The Old Wives' Tale

by Arnold Bennett

  Then everyone simultaneously noticed Cyril, for he gave a yell. It was not the cry of a despairing soul who sees his beautiful irridescent dream shattered at his feet; it was the cry of the strong, masterful spirit, furious. He turned upon Jennie, sobbing, and snatched at her cake. Unaccustomed to such behaviour from hosts, and being besides a haughty put-you-in-your-place beauty of the future, Jennie defended her cake. After all, it was not she who had taken two slices at once. Cyril hit her in the eye, and then crammed most of the slice of cake into his enormous mouth. He could not swallow it, nor even masticate it, for his throat was rigid and tight. So the cake projected from his red lips, and big tears watered it. The most awful mess you can conceive! Jennie wept loudly, and one or two others joined her in sympathy, but the rest went on eating tranquilly, unmoved by the horror which transfixed their elders.

  A host to snatch food from a guest! A host to strike a guest! A gentleman to strike a lady!

  Constance whipped up Cyril from his chair and flew with him to his own room (once Samuel’s), where she smacked him on the arm and told him he was a very, very naughty boy and that she didn’t know what his father would say. She took the food out of his disgusting mouth—or as much of it as she could get at—and then she left him, on the bed. Miss Jennie was still in tears when, blushing scarlet, and trying to smile, Constance returned to the drawing-room. Jennie would not be appeased. Happily Jennie’s mother (being about to present Jennie with a little brother—she hoped) was not present. Miss Insull had promised to see Jennie home, and it was decided that she should go. Mr Critchlow, in high sardonic spirits, said that he would go too; the three departed together, heavily charged with Constance’s love and apologies. Then all pretended, and said loudly, that what had happened was naught, that such things were always happening at children’s parties. And visitors’ relatives asseverated that Cyril was a perfect darling and that really Mrs Povey must not . . .

  But the attempt to keep up appearance was a failure.

  The Methuselah of visitors, a gaping girl of nearly eight years, walked across the room to where Constance was standing, and said in a loud, confidential, fatuous voice:

  “Cyril has been a rude boy, hasn’t he, Mrs Povey?”

  The clumsiness of children is sometimes tragic.

  Later, there was a trickling stream of fluffy bundles down the crooked stairs and through the parlour and so out into King Street. And Constance received many compliments and sundry appeals that darling Cyril should be forgiven.

  “I thought you said that boy was in his bedroom,” said Samuel to Constance, coming into the parlour when the last guest had gone. Each avoided the other’s eyes.

  “Yes, isn’t he?”

  “No.”

  “The little jockey!” (“Jockey,” an essay in the playful, towards making light of the jockey’s sin!) “I expect he’s been in search of Amy.”

  She went to the top of the kitchen stairs and called out: “Amy, is Master Cyril down there?”

  “Master Cyril? No, mum. But he was in the parlour a bit ago, after the first and second lot had gone. I told him to go upstairs and be a good boy.”

  Not for a few moments did the suspicion enter the minds of Samuel and Constance that Cyril might be missing, that the house might not contain Cyril. But having once entered, the suspicion became a certainty. Amy, cross-examined, burst into sudden tears, admitting that the side-door might have been open when, having sped “the second lot,” she criminally left Cyril alone in the parlour in order to descend for an instant to her kitchen. Dusk was gathering. Amy saw the defenceless innocent wandering about all night in the deserted streets of a great city. A similar vision with precise details of canals, tramcarwheels, and cellar-flaps, disturbed Constance. Samuel said that anyhow he could not have got far, that someone was bound to remark and recognize him, and restore him. “Yes, of course,” thought sensible Constance. “But supposing—”

  They all three searched the entire house again. Then, in the drawing-room (which was in a sad condition of anti-climax) Amy exclaimed:

  “Eh, master! There’s town-crier crossing the Square. Hadn’t ye better have him cried?”

  “Run out and stop him,” Constance commanded.

  And Amy flew.

