 Preface to The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett. 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 told 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? Are you 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 that 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 cases are tragedy. One ought to be able to make a heart-rending novel out of the history of a woman such as she. Every stout-aging woman is not grotesque, far from it. But there is an extreme pathos in the mere fact that every stout-aging 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 young girl to stout-aging 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 Wife's 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 age forty and had daughters old enough to be in love. The reviewers, by the way, were staggered by my hardy-hood in offering a woman of forty as a subject of serious interest to the public, but I meant to go much further than forty. Finally, as a supreme reason I had the example and the challenge of Guy de Mopassant's unvie. In the nineties we used to regard unvie with mute awe as being the summit of achievement in fiction. And I remember being very cross with Mr. Bernard Shaw, because having read unvie 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 unvie 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 Réjean, or even Fort Comble Amour. To return to the year 1903, unvie 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 unvie. 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 unvie, 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 Mopesson 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 squarely in the face at intervals, then walked away to write novels of smaller scope, of which I produced five or six. But I could not dally for ever, 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 two hundred thousand 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 four hundred thousand words a piece. 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 Bainses, 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, and indifference which was 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 afterwards 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 20th 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, 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, starting 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 Sars's diary of the siege allowed to my wife, and I looked at the pictures in Jules Claretty's popular work on the siege and the commune, and I glanced at the printed collection of official documents. 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 auxer solennité. 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 utilised 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 rarely carried conviction to them, assert offhand, oh, that must be autobiography. Book I. Mrs. Baines Chapter I. The Square I. Those two girls, Constance and Sophia Baines, paid no heat 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 northward, 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, Meese, Dove, Turn, Dane, Meese, Star, Tame, and even hasty Seven. Not that the Seven 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 reek in, 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 Wattling 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 middle of England, unsung by searches 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, wrecked 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, water-courses, 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 wagons 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, heathlocks played in the ineffacable mule tracks that had served centuries before even the Romans thought of Wattling 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 a 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 savor 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 ployadee is in a green and empty sky, and Hanbridge has the shape of a horse and rider, bursely of half a donkey, night of a pair of trousers, longshore of an octopus, and little turn hill 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 longshore 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 cotton 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. Maybe 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 stable 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 stable as something wholesale, vulgar and assuredly filthy, and you'll 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 a certain phenomena in his square, but except in Wake's week, when the shocking always happened, St Luke's square lived in a manor possibly saintly, though it contained five public houses, a bank, a barber's, a confectioner's, three roses, 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 no 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 being 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 cricholos, chemists, the clothiers, 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 wish 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. Two. They pressed their noses against the window of the showroom, and gazed down into the square as perpendicularly as the projecting front of the shop would allow. The showroom 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 shovel-bar 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 race-horses, 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 to fire. 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 confectioners and one chemists, 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 Longshore 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, providing she did not carry on in the kitchen or the yard. And as a matter of 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 Maggie's. The dredge 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 nought in reply, but really Maggie? Engagements and tragic partings were Maggie's past time, fixed otherwise she might have studied the piano instead. No gloves, of course, Sophia criticised. Well, you can't expect her to have gloves, said Constance. Then a pause as the bonnet and dress near 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 Old Castle Street. Well, said 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 showroom expressly to deride Maggie in her new clothes. They obscurely thought that a woman so ugly and soiled as Maggie 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 reign to a 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 manufacturer 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, clapping 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 Osbourne Quadrilles, Sophia suggested. The Osbourne Quadrilles, being a series of dances, arranged to be performed on drawing-room pianos by four dueled 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 today 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 the result that mimicked a fragment of uncompromising axe-minster 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 of the canvas, excused and invested with charm, an activity which on artistic grounds could not possibly be justified. The canvas was destined to adorn a gilt fire-screen 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 hopes, none save Mrs. Baines new. Conn, 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 wondered about a prey ripe for the evil one. Oh, she exclaimed joyously, even ecstatically, looking behind the chivalr glass. Here's a mother's new skirt. This done has 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 finally, 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 15 sisters, all of the same height and slimness of figure, all of the same age, about 25 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 verandas. 