The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett (thriller books to read .TXT) đ
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- Author: Arnold Bennett
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Mr. Scales came about ten oâclock. Instead of going to Mr. Poveyâs counter, he walked boldly to Constanceâs corner, and looked over the boxes, smiling and saluting. Both the girls candidly delighted in his visit. Both blushed; both laughedâwithout knowing why they laughed. Mr. Scales said he was just departing and had slipped in for a moment to thank all of them for their kindness of last nightââor rather this morning.â The girls laughed again at this witticism. Nothing could have been more simple than his speech. Yet it appeared to them magically attractive. A customer entered, a lady; one of the assistants rose from the neighbourhood of the stove, but the daughters of the house ignored the customer; it was part of the etiquette of the shop that customers, at any rate chance customers, should not exist for the daughters of the house, until an assistant had formally drawn attention to them. Otherwise every one who wanted a pennyworth of tape would be expecting to be served by Miss Baines, or Miss Sophia, if Miss Sophia were there. Which would have been ridiculous.
Sophia, glancing sidelong, saw the assistant parleying with the customer; and then the assistant came softly behind the counter and approached the corner.
âMiss Constance, can you spare a minute?â the assistant whispered discreetly.
Constance extinguished her smile for Mr. Scales, and, turning away, lighted an entirely different and inferior smile for the customer.
âGood morning, Miss Baines. Very cold, isnât it?â
âGood morning, Mrs. Chatterley. Yes, it is. I suppose youâre getting anxious about thoseââ Constance stopped.
Sophia was now alone with Mr. Scales, for in order to discuss the unnameable freely with Mrs. Chatterley her sister was edging up the counter. Sophia had dreamed of a private conversation as something delicious and impossible. But chance had favoured her. She was alone with him. And his neat fair hair and his blue eyes and his delicate mouth were as wonderful to her as ever. He was gentlemanly to a degree that impressed her more than anything had impressed her in her life. And all the proud and aristocratic instinct that was at the base of her character sprang up and seized on his gentlemanliness like a famished animal seizing on food.
âThe last time I saw you,â said Mr. Scales, in a new tone, âyou said you were never in the shop.â
âWhat? Yesterday? Did I?â
âNo, I mean the last time I saw you alone,â said he.
âOh!â she exclaimed. âItâs just an accident.â
âThatâs exactly what you said last time.â
âIs it?â
Was it his manner, or what he said, that flattered her, that intensified her beautiful vivacity?
âI suppose you donât often go out?â he went on.
âWhat? In this weather?â
âAny time.â
âI go to chapel,â said she, âand marketing with mother.â There was a little pause. âAnd to the Free Library.â
âOh yes. Youâve got a Free Library here now, havenât you?â
âYes. Weâve had it over a year.â
âAnd you belong to it? What do you read?â
âOh, stories, you know. I get a fresh book out once a week.â
âSaturdays, I suppose?â
âNo,â she said. âWednesdays.â And she smiled. âUsually.â
âItâs Wednesday to-day,â said he. âNot been already?â
She shook her head. âI donât think I shall go to-day. Itâs too cold. I donât think I shall venture out to-day.â
âYou must be very fond of reading,â said he.
Then Mr. Povey appeared, rubbing his mittened hands. And Mrs. Chatterley went.
âIâll run and fetch mother,â said Constance.
Mrs. Baines was very polite to the young man. He related his interview with the police, whose opinion was that he had been attacked by stray members of a gang from Hanbridge. The young lady assistants, with ears cocked, gathered the nature of Mr. Scalesâs adventure, and were thrilled to the point of questioning Mr. Povey about it after Mr. Scales had gone. His farewell was marked by much handshaking, and finally Mr. Povey ran after him into the Square to mention something about dogs.
At half-past one, while Mrs. Baines was dozing after dinner, Sophia wrapped herself up, and with a book under her arm went forth into the world, through the shop. She returned in less than twenty minutes. But her mother had already awakened, and was hovering about the back of the shop. Mothers have supernatural gifts.
Sophia nonchalantly passed her and hurried into the parlour where she threw down her muff and a book and knelt before the fire to warm herself.
Mrs. Baines followed her. âBeen to the Library?â questioned Mrs. Baines.
âYes, mother. And itâs simply perishing.â
âI wonder at your going on a day like to-day. I thought you always went on Thursdays?â
âSo I do. But Iâd finished my book.â
âWhat is this?â Mrs. Baines picked up the volume, which was covered with black oilcloth.
She picked it up with a hostile air. For her attitude towards the Free Library was obscurely inimical. She never read anything herself except The Sunday at Home, and Constance never read anything except The Sunday at Home. There were scriptural commentaries, Dugdaleâs Gazetteer, Culpepperâs Herbal, and works by Bunyan and Flavius Josephus in the drawingroom bookcase; also Uncle Tomâs Cabin. And Mrs. Baines, in considering the welfare of her daughters, looked askance at the whole remainder of printed literature. If the Free Library had not formed part of the Famous Wedgwood Institution, which had been opened with immense eclat by the semi-divine Gladstone; if the first book had not been ceremoniously âtaken outâ of the Free Library by the Chief Bailiff in personâa grandfather of stainless renownâMrs. Baines would probably have risked her authority in forbidding the Free Library.
