The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett (carter reed txt) 📕

“She only wants a bit of your society,” said Sophia. “Will you go up? You know the way to the drawingroom. I’ll follow.”

As soon as he had gone she sat down on the sofa, staring out of the window. Then with a grunt: “Well, that’s no use, anyway!” she went upstairs after the doctor. Already Constance had begun upon her recital.

“Yes,” Constance was saying. “And when I went down this morning to keep an eye on the breakfast, I thought Spot was very quiet—” She paused. “He was dead in the drawer. She pretended she didn’t know, but I’m sure she did. Nothing will convince me that she didn’t poison that dog with the mice-poison we had last year. She was vexed because Sophia took her up sharply about Fossette last night, and she revenged herself on the other dog. It would just be like her. Don’t tell me! I know. I should have packed her off at once, but Sophia thought better not. We couldn’t prove anything, as Sophia says. Now, what do you think of it, doctor?”

Constance’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.

“Ye’d had Spot a long time, hadn’t ye?” he said sympathetically.

She nodded. “When I was married,” said she, “the first thing my husband did was to buy a fox-terrier, and ever since we’ve always had a fox-terrier in the house.” This was not true, but Constance was firmly convinced of its truth.

“It’s very trying,” said the doctor. “I know when my Airedale died, I said to my wife I’d never have another dog—unless she could find me one that would live for ever. Ye remember my Airedale?”

“Oh, quite well!”

“Well, my wife said I should be bound to have another one sooner or later, and the sooner the better. She went straight off to Oldcastle and bought me a spaniel pup, and there was such a to-do training it that we hadn’t too much time to think about Piper.”

Constance regarded this procedure as somewhat callous, and she said so, tartly. Then she recommenced the tale of Spot’s death from the beginning, and took it as far as his burial, that afternoon, by Mr. Critchlow’s manager, in the yard. It had been necessary to remove and replace paving-stones.

“Of course,” said Dr. Stirling, “ten years is a long time. He was an old dog. Well, you’ve still got the celebrated Fossette.” He turned to Sophia.

“Oh yes,” said Constance, perfunctorily. “Fossette’s ill. The fact is that if Fossette hadn’t been ill, Spot would probably have been alive and well now.”

Her tone exhibited a grievance. She could not forget that Sophia had harshly dismissed Spot to the kitchen, thus practically sending him to his death. It seemed very hard to her that Fossette, whose life had once been despaired of, should continue to exist, while Spot, always healthy and unspoilt, should die untended, and by treachery. For the rest, she had never liked Fossette. On Spot’s behalf she had always been jealous of Fossette.

“Probably alive and well now!” she repeated, with a peculiar accent.

Observing that Sophia maintained a strange silence, Dr. Stirling suspected a slight tension in the relations of the sisters, and he changed the subject. One of his great qualities was that he refrained from changing a subject introduced by a patient unless there was a professional reason for changing it.

“I’ve just met Richard Povey in the town,” said he. “He told me to tell ye that he’ll be round in about an hour or so to take you for a spin. He was in a new car, which he did his best to sell to me, but he didn’t succeed.”

“It’s very kind of Dick,” said Constance. “But this afternoon really we’re not—”

“I’ll thank ye to take it as a prescription, then,” replied the doctor. “I told Dick I’d see that ye went. Splendid June weather. No dust after all that rain. It’ll do ye all the good in the world. I must exercise my authority. The truth is, I’ve gradually been losing all control over ye. Ye do just as ye like.”

“Oh, doctor, how you do run on!” murmured Constance, not quite well pleased to-day by his tone.

After the scene between Sophia and herself at Buxton, Constance had always, to a certain extent, in the doctor’s own phrase, ‘got her knife into him.’ Sophia had, then, in a manner betrayed him. Constance and the doctor discussed that matter with frankness, the doctor humorously accusing her of being ‘hard’ on him. Nevertheless the little cloud between them was real, and the result was often a faint captiousness on Constance’s part in judging the doctor’s behaviour.

“He’s got a surprise for ye, has Dick!” the doctor added.

Dick Povey, after his father’s death and his own partial recovery, had set up in Hanbridge as a bicycle agent. He was permanently lamed, and he hopped about with a thick stick. He had succeeded with bicycles and had taken to automobiles, and he was succeeding with automobiles. People were at first startled that he should advertise himself in the Five Towns. There was an obscure general feeling that because his mother had been a drunkard and his father a murderer, Dick Povey had no right to exist. However, when it had recovered from the shock of seeing Dick Povey’s announcement of bargains in the Signal, the district most sensibly decided that there was no reason why Dick Povey should not sell bicycles as well as a man with normal parents. He was now supposed to be acquiring wealth rapidly. It was said that he was a marvellous chauffeur, at once daring and prudent. He had one day, several years previously, overtaken the sisters in the rural neighbourhood of Sneyd, where they had been making an afternoon excursion. Constance had presented him to Sophia, and he had insisted on driving the ladies home. They had been much impressed by his cautious care of them, and their natural prejudice against anything so new as a motorcar had been conquered instantly. Afterwards he had taken them out for occasional runs. He had a great admiration for Constance, founded on gratitude to Samuel Povey; and as for Sophia, he always said to her that she would be an ornament to any car.

