The Old Wives' Tale

by Arnold Bennett

  His face was deeply flushed as he returned into the shop. The assistants bent closer over their work. He did not instantly rush into the parlour and communicate with Constance. He had dropped into a way of conducting many operations by his own unaided brain. His confidence in his skill had increased with years. Further, at the back of his mind, there had established itself a vision of Mr Povey as the seat of government and of Constance and Cyril as a sort of permanent opposition. He would not have admitted that he saw such a vision, for he was utterly loyal to his wife; but it was there. This unconfessed vision was one of several causes which had contributed to intensify his inherent tendency towards Machiavellianism and secretiveness. He said nothing to Constance, nothing to Cyril; but, happening to encounter Amy in the showroom, he was inspired to interrogate her sharply. The result was that they descended to the cellar together, Amy weeping. Amy was commanded to hold her tongue. And as she went in mortal fear of Mr Povey she did hold her tongue.

  Nothing occurred for several days. And then one morning—it was Constance’s birthday: children are nearly always horribly unlucky in their choice of days for sin—Mr Povey, having executed mysterious movements in the shop after Cyril’s departure to school, jammed his hat on his head and ran forth in pursuit of Cyril, whom he intercepted with two other boys, at the corner of Oldcastle Street and Acre Passage.

  Cyril stood as if turned into salt. “Come back home!” said Mr Povey, grimly; and for the sake of the other boys: “Please.”

  “But I shall be late for school, father,” Cyril weakly urged.

  “Never mind.”

  They passed through the shop together, causing a terrific concealed emotion, and then they did violence to Constance by appearing in the parlour. Constance was engaged in cutting straws and ribbons to make a straw-frame for a water-colour drawing of a moss-rose which her pure-hearted son had given her as a birthday present.

  “Why—what—?” she exclaimed. She said no more at the moment because she was sure, from the faces of her men, that the time was big with fearful events.

  “Take your satchel off,” Mr Povey ordered coldly. “And your mortar-board,” he added with a peculiar intonation, as if glad thus to prove that Cyril was one of those rude boys who have to be told to take their hats off in a room.

  “Whatever’s amiss?” Constance murmured under her breath, as Cyril obeyed the command. “Whatever’s amiss?”

  Mr Povey made no immediate answer. He was in charge of these proceedings, and was very anxious to conduct them with dignity and with complete effectiveness. Little fat man over fifty, with a wizened face, grey-haired and grey-bearded, he was as nervous as a youth. His heart beat furiously. And Constance, the portly matron who would never see forty again, was just as nervous as a girl. Cyril had gone very white. All three felt physically sick.

  “What money have you got in your pockets?” Mr Povey demanded, as a commencement.

  Cyril, who had no opportunity to prepare his case, offered no reply.

  “You heard what I said,” Mr Povey thundered.

  “I’ve got three-halfpence,” Cyril murmured glumly, looking down at the floor. His lower lip seemed to hang precariously away from his gums.

  “Where did you get that from?”

  “It’s part of what mother gave me,” said the boy.

  “I did give him a threepenny bit last week,” Constance put in guiltily. “It was a long time since he had had any money.”

  “If you gave it him, that’s enough,” said Mr Povey quickly, and to the boy: “That’s all you’ve got?”

  “Yes, father,” said the boy.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, father.”

  Cyril was playing a hazardous game for the highest stakes, and under grave disadvantages; and he acted for the best. He guarded his own interests as well as he could.

  Mr Povey found himself obliged to take a serious risk. “Empty your pockets, then.”

  Cyril, perceiving that he had lost that particular game, emptied his pockets.

  “Cyril,” said Constance, “how often have I told you to change your handkerchiefs oftener! Just look at this!”

  Astonishing creature! She was in the seventh hell of sick apprehension, and yet she said that!

  After the handkerchief emerged the common schoolboy stock of articles useful and magic, and then, last, a silver florin!

  Mr Povey felt relief.

  “Oh, Cyril!” whimpered Constance.

