Title: The Old Wives' Tale
Author: Arnold Bennett



To W. W. K.




PREFACE TO THIS EDITION

In the autumn of 1903 I used to dine frequently in a restaurant in
the Rue de Clichy, Paris. Here were, among others, two waitresses
that attracted my attention. One was a beautiful, pale young girl,
to whom I never spoke, for she was employed far away from the
table which I affected. The other, a stout, middle-aged managing
Breton woman, had sole command over my table and me, and gradually
she began to assume such a maternal tone towards me that I saw I
should be compelled to leave that restaurant. If I was absent for
a couple of nights running she would reproach me sharply: "What!
you are unfaithful to me?" Once, when I complained about some
French beans, she informed me roundly that French beans were a
subject which I did not understand. I then decided to be eternally
unfaithful to her, and I abandoned the restaurant. A few nights
before the final parting an old woman came into the restaurant to
dine. She was fat, shapeless, ugly, and grotesque. She had a
ridiculous voice, and ridiculous gestures. It was easy to see that
she lived alone, and that in the long lapse of years she had
developed the kind of peculiarity which induces guffaws among the
thoughtless. She was burdened with a lot of small parcels, which
she kept dropping. She chose one seat; and then, not liking it,
chose another; and then another. In a few moments she had the
whole restaurant laughing at her. That my middle-aged Breton
should laugh was indifferent to me, but I was pained to see a
coarse grimace of giggling on the pale face of the beautiful young
waitress to whom I had never spoken.

I reflected, concerning the grotesque diner: "This woman was once
young, slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free from these
ridiculous mannerisms. Very probably she is unconscious of her
singularities. Her case is a tragedy. One ought to be able to make
a heartrending novel out of the history of a woman such as she."
Every stout, ageing woman is not grotesque--far from it!--but
there is an extreme pathos in the mere fact that every stout
ageing woman was once a young girl with the unique charm of youth
in her form and movements and in her mind. And the fact that the
change from the young girl to the stout ageing woman is made up of
an infinite number of infinitesimal changes, each unperceived by
her, only intensifies the pathos.

It was at this instant that I was visited by the idea of writing
the book which ultimately became "The Old Wives' Tale." Of course
I felt that the woman who caused the ignoble mirth in the
restaurant would not serve me as a type of heroine. For she was
much too old and obviously unsympathetic. It is an absolute rule
that the principal character of a novel must not be unsympathetic,
and the whole modern tendency of realistic fiction is against
oddness in a prominent figure. I knew that I must choose the sort
of woman who would pass unnoticed in a crowd.

I put the idea aside for a long time, but it was never very
distant from me. For several reasons it made a special appeal to
me. I had always been a convinced admirer of Mrs. W. K. Clifford's
most precious novel, "Aunt Anne," but I wanted to see in the story
of an old woman many things that Mrs. W. K. Clifford had omitted
from "Aunt Anne." Moreover, I had always revolted against the
absurd youthfulness, the unfading youthfulness of the average
heroine. And as a protest against this fashion, I was already, in
1903, planning a novel ("Leonora") of which the heroine was aged
forty, and had daughters old enough to be in love. The reviewers,
by the way, were staggered by my hardihood in offering a woman of
forty as a subject of serious interest to the public. But I meant
to go much farther than forty! Finally as a supreme reason, I had
the example and the challenge of Guy de Maupassant's "Une Vie." In
the nineties we used to regard "Une Vie" with mute awe, as being
the summit of achievement in fiction. And I remember being very
cross with Mr. Bernard Shaw because, having read "Une Vie" at the
suggestion (I think) of Mr. William Archer, he failed to see in it
anything very remarkable. Here I must confess that, in 1908, I
read "Une Vie" again, and in spite of a natural anxiety to differ
from Mr. Bernard Shaw, I was gravely disappointed with it. It is a
fine novel, but decidedly inferior to "Pierre et Jean" or even
"Fort Comme la Mort." To return to the year 1903. "Une Vie"
relates the entire life history of a woman. I settled in the
privacy of my own head that my book about the development of a
young girl into a stout old lady must be the English "Une Vie." I
have been accused of every fault except a lack of self-confidence,
and in a few weeks I settled a further point, namely, that my book
must "go one better" than "Une Vie," and that to this end it must
be the life-history of two women instead of only one. Hence, "The
Old Wives' Tale" has two heroines. Constance was the original;
Sophia was created out of bravado, just to indicate that I
declined to consider Guy de Maupassant as the last forerunner of
the deluge. I was intimidated by the audacity of my project, but I
had sworn to carry it out. For several years I looked it squarely
in the face at intervals, and then walked away to write novels of
smaller scope, of which I produced five or six. But I could not
dally forever, and in the autumn of 1907 I actually began to write
it, in a village near Fontainebleau, where I rented half a house
from a retired railway servant. I calculated that it would be
200,000 words long (which it exactly proved to be), and I had a
vague notion that no novel of such dimensions (except
Richardson's) had ever been written before. So I counted the words
in several famous Victorian novels, and discovered to my relief
that the famous Victorian novels average 400,000 words apiece. I
wrote the first part of the novel in six weeks. It was fairly easy
to me, because, in the seventies, in the first decade of my life,
I had lived in the actual draper's shop of the Baines's, and knew
it as only a child could know it. Then I went to London on a
visit. I tried to continue the book in a London hotel, but London
was too distracting, and I put the thing away, and during January
and February of 1908, I wrote "Buried Alive," which was published
immediately, and was received with majestic indifference by the
English public, an indifference which has persisted to this day.

I then returned to the Fontainebleau region and gave "The Old
Wives' Tale" no rest till I finished it at the end of July, 1908.
It was published in the autumn of the same year, and for six weeks
afterward the English public steadily confirmed an opinion
expressed by a certain person in whose judgment I had confidence,
to the effect that the work was honest but dull, and that when it
was not dull it had a regrettable tendency to facetiousness. My
publishers, though brave fellows, were somewhat disheartened;
however, the reception of the book gradually became less and less
frigid.

With regard to the French portion of the story, it was not until I
had written the first part that I saw from a study of my
chronological basis that the Siege of Paris might be brought into
the tale. The idea was seductive; but I hated, and still hate, the
awful business of research; and I only knew the Paris of the
Twentieth Century. Now I was aware that my railway servant and his
wife had been living in Paris at the time of the war. I said to
the old man, "By the way, you went through the Siege of Paris,
didn't you?" He turned to his old wife and said, uncertainly, "The
Siege of Paris? Yes, we did, didn't we?" The Siege of Paris had
been only one incident among many in their lives. Of course, they
remembered it well, though not vividly, and I gained much
information from them. But the most useful thing which I gained
from them was the perception, startling at first, that ordinary
people went on living very ordinary lives in Paris during the
siege, and that to the vast mass of the population the siege was
not the dramatic, spectacular, thrilling, ecstatic affair that is
described in history. Encouraged by this perception, I decided to
include the siege in my scheme. I read Sarcey's diary of the siege
aloud to my wife, and I looked at the pictures in Jules Claretie's
popular work on the siege and the commune, and I glanced at the
printed collection of official documents, and there my research
ended.

It has been asserted that unless I had actually been present at a
public execution, I could not have written the chapter in which
Sophia was at the Auxerre solemnity. I have not been present at a
public execution, as the whole of my information about public
executions was derived from a series of articles on them which I
read in the Paris Matin. Mr. Frank Harris, discussing my book in
"Vanity Fair," said it was clear that I had not seen an execution,
(or words to that effect), and he proceeded to give his own
description of an execution. It was a brief but terribly
convincing bit of writing, quite characteristic and quite worthy
of the author of "Montes the Matador" and of a man who has been
almost everywhere and seen almost everything. I comprehended how
far short I had fallen of the truth! I wrote to Mr. Frank Harris,
regretting that his description had not been printed before I
wrote mine, as I should assuredly have utilized it, and, of
course, I admitted that I had never witnessed an execution. He
simply replied: "Neither have I." This detail is worth preserving,
for it is a reproof to that large body of readers, who, when a
novelist has really carried conviction to them, assert off hand:
"O, that must be autobiography!"

ARNOLD BENNETT.






CONTENTS


BOOK I.

MRS. BAINES

   I. THE SQUARE

  II. THE TOOTH

 III. A BATTLE

  IV. ELEPHANT

   V. THE TRAVELLER

  VI. ESCAPADE

 VII. A DEFEAT



BOOK II.

CONSTANCE

   I. REVOLUTION

  II. CHRISTMAS AND THE FUTURE

 III. CYRIL

  IV. CRIME

   V. ANOTHER CRIME

  VI. THE WIDOW

 VII. BRICKS AND MORTAR

VIII. THE PROUDEST MOTHER



BOOK III.

SOPHIA

   I. THE ELOPEMENT

  II. SUPPER

 III. AN AMBITION SATISFIED

  IV. A CRISIS FOR GERALD

   V. FEVER

  VI. THE SIEGE

 VII. SUCCESS



BOOK IV.

WHAT LIFE IS

   I. FRENSHAM'S

  II. THE MEETING

 III. TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE

  IV. END OF SOPHIA

   V. END OF CONSTANCE






BOOK I

MRS. BAINES




CHAPTER I

THE SQUARE

I


Those two girls, Constance and Sophia Baines, paid no heed to the
manifold interest of their situation, of which, indeed, they had
never been conscious. They were, for example, established almost
precisely on the fifty-third parallel of latitude. A little way to
the north of them, in the creases of a hill famous for its
religious orgies, rose the river Trent, the calm and
characteristic stream of middle England. Somewhat further
northwards, in the near neighbourhood of the highest public-house
in the realm, rose two lesser rivers, the Dane and the Dove,
which, quarrelling in early infancy, turned their backs on each
other, and, the one by favour of the Weaver and the other by
favour of the Trent, watered between them the whole width of
England, and poured themselves respectively into the Irish Sea and
the German Ocean. What a county of modest, unnoticed rivers! What
a natural, simple county, content to fix its boundaries by these
tortuous island brooks, with their comfortable names--Trent,
Mease, Dove, Tern, Dane, Mees, Stour, Tame, and even hasty Severn!
Not that the Severn is suitable to the county! In the county
excess is deprecated. The county is happy in not exciting remark.
It is content that Shropshire should possess that swollen bump,
the Wrekin, and that the exaggerated wildness of the Peak should
lie over its border. It does not desire to be a pancake like
Cheshire. It has everything that England has, including thirty
miles of Watling Street; and England can show nothing more
beautiful and nothing uglier than the works of nature and the
works of man to be seen within the limits of the county. It is
England in little, lost in the midst of England, unsung by
searchers after the extreme; perhaps occasionally somewhat sore at
this neglect, but how proud in the instinctive cognizance of its
representative features and traits!

Constance and Sophia, busy with the intense preoccupations of
youth, recked not of such matters. They were surrounded by the
county. On every side the fields and moors of Staffordshire,
intersected by roads and lanes, railways, watercourses and
telegraph-lines, patterned by hedges, ornamented and made
respectable by halls and genteel parks, enlivened by villages at
the intersections, and warmly surveyed by the sun, spread out
undulating. And trains were rushing round curves in deep cuttings,
and carts and waggons trotting and jingling on the yellow roads,
and long, narrow boats passing in a leisure majestic and infinite
over the surface of the stolid canals; the rivers had only
themselves to support, for Staffordshire rivers have remained
virgin of keels to this day. One could imagine the messages
concerning prices, sudden death, and horses, in their flight
through the wires under the feet of birds. In the inns Utopians
were shouting the universe into order over beer, and in the halls
and parks the dignity of England was being preserved in a fitting
manner. The villages were full of women who did nothing but fight
against dirt and hunger, and repair the effects of friction on
clothes. Thousands of labourers were in the fields, but the fields
were so broad and numerous that this scattered multitude was
totally lost therein. The cuckoo was much more perceptible than
man, dominating whole square miles with his resounding call. And
on the airy moors heath-larks played in the ineffaceable mule-
tracks that had served centuries before even the Romans thought of
Watling Street. In short, the usual daily life of the county was
proceeding with all its immense variety and importance; but though
Constance and Sophia were in it they were not of it.

The fact is, that while in the county they were also in the
district; and no person who lives in the district, even if he
should be old and have nothing to do but reflect upon things in
general, ever thinks about the county. So far as the county goes,
the district might almost as well be in the middle of the Sahara.
It ignores the county, save that it uses it nonchalantly sometimes
as leg-stretcher on holiday afternoons, as a man may use his back
garden. It has nothing in common with the county; it is richly
sufficient to itself. Nevertheless, its self-sufficiency and the
true salt savour of its life can only be appreciated by picturing
it hemmed in by county. It lies on the face of the county like an
insignificant stain, like a dark Pleiades in a green and empty
sky. And Hanbridge has the shape of a horse and its rider, Bursley
of half a donkey, Knype of a pair of trousers, Longshaw of an
octopus, and little Turnhill of a beetle. The Five Towns seem to
cling together for safety. Yet the idea of clinging together for
safety would make them laugh. They are unique and indispensable.
From the north of the county right down to the south they alone
stand for civilization, applied science, organized manufacture,
and the century--until you come to Wolverhampton. They are unique
and indispensable because you cannot drink tea out of a teacup
without the aid of the Five Towns; because you cannot eat a meal
in decency without the aid of the Five Towns. For this the
architecture of the Five Towns is an architecture of ovens and
chimneys; for this its atmosphere is as black as its mud; for this
it burns and smokes all night, so that Longshaw has been compared
to hell; for this it is unlearned in the ways of agriculture,
never having seen corn except as packing straw and in quartern
loaves; for this, on the other hand, it comprehends the mysterious
habits of fire and pure, sterile earth; for this it lives crammed
together in slippery streets where the housewife must change white
window-curtains at least once a fortnight if she wishes to remain
respectable; for this it gets up in the mass at six a.m., winter
and summer, and goes to bed when the public-houses close; for this
it exists--that you may drink tea out of a teacup and toy with a
chop on a plate. All the everyday crockery used in the kingdom is
made in the Five Towns--all, and much besides. A district capable
of such gigantic manufacture, of such a perfect monopoly--and
which finds energy also to produce coal and iron and great men--
may be an insignificant stain on a county, considered
geographically, but it is surely well justified in treating the
county as its back garden once a week, and in blindly ignoring it
the rest of the time.

