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_ "Is that you, Mrs. Baines?" asked Gerald Scales, in a half-witted
voice, looking up, and then getting to his feet. "Is this your
house? So it is! Well, I'd no idea I was sitting on your
doorstep."
He smiled timidly, nay, sheepishly, while the women and Mr. Povey
surrounded him with their astonished faces under the light of the
gas-lamp. Certainly he was very pale.
"But whatever is the matter, Mr. Scales?" Mrs. Baines demanded in
an anxious tone. "Are you ill? Have you been suddenly--"
"Oh no," said the young man lightly. "It's nothing. Only I was set
on just now, down there,"--he pointed to the depths of King
Street.
"Set on!" Mrs. Baines repeated, alarmed.
"That makes the fourth case in a week, that we KNOW of!" said Mr.
Povey. "It really is becoming a scandal."
The fact was that, owing to depression of trade, lack of
employment, and rigorous weather, public security in the Five
Towns was at that period not as perfect as it ought to have been.
In the stress of hunger the lower classes were forgetting their
manners--and this in spite of the altruistic and noble efforts of
their social superiors to relieve the destitution due, of course,
to short-sighted improvidence. When (the social superiors were
asking in despair) will the lower classes learn to put by for a
rainy day? (They might have said a snowy and a frosty day.) It was
'really too bad' of the lower classes, when everything that could
be done was being done for them, to kill, or even attempt to kill,
the goose that lays the golden eggs! And especially in a
respectable town! What, indeed, were things coming to? Well, here
was Mr. Gerald Scales, gentleman from Manchester, a witness and
victim to the deplorable moral condition of the Five Towns. What
would he think of the Five Towns? The evil and the danger had been
a topic of discussion in the shop for a week past, and now it was
brought home to them.
"I hope you weren't--" said Mrs. Baines, apologetically and
sympathetically.
"Oh no!" Mr. Scales interrupted her quite gaily. "I managed to
beat them off. Only my elbow--"
Meanwhile it was continuing to snow.
"Do come in!" said Mrs. Baines.
"I couldn't think of troubling you," said Mr. Scales. "I'm all
right now, and I can find my way to the Tiger."
"You must come in, if it's only for a minute," said Mrs. Baines,
with decision. She had to think of the honour of the town.
"You're very kind," said Mr. Scales.
The door was suddenly opened from within, and Maggie surveyed them
from the height of the two steps.
"A happy New Year, mum, to all of you."
"Thank you, Maggie," said Mrs. Baines, and primly added:
"The same to you!" And in her own mind she said that Maggie could
best prove her desire for a happy new year by contriving in future
not to 'scamp her corners,' and not to break so much crockery.
Sophia, scarce knowing what she did, mounted the steps.
"Mr. Scales ought to let our New Year in, my pet," Mrs. Baines
stopped her.
"Oh, of course, mother!" Sophia concurred with, a gasp, springing
back nervously.
Mr. Scales raised his hat, and duly let the new year, and much
snow, into the Baines parlour. And there was a vast deal of
stamping of feet, agitating of umbrellas, and shaking of cloaks
and ulsters on the doormat in the corner by the harmonium. And
Maggie took away an armful of everything snowy, including
goloshes, and received instructions to boil milk and to bring
'mince.' Mr. Povey said "B-r-r-r!" and shut the door (which was
bordered with felt to stop ventilation); Mrs. Baines turned up the
gas till it sang, and told Sophia to poke the fire, and actually
told Constance to light the second gas.
Excitement prevailed.
The placidity of existence had been agreeably disturbed (yes,
agreeably, in spite of horror at the attack on Mr. Scales's elbow)
by an adventure. Moreover, Mr. Scales proved to be in evening-
dress. And nobody had ever worn evening-dress in that house
before.
Sophia's blood was in her face, and it remained there, enhancing
the vivid richness of her beauty. She was dizzy with a strange and
disconcerting intoxication. She seemed to be in a world of
unrealities and incredibilities. Her ears heard with
indistinctness, and the edges of things and people had a prismatic
colouring. She was in a state of ecstatic, unreasonable,
inexplicable happiness. All her misery, doubts, despair, rancour,
churlishness, had disappeared. She was as softly gentle as
Constance. Her eyes were the eyes of a fawn, and her gestures
delicious in their modest and sensitive grace. Constance was
sitting on the sofa, and, after glancing about as if for shelter,
she sat down on the sofa by Constance's side. She tried not to
stare at Mr. Scales, but her gaze would not leave him. She was
sure that he was the most perfect man in the world. A shortish
man, perhaps, but a perfect. That such perfection could be was
almost past her belief. He excelled all her dreams of the ideal
man. His smile, his voice, his hand, his hair--never were such!
Why, when he spoke--it was positively music! When he smiled--it
was heaven! His smile, to Sophia, was one of those natural
phenomena which are so lovely that they make you want to shed
tears. There is no hyperbole in this description of Sophia's
sensations, but rather an under-statement of them. She was utterly
obsessed by the unique qualities of Mr. Scales. Nothing would have
persuaded her that the peer of Mr. Scales existed among men, or
could possibly exist. And it was her intense and profound
conviction of his complete pre-eminence that gave him, as he sat
there in the rocking-chair in her mother's parlour, that air of
the unreal and the incredible.
"I stayed in the town on purpose to go to a New Year's party at
Mr. Lawton's," Mr. Scales was saying.
"Ah! So you know Lawyer Lawton!" observed Mrs. Baines, impressed,
for Lawyer Lawton did not consort with tradespeople. He was jolly
with them, and he did their legal business for them, but he was
not of them. His friends came from afar.
"My people are old acquaintances of his," said Mr. Scales, sipping
the milk which Maggie had brought.
"Now, Mr. Scales, you must taste my mince. A happy month for every
tart you eat, you know," Mrs. Baines reminded him.
He bowed. "And it was as I was coming away from there that I got
into difficulties." He laughed.
Then he recounted the struggle, which had, however, been brief, as
the assailants lacked pluck. He had slipped and fallen on his
elbow on the kerb, and his elbow might have been broken, had not
the snow been so thick. No, it did not hurt him now; doubtless a
mere bruise. It was fortunate that the miscreants had not got the
better of him, for he had in his pocket-book a considerable sum of
money in notes--accounts paid! He had often thought what an
excellent thing it would be if commercials could travel with dogs,
particularly in winter. There was nothing like a dog.
"You are fond of dogs?" asked Mr. Povey, who had always had a
secret but impracticable ambition to keep a dog.
"Yes," said Mr. Scales, turning now to Mr. Povey.
"Keep one?" asked Mr. Povey, in a sporting tone.
"I have a fox-terrier bitch," said Mr. Scales, "that took a first
at Knutsford; but she's getting old now."
The sexual epithet fell queerly on the room. Mr. Povey, being a
man of the world, behaved as if nothing had happened; but Mrs.
Baines's curls protested against this unnecessary coarseness.
Constance pretended not to hear. Sophia did not understandingly
hear. Mr. Scales had no suspicion that he was transgressing a
convention by virtue of which dogs have no sex. Further, he had no
suspicion of the local fame of Mrs. Baines's mince-tarts. He had
already eaten more mince-tarts than he could enjoy, before
beginning upon hers, and Mrs. Baines missed the enthusiasm to
which she was habituated from consumers of her pastry.
Mr. Povey, fascinated, proceeded in the direction of dogs, and it
grew more and more evident that Mr. Scales, who went out to
parties in evening dress, instead of going in respectable broad-
cloth to watch-night services, who knew the great ones of the
land, and who kept dogs of an inconvenient sex, was neither an
ordinary commercial traveller nor the kind of man to which the
Square was accustomed. He came from a different world.
"Lawyer Lawton's party broke up early--at least I mean,
considering--" Mrs. Baines hesitated.
After a pause Mr. Scales replied, "Yes, I left immediately the
clock struck twelve. I've a heavy day to-morrow--I mean to-day."
It was not an hour for a prolonged visit, and in a few minutes Mr.
Scales was ready again to depart. He admitted a certain feebleness
('wankiness,' he playfully called it, being proud of his skill in
the dialect), and a burning in his elbow; but otherwise he was
quite well--thanks to Mrs. Baines's most kind hospitality ... He
really didn't know how he came to be sitting on her doorstep. Mrs.
Baines urged him, if he met a policeman on his road to the Tiger,
to furnish all particulars about the attempted highway robbery,
and he said he decidedly would.
He took his leave with distinguished courtliness.
"If I have a moment I shall run in to-morrow morning just to let
you know I'm all right," said he, in the white street.
"Oh, do!" said Constance. Constance's perfect innocence made her
strangely forward at times.
"A happy New Year and many of them!"
"Thanks! Same to you! Don't get lost."
"Straight up the Square and first on the right," called the
commonsense of Mr. Povey.
Nothing else remained to say, and the visitor disappeared silently
in the whirling snow. "Brrr!" murmured Mr. Povey, shutting the
door. Everybody felt: "What a funny ending of the old year!"
"Sophia, my pet," Mrs. Baines began.
But Sophia had vanished to bed.
"Tell her about her new night-dress," said Mrs. Baines to
Constance.
"Yes, mother."
"I don't know that I'm so set up with that young man, after all,"
Mrs. Baines reflected aloud.
"Oh, mother!" Constance protested. "I think he's just lovely."
"He never looks you straight in the face," said Mrs. Baines.
"Don't tell ME!" laughed Constance, kissing her mother good night.
"You're only on your high horse because he didn't praise your
mince. _I_ noticed it." _
Read next: BOOK I MRS. BAINES: CHAPTER V - THE TRAVELLER: PART IV
Read previous: BOOK I MRS. BAINES: CHAPTER V - THE TRAVELLER: PART II
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