  “Give it your mother,” said Mr Povey.

  The boy stepped forward awkwardly, and Constance, weeping, took the coin.

  “Please look at it, mother,” said Mr Povey. “And tell me if there’s a cross marked on it.”

  Constance’s tears blurred the coin. She had to wipe her eyes.

  “Yes,” she whispered faintly. “There’s something on it.”

  “I thought so,” said Mr Povey. “Where did you steal it from?” he demanded.

  “Out of the till,” answered Cyril.

  “Have you ever stolen anything out of the till before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what.”

  “Yes, father.”

  “Take your hands out of your pockets and stand up straight, if you can. How often?”

  “I—I don’t know, father.”

  “I blame myself,” said Mr Povey, frankly. “I blame myself. The till ought always to be locked. All tills ought always to be locked. But we felt we could trust the assistants. If anybody had told me that I ought not to trust you, if anybody had told me that my own son would be the thief, I should have—well, I don’t know what I should have said!”

  Mr Povey was quite justified in blaming himself. The fact was that the functioning of that till was a patriarchal survival, which he ought to have revolutionized, but which it had never occurred to him to revolutionize, so accustomed to it was he. In the time of John Baines, the till, with its three bowls, two for silver and one for copper (gold had never been put into it), was invariably unlocked. The person in charge of the shop took change from it for the assistants, or temporarily authorized an assistant to do so. Gold was kept in a small linen bag in a locked drawer of the desk. The contents of the till were never checked by any system of book-keeping, as there was no system of book-keeping; when all transactions, whether in payment or receipt, are in cash—the Baineses never owed a penny save the quarterly wholesale accounts, which were discharged instantly to the travellers—a system of book-keeping is not indispensable. The till was situate immediately at the entrance to the shop from the house; it was in the darkest part of the shop, and the unfortunate Cyril had to pass it every day on his way to school. The thing was a perfect device for the manufacture of young criminals.

  “And how have you been spending this money?” Mr Povey inquired.

  Cyril’s hands slipped into his pockets again. Then, noticing the lapse, he dragged them out.

  “Sweets,” said he.

  “Anything else?”

  “Sweets and things.”

  “Oh!” said Mr Povey. “Well, now you can go down into the cinder-cellar and bring up here all the things there are in that little box in the corner. Off you go!”

  And off went Cyril. He had to swagger through the kitchen.

  “What did I tell you, Master Cyril?” Amy unwisely asked of him. “You’ve copped it finely this time.”

  “Copped” was a word which she had learned from Cyril.

  “Go on, you old bitch!” Cyril growled.

  As he returned from the cellar, Amy said angrily:

  “I told you I should tell your father the next time you called me that, and I shall. You mark my words.”

  “Cant! cant!” he retorted. “Do you think I don’t know who’s been canting? Cant! cant!”

  Upstairs in the parlour Samuel was explaining the matter to his wife. There had been a perfect epidemic of smoking in the school. The headmaster had discovered it and, he hoped, stamped it out. What had disturbed the headmaster far more
than the smoking was the fact that a few boys had been found to possess somewhat costly pipes, cigar-holders, or cigarette-holders. The headmaster, wily, had not confiscated these articles; he had merely informed the parents concerned. In his opinion the articles came from one single source, a generous thief; he left the parents to ascertain which of them had brought a thief into the world.

  Further information Mr Povey had culled from Amy, and there could remain no doubt that Cyril had been providing his chums with the utensils of smoking, the till supplying the means. He had told Amy that the things which he secreted in the cellar had been presented to him by blood-brothers. But Mr Povey did not believe that. Anyhow, he had marked every silver coin in the till for three nights, and had watched the till in the mornings from behind the merino-pile; and the florin on the parlour table spoke of his success as a detective.

  Constance felt guilty on behalf of Cyril. As Mr Povey outlined his case she could not free herself from an entirely irrational sensation of sin; at any rate of special responsibility. Cyril seemed to be her boy and not Samuel’s boy at all. She avoided her husband’s glance. This was very odd.

