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

“What money have you got in your pockets?” Mr. Povey demanded, as a commencement.

Cyril, who had had no opportunity to prepare his case, offered no reply.

“You heard what I said,” Mr. Povey thundered.

“I’ve got three-halfpence,” Cyril murmured glumly, looking down at the floor. His lower lip seemed to hang precariously away from his gums.

“Where did you get that from?”

“It’s part of what mother gave me,” said the boy.

“I did give him a threepenny bit last week,” Constance put in guiltily. “It was a long time since he had had any money.”

“If you gave it him, that’s enough,” said Mr. Povey, quickly, and to the boy: “That’s all you’ve got?”

“Yes, father,” said the boy.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, father.”

Cyril was playing a hazardous game for the highest stakes, and under grave disadvantages; and he acted for the best. He guarded his own interests as well as he could.

Mr. Povey found himself obliged to take a serious risk. “Empty your pockets, then.”

Cyril, perceiving that he had lost that particular game, emptied his pockets.

“Cyril,” said Constance, “how often have I told you to change your handkerchiefs oftener! Just look at this!”

Astonishing creature! She was in the seventh hell of sick apprehension, and yet she said that!

After the handkerchief emerged the common schoolboy stock of articles useful and magic, and then, last, a silver florin!

Mr. Povey felt relief.

“Oh, Cyril!” whimpered Constance.

“Give it your mother,” said Mr. Povey.

The boy stepped forward awkwardly, and Constance, weeping, took the coin.

“Please look at it, mother,” said Mr. Povey. “And tell me if there’s a cross marked on it.”

Constance’s tears blurred the coin. She had to wipe her eyes.

“Yes,” she whispered faintly. “There’s something on it.”

“I thought so,” said Mr. Povey. “Where did you steal it from?” he demanded.

“Out of the till,” answered Cyril.

“Have you ever stolen anything out of the till before?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what.”

“Yes, father.”

“Take your hands out of your pockets and stand up straight, if you can. How often?”

“I—I don’t know, father.”

“I blame myself,” said Mr. Povey, frankly. “I blame myself. The till ought always to be locked. All tills ought always to be locked. But we felt we could trust the assistants. If anybody had told me that I ought not to trust you, if anybody had told me that my own son would be the thief, I should have—well, I don’t know what I should have said!”

Mr. Povey was quite justified in blaming himself. The fact was that the functioning of that till was a patriarchal survival, which he ought to have revolutionized, but which it had never occurred to him to revolutionize, so accustomed to it was he. In the time of John Baines, the till, with its three bowls, two for silver and one for copper (gold had never been put into it), was invariably unlocked. The person in charge of the shop took change from it for the assistants, or temporarily authorized an assistant to do so. Gold was kept in a small linen bag in a locked drawer of the desk. The contents of the till were never checked by any system of book-keeping, as there was no system of book-keeping; when all transactions, whether in payment or receipt, are in cash- -the Baineses never owed a penny save the quarterly wholesale accounts, which were discharged instantly to the travellers—a system of book-keeping is not indispensable. The till was situate immediately at the entrance to the shop from the house; it was in the darkest part of the shop, and the unfortunate Cyril had to pass it every day on his way to school. The thing was a perfect device for the manufacture of young criminals.

“And how have you been spending this money?” Mr. Povey inquired.

Cyril’s hands slipped into his pockets again. Then, noticing the lapse, he dragged them out.

“Sweets,” said he.

“Anything else?”

“Sweets and things.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Povey. “Well, now you can go down into the cinder-cellar and bring up here all the things there are in that little box in the corner. Off you go!”

And off went Cyril. He had to swagger through the kitchen.

“What did I tell you, Master Cyril?” Amy unwisely asked of him. “You’ve copped it finely this time.”

‘Copped’ was a word which she had learned from Cyril.

“Go on, you old bitch!” Cyril growled.

As he returned from the cellar, Amy said angrily:

“I told you I should tell your father the next time you called me that, and I shall. You mark my words.”

“Cant! cant!” he retorted. “Do you think I don’t know who’s been canting? Cant! cant!”

Upstairs in the parlour Samuel was explaining the matter to his wife. There had been a perfect epidemic of smoking in the school. The headmaster had discovered it and, he hoped, stamped it out. What had disturbed the headmaster far more than the smoking was the fact that a few boys had been found to possess somewhat costly pipes, cigar-holders, or cigarette-holders. The headmaster, wily, had not confiscated these articles; he had merely informed the parents concerned. In his opinion the articles came from one single source, a generous thief; he left the parents to ascertain which of them had brought a thief into the world.