Even the majestic thought that whenever and wherever in all
England a woman washes up, she washes up the product of the
district; that whenever and wherever in all England a plate is
broken the fracture means new business for the district--even this
majestic thought had probably never occurred to either of the
girls. The fact is, that while in the Five Towns they were also in
the Square, Bursley and the Square ignored the staple manufacture
as perfectly as the district ignored the county. Bursley has the
honours of antiquity in the Five Towns. No industrial development
can ever rob it of its superiority in age, which makes it
absolutely sure in its conceit. And the time will never come when
the other towns--let them swell and bluster as they may--will not
pronounce the name of Bursley as one pronounces the name of one's
mother. Add to this that the Square was the centre of Bursley's
retail trade (which scorned the staple as something wholesale,
vulgar, and assuredly filthy), and you will comprehend the
importance and the self-isolation of the Square in the scheme of
the created universe. There you have it, embedded in the district,
and the district embedded in the county, and the county lost and
dreaming in the heart of England!

The Square was named after St. Luke. The Evangelist might have
been startled by certain phenomena in his square, but, except in
Wakes Week, when the shocking always happened, St. Luke's Square
lived in a manner passably saintly--though it contained five
public-houses. It contained five public-houses, a bank, a
barber's, a confectioner's, three grocers', two chemists', an
ironmonger's, a clothier's, and five drapers'. These were all the
catalogue. St. Luke's Square had no room for minor establishments.
The aristocracy of the Square undoubtedly consisted of the drapers
(for the bank was impersonal); and among the five the shop of
Baines stood supreme. No business establishment could possibly be
more respected than that of Mr. Baines was respected. And though
John Baines had been bedridden for a dozen years, he still lived
on the lips of admiring, ceremonious burgesses as 'our honoured
fellow-townsman.' He deserved his reputation.

The Baines's shop, to make which three dwellings had at intervals
been thrown into one, lay at the bottom of the Square. It formed
about one-third of the south side of the Square, the remainder
being made up of Critchlow's (chemist), the clothier's, and the
Hanover Spirit Vaults. ("Vaults" was a favourite synonym of the
public-house in the Square. Only two of the public-houses were
crude public-houses: the rest were "vaults.") It was a composite
building of three storeys, in blackish-crimson brick, with a
projecting shop-front and, above and behind that, two rows of
little windows. On the sash of each window was a red cloth roll
stuffed with sawdust, to prevent draughts; plain white blinds
descended about six inches from the top of each window. There were
no curtains to any of the windows save one; this was the window of
the drawing-room, on the first floor at the corner of the Square
and King Street. Another window, on the second storey, was
peculiar, in that it had neither blind nor pad, and was very
dirty; this was the window of an unused room that had a separate
staircase to itself, the staircase being barred by a door always
locked. Constance and Sophia had lived in continual expectation of
the abnormal issuing from that mysterious room, which was next to
their own. But they were disappointed. The room had no shameful
secret except the incompetence of the architect who had made one
house out of three; it was just an empty, unemployable room. The
building had also a considerable frontage on King Street, where,
behind the shop, was sheltered the parlour, with a large window
and a door that led directly by two steps into the street. A
strange peculiarity of the shop was that it bore no signboard.
Once it had had a large signboard which a memorable gale had blown
into the Square. Mr. Baines had decided not to replace it. He had
always objected to what he called "puffing," and for this reason
would never hear of such a thing as a clearance sale. The hatred
of "puffing" grew on him until he came to regard even a sign as
"puffing." Uninformed persons who wished to find Baines's must ask
and learn. For Mr. Baines, to have replaced the sign would have
been to condone, yea, to participate in, the modern craze for
unscrupulous self-advertisement. This abstention of Mr. Baines's
from indulgence in signboards was somehow accepted by the more
thoughtful members of the community as evidence that the height of
Mr. Baines's principles was greater even than they had imagined.

Constance and Sophia were the daughters of this credit to human
nature. He had no other children.

II

They pressed their noses against the window of the show-room, and
gazed down into the Square as perpendicularly as the projecting
front of the shop would allow. The show-room was over the
millinery and silken half of the shop. Over the woollen and
shirting half were the drawing-room and the chief bedroom. When in
quest of articles of coquetry, you mounted from the shop by a
curving stair, and your head gradually rose level with a large
apartment having a mahogany counter in front of the window and
along one side, yellow linoleum on the floor, many cardboard
boxes, a magnificent hinged cheval glass, and two chairs. The
window-sill being lower than the counter, there was a gulf between
the panes and the back of the counter, into which important
articles such as scissors, pencils, chalk, and artificial flowers
were continually disappearing: another proof of the architect's
incompetence.

The girls could only press their noses against the window by
kneeling on the counter, and this they were doing. Constance's
nose was snub, but agreeably so. Sophia had a fine Roman nose; she
was a beautiful creature, beautiful and handsome at the same time.
They were both of them rather like racehorses, quivering with
delicate, sensitive, and luxuriant life; exquisite, enchanting
proof of the circulation of the blood; innocent, artful, roguish,
prim, gushing, ignorant, and miraculously wise. Their ages were
sixteen and fifteen; it is an epoch when, if one is frank, one
must admit that one has nothing to learn: one has learnt simply
everything in the previous six months.

"There she goes!" exclaimed Sophia.

Up the Square, from the corner of King Street, passed a woman in a
new bonnet with pink strings, and a new blue dress that sloped at
the shoulders and grew to a vast circumference at the hem. Through
the silent sunlit solitude of the Square (for it was Thursday
afternoon, and all the shops shut except the confectioner's and
one chemist's) this bonnet and this dress floated northwards in
search of romance, under the relentless eyes of Constance and
Sophia. Within them, somewhere, was the soul of Maggie, domestic
servant at Baines's. Maggie had been at the shop since before the
creation of Constance and Sophia. She lived seventeen hours of
each day in an underground kitchen and larder, and the other seven
in an attic, never going out except to chapel on Sunday evenings,
and once a month on Thursday afternoons. "Followers" were most
strictly forbidden to her; but on rare occasions an aunt from
Longshaw was permitted as a tremendous favour to see her in the
subterranean den. Everybody, including herself, considered that
she had a good "place," and was well treated. It was undeniable,
for instance, that she was allowed to fall in love exactly as she
chose, provided she did not "carry on" in the kitchen or the yard.
And as a fact, Maggie had fallen in love. In seventeen years she
had been engaged eleven times. No one could conceive how that ugly
and powerful organism could softly languish to the undoing of even
a butty-collier, nor why, having caught a man in her sweet toils,
she could ever be imbecile enough to set him free. There are,
however, mysteries in the souls of Maggies. The drudge had
probably been affianced oftener than any woman in Bursley. Her
employers were so accustomed to an interesting announcement that
for years they had taken to saying naught in reply but 'Really,
Maggie!' Engagements and tragic partings were Maggie's pastime.
Fixed otherwise, she might have studied the piano instead.

"No gloves, of course!" Sophia criticized.

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

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

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

"I don't care if she does," said Sophia, with a haughtiness almost
impassioned; and her head trembled slightly.

There were, as usual, several loafers at the top of the Square, in
the corner between the bank and the "Marquis of Granby." And one
of these loafers stepped forward and shook hands with an obviously
willing Maggie. Clearly it was a rendezvous, open, unashamed. The
twelfth victim had been selected by the virgin of forty, whose
kiss would not have melted lard! The couple disappeared together
down Oldcastle Street.

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

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

With the profound, instinctive cruelty of youth, Constance and
Sophia had assembled in their favourite haunt, the show-room,
expressly to deride Maggie in her new clothes. They obscurely
thought that a woman so ugly and soiled as Maggie was had no right
to possess new clothes. Even her desire to take the air of a
Thursday afternoon seemed to them unnatural and somewhat
reprehensible. Why should she want to stir out of her kitchen? As
for her tender yearnings, they positively grudged these to Maggie.
That Maggie should give rein to chaste passion was more than
grotesque; it was offensive and wicked. But let it not for an
instant be doubted that they were nice, kind-hearted, well-
behaved, and delightful girls! Because they were. They were not
angels.

"It's too ridiculous!" said Sophia, severely. She had youth,
beauty, and rank in her favour. And to her it really was
ridiculous.

"Poor old Maggie!" Constance murmured. Constance was foolishly
good-natured, a perfect manufactory of excuses for other people;
and her benevolence was eternally rising up and overpowering her
reason.

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

"Not until supper."

"Oh! Hallelujah!" Sophia burst out, clasping her hands in joy. And
they both slid down from the counter just as if they had been
little boys, and not, as their mother called them, "great girls."

"Let's go and play the Osborne quadrilles," Sophia suggested (the
Osborne quadrilles being a series of dances arranged to be
performed on drawing-room pianos by four jewelled hands).

"I couldn't think of it," said Constance, with a precocious
gesture of seriousness. In that gesture, and in her tone, was
something which conveyed to Sophia: "Sophia, how can you be so
utterly blind to the gravity of our fleeting existence as to ask
me to go and strum the piano with you?" Yet a moment before she
had been a little boy.

"Why not?" Sophia demanded.

"I shall never have another chance like to-day for getting on with
this," said Constance, picking up a bag from the counter.

She sat down and took from the bag a piece of loosely woven
canvas, on which she was embroidering a bunch of roses in coloured
wools. The canvas had once been stretched on a frame, but now, as
the delicate labour of the petals and leaves was done, and nothing
remained to do but the monotonous background, Constance was
content to pin the stuff to her knee. With the long needle and
several skeins of mustard-tinted wool, she bent over the canvas
and resumed the filling-in of the tiny squares. The whole design
was in squares--the gradations of red and greens, the curves of
the smallest buds--all was contrived in squares, with a result
that mimicked a fragment of uncompromising Axminster carpet.
Still, the fine texture of the wool, the regular and rapid grace
of those fingers moving incessantly at back and front of the
canvas, the gentle sound of the wool as it passed through the
holes, and the intent, youthful earnestness of that lowered gaze,
excused and invested with charm an activity which, on artistic
grounds, could not possibly be justified. The canvas was destined
to adorn a gilt firescreen in the drawing-room, and also to form a
birthday gift to Mrs. Baines from her elder daughter. But whether
the enterprise was as secret from Mrs. Baines as Constance hoped,
none save Mrs. Baines knew.

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

"Well," said Constance, blandly, "it's no use pretending that this
hasn't got to be finished before we go back to school, because it
has." Sophia wandered about, a prey ripe for the Evil One. "Oh,"
she exclaimed joyously--even ecstatically--looking behind the
cheval glass, "here's mother's new skirt! Miss Dunn's been putting
the gimp on it! Oh, mother, what a proud thing you will be!"
Constance heard swishings behind the glass. "What are you doing,
Sophia?"

"Nothing."

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

"Why not?"

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

Without further defence, Sophia sprang out from behind the immense
glass. She had already shed a notable part of her own costume, and
the flush of mischief was in her face. She ran across to the other
side of the room and examined carefully a large coloured print
that was affixed to the wall.

This print represented fifteen sisters, all of the same height and
slimness of figure, all of the same age--about twenty-five or so,
and all with exactly the same haughty and bored beauty. That they
were in truth sisters was clear from the facial resemblance
between them; their demeanour indicated that they were princesses,
offspring of some impossibly prolific king and queen. Those hands
had never toiled, nor had those features ever relaxed from the
smile of courts. The princesses moved in a landscape of marble
steps and verandahs, with a bandstand and strange trees in the
distance. One was in a riding-habit, another in evening attire,
another dressed for tea, another for the theatre; another seemed
to be ready to go to bed. One held a little girl by the hand; it
could not have been her own little girl, for these princesses were
far beyond human passions. Where had she obtained the little girl?
Why was one sister going to the theatre, another to tea, another
to the stable, and another to bed? Why was one in a heavy mantle,
and another sheltering from the sun's rays under a parasol? The
picture was drenched in mystery, and the strangest thing about it
was that all these highnesses were apparently content with the
most ridiculous and out-moded fashions. Absurd hats, with veils
flying behind; absurd bonnets, fitting close to the head, and
spotted; absurd coiffures that nearly lay on the nape; absurd,
clumsy sleeves; absurd waists, almost above the elbow's level;
absurd scolloped jackets! And the skirts! What a sight were those
skirts! They were nothing but vast decorated pyramids; on the
summit of each was stuck the upper half of a princess. It was
astounding that princesses should consent to be so preposterous
and so uncomfortable. But Sophia perceived nothing uncanny in the
picture, which bore the legend: "Newest summer fashions from
Paris. Gratis supplement to Myra's Journal." Sophia had never
imagined anything more stylish, lovely, and dashing than the
raiment of the fifteen princesses.