“You haven’t heard his latest, I suppose?” said the doctor, smiling.

“What is it?” Sophia asked perfunctorily.

“He wants to take to ballooning. It seems he’s been up once.”

Constance made a deprecating noise with her lips.

“However, that’s not his surprise,” the doctor added, smiling again at the floor. He was sitting on the music-stool, and saying to himself, behind his mask of effulgent good-nature: “It gets more and more uphill work, cheering up these two women. I’ll try them on Federation.”

Federation was the name given to the scheme for blending the Five Towns into one town, which would be the twelfth largest town in the kingdom. It aroused fury in Bursley, which saw in the suggestion nothing but the extinction of its ancient glory to the aggrandizement of Hanbridge. Hanbridge had already, with the assistance of electric cars that whizzed to and fro every five minutes, robbed Bursley of two-thirds of its retail trade—as witness the steady decadence of the Square!—and Bursley had no mind to swallow the insult and become a mere ward of Hanbridge. Bursley would die fighting. Both Constance and Sophia were bitter opponents of Federation. They would have been capable of putting Federationists to the torture. Sophia in particular, though so long absent from her native town, had adopted its cause with characteristic vigour. And when Dr. Stirling wished to practise his curative treatment of taking the sisters ‘out of themselves,’ he had only to start the hare of Federation and the hunt would be up in a moment. But this afternoon he did not succeed with Sophia, and only partially with Constance. When he stated that there was to be a public meeting that very night, and that Constance as a ratepayer ought to go to it and vote, if her convictions were genuine, she received his chaff with a mere murmur to the effect that she did not think she should go. Had the man forgotten that Spot was dead? At length he became grave, and examined them both as to their ailments, and nodded his head, and looked into vacancy while meditating upon each case. And then, when he had inquired where they meant to go for their summer holidays, he departed.

“Aren’t you going to see him out?” Constance whispered to Sophia, who had shaken hands with him at the drawingroom door. It was Sophia who did the running about, owing to the state of Constance’s sciatic nerve. Constance had, indeed, become extraordinarily inert, leaving everything to Sophia.

Sophia shook her head. She hesitated; then approached Constance, holding out her hand and disclosing the crumpled telegram.

“Look at that!” said she.

Her face frightened Constance, who was always expectant of new anxieties and troubles. Constance straightened out the paper with difficulty, and read—

“Mr. Gerald Scales is dangerously ill here. Boldero, 49, Deansgate, Manchester.”

All through the inexpressibly tedious and quite unnecessary call of Dr. Stirling—(Why had he chosen to call just then? Neither of them was ill)—Sophia had held that telegram concealed in her hand and its information concealed in her heart. She had kept her head up, offering a calm front to the world. She had given no hint of the terrible explosion—for an explosion it was. Constance was astounded at her sister’s self-control, which entirely passed her comprehension. Constance felt that worries would never cease, but would rather go on multiplying until death ended all. First, there had been the frightful worry of the servant; then the extremely distressing death and burial of Spot—and now it was Gerald Scales turning up again! With what violence was the direction of their thoughts now shifted! The wickedness of maids was a trifle; the death of pets was a trifle. But the reappearance of Gerald Scales! That involved the possibility of consequences which could not even be named, so afflictive was the mere prospect to them. Constance was speechless, and she saw that Sophia was also speechless.

Of course the event had been bound to happen. People do not vanish never to be heard of again. The time surely arrives when the secret is revealed. So Sophia said to herself—now!

She had always refused to consider the effect of Gerald’s reappearance. She had put the idea of it away from her, determined to convince herself that she had done with him finally and for ever. She had forgotten him. It was years since he had ceased to disturb her thoughts—many years. “He MUST be dead,” she had persuaded herself. “It is inconceivable that he should have lived on and never come across me. If he had been alive and learnt that I had made money, he would assuredly have come to me. No, he must be dead!”

And he was not dead! The brief telegram overwhelmingly shocked her. Her life had been calm, regular, monotonous. And now it was thrown into an indescribable turmoil by five words of a telegram, suddenly, with no warning whatever. Sophia had the right to say to herself: “I have had my share of trouble, and more than my share!” The end of her life promised to be as awful as the beginning. The mere existence of Gerald Scales was a menace to her. But it was the simple impact of the blow that affected her supremely, beyond ulterior things. One might have pictured fate as a cowardly brute who had struck this ageing woman full in the face, a felling blow, which however had not felled her. She staggered, but she stuck on her legs. It seemed a shame—one of those crude, spectacular shames which make the