The Old Wives' Tale

by Arnold Bennett

  “Can I find anything for you?” Lily asked.

  “No, no!” said Constance, leaving the room.

  She returned in a moment with her jewel-box, a receptacle of ebony with ivory ornamentations.

  “I’ve always meant to give you this,” said Constance, taking from the box a fine cameo brooch. “I don’t seem to fancy wearing it myself. And I should like to see you wearing it. It was mother’s. I believe they’re coming into fashion again. I don’t see why you shouldn’t wear it while you’re in mourning. They aren’t half so strict now about mourning as they used to be.”

  “Truly!” murmured Lily, ecstatically. They kissed. Constance seemed to breathe out benevolence, as with trembling hands she pinned the brooch at Lily’s neck. She lavished the warm treasure of her heart on Lily, whom she regarded as an almost perfect girl, and who had become the idol of her latter years.

  “What a magnificent old watch!” said Lily, as they delved together in the lower recesses of the box. “And the chain to it!”

  “That was father’s,” said Constance. “He always used to swear by it. When it didn’t agree with the Town Hall, he used to say: ‘Then th’ Town Hall’s wrong.’ And it’s curious, the Town Hall was wrong. You know the Town Hall clock has never been a good timekeeper. I’ve been thinking of giving that watch and chain to Dick.”

  “Have you?” said Lily.

  “Yes. It’s just as good as it was when father wore it. My husband never would wear it. He preferred his own. He had little fancies like that. And Cyril takes after his father.” She spoke in her “dry” tone. “I’ve almost decided to give it to Dick—that is, if he behaves himself. Is he still on with his ballooning?”

  Lily smiled guiltily: “Oh yes!”

  “Well,” said Constance, “I never heard the like! If he’s been up and come down safely, that ought to be enough for him. I wonder you let him do it, my dear.”

  “But how can I stop him? I’ve no control over him.”

  “But do you mean to say that he’d still do it if you told him seriously you didn’t want him to?”

  “Yes,” said Lily; and added: “So I shan’t tell him.”

  Constance nodded her head, musing over the secret nature of men. She remembered too well the cruel obstinacy of Samuel, who had nevertheless loved her. And Dick Povey was a thousand times more bizarre than Samuel. She saw him vividly, a little boy, whizzing down King Street on a boneshaker, and his cap flying off. Afterwards it had been motor-cars! Now it was balloons! She sighed. She was struck by the profound instinctive wisdom just enunciated by the girl.

  “Well,” she said, “I shall see. I’ve not made up my mind yet. What’s the young man doing this afternoon, by the way?”

  “He’s gone to Birmingham to try to sell two motor-lorries. He won’t be back home till late. He’s coming over here tomorrow.”

  It was an excellent illustration of Dick Povey’s methods that at this very moment Lily heard in the Square the sound of a motor-car, which happened to be Dick’s car. She sprang up to look.

  “Why!” she cried, flushing. “Here he is now!”

  “Bless us, bless us!” muttered Constance, closing the box.

  When Dick, having left the car in King Street, limped tempestuously into the drawing-room, galvanizing it by his abundant vitality into a new life, he cried joyously: “Sold my lorries! Sold my lorries!” And he explained that by a charming accident he had disposed of them to a chance buyer in Hanbridge, just before starting for Birmingham. So he had telephoned to Birmingham that the matter was “off,” and then, being “at a loose end,” he had come over to Bursley in search of his betrothed. At Holl’s shop they had told him that she was with Mrs Povey. Constance glanced at him, impressed by his jolly air of success. He seemed exactly like his breezy and self-confident advertisements in the Signal. He was absolutely pleased with himself. He triumphed over his limp—that ever-present reminder of a tragedy. Who would dream, to look at this blond, laughing, scintillating face, astonishingly young for his years, that he had once passed through such a night as that on which his father had killed his mother while he lay immovable and cursing, with a broken knee, in bed? Constance had heard all about that scene from her husband, and she paused in wonder at the contrasting hazards of existence.

  Dick Povey brought his hands together with a resounding smack, and then rubbed them rapidly.

  “And a good price, too!” he exclaimed blithely. “Mrs Povey, I don’t mind telling you that I’ve netted seventy pounds odd this afternoon.”

  Lily’s eyes expressed her proud joy.