For Constance and Sophia had the disadvantage of living in the
middle ages. The crinoline had not quite reached its full
circumference, and the dress-improver had not even been thought
of. In all the Five Towns there was not a public bath, nor a free
library, nor a municipal park, nor a telephone, nor yet a board-
school. People had not understood the vital necessity of going
away to the seaside every year. Bishop Colenso had just staggered
Christianity by his shameless notions on the Pentateuch. Half
Lancashire was starving on account of the American war. Garroting
was the chief amusement of the homicidal classes. Incredible as it
may appear, there was nothing but a horse-tram running between
Bursley and Hanbridge--and that only twice an hour; and between
the other towns no stage of any kind! One went to Longshaw as one
now goes to Pekin. It was an era so dark and backward that one
might wonder how people could sleep in their beds at night for
thinking about their sad state.

Happily the inhabitants of the Five Towns in that era were
passably pleased with themselves, and they never even suspected
that they were not quite modern and quite awake. They thought that
the intellectual, the industrial, and the social movements had
gone about as far as these movements could go, and they were
amazed at their own progress. Instead of being humble and ashamed,
they actually showed pride in their pitiful achievements. They
ought to have looked forward meekly to the prodigious feats of
posterity; but, having too little faith and too much conceit, they
were content to look behind and make comparisons with the past.
They did not foresee the miraculous generation which is us. A
poor, blind, complacent people! The ludicrous horse-car was
typical of them. The driver rang a huge bell, five minutes before
starting, that could he heard from the Wesleyan Chapel to the Cock
Yard, and then after deliberations and hesitations the vehicle
rolled off on its rails into unknown dangers while passengers
shouted good-bye. At Bleakridge it had to stop for the turnpike,
and it was assisted up the mountains of Leveson Place and
Sutherland Street (towards Hanbridge) by a third horse, on whose
back was perched a tiny, whip-cracking boy; that boy lived like a
shuttle on the road between Leveson Place and Sutherland Street,
and even in wet weather he was the envy of all other boys. After
half an hour's perilous transit the car drew up solemnly in a
narrow street by the Signal office in Hanbridge, and the ruddy
driver, having revolved many times the polished iron handle of his
sole brake, turned his attention to his passengers in calm
triumph, dismissing them with a sort of unsung doxology.

And this was regarded as the last word of traction! A whip-
cracking boy on a tip horse! Oh, blind, blind! You could not
foresee the hundred and twenty electric cars that now rush madly
bumping and thundering at twenty miles an hour through all the
main streets of the district!

So that naturally Sophia, infected with the pride of her period,
had no misgivings whatever concerning the final elegance of the
princesses. She studied them as the fifteen apostles of the ne
plus ultra; then, having taken some flowers and plumes out of a
box, amid warnings from Constance, she retreated behind the glass,
and presently emerged as a great lady in the style of the
princesses. Her mother's tremendous new gown ballooned about her
in all its fantastic richness and expensiveness. And with the gown
she had put on her mother's importance--that mien of assured
authority, of capacity tested in many a crisis, which
characterized Mrs. Baines, and which Mrs. Baines seemed to impart
to her dresses even before she had regularly worn them. For it was
a fact that Mrs. Baines's empty garments inspired respect, as
though some essence had escaped from her and remained in them.

"Sophia!"

Constance stayed her needle, and, without lifting her head, gazed,
with eyes raised from the wool-work, motionless at the posturing
figure of her sister. It was sacrilege that she was witnessing, a
prodigious irreverence. She was conscious of an expectation that
punishment would instantly fall on this daring, impious child. But
she, who never felt these mad, amazing impulses, could
nevertheless only smile fearfully.

"Sophia!" she breathed, with an intensity of alarm that merged
into condoning admiration. "Whatever will you do next?"

Sophia's lovely flushed face crowned the extraordinary structure
like a blossom, scarcely controlling its laughter. She was as tall
as her mother, and as imperious, as crested, and proud; and in
spite of the pigtail, the girlish semi-circular comb, and the
loose foal-like limbs, she could support as well as her mother the
majesty of the gimp-embroidered dress. Her eyes sparkled with all
the challenges of the untried virgin as she minced about the
showroom. Abounding life inspired her movements. The confident and
fierce joy of youth shone on her brow. "What thing on earth equals
me?" she seemed to demand with enchanting and yet ruthless
arrogance. She was the daughter of a respected, bedridden draper
in an insignificant town, lost in the central labyrinth of
England, if you like; yet what manner of man, confronted with her,
would or could have denied her naive claim to dominion? She stood,
in her mother's hoops, for the desire of the world. And in the
innocence of her soul she knew it! The heart of a young girl
mysteriously speaks and tells her of her power long ere she can
use her power. If she can find nothing else to subdue, you may
catch her in the early years subduing a gate-post or drawing
homage from an empty chair. Sophia's experimental victim was
Constance, with suspended needle and soft glance that shot out
from the lowered face.

Then Sophia fell, in stepping backwards; the pyramid was
overbalanced; great distended rings of silk trembled and swayed
gigantically on the floor, and Sophia's small feet lay like the
feet of a doll on the rim of the largest circle, which curved and
arched above them like a cavern's mouth. The abrupt transition of
her features from assured pride to ludicrous astonishment and
alarm was comical enough to have sent into wild uncharitable
laughter any creature less humane than Constance. But Constance
sprang to her, a single embodied instinct of benevolence, with her
snub nose, and tried to raise her.

"Oh, Sophia!" she cried compassionately--that voice seemed not to
know the tones of reproof--"I do hope you've not messed it,
because mother would be so--"

The words were interrupted by the sound of groans beyond the door
leading to the bedrooms. The groans, indicating direst physical
torment, grew louder. The two girls stared, wonder-struck and
afraid, at the door, Sophia with her dark head raised, and
Constance with her arms round Sophia's waist. The door opened,
letting in a much-magnified sound of groans, and there entered a
youngish, undersized man, who was frantically clutching his head
in his hands and contorting all the muscles of his face. On
perceiving the sculptural group of two prone, interlocked girls,
one enveloped in a crinoline, and the other with a wool-work bunch
of flowers pinned to her knee, he jumped back, ceased groaning,
arranged his face, and seriously tried to pretend that it was not
he who had been vocal in anguish, that, indeed, he was just
passing as a casual, ordinary wayfarer through the showroom to the
shop below. He blushed darkly; and the girls also blushed.

"Oh, I beg pardon, I'm sure!" said this youngish man suddenly; and
with a swift turn he disappeared whence he had come.

He was Mr. Povey, a person universally esteemed, both within and
without the shop, the surrogate of bedridden Mr. Baines, the
unfailing comfort and stand-by of Mrs. Baines, the fount and
radiating centre of order and discipline in the shop; a quiet,
diffident, secretive, tedious, and obstinate youngish man,
absolutely faithful, absolutely efficient in his sphere; without
brilliance, without distinction; perhaps rather little-minded,
certainly narrow-minded; but what a force in the shop! The shop
was inconceivable without Mr. Povey. He was under twenty and not
out of his apprenticeship when Mr. Baines had been struck down,
and he had at once proved his worth. Of the assistants, he alone
slept in the house. His bedroom was next to that of his employer;
there was a door between the two chambers, and the two steps led
down from the larger to the less.

The girls regained their feet, Sophia with Constance's help. It
was not easy to right a capsized crinoline. They both began to
laugh nervously, with a trace of hysteria.

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

Mr. Povey's toothache had been causing anxiety in the microcosm
for two days, and it had been clearly understood at dinner that
Thursday morning that Mr. Povey was to set forth to Oulsnam Bros.,
the dentists at Hillport, without any delay. Only on Thursdays and
Sundays did Mr. Povey dine with the family. On other days he dined
later, by himself, but at the family table, when Mrs. Baines or
one of the assistants could "relieve" him in the shop. Before
starting out to visit her elder sister at Axe, Mrs. Baines had
insisted to Mr. Povey that he had eaten practically nothing but
"slops" for twenty-four hours, and that if he was not careful she
would have him on her hands. He had replied in his quietest, most
sagacious, matter-of-fact tone--the tone that carried weight with
all who heard it--that he had only been waiting for Thursday
afternoon, and should of course go instantly to Oulsnams' and have
the thing attended to in a proper manner. He had even added that
persons who put off going to the dentist's were simply sowing
trouble for themselves.

None could possibly have guessed that Mr. Povey was afraid of
going to the dentist's. But such was the case. He had not dared to
set forth. The paragon of commonsense, pictured by most people as
being somehow unliable to human frailties, could not yet screw
himself up to the point of ringing a dentist's door-bell.

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

Constance made no answer; but when Sophia had resumed her own
clothes, and it was ascertained beyond doubt that the new dress
had not suffered, and Constance herself was calmly stitching
again, she said, poising her needle as she had poised it to watch
Sophia:

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

"What?" Sophia demanded.

"Has he gone back to his bedroom?"

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

They went, through the showroom door, past the foot of the stairs
leading to the second storey, down the long corridor broken in the
middle by two steps and carpeted with a narrow bordered carpet
whose parallel lines increased its apparent length. They went on
tiptoe, sticking close to one another. Mr. Povey's door was
slightly ajar. They listened; not a sound.

"Mr. Povey!" Constance coughed discreetly.

No reply. It was Sophia who pushed the door open. Constance made
an elderly prim plucking gesture at Sophia's bare arm, but she
followed Sophia gingerly into the forbidden room, which was,
however, empty. The bed had been ruffled, and on it lay a book,
"The Harvest of a Quiet Eye."

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

"Hsh!" Constance put her lips forward.

From the next room came a regular, muffled, oratorical sound, as
though some one had begun many years ago to address a meeting and
had forgotten to leave off and never would leave off. They were
familiar with the sound, and they quitted Mr. Povey's chamber in
fear of disturbing it. At the same moment Mr. Povey reappeared,
this time in the drawing-room doorway at the other extremity of
the long corridor. He seemed to be trying ineffectually to flee
from his tooth as a murderer tries to flee from his conscience.

"Oh, Mr. Povey!" said Constance quickly--for he had surprised them
coming out of his bedroom; "we were just looking for you."

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

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

Then he began to come down the corridor, slowly.

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

"No, I haven't," said Mr. Povey, as if Constance was indicating a
fact which had escaped his attention. "The truth is, I thought it
looked like rain, and if I'd got wet--you see--"

Miserable Mr. Povey!

"Yes," said Constance, "you certainly ought to keep out of
draughts. Don't you think it would be a good thing if you went and
sat in the parlour? There's a fire there."

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

III

The girls made way for him to pass them at the head of the
twisting stairs which led down to the parlour. Constance followed,
and Sophia followed Constance.

"Have father's chair," said Constance.

There were two rocking-chairs with fluted backs covered by
antimacassars, one on either side of the hearth. That to the left
was still entitled "father's chair," though its owner had not sat
in it since long before the Crimean war, and would never sit in it
again.

"I think I'd sooner have the other one," said Mr. Povey, "because
it's on the right side, you see." And he touched his right cheek.

Having taken Mrs. Baines's chair, he bent his face down to the
fire, seeking comfort from its warmth. Sophia poked the fire,
whereupon Mr. Povey abruptly withdrew his face. He then felt
something light on his shoulders. Constance had taken the
antimacassar from the back of the chair, and protected him with it
from the draughts. He did not instantly rebel, and therefore was
permanently barred from rebellion. He was entrapped by the
antimacassar. It formally constituted him an invalid, and
Constance and Sophia his nurses. Constance drew the curtain across
the street door. No draught could come from the window, for the
window was not 'made to open.' The age of ventilation had not
arrived. Sophia shut the other two doors. And, each near a door,
the girls gazed at Mr. Povey behind his back, irresolute, but
filled with a delicious sense of responsibility.

The situation was on a different plane now. The seriousness of Mr.
Povey's toothache, which became more and more manifest, had
already wiped out the ludicrous memory of the encounter in the
showroom. Looking at these two big girls, with their short-sleeved
black frocks and black aprons, and their smooth hair, and their
composed serious faces, one would have judged them incapable of
the least lapse from an archangelic primness; Sophia especially
presented a marvellous imitation of saintly innocence. As for the
toothache, its action on Mr. Povey was apparently periodic; it
gathered to a crisis like a wave, gradually, the torture
increasing till the wave broke and left Mr. Povey exhausted, but
free for a moment from pain. These crises recurred about once a
minute. And now, accustomed to the presence of the young virgins,
and having tacitly acknowledged by his acceptance of the
antimacassar that his state was abnormal, he gave himself up
frankly to affliction. He concealed nothing of his agony, which
was fully displayed by sudden contortions of his frame, and
frantic oscillations of the rocking-chair. Presently, as he lay
back enfeebled in the wash of a spent wave, he murmured with a
sick man's voice:

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

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

"Yes, to hold in my mouth."

He sat up, tense; another wave was forming. The excellent fellow
was lost to all self-respect, all decency.

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

Constance, who bore Mrs. Baines's bunch of keys at her girdle, a
solemn trust, moved a little fearfully to a corner cupboard which
was hung in the angle to the right of the projecting fireplace,
over a shelf on which stood a large copper tea-urn. That corner
cupboard, of oak inlaid with maple and ebony in a simple border
pattern, was typical of the room. It was of a piece with the deep
green "flock" wall paper, and the tea-urn, and the rocking-chairs
with their antimacassars, and the harmonium in rosewood with a
Chinese paper-mache tea-caddy on the top of it; even with the
carpet, certainly the most curious parlour carpet that ever was,
being made of lengths of the stair-carpet sewn together side by
side. That corner cupboard was already old in service; it had held
the medicines of generations. It gleamed darkly with the grave and
genuine polish which comes from ancient use alone. The key which
Constance chose from her bunch was like the cupboard, smooth and
shining with years; it fitted and turned very easily, yet with a
firm snap. The single wide door opened sedately as a portal.

