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_ "Well," said Mr. Povey, rising from the rocking-chair that in a
previous age had been John Baines's, "I've got to make a start
some time, so I may as well begin now!"
And he went from the parlour into the shop. Constance's eye
followed him as far as the door, where their glances met for an
instant in the transient gaze which expresses the tenderness of
people who feel more than they kiss.
It was on the morning of this day that Mrs. Baines, relinquishing
the sovereignty of St. Luke's Square, had gone to live as a
younger sister in the house of Harriet Maddack at Axe. Constance
guessed little of the secret anguish of that departure. She only
knew that it was just like her mother, having perfectly arranged
the entire house for the arrival of the honeymoon couple from
Buxton, to flit early away so as to spare the natural blushing
diffidence of the said couple. It was like her mother's
commonsense and her mother's sympathetic comprehension. Further,
Constance did not pursue her mother's feelings, being far too busy
with her own. She sat there full of new knowledge and new
importance, brimming with experience and strange, unexpected
aspirations, purposes, yes--and cunnings! And yet, though the very
curves of her cheeks seemed to be mysteriously altering, the old
Constance still lingered in that frame, an innocent soul
hesitating to spread its wings and quit for ever the body which
had been its home; you could see the timid thing peeping wistfully
out of the eyes of the married woman.
Constance rang the bell for Maggie to clear the table; and as she
did so she had the illusion that she was not really a married
woman and a house-mistress, but only a kind of counterfeit. She
did most fervently hope that all would go right in the house--at
any rate until she had grown more accustomed to her situation.
The hope was to be disappointed. Maggie's rather silly, obsequious
smile concealed but for a moment the ineffable tragedy that had
lain in wait for unarmed Constance.
"If you please, Mrs. Povey," said Maggie, as she crushed cups
together on the tin tray with her great, red hands, which always
looked like something out of a butcher's shop; then a pause, "Will
you please accept of this?"
Now, before the wedding Maggie had already, with tears of
affection, given Constance a pair of blue glass vases (in order to
purchase which she had been obliged to ask for special permission
to go out), and Constance wondered what was coming now from
Maggie's pocket. A small piece of folded paper came from Maggie's
pocket. Constance accepted of it, and read: "I begs to give one
month's notice to leave. Signed Maggie. June 10, 1867."
"Maggie!" exclaimed the old Constance, terrified by this
incredible occurrence, ere the married woman could strangle her.
"I never give notice before, Mrs. Povey," said Maggie, "so I don't
know as I know how it ought for be done--not rightly. But I hope
as you'll accept of it, Mrs. Povey."
"Oh! of course," said Mrs. Povey, primly, just as if Maggie was
not the central supporting pillar of the house, just as if Maggie
had not assisted at her birth, just as if the end of the world had
not abruptly been announced, just as if St. Luke's Square were not
inconceivable without Maggie. "But why--"
"Well, Mrs. Povey, I've been a-thinking it over in my kitchen, and
I said to myself: 'If there's going to be one change there'd
better be two,' I says. Not but what I wouldn't work my fingers to
the bone for ye, Miss Constance."
Here Maggie began to cry into the tray.
Constance looked at her. Despite the special muslin of that day
she had traces of the slatternliness of which Mrs. Baines had
never been able to cure her. She was over forty, big, gawky. She
had no figure, no charms of any kind. She was what was left of a
woman after twenty-two years in the cave of a philanthropic
family. And in her cave she had actually been thinking things
over! Constance detected for the first time, beneath the
dehumanized drudge, the stirrings of a separate and perhaps
capricious individuality. Maggie's engagements had never been real
to her employers. Within the house she had never been, in
practice, anything but 'Maggie'--an organism. And now she was
permitting herself ideas about changes!
"You'll soon be suited with another, Mrs. Povey," said Maggie.
"There's many a--many a--" She burst into sobs.
"But if you really want to leave, what are you crying for,
Maggie?" asked Mrs. Povey, at her wisest. "Have you told mother?"
"No, miss," Maggie whimpered, absently wiping her wrinkled cheeks
with ineffectual muslin. "I couldn't seem to fancy telling your
mother. And as you're the mistress now, I thought as I'd save it
for you when you come home. I hope you'll excuse me, Mrs. Povey."
"Of course I'm very sorry. You've been a very good servant. And in
these days--"
The child had acquired this turn of speech from her mother. It did
not appear to occur to either of them that they were living in the
sixties.
"Thank ye, miss."
"And what are you thinking of doing, Maggie? You know you won't
get many places like this."
"To tell ye the truth, Mrs. Povey, I'm going to get married
mysen."
"Indeed!" murmured Constance, with the perfunctoriness of habit in
replying to these tidings.
"Oh! but I am, mum," Maggie insisted. "It's all settled. Mr.
Hollins, mum."
"Not Hollins, the fish-hawker!"
"Yes, mum. I seem to fancy him. You don't remember as him and me
was engaged in '48. He was my first, like. I broke it off because
he was in that Chartist lot, and I knew as Mr. Baines would never
stand that. Now he's asked me again. He's been a widower this long
time."
"I'm sure I hope you'll be happy, Maggie. But what about his
habits?"
"He won't have no habits with me, Mrs. Povey."
A woman was definitely emerging from the drudge.
