The Old Wives' Tale

by Arnold Bennett

  But the idea of leaving Constance, having once rejoined her, did not please Sophia. It disquieted her. She could not see herself living away from Constance. She was alone—but Constance was there.

  She was downstairs first, and she had a little conversation with Amy. And she stood on the step of the front door while Fossette made a preliminary inspection of Spot’s gutter. She found the air nipping.

  Constance, when she descended, saw stretching across one side of the breakfast table an umbrella, Sophia’s present to her from Paris. It was an umbrella such that a better could not be bought. It would have impressed even Aunt Harriet. The handle was of gold, set with a circlet of opalines. The tips of the ribs were also of gold. It was this detail which staggered Constance. Frankly, this development of luxury had been unknown and unsuspected in the Square. That the tips of the ribs should match the handle . . . that did truly beat everything! Sophia said calmly that the device was quite common. But she did not conceal that the umbrella was strictly of the highest class and that it might be shown to queens without shame. She intimated that the frame (a “Fox’s Paragon”), handle, and tips, would outlast many silks. Constance was childish with pleasure.

  They decided to go out marketing together. The unspoken thought in their minds was that as Sophia would have to be introduced to the town sooner or later, it might as well be sooner.

  Constance looked at the sky. “It can’t possibly rain,” she said. “I shall take my umbrella.”

  CHAPTER III

  TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE

  I

  Sophia wore list slippers in the morning. It was a habit which she had formed in the Rue Lord Byron—by accident rather than with an intention to utilize list slippers for the effective supervision of servants. These list slippers were the immediate cause of important happenings in St Luke’s Square. Sophia had been with Constance one calendar month—it was, of course, astonishing how quickly the time had passed!—and she had become familiar with the house. Restraint had gradually ceased to mark the relations of the sisters. Constance, in particular, hid nothing from Sophia, who was made aware of the minor and major defects of Amy and all the other creakings of the household machine. Meals were eaten off the ordinary table-cloths, and on the days for “turning out” the parlour, Constance assumed, with a little laugh, that Sophia would excuse Amy’s apron, which she had not had time to change. In brief, Sophia was no longer a stranger, and nobody felt bound to pretend that things were not exactly what they were. In spite of the foulness and the provinciality of Bursley, Sophia enjoyed the intimacy with Constance. As for Constance, she was enchanted. The inflections of their voices, when they were talking to each other very privately, were often tender, and these sudden surprising tenderness secretly thrilled both of them.

  On the fourth Sunday morning Sophia put on her dressing-gown and those list slippers very early, and paid a visit to Constance’s bedroom. She was somewhat concerned about Constance, and her concern was pleasurable to her. She made the most of it. Amy, with her lifelong carelessness about doors, had criminally failed to latch the street door of the parlour on the previous morning, and Constance had only perceived the omission by the phenomenon of frigidity in her legs at breakfast. She always sat with her back to the door, in her mother’s fluted rocking-chair; and Sophia on the spot, but not in the chair, occupied by John Baines in the forties, and in the seventies and later by Samuel Povey. Constance had been alarmed by that frigidity. “I shall have a return of my sciatica!” she had exclaimed, and Sophia was startled by the apprehension in her tone. Before evening the sciatica had indeed revisited Constance’s sciatic nerve, and Sophia for the first time gained an idea of what a pulsating sciatica can do in the way of torturing its victim. Constance, in addition to the sciatica, had caught a sneezing cold, and the act of sneezing caused her the most acute pain. Sophia had soon stopped the sneezing. Constance was got to bed. Sophia wished to summon a doctor, but Constance assured her that the doctor would have nothing new to advise. Constance suffered angelically. The weak and exquisite sweetness of her smile, as she lay in bed under the stress of twinging pain amid hot-water bottles, was amazing to Sophia. It made her think upon the reserves of Constance’s character, and upon the variety of the manifestations of the Baines blood.

  So on the Sunday morning she had risen early, just after Amy.