  Samuel and the aged town-crier parleyed at the side-door, the women in the background.

  “I canna’ cry him without my bell,” drawled the crier, stroking his shabby uniform. “My Bell’s at wum [home]. I mun go and fetch my bell. Yo’ write it down on a bit o’ paper for me so as I can read it, and I’ll foot off for my bell. Folk wouldna’ listen to me if I hadna’ gotten my bell.”

  Thus was Cyril cried.

  “Amy,” said Constance, when she and the girl were alone, “there’s no use in you standing blubbering there. Get to work and clear up that drawing-room, do! The child is sure to be found soon. Your master’s gone out, too.”

  Brave words! Constance aided in the drawing-room and kitchen. Theirs was the woman’s lot in a great crisis. Plates have always to be washed.

  Very shortly afterwards, Samuel Povey came into the kitchen by the underground passage which led past the two cellars to the yard and to Brougham Street. He was carrying in his arms an obscene black mass. This mass was Cyril, once white.

  Constance screamed. She was at liberty to give way to her feelings, because Amy happened to be upstairs.

  “Stand away!” cried Mr Povey. “He isn’t fit to touch.”

  And Mr Povey made as if to pass directly onwards, ignoring the mother.

  “Wherever did you find him?”

  “I found him in the far cellar,” said Mr Povey, compelled to stop, after all. “He was down there with me yesterday, and it just occurred to me that he might have gone there again.”

  “What! All in the dark?”

  “He’d lighted a candle, if you please! I’d left a candlestick and a box of matches handy because I hadn’t finished that shelving.”

  “Well!” Constance murmured. “I can’t think how ever he dared go there all alone!”

  “Can’t you?” said Mr Povey, cynically. “I can. He simply did it to frighten us.”

  “Oh, Cyril!” Constance admonished the child. “Cyril!”

  The child showed no emotion. His face was an enigma. It might have hidden sullenness or mere callous indifference, or a perfect unconsciousness of sin.

  “Give him to me,” said Constance.

  “I’ll look after him this evening,” said Samuel, grimly.

  “But you can’t wash him,” said Constance, her relief yielding to apprehension.

  “Why not?” demanded Mr Povey. And he moved off.

  “But Sam—”

  “I’ll look after him, I tell you!” Mr Povey repeated, threateningly.

  “But what are you going to do?” Constance asked with fear.

  “Well,” said Mr Povey, “has this sort of thing got to be dealt with, or hasn’t it?” He departed upstairs.

  Constance overtook him at the door of Cyril’s bedroom.

  Mr Povey did not wait for her to speak. His eyes were blazing.

  “See here!” he admonished her cruelly. “You get away downstairs, mother!”

  And he disappeared into the bedroom with his vile and helpless victim.

  A moment later he popped his head out of the door. Constance was disobeying him. He stepped into the passage and shut the door so that Cyril should not hear.

  “Now please do as I tell you,” he hissed at his wife. “Don’t let’s have a scene, please.”

  She descended, slowly, weeping. And Mr Povey retired again to the place of execution.

  Amy nearly fell on the top of Constance with a final tray of things from the drawing-room. And Constance had to tell the girl that Cyril was found. Somehow she could not resist the instinct to tell her also that the master had the affair in hand. Amy then wept.

  After about an hour Mr Povey at last reappeared. Constance was trying to count silver teaspoons in the parlour.

/>   “He’s in bed now,” said Mr Povey, with a magnificent attempt to be nonchalant. “You mustn’t go near him.”

  “But have you washed him?” Constance whimpered.

  “I’ve washed him,” replied the astonishing Mr Povey.

  “What have you done to him?”

  “I’ve punished him, of course,” said Mr Povey, like a god who is above human weaknesses. “What did you expect me to do? Someone had to do it.”

  Constance wiped her eyes with the edge of the white apron which she was wearing over her new silk dress. She surrendered; she accepted the situation; she made the best of it. And all the evening was spent in dismally and horribly pretending that their hearts were beating as one. Mr Povey’s elaborate, cheeky kindliness was extremely painful.

