The Old Wives' Tale - Arnold Bennett (red novels .TXT) 📗

matters which by the other guests were taken for granted and used as a basis for conversation. Prolonged residence in Paris would not justify this ignorance; it seemed rather to intensify its strangeness. Thus, when someone of cosmopolitan experience, having learnt that she had lived in Paris for many years, asked what had been going on lately at the Comedie Francaise, she had to admit that she had not been in a French theatre for nearly thirty years. And when, on a Sunday, the same person questioned her about the English chaplain in Paris, lo! she knew nothing but his name, had never even seen him. Sophia’s life, in its way, had been as narrow as Constance’s. Though her experience of human nature was wide, she had been in a groove as deep as Constance’s. She had been utterly absorbed in doing one single thing.

By tacit agreement she had charge of the expedition. She paid all the bills. Constance protested against the expensiveness of the affair several times, but Sophia quietened her by sheer force of individuality. Constance had one advantage over Sophia. She knew Buxton and its neighbourhood intimately, and she was therefore in a position to show off the sights and to deal with local peculiarities. In all other respects Sophia led.

They very soon became acclimatized to the hotel. They moved easily between Turkey carpets and sculptured ceilings; their eyes grew used to the eternal vision of themselves and other slow-moving dignities in gilt mirrors, to the heaviness of great oil-paintings of picturesque scenery, to the indications of surreptitious dirt behind massive furniture, to the grey-brown of the shirt-fronts of the waiters, to the litter of trays, boots and pails in long corridors; their ears were always awake to the sounds of gongs and bells. They consulted the barometer and ordered the daily carriage with the perfunctoriness of habit. They discovered what can be learnt of other people’s needlework in a hotel on a wet day. They performed co-operative outings with fellow-guests. They invited fellow-guests into their sitting-room. When there was an entertainment they did not avoid it. Sophia was determined to do everything that could with propriety be done, partly as an outlet for her own energy (which since she left Paris had been accumulating), but more on Constance’s account. She remembered all that Dr. Stirling had. said, and the heartiness of her own agreement with his opinions. It was a great day when, under tuition of an aged lady and in the privacy of their parlour, they both began to study the elements of Patience. Neither had ever played at cards. Constance was almost afraid to touch cards, as though in the very cardboard there had been something unrighteous and perilous. But the respectability of a luxurious private hotel makes proper every act that passes within its walls. And Constance plausibly argued that no harm could come from a game which you played by yourself. She acquired with some aptitude several varieties of Patience. She said: “I think I could enjoy that, if I kept at it. But it does make my head whirl.”

Nevertheless Constance was not happy in the hotel. She worried the whole time about her empty house. She anticipated difficulties and even disasters. She wondered again and again whether she could trust the second Maggie in her house alone, whether it would not be better to return home earlier and participate personally in the cleaning. She would have decided to do so had it not been that she hesitated to subject Sophia to the inconvenience of a house upside down. The matter was on her mind, always. Always she was restlessly anticipating the day when they would leave. She had carelessly left her heart behind in St. Luke’s Square. She had never stayed in a hotel before, and she did not like it. Sciatica occasionally harassed her. Yet when it came to the point she would not drink the waters. She said she never had drunk them, and seemed to regard that as a reason why she never should. Sophia had achieved a miracle in getting her to Buxton for nearly a month, but the ultimate grand effect lacked brilliance.

Then came the fatal letter, the desolating letter, which vindicated Constance’s dark apprehensions. Rose Bennion calmly wrote to say that she had decided not to come to St. Luke’s Square. She expressed regret for any inconvenience which might possibly be caused; she was polite. But the monstrousness of it! Constance felt that this actually and truly was the deepest depth of her calamities. There she was, far from a dirty home, with no servant and no prospect of a servant! She bore herself bravely, nobly; but she was stricken. She wanted to return to the dirty home at once.

Sophia felt that the situation created by this letter would demand her highest powers of dealing with situations, and she determined to deal with it adequately. Great measures were needed, for Constance’s health and happiness were at stake. She alone could act. She knew that she could not rely upon Cyril. She still had an immense partiality for Cyril; she thought him the most charming young man she had ever known; she knew him to be industrious and clever; but in his relations with his mother there was a hardness, a touch of callousness. She explained it vaguely by saying that ‘they did not get on well together’; which was strange, considering Constance’s sweet affectionateness. Still, Constance could be a little trying—at times. Anyhow, it was soon clear to Sophia that the idea of mother and son living together in London was entirely impracticable. No! If Constance was to be saved from herself, there was no one but Sophia to save her.

