“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 today 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 experi
ence 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 farther 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 medieval 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 “Bonesetter 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 tomorrow 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 j
oy 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 tiding-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.
The Old Wives' Tale Page 8