  Then Cyril returned, and his parents composed their faces and he deposited, next to the florin, a sham meerschaum pipe in a case, a tobacco-pouch, a cigar of which one end had been charred but the other not cut, and a half-empty packet of cigarettes without a label.

  Nothing could be hid from Mr Povey. The details were distressing.

  “So Cyril is a liar and a thief, to say nothing of this smoking!” Mr Povey concluded.

  He spoke as if Cyril had invented strange and monstrous sins. But deep down in his heart a little voice was telling him, as regards the smoking, that he had set the example. Mr Baines had never smoked. Mr Critchlow never smoked. Only men like Daniel smoked.

  Thus far Mr Povey had conducted the proceedings to his own satisfaction. He had proved the crime. He had made Cyril confess. The whole affair lay revealed. Well—what next? Cyril ought to have dissolved in repentance; something dramatic ought to have occurred. But Cyril simply stood with hanging, sulky head, and gave no sign of proper feeling.

  Mr Povey considered that, until something did happen, he must improve the occasion.

  “Here we have trade getting worse every day,” said he (it was true), “and you are robbing your parents to make a beast of yourself, and corrupting your companions! I wonder your mother never smelt you!”

  “I never dreamt of such a thing!” said Constance, grievously.

  Besides, a young man clever enough to rob a till is usually clever enough to find out that the secret of safety in smoking is to use cachous and not to keep the stuff in your pockets a minute longer than you can help.

  “There’s no knowing how much money you have stolen,” said Mr Povey. “A thief!”

  If Cyril had stolen cakes, jam, string, cigars, Mr Povey would never have said “thief” as he did say it. But money! Money was different. And a till was not a cupboard or a larder. A till was a till. Cyril had struck at the very basis of society.

  “And on your mother’s birthday!” Mr Povey said further.

  “There’s one thing I can do!” he said. “I can burn all this. Built on lies! How dared you?”

  And he pitched into the fire—not the apparatus of crime, but the water-colour drawing of a moss-rose and the straws and the blue ribbons for bows at the corners.

  “How dared you?” he repeated.

  “You never gave me any money,” Cyril muttered.

  He thought the marking of coins a mean trick, and the dragging-in

  of bad trade and his mother’s birthday roused a familiar devil that usually slept quietly in his breast.

  “What’s that you say?” Mr Povey almost shouted.

  “You never gave me any money,” the devil repeated in a louder tone than Cyril had employed.

  (It was true. But Cyril “had only to ask,” and he would have received all that was good for him.)

  Mr Povey sprang up. Mr Povey also had a devil. The two devils gazed at each other for an instant; and then, noticing that Cyril’s head was above Mr Povey’s, the elder devil controlled itself. Mr Povey had suddenly had as much drama as he wanted.

  “Get away to bed!” said he with dignity.

  Cyril went, defiantly.

  “He’s to have nothing but bread and water, mother,” Mr Povey finished. He was, on the whole, pleased with himself.

  Later in the day Constance reported, tearfully, that she had been up to Cyril and that Cyril had wept. Which was to Cyril’s credit. But all felt that life could never be the same again. During the remainder of existence this unspeakable horror would lift its obscene form between them. Constance had never been so unhappy. Occasionally, when by herself she would rebel for a brief moment, as one rebels in secret against a mummery which one is obliged to treat seriously. “After all,” she would whisper, “suppose he has taken a few shillings out of the till! What then? What does it matter?” But these moods of moral insurrection against society and Mr Povey were very transitory. They were come and gone in a flash.

  CHAPTER V

  ANOTHER CRIME

  I

  One night—it was late in the afternoon of the same year, about six months after the tragedy of the florin—Samuel Povey was wakened up by a hand on his shoulder and a voice that whispered: “Father!”

  The thief and the liar was standing in his night-shirt by the bed. Samuel’s sleepy eyes could just descry him in the thick gloom.

