The Old Wives' Tale

by Arnold Bennett

  “With pleasure, Mrs Povey.”

  “Where are you going to?” Mr Povey interrupted his conversation to stop the flying girl.

  “She’s just going to the post for me,” Constance called out from the region of the till.

  “Oh! All right!”

  A trifle! A nothing! Yet somehow, in the quiet customerless shop, the episode, with the scarce perceptible difference in Samuel’s tone at his second remark, was delicious to Constance. Somehow it was the real beginning of her wifehood. (There had been about nine other real beginnings in the past fortnight.)

  Mr Povey came in to supper, laden with ledgers and similar works which Constance had never even pretended to understand. It was a sign from him that the honeymoon was over. He was proprietor now, and his ardour for ledgers most justifiable, Still, there was the question of her servant.

  “Never!” he exclaimed, when she told him all about the end of the world. A “never” which expressed extreme astonishment and the liveliest concern!

  But Constance had anticipated that he would have been just a little more knocked down, bowled over, staggered, stunned, flabbergasted. In a swift gleam of insight she saw that she had been in danger of forgetting her rôle of experienced, capable married woman.

  “I shall have to set about getting a fresh one,” she said hastily, with an admirable assumption of light and easy casualness.

  Mr Povey seemed to think that Hollins would suit Maggie pretty well. He made no remark to the betrothed when she answered the final bell of the night.

  He opened his ledgers, whistling.

  “I think I shall go up, dear,” said Constance. “I’ve a lot of things to put away.”

  “Do,” said he. “Call out when you’ve done.”

  II

  “Sam!” she cried from the top of the crooked stairs.

  No answer. The door at the foot was closed.

  “Sam!”

  “Hello?” Distantly, faintly.

  “I’ve done all I’m going to do tonight.”

  And she ran back along the corridor, a white figure in the deep gloom, and hurried into bed, and drew the clothes up to her chin.

  In the life of a bride there are some dramatic moments. If she has married the industrious apprentice, one of those moments occurs when she first occupies the sacred bedchamber of her ancestors, and the bed on which she was born. Her parents’ room had always been to Constance, if not sacred, at least invested with a certain moral solemnity. She could not enter it as she would enter another room. The course of nature, with its succession of deaths, conceptions, and births, slowly makes such a room august with a mysterious quality which interprets the grandeur of mere existence and imposes itself on all. Constance had the strangest sensations in that bed, whose heavy dignity of ornament symbolized a past age; sensations of sacrilege and trespass, of being a naughty girl to whom punishment would accrue for this shocking freak. Not since she was quite tiny had she slept in that bed—one night with her mother, before her father’s seizure, when he had been away. What a limitless, unfathomable bed it was then! Now it was just a bed—so she had to tell herself—like any other bed. The tiny child that, safely touching its mother, had slept in the vast expanse, seemed to her now a pathetic little thing; its image made her feel melancholy. And her mind dwelt on sad events: the death of her father, the flight of darling Sophia; the immense grief, and the exile, of her mother. She esteemed that she knew what life was, and that it was grim. And she sighed. But the sigh was an affectation, meant partly to convince herself that she was grown-up, and partly to keep her in countenance in the intimidating bed. This melancholy was factitious, was less than transient foam on the deep sea of her joy. Death and sorrow and sin were dim shapes to her; the ruthless egoism of happiness blew them away with a puff, and their wistful faces vanished. To see her there in the bed, framed in mahogany and tassels, lying on her side, with her young glowing cheeks, and honest but not artless gaze, and the rich curve of her hip lifting the counterpane, one would have said that she had never heard of aught but love.

  Mr Povey entered, the bridegroom, quickly, firmly, carrying it off rather well, but still self-conscious. “After all,” his shoulders were trying to say, “what’s the difference between this bedroom and the bed-room of a boarding-house? Indeed, ought we not to feel more at home here? Besides, confound it, we’ve been married a fortnight!”

  “Doesn’t it give you a funny feeling, sleeping in this room? It does me,” said Constance. Women, even experienced women, are so foolishly frank. They have no decency, no self-respect.

