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

Samuel then saw Cyril getting ready to go out. “Where are you off?” he demanded.

“He’s going with you as far as Knype,” said Constance grimly. “He’ll see you into the train and then come back here in the cab.”

She had sprung this indignity upon him. She glared. Cyril glanced with timid bravado from one to the other. Samuel had to yield.

Thus in the winter darkness—for it was not yet dawn—Samuel set forth to the trial, escorted by his son. The reverberation of his appalling cough from the cab was the last thing that Constance heard.

During most of the day Constance sat in ‘Miss Insull’s corner’ in the shop. Twenty years ago this very corner had been hers. But now, instead of large millinery-boxes enwrapped in brown paper, it was shut off from the rest of the counter by a rich screen of mahogany and ground-glass, and within the enclosed space all the apparatus necessary to the activity of Miss Insull had been provided for. However, it remained the coldest part of the whole shop, as Miss Insull’s fingers testified. Constance established herself there more from a desire to do something, to interfere in something, than from a necessity of supervising the shop, though she had said to Samuel that she would keep an eye on the shop. Miss Insull, whose throne was usurped, had to sit by the stove with less important creatures; she did not like it, and her underlings suffered accordingly.

It was a long day. Towards tea-time, just before Cyril was due from school, Mr. Critchlow came surprisingly in. That is to say, his arrival was less of a surprise to Miss Insull and the rest of the staff than to Constance. For he had lately formed an irregular habit of popping in at tea-time, to chat with Miss Insull. Mr. Critchlow was still defying time. He kept his long, thin figure perfectly erect. His features had not altered. His hair and heard could not have been whiter than they had been for years past. He wore his long white apron, and over that a thick reefer jacket. In his long, knotty fingers he carried a copy of the Signal.

Evidently he had not expected to find the corner occupied by Constance. She was sewing.

“So it’s you!” he said, in his unpleasant, grating voice, not even glancing at Miss Insull. He had gained the reputation of being the rudest old man in Bursley. But his general demeanour expressed indifference rather than rudeness. It was a manner that said: “You’ve got to take me as I am. I may be an egotist, hard, mean, and convinced; but those who don’t like it can lump it. I’m indifferent.”

He put one elbow on the top of the screen, showing the Signal.

“Mr. Critchlow!” said Constance, primly; she had acquired Samuel’s dislike of him.

“It’s begun!” he observed with mysterious glee.

“Has it?” Constance said eagerly. “Is it in the paper already?”

She had been far more disturbed about her husband’s health than about the trial of Daniel Povey for murder, but her interest in the trial was of course tremendous. And this news, that it had actually begun, thrilled her.

“Ay!” said Mr. Critchlow. “Didn’t ye hear the Signal boy hollering just now all over the Square?”

“No,” said Constance. For her, newspapers did not exist. She never had the idea of opening one, never felt any curiosity which she could not satisfy, if she could satisfy it at all, without the powerful aid of the press. And even on this day it had not occurred to her that the Signal might be worth opening.

“Ay!” repeated Mr. Critchlow. “Seemingly it began at two o’clock— or thereabouts.” He gave a moment of his attention to a noisy gas-jet, which he carefully lowered.

“What does it say?”

“Nothing yet!” said Mr. Critchlow; and they read the few brief sentences, under their big heading, which described the formal commencement of the trial of Daniel Povey for the murder of his wife. “There was some as said,” he remarked, pushing up his spectacles, “that grand jury would alter the charge, or summat!” He laughed, grimly tolerant of the extreme absurdity. “Ah!” he added contemplatively, turning his head to see if the assistants were listening. They were. It would have been too much, on such a day, to expect a strict adherence to the etiquette of the shop.

Constance had been hearing a good deal lately of grand juries, but she had understood nothing, nor had she sought to understand.

“I’m very glad it’s come on so soon,” she said. “In a sense, that is! I was afraid Sam might be kept at Stafford for days. Do you think it will last long?”

“Not it!” said Mr. Critchlow, positively. “There’s naught in it to spin out.”

Then a silence, punctuated by the sound of stitching.

Constance would really have preferred not to converse with the old man; but the desire for reassurance, for the calming of her own fears, forced her to speak, though she knew well that Mr. Critchlow was precisely the last man in the town to give moral assistance if he thought it was wanted.

“I do hope everything will be all right!” she murmured.

“Everything’ll be all right!” he said gaily. “Everything’ll be all right. Only it’ll be all wrong for Dan.”

“Whatever do you mean, Mr. Critchlow?” she protested.

Nothing, she reflected, could rouse pity in that heart, not even a tragedy like Daniel’s. She bit her lip for having spoken.

