________________________________________________
_ It is remarkable what a little thing will draw even the most
regular and serious people from the deep groove of their habits.
One morning in March, a boneshaker, an affair on two equal wooden
wheels joined by a bar of iron, in the middle of which was a
wooden saddle, disturbed the gravity of St. Luke's Square. True,
it was probably the first boneshaker that had ever attacked the
gravity of St. Luke's Square. It came out of the shop of Daniel
Povey, the confectioner and baker, and Samuel Povey's celebrated
cousin, in Boulton Terrace. Boulton Terrace formed nearly a right
angle with the Baines premises, and at the corner of the angle
Wedgwood Street and King Street left the Square. The boneshaker
was brought forth by Dick Povey, the only son of Daniel, now aged
eleven years, under the superintendence of his father, and the
Square soon perceived that Dick had a natural talent for breaking-
in an untrained boneshaker. After a few attempts he could remain
on the back of the machine for at least ten yards, and his feats
had the effect of endowing St. Luke's Square with the
attractiveness of a circus. Samuel Povey watched with candid
interest from the ambush of his door, while the unfortunate young
lady assistants, though aware of the performance that was going
on, dared not stir from the stove. Samuel was tremendously tempted
to sally out boldly, and chat with his cousin about the toy; he
had surely a better right to do so than any other tradesman in the
Square, since he was of the family; but his diffidence prevented
him from moving. Presently Daniel Povey and Dick went to the top
of the Square with the machine, opposite Holl's, and Dick, being
carefully installed in the saddle, essayed to descend the gentle
paven slopes of the Square. He failed time after time; the machine
had an astonishing way of turning round, running uphill, and then
lying calmly on its side. At this point of Dick's life-history
every shop-door in the Square was occupied by an audience. At last
the boneshaker displayed less unwillingness to obey, and lo! in a
moment Dick was riding down the Square, and the spectators held
their breath as if he had been Blondin crossing Niagara. Every
second he ought to have fallen off, but he contrived to keep
upright. Already he had accomplished twenty yards--thirty yards!
It was a miracle that he was performing! The transit continued,
and seemed to occupy hours. And then a faint hope rose in the
breast of the watchers that the prodigy might arrive at the bottom
of the Square. His speed was increasing with his 'nack.' But the
Square was enormous, boundless. Samuel Povey gazed at the
approaching phenomenon, as a bird at a serpent, with bulging,
beady eyes. The child's speed went on increasing and his path grew
straighter. Yes, he would arrive; he would do it! Samuel Povey
involuntarily lifted one leg in his nervous tension. And now the
hope that Dick would arrive became a fear, as his pace grew still
more rapid. Everybody lifted one leg, and gaped. And the intrepid
child surged on, and, finally victorious, crashed into the
pavement in front of Samuel at the rate of quite six miles an
hour.
Samuel picked him up, unscathed. And somehow this picking up of
Dick invested Samuel with importance, gave him a share in the
glory of the feat itself.
Daniel Povey same running and joyous. "Not so bad for a start,
eh?" exclaimed the great Daniel. Though by no means a simple man,
his pride in his offspring sometimes made him a little naive.
Father and son explained the machine to Samuel, Dick incessantly
repeating the exceedingly strange truth that if you felt you were
falling to your right you must turn to your right and vice versa.
Samuel found himself suddenly admitted, as it were, to the inner
fellowship of the boneshaker, exalted above the rest of the
Square. In another adventure more thrilling events occurred. The
fair-haired Dick was one of those dangerous, frenzied madcaps who
are born without fear. The secret of the machine had been revealed
to him in his recent transit, and he was silently determining to
surpass himself. Precariously balanced, he descended the Square
again, frowning hard, his teeth set, and actually managed to
swerve into King Street. Constance, in the parlour, saw an
incomprehensible winged thing fly past the window. The cousins
Povey sounded an alarm and protest and ran in pursuit; for the
gradient of King Street is, in the strict sense, steep. Half-way
down King Street Dick was travelling at twenty miles an hour, and
heading straight for the church, as though he meant to
disestablish it and perish. The main gate of the churchyard was
open, and that affrighting child, with a lunatic's luck, whizzed
safely through the portals into God's acre. The cousins Povey
discovered him lying on a green grave, clothed in pride. His first
words were: "Dad, did you pick my cap up?" The symbolism of the
amazing ride did not escape the Square; indeed, it was much
discussed.
This incident led to a friendship between the cousins. They formed
a habit of meeting in the Square for a chat. The meetings were the
subject of comment, for Samuel's relations with the greater