The Old Wives' Tale. Arnold Bennett
did not understand how her mother and Constance could bring themselves to be deferential and flattering to every customer that entered. No, she did not understand it; but her mother (though a proud woman) and Constance seemed to practise such behaviour so naturally, so unquestioningly, that she had never imparted to either of them her feelings; she guessed that she would not be comprehended. But long ago she had decided that she would never “go into the shop.” She knew that she would be expected to do something, and she had fixed on teaching as the one possibility. These decisions had formed part of her inner life for years past. She had not mentioned them, being secretive and scarcely anxious for unpleasantness. But she had been slowly preparing herself to mention them. The extraordinary announcement that she was to leave school at the same time as Constance had taken her unawares, before the preparations ripening in her mind were complete — before, as it were, she had girded up her loins for the fray. She had been caught unready, and the opposing forces had obtained the advantage of her. But did they suppose she was beaten?
No argument from her mother! No hearing, even! Just a curt and haughty ‘Let me hear no more of this’! And so the great desire of her life, nourished year after year in her inmost bosom, was to be flouted and sacrificed with a word! Her mother did not appear ridiculous in the affair, for her mother was a genuine power, commanding by turns genuine love and genuine hate, and always, till then, obedience and the respect of reason. It was her father who appeared tragically ridiculous; and, in turn, the whole movement against her grew grotesque in its absurdity. Here was this antique wreck, helpless, useless, powerless — merely pathetic — actually thinking that he had only to mumble in order to make her ‘understand’! He knew nothing; he perceived nothing; he was a ferocious egoist, like most bedridden invalids, out of touch with life — and he thought himself justified in making destinies, and capable of making them! Sophia could not, perhaps, define the feelings which overwhelmed her; but she was conscious of their tendency. They aged her, by years. They aged her so that, in a kind of momentary ecstasy of insight, she felt older than her father himself.
“You will be a good girl,” he said. “I’m sure o’ that.”
It was too painful. The grotesqueness of her father’s complacency humiliated her past bearing. She was humiliated, not for herself, but for him. Singular creature! She ran out of the room.
Fortunately Constance was passing in the corridor, otherwise Sophia had been found guilty of a great breach of duty.
“Go to father,” she whispered hysterically to Constance, and fled upwards to the second floor.
IV
At supper, with her red, downcast eyes, she had returned to sheer girlishness again, overawed by her mother. The meal had an unusual aspect. Mr. Povey, safe from the dentist’s, but having lost two teeth in two days, was being fed on ‘slops’— bread and milk, to wit; he sat near the fire. The others had cold pork, half a cold apple-pie, and cheese; but Sophia only pretended to eat; each time she tried to swallow, the tears came into her eyes, and her throat shut itself up. Mrs. Baines and Constance had a too careful air of eating just as usual. Mrs. Baines’s handsome ringlets dominated the table under the gas.
“I’m not so set up with my pastry today,” observed Mrs. Baines, critically munching a fragment of pie-crust.
She rang a little hand-bell. Maggie appeared from the cave. She wore a plain white bib-less apron, but no cap.
“Maggie, will you have some pie?”
“Yes, if you can spare it, ma’am.”
This was Maggie’s customary answer to offers of food.
“We can always spare it, Maggie,” said her mistress, as usual. “Sophia, if you aren’t going to use that plate, give it to me.”
Maggie disappeared with liberal pie.
Mrs. Baines then talked to Mr. Povey about his condition, and in particular as to the need for precautions against taking cold in the bereaved gum. She was a brave and determined woman; from start to finish she behaved as though nothing whatever in the household except her pastry and Mr. Povey had deviated that day from the normal. She kissed Constance and Sophia with the most exact equality, and called them ‘my chucks’ when they went up to bed.
Constance, excellent kind heart, tried to imitate her mother’s tactics as the girls undressed in their room. She thought she could not do better than ignore Sophia’s deplorable state.
“Mother’s new dress is quite finished, and she’s going to wear it on Sunday,” said she, blandly.
“If you say another word I’ll scratch your eyes out!” Sophia turned on her viciously, with a catch in her voice, and then began to sob at intervals. She did not mean this threat, but its utterance gave her relief. Constance, faced with the fact that her mother’s shoes were too big for her, decided to preserve her eyesight.
Long after the gas was out, rare sobs from Sophia shook the bed, and they both lay awake in silence.
“I suppose you and mother have been talking me over finely today?” Sophia burst forth, to Constance’s surprise, in a wet voice.
“No,” said Constance soothingly. “Mother only told me.”
“Told you what?”
“That you wanted to be a teacher.”
“And I will be, too!” said Sophia, bitterly.
“You don’t know mother,” thought Constance; but she made no audible comment.
There was another detached, hard sob. And then, such is the astonishing talent of youth, they both fell asleep.
The next morning, early, Sophia stood gazing out of the window at the Square. It was Saturday, and all over the Square little stalls, with yellow linen roofs, were being erected for the principal market of the week. In those barbaric days Bursley had a majestic edifice, black as basalt, for the sale of dead animals by the limb and rib — it was entitled ‘the Shambles’— but vegetables, fruit, cheese, eggs, and pikelets were still sold under canvas. Eggs are now offered at five farthings apiece in a palace that cost twenty-five thousand pounds. Yet you will find people in Bursley ready to assert that things generally are not what they were, and that in particular the romance of life has gone. But until it has gone it is never romance. To Sophia, though she was in a mood which usually stimulates the sense of the romantic, there was nothing of romance in this picturesque tented field. It was just the market. Holl’s, the leading grocer’s, was already open, at the extremity of the Square, and a boy apprentice was sweeping the pavement in front of it. The public-houses were open, several of them specializing in hot rum at 5.30 a.m. The town-crier, in his blue coat with red facings, crossed the Square, carrying his big bell by the tongue. There was the same shocking hole in one of Mrs. Povey’s (confectioner’s) window-curtains — a hole which even her recent travail could scarcely excuse. Such matters it was that Sophia noticed with dull, smarting eyes.
“Sophia, you’ll take your death of cold standing there like that!”
She jumped. The voice was her mother’s. That vigorous woman, after a calm night by the side of the paralytic, was already up and neatly dressed. She carried a bottle and an egg-cup, and a small quantity of jam in a table-spoon.
“Get into bed again, do! There’s a dear! You’re shivering.”
White Sophia obeyed. It was true; she was shivering. Constance awoke. Mrs. Baines went to the dressing-table and filled the egg-cup out of the bottle.
“Who’s that for, mother?” Constance asked sleepily.
“It’s for Sophia,” said Mrs. Baines, with good cheer. “Now, Sophia!” and she advanced with the egg-cup in one hand and the table-spoon in the other.
“What is it, mother?” asked Sophia, who well knew what it was.
“Castor-oil, my dear,” said Mrs. Baines, winningly.
The