The Old Wives' Tale

by Arnold Bennett

  For a few moments she mused solitary in the parlour, and then, lowering the gas, she went upstairs to her sister, who lay in the dark. Sophia struck a match.

  “You’ve been having quite a long chat with the doctor,” said Constance. “He’s very good company, isn’t he? What did he talk about this time?”

  “He wanted to know about Paris and so on,” Sophia answered.

  “Oh! I believe he’s a rare student.”

  Lying there in the dark, the simple Constance never suspected that those two active and strenuous ones had been arranging her life for her, so that she should be jolly and live for twenty years yet. She did not suspect that she had been tried and found guilty of sinful attachments, and of being in a rut, and of lacking the elements of ordinary sagacity. It had not occurred to her that if she was worried and ill, the reason was to be found in her own blind and stupid obstinacy. She had thought herself a fairly sensible kind of creature.

  III

  The sisters had an early supper together in Constance’s bedroom. Constance was much easier. Having a fancy that a little movement would be beneficial, she had even got up for a few moments and moved about the room. Now she sat ensconced in pillows. A fire burned in the old-fashioned ineffectual grate. From the Sun Vaults opposite came the sound of a phonograph singing an invitation to God to save its gracious queen. This phonograph was a wonderful novelty, and filled the Sun nightly. For a few evenings it had interested the sisters, in spite of themselves, but they had soon sickened of it and loathed it. Sophia became more and more obsessed by the monstrous absurdity of the simple fact that she and Constance were there, in that dark inconvenient house, wearied by the gaiety of public-houses, blackened by smoke, surrounded by mud, instead of being luxuriously installed in a beautiful climate, amid scenes of beauty and white cleanliness. Secretly she became more and more indignant.

  Amy entered, bearing a letter in her coarse hand. As Amy unceremoniously handed the letter to Constance, Sophia thought: “If she was my servant she would hand letters on a tray.” (An advertisement had already been sent to the Signal.)

  Constance took the letter trembling. “Here it is at last,” she cried.

  When she had put on her spectacles and read it, she exclaimed:

  “Bless us! Here’s news! He’s coming down! That’s why he didn’t write on Saturday as usual.”

  She gave the letter to Sophia to read. It ran—

  Sunday midnight.

  Dear Mother,

  Just a line to say I am coming down to Bursley on Wednesday, on business with Peels. I shall get to Knype at 5.28, and take the Loop. I’ve been very busy, and as I was coming down I didn’t write on Saturday. I hope you didn’t worry. Love to yourself and Aunt Sophia.

  Yours, C.

  “I must send him a line,” said Constance, excitedly.

  “What? Tonight?”

  “Yes. Amy can easily catch the last post with it. Otherwise he won’t know that I’ve got his letter.”

  She rang the bell.

  Sophia thought: “His coming down is really no excuse for his not writing on Saturday. How could she guess that he was coming down? I shall have to put in a little word to that young man. I wonder Constance is so blind. She is quite satisfied now that his letter has come.” On behalf of the elder generation she rather resented Constance’s eagerness to write in answer.

  But Constance was not so blind. Constance thought exactly as Sophia thought. In her heart she did not at all justify or excuse Cyril. She remembered separately almost every instance of his carelessness in her regard. “Hope I didn’t worry, indeed!” she said to herself with a faint touch of bitterness, apropos of the phrase in his letter.

  Nevertheless she insisted on writing at once. And Amy had to bring the writing materials.

  “Mr Cyril is coming down on Wednesday,” she said to Amy with great dignity.

  Amy’s stony calmness was shaken, for Mr Cyril was a great deal to Amy. Amy wondered how she would be able to look Mr Cyril in the face when he knew that she had given notice.

  In the middle of writing, on her knee, Constance looked up at Sophia, and said, as though defending herself against an accusation: “I didn’t write to him yesterday, you know, or today.”

  “No,” Sophia murmured assentingly.