  “Really?” replied Mr Povey, with loftiness, as who should say: “What an extraordinary thing that a reasonable creature can have such fancies! Now to me this room is exactly like any other room.” And he added aloud, glancing away from the glass, where he was unfastening his necktie: “It’s not a bad room at all.” This, with the judicial air of an auctioneer.

  Not for an instant did he deceive Constance, who read his real sensations with accuracy. But his futile poses did not in the slightest degree lessen her respect for him. On the contrary, she admired him the more for them; they were a sort of embroidery on the solid stuff of his character. At that period he could not do wrong for her. The basis of her regard for him was, she often thought, his honesty, his industry, his genuine kindliness of act, his grasp of the business, his perseverance, his passion for doing at once that which had to be done. She had the greatest admiration for his qualities, and he was in her eyes an indivisible whole; she could not admire one part of him and frown upon another. Whatever he did was good because he did it. She knew that some people were apt to smile at certain phases of his individuality; she knew that far down in her mother’s heart was a suspicion that she had married ever so little beneath her. But this knowledge did not disturb her. She had no doubt as to the correctness of her own estimate.

  Mr Povey was an exceedingly methodical person, and he was also one of those persons who must always be “before-hand” with time. Thus at night he would arrange his raiment so that in the morning it might be reassumed in the minimum of minutes. He was not a man, for example, to leave the changing of studs from one shirt to another till the morrow. Had it been practicable, he would have brushed his hair the night before. Constance already loved to watch his meticulous preparations. She saw him now go into his old bedroom and return with a paper collar, which he put on the dressing-table next to a black necktie. His shop-suit was laid out on a chair.

  “Oh, Sam!” she exclaimed impulsively, “you surely aren’t going to begin wearing those horrid paper collars again!” During the honeymoon he had worn linen collars.

  Her tone was perfectly gentle, but the remark, nevertheless, showed a lack of tact. It implied that all his life Mr Povey had been enveloping his neck in something which was horrid. Like all persons with a tendency to fall into the ridiculous, Mr Povey was exceedingly sensitive to personal criticisms. He flushed darkly.

  “I didn’t know they were ‘horrid,’” he snapped. He was hurt and angry. Anger surprised him unawares.

  Both of them suddenly saw that they were standing on the edge of a chasm, and drew back. They had imagined themselves to be wandering safely in a flowered meadow, and here was this bottomless chasm! It was most disconcerting.

  Mr Povey’s hand hovered undecided over the collar. “However—” he muttered.

  She could feel that he was trying with all his might to be gentle and pacific. And she was aghast at her own stupid clumsiness, she so experienced!

  “Just as you like, dear,” she said quickly. “Please!”

  “Oh no!” And he did his best to smile, and went off gawkily with the collar and came back with a linen one.

  Her passion for him burned stronger than ever. She knew then that she did not love him for his good qualities, but for something boyish and naïve that there was about him, an indescribable something that occasionally, when his face was close to hers, made her dizzy.

  The chasm had disappea
red. In such moments, when each must pretend not to have seen or even suspected the chasm, small-talk is essential.

  “Wasn’t that Mr Yardley in the shop tonight?” began Constance.

  “Yes.”

  “What did he want?”

  “I’d sent for him. He’s going to paint us a signboard.”

  Useless for Samuel to make-believe that nothing in this world is more ordinary than a signboard.

  “Oh!” murmured Constance. She said no more, the episode of the paper collar having weakened her self-confidence.

  But a signboard!

  What with servants, chasms, and signboards, Constance considered that her life as a married woman would not be deficient in excitement. Long afterwards she fell asleep, thinking of Sophia.