  “What—what?” questioned the father, gradually coming to consciousness. “What are you doing there?”

  “I didn’t want to wake mother up,” the boy whispered. “There’s someone been throwing dirt or something at our windows, and has been for a long time.”

  “Eh, what?”

  Samuel stared at the dim form of the thief and liar. The boy was tall, not in the least like a little boy; and yet, then, he seemed to his father as quite a little boy, a little “thing” in a night-shirt, with childish gestures and childish inflections, and a childish, delicious, quaint anxiety not to disturb his mother, who had lately been deprived of sleep owing to an illness of Amy’s which had demanded nursing. His father had not so perceived him for years. In that instant the conviction that Cyril was permanently unfit for human society finally expired in the father’s mind. Time had already weakened it very considerably. The decision that, be Cyril what he might, the summer holiday must be taken as usual, had dealt it a fearful blow. And yet, though Samuel and Constance had grown so accustomed to the companionship of a criminal that they frequently lost memory of his guilt for long periods, nevertheless the convention of his leprosy had more or less persisted with Samuel until that moment: when it vanished with strange suddenness, to Samuel’s conscious relief.

  There was a rain of pellets on the window.

  “Hear that?” demanded Cyril, whispering dramatically. “And it’s been like that on my window too.”

  Samuel arose. “Go back to your room!” he ordered in the same dramatic whisper; but not as father to son—rather as conspirator to conspirator.

  Constance slept. They could hear her regular breathing.

  Barefooted, the elderly gowned figure followed the younger, and one after the other they creaked down the two steps which separated Cyril’s room from his parents’.

  “Shut the door quietly!” said Samuel.

  Cyril observed.

  And then, having lighted Cyril’s gas, Samuel drew the blind, unfastened the catch of the window, and began to open it with many precautions of silence. All the sashes in that house were difficult to manage. Cyril stood close to his father, shivering without knowing that he shivered, astonished only that his father had not told him to get back into bed at once. It was, beyond doubt, the proudest hour of Cyril’s career. In addition to the mysterious circumstances of the night, there was in the situation that thrill which always communicates itself to a father and son when they are afoot together upon an enterprise unsuspected by the
woman from whom their lives have no secrets.

  Samuel put his head out of the window.

  A man was standing there.

  “That you, Samuel?” The voice came low.

  “Yes,” replied Samuel, cautiously. “It’s not Cousin Daniel, is it?”

  “I want ye,” said Daniel Povey curtly.

  Samuel paused. “I’ll be down in a minute,” he said.

  Cyril at length received the command to get back into bed at once.

  “Whatever’s up, father?” he asked joyously.

  “I don’t know. I must put some things on and go and see.”

  He shut down the window on all the breezes that were pouring into the room.

  “Now quick, before I turn the gas out!” he admonished, his hand on the gas-tap.

  “You’ll tell me in the morning, won’t you, father?”

  “Yes,” said Mr Povey, conquering his habitual impulse to say “No.”

  He crept back to the large bedroom to grope for clothes.

  When, having descended to the parlour and lighted the gas there, he opened the side-door, expecting to let Cousin Daniel in, there was no sign of Cousin Daniel. Presently he saw a figure standing at the corner of the Square. He whistled—Samuel had a singular faculty of whistling, the envy of his son—and Daniel beckoned to him. He nearly extinguished the gas and then ran out, hatless. He was wearing most of his clothes, except his linen collar and neck-tie, and the collar of his coat was turned up.

  Daniel advanced before him, without waiting, into the confectioner’s shop opposite. Being part of the most modern building in the Square, Daniel’s shop was provided with the new roll-down iron shutter, by means of which you closed your establishment with a motion similar to the winding of a large clock, instead of putting up twenty separate shutters one by one as in the sixteenth century. The little portal in the vast sheet of armour was ajar, and Daniel had passed into the gloom beyond. At the same moment a policeman came along on his beat, cutting off Mr Povey from Daniel.