The Old Wives' Tale

by Arnold Bennett

  “Yes,” he said. “Been up most of th’ night. Difficult! Difficult!”

  “It’s all right, I hope?”

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

  “No,” said Mrs Baines, with a different expression.

  “Keeps cheerful?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good! A very good morning to you.”

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

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

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

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

  “What’s all this about Sophia wanting to be a school-teacher?”

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

  “Yes. Hasn’t she said anything to you?”

  “Not a word!”

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

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

  “Neither did I!” said Mrs Baines.

  “And shall you let her, mother?”

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

  “No, mother!”

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

  III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Is that Sophia?”

  “Yes, father,” she answered cheerfully.

  And after another pause, the old man said: “Ay! It’s Sophia.”

  And later: “Your mother said she should send ye.”

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

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

  “Ay!” he muttered. “That’s it. That’s it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Teaching!” he muttered. “Nay, nay! I canna’ allow that.”

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

  “You understand me?” he questioned finally.

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

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

  “You will be a good girl,” he said. “I’m sure o’ that.”

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

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

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

  IV

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

  “I’m not so set up with my pastry today,” observed Mrs Baines, critically munching a fragment of pie-crust.

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

  “Maggie, will you have some pie?”

  “Yes, if you can spare it, ma’am.”

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

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

  Maggie disappeared with liberal pie.

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

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

  “Mother’s new dress is quite finished, and she’s going to wear it on Sunday,” said she, blandly.

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

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

  “I suppose you and mother have been talking me over finely today?” Sophia burst forth, to Constance’s surprise, in a wet voice.

  “No,” said Constance soothingly. “Mother only told me.”

  “Told you what?”

  “That you wanted to be a teacher.”

  “And I will be, too!” said Sophia, bitterly.

  “You don’t know mother,” thought Constance; but she made no audible comment.

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

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