  Constance rang the bell yet again, and Amy was sent out to the post.

  Soon afterwards the bell was rung for the fourth time, and not answered.

  “I suppose she hasn’t come back yet. But I thought I heard the door. What a long time she is!”

  “What do you want?” Sophia asked.

  “I just want to speak to her,” said Constance.

  When the bell had been rung seven or eight times, Amy at length reappeared, somewhat breathless.

  “Amy,” said Constance, “let me examine those sheets, will you?”

  “Yes’m,” said Amy, apparently knowing what sheets, of all the various and multitudinous sheets in that house.

  “And the pillow-cases,” Constance added as Amy left the room.

  So it continued. The next day the fever heightened. Constance was up early, before Sophia, and trotting about the house like a girl. Immediately after breakfast Cyril’s bedroom was invested and revolutionized; not till evening was order restored in that chamber. And on the Wednesday morning it had to be dusted afresh. Sophia watched the preparations, and the increasing agitation of Constance’s demeanour, with an astonishment which she had real difficulty in concealing. “Is the woman absolutely mad?” she asked herself. The spectacle was ludicrous: or it seemed so to Sophia, whose career had not embraced much experience of mothers. It was not as if the manifestations of Constance’s anxiety were dignified or original or splendid. They were just silly, ordinary fussinesses; they had no sense in them. Sophia was very careful to make no observation. She felt that before she and Constance were very much older she had a very great deal to do, and that a subtle diplomacy and wary tactics would be necessary. Moreover, Constance’s angelic temper was slightly affected by the strain of expectation. She had a tendency to rasp. After the high-tea was set she suddenly sprang on to the sofa and lifted down the “Stag at Eve” engraving. The dust on the top of the frame incensed her.

  “What are you going to do?” Sophia asked, in a final marvel.

  “I’m going to change it with that one,” said Constance, pointing to another engraving opposite the fireplace. “He said the effect would be very much better if they were changed. And his lordship is very particular.”

  Constance did not go to Bursley station to meet her son. She explained that it upset her to do so, and that also Cyril preferred her not to come.

  “Suppose I go to meet him,” said Sophia, at half-past five. The idea had visited her suddenly. She thought: “Then I could talk to him before anyone else.”

  “Oh, do!” Constance agreed.

  Sophia put her things on with remarkable expedition. She arrived at the station a minute before the train came in. Only a few persons emerged from the train, and Cyril was not among them. A porter said that there was not supposed to be any connexion between the Loop Line trains and the main line expresses, and that probably the express had missed the Loop. She waited thirty-five minutes for the next Loop, and Cyril did not emerge from that train either.

  Constance opened the front door to her, and showed a telegram—

  Sorry prevented last moment. Writing. CYRIL.

  Sophia had known it. Somehow she had known that it was useless to wait for the second train. Constance was silent and calm; Sophia also.

  “What a shame! What a shame!” thumped Sophia’s heart.

  It was the most ordinary episode. But beneath her calm she was furious against her favourite. She hesitated.

  “I’m just going out a minute,” she said.

  “Where?” asked Constance. “Hadn’t we better have tea? I suppose we must have tea.”

  “I shan’t be long. I want to buy something.”

  Sophia went to the p
ost-office and despatched a telegram. Then, partially eased, she returned to the arid and painful desolation of the house.

  IV

  The next evening Cyril sat at the tea-table in the parlour with his mother and his aunt. To Constance his presence there had something of the miraculous in it. He had come, after all! Sophia was in a rich robe, and for ornament wore an old silver-gilt neck-chain, which was clasped at the throat, and fell in double to her waist, where it was caught in her belt. This chain interested Cyril. He referred to it once or twice, and then he said: “Just let me have a look at that chain,” and put out his hands; and Sophia leaned forward so that he could handle it. His fingers played with it thus for some seconds; the picture strikingly affected Constance. At length he dropped it, and said: “H’m!” After a pause he said: “Louis Sixteenth, eh?” and Sophia said:

  “They told me so. But it’s nothing; it only cost thirty francs, you know.” And Cyril took her up sharply:

  “What does that matter?” Then after another pause he asked: “How often do you break a link of it?”