  She discovered Constance to be a little better, as regards the neuralgia, but exhausted by the torments of a sleepless night. Sophia, though she had herself not slept well, felt somehow conscience-stricken for having slept at all.

  “You poor dear!” she murmured, brimming with sympathy. “I shall make you some tea at once, myself.”

  “Oh, Amy will do it,” said Constance.

  Sophia repeated with a resolute intonation: “I shall make it myself.” And after being satisfied that there was no instant need for a renewal of hot-water bottles, she went further downstairs in those list slippers.

  As she was descending the dark kitchen steps she heard Amy’s voice in pettish exclamation: “Oh, get out, you!” followed by a yelp from Fossette. She had a swift movement of anger, which she controlled. The relations between her and Fossette were not marked by transports, and her rules over dogs in general were severe; even when alone she very seldom kissed the animal passionately, according to the general habit of people owning dogs. But she loved Fossette. And, moreover, her love for Fossette had been lately sharpened by the ridicule which Bursley had showered upon that strange beast. Happily for Sophia’s amour propre, there was no means of getting Fossette shaved in Bursley, and thus Fossette was daily growing less comic to the Bursley eye. Sophia could therefore without loss of dignity yield to force of circumstances what she would not have yielded to popular opinion. She guessed that Amy had no liking for the dog, but the accent which Amy had put upon the “you” seemed to indicate that Amy was making distinctions between Fossette and Spot, and this disturbed Sophia much more than Fossette’s yelps.

  Sophia coughed, and entered the kitchen.

  Spot was lapping his morning milk out of a saucer, while Fossette stood wistfully, an amorphous mass of thick hair, under the table.

  “Good morning, Amy,” said Sophia, with dreadful politeness.

  “Good morning, m’m,” said Amy, glumly.

  Amy knew that Sophia had heard that yelp, and Sophia knew that she knew. The pretence of politeness was horrible. Both the women felt as though the kitchen was sanded with gunpowder and there were lighted matches about. Sophia had a very proper grievance against Amy on account of the open door of the previous day. Sophia thought that, after such a sin, the least Amy could do was to show contrition and amiability and an anxiety to please: which things Amy had not shown. Amy had a grievance against Sophia because Sophia had recently thrust upon her a fresh method of cooking green vegetables. Amy was a strong opponent of new or foreign methods. Sophia was not aware of this grievance, for Amy had hidden it under her customary cringing politeness to Sophia.

  They surveyed each other like opposing armies.

  “What a pity you have no gas stove here! I want to make some tea at once for Mrs Povey,” said Sophia, inspecting the just-born fire.

  “Gas stove, m’m?” said Amy, hostilely. It was Sophia’s list slippers which had finally decided Amy to drop the mask of deference.

  She made no effort to aid Sophia; she gave no indication as to where the various necessaries for tea were to be found. Sophia got the kettle, and washed it out. Sophia got the smallest tea-pot, and, as the tea-leaves had been left in it, she washed out the tea-pot also, with exaggerated noise and meticulousness. Sophia got the sugar and the other trifles, and Sophia blew up the fire with the bellows. And Amy did nothing in particular except encourage Spot to drink.

  “Is that all the milk you give to Fossette?” Sophia demanded coldly, when it had come to Fossette’s turn. She was waiting for the water to boil. The saucer for the bigger dog, who would have made two of Spot, was not half full.

  “It�
��s all there is to spare, m’m,” Amy rasped.

  Sophia made no reply. Soon afterwards she departed, with the tea successfully made. If Amy had not been a mature woman of over forty she would have snorted as Sophia went away. But Amy was scarcely the ordinary silly girl.

  Save for a certain primness as she offered the tray to her sister, Sophia’s demeanour gave no sign whatever that the Amazon in her was aroused. Constance’s eager trembling pleasure in the tea touched her deeply, and she was exceedingly thankful that Constance had her, Sophia, as a succour in time of distress.

  A few minutes later, Constance, having first asked Sophia what time it was by the watch in the watch-case on the chest of drawers (the Swiss clock had long since ceased to work), pulled the red tassel of bell-cord over her bed. A bell tinkled far away in the kitchen.