“Well,” he said in loud tones, frankly addressing the girls round the stove as much as Constance. “I’ve met with some rare good arguments this new year, no mistake! There’s been some as say that Dan never meant to do it. That’s as may be. But if it’s a good reason for not hanging, there’s an end to capital punishment in this country. ‘Never meant’! There’s a lot of ‘em as ‘never meant’! Then I’m told as she was a gallivanting woman and no housekeeper, and as often drunk as sober. I’d no call to be told that. If strangling is a right punishment for a wife as spends her time in drinking brandy instead of sweeping floors and airing sheets, then Dan’s safe. But I don’t seem to see Judge Lindley telling the jury as it is. I’ve been a juryman under Judge Lindley myself—and more than once—and I don’t seem to see him, like!” He paused with his mouth open. “As for all them nobs,” he continued, “including th’ rector, as have gone to Stafford to kiss the book and swear that Dan’s reputation is second to none—if they could ha’ sworn as Dan wasn’t in th’ house at all that night, if they could ha’ sworn he was in Jericho, there’d ha’ been some sense in their going. But as it is, they’d ha’ done better to stop at home and mind their business. Bless us! Sam wanted ME to go!”

He laughed again, in the faces of the horrified and angry women.

“I’m surprised at you, Mr. Critchlow! I really am!” Constance exclaimed.

And the assistants inarticulately supported her with vague sounds. Miss Insull got up and poked the stove. Every soul in the establishment was loyally convinced that Daniel Povey would be acquitted, and to breathe a doubt on the brightness of this certainty was a hideous crime. The conviction was not within the domain of reason; it was an act of faith; and arguments merely fretted, without in the slightest degree disturbing it.

“Ye may be!” Mr. Critchlow gaily concurred. He was very content.

Just as he shuffled round to leave the shop, Cyril entered.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Critchlow,” said Cyril, sheepishly polite.

Mr. Critchlow gazed hard at the boy, then nodded his head several times rapidly, as though to say: “Here’s another fool in the making! So the generations follow one another!” He made no answer to the salutation, and departed.

Cyril ran round to his mother’s corner, pitching his bag on to the showroom stairs as he passed them. Taking off his hat, he kissed her, and she unbuttoned his overcoat with her cold hands.

“What’s old Methuselah after?” he demanded.

“Hush!” Constance softly corrected him. “He came in to tell me the trial had started.”

“Oh, I knew that! A boy bought a paper and I saw it. I say, mother, will father be in the paper?” And then in a different tone: “I say, mother, what is there for tea?”

When his stomach had learnt exactly what there was for tea, the boy began to show an immense and talkative curiosity in the trial. He would not set himself to his home-lessons. “It’s no use, mother,” he said, “I can’t.” They returned to the shop together, and Cyril would go every moment to the door to listen for the cry of a newsboy. Presently he hit upon the idea that perhaps newsboys might be crying the special edition of the Signal in the market-place, in front of the Town Hall, to the neglect of St. Luke’s Square. And nothing would satisfy him but he must go forth and see. He went, without his overcoat, promising to run. The shop waited with a strange anxiety. Cyril had created, by his restless movements to and fro, an atmosphere of strained expectancy. It seemed now as if the whole town stood with beating heart, fearful of tidings and yet burning to get them. Constance pictured Stafford, which she had never seen, and a court of justice, which she had never seen, and her husband and Daniel in it. And she waited.

Cyril ran in. “No!” he announced breathlessly. “Nothing yet.”

“Don’t take cold, now you’re hot,” Constance advised.

But he would keep near the door. Soon he ran off again.

And perhaps fifteen seconds after he had gone, the strident cry of a Signal boy was heard in the distance, faint and indistinct at first, then clearer and louder.

“There’s a paper!” said the apprentice.

“Sh!” said Constance, listening.

“Sh!” echoed Miss Insull.

“Yes, it is!” said Constance. “Miss Insull, just step out and get a paper. Here’s a halfpenny.”

The halfpenny passed quickly from one thimbled hand to another. Miss Insull scurried.

She came in triumphantly with the sheet, which Constance tremblingly took. Constance could not find the report at first. Miss Insull pointed to it, and read—

“‘Summing up!’ Lower down, lower down! ‘After an absence of thirty-five minutes the jury found the prisoner guilty of murder, with a recommendation to mercy. The judge assumed the black cap and pronounced sentence of death, saying that he would forward the recommendation to the proper quarter.’”

Cyril returned. “Not yet!” he was saying—when he saw the paper lying on the counter. His crest fell.

Long after the shop was shut, Constance and Cyril waited in the parlour for the arrival of the master of the house. Constance was in the blackest despair. She saw nothing but death around her. She thought: misfortunes never come singly. Why did not Samuel come? All was ready for him, everything that her imagination could suggest, in the way of food, remedies, and the means of warmth. Amy was not allowed to go to bed, lest she might be needed. Constance did not even hint that Cyril should go to bed. The dark, dreadful minutes ticked themselves off on the mantelpiece until only five minutes separated Constance from the moment when