When Maggie, having entirely ceased sobbing, had put the folded
cloth in the table-drawer and departed with the tray, her mistress
became frankly the girl again. No primness about her as she stood
alone there in the parlour; no pretence that Maggie's notice to
leave was an everyday document, to be casually glanced at--as one
glances at an unpaid bill! She would be compelled to find a new
servant, making solemn inquiries into character, and to train the
new servant, and to talk to her from heights from which she had
never addressed Maggie. At that moment she had an illusion that
there were no other available, suitable servants in the whole
world. And the arranged marriage? She felt that this time--the
thirteenth or fourteenth time--the engagement was serious and
would only end at the altar. The vision of Maggie and Hollins at
the altar shocked her. Marriage was a series of phenomena, and a
general state, very holy and wonderful--too sacred, somehow, for
such creatures as Maggie and Hollins. Her vague, instinctive
revolt against such a usage of matrimony centred round the idea of
a strong, eternal smell of fish. However, the projected outrage on
a hallowed institution troubled her much less than the imminent
problem of domestic service.
She ran into the shop--or she would have run if she had not
checked her girlishness betimes--and on her lips, ready to be
whispered importantly into a husband's astounded ear, were the
words, "Maggie has given notice! Yes! Truly!" But Samuel Povey was
engaged. He was leaning over the counter and staring at an
outspread paper upon which a certain Mr. Yardley was making
strokes with a thick pencil. Mr. Yardley, who had a long red
beard, painted houses and rooms. She knew him only by sight. In
her mind she always associated him with the sign over his premises
in Trafalgar Road, "Yardley Bros., Authorised plumbers. Painters.
Decorators. Paper-hangers. Facia writers." For years, in
childhood, she had passed that sign without knowing what sort of
things 'Bros,' and 'Facia' were, and what was the mysterious
similarity between a plumber and a version of the Bible. She could
not interrupt her husband, he was wholly absorbed; nor could she
stay in the shop (which appeared just a little smaller than
usual), for that would have meant an unsuccessful endeavour to
front the young lady-assistants as though nothing in particular
had happened to her. So she went sedately up the showroom stairs
and thus to the bedroom floors of the house--her house! Mrs.
Povey's house! She even climbed to Constance's old bedroom; her
mother had stripped the bed--that was all, except a slight
diminution of this room, corresponding to that of the shop! Then
to the drawing-room. In the recess outside the drawing-room door
the black box of silver plate still lay. She had expected her
mother to take it; but no! Assuredly her mother was one to do
things handsomely--when she did them. In the drawing-room, not a
tassel of an antimacassar touched! Yes, the fire-screen, the
luscious bunch of roses on an expanse of mustard, which Constance
had worked for her mother years ago, was gone! That her mother
should have clung to just that one souvenir, out of all the heavy
opulence of the drawing-room, touched Constance intimately. She
perceived that if she could not talk to her husband she must write
to her mother. And she sat down at the oval table and wrote,
"Darling mother, I am sure you will be very surprised to hear. ...
She means it. ... I think she is making a serious mistake. Ought I
to put an advertisement in the Signal, or will it do if. ...
Please write by return. We are back and have enjoyed ourselves
very much. Sam says he enjoys getting up late. ..." And so on to
the last inch of the fourth scolloped page.
She was obliged to revisit the shop for a stamp, stamps being kept
in Mr. Povey's desk in the corner--a high desk, at which you
stood. Mr. Povey was now in earnest converse with Mr. Yardley at
the door, and twilight, which began a full hour earlier in the
shop than in the Square, had cast faint shadows in corners behind
counters.
"Will you just run out with this to the pillar, Miss Dadd?"
"With pleasure, Mrs. Povey."
"Where are you going to?" Mr. Povey interrupted his conversation
to stop the flying girl.
"She's just going to the post for me," Constance called out from
the region of the till.
"Oh! All right!"
A trifle! A nothing! Yet somehow, in the quiet customerless shop,
the episode, with the scarce perceptible difference in Samuel's
tone at his second remark, was delicious to Constance. Somehow it
was the REAL beginning of her wifehood. (There had been about nine
other real beginnings in the past fortnight.)
Mr. Povey came in to supper, laden with ledgers and similar works
which Constance had never even pretended to understand. It was a
sign from him that the honeymoon was over. He was proprietor now,
and his ardour for ledgers most justifiable. Still, there was the
question of her servant.
"Never!" he exclaimed, when she told him all about the end of the
world. A 'never' which expressed extreme astonishment and the
liveliest concern!
But Constance had anticipated that he would have been just a
little more knocked down, bowled over, staggered, stunned,
flabbergasted. In a swift gleam of insight she saw that she had
been in danger of forgetting her role of experienced, capable
married woman.
"I shall have to set about getting a fresh one," she said hastily,
with an admirable assumption of light and easy casualness.
Mr. Povey seemed to think that Hollins would suit Maggie pretty
well. He made no remark to the betrothed when she answered the
final bell of the night.
He opened his ledgers, whistling.
"I think I shall go up, dear," said Constance. "I've a lot of
things to put away."
"Do," said he. "Call out when you've done." _
Read next: BOOK II CONSTANCE: CHAPTER I - REVOLUTION: PART II
Read previous: BOOK I MRS. BAINES: CHAPTER VII - A DEFEAT: PART III
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