âYou neednât be afraid,â said Sophia, laughing. âItâs Miss Sewellâs Experience of Life.â
âA novel, I see,â observed Mrs. Baines, dropping the book.
Gold and jewels would probably not tempt a Sophia of these days to read Experience of Life; but to Sophia Baines the bland story had the piquancy of the disapproved.
The next day Mrs. Baines summoned Sophia into her bedroom.
âSophia,â said she, trembling, âI shall be glad if you will not walk about the streets with young men until you have my permission.â
The girl blushed violently. âIâIââ
âYou were seen in Wedgwood Street,â said Mrs. Baines.
âWhoâs been gossipingâMr. Critchlow, I suppose?â Sophia exclaimed scornfully.
âNo one has been âgossiping,ââ said Mrs Baines. âWell, if I meet some one by accident in the street I canât help it, can I?â Sophiaâs voice shook.
âYou know what I mean, my child,â said Mrs. Baines, with careful calm.
Sophia dashed angrily from the room.
âI like the idea of him having âa heavy dayâ!â Mrs. Baines reflected ironically, recalling a phrase which had lodged in her mind. And very vaguely, with an uneasiness scarcely perceptible, she remembered that âhe,â and no other, had been in the shop on the day her husband died.
I
The uneasiness of Mrs. Baines flowed and ebbed, during the next three months, influenced by Sophiaâs moods. There were days when Sophia was the old Sophiaâthe forbidding, difficult, waspish, and even hedgehog Sophia. But there were other days on which Sophia seemed to be drawing joy and gaiety and goodwill from some secret source, from some fount whose nature and origin none could divine. It was on these days that the uneasiness of Mrs. Baines waxed. She had the wildest suspicions; she was almost capable of accusing Sophia of carrying on a clandestine correspondence; she saw Sophia and Gerald Scales deeply and wickedly in love; she saw them with their arms round each otherâs necks. ⊠And then she called herself a middle-aged fool, to base such a structure of suspicion on a brief encounter in the street and on an idea, a fancy, a curious and irrational notion! Sophia had a certain streak of pure nobility in that exceedingly heterogeneous thing, her character. Moreover, Mrs. Baines watched the posts, and she also watched Sophiaâshe was not the woman to trust to a streak of pure nobilityâand she came to be sure that Sophiaâs sinfulness, if any, was not such as could be weighed in a balance, or collected together by stealth and then suddenly placed before the girl on a charger.
Still, she would have given much to see inside Sophiaâs lovely head. Ah! Could she have done so, what sleep-destroying wonders she would have witnessed! By what bright lamps burning in what mysterious grottoes and caverns of the brain would her mature eyes have been dazzled! Sophia was living for months on the exhaustless ardent vitality absorbed during a magical two minutes in Wedgwood Street. She was living chiefly on the flaming fire struck in her soul by the shock of seeing Gerald Scales in the porch of the Wedgwood Institution as she came out of the Free Library with Experience Of Life tucked into her large astrakhan muff. He had stayed to meet her, then: she knew it! âAfter all,â her heart said, âI must be very beautiful, for I have attracted the pearl of men!â And she remembered her face in the glass. The value and the power of beauty were tremendously proved to her. He, the great man of the world, the handsome and elegant man with a thousand strange friends and a thousand interests far remote from her, had remained in Bursley on the mere chance of meeting her! She was proud, but her pride was drowned in bliss. âI was just looking at this inscription about Mr. Gladstone.â âSo you decided to come out as usual!â âAnd may I ask what book you have chosen?â These were the phrases she heard, and to which she responded with similar phrases. And meanwhile a miracle of ecstasy had openedâopened like a flower. She was walking along Wedgwood Street by his side, slowly, on the scraped pavements, where marble bulbs of snow had defied the spade and remained. She and he were exactly of the same height, and she kept looking into his face and he into hers. This was all the miracle. Except that she was not walking on the pavementâshe was walking on the intangible sward of paradise! Except that the houses had receded and faded, and the passers-by were subtilized into unnoticeable ghosts! Except that her mother and Constance had become phantasmal beings existing at an immense distance!
What had happened? Nothing! The most commonplace occurrence! The eternal cause had picked up a commercial traveller (it might have been a clerk or curate, but it in fact was a commercial traveller), and endowed him with all the glorious, unique, incredible attributes of a god, and planted him down before Sophia in order to produce the eternal effect. A miracle performed specially for Sophiaâs benefit! No one else in Wedgwood Street saw the god walking along by her side. No one else saw anything but a simple commercial traveller. Yes, the most commonplace occurrence!
Of course at the corner of the street he had to go. âTill next time!â he murmured. And fire came out of his eyes and lighted in Sophiaâs lovely head those lamps which Mrs. Baines was mercifully spared from seeing. And he had shaken hands and raised his hat. Imagine a god raising his hat! And he went off on two legs, precisely like a dashing little commercial traveller.
And, escorted by the equivocal Angel of Eclipses, she had turned into King Street, and arranged her face, and courageously met her mother. Her mother had not at first perceived the unusual; for mothers, despite their reputation to the contrary, really
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