  “I hope pride won’t have a fall,” said Constance, with a calm smile out of which peeped a hint of a rebuke. “That’s what I hope. I must just go and see about tea.”

  “I can’t stay for tea—really,” said Dick.

  “Of course you can,” said Constance, positively. “Suppose you’d been at Birmingham? It’s weeks since you stayed to tea.”

  “Oh, well, thanks!” Dick yielded, rather snubbed.

  “Can’t I save you a journey, Mrs Povey?” Lily asked, eagerly thoughtful.

  “No, thank you, my dear. There are one or two little things that need my attention.” And Constance departed with her jewel-box.

  Dick, having assured himself that the door was closed, assaulted Lily with a kiss.

  “Been here long?” he inquired.

  “About an hour and a half.”

  “Glad to see me?”

  “Oh, Dick!” she protested.

  “Old lady’s in one of her humours, eh?”

  “No, no! Only she was just talking about balloons—you know. She’s very much up in arms.”

  “You ought to keep her off balloons. Balloons may be the ruin of her wedding-present to us, my child.”

  “Dick! How can you talk like that? . . . It’s all very well saying I ought to keep her off balloons. You try to keep her off balloons when once she begins, and see!”

  “What started her?”

  “She said she was thinking of giving you old Mr Baines’s gold watch and chain—if you behaved yourself.”

  “Thank you for nothing!” said Dick. “I don’t want it.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “Have I seen it? I should say I had seen it. She’s mentioned it once or twice before.”

  “Oh! I didn’t know.”

  “I don’t see myself carting that thing about. I much prefer my own. What do you think of it?”

  “Of course it is rather clumsy,” said Lily. “But if she offered it to you, you couldn’t refuse it, and you’d simply have to wear it.”

  “Well, then,” said Dick, “I must try to behave myself just badly enough to keep off the watch, but not badly enough to upset her notions about wedding-presents.”

  “Poor old thing!” Lily murmured, compassionately.

  Then Lily put her hand silently to her neck.

  “What’s that?”

  “She’s just given it to me.”

  Dick approached very near to examine the cameo brooch. “Hm!” he murmured. It was an adverse verdict. And Lily coincided with it by a lift of the eyebrows.

  “And I suppose you’ll have to wear that!” said Dick.

  “She values it as much as anything she’s got, poor old thing!” said Lily. “It belonged to her mother. And she says cameos are coming into fashion again. It really is rather good, you know.”

  “I wonder where she learnt that!” said Dick, dryly. “I see you’ve been suffering from the photographs again.”

  “Well,” said Lily, “I much prefer the photographs to helping her to play Patience. The way she cheats herself—it’s too silly! I—”

  She stopped. The door, which had after all not been latched, was pushed open, and the antique Fossette introduced herself painfully into the room. Fossette had an affection for Dick Povey.

  “Well, Methuselah!” he greeted the animal loudly. She could scarcely wag her tail, or shake the hair out of her dim eyes in order to look u
p at him. He stooped to pat her.

  “That dog does smell,” said Lily, bluntly.

  “What do you expects? What she wants is the least dose of prussic acid. She’s a burden to herself.”

  “It’s funny that if you venture to hint to Mrs Povey that the dog is offensive she gets quite peppery,” said Lily.

  “Well, that’s very simple,” said Dick. “Don’t hint, that’s all! Hold your nose and your tongue too.”

  “Dick, I do wish you wouldn’t be so absurd.”

  Constance returned into the room, cutting short the conversation.

  “Mrs Povey,” said Dick, in a voice full of gratitude, “Lily has just been showing me her brooch.”

  He noticed that she paid no heed to him, but passed hurriedly to the window.

  “What’s amiss in the Square?” Constance exclaimed. “When I was in the parlour just now I saw a man running along Wedgwood Street, and I said to myself, what’s amiss?”

  Dick and Lily joined her at the window.

  Several people were hurrying down the Square, and then a man came running with a doctor from the market-place. All these persons disappeared from view under the window of Mrs Povey’s drawing-room, which was over part of Mrs Critchlow’s shop. As the windows of the shop projected beyond the walls of the house it was impossible, from the drawing-room window, to see the pavement in front of the shop.

  “It must be something on the pavement—or in the shop!” murmured Constance.

  “Oh, ma’am!” said a startled voice behind the three. It was Mary, original of the photograph, who had run unperceived into the drawing-room. “They say as Mrs Critchlow has tried to commit suicide!”

