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_ Neither Mr. Povey nor Constance introduced the delicate subject to
her again, and she was determined not to be the first to speak of
it. She considered that Mr. Povey had taken advantage of his
position, and that he had also been infantile and impolite. And
somehow she privately blamed Constance for his behaviour. So the
matter hung, as it were, suspended in the ether between the
opposing forces of pride and passion.
Shortly afterwards events occurred compared to which the
vicissitudes of Mr. Povey's heart were of no more account than a
shower of rain in April. And fate gave no warning of them; it
rather indicated a complete absence of events. When the customary
advice circular arrived from Birkinshaws, the name of 'our Mr.
Gerald Scales' was replaced on it by another and an unfamiliar
name. Mrs. Baines, seeing the circular by accident, experienced a
sense of relief, mingled with the professional disappointment of a
diplomatist who has elaborately provided for contingencies which
have failed to happen. She had sent Sophia away for nothing; and
no doubt her maternal affection had exaggerated a molehill into a
mountain. Really, when she reflected on the past, she could not
recall a single fact that would justify her theory of an
attachment secretly budding between Sophia and the young man
Scales! Not a single little fact! All she could bring forward was
that Sophia had twice encountered Scales in the street.
She felt a curious interest in the fate of Scales, for whom in her
own mind she had long prophesied evil, and when Birkinshaws'
representative came she took care to be in the shop; her intention
was to converse with him, and ascertain as much as was
ascertainable, after Mr. Povey had transacted business. For this
purpose, at a suitable moment, she traversed the shop to Mr.
Povey's side, and in so doing she had a fleeting view of King
Street, and in King Street of a familiar vehicle. She stopped, and
seemed to catch the distant sound of knocking. Abandoning the
traveller, she hurried towards the parlour, in the passage she
assuredly did hear knocking, angry and impatient knocking, the
knocking of someone who thinks he has knocked too long.
"Of course Maggie is at the top of the house!" she muttered
sarcastically.
She unchained, unbolted, and unlocked the side-door.
"At last!" It was Aunt Harriet's voice, exacerbated. "What! You,
sister? You're soon up. What a blessing!"
The two majestic and imposing creatures met on the mat, craning
forward so that their lips might meet above their terrific bosoms.
"What's the matter?" Mrs. Baines asked, fearfully.
"Well, I do declare!" said Mrs. Maddack. "And I've driven
specially over to ask you!"
"Where's Sophia?" demanded Mrs. Baines.
"You don't mean to say she's not come, sister?" Mrs. Maddack sank
down on to the sofa.
"Come?" Mrs. Baines repeated. "Of course she's not come! What do
you mean, sister?"
"The very moment she got Constance's letter yesterday, saying you
were ill in bed and she'd better come over to help in the shop,
she started. I got Bratt's dog-cart for her."
Mrs. Baines in her turn also sank down on to the sofa.
"I've not been ill," she said. "And Constance hasn't written for a
week! Only yesterday I was telling her--"
"Sister--it can't be! Sophia had letters from Constance every
morning. At least she said they were from Constance. I told her to
be sure and write me how you were last night, and she promised
faithfully she would. And it was because I got nothing by this
morning's post that I decided to come over myself, to see if it
was anything serious."
"Serious it is!" murmured Mrs. Baines.
"What--"
"Sophia's run off. That's the plain English of it!" said Mrs.
Baines with frigid calm.
"Nay! That I'll never believe. I've looked after Sophia night and
day as if she was my own, and--"
"If she hasn't run off, where is she?"
Mrs. Maddack opened the door with a tragic gesture.
"Bladen," she called in a loud voice to the driver of the
waggonette, who was standing on the pavement.
"Yes'm."
"It was Pember drove Miss Sophia yesterday, wasn't it?"
"Yes'm."
She hesitated. A clumsy question might enlighten a member of the
class which ought never to be enlightened about one's private
affairs.
"He didn't come all the way here?"
"No'm. He happened to say last night when he got back as Miss
Sophia had told him to set her down at Knype Station."
"I thought so!" said Mrs. Maddack, courageously.
"Yes'm."
"Sister!" she moaned, after carefully shutting the door.
They clung to each other.
The horror of what had occurred did not instantly take full
possession of them, because the power of credence, of
imaginatively realizing a supreme event, whether of great grief or
of great happiness, is ridiculously finite. But every minute the
horror grew more clear, more intense, more tragically dominant
over them. There were many things that they could not say to each
other,--from pride, from shame, from the inadequacy of words.