The girls examined the sacred interior, which had the air of being
inhabited by an army of diminutive prisoners, each crying aloud
with the full strength of its label to be set free on a mission.

"There it is!" said Sophia eagerly.

And there it was: a blue bottle, with a saffron label, "Caution.
POISON. Laudanum. Charles Critchlow, M.P.S. Dispensing Chemist.
St. Luke's Square, Bursley."

Those large capitals frightened the girls. Constance took the
bottle as she might have taken a loaded revolver, and she glanced
at Sophia. Their omnipotent, all-wise mother was not present to
tell them what to do. They, who had never decided, had to decide
now. And Constance was the elder. Must this fearsome stuff, whose
very name was a name of fear, be introduced in spite of printed
warnings into Mr. Povey's mouth? The responsibility was
terrifying.

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

The expectation of beneficent laudanum had enlivened Mr. Povey,
had already, indeed, by a sort of suggestion, half cured his
toothache.

"Oh no!" he said. "No need to ask Mr. Critchlow ... Two or three
drops in a little water." He showed impatience to be at the
laudanum.

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

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

With youthful cries and alarms they succeeded in pouring four
mortal dark drops (one more than Constance intended) into a cup
containing a little water. And as they handed the cup to Mr. Povey
their faces were the faces of affrighted comical conspirators.
They felt so old and they looked so young.

Mr. Povey imbibed eagerly of the potion, put the cup on the
mantelpiece, and then tilted his head to the right so as to
submerge the affected tooth. In this posture he remained, awaiting
the sweet influence of the remedy. The girls, out of a nice
modesty, turned away, for Mr. Povey must not swallow the medicine,
and they preferred to leave him unhampered in the solution of a
delicate problem. When next they examined him, he was leaning back
in the rocking-chair with his mouth open and his eyes shut.

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

"I think I'll lie down on the sofa for a minute," was Mr. Povey's
strange reply; and forthwith he sprang up and flung himself on to
the horse-hair sofa between the fireplace and the window, where he
lay stripped of all his dignity, a mere beaten animal in a grey
suit with peculiar coat-tails, and a very creased waistcoat, and a
lapel that was planted with pins, and a paper collar and close-
fitting paper cuffs.

Constance ran after him with the antimacassar, which she spread
softly on his shoulders; and Sophia put another one over his thin
little legs, all drawn up.

They then gazed at their handiwork, with secret self-accusations
and the most dreadful misgivings.

"He surely never swallowed it!" Constance whispered.

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

Mr. Povey was certainly asleep, and his mouth was very wide open--
like a shop-door. The only question was whether his sleep was not
an eternal sleep; the only question was whether he was not out of
his pain for ever.

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

Sophia approached him as though he were a bomb, and stared,
growing bolder, into his mouth.

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

In an instant all their four eyes were exploring the singular
landscape of Mr. Povey's mouth. In a corner, to the right of that
interior, was one sizeable fragment of a tooth, that was attached
to Mr. Povey by the slenderest tie, so that at each respiration of
Mr. Povey, when his body slightly heaved and the gale moaned in
the cavern, this tooth moved separately, showing that its long
connection with Mr. Povey was drawing to a close.

"That's the one," said Sophia, pointing. "And it's as loose as
anything. Did you ever see such a funny thing?"

The extreme funniness of the thing had lulled in Sophia the fear
of Mr. Povey's sudden death.

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

"Why, I do believe---" Sophia began, and then stopped, glancing at
the sewing-machine, which stood next to the sofa.

It was a Howe sewing-machine. It had a little tool-drawer, and in
the tool-drawer was a small pair of pliers. Constance, engaged in
sniffing at the lees of the potion in order to estimate its
probable deadliness, heard the well-known click of the little
tool-drawer, and then she saw Sophia nearing Mr. Povey's mouth
with the pliers.

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

"Nothing," said Sophia.

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

"It jumps!" he muttered; and, after a reflective pause, "but it's
much better." He had at any rate escaped death.

Sophia's right hand was behind her back.

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

"Oh!" Sophia almost shrieked. "Do let's have mussels and cockles
for tea!" And she rushed to the door, and unlocked and opened it,
regardless of the risk of draughts to Mr. Povey.

In those days people often depended upon the caprices of hawkers
for the tastiness of their teas; but it was an adventurous age,
when errant knights of commerce were numerous and enterprising.
You went on to your doorstep, caught your meal as it passed,
withdrew, cooked it and ate it, quite in the manner of the early
Briton.

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

"Fresh mussels and cockles all alive oh!" bawled the hawker,
looking across the road in the April breeze. He was the celebrated
Hollins, a professional Irish drunkard, aged in iniquity, who
cheerfully saluted magistrates in the street, and referred to the
workhouse, which he occasionally visited, as the Bastile.

Sophia was trembling from head to foot.

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

Sophia surreptitiously showed the pliers, which she had partly
thrust into her pocket. Between their points was a most
perceptible, and even recognizable, fragment of Mr. Povey.

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

"What!" Constance's face showed the final contortions of that
horrified incredulity which is forced to believe.

Sophia nudged her violently to remind her that they were in the
street, and also quite close to Mr. Povey.

"Now, my little missies," said the vile Hollins. "Three pence a
pint, and how's your honoured mother to-day? Yes, fresh, so help
me God!"




CHAPTER II

THE TOOTH

I


The two girls came up the unlighted stone staircase which led from
Maggie's cave to the door of the parlour. Sophia, foremost, was
carrying a large tray, and Constance a small one. Constance, who
had nothing on her tray but a teapot, a bowl of steaming and
balmy-scented mussels and cockles, and a plate of hot buttered
toast, went directly into the parlour on the left. Sophia had in
her arms the entire material and apparatus of a high tea for two,
including eggs, jam, and toast (covered with the slop-basin turned
upside down), but not including mussels and cockles. She turned to
the right, passed along the corridor by the cutting-out room, up
two steps into the sheeted and shuttered gloom of the closed shop,
up the showroom stairs, through the showroom, and so into the
bedroom corridor. Experience had proved it easier to make this
long detour than to round the difficult corner of the parlour
stairs with a large loaded tray. Sophia knocked with the edge of
the tray at the door of the principal bedroom. The muffled
oratorical sound from within suddenly ceased, and the door was
opened by a very tall, very thin, black-bearded man, who looked
down at Sophia as if to demand what she meant by such an
interruption.

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

And Mr. Critchlow carefully accepted the tray.

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

"Yes, father," said Sophia.

But she did not attempt to enter the room. Mr. Critchlow put the
tray on a white-clad chest of drawers near the door, and then he
shut the door, with no ceremony. Mr. Critchlow was John Baines's
oldest and closest friend, though decidedly younger than the
draper. He frequently "popped in" to have a word with the invalid;
but Thursday afternoon was his special afternoon, consecrated by
him to the service of the sick. From two o'clock precisely till
eight o'clock precisely he took charge of John Baines, reigning
autocratically over the bedroom. It was known that he would not
tolerate invasions, nor even ambassadorial visits. No! He gave up
his weekly holiday to this business of friendship, and he must be
allowed to conduct the business in his own way. Mrs. Baines
herself avoided disturbing Mr. Critchlow's ministrations on her
husband. She was glad to do so; for Mr. Baines was never to be
left alone under any circumstances, and the convenience of being
able to rely upon the presence of a staid member of the
Pharmaceutical Society for six hours of a given day every week
outweighed the slight affront to her prerogatives as wife and
house-mistress. Mr. Critchlow was an extremely peculiar man, but
when he was in the bedroom she could leave the house with an easy
mind. Moreover, John Baines enjoyed these Thursday afternoons. For
him, there was 'none like Charles Critchlow.' The two old friends
experienced a sort of grim, desiccated happiness, cooped up
together in the bedroom, secure from women and fools generally.
How they spent the time did not seem to be certainly known, but
the impression was that politics occupied them. Undoubtedly Mr.
Critchlow was an extremely peculiar man. He was a man of habits.
He must always have the same things for his tea. Black-currant
jam, for instance. (He called it "preserve.") The idea of offering
Mr. Critchlow a tea which did not comprise black-currant jam was
inconceivable by the intelligence of St. Luke's Square. Thus for
years past, in the fruit-preserving season, when all the house and
all the shop smelt richly of fruit boiling in sugar, Mrs. Baines
had filled an extra number of jars with black-currant jam,
'because Mr. Critchlow wouldn't TOUCH any other sort.'

So Sophia, faced with the shut door of the bedroom, went down to
the parlour by the shorter route. She knew that on going up again,
after tea, she would find the devastated tray on the doormat.

Constance was helping Mr. Povey to mussels and cockles. And Mr.
Povey still wore one of the antimacassars. It must have stuck to
his shoulders when he sprang up from the sofa, woollen
antimacassars being notoriously parasitic things. Sophia sat down,
somewhat self-consciously. The serious Constance was also
perturbed. Mr. Povey did not usually take tea in the house on
Thursday afternoons; his practice was to go out into the great,
mysterious world. Never before had he shared a meal with the girls
alone. The situation was indubitably unexpected, unforeseen; it
was, too, piquant, and what added to its piquancy was the fact
that Constance and Sophia were, somehow, responsible for Mr.
Povey. They felt that they were responsible for him. They had
offered the practical sympathy of two intelligent and well-trained
young women, born nurses by reason of their sex, and Mr. Povey had
accepted; he was now on their hands. Sophia's monstrous, sly
operation in Mr. Povey's mouth did not cause either of them much
alarm, Constance having apparently recovered from the first shock
of it. They had discussed it in the kitchen while preparing the
teas; Constance's extraordinarily severe and dictatorial tone in
condemning it had led to a certain heat. But the success of the
impudent wrench justified it despite any irrefutable argument to
the contrary. Mr. Povey was better already, and he evidently
remained in ignorance of his loss.

"Have some?" Constance asked of Sophia, with a large spoon
hovering over the bowl of shells.

"Yes, PLEASE," said Sophia, positively.

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

"Pass your plate, then."

Now when everybody was served with mussels, cockles, tea, and
toast, and Mr. Povey had been persuaded to cut the crust off his
toast, and Constance had, quite unnecessarily, warned Sophia
against the deadly green stuff in the mussels, and Constance had
further pointed out that the evenings were getting longer, and Mr.
Povey had agreed that they were, there remained nothing to say. An
irksome silence fell on them all, and no one could lift it off.
Tiny clashes of shell and crockery sounded with the terrible
clearness of noises heard in the night. Each person avoided the
eyes of the others. And both Constance and Sophia kept
straightening their bodies at intervals, and expanding their
chests, and then looking at their plates; occasionally a prim
cough was discharged. It was a sad example of the difference
between young women's dreams of social brilliance and the reality
of life. These girls got more and more girlish, until, from being
women at the administering of laudanum, they sank back to about
eight years of age--perfect children--at the tea-table.

The tension was snapped by Mr. Povey. "My God!" he muttered, moved
by a startling discovery to this impious and disgraceful oath (he,
the pattern and exemplar--and in the presence of innocent girlhood
too!). "I've swallowed it!"

"Swallowed what, Mr. Povey?" Constance inquired.

The tip of Mr. Povey's tongue made a careful voyage of inspection
all round the right side of his mouth.

"Oh yes!" he said, as if solemnly accepting the inevitable. "I've
swallowed it!"

Sophia's face was now scarlet; she seemed to be looking for some
place to hide it. Constance could not think of anything to say.

"That tooth has been loose for two years," said Mr. Povey, "and
now I've swallowed it with a mussel."

"Oh, Mr. Povey!" Constance cried in confusion, and added, "There's
one good thing, it can't hurt you any more now."

"Oh!" said Mr. Povey. "It wasn't THAT tooth that was hurting me.
It's an old stump at the back that's upset me so this last day or
two. I wish it had been."

Sophia had her teacup close to her red face. At these words of Mr.
Povey her cheeks seemed to fill out like plump apples. She dashed
the cup into its saucer, spilling tea recklessly, and then ran
from the room with stifled snorts.

"Sophia!" Constance protested.

"I must just---" Sophia incoherently spluttered in the doorway. "I
shall be all right. Don't---"

Constance, who had risen, sat down again.

II

Sophia fled along the passage leading to the shop and took refuge
in the cutting-out room, a room which the astonishing architect
had devised upon what must have been a backyard of one of the
three constituent houses. It was lighted from its roof, and only a
wooden partition, eight feet high, separated it from the passage.
Here Sophia gave rein to her feelings; she laughed and cried
together, weeping generously into her handkerchief and wildly
giggling, in a hysteria which she could not control. The spectacle
of Mr. Povey mourning for a tooth which he thought he had
swallowed, but which in fact lay all the time in her pocket,
seemed to her to be by far the most ridiculous, side-splitting
thing that had ever happened or could happen on earth. It utterly
overcame her. And when she fancied that she had exhausted and
conquered its surpassing ridiculousness, this ridiculousness
seized her again and rolled her anew in depths of mad, trembling
laughter.