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. He 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 outmoded fashions. Observed hats with veils flying behind, observed bonnets fitting closely to the head and spotted, observed coiffures that nearly lay on the nape, observed clumsy sleeves, observed wastes almost above the elbow's level, observed scalloped jackets and the skirts. What a sight were these 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 be content 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 Mayre'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 false 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 Collenso had just staggered Christianity by his shameless notions on the Pentateuch. Half Lancashire was starving on account of the American War. Garotting 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 Longshore as one now goes to peek in. It was a nearer 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 possibly pleased with themselves, and they never even suspected that they were not quite modern and quite awake. They thought that intellectual, 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, but could be heard from the Wesleyan chapel to the cockyard, and then after deliberations and hesitations, the vehicle rolled off on its rails into unknown dangers, while passengers shouted goodbye. At Bleakridge it had to stop for the turnpike, and it was assisted up the mountains of Levison Place and Sutherland Street, towards Handbridge, by a third horse, on whose back was perched a tiny whip-cracking boy. That boy lived like a shuttle on the road between Levison 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 Handbridge, and the ruddy driver, having revolved many times the polished iron handle of his sole break, turned his attention to the 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 Ney-Plath Ultra, then, having taken some flowers and plumes out of her 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 expansiveness. And with the gown she had put on her mother's importance, that mean of assured authority, of capacity tested in many a crisis, which characterised 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' 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 had 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, semicircular 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 ludricous astonishment and alarm was comical enough to have sent into wild and charitable laughter any creature less human 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, wonderstruck 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 with his hands and contorting all the muscles of his face. On perceiving the sculptural group of two prone interlocked girls, one enveloped in crinoline, and the other, with a wool-work bunch of flowers pinned to her knees, 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 standby 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 assistance, he alone slept in the house. His bedroom was next to that of his employer. There was a door between the two chambers, and two steps led down from the larger to the less. The girls regained their feet, so far with Constance's help. It was not easy to write 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 Woolsonon Brothers, 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 Woolsonon's and have the thing attended to in a proper manner. He had even added that persons who put off going to the dentists were simply sowing trouble for themselves. Non could possibly have guessed that Mr. Povey was afraid of going to the dentists, that such was the case. He had not dared to set forth. The paragon of common sense, 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 doorbell. 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 ought to be done for Mr. Povey. What, Sophia demanded. Has he gone back to his bedroom? Let's go and listen, said Sophia, the adventurous. They went through the showroom door, past the foot of the stairs leading to the second story, 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. The Harvest of a Quiet Tooth. Sophia whispered, giggling very low. Constance put her lips forward. From the next room came a regular, muffled oratorical sound, as though someone 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 there was anything we could do 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 dentists, 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 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. Three. 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 anti-McCassers, 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 anti-McCassar 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 the rebellion. He was entrapped by the anti-McCassar. 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 antimicasa 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 in feebled in the wash of a spent wave, he murmured with the sick man's voice, I suppose you haven't got any lordenum. The girls started into life. Lordenum, 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-earn. That corner cupboard, of oak, inlaid with maple and ebony in simple border pattern, was typical of the room. It was of a piece with the deep green flock wallpaper, and the tea-earn, and the rocking chairs with their antimicassas, and the harmonium in rosewood with a Chinese papier-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. The heritage is, said so far, eagerly, and there it was, a blue bottle with a saffron label, caution, poison, lordenum, Charles Critchlow M.B.S., dispensing chemist St. Luke's Square, Bursley. Those large capitals frightened the girls. Constance took the bottle of 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 better ask Mr. Critchlow. Constance faltered. The expectation of beneficent lordenum 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 lordenum. 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 useful 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 mantle-piece, 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 onto 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 antimicasa, which he 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 forever. Then he snored horribly. His snore seemed a portent of disaster. So far 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 sizable 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 it'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 howl sewing machine. It had a little tool-draw, and in the tool-draw was a small pair of pliers. Constance, engaged in sniffing at the leaves of the potion, in order to estimate its probable deadliness, heard the well-known click of the little tool-draw, 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 Lordnam dream. He jumps, he muttered, and after a reflecting 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 muscles and cockles. Oh! Sophia almost shrieked. Do let's have muscles and cockles for tea! And she rushed to the door and unlocked it 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 tasterness of their teas, but it was an adventurous age when errant nights of commerce were numerous and enterprising. You went on your doorstep, caught your meal as it passed, withdrew, cooked it, and ate it, quite in the manner of the early Britain. Constance was obliged to join her sister on the top step. Sophia descended to the second step. Fresh muscles and cockles! Holy loybo! Bald 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 Bastille. 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 recognisable 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 messes, said the vile Hollins, three pence a point, and here is your hard-earned mother, yes, fresh, so help me God! End of Book One, Mrs. Baines, Chapter One, The Square. Book One, Chapter Two, of The Old Wife's Tale, by Arnold Bennett. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information, or to volunteer, please go to LibriVox.org. Reading by Andy Minter. The Old Wife's Tale, by Arnold Bennett. Book One, Mrs. Baines. Chapter Two, The Tooth. One. 