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

Then the portress came forth from her box, and, slightly bent, sped actively across the hall, smiling pleasantly at the guest as she passed him, and disappeared up the stairs. The mistress was alone in the retreat. Peel-Swynnerton jumped up brusquely, dropping the paper with a rustle, and approached her.

“Excuse me,” he said deferentially. “Have any letters come for me tonight?”

He knew that the arrival of letters for him was impossible, since nobody knew his address.

“What name?” The question was coldly polite, and the questioner looked him full in the face. Undoubtedly she was a handsome woman. Her hair was greying at the temples, and the skin was withered and crossed with lines. But she was handsome. She was one of those women of whom to their last on earth the stranger will say: “When she was young she must have been worth looking at!”—with a little transient regret that beautiful young women cannot remain for ever young. Her voice was firm and even, sweet in tone, and yet morally harsh from incessant traffic—with all varieties of human nature. Her eyes were the impartial eyes of one who is always judging. And evidently she was a proud, even a haughty creature, with her careful, controlled politeness. Evidently she considered herself superior to no matter what guest. Her eyes announced that she had lived and learnt, that she knew more about life than any one whom she was likely to meet, and that having pre-eminently succeeded in life, she had tremendous confidence in herself. The proof of her success was the unique Frensham’s. A consciousness of the uniqueness of Frensham’s was also in those eyes. Theoretically Matthew Peel-Swynnerton’s mental attitude towards lodging-house keepers was condescending, but here it was not condescending. It had the real respectfulness of a man who for the moment at any rate is impressed beyond his calculations. His glance fell as he said—

“Peel-Swynnerton.” Then he looked up again.

He said the words awkwardly, and rather fearfully, as if aware that he was playing with fire. If this Mrs. Scales was the long-vanished aunt of his friend, Cyril Povey, she must know those two names, locally so famous. Did she start? Did she show a sign of being perturbed? At first he thought he detected a symptom of emotion, but in an instant he was sure that he had detected nothing of the sort, and that it was silly to suppose that he was treading on the edge of a romance. Then she turned towards the letter-rack at her side, and he saw her face in profile. It bore a sudden and astonishing likeness to the profile of Cyril Povey; a resemblance unmistakable and finally decisive. The nose, and the curve of the upper lip were absolutely Cyril’s. Matthew Peel-Swynnerton felt very queer. He felt like a criminal in peril of being caught in the act, and he could not understand why he should feel so. The landlady looked in the ‘P’ pigeon-hole, and in the ‘S’ pigeon-hole.

“No,” she said quietly, “I see nothing for you.”

Taken with a swift rash audacity, he said: “Have you had any one named Povey here recently?”

“Povey?”

“Yes. Cyril Povey, of Bursley—in the Five Towns.”

He was very impressionable, very sensitive, was Matthew Peel-Swynnerton. His voice trembled as he spoke. But hers also trembled in reply.

“Not that I remember! No! Were you expecting him to be here?”

“Well, it wasn’t at all sure,” he muttered. “Thank you. Good-night.”

“Good-night,” she said, apparently with the simple perfunctoriness of the landlady who says good-night to dozens of strangers every evening.

He hurried away upstairs, and met the portress coming down. “Well, well!” he thought. “Of all the queer things—!” And he kept nodding his head. At last he had encountered something REALLY strange in the spectacle of existence. It had fallen to him to discover the legendary woman who had fled from Bursley before he was born, and of whom nobody knew anything. What news for Cyril! What a staggering episode! He had scarcely any sleep that night. He wondered whether he would be able to meet Mrs. Scales without self-consciousness on the morrow. However, he was spared the curious ordeal of meeting her. She did not appear at all on the following day; nor did he see her before he left. He could not find a pretext for asking why she was invisible.

II

The hansom of Matthew Peel-Swynnerton drew up in front of No. 26, Victoria Grove, Chelsea; his kit-bag was on the roof of the cab. The cabman had a red flower in his buttonhole. Matthew leaped out of the vehicle, holding his straw hat on his head with one hand. On reaching the pavement he checked himself suddenly and became carelessly calm. Another straw-hatted and grey-clad figure was standing at the side-gate of No. 26 in the act of lighting a cigarette.

“Hello, Matt!” exclaimed the second figure, languidly, and in a veiled voice due to the fact that he was still holding the match to the cigarette and puffing. “What’s the meaning of all this fluster? You’re just the man I want to see.”

He threw away the match with a wave of the arm, and took Matthew’s hand for a moment, blowing a double shaft of smoke through his nose

“I want to see you, too,” said Matthew. “And I’ve only got a minute. I’m on my way to Euston. I must catch the twelve-five.”

He looked at his friend, and could positively see no feature of it that was not a feature of Mrs. Scales’s face. Also, the elderly woman held her body in exactly the same way as the young man. It was entirely disconcerting.

“Have a cigarette,” answered Cyril Povey, imperturbably. He was two years younger than Matthew, from whom he had acquired most of his vast and intricate knowledge of life and art, with certain leading notions of deportment; whose pupil indeed he was in all the things that matter to young men. But he had already surpassed his professor. He could pretend to be old much more successfully than Matthew could.