After half a morning spent chiefly in listening to Constance’s hopeless comments on the monstrous letter, Sophia said suddenly that she must take the dogs for an airing. Constance did not feel equal to walking out, and she would not drive. She did not want Sophia to ‘venture,’ because the sky threatened. However, Sophia did venture, and she returned a few minutes late for lunch, full of vigour, with two happy dogs. Constance was moodily awaiting her in the dining-room. Constance could not eat. But Sophia ate, and she poured out cheerfulness and energy as from a source inexhaustible. After lunch it began to rain. Constance said she thought she should retire directly to the sitting-room. “I’m coming too,” said Sophia, who was still wearing her hat and coat and carried her gloves in her hand. In the pretentious and banal sitting-room they sat down on either side the fire. Constance put a little shawl round her shoulders, pushed her spectacles into her grey hair, folded her hands, and sighed an enormous sigh: “Oh, dear!” She was the tragic muse, aged, and in black silk.

“I tell you what I’ve been thinking,” said Sophia, folding up her gloves.

“What?” asked Constance, expecting some wonderful solution to come out of Sophia’s active brain.

“There’s no earthly reason why you should go back to Bursley. The house won’t run away, and it’s costing nothing but the rent. Why not take things easy for a bit?”

“And stay here?” said Constance, with an inflection that enlightened Sophia as to the intensity of her dislike of the existence at the Rutland.

“No, not here,” Sophia answered with quick deprecation. “There are plenty of other places we could go to.”

“I don’t think I should be easy in my mind,” said Constance. “What with nothing being settled, the house–-”

“What does it matter about the house?”

“It matters a great deal,” said Constance, seriously, and slightly hurt. “I didn’t leave things as if we were going to be away for a long time. It wouldn’t do.”

“I don’t see that anything could come to any harm, I really don’t!” said Sophia, persuasively. “Dirt can always be cleaned, after all. I think you ought to go about more. It would do you good—all the good in the world. And there is no reason why you shouldn’t go about. You are perfectly free. Why shouldn’t we go abroad together, for instance, you and I? I’m sure you would enjoy it very much.”

“Abroad?” murmured Constance, aghast, recoiling from the proposition as from a grave danger.

“Yes,” said Sophia, brightly and eagerly. She was determined to take Constance abroad. “There are lots of places we could go to, and live very comfortably among nice English people.” She thought of the resorts she had visited with Gerald in the sixties. They seemed to her like cities of a dream. They came back to her as a dream recurs.

“I don’t think going abroad would suit me,” said Constance.

“But why not? You don’t know. You’ve never tried, my dear.” She smiled encouragingly. But Constance did not smile. Constance was inclined to be grim.

“I don’t think it would,” said she, obstinately. “I’m one of your stay-at-homes. I’m not like you. We can’t all be alike,” she added, with her ‘tart’ accent.

Sophia suppressed a feeling of irritation. She knew that she had a stronger individuality than Constance’s.

“Well, then,” she said, with undiminished persuasiveness, “in England or Scotland. There are several places I should like to visit—Torquay, Tunbridge Wells. I’ve always understood that Tunbridge Wells is a very nice town indeed, with very superior people, and a beautiful climate.”

“I think I shall have to be getting back to St. Luke’s Square,” said Constance, ignoring all that Sophia had said. “There’s so much to be done.”

Then Sophia looked at Constance with a more serious and resolute air; but still kindly, as though looking thus at Constance for Constance’s own good.

“You are making a mistake, Constance,” she said, “if you will allow me to say so.”

“A mistake!” exclaimed Constance, startled.

“A very great mistake,” Sophia insisted, observing that she was creating an effect.

“I don’t see how I can be making a mistake,” Constance said, gaining confidence in herself, as she thought the matter over.

“No,” said Sophia, “I’m sure you don’t see it. But you are. You know, you are just a little apt to let yourself be a slave to that house of yours. Instead of the house existing for you, you exist for the house.”

“Oh! Sophia!” Constance muttered awkwardly. “What ideas you do have, to be sure!” In her nervousness she rose and picked up some embroidery, adjusting her spectacles and coughing. When she sat down she said: “No one could take things easier than I do as regards housekeeping. I can assure you I let dozens of little matters go, rather than bother myself.”

“Then why do you bother now?” Sophia posed her.

“I can’t leave the place like that.” Constance was hurt.

“There’s one thing I can’t understand,” said Sophia, raising her head and gazing at Constance again, “and that is, why you live in St. Luke’s Square at all.”

“I must live somewhere. And I’m sure it’s very pleasant.”

“In all that smoke! And with that dirt! And the house is very old.”

“It’s a great deal better built than a lot of those new houses by the Park,” Constance sharply retorted. In spite of herself she resented any criticism of her house. She even resented the obvious truth that it was old.

“You’ll never get a servant to stay in that cellar-kitchen, for one thing,” said Sophia, keeping calm.

“Oh! I don’t know about that! I don’t know about that! That Bennion woman didn’t object to it, anyway. It’s all very well for you, Sophia, to talk like that. But I know Bursley perhaps better than you do.” She was tart again. “And I can assure you that my house is looked upon as a very good house indeed.”

“Oh! I don’t say it isn’t; I don’t say it isn’t. But you would be better away from it. Every one says that.”

“Every one?” Constance looked up, dropping