  Constance started back. Lily went towards her, with an instinctive gesture of supporting consolation.

  “Maria Critchlow tried to commit suicide!” Constance muttered.

  “Yes, ma’am! But they say she’s not done it.”

  “By Jove! I’d better go and see if I can help, hadn’t I?” cried Dick Povey, hobbling off, excited and speedy. “Strange, isn’t it?” he exclaimed afterwards, “how I manage to come in for things? Sheer chance that I was here today! But it’s always like that! Somehow something extraordinary is always happening where I am.” And this too ministered to his satisfaction, and to his zest for life.

  II

  When, in the evening, after all sorts of comings and goings, he finally returned to the old lady and the young one, in order to report the upshot, his demeanour was suitably toned to Constance’s mood. The old lady had been very deeply disturbed by the tragedy, which, as she said, had passed under her very feet while she was calmly talking to Lily.

  The whole truth came out in a short space of time. Mrs Critchlow was suffering from melancholia. It appeared that for long she had been depressed by the failing trade of the shop, which was none of her fault. The state of the Square had steadily deteriorated. Even the “Vaults” were not what they once were. Four or five shops had been shut up, as it were definitely, the landlords having given up hope of discovering serious tenants. And, of those kept open, the majority were struggling desperately to make ends meet. Only Holl’s and a new upstart draper, who had widely advertised his dressmaking department, were really flourishing. The confectionery half of Mr Brindley’s business was disappearing. People would not go to Hanbridge for their bread or for their groceries, but they would go for their cakes. These electric trams had simply carried to Hanbridge the cream, and much of the milk, of Bursley’s retail trade. Where were unprincipled tradesmen in Hanbridge ready to pay the car-fares of any customer who spent a crown in their establishments. Hanbridge was the geographical centre of the Five Towns, and it was alive to its situation. Useless for Bursley to compete! If Mrs Critchlow had been a philosopher, if she had known that geography had always made history, she would have given up her enterprise a dozen years ago. But Mrs Critchlow was merely Maria Insull. She had seen Baines’s in its magnificent prime, when Baines’s almost conferred a favour on customers in serving them. At the time when she took over the business under the wing of her husband, it was still a good business. But from that instant the tide had seemed to turn. She had fought, and she kept on fighting, stupidly. She was not aware that she was fighting against evolution, not aware that evolution had chosen her for one of its victims! She could understand that all the other shops in the Square should fail, but not that Baines’s should fail! She was as industrious as ever, as good a buyer, as good a seller, as keen for novelties, as economical, as methodical! And yet the returns dropped and dropped.

  She naturally had no sympathy from Charles, who now took small interest even in his own business, or what was left of it, and who was coldly disgusted at the ultimate cost of his marriage. Charles gave her no money that he could avoid giving her. The crisis had been slowly approaching for years. The assistants in the shop had said nothing, or had only whispered among themselves, but now that the crisis had flowered suddenly in an attempted self-murder, they all spoke at once, and the evidences were pieced together into a formidable proof of the strain which Mrs Critchlow had suffered. It appeared that for many months she had been depressed and irritable, that sometimes she would sit down in the midst of work and declare, with every sign of exhaustion, that she could do no more. Then with equal briskness she would arise and force herself to labour. She did not sleep for whole nights. One assistant related how she had complained of having had no sleep whatever for four nights consecutively. She had noises in the ears and a chronic headache. Never very plump, she had grown thinner and thinner. And she was for ever taking pills: this information came from Charles’s manager. She had had several outrageous quarrels with the redoubtable Charles, to the stupefaction of all who heard or saw them . . . Mrs Critchlow standing up to her husband! Another strange thing was that she thought the bills of several of the big Manchester firms were unpaid when as a fact they had been paid. Even when shown the receipts she would not be convinced, though she pretended to be convinced. She would recommence the next day. All this was sufficiently disconcerting for female assistants in the drapery. But what could they do?

  Then Maria Critchlow had gone a step further. She had summoned the eldest assistant to her corner and had informed her, with all the solemnity of a confession made to assuage a conscience which has been tortured too long, that she had on many occasions been guilty of sexual irregularity with her late employer, Samuel Povey. There was no truth whatever in this accusation (which everybody, however, took care not to mention to Constance); it merely indicated, perhaps, the secret aspirations of Maria Insull, the virgin. The assistant was properly scandalized, more by the crudity of Mrs Critchlow’s language than by the alleged sin buried in the past. Goodness knows what the assistant would have done! But two hours later Maria Critchlow tried to commit suicide by stabbing herself with a pair of scissors. There was blood in the shop.