Gradually she grew calmer. She heard the parlour door open, and
Constance descend the kitchen steps with a rattling tray of tea-
things. Tea, then, was finished, without her! Constance did not
remain in the kitchen, because the cups and saucers were left for
Maggie to wash up as a fitting coda to Maggie's monthly holiday.
The parlour door closed. And the vision of Mr. Povey in his
antimacassar swept Sophia off into another convulsion of laughter
and tears. Upon this the parlour door opened again, and Sophia
choked herself into silence while Constance hastened along the
passage. In a minute Constance returned with her woolwork, which
she had got from the showroom, and the parlour received her. Not
the least curiosity on the part of Constance as to what had become
of Sophia!

At length Sophia, a faint meditative smile being all that was left
of the storm in her, ascended slowly to the showroom, through the
shop. Nothing there of interest! Thence she wandered towards the
drawing-room, and encountered Mr. Critchlow's tray on the mat. She
picked it up and carried it by way of the showroom and shop down
to the kitchen, where she dreamily munched two pieces of toast
that had cooled to the consistency of leather. She mounted the
stone steps and listened at the door of the parlour. No sound!
This seclusion of Mr. Povey and Constance was really very strange.
She roved right round the house, and descended creepingly by the
twisted house-stairs, and listened intently at the other door of
the parlour. She now detected a faint regular snore. Mr. Povey, a
prey to laudanum and mussels, was sleeping while Constance worked
at her fire-screen! It was now in the highest degree odd, this
seclusion of Mr. Povey and Constance; unlike anything in Sophia's
experience! She wanted to go into the parlour, but she could not
bring herself to do so. She crept away again, forlorn and puzzled,
and next discovered herself in the bedroom which she shared with
Constance at the top of the house; she lay down in the dusk on the
bed and began to read "The Days of Bruce;" but she read only with
her eyes.

Later, she heard movements on the house-stairs, and the familiar
whining creak of the door at the foot thereof. She skipped lightly
to the door of the bedroom.

"Good-night, Mr. Povey. I hope you'll be able to sleep."

Constance's voice!

"It will probably come on again."

Mr. Povey's voice, pessimistic!

Then the shutting of doors. It was almost dark. She went back to
the bed, expecting a visit from Constance. But a clock struck
eight, and all the various phenomena connected with the departure
of Mr. Critchlow occurred one after another. At the same time
Maggie came home from the land of romance. Then long silences!
Constance was now immured with her father, it being her "turn" to
nurse; Maggie was washing up in her cave, and Mr. Povey was lost
to sight in his bedroom. Then Sophia heard her mother's lively,
commanding knock on the King Street door. Dusk had definitely
yielded to black night in the bedroom. Sophia dozed and dreamed.
When she awoke, her ear caught the sound of knocking. She jumped
up, tiptoed to the landing, and looked over the balustrade, whence
she had a view of all the first-floor corridor. The gas had been
lighted; through the round aperture at the top of the porcelain
globe she could see the wavering flame. It was her mother, still
bonneted, who was knocking at the door of Mr. Povey's room.
Constance stood in the doorway of her parents' room. Mrs. Baines
knocked twice with an interval, and then said to Constance, in a
resonant whisper that vibrated up the corridor---

"He seems to be fast asleep. I'd better not disturb him."

"But suppose he wants something in the night?"

"Well, child, I should hear him moving. Sleep's the best thing for
him."

Mrs. Baines left Mr. Povey to the effects of laudanum, and came
along the corridor. She was a stout woman, all black stuff and
gold chain, and her skirt more than filled the width of the
corridor. Sophia watched her habitual heavy mounting gesture as
she climbed the two steps that gave variety to the corridor. At
the gas-jet she paused, and, putting her hand to the tap, gazed up
into the globe.

"Where's Sophia?" she demanded, her eyes fixed on the gas as she
lowered the flame.

"I think she must be in bed, mother," said Constance,
nonchalantly.

The returned mistress was point by point resuming knowledge and
control of that complicated machine--her household.

Then Constance and her mother disappeared into the bedroom, and
the door was shut with a gentle, decisive bang that to the silent
watcher on the floor above seemed to create a special excluding
intimacy round about the figures of Constance and her father and
mother. The watcher wondered, with a little prick of jealousy,
what they would be discussing in the large bedroom, her father's
beard wagging feebly and his long arms on the counterpane,
Constance perched at the foot of the bed, and her mother walking
to and fro, putting her cameo brooch on the dressing-table or
stretching creases out of her gloves. Certainly, in some subtle
way, Constance had a standing with her parents which was more
confidential than Sophia's.

III

When Constance came to bed, half an hour later, Sophia was already
in bed. The room was fairly spacious. It had been the girls'
retreat and fortress since their earliest years. Its features
seemed to them as natural and unalterable as the features of a
cave to a cave-dweller. It had been repapered twice in their
lives, and each papering stood out in their memories like an
epoch; a third epoch was due to the replacing of a drugget by a
resplendent old carpet degraded from the drawing-room. There was
only one bed, the bedstead being of painted iron; they never
interfered with each other in that bed, sleeping with a detachment
as perfect as if they had slept on opposite sides of St. Luke's
Square; yet if Constance had one night lain down on the half near
the window instead of on the half near the door, the secret nature
of the universe would have seemed to be altered. The small fire-
grate was filled with a mass of shavings of silver paper; now the
rare illnesses which they had suffered were recalled chiefly as
periods when that silver paper was crammed into a large slipper-
case which hung by the mantelpiece, and a fire of coals
unnaturally reigned in its place--the silver paper was part of the
order of the world. The sash of the window would not work quite
properly, owing to a slight subsidence in the wall, and even when
the window was fastened there was always a narrow slit to the left
hand between the window and its frame; through this slit came
draughts, and thus very keen frosts were remembered by the nights
when Mrs. Baines caused the sash to be forced and kept at its full
height by means of wedges--the slit of exposure was part of the
order of the world.

They possessed only one bed, one washstand, and one dressing-
table; but in some other respects they were rather fortunate
girls, for they had two mahogany wardrobes; this mutual
independence as regards wardrobes was due partly to Mrs. Baines's
strong commonsense, and partly to their father's tendency to spoil
them a little. They had, moreover, a chest of drawers with a
curved front, of which structure Constance occupied two short
drawers and one long one, and Sophia two long drawers. On it stood
two fancy work-boxes, in which each sister kept jewellery, a
savings-bank book, and other treasures, and these boxes were
absolutely sacred to their respective owners. They were different,
but one was not more magnificent than the other. Indeed, a rigid
equality was the rule in the chamber, the single exception being
that behind the door were three hooks, of which Constance
commanded two.

"Well," Sophia began, when Constance appeared. "How's darling Mr.
Povey?" She was lying on her back, and smiling at her two hands,
which she held up in front of her.

"Asleep," said Constance. "At least mother thinks so. She says
sleep is the best thing for him."

"'It will probably come on again,'" said Sophia.

"What's that you say?" Constance asked, undressing.

"'It will probably come on again.'"

These words were a quotation from the utterances of darling Mr.
Povey on the stairs, and Sophia delivered them with an exact
imitation of Mr. Povey's vocal mannerism.

"Sophia," said Constance, firmly, approaching the bed, "I wish you
wouldn't be so silly!" She had benevolently ignored the satirical
note in Sophia's first remark, but a strong instinct in her rose
up and objected to further derision. "Surely you've done enough
for one day!" she added.

For answer Sophia exploded into violent laughter, which she made
no attempt to control. She laughed too long and too freely while
Constance stared at her.

"_I_ don't know what's come over you!" said Constance.

"It's only because I can't look at it without simply going off
into fits!" Sophia gasped out. And she held up a tiny object in
her left hand.

Constance started, flushing. "You don't mean to say you've kept
it!" she protested earnestly. "How horrid you are, Sophia! Give it
me at once and let me throw it away. I never heard of such doings.
Now give it me!"

"No," Sophia objected, still laughing. "I wouldn't part with it
for worlds. It's too lovely."

She had laughed away all her secret resentment against Constance
for having ignored her during the whole evening and for being on
such intimate terms with their parents. And she was ready to be
candidly jolly with Constance.

"Give it me," said Constance, doggedly.

Sophia hid her hand under the clothes. "You can have his old
stump, when it comes out, if you like. But not this. What a pity
it's the wrong one!"

"Sophia, I'm ashamed of you! Give it me."

Then it was that Sophia first perceived Constance's extreme
seriousness. She was surprised and a little intimidated by it. For
the expression of Constance's face, usually so benign and calm,
was harsh, almost fierce. However, Sophia had a great deal of what
is called "spirit," and not even ferocity on the face of mild
Constance could intimidate her for more than a few seconds. Her
gaiety expired and her teeth were hidden.

"I've said nothing to mother---" Constance proceeded.

"I should hope you haven't," Sophia put in tersely.

"But I certainly shall if you don't throw that away," Constance
finished.

"You can say what you like," Sophia retorted, adding
contemptuously a term of opprobrium which has long since passed
out of use: "Cant!"

"Will you give it me or won't you?"

"No!"

It was a battle suddenly engaged in the bedroom. The atmosphere
had altered completely with the swiftness of magic. The beauty of
Sophia, the angelic tenderness of Constance, and the youthful,
naive, innocent charm of both of them, were transformed into
something sinister and cruel. Sophia lay back on the pillow amid
her dark-brown hair, and gazed with relentless defiance into the
angry eyes of Constance, who stood threatening by the bed. They
could hear the gas singing over the dressing-table, and their
hearts beating the blood wildly in their veins. They ceased to be
young without growing old; the eternal had leapt up in them from
its sleep.

Constance walked away from the bed to the dressing-table and began
to loose her hair and brush it, holding back her head, shaking it,
and bending forward, in the changeless gesture of that rite. She
was so disturbed that she had unconsciously reversed the customary
order of the toilette. After a moment Sophia slipped out of bed
and, stepping with her bare feet to the chest of drawers, opened
her work-box and deposited the fragment of Mr. Povey therein; she
dropped the lid with an uncompromising bang, as if to say, "We
shall see if I am to be trod upon, miss!" Their eyes met again in
the looking-glass. Then Sophia got back into bed.

Five minutes later, when her hair was quite finished, Constance
knelt down and said her prayers. Having said her prayers, she went
straight to Sophia's work-box, opened it, seized the fragment of
Mr. Povey, ran to the window, and frantically pushed the fragment
through the slit into the Square.

"There!" she exclaimed nervously.

She had accomplished this inconceivable transgression of the code
of honour, beyond all undoing, before Sophia could recover from
the stupefaction of seeing her sacred work-box impudently
violated. In a single moment one of Sophia's chief ideals had been
smashed utterly, and that by the sweetest, gentlest creature she
had ever known. It was a revealing experience for Sophia--and also
for Constance. And it frightened them equally. Sophia, staring at
the text, "Thou God seest me," framed in straw over the chest of
drawers, did not stir. She was defeated, and so profoundly moved
in her defeat that she did not even reflect upon the obvious
inefficacy of illuminated texts as a deterrent from evil-doing.
Not that she eared a fig for the fragment of Mr. Povey! It was the
moral aspect of the affair, and the astounding, inexplicable
development in Constance's character, that staggered her into
silent acceptance of the inevitable.

Constance, trembling, took pains to finish undressing with
dignified deliberation. Sophia's behaviour under the blow seemed
too good to be true; but it gave her courage. At length she turned
out the gas and lay down by Sophia. And there was a little
shuffling, and then stillness for a while.

"And if you want to know," said Constance in a tone that mingled
amicableness with righteousness, "mother's decided with Aunt
Harriet that we are BOTH to leave school next term."




CHAPTER III

A BATTLE

I


The day sanctioned by custom in the Five Towns for the making of
pastry is Saturday. But Mrs. Baines made her pastry on Friday,
because Saturday afternoon was, of course, a busy time in the
shop. It is true that Mrs. Baines made her pastry in the morning,
and that Saturday morning in the shop was scarcely different from
any other morning. Nevertheless, Mrs. Baines made her pastry on
Friday morning instead of Saturday morning because Saturday
afternoon was a busy time in the shop. She was thus free to do her
marketing without breath-taking flurry on Saturday morning.

On the morning after Sophia's first essay in dentistry, therefore,
Mrs. Baines was making her pastry in the underground kitchen. This
kitchen, Maggie's cavern-home, had the mystery of a church, and on
dark days it had the mystery of a crypt. The stone steps leading
down to it from the level of earth were quite unlighted. You felt
for them with the feet of faith, and when you arrived in the
kitchen, the kitchen, by contrast, seemed luminous and gay; the
architect may have considered and intended this effect of the
staircase. The kitchen saw day through a wide, shallow window
whose top touched the ceiling and whose bottom had been out of the
girls' reach until long after they had begun to go to school. Its
panes were small, and about half of them were of the "knot" kind,
through which no object could be distinguished; the other half
were of a later date, and stood for the march of civilization. The
view from the window consisted of the vast plate-glass windows of
the newly built Sun vaults, and of passing legs and skirts. A
strong wire grating prevented any excess of illumination, and also
protected the glass from the caprices of wayfarers in King Street.
Boys had a habit of stopping to kick with their full strength at
the grating.

