The Old Wives' Tale. Bennett Arnold
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not to cry out brokenly: “I’ve suffered too much. Do anything you like; only let me die in peace!” And so saying, to let everything indifferently slide!
III
Neither Mr. Povey nor Constance introduced the delicate subject to her again, and she was determined not to be the first to speak of it. She considered that Mr. Povey had taken advantage of his position, and that he had also been infantile and impolite. And somehow she privately blamed Constance for his behaviour. So the matter hung, as it were, suspended in the ether between the opposing forces of pride and passion.
Shortly afterwards events occurred compared to which the vicissitudes of Mr. Povey’s heart were of no more account than a shower of rain in April. And fate gave no warning of them; it rather indicated a complete absence of events. When the customary advice circular arrived from Birkinshaws, the name of ‘our Mr. Gerald Scales’ was replaced on it by another and an unfamiliar name. Mrs. Baines, seeing the circular by accident, experienced a sense of relief, mingled with the professional disappointment of a diplomatist who has elaborately provided for contingencies which have failed to happen. She had sent Sophia away for nothing; and no doubt her maternal affection had exaggerated a molehill into a mountain. Really, when she reflected on the past, she could not recall a single fact that would justify her theory of an attachment secretly budding between Sophia and the young man Scales! Not a single little fact! All she could bring forward was that Sophia had twice encountered Scales in the street.
She felt a curious interest in the fate of Scales, for whom in her own mind she had long prophesied evil, and when Birkinshaws’ representative came she took care to be in the shop; her intention was to converse with him, and ascertain as much as was ascertainable, after Mr. Povey had transacted business. For this purpose, at a suitable moment, she traversed the shop to Mr. Povey’s side, and in so doing she had a fleeting view of King Street, and in King Street of a familiar vehicle. She stopped, and seemed to catch the distant sound of knocking. Abandoning the traveller, she hurried towards the parlour, in the passage she assuredly did hear knocking, angry and impatient knocking, the knocking of someone who thinks he has knocked too long.
“Of course Maggie is at the top of the house!” she muttered sarcastically.
She unchained, unbolted, and unlocked the side-door.
“At last!” It was Aunt Harriet’s voice, exacerbated. “What! You, sister? You’re soon up. What a blessing!”
The two majestic and imposing creatures met on the mat, craning forward so that their lips might meet above their terrific bosoms.
“What’s the matter?” Mrs. Baines asked, fearfully.
“Well, I do declare!” said Mrs. Maddack. “And I’ve driven specially over to ask you!”
“Where’s Sophia?” demanded Mrs. Baines.
“You don’t mean to say she’s not come, sister?” Mrs. Maddack sank down on to the sofa.
“Come?” Mrs. Baines repeated. “Of course she’s not come! What do you mean, sister?”
“The very moment she got Constance’s letter yesterday, saying you were ill in bed and she’d better come over to help in the shop, she started. I got Bratt’s dog-cart for her.”
Mrs. Baines in her turn also sank down on to the sofa.
“I’ve not been ill,” she said. “And Constance hasn’t written for a week! Only yesterday I was telling her—”
“Sister—it can’t be! Sophia had letters from Constance every morning. At least she said they were from Constance. I told her to be sure and write me how you were last night, and she promised faithfully she would. And it was because I got nothing by this morning’s post that I decided to come over myself, to see if it was anything serious.”
“Serious it is!” murmured Mrs. Baines.
“What—”
“Sophia’s run off. That’s the plain English of it!” said Mrs. Baines with frigid calm.
“Nay! That I’ll never believe. I’ve looked after Sophia night and day as if she was my own, and—”
“If she hasn’t run off, where is she?”
Mrs. Maddack opened the door with a tragic gesture.
“Bladen,” she called in a loud voice to the driver of the waggonette, who was standing on the pavement.
“Yes’m.”
“It was Pember drove Miss Sophia yesterday, wasn’t it?”
“Yes’m.”
She hesitated. A clumsy question might enlighten a member of the class which ought never to be enlightened about one’s private affairs.
“He didn’t come all the way here?”
“No’m. He happened to say last night when he got back as Miss Sophia had told him to set her down at Knype Station.”
“I thought so!” said Mrs. Maddack, courageously.
“Yes’m.”
“Sister!” she moaned, after carefully shutting the door.
They clung to each other.
The horror of what had occurred did not instantly take full possession of them, because the power of credence, of imaginatively realizing a supreme event, whether of great grief or of great happiness, is ridiculously finite. But every minute the horror grew more clear, more intense, more tragically dominant over them. There were many things that they could not say to each other—from pride, from shame, from the inadequacy of words. Neither could utter the name of Gerald Scales. And Aunt Harriet could not stoop to defend herself from a possible charge of neglect; nor could Mrs. Baines stoop to assure her sister that she was incapable of preferring such a charge. And the sheer, immense criminal folly of Sophia could not even be referred to: it was unspeakable. So the interview proceeded, lamely, clumsily, inconsequently, leading to naught.
Sophia was gone. She was gone with Gerald Scales.
That beautiful child, that incalculable, untamable, impossible creature, had committed the final folly; without pretext or excuse, and with what elaborate deceit! Yes, without excuse! She had not been treated harshly; she had had a degree of liberty which would have astounded and shocked her grandmothers; she had been petted, humoured, spoilt. And her answer was to disgrace the family by an act as irrevocable as it was utterly vicious. If among her desires was the desire to humiliate those majesties, her mother and Aunt Harriet, she would have been content could she have seen them on the sofa there, humbled, shamed, mortally wounded! Ah, the monstrous Chinese cruelty of youth!
What was to be done? Tell dear Constance? No, this was not, at the moment, an affair for the younger generation. It was too new and raw for the younger generation. Moreover, capable, proud, and experienced as they were, they felt the need of a man’s voice, and a man’s hard, callous ideas. It was a case for Mr. Critchlow. Maggie was sent to fetch him, with a particular request that he should come to the side-door. He came expectant, with the pleasurable anticipation of disaster, and he was not disappointed. He passed with the sisters the happiest hour that had fallen to him for years. Quickly he arranged the alternatives for them. Would they tell the police, or would they take the risks of waiting? They shied away, but with fierce brutality he brought them again and again to the immediate point of decision. … Well, they could not tell the police! They simply could not. Then they must face another danger. … He had no mercy for them. And while he was torturing them there arrived a telegram, despatched from Charing Cross, “I am all right, Sophia.” That proved, at any rate, that the child was not heartless, not merely careless.
Only yesterday, it seemed to Mrs. Baines, she