  III

  A few days later Constance was arranging the more precious of her wedding presents in the parlour; some had to be wrapped in tissue and in brown paper and then tied with string and labelled; others had special cases of their own, leather without and velvet within. Among the latter was the resplendent egg-stand holding twelve silver-gilt egg-cups and twelve chased spoons to match, presented by Aunt Harriet. In the Five Towns’ phrase, “it must have cost money.” Even if Mr and Mrs Povey had ten guests or ten children, and all the twelve of them were simultaneously gripped by a desire to eat eggs at breakfast or tea—even in this remote contingency Aunt Harriet would have been pained to see the egg-stand in use; such treasures are not designed for use. The presents, few in number, were mainly of this character, because, owing to her mother’s heroic cession of the entire interior, Constance already possessed every necessary. The fewness of the presents was accounted for by the fact that the wedding had been strictly private and had taken place at Axe. There is nothing like secrecy in marriage for discouraging the generous impulses of one’s friends. It was Mrs Baines, abetted by both the chief parties, who had decided that the wedding should be private and secluded. Sophia’s wedding had been altogether too private and secluded; but the casting of a veil over Constance’s (whose union was irreproachable) somehow justified, after the event, the circumstances of Sophia’s, indicating as it did that Mrs Baines believed in secret weddings on principle. In such matters Mrs Baines was capable of extraordinary subtlety.

  And while Constance was thus taking her wedding presents with due seriousness, Maggie was cleaning the steps that led from the pavement of King Street to the side-door, and the door was ajar. It was a fine June morning.

  Suddenly, over the sound of scouring, Constance heard a dog’s low growl and then the hoarse voice of a man:

  “Mester in, wench?”

  “Happen he is, happen he isn’t,” came Maggie’s answer. She had no fancy for being called wench.

  Constance went to the door, not merely from curiosity, but from a feeling that her authority and her responsibilities as housemistress extended to the pavement surrounding the house.

  The famous James Boon, of Buck Row, the greatest dog-fancier in the Five Towns, stood at the bottom of the steps: a tall, fat man, clad in stiff, stained brown and smoking a black clay pipe less than three inches long. Behind him attended two bulldogs.

  “Morning, missis!” cried Boon, cheerfully. “I’ve heerd tell as th’ mister is looking out for a dog, as you might say.”

  “I don’t stay here with them animals a-sniffing at me—no, that I don’t!” observed Maggie, picking herself up.

  “Is he?” Constance hesitated. She knew that Samuel had vaguely referred to dogs; she had not, however, imagined that he regarded a dog as aught but a beautiful dream. No dog had ever put paw into that house, and it seemed impossible that one should ever do so. As for those beasts of prey on the pavement . . . !

  “Ay!” said James Boon, calmly.

  “I’ll tell him you’re here,” said Constance. “But I don’t know if he’s at liberty. He seldom is at this time of day. Maggie, you’d better come in.”

  She went slowly to the shop, full of fear for the future.

  “Sam,” she whispered to her husband, who was writing at his desk, “here’s a man come to see you about a dog.”

  Assuredly he was taken aback. Still, he behaved with much presence of mind.

  “Oh, about a dog! Who is it?”

  “It’s that Jim Boon. He says he’s heard you want one.”

  The renowned name of Jim Boon gave him pause; but he had to go through with the affair, and he went through with it, though nervously. Constance followed his agitated footsteps to the side-door.

  “Morning, Boon.”

  “Morning, mester.”

  They began to talk dogs, Mr Povey, for his part, with due caution.

  “Now, there’s a dog!” said Boon, pointing to one of the bull-dogs, a miracle of splendid ugliness.

  “Yes,” responded Mr Povey, insincerely. “He is a beauty. What’s it worth now, at a venture?”

  “I’ll tak’ a hundred and twenty sovereigns for her,” said Boon. “Th’ other’s a bit cheaper—a hundred.”

  “Oh, Sam!” gasped Constance.

  And even Mr Povey nearly lost his nerve. “That’s more than I want to give,” said he timidly.

  “But look at her!” Boon persisted, roughly snatching up the more expensive animal, and displaying her cannibal teeth.

  Mr Povey shook his head. Constance glanced away.

  “That’s not quite the sort of dog I want,” said Mr Povey.

  “Fox-terrier?”

  “Yes, that’s more like,” Mr Povey agreed eagerly.

  “What’ll ye run to?”

  “Oh,” said Mr Povey, largely, “I don’t know.”

  “Will ye run to a tenner?”

  “I thought of something cheaper.”

  “Well, hoo much? Out wi’ it, mester.”

  “Not more than two pounds,” said Mr Povey. He would have said one pound had he dared. The prices of dogs amazed him.

  “I thowt it was a dog as ye wanted!” said Boon. “Look ’ere, mester. Come up to my yard and see what I’ve got.”

  “I will,” said Mr Povey.

  “And bring missis along too. Now, what about a cat for th’ missis? Or a gold-fish?”

  The end of the episode was that a young lady aged some twelve months entered the Povey household on trial. Her exiguous legs twinkled all over the parlour, and she had the oddest appearance in the parlour. But she was so confiding, so affectionate, so timorous, and her black nose was so icy in that hot weather, that Constance loved her violently within an hour. Mr Povey made rules for her. He explained to her that she must never, never go into the shop. But she went, and he whipped her to the squealing point, and Constance cried an instant, while admiring her husband’s firmness.

  The dog was not all.

  On another day Constance, prying into the least details of the parlour, discovered a box of cigars inside the lid of the harmonium, on the keyboard. She was so unaccustomed to cigars that at first she did not realize what the object was. Her father had never smoked, nor drunk intoxicants; nor had Mr Critchlow. Nobody had ever smoked in that house, where tobacco had always been regarded as equally licentious with cards, “the devil’s playthings.” Certainly Samuel had never smoked in the house, though the sight of the cigar-box reminded Constance of an occasion when her mother had announced an incredulous suspicion that Mr Povey, fresh from an excursion into the world on a Thursday evening, “smelt of smoke.”

  She closed the harmonium and kept silence.

  That very night, coming suddenly into the parlour, she caught Samuel at the harmonium. The lid went down with a resonant bang that awoke sympathetic vibrations in every corner of the room.

  “What is it?” Constance inquired, jumping.

  “Oh, nothing!” replied Mr Povey, carelessly.

  Each was deceiving the other: Mr Povey hid his crime, and Constance hid her knowledge of his crime. False, false! But this is what marriage is.

  And the next day Constance had a visit in the shop from a possible new servant, recom
mended to her by Mr Holl, the grocer.

  “Will you please step this way?” said Constance, with affable primness, steeped in the novel sense of what it is to be the sole responsible mistress of a vast household. She preceded the girl to the parlour, and as they passed the open door of Mr Povey’s cutting-out room, Constance had the clear vision and titillating odour of her husband smoking a cigar. He was in his shirtsleeves, calmly cutting out, and Fan (the lady companion), at watch on the bench, yapped at the possible new servant.

  “I think I shall try that girl,” said she to Samuel at tea. She said nothing as to the cigar; nor did he.

  On the following evening, after supper, Mr Povey burst out:

  “I think I’ll have a weed! You didn’t know I smoked, did you?”

  Thus Mr Povey came out in his true colours as a blood, a blade, and a gay spark.

  But dogs and cigars, disconcerting enough in their degree, were to the signboard, when the signboard at last came, as skim milk is to hot brandy. It was the signboard that, more startingly than anything else, marked the dawn of a new era in St Luke’s Square. Four men spent a day and a half in fixing it; they had ladders, ropes, and pulleys, and two of them dined on the flat lead roof of the projecting shop-windows. The signboard was thirty-five feet long and two feet in depth; over its centre was a semicircle about three feet in radius; this semicircle bore the legend, judiciously disposed, “S. Povey. Late.” All the signboard proper was devoted to the words, “John Baines,” in gold letters a foot and a half high, on a green ground.

  The Square watched and wondered; and murmured: “Well, bless us! What next?”

  It was agreed that in giving paramount importance to the name of his late father-in-law, Mr Povey had displayed a very nice feeling.

  Some asked with glee: “What’ll the old lady have to say?”

  Constance asked herself this, but not with glee. When Constance walked down the Square homewards, she could scarcely bear to look at the sign; the thought of what her mother might say frightened her. Her mother’s first visit of state was imminent, and Aunt Harriet was to accompany her. Constance felt almost sick as the day approached. When she faintly hinted her apprehensions to Samuel, he demanded, as if surprised—