Forget-me-nots on a brown field ornamented the walls of the
kitchen. Its ceiling was irregular and grimy, and a beam ran
across it; in this beam were two hooks; from these hooks had once
depended the ropes of a swing, much used by Constance and Sophia
in the old days before they were grown up. A large range stood out
from the wall between the stairs and the window. The rest of the
furniture comprised a table--against the wall opposite the range--
a cupboard, and two Windsor chairs. Opposite the foot of the steps
was a doorway, without a door, leading to two larders, dimmer even
than the kitchen, vague retreats made visible by whitewash, where
bowls of milk, dishes of cold bones, and remainders of fruit-pies,
reposed on stillages; in the corner nearest the kitchen was a
great steen in which the bread was kept. Another doorway on the
other side of the kitchen led to the first coal-cellar, where was
also the slopstone and tap, and thence a tunnel took you to the
second coal-cellar, where coke and ashes were stored; the tunnel
proceeded to a distant, infinitesimal yard, and from the yard, by
ways behind Mr. Critchlow's shop, you could finally emerge,
astonished, upon Brougham Street. The sense of the vast-obscure of
those regions which began at the top of the kitchen steps and
ended in black corners of larders or abruptly in the common
dailiness of Brougham Street, a sense which Constance and Sophia
had acquired in infancy, remained with them almost unimpaired as
they grew old.

Mrs. Baines wore black alpaca, shielded by a white apron whose
string drew attention to the amplitude of her waist. Her sleeves
were turned up, and her hands, as far as the knuckles, covered
with damp flour. Her ageless smooth paste-board occupied a corner
of the table, and near it were her paste-roller, butter, some pie-
dishes, shredded apples, sugar, and other things. Those rosy hands
were at work among a sticky substance in a large white bowl.

"Mother, are you there?" she heard a voice from above.

"Yes, my chuck."

Footsteps apparently reluctant and hesitating clinked on the
stairs, and Sophia entered the kitchen.

"Put this curl straight," said Mrs. Baines, lowering her head
slightly and holding up her floured hands, which might not touch
anything but flour. "Thank you. It bothered me. And now stand out
of my light. I'm in a hurry. I must get into the shop so that I
can send Mr. Povey off to the dentist's. What is Constance doing?"

"Helping Maggie to make Mr. Povey's bed."

"Oh!"

Though fat, Mrs. Baines was a comely woman, with fine brown hair,
and confidently calm eyes that indicated her belief in her own
capacity to accomplish whatever she could be called on to
accomplish. She looked neither more nor less than her age, which
was forty-five. She was not a native of the district, having been
culled by her husband from the moorland town of Axe, twelve miles
off. Like nearly all women who settle in a strange land upon
marriage, at the bottom of her heart she had considered herself
just a trifle superior to the strange land and its ways. This
feeling, confirmed by long experience, had never left her. It was
this feeling which induced her to continue making her own pastry--
with two thoroughly trained "great girls" in the house! Constance
could make good pastry, but it was not her mother's pastry. In
pastry-making everything can be taught except the "hand," light
and firm, which wields the roller. One is born with this hand, or
without it. And if one is born without it, the highest flights of
pastry are impossible. Constance was born without it. There were
days when Sophia seemed to possess it; but there were other days
when Sophia's pastry was uneatable by any one except Maggie. Thus
Mrs. Baines, though intensely proud and fond of her daughters, had
justifiably preserved a certain condescension towards them. She
honestly doubted whether either of them would develop into the
equal of their mother.

"Now you little vixen!" she exclaimed. Sophia was stealing and
eating slices of half-cooked apple. "This comes of having no
breakfast! And why didn't you come down to supper last night?"

"I don't know. I forgot."

Mrs. Baines scrutinized the child's eyes, which met hers with a
sort of diffident boldness. She knew everything that a mother can
know of a daughter, and she was sure that Sophia had no cause to
be indisposed. Therefore she scrutinized those eyes with a faint
apprehension.

"If you can't find anything better to do," said she, "butter me
the inside of this dish. Are your hands clean? No, better not
touch it."

Mrs. Baines was now at the stage of depositing little pats of
butter in rows on a large plain of paste. The best fresh butter!
Cooking butter, to say naught of lard, was unknown in that kitchen
on Friday mornings. She doubled the expanse of paste on itself and
rolled the butter in--supreme operation!

"Constance has told you--about leaving school?" said Mrs. Baines,
in the vein of small-talk, as she trimmed the paste to the shape
of a pie-dish.

"Yes," Sophia replied shortly. Then she moved away from the table
to the range. There was a toasting-fork on the rack, and she began
to play with it.

"Well, are you glad? Your aunt Harriet thinks you are quite old
enough to leave. And as we'd decided in any case that Constance
was to leave, it's really much simpler that you should both leave
together."

"Mother," said Sophia, rattling the toasting-fork, "what am I
going to do after I've left school?"

"I hope," Mrs. Baines answered with that sententiousness which
even the cleverest of parents are not always clever enough to deny
themselves, "I hope that both of you will do what you can to help
your mother--and father," she added.

"Yes," said Sophia, irritated. "But what am I going to DO?"

"That must be considered. As Constance is to learn the millinery,
I've been thinking that you might begin to make yourself useful in
the underwear, gloves, silks, and so on. Then between you, you
would one day be able to manage quite nicely all that side of the
shop, and I should be--"

"I don't want to go into the shop, mother."

This interruption was made in a voice apparently cold and
inimical. But Sophia trembled with nervous excitement as she
uttered the words. Mrs. Baines gave a brief glance at her,
unobserved by the child, whose face was towards the fire. She
deemed herself a finished expert in the reading of Sophia's moods;
nevertheless, as she looked at that straight back and proud head,
she had no suspicion that the whole essence and being of Sophia
was silently but intensely imploring sympathy.

"I wish you would be quiet with that fork," said Mrs. Baines, with
the curious, grim politeness which often characterized her
relations with her daughters.

The toasting-fork fell on the brick floor, after having rebounded
from the ash-tin. Sophia hurriedly replaced it on the rack.

"Then what SHALL you do?" Mrs. Baines proceeded, conquering the
annoyance caused by the toasting-fork. "I think it's me that
should ask you instead of you asking me. What shall you do? Your
father and I were both hoping you would take kindly to the shop
and try to repay us for all the--"

Mrs. Baines was unfortunate in her phrasing that morning. She
happened to be, in truth, rather an exceptional parent, but that
morning she seemed unable to avoid the absurd pretensions which
parents of those days assumed quite sincerely and which every good
child with meekness accepted.

Sophia was not a good child, and she obstinately denied in her
heart the cardinal principle of family life, namely, that the
parent has conferred on the offspring a supreme favour by bringing
it into the world. She interrupted her mother again, rudely.

"I don't want to leave school at all," she said passionately.

"But you will have to leave school sooner or later," argued Mrs.
Baines, with an air of quiet reasoning, of putting herself on a
level with Sophia. "You can't stay at school for ever, my pet, can
you? Out of my way!"

She hurried across the kitchen with a pie, which she whipped into
the oven, shutting the iron door with a careful gesture.

"Yes," said Sophia. "I should like to be a teacher. That's what I
want to be."

The tap in the coal-cellar, out of repair, could be heard
distinctly and systematically dropping water into a jar on the
slopstone.

"A school-teacher?" inquired Mrs. Baines.

"Of course. What other kind is there?" said Sophia, sharply. "With
Miss Chetwynd."

"I don't think your father would like that," Mrs. Baines replied.
"I'm sure he wouldn't like it."

"Why not?"

"It wouldn't be quite suitable."

"Why not, mother?" the girl demanded with a sort of ferocity. She
had now quitted the range. A man's feet twinkled past the window.

Mrs. Baines was startled and surprised. Sophia's attitude was
really very trying; her manners deserved correction. But it was
not these phenomena which seriously affected Mrs. Baines; she was
used to them and had come to regard them as somehow the inevitable
accompaniment of Sophia's beauty, as the penalty of that
surpassing charm which occasionally emanated from the girl like a
radiance. What startled and surprised Mrs. Baines was the perfect
and unthinkable madness of Sophia's infantile scheme. It was a
revelation to Mrs. Baines. Why in the name of heaven had the girl
taken such a notion into her head? Orphans, widows, and spinsters
of a certain age suddenly thrown on the world--these were the
women who, naturally, became teachers, because they had to become
something. But that the daughter of comfortable parents,
surrounded by love and the pleasures of an excellent home, should
wish to teach in a school was beyond the horizons of Mrs. Baines's
common sense. Comfortable parents of to-day who have a difficulty
in sympathizing with Mrs. Baines, should picture what their
feelings would be if their Sophias showed a rude desire to adopt
the vocation of chauffeur.

"It would take you too much away from home," said Mrs. Baines,
achieving a second pie.

She spoke softly. The experience of being Sophia's mother for
nearly sixteen years had not been lost on Mrs. Baines, and though
she was now discovering undreamt-of dangers in Sophia's erratic
temperament, she kept her presence of mind sufficiently well to
behave with diplomatic smoothness. It was undoubtedly humiliating
to a mother to be forced to use diplomacy in dealing with a girl
in short sleeves. In HER day mothers had been autocrats. But
Sophia was Sophia.

"What if it did?" Sophia curtly demanded.

"And there's no opening in Bursley," said Mrs. Baines.

"Miss Chetwynd would have me, and then after a time I could go to
her sister."

"Her sister? What sister?"

"Her sister that has a big school in London somewhere."

Mrs. Baines covered her unprecedented emotions by gazing into the
oven at the first pie. The pie was doing well, under all the
circumstances. In those few seconds she reflected rapidly and
decided that to a desperate disease a desperate remedy must be
applied.

London! She herself had never been further than Manchester.
London, 'after a time'! No, diplomacy would be misplaced in this
crisis of Sophia's development!

"Sophia," she said, in a changed and solemn voice, fronting her
daughter, and holding away from her apron those floured, ringed
hands, "I don't know what has come over you. Truly I don't! Your
father and I are prepared to put up with a certain amount, but the
line must be drawn. The fact is, we've spoilt you, and instead of
getting better as you grow up, you're getting worse. Now let me
hear no more of this, please. I wish you would imitate your sister
a little more. Of course if you won't do your share in the shop,
no one can make you. If you choose to be an idler about the house,
we shall have to endure it. We can only advise you for your own
good. But as for this ..." She stopped, and let silence speak,
and then finished: "Let me hear no more of it."

It was a powerful and impressive speech, enunciated clearly in
such a tone as Mrs. Baines had not employed since dismissing a
young lady assistant five years ago for light conduct.

"But, mother--"

A commotion of pails resounded at the top of the stone steps. It
was Maggie in descent from the bedrooms. Now, the Baines family
passed its life in doing its best to keep its affairs to itself,
the assumption being that Maggie and all the shop-staff (Mr. Povey
possibly excepted) were obsessed by a ravening appetite for that
which did not concern them. Therefore the voices of the Baineses
always died away, or fell to a hushed, mysterious whisper,
whenever the foot of the eavesdropper was heard.

Mrs. Baines put a floured finger to her double chin. "That will
do," said she, with finality.

Maggie appeared, and Sophia, with a brusque precipitation of
herself, vanished upstairs.

II

"Now, really, Mr. Povey, this is not like you," said Mrs. Baines,
who, on her way into the shop, had discovered the Indispensable in
the cutting-out room.

It is true that the cutting-out room was almost Mr. Povey's
sanctum, whither he retired from time to time to cut out suits of
clothes and odd garments for the tailoring department. It is true
that the tailoring department flourished with orders, employing
several tailors who crossed legs in their own homes, and that
appointments were continually being made with customers for
trying-on in that room. But these considerations did not affect
Mrs. Baines's attitude of disapproval.

"I'm just cutting out that suit for the minister," said Mr. Povey.

The Reverend Mr. Murley, superintendent of the Wesleyan Methodist
circuit, called on Mr. Baines every week. On a recent visit Mr.
Baines had remarked that the parson's coat was ageing into green,
and had commanded that a new suit should be built and presented to
Mr. Murley. Mr. Murley, who had a genuine mediaeval passion for
souls, and who spent his money and health freely in gratifying the
passion, had accepted the offer strictly on behalf of Christ, and
had carefully explained to Mr. Povey Christ's use for multifarious
pockets.

"I see you are," said Mrs. Baines tartly. "But that's no reason
why you should be without a coat--and in this cold room too. You
with toothache!"

The fact was that Mr. Povey always doffed his coat when cutting
out. Instead of a coat he wore a tape-measure.

"My tooth doesn't hurt me," said he, sheepishly, dropping the
great scissors and picking up a cake of chalk.

"Fiddlesticks!" said Mrs. Baines.

This exclamation shocked Mr. Povey. It was not unknown on the lips
of Mrs. Baines, but she usually reserved it for members of her own
sex. Mr. Povey could not recall that she had ever applied it to
any statement of his. "What's the matter with the woman?" he
thought. The redness of her face did not help him to answer the
question, for her face was always red after the operations of
Friday in the kitchen.

"You men are all alike," Mrs. Baines continued. "The very thought
of the dentist's cures you. Why don't you go in at once to Mr.
Critchlow and have it out--like a man?"

Mr. Critchlow extracted teeth, and his shop sign said "Bone-setter
and chemist." But Mr. Povey had his views.

"I make no account of Mr. Critchlow as a dentist," said he.

"Then for goodness' sake go up to Oulsnam's."

"When? I can't very well go now, and to-morrow is Saturday."

"Why can't you go now?"

"Well, of course, I COULD go now," he admitted.

"Let me advise you to go, then, and don't come back with that
tooth in your head. I shall be having you laid up next. Show some
pluck, do!"

"Oh! pluck--!" he protested, hurt.

At that moment Constance came down the passage singing.

"Constance, my pet!" Mrs. Baines called.

"Yes, mother." She put her head into the room. "Oh!" Mr. Povey was
assuming his coat.

"Mr. Povey is going to the dentist's."

"Yes, I'm going at once," Mr. Povey confirmed.