  “Oh, often,” she said. “It’s always getting shorter.”

  And he murmured mysteriously: “H’m!”

  He was still mysterious, withdrawn within himself, extraordinarily uninterested in his physical surroundings. But that evening he talked more than he usually did. He was benevolent, and showed a particular benevolence towards his mother, apparently exerting himself to answer her questions with fullness and heartiness, as though admitting frankly her right to be curious. He praised the tea; he seemed to notice what he was eating. He took Spot on his knee, and gazed in admiration at Fossette.

  “By Jove!” he said, “that’s a dog, that is! . . . All the same . . .” And he burst out laughing.

  “I won’t have Fossette laughed at,” Sophia warned him.

  “No, seriously,” he said, in his quality of an amateur of dogs; “she is very fine.” Even then he could not help adding: “What you can see of her!”

  Whereupon Sophia shook her head, deprecating such wit. Sophia was very lenient towards him. Her leniency could be perceived in her eyes, which followed his movements all the time. “Do you think he is like me, Constance?” she asked.

  “I wish I was half as good looking,” said Cyril, quickly; and Constance said:

  “As a baby he was very like you. He was a handsome baby. He wasn’t at all like you when he was at school. These last few years he’s begun to be like you again. He’s very much changed since he left school; he was rather heavy and clumsy then.”

  “Heavy and clumsy!” exclaimed Sophia. “Well, I should never have believed it!”

  “Oh, but he was!” Constance insisted.

  “Now, mater,” said Cyril, “it’s a pity you don’t want that cake cutting into. I think I could have eaten a bit of that cake. But of course if it’s only for show . . . !”

  Constance sprang up, seizing a knife.

  “You shouldn’t tease your mother,” Sophia told him. “He doesn’t really want any, Constance; he’s regularly stuffed himself.”

  And Cyril agreed, “No, no, mater, don’t cut it; I really couldn’t. I was only gassing.”

  But Constance could never clearly see through humour of that sort. She cut three slices of cake, and she held the plate towards Cyril.

  “I tell you I really couldn’t!” he protested.

  “Come!” she said obstinately. “I’m waiting! How much longer must I hold this plate?”

  And he had to take a slice. So had Sophia. When she was roused, they both of them had to yield to Constance.

  With the dogs, and the splendour of the tea-table under the gas, and the distinction of Sophia and Cyril, and the conversation, which on the whole was gay and free, rising at times to jolly garrulity, the scene in her parlour ought surely to have satisfied Constance utterly. She ought to have been quite happy, as her sciatica had raised the siege for a space. But she was not quite happy. The circumstances of Cyril’s arrival had disturbed her; they had in fact wounded her, though she would scarcely admit the wound. In the morning she had received a brief letter from Cyril to say that he had not been able to come, and vaguely promising, or half-promising, to run down at a later date. That letter had the cardinal defects of all Cyril’s relations with his mother: it was casual, and it was not candid. It gave no hint of the nature of the obstacle which had prevented him from coming. Cyril had always been too secretive. She was gravely depressed by the letter, which she did not show to Sophia, because it impaired her dignity as a mother, and displayed her son in a bad light. Then about eleven o’clock a telegram had come for Sophia.

  “That’s all right,” Sophia had said, on reading it. “He’ll be here this evening!” And she had handed over the telegram, which read—

  Very well. Will come same train today.

  And Constance learned that when Sophia had rushed out just before tea on the previous evening, it was to telegraph to Cyril.

  “What did you say to him?” Constance asked.

  “Oh!” said Sophia, with a careless air, “I told him I thought he ought to come. After all, you’re more important than any business, Constance! And I don’t like him behaving like that. I was determined he should come!”

  Sophia had tossed her proud head.