Further information Mr. Povey had culled from Amy, and there could remain no doubt that Cyril had been providing his chums with the utensils of smoking, the till supplying the means. He had told Amy that the things which he secreted in the cellar had been presented to him by blood-brothers. But Mr. Povey did not believe that. Anyhow, he had marked every silver coin in the till for three nights, and had watched the till in the mornings from behind the merino-pile; and the florin on the parlour-table spoke of his success as a detective.

Constance felt guilty on behalf of Cyril. As Mr. Povey outlined his case she could not free herself from an entirely irrational sensation of sin; at any rate of special responsibility. Cyril seemed to be her boy and not Samuel’s boy at all. She avoided her husband’s glance. This was very odd.

Then Cyril returned, and his parents composed their faces and he deposited, next to the florin, a sham meerschaum pipe in a case, a tobacco-pouch, a cigar of which one end had been charred but the other not cut, and a half-empty packet of cigarettes without a label.

Nothing could be hid from Mr. Povey. The details were distressing.

“So Cyril is a liar and a thief, to say nothing of this smoking!” Mr. Povey concluded.

He spoke as if Cyril had invented strange and monstrous sins. But deep down in his heart a little voice was telling him, as regards the smoking, that HE had set the example. Mr. Baines had never smoked. Mr. Critchlow never smoked. Only men like Daniel smoked.

Thus far Mr. Povey had conducted the proceedings to his own satisfaction. He had proved the crime. He had made Cyril confess. The whole affair lay revealed. Well—what next? Cyril ought to have dissolved in repentance; something dramatic ought to have occurred. But Cyril simply stood with hanging, sulky head, and gave no sign of proper feeling.

Mr. Povey considered that, until something did happen, he must improve the occasion.

“Here we have trade getting worse every day,” said he (it was true), “and you are robbing your parents to make a beast of yourself, and corrupting your companions! I wonder your mother never smelt you!”

“I never dreamt of such a thing!” said Constance, grievously.

Besides, a young man clever enough to rob a till is usually clever enough to find out that the secret of safety in smoking is to use cachous and not to keep the stuff in your pockets a minute longer than you can help.

“There’s no knowing how much money you have stolen,” said Mr. Povey. “A thief!”

If Cyril had stolen cakes, jam, string, cigars, Mr. Povey would never have said ‘thief’ as he did say it. But money! Money was different. And a till was not a cupboard or a larder. A till was a till. Cyril had struck at the very basis of society.

“And on your mother’s birthday!” Mr. Povey said further.

“There’s one thing I can do!” he said. “I can burn all this. Built on lies! How dared you?”

And he pitched into the fire—not the apparatus of crime, but the water-colour drawing of a moss-rose and the straws and the blue ribbon for bows at the corners.

“How dared you?” he repeated.

“You never gave me any money,” Cyril muttered.

He thought the marking of coins a mean trick, and the dragging-in of bad trade and his mother’s birthday roused a familiar devil that usually slept quietly in his breast.

“What’s that you say?” Mr. Povey almost shouted.

“You never gave me any money,” the devil repeated in a louder tone than Cyril had employed.

(It was true. But Cyril ‘had only to ask’ and he would have received all that was good for him.)

Mr. Povey sprang up. Mr. Povey also had a devil. The two devils gazed at each other for an instant; and then, noticing that Cyril’s head was above Mr. Povey’s, the elder devil controlled itself. Mr. Povey had suddenly had as much drama as he wanted.

“Get away to bed!” said he with dignity.

Cyril went, defiantly.

“He’s to have nothing but bread and water, mother,” Mr. Povey finished. He was, on the whole, pleased with himself.

Later in the day Constance reported, tearfully, that she had been up to Cyril and that Cyril had wept. Which was to Cyril’s credit. But all felt that life could never be the same again. During the remainder of existence this unspeakable horror would lift its obscene form between them. Constance had never been so unhappy. Occasionally, when by herself, she would rebel for a brief moment, as one rebels in secret against a mummery which one is obliged to treat seriously. “After all,” she would whisper, “suppose he HAS taken a few shillings out of the till! What then? What does it matter?” But these moods of moral insurrection against society and Mr. Povey were very transitory. They were come and gone in a flash.