"Oh! I'm so GLAD!" Constance exclaimed. Her face expressed a pure
sympathy, uncomplicated by critical sentiments. Mr. Povey rapidly
bathed in that sympathy, and then decided that he must show
himself a man of oak and iron.

"It's always best to get these things done with," said he, with
stern detachment. "I'll just slip my overcoat on."

"Here it is," said Constance, quickly. Mr. Povey's overcoat and
hat were hung on a hook immediately outside the room, in the
passage. She gave him the overcoat, anxious to be of service.

"I didn't call you in here to be Mr. Povey's valet," said Mrs.
Baines to herself with mild grimness; and aloud: "I can't stay in
the shop long, Constance, but you can be there, can't you, till
Mr. Povey comes back? And if anything happens run upstairs and
tell me."

"Yes, mother," Constance eagerly consented. She hesitated and then
turned to obey at once.

"I want to speak to you first, my pet," Mrs. Baines stopped her.
And her tone was peculiar, charged with import, confidential, and
therefore very flattering to Constance.

"I think I'll go out by the side-door," said Mr. Povey. "It'll be
nearer."

This was truth. He would save about ten yards, in two miles, by
going out through the side-door instead of through the shop. Who
could have guessed that he was ashamed to be seen going to the
dentist's, afraid lest, if he went through the shop, Mrs. Baines
might follow him and utter some remark prejudicial to his dignity
before the assistants? (Mrs. Baines could have guessed, and did.)

"You won't want that tape-measure," said Mrs. Baines, dryly, as
Mr. Povey dragged open the side-door. The ends of the forgotten
tape-measure were dangling beneath coat and overcoat.

"Oh!" Mr. Povey scowled at his forgetfulness.

"I'll put it in its place," said Constance, offering to receive
the tape-measure.

"Thank you," said Mr. Povey, gravely. "I don't suppose they'll be
long over my bit of a job," he added, with a difficult, miserable
smile.

Then he went off down King Street, with an exterior of gay
briskness and dignified joy in the fine May morning. But there was
no May morning in his cowardly human heart.

"Hi! Povey!" cried a voice from the Square.

But Mr. Povey disregarded all appeals. He had put his hand to the
plough, and he would not look back.

"Hi! Povey!"

Useless!

Mrs. Baines and Constance were both at the door. A middle-aged man
was crossing the road from Boulton Terrace, the lofty erection of
new shops which the envious rest of the Square had decided to call
"showy." He waved a hand to Mrs. Baines, who kept the door open.

"It's Dr. Harrop," she said to Constance. "I shouldn't be
surprised if that baby's come at last, and he wanted to tell Mr.
Povey."

Constance blushed, full of pride. Mrs. Povey, wife of "our Mr.
Povey's" renowned cousin, the high-class confectioner and baker in
Boulton Terrace, was a frequent subject of discussion in the
Baines family,, but this was absolutely the first time that Mrs.
Baines had acknowledged, in presence of Constance, the marked and
growing change which had characterized Mrs. Povey's condition
during recent months. Such frankness on the part of her mother,
coming after the decision about leaving school, proved indeed that
Constance had ceased to be a mere girl.

"Good morning, doctor."

The doctor, who carried a little bag and wore riding-breeches (he
was the last doctor in Bursley to abandon the saddle for the dog-
cart), saluted and straightened his high, black stock.

"Morning! Morning, missy! Well, it's a boy."

"What? Yonder?" asked Mrs. Baines, indicating the confectioner's.

Dr. Harrop nodded. "I wanted to inform him," said he, jerking his
shoulder in the direction of the swaggering coward.

"What did I tell you, Constance?" said Mrs. Baines, turning to her
daughter.

Constance's confusion was equal to her pleasure. The alert doctor
had halted at the foot of the two steps, and with one hand in the
pocket of his "full-fall" breeches, he gazed up, smiling out of
little eyes, at the ample matron and the slender virgin.

"Yes," he said. "Been up most of th' night. Difficult! Difficult!"

"It's all RIGHT, I hope?"

"Oh yes. Fine child! Fine child! But he put his mother to some
trouble, for all that. Nothing fresh?" This time he lifted his
eyes to indicate Mr. Baines's bedroom.

"No," said Mrs. Baines, with a different expression.

"Keeps cheerful?"

"Yes."

"Good! A very good morning to you."

He strode off towards his house, which was lower down the street.

"I hope she'll turn over a new leaf now," observed Mrs. Baines to
Constance as she closed the door. Constance knew that her mother
was referring to the confectioner's wife; she gathered that the
hope was slight in the extreme.

"What did you want to speak to me about, mother?" she asked, as a
way out of her delicious confusion.

"Shut that door," Mrs. Baines replied, pointing to the door which
led to the passage; and while Constance obeyed, Mrs. Baines
herself shut the staircase-door. She then said, in a low, guarded
voice--

"What's all this about Sophia wanting to be a school-teacher?"

"Wanting to be a school-teacher?" Constance repeated, in tones of
amazement.

"Yes. Hasn't she said anything to you?"

"Not a word!"

"Well, I never! She wants to keep on with Miss Chetwynd and be a
teacher." Mrs. Baines had half a mind to add that Sophia had
mentioned London. But she restrained herself. There are some
things which one cannot bring one's self to say. She added,
"Instead of going into the shop!"

"I never heard of such a thing!" Constance murmured brokenly, in
the excess of her astonishment. She was rolling up Mr. Povey's
tape-measure.

"Neither did I!" said Mrs. Baines.

"And shall you let her, mother?"

"Neither your father nor I would ever dream of it!" Mrs. Baines
replied, with calm and yet terrible decision. "I only mentioned it
to you because I thought Sophia would have told you something."

"No, mother!"

As Constance put Mr. Povey's tape-measure neatly away in its
drawer under the cutting-out counter, she thought how serious life
was--what with babies and Sophias. She was very proud of her
mother's confidence in her; this simple pride filled her ardent
breast with a most agreeable commotion. And she wanted to help
everybody, to show in some way how much she sympathized with and
loved everybody. Even the madness of Sophia did not weaken her
longing to comfort Sophia.

III

That afternoon there was a search for Sophia, whom no one had seen
since dinner. She was discovered by her mother, sitting alone and
unoccupied in the drawing-room. The circumstance was in itself
sufficiently peculiar, for on weekdays the drawing-room was never
used, even by the girls during their holidays, except for the
purpose of playing the piano. However, Mrs. Baines offered no
comment on Sophia's geographical situation, nor on her idleness.

"My dear," she said, standing at the door, with a self-conscious
effort to behave as though nothing had happened, "will you come
and sit with your father a bit?"

"Yes, mother," answered Sophia, with a sort of cold alacrity.

"Sophia is coming, father," said Mrs. Baines at the open door of
the bedroom, which was at right-angles with, and close to, the
drawing-room door. Then she surged swishing along the corridor and
went into the showroom, whither she had been called.

Sophia passed to the bedroom, the eternal prison of John Baines.
Although, on account of his nervous restlessness, Mr. Baines was
never left alone, it was not a part of the usual duty of the girls
to sit with him. The person who undertook the main portion of the
vigils was a certain Aunt Maria--whom the girls knew to be not a
real aunt, not a powerful, effective aunt like Aunt Harriet of
Axe--but a poor second cousin of John Baines; one of those
necessitous, pitiful relatives who so often make life difficult
for a great family in a small town. The existence of Aunt Maria,
after being rather a "trial" to the Baineses, had for twelve years
past developed into something absolutely "providential" for them.
(It is to be remembered that in those days Providence was still
busying himself with everybody's affairs, and foreseeing the
future in the most extraordinary manner. Thus, having foreseen
that John Baines would have a "stroke" and need a faithful,
tireless nurse, he had begun fifty years in advance by creating
Aunt Maria, and had kept her carefully in misfortune's way, so
that at the proper moment she would be ready to cope with the
stroke. Such at least is the only theory which will explain the
use by the Baineses, and indeed by all thinking Bursley, of the
word "providential" in connection with Aunt Maria.) She was a
shrivelled little woman, capable of sitting twelve hours a day in
a bedroom and thriving on the regime. At nights she went home to
her little cottage in Brougham Street; she had her Thursday
afternoons and generally her Sundays, and during the school
vacations she was supposed to come only when she felt inclined, or
when the cleaning of her cottage permitted her to come. Hence, in
holiday seasons, Mr. Baines weighed more heavily on his household
than at other times, and his nurses relieved each other according
to the contingencies of the moment rather than by a set programme
of hours.

The tragedy in ten thousand acts of which that bedroom was the
scene, almost entirely escaped Sophia's perception, as it did
Constance's. Sophia went into the bedroom as though it were a mere
bedroom, with its majestic mahogany furniture, its crimson rep
curtains (edged with gold), and its white, heavily tasselled
counterpane. She was aged four when John Baines had suddenly been
seized with giddiness on the steps of his shop, and had fallen,
and, without losing consciousness, had been transformed from John
Baines into a curious and pathetic survival of John Baines. She
had no notion of the thrill which ran through the town on that
night when it was known that John Baines had had a stroke, and
that his left arm and left leg and his right eyelid were
paralyzed, and that the active member of the Local Board, the
orator, the religious worker, the very life of the town's life,
was permanently done for. She had never heard of the crisis
through which her mother, assisted by Aunt Harriet, had passed,
and out of which she had triumphantly emerged. She was not yet old
enough even to suspect it. She possessed only the vaguest memory
of her father before he had finished with the world. She knew him
simply as an organism on a bed, whose left side was wasted, whose
eyes were often inflamed, whose mouth was crooked, who had no
creases from the nose to the corners of the mouth like other
people, who experienced difficulty in eating because the food
would somehow get between his gums and his cheek, who slept a
great deal but was excessively fidgety while awake, who seemed to
hear what was said to him a long time after it was uttered, as if
the sense had to travel miles by labyrinthine passages to his
brain, and who talked very, very slowly in a weak, trembling
voice.

And she had an image of that remote brain as something with a red
spot on it, for once Constance had said: "Mother, why did father
have a stroke?" and Mrs. Baines had replied: "It was a haemorrhage
of the brain, my dear, here"--putting a thimbled finger on a
particular part of Sophia's head.

Not merely had Constance and Sophia never really felt their
father's tragedy; Mrs. Baines herself had largely lost the sense
of it--such is the effect of use. Even the ruined organism only
remembered fitfully and partially that it had once been John
Baines. And if Mrs. Baines had not, by the habit of years,
gradually built up a gigantic fiction that the organism remained
ever the supreme consultative head of the family; if Mr. Critchlow
had not obstinately continued to treat it as a crony, the mass of
living and dead nerves on the rich Victorian bedstead would have
been of no more account than some Aunt Maria in similar case.
These two persons, his wife and his friend, just managed to keep
him morally alive by indefatigably feeding his importance and his
dignity. The feat was a miracle of stubborn self-deceiving,
splendidly blind devotion, and incorrigible pride.

When Sophia entered the room, the paralytic followed her with his
nervous gaze until she had sat down on the end of the sofa at the
foot of the bed. He seemed to study her for a long time, and then
he murmured in his slow, enfeebled, irregular voice:

"Is that Sophia?"

"Yes, father," she answered cheerfully.

And after another pause, the old man said: "Ay! It's Sophia."

And later: "Your mother said she should send ye."

Sophia saw that this was one of his bad, dull days. He had,
occasionally, days of comparative nimbleness, when his wits seized
almost easily the meanings of external phenomena.

Presently his sallow face and long white beard began to slip down
the steep slant of the pillows, and a troubled look came into his
left eye. Sophia rose and, putting her hands under his armpits,
lifted him higher in the bed. He was not heavy, but only a strong
girl of her years could have done it.

"Ay!" he muttered. "That's it. That's it."

And, with his controllable right hand, he took her hand as she
stood by the bed. She was so young and fresh, such an incarnation
of the spirit of health, and he was so far gone in decay and
corruption, that there seemed in this contact of body with body
something unnatural and repulsive. But Sophia did not so feel it.

"Sophia," he addressed her, and made preparatory noises in his
throat while she waited.

He continued after an interval, now clutching her arm, "Your
mother's been telling me you don't want to go in the shop."

She turned her eyes on him, and his anxious, dim gaze met hers.
She nodded.

"Nay, Sophia," he mumbled, with the extreme of slowness. "I'm
surprised at ye. . .Trade's bad, bad! Ye know trade's bad?" He was
still clutching her arm.

She nodded. She was, in fact, aware of the badness of trade,
caused by a vague war in the United States. The words "North" and
"South" had a habit of recurring in the conversation of adult
persons. That was all she knew, though people were starving in the
Five Towns as they were starving in Manchester.

"There's your mother," his thought struggled on, like an aged
horse over a hilly road. "There's your mother!" he repeated, as if
wishful to direct Sophia's attention to the spectacle of her
mother. "Working hard! Con--Constance and you must help her. . . .
Trade's bad! What can I do. . .lying here?"

The heat from his dry fingers was warming her arm. She wanted to
move, but she could not have withdrawn her arm without appearing
impatient. For a similar reason she would not avert her glance. A
deepening flush increased the lustre of her immature loveliness as
she bent over him. But though it was so close he did not feel that
radiance. He had long outlived a susceptibility to the strange
influences of youth and beauty.

"Teaching!" he muttered. "Nay, nay! I canna' allow that."

Then his white beard rose at the tip as he looked up at the
ceiling above his head, reflectively.

"You understand me?" he questioned finally.