  “Anything I can do?” Sophia inquired.

  “Oh no, thanks,” said Constance. “I only want my letters, if the postman has come. He ought to have been here long ago.”

  Sophia had learned during her stay that Sunday morning was the morning on which Constance expected a letter from Cyril. It was a definite arrangement between mother and son that Cyril should write on Saturdays, and Constance on Sundays. Sophia knew that Constance set store by this letter, becoming more and more preoccupied about Cyril as the end of the week approached. Since Sophia’s arrival Cyril’s letter had not failed to come, but once it had been naught save a scribbled line or two, and Sophia gathered that it was never a certainty, and that Constance was accustomed, though not reconciled, to disappointments. Sophia had been allowed to read the letters. They left a faint impression on her mind that her favourite was perhaps somewhat negligent in his relations with his mother.

  There was no reply to the bell. Constance rang again without effect.

  With a brusque movement Sophia left the bedroom by way of Cyril’s room.

  “Amy,” she called over the banisters, “do you not hear your mistress’s bell?”

  “I’m coming as quick as I can, m’m.” The voice was still very glum.

  Sophia murmured something inarticulate, staying till assured that Amy really was coming, and then she passed back into Cyril’s bedroom. She waited there, hesitant, not exactly on the watch, not exactly unwilling to assist at an interview between Amy and Amy’s mistress; indeed, she could not have surely analysed her motive for remaining in Cyril’s bedroom, with the door ajar between that room and Constance’s.

  Amy reluctantly mounted the stairs and went into her mistress’s bedroom with her chin in the air. She thought that Sophia had gone up to the second storey, where she “belonged.” She stood in silence by the bed, showing no sympathy with Constance, no curiosity as to the indisposition. She objected to Constance’s attack of sciatica, as being a too permanent reproof of her carelessness as to doors.

  Constance also waited, for the fraction of a second, as if expectant.

  “Well, Amy,” she said at length in her voice weakened by fatigue and pain. “The letters?”

  “There ain’t no letters,” said Amy, grimly. “You might have known, if there’d been any, I should have brought ’em up. Postman went past twenty minutes agone. I’m always being interrupted, and it isn’t as if I hadn’t got enough to do—now!”

  She turned to leave, and was pulling the door open.

  “Amy!” said a voice sharply. It was Sophia’s.

  The servant jumped, and in spite of herself obeyed the implicit, imperious command to stop.

  “You will please not speak to your mistress in that tone, at any rate while I’m here,” said Sophia, icily. “You know she is ill and weak. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  “I never—” Amy began.

  “I don’t want to argue,” Sophia said angrily. “Please leave the room.”

  Amy obeyed. She was cowed, in addition to being staggered.

  To the persons involved in it, this episode was intensely dramatic. Sophia had surmised that Constance permitted liberties of speech to Amy; she had even guessed that Amy sometimes took licence to be rude. But that the relations between them were such as to allow the bullying of Constance by an Amy downright insolent—this had shocked and wounded Sophia, who suddenly had a vision of Constance as the victim of a reign of terror. “If the creature will do this while I’m here,” said Sophia to herself, “what does she do when they are alone together in the house?”

  “Well,” she exclaimed, “I never heard of such goings-on! And you let her talk to you in that style! My dear Constance!”

  Constance was sitting up in bed, the small tea-tray on her knees. Her eyes were moist. The tears had filled them when she knew that there was no letter. Ordinarily the failure of Cyril’s letter would not have made her cry, but weakness had impaired her self-control. And the tears having once got into her eyes, she could not dismiss them. There they were!

  “She’s been with me such a long time,” Constance murmured. “She takes liberties. I’ve Corrected her once or twice.”

  “Liberties!” Sophia repeated the word. “Liberties!”

  “Of course I really ought not to allow it,” said Constance. “I ought to have put a stop to it long since.”

  “Well,” said Sophia, rather relieved by this symptom of Constance’s secret mind, “I do hope you won’t think I’m meddlesome, but truly it was too much for me. The words were out of my mouth before I—” She stopped.