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 barmy scented muscles 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 base and turned upside down, but not including muscles and cockles. She turned to the right, past 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, noted 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 brought the tea, Mr. Critchlow, said Sophia, and Mr. Critchlow carefully accepted the tray. He said, by 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 or 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 Pharmacutical Society for six hours were given day each 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 Current Jam, for instance. He called it Preserve. The idea of offering Mr. Critchlow a tea, which did not comprise Black Current 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 shops smelt richly of fruit, boiling in sugar, Mrs. Baines had filled an extra number of jars with Black Current Jam, because Mr. Critchlow wouldn't touch any other sort. So Sophia, faced with the shut door of the bedroom, went down to the parlor by the shorter route. She knew that on going up again after tea she would find the devastated tray on the door-mat. Constance was helping Mr. Povey to muscles and cockles. For Mr. Povey still wore one of the Antimacassas, it must have stuck to his shoulders when he sprang up from the sofa. Wool and Antimacassas 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 pecan't. And what added to its pecancy 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 chock of it, they had discussed it in the kitchen while preparing the teas. Constance's extraordinary 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, these, said Sophia positively. Constance well knew that she would have some, and had only asked from a sheer nervousness. Flash 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. They remained nothing to say. An irksome silence fell upon 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 Lordenham, 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 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, too, has been loose for two years, said Mr. Povey, and now I've swallowed it with a muscle. 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 this last day or two. I wish it had been. Sophia had her teak up close to her red face. At these words of Mr. Povey, her cheeks seemed to fill out like plum-papples. 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 then. Constance, who had risen, sat down again. Two. 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 rain 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 parlor 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 parlor door closed, and the vision of Mr. Povey and his anti-McCassar swept Sophia off into another convulsion of laughter and tears. Upon this the parlor door opened again, and Sophia choked herself into silence, while Constance hastened along the passage. In a minute Constance returned with her wool-work, which she had got from the showroom, and the parlor 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 parlor. 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 parlor. She now detected a faint, regular snore. Mr. Povey, a prey to Lordnam and Muscles, 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 parlor, but she could not bring herself to do so. She crept away again, for lawn 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, when 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 Lorddom, 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 at the globe. Where 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 return 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 threesies out of her gloves. Certainly, in some subtle way, Constance had a standing with her parents, which was more confidential than Sophia's. 3. When Constance came to bed, often hour later, Sophia was already in bed. The room was fairly spacious. It had been the girl's 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 of like an epoch. A third epoch was due to the replacing of a drug-it 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 the 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 on 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, going 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 wash stand, 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 common sense, and partly to their father's tendency to spoil them a little. They had more over a chest of drawers with a curved front, of which structure, constants occupied two short drawers and one long one, and sapphire two long drawers. On it stood two fancy work boxes, in which each sister kept jewellery, a savings bankbook 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, so far 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. A sleep, said Constance. At least mother thinks so. She says sleep is the best thing for him. It will probably come on again, said Sapphire. 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 Sapphire delivered them with an exact imitation of Mr. Povey's vocal mannerism. Sapphire, said Constance firmly, approaching the bed, I wish she wouldn't be so silly. She had benevolently ignored the satirical note in Sapphire'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, Sapphire exploded and a 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 it a bit. Sapphire gasped out, and she held up a tiny object in her left hand. Constance started flashing. You don't mean to say you've kept it. She protested earnestly how horrid you are, Sapphire. Give it me a once and let me throw it away. I never heard of such things. Now give it to me. No, Sapphire 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. Sapphire hid her hands under the clothes. You can have this old stump when it comes out, if you like, but not this. What a pity it's the wrong one. Sapphire, I'm ashamed of you. Give it me. Then it was that Sapphire first perceived Constance's extreme seriousness. She was surprised of the little intimidated by it. For the expression of Constance's face, usually so benign and calm, was harsh, almost fierce. However, Sapphire 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," Sapphire put in, thirstily. But I certainly shall, if you don't throw that away, Constance finished. You could say what you like," Sapphire retorted, adding contemptuously the term of a probium, which has long since passed out of use. Can't. 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 Sapphire, the angelic tenderness of Constance, and the youthful, naive, innocent charm of both of them, were transformed into something sinister and cruel. Sapphire lay back on the pillow amid her dark brown hair, and gazed with relentless defiance into the angry eyes of Constance, who stood and 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 right. She was so disturbed that she had unconsciously reversed the customary order of the toilette. After a moment, Sapphire slipped out of bed, and stepping with her bare feet to the chest of drawers, opened her workbox, 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 this. Their eyes met again in the looking-glass. Then Sapphire got back into bed. Five minutes later, when her hair was quite finished, Constance knelt down and set her prayers. Having set her prayers, she went straight to Sapphire's workbox, 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 transition of the Code of Honour beyond all undoing, before Sapphire could recover from the stupid faction of seeing her sacred workbox impudently violated in a single moment. One of Sapphire's chief ideals had been smashed utterly, and that by the sweetest, gentlest creature she had ever known. It was a revealing experience for Sapphire, and also for Constance, and it frightened them equally. Sapphire, staring at the text, Thou, God, ofceased 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 text as a deterrent from evil doing. Although she cared 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 fish undressing with dignified deliberation. Sapphire's behaviour under the blow seemed too good to be true, but he gave her courage. At length she turned out the gas and lay down by Sapphire, 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, mothers decided with Aunt Harriet that we're both to leave school next term. End of Chapter 2