She nodded again; he loosed her arm, and she turned away. She
could not have spoken. Glittering tears enriched her eyes. She was
saddened into a profound and sudden grief by the ridiculousness of
the scene. She had youth, physical perfection; she brimmed with
energy, with the sense of vital power; all existence lay before
her; when she put her lips together she felt capable of outvying
no matter whom in fortitude of resolution. She had always hated
the shop. She did not understand how her mother and Constance
could bring themselves to be deferential and flattering to every
customer that entered. No, she did not understand it; but her
mother (though a proud woman) and Constance seemed to practise
such behaviour so naturally, so unquestioningly, that she had
never imparted to either of them her feelings; she guessed that
she would not be comprehended. But long ago she had decided that
she would never "go into the shop." She knew that she would be
expected to do something, and she had fixed on teaching as the one
possibility. These decisions had formed part of her inner life for
years past. She had not mentioned them, being secretive and
scarcely anxious for unpleasantness. But she had been slowly
preparing herself to mention them. The extraordinary announcement
that she was to leave school at the same time as Constance had
taken her unawares, before the preparations ripening in her mind
were complete--before, as it were, she had girded up her loins for
the fray. She had been caught unready, and the opposing forces had
obtained the advantage of her. But did they suppose she was
beaten?

No argument from her mother! No hearing, even! Just a curt and
haughty 'Let me hear no more of this'! And so the great desire of
her life, nourished year after year in her inmost bosom, was to be
flouted and sacrificed with a word! Her mother did not appear
ridiculous in the affair, for her mother was a genuine power,
commanding by turns genuine love and genuine hate, and always,
till then, obedience and the respect of reason. It was her father
who appeared tragically ridiculous; and, in turn, the whole
movement against her grew grotesque in its absurdity. Here was
this antique wreck, helpless, useless, powerless--merely pathetic
--actually thinking that he had only to mumble in order to make her
'understand'! He knew nothing; he perceived nothing; he was a
ferocious egoist, like most bedridden invalids, out of touch with
life,--and he thought himself justified in making destinies, and
capable of making them! Sophia could not, perhaps, define the
feelings which overwhelmed her; but she was conscious of their
tendency. They aged her, by years. They aged her so that, in a
kind of momentary ecstasy of insight, she felt older than her
father himself.

"You will be a good girl," he said. "I'm sure o' that."

It was too painful. The grotesqueness of her father's complacency
humiliated her past bearing. She was humiliated, not for herself,
but for him. Singular creature! She ran out of the room.

Fortunately Constance was passing in the corridor, otherwise
Sophia had been found guilty of a great breach of duty.

"Go to father," she whispered hysterically to Constance, and fled
upwards to the second floor.

IV

At supper, with her red, downcast eyes, she had returned to sheer
girlishness again, overawed by her mother. The meal had an unusual
aspect. Mr. Povey, safe from the dentist's, but having lost two
teeth in two days, was being fed on 'slops'--bread and milk, to
wit; he sat near the fire. The others had cold pork, half a cold
apple-pie, and cheese; but Sophia only pretended to eat; each time
she tried to swallow, the tears came into her eyes, and her throat
shut itself up. Mrs. Baines and Constance had a too careful air of
eating just as usual. Mrs. Baines's handsome ringlets dominated
the table under the gas.

"I'm not so set up with my pastry to-day," observed Mrs. Baines,
critically munching a fragment of pie-crust.

She rang a little hand-bell. Maggie appeared from the cave. She
wore a plain white bib-less apron, but no cap.

"Maggie, will you have some pie?"

"Yes, if you can spare it, ma'am."

This was Maggie's customary answer to offers of food.

"We can always spare it, Maggie," said her mistress, as usual.
"Sophia, if you aren't going to use that plate, give it to me."

Maggie disappeared with liberal pie.

Mrs. Baines then talked to Mr. Povey about his condition, and in
particular as to the need for precautions against taking cold in
the bereaved gum. She was a brave and determined woman; from start
to finish she behaved as though nothing whatever in the household
except her pastry and Mr. Povey had deviated that day from the
normal. She kissed Constance and Sophia with the most exact
equality, and called them 'my chucks' when they went up to bed.

Constance, excellent kind heart, tried to imitate her mother's
tactics as the girls undressed in their room. She thought she
could not do better than ignore Sophia's deplorable state.

"Mother's new dress is quite finished, and she's going to wear it
on Sunday," said she, blandly.

"If you say another word I'll scratch your eyes out!" Sophia
turned on her viciously, with a catch in her voice, and then began
to sob at intervals. She did not mean this threat, but its
utterance gave her relief. Constance, faced with the fact that her
mother's shoes were too big for her, decided to preserve her
eyesight.

Long after the gas was out, rare sobs from Sophia shook the bed,
and they both lay awake in silence.

"I suppose you and mother have been talking me over finely to-
day?" Sophia burst forth, to Constance's surprise, in a wet voice.

"No," said Constance soothingly. "Mother only told me."

"Told you what?"

"That you wanted to be a teacher."

"And I will be, too!" said Sophia, bitterly.

"You don't know mother," thought Constance; but she made no
audible comment.

There was another detached, hard sob. And then, such is the
astonishing talent of youth, they both fell asleep.

The next morning, early, Sophia stood gazing out of the window at
the Square. It was Saturday, and all over the Square little
stalls, with yellow linen roofs, were being erected for the
principal market of the week. In those barbaric days Bursley had a
majestic edifice, black as basalt, for the sale of dead animals by
the limb and rib--it was entitled 'the Shambles'--but vegetables,
fruit, cheese, eggs, and pikelets were still sold under canvas.
Eggs are now offered at five farthings apiece in a palace that
cost twenty-five thousand pounds. Yet you will find people in
Bursley ready to assert that things generally are not what they
were, and that in particular the romance of life has gone. But
until it has gone it is never romance. To Sophia, though she was
in a mood which usually stimulates the sense of the romantic,
there was nothing of romance in this picturesque tented field. It
was just the market. Holl's, the leading grocer's, was already
open, at the extremity of the Square, and a boy apprentice was
sweeping the pavement in front of it. The public-houses were open,
several of them specializing in hot rum at 5.30 a.m. The town-
crier, in his blue coat with red facings, crossed the Square,
carrying his big bell by the tongue. There was the same shocking
hole in one of Mrs. Povey's (confectioner's) window-curtains--a
hole which even her recent travail could scarcely excuse. Such
matters it was that Sophia noticed with dull, smarting eyes.

"Sophia, you'll take your death of cold standing there like that!"

She jumped. The voice was her mother's. That vigorous woman, after
a calm night by the side of the paralytic, was already up and
neatly dressed. She carried a bottle and an egg-cup, and a small
quantity of jam in a table-spoon.

"Get into bed again, do! There's a dear! You're shivering."

White Sophia obeyed. It was true; she was shivering. Constance
awoke. Mrs. Baines went to the dressing-table and filled the egg-
cup out of the bottle.

"Who's that for, mother?" Constance asked sleepily.

"It's for Sophia," said Mrs. Baines, with good cheer. "Now,
Sophia!" and she advanced with the egg-cup in one hand and the
table-spoon in the other.

"What is it, mother?" asked Sophia, who well knew what it was.

"Castor-oil, my dear," said Mrs. Baines, winningly.

The ludicrousness of attempting to cure obstinacy and yearnings
for a freer life by means of castor-oil is perhaps less real than
apparent. The strange interdependence of spirit and body, though
only understood intelligently in these intelligent days, was
guessed at by sensible mediaeval mothers. And certainly, at the
period when Mrs. Baines represented modernity, castor-oil was
still the remedy of remedies. It had supplanted cupping. And, if
part of its vogue was due to its extreme unpleasantness, it had at
least proved its qualities in many a contest with disease. Less
than two years previously old Dr. Harrop (father of him who told
Mrs. Baines about Mrs. Povey), being then aged eighty-six, had
fallen from top to bottom of his staircase. He had scrambled up,
taken a dose of castor-oil at once, and on the morrow was as well
as if he had never seen a staircase. This episode was town
property and had sunk deep into all hearts.

"I don't want any, mother," said Sophia, in dejection. "I'm quite
well."

"You simply ate nothing all day yesterday," said Mrs. Baines. And
she added, "Come!" As if to say, "There's always this silly fuss
with castor-oil. Don't keep me waiting."

"I don't WANT any," said Sophia, irritated and captious.

The two girls lay side by side, on their backs. They seemed very
thin and fragile in comparison with the solidity of their mother.
Constance wisely held her peace.

Mrs. Baines put her lips together, meaning: "This is becoming
tedious. I shall have to be angry in another moment!"

"Come!" said she again.

The girls could hear her foot tapping on the floor.

"I really don't want it, mamma," Sophia fought. "I suppose I ought
to know whether I need it or not!" This was insolence.

"Sophia, will you take this medicine, or won't you?"

In conflicts with her children, the mother's ultimatum always took
the formula in which this phrase was cast. The girls knew, when
things had arrived at the pitch of 'or won't you' spoken in Mrs.
Baines's firmest tone, that the end was upon them. Never had the
ultimatum failed.

There was a silence.

"And I'll thank you to mind your manners," Mrs. Baines added.

"I won't take it," said Sophia, sullenly and flatly; and she hid
her face in the pillow.

It was a historic moment in the family life. Mrs. Baines thought
the last day had come. But still she held herself in dignity while
the apocalypse roared in her ears.

"OF COURSE I CAN'T FORCE YOU TO TAKE IT," she said with superb
evenness, masking anger by compassionate grief. "You're a big girl
and a naughty girl. And if you will be ill you must."

Upon this immense admission, Mrs. Baines departed.

Constance trembled.

Nor was that all. In the middle of the morning, when Mrs. Baines
was pricing new potatoes at a stall at the top end of the Square,
and Constance choosing threepennyworth of flowers at the same
stall, whom should they both see, walking all alone across the
empty corner by the Bank, but Sophia Baines! The Square was busy
and populous, and Sophia was only visible behind a foreground of
restless, chattering figures. But she was unmistakably seen. She
had been beyond the Square and was returning. Constance could
scarcely believe her eyes. Mrs. Baines's heart jumped. For let it
be said that the girls never under any circumstances went forth
without permission, and scarcely ever alone. That Sophia should be
at large in the town, without leave, without notice, exactly as if
she were her own mistress, was a proposition which a day earlier
had been inconceivable. Yet there she was, and moving with a
leisureliness that must be described as effrontery!

Red with apprehension, Constance wondered what would happen. Mrs.
Baines said nought of her feelings, did not even indicate that she
had seen the scandalous, the breath-taking sight. And they
descended the Square laden with the lighter portions of what they
had bought during an hour of buying. They went into the house by
the King Street door; and the first thing they heard was the sound
of the piano upstairs. Nothing happened. Mr. Povey had his dinner
alone; then the table was laid for them, and the bell rung, and
Sophia came insolently downstairs to join her mother and sister.
And nothing happened. The dinner was silently eaten, and Constance
having rendered thanks to God, Sophia rose abruptly to go.

"Sophia!"

"Yes, mother."

"Constance, stay where you are," said Mrs. Baines suddenly to
Constance, who had meant to flee. Constance was therefore destined
to be present at the happening, doubtless in order to emphasize
its importance and seriousness.

"Sophia," Mrs. Baines resumed to her younger daughter in an
ominous voice. "No, please shut the door. There is no reason why
everybody in the house should hear. Come right into the room--
right in! That's it. Now, what were you doing out in the town this
morning?"

Sophia was fidgeting nervously with the edge of her little black
apron, and worrying a seam of the carpet with her toes. She bent
her head towards her left shoulder, at first smiling vaguely. She
said nothing, but every limb, every glance, every curve, was
speaking. Mrs. Baines sat firmly in her own rocking-chair, full of
the sensation that she had Sophia, as it were, writhing on the end
of a skewer. Constance was braced into a moveless anguish.

"I will have an answer," pursued Mrs. Baines. "What were you doing
out in the town this morning?"

"I just went out," answered Sophia at length, still with eyes
downcast, and in a rather simpering tone.

"Why did you go out? You said nothing to me about going out. I
heard Constance ask you if you were coming with us to the market,
and you said, very rudely, that you weren't."

"I didn't say it rudely," Sophia objected.

"Yes you did. And I'll thank you not to answer back."

"I didn't mean to say it rudely, did I, Constance?" Sophia's head
turned sharply to her sister. Constance knew not where to look.

"Don't answer back," Mrs. Baines repeated sternly. "And don't try
to drag Constance into this, for I won't have it."

"Oh, of course Constance is always right!" observed Sophia, with
an irony whose unparalleled impudence shook Mrs. Baines to her
massive foundations.

"Do you want me to have to smack you, child?"

Her temper flashed out and you could see ringlets vibrating under
the provocation of Sophia's sauciness. Then Sophia's lower lip
began to fall and to bulge outwards, and all the muscles of her
face seemed to slacken.

"You are a very naughty girl," said Mrs. Baines, with restraint.
("I've got her," said Mrs. Baines to herself. "I may just as well
keep my temper.")

And a sob broke out of Sophia. She was behaving like a little
child. She bore no trace of the young maiden sedately crossing the
Square without leave and without an escort.

("I knew she was going to cry," said Mrs. Baines, breathing
relief.)

"I'm waiting," said Mrs. Baines aloud.

A second sob. Mrs. Baines manufactured patience to meet the
demand.

"You tell me not to answer back, and then you say you're waiting,"
Sophia blubbered thickly.

"What's that you say? How can I tell what you say if you talk like
that?" (But Mrs. Baines failed to hear out of discretion, which is
better than valour.)

"It's of no consequence," Sophia