  They went to bed, and in their bedroom Constance, as she stood close to Samuel, suddenly dropped the pretence, and with eyes and voice of anguish said:

  “You must let me look at him.”

  They faced each other. For a brief instant Cyril did not exist for Constance. Samuel alone obsessed her, and yet Samuel seemed a strange, unknown man. It was in Constance’s life one of those crises when the human soul seems to be on the very brink of mysterious and disconcerting cognitions, and then the wave recedes as inexplicably as it surged up.

  “Why, of course!” said Mr Povey, turning away lightly, as though to imply that she was making tragedies out of nothing.

  She gave an involuntary gesture of almost childish relief.

  Cyril slept calmly. It was a triumph for Mr Povey.

  Constance could not sleep. As she lay darkly awake by her husband, her secret being seemed to be a-quiver with emotion. Not exactly sorrow; not exactly joy; an emotion more elemental than these! A sensation of the intensity of her life in that hour; troubling, anxious, yet not sad! She said that Samuel was quite right, quite right. And then she said that the poor little thing wasn’t yet five years old, and that it was monstrous. The two had to be reconciled. And they never could be reconciled. Always she would be between them, to reconcile them, and to be crushed by their impact. Always she would have to bear the burden of both of them. There could be no ease for her, no surcease from a tremendous preoccupation and responsibility. She could not change Samuel; besides, he was right! And though Cyril was not yet five, she felt that she could not change Cyril either. He was just as unchangeable as a growing plant. The thought of her mother and Sophia did not present itself to her; she felt, however, somewhat as Mrs Baines had felt on historic occasions; but, being more softly kind, younger, and less chafed by destiny, she was conscious of no bitterness, conscious rather of a solemn blessedness.

  CHAPTER IV

  CRIME

  I

  “Now, Master Cyril,” Amy protested, “will you leave that fire alone? It’s not you that can mend my fires.”

  A boy of nine, great and heavy for his years, with a full face and very short hair, bent over the smoking grate. It was about five minutes to eight on a chilly morning after Easter. Amy, hastily clad in blue, with a rough brown apron, was setting the breakfast table. The boy turned his head, still bending.

  “Shut up, Ame,” he replied, smiling. Life being short, he usually called her Ame when they were alone together. “Or I’ll catch you one in the eye with the poker.”

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Amy. “And you know your mother told you to wash your feet this morning, and you haven’t done. Fine clothes is all very well, but—”

  “Who says I haven’t washed my feet?” asked Cyril, guiltily.

  Amy’s mention of fine clothes referred to the fact that he was that morning wearing his Sunday suit for the first time on a week-day.

  “I say you haven’t,” said Amy.

  She was more than three times his age still, but they had been treating each other as intellectual equals for years.

  “And how do you know?” asked Cyril, tired of the fire.

  “I know,” said Amy.

  “Well, you just don’t, then!” said Cyril. “And what about your feet? I should be sorry to see your feet, Ame.”

  Amy was excusably annoyed. She tossed her head. “My feet are as clean as yours any day,” she said. “And I shall tell your mother.”

  But he would not leave her feet alone, and there ensued one of those endless monotonous altercations on a single theme which occur so often between intellectual equals when one is a young son of the house and the other an established servant who adores him. Refined minds would have found the talk disgusting, but the sentiment of disgust seemed to be unknown to either of the wranglers. At last, when Amy by superior tactics had cornered him, Cyril said suddenly:

  “Oh, go to hell!”

  Amy banged down the spoon for the bacon gravy. “Now I shall tell your mother. Mark my words, this time I shall tell your mother.”

  Cyril felt that in truth he had gone rather far. He was perfectly sure that Amy would not tell his mother. And yet, supposing that by some freak of her nature she did! The consequences would be unutterable; the consequences would more than extinguish his private glory in the use of such a dashing word. So he laughed, a rather silly, giggling laugh, to reassure himself.