  With as little delay as possible she had been driven away to the asylum. Charles Critchlow, enveloped safely in the armour of his senile egotism, had shown no emotion, and very little activity. The shop was closed. And as a general draper’s it never opened again. That was the end of Baines’s. Two assistants found themselves without a livelihood. The small tumble with the great.

  Constance’s emotion was more than pardonable; it was justified. She could not eat and Lily could not persuade her to eat. In an unhappy moment Dick Povey mentioned—he never could remember how, afterwards—the word Federation! And then Constance, from a passive figure of grief, became a menace. She overwhelmed Dick Povey with her anathema of Federation, for Dick was a citizen of Hanbridge, where this detestable movement for Federation had had its birth. All the misfortunes of St Luke’s Square were due to that great, busy, grasping, unscrupulous neighbour. Had not Hanbridge done enough, without wanting to merge all the Five Towns into one town, of which of course itself would be the centre? For Constance, Hanbridge was a borough of unprincipled adventurers, bent on ruining the ancient “Mother of the Five Towns” for its own glory
and aggrandizement. Let Constance hear no more of Federation! Her poor sister Sophia had been dead against Federation, and she had been quite right! All really respectable people were against it! The attempted suicide of Mrs Critchlow sealed the fate of Federation and damped it for ever, in Constance’s mind. Her hatred of the idea of it was intensified into violent animosity; insomuch that in the result she died a martyr to the cause of Bursley’s municipal independence.

  III

  It was on a muddy day in October that the first great battle for and against Federation was fought in Bursley. Constance was suffering severely from sciatica. She was also suffering from disgust with the modern world.

  Unimaginable things had happened in the Square. For Constance, the reputation of the Square was eternally ruined. Charles Critchlow, by that strange good fortune which always put him in the right when fairly he ought to have been in the wrong, had let the Baines shop and his own shop and house to the Midland Clothiers Company, which was establishing branches throughout Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, and adjacent counties. He had sold his own chemist’s stock and gone to live in a little house at the bottom of King Street. It is doubtful whether he would have consented to retire had not Alderman Holl died earlier in the year, thus ending a long rivalry between the old men for the patriarchate of the Square. Charles Critchlow was as free from sentiment as any man, but no man is quite free from it, and the ancient was in a position to indulge sentiment had he chosen. His business was not a source of loss, and he could still trust his skinny hands and peering eyes to make up a prescription. However, the offer of the Midland Clothiers Company tempted him, and as the undisputed “father” of the Square he left the Square in triumph.

  The Midland Clothiers Company had no sense of the proprieties of trade. Their sole idea was to sell goods. Having possessed themselves of one of the finest sites in a town which, after all was said and done, comprised nearly forty thousand inhabitants, they set about to make the best of that site. They threw the two shops into one, and they caused to be constructed a sign compared to which the spacious old “Baines” sign was a postcard. They covered the entire frontage with posters of a theatrical description—coloured posters! They occupied the front page of the Signal, and from that pulpit they announced that winter was approaching, and that they meant to sell ten thousand overcoats at their new shop in Bursley at the price of twelve and sixpence each. The tailoring of the world was loudly and coarsely defied to equal the value of those overcoats. On the day of opening they arranged an orchestra or artillery of phonographs upon the leads over the window of that part of the shop which had been Mr Critchlow’s. They also carpeted the Square with handbills, and flew flags from their upper storeys. The immense shop proved to be full of overcoats; overcoats were shown in all the three great windows; in one window an overcoat was disposed as a receptacle for water, to prove that the Midland twelve-and-sixpenny overcoats were impermeable by rain. Overcoats flapped in the two doorways. These devices woke and drew the town, and the town found itself received by bustling male assistants very energetic and rapid, instead of by demure anaemic virgins. At moments towards evening the shop was populous with custom; the number of overcoats sold was prodigious. On another day the Midland sold trousers in a like manner, but without the phonographs. Unmistakably the Midland had shaken the Square and demonstrated that commerce was still possible to fearless enterprise.