  “You were quite right, quite right,” said Constance, seeing before her in the woman of fifty the passionate girl of fifteen.

  “I’ve had a good deal of experience of servants,” said Sophia.

  “I know you have,” Constance put in.

  “And I’m convinced that it never pays to stand any sauce. Servants don’t understand kindness and forbearance. And this sort of thing grows and grows till you can’t call your soul your own.”

  “You are quite right,” Constance said again, with even more positiveness.

  Not merely the conviction that Sophia was quite right, but the desire to assure Sophia that Sophia was not meddlesome, gave force to her utterance. Amy’s allusion to extra work shamed Amy’s mistress as a hostess, and she was bound to make amends.

  “Now as to that woman,” said Sophia in a lower voice, as she sat down confidentially on the edge of the bed. And she told Constance about Amy and the dogs, and about Amy’s rudeness in the kitchen. “I should never have dreamt of mentioning such things,” she finished. “But under the circumstances I felt it right that you should know. I feel you ought to know.”

  And Constance nodded her head in thorough agreement. She did not trouble to go into articulate apologies to her guest for the actual misdeeds of her servant. The sisters were now on a plane of intimacy where such apologies would have been supererogatory. Their voices fell lower and lower, and the case of Amy was laid bare and discussed to the minutest detail.

  Gradually they realized that what had occurred was a crisis. They were both very excited, apprehensive, and rather too consciously defiant. At the same time they were drawn very close to each other, by Sophia’s generous indignation and by Constance’s absolute loyalty.

  A long time passed before Constance said, thinking about something else:

  “I expect it’s been delayed in the post.”

  “Cyril’s letter? Oh, no doubt! If you knew the posts in France, my word!”

  Then they determined, with little sighs, to face the crisis cheerfully.

  In truth it was a crisis, and a great one. The sensation of the crisis affected the atmosphere of the entire house. Constance got up for tea and managed to walk to the drawing-room. And when Sophia, after an absence in her own room, came down to tea and found the tea all served, Constance whispered:

  “She’s given notice! And Sunday too!”

  “What did she say?”

  “She didn’t say much,” Constance replied vaguely, hiding from Sophia that Amy had harped on the too great profusion of mistresses in that house. “After all, it’s just
as well. She’ll be all right She’s saved a good bit of money, and she has friends.”

  “But how foolish of her to give up such a good place!”

  “She simply doesn’t care,” said Constance, who was a little hurt by Amy’s defection. “When she takes a thing into her head she simply doesn’t care. She’s got no common sense. I’ve always known that.”

  “So you’re going to leave, Amy?” said Sophia that evening, as Amy was passing through the parlour on her way to bed. Constance was already arranged for the night.

  “I am, m’m,” answered Amy, precisely.

  Her tone was not rude, but it was firm. She had apparently reconnoitred her position in calmness.

  “I’m sorry I was obliged to correct you this morning,” said Sophia, with cheerful amicableness, pleased in spite of herself with the woman’s tone. “But I think you will see that I had reason to.”

  “I’ve been thinking it over, m’m,” said Amy, with dignity, “and I see as I must leave.”

  There was a pause.

  “Well, you know best . . . Good night, Amy.”

  “Good night, m’m.”

  “She’s a decent woman,” thought Sophia, “but hopeless for this place now.”

  The sisters were fronted with the fact that Constance had a month in which to find a new servant, and that a new servant would have to be trained in well-doing and might easily prove disastrous. Both Constance and Amy were profoundly disturbed by the prospective dissolution of a bond which dated from the seventies. And both were decided that there was no alternative to the dissolution. Outsiders knew merely that Mrs Povey’s old servant was leaving. Outsiders merely saw Mrs Povey’s advertisement in the Signal for a new servant. They could not read hearts. Some of the younger generation even said superiorly that old-fashioned women like Mrs Povey seemed to have servants on the brain, etc., etc.

  II

  “Well, have you got your letter?” Sophia demanded cheerfully of Constance when she entered the bedroom the next morning.