  Constance had pretended to be pleased and grateful. But the existence of a wound was incontestable. Sophia, then, could do more with Cyril than she could! Sophia had only met him once, and could simply twist him round her little finger. He would never have done so much for his mother. A fine sort of an obstacle it must have been, if a single telegram from Sophia could overcome it . . . ! And Sophia, too, was secretive. She had gone out and had telegraphed, and had not breathed a word until she got the reply, sixteen hours later. She was secretive, and Cyril was secretive. They resembled one another. They had taken to one another. But Sophia was a curious mixture. When Constance had asked her if she should go to the station again to meet Cyril, she had replied scornfully: “No, indeed! I’ve done going to meet Cyril. People who don’t arrive must not expect to be met.”

  When Cyril drove up to the door, Sophia had been in attendance. She hurried down the steps. “Don’t say anything about my telegram,” she had rapidly whispered to Cyril; there was no time for further explanation. Constance was at the top of the steps. Constance had not heard the whisper, but she had seen it; and she saw a guilty, puzzled look on Cyril’s face, afterwards an ineffectively concealed conspiratorial look on both their faces. They had “something between them,” from which she, the mother, was shut out! Was it not natural that she should be wounded? She was far too proud to mention the telegrams. And as neither Cyril nor Sophia mentioned them, the circumstances leading to Cyril’s change of plan were not referred to at all, which was very curious. Then Cyril was more sociable than he had ever been; he was different, under his aunt’s gaze. Certainly he treated his mother faultlessly. But Constance said to herself: “It is because she is here that he is so specially nice to me.”

  When tea was finished and they were going upstairs to the drawing-room, she asked him, with her eye on the “Stag at Eve” engraving:

  “Well, is it a success?”

  “What?” His eye followed hers. “Oh, you’ve changed it! What did you do that for, mater?”

  “You said it would be better like that,” she reminded him.

  “Did I?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “I don’t remember. I believe it is better, though,” he added. “It might be better still if you turned it the other way up.”

  He pulled a face to Sophia, and screwed up his shoulders, as if to indicate: “I’ve done it, this time!”

  “How? The other way up?” Constance queried. Then as she comprehended that he was teasing her, she said: “Get away with you!” and pretended to box his ears. “You were fond enough of that picture at one time!” she said ironically.

  “Yes, I was, mater,” he submissively agreed. “There’s no getting over that.” And he pressed her cheeks
between his hands and kissed her.

  In the drawing-room he smoked cigarettes and played the piano—waltzes of his own composition. Constance and Sophia did not entirely comprehend those waltzes. But they agreed that all were wonderful and that one was very pretty indeed. (It soothed Constance that Sophia’s opinion coincided with hers.) He said that that waltz was the worst of the lot. When he had finished with the piano, Constance informed him about Amy. “Oh! She told me,” he said, “when she brought me my water. I didn’t mention it because I thought it would be rather a sore subject.” Beneath the casualness of his tone there lurked a certain curiosity, a willingness to hear details. He heard them.

  At five minutes to ten, when Constance had yawned, he threw a bomb among them on the hearthrug.

  “Well,” he said, “I’ve got an appointment with Matthew at the Conservative Club at ten o’clock. I must go. Don’t wait up for me.”

  Both women protested, Sophia the more vivaciously. It was Sophia now who was wounded.

  “It’s business,” he said, defending himself. “He’s going away early tomorrow, and it’s my only chance.” And as Constance did not brighten he went on: “Business has to be attended to. You mustn’t think I’ve got nothing to do but enjoy myself.”

  No hint of the nature of the business! He never explained. As to business, Constance knew only that she allowed him three hundred a year, and paid his local tailor. The sum had at first seemed to her enormous, but she had grown accustomed to it.

  “I should have preferred you to see Mr Peel-Swynnerton here,” said Constance. “You could have had a room to yourselves. I do not like you going out at ten o’clock at night to a club.”