The cabman approvingly watched the ignition of the second cigarette, and then the cabman pulled out a cigar, and showed his large, white teeth, as he bit the end off it. The appearance and manner of his fare, the quality of the kit-bag, and the opening gestures of the interview between the two young dukes, had put the cabman in an optimistic mood. He had no apprehensions of miserly and ungentlemanly conduct by his fare upon the arrival at Euston. He knew the language of the tilt of a straw hat. And it was a magnificent day in London. The group of the two elegances dominated by the perfection of the cabman made a striking tableau of triumphant masculinity, content with itself, and needing nothing.

Matthew lightly took Cyril’s arm and drew him further down the street, past the gate leading to the studio (hidden behind a house) which Cyril rented.

“Look here, my boy,” he began, “I’ve found your aunt.”

“Well, that’s very nice of you,” said Cyril, solemnly. “That’s a friendly act. May I ask what aunt?”

“Mrs. Scales,” said Matthew. “You know—”

“Not the—” Cyril’s face changed.

“Yes, precisely!” said Matthew, feeling that he was not being cheated of the legitimate joy caused by making a sensation. Assuredly he had made a sensation in Victoria Grove.

When he had related the whole story, Cyril said: “Then she doesn’t know you know?”

“I don’t think so. No, I’m sure she doesn’t. She may guess.”

“But how can you be certain you haven’t made a mistake? It may be that—”

“Look here, my boy,” Matthew interrupted him. “I’ve not made any mistake.”

“But you’ve no proof.”

“Proof be damned!” said Matthew, nettled. “I tell you it’s HER!”

“Oh! All right! All right! What puzzles me most is what the devil you were doing in a place like that. According to your description of it, it must be a—”

“I went there because I was broke,” said Matthew.

“Razzle?”

Matthew nodded.

“Pretty stiff, that!” commented Cyril, when Matthew had narrated the prologue to Frensham’s.

“Well, she absolutely swore she never took less than two hundred francs. And she looked it, too! And she was worth it! I had the time of my life with that woman. I can tell you one thing—no more English for me! They simply aren’t in it.”

“How old was she?”

Matthew reflected judicially. “I should say she was thirty.” The gaze of admiration and envy was upon him. He had the legitimate joy of making a second sensation. “I’ll let you know more about that when I come back,” he added. “I can open your eyes, my child.”

Cyril smiled sheepishly. “Why can’t you stay now?” he asked. “I’m going to take the cast of that Verrall girl’s arm this afternoon, and I know I can’t do it alone. And Robson’s no good. You’re just the man I want.”

“Can’t!” said Matthew.

“Well, come into the studio a minute, anyhow.”

“Haven’t time; I shall miss my train.”

“I don’t care if you miss forty trains. You must come in. You’ve got to see that fountain,” Cyril insisted crossly.

Matthew yielded. When they emerged into the street again, after six minutes of Cyril’s savage interest in his own work, Matthew remembered Mrs. Scales.

“Of course you’ll write to your mother?” he said.

“Yes,” said Cyril, “I’ll write; but if you happen to see her, you might tell her.”

“I will,” said Matthew. “Shall you go over to Paris?”

“What! To see Auntie?” He smiled. “I don’t know. Depends. If the mater will fork out all my exes … it’s an idea,” he said lightly, and then without any change of tone, “Naturally, if you’re going to idle about here all morning you aren’t likely to catch the twelve-five.”

Matthew got into the cab, while the driver, the stump of a cigar between his exposed teeth, leaned forward and lifted the reins away from the tilted straw hat.

“By-the-by, lend me some silver,” Matthew demanded. “It’s a good thing I’ve got my return ticket. I’ve run it as fine as ever I did in my life.”

Cyril produced eight shillings in silver. Secure in the possession of these riches, Matthew called to the driver—

“Euston—like hell!”

“Yes, sir,” said the driver, calmly.

“Not coming my way I suppose?” Matthew shouted as an afterthought, just when the cab began to move.

“No. Barber’s,” Cyril shouted in answer, and waved his hand.

The horse rattled into Fulham Road.

III

Three days later Matthew Peel-Swynnerton was walking along Bursley Market Place when, just opposite the Town Hall, he met a short, fat, middle-aged lady dressed in black, with a black embroidered mantle, and a small bonnet tied with black ribbon and ornamented with jet fruit and crape leaves. As she stepped slowly and carefully forward she had the dignified, important look of a provincial woman who has always been accustomed to deference in her native town, and whose income is ample enough to extort obsequiousness from the vulgar of all ranks. But immediately she caught sight of Matthew, her face changed. She became simple and naive. She blushed slightly, smiling with a timid pleasure. For her, Matthew belonged to a superior race. He bore the almost sacred name of Peel. His family had been distinguished in the district for generations. ‘Peel!’ You could without impropriety utter it in the same breath with ‘Wedgwood.’ And ‘Swynnerton’ stood not much lower. Neither her self-respect, which was great, nor her commonsense, which far exceeded the average, could enable her to extend as far as the Peels the theory that one man is as good as another. The Peels never shopped in St.