  “You daren’t,” he said.

  “Daren’t I?” she said grimly. “You’ll see. I don’t know where you learn! It fair beats me. But it isn’t Amy Bates as is going to be sworn at. As soon as ever your mother comes into this room!”

  The door at the foot of the stairs creaked and Constance came into the room. She was wearing a dress of magenta merino, and a gold chain descended from her neck over her rich bosom. She had scarcely aged in five years. It would have been surprising if she had altered much, for the years had passed over her head at an incredible rate. To her it appeared only a few months since Cyril’s first and last party.

  “Are you all ready, my pet? Let me look at you.” Constance greeted the boy with her usual bright, soft energy.

  Cyril glanced at Amy, who averted her head, putting spoons into three saucers.

  “Yes, mother,” he replied in a new voice.

  “Did you do what I told you?”

  “Yes, mother,” he said simply.

  “That’s right.”

  Amy made a faint noise with her lips, and departed.

  He was saved once more. He said to himself that never again would he permit his soul to be disturbed by any threat of “old Ame’s.”

  Constance’s hand descended into her pocket and drew out a hard paper packet, which she clapped on to her son’s head.

  “Oh, mother!” He pretended that she had hurt him, and then he opened the packet. It contained Congleton butterscotch, reputed a harmless sweetmeat.

  “Good!” he cried, “good! Oh! Thanks, mother.”

  “Now don’t begin eating them at once.”

  “Just one, mother.”

  “No! And how often have I told you to keep your feet off that fender. See how it’s bent. And it’s nobody but you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s no use being sorry if you persist in doing it.”

  “Oh, mother, I had such a funny dream!”

  They chatted until Amy came up the stairs with tea and bacon. The fire had developed from black to clear red.

  “Run and tell father that breakfast is ready.”

  After a little delay a spectacled man of fifty, short and stoutish, with grey hair and a small beard half grey and half black, entered from the shop. Samuel had certainly very much aged, especially in his gestures, which, however, were still quick. He sat down at once—his wife and son were already seated—and served the bacon with the rapid assurance of one who needs not to inquire about tastes and appetites. Not a word was said, except a brief grace by Samuel. But there was no restraint. Samuel had a mild, benignant air. Constance’s eyes were a fountain of cheerfulness. The boy sat between them and ate steadily.

  Mysterious creature, this child, mysteriously growing and growing in the house! To his mother he was a delici
ous joy at all times save when he disobeyed his father. But now for quite a considerable period there had been no serious collision. The boy seemed to be acquiring virtue as well as sense. And really he was charming. So big, truly enormous (everyone remarked on it), and yet graceful, lithe, with a smile that could ravish. And he was distinguished in his bearing. Without depreciating Samuel in her faithful heart, Constance saw plainly the singular differences between Samuel and the boy. Save that he was dark, and that his father’s “dangerous look” came into those childish eyes occasionally, Cyril had now scarcely any obvious resemblance to his father. He was a Baines. This naturally deepened Constance’s family pride. Yes, he was mysterious to Constance, though probably not more so than any other boy to any other parent. He was equally mysterious to Samuel, but otherwise Mr Povey had learned to regard him in the light of a parcel which he was always attempting to wrap up in a piece of paper imperceptibly too small. When he successfully covered the parcel at one corner it burst out at another, and this went on for ever, and he could never get the string on. Nevertheless, Mr Povey had unabated confidence in his skill as a parcel-wrapper. The boy was strangely subtle at times, but then at times he was astoundingly ingenuous, and then his dodges would not deceive the dullest. Mr Povey knew himself more than a match for his son. He was proud of him because he regarded him as not an ordinary boy; he took it as a matter of course that his boy should not be an ordinary boy. He never, or very rarely, praised Cyril. Cyril thought of his father as a man who, in response to any request, always began by answering with a thoughtful, serious “No, I’m afraid not.”