Neither could utter the name of Gerald Scales. And Aunt Harriet
could not stoop to defend herself from a possible charge of
neglect; nor could Mrs. Baines stoop to assure her sister that she
was incapable of preferring such a charge. And the sheer, immense
criminal folly of Sophia could not even be referred to: it was
unspeakable. So the interview proceeded, lamely, clumsily,
inconsequently, leading to naught.
Sophia was gone. She was gone with Gerald Scales.
That beautiful child, that incalculable, untamable, impossible
creature, had committed the final folly; without pretext or
excuse, and with what elaborate deceit! Yes, without excuse! She
had not been treated harshly; she had had a degree of liberty
which would have astounded and shocked her grandmothers; she had
been petted, humoured, spoilt. And her answer was to disgrace the
family by an act as irrevocable as it was utterly vicious. If
among her desires was the desire to humiliate those majesties, her
mother and Aunt Harriet, she would have been content could she
have seen them on the sofa there, humbled, shamed, mortally
wounded! Ah, the monstrous Chinese cruelty of youth!
What was to be done? Tell dear Constance? No, this was not, at the
moment, an affair for the younger generation. It was too new and
raw for the younger generation. Moreover, capable, proud, and
experienced as they were, they felt the need of a man's voice, and
a man's hard, callous ideas. It was a case for Mr. Critchlow.
Maggie was sent to fetch him, with a particular request that he
should come to the side-door. He came expectant, with the
pleasurable anticipation of disaster, and he was not disappointed.
He passed with the sisters the happiest hour that had fallen to
him for years. Quickly he arranged the alternatives for them.
Would they tell the police, or would they take the risks of
waiting? They shied away, but with fierce brutality he brought
them again and again to the immediate point of decision. ... Well,
they could not tell the police! They simply could not. Then they
must face another danger. ... He had no mercy for them. And while
he was torturing them there arrived a telegram, despatched from
Charing Cross, "I am all right, Sophia." That proved, at any rate,
that the child was not heartless, not merely careless.
Only yesterday, it seemed to Mrs. Baines, she had borne Sophia;
only yesterday she was a baby, a schoolgirl to be smacked. The
years rolled up in a few hours. And now she was sending telegrams
from a place called Charing Cross! How unlike was the hand of the
telegram to Sophia's hand! How mysteriously curt and inhuman was
that official hand, as Mrs. Baines stared at it through red, wet
eyes!
Mr. Critchlow said some one should go to Manchester, to ascertain
about Scales. He went himself, that afternoon, and returned with
the news that an aunt of Scales had recently died, leaving him
twelve thousand pounds, and that he had, after quarrelling with
his uncle Boldero, abandoned Birkinshaws at an hour's notice and
vanished with his inheritance.
"It's as plain as a pikestaff," said Mr. Critchlow. "I could ha'
warned ye o' all this years ago, even since she killed her
father!"
Mr. Critchlow left nothing unsaid.
During the night Mrs. Baines lived through all Sophia's life,
lived through it more intensely than ever Sophia had done.
The next day people began to know. A whisper almost inaudible
went across the Square, and into the town: and in the stillness
every one heard it. "Sophia Baines run off with a commercial!"
In another fortnight a note came, also dated from London.
"Dear Mother, I am married to Gerald Scales. Please don't worry
about me. We are going abroad. Your affectionate Sophia. Love to
Constance." No tear-stains on that pale blue sheet! No sign of
agitation!
And Mrs. Baines said: "My life is over." It was, though she was
scarcely fifty. She felt old, old and beaten. She had fought and
been vanquished. The everlasting purpose had been too much for
her. Virtue had gone out of her--the virtue to hold up her head
and look the Square in the face. She, the wife of John Baines!
She, a Syme of Axe!
Old houses, in the course of their history, see sad sights, and
never forget them! And ever since, in the solemn physiognomy of
the triple house of John Baines at the corner of St. Luke's Square
and King Street, have remained the traces of the sight it saw on
the morning of the afternoon when Mr. and Mrs. Povey returned from
their honeymoon--the sight of Mrs. Baines getting into the
waggonette for Axe; Mrs. Baines, encumbered with trunks and
parcels, leaving the scene of her struggles and her defeat,
whither she had once come as slim as a wand, to return stout and
heavy, and heavy-hearted, to her childhood; content to live with
her grandiose sister until such time as she should be ready for
burial! The grimy and impassive old house perhaps heard her heart
saying: "Only yesterday they were little girls, ever so tiny, and
now--" The driving-off of a waggonette can be a dreadful thing. _
Read next: BOOK II CONSTANCE: CHAPTER I - REVOLUTION: PART I
Read previous: BOOK I MRS. BAINES: CHAPTER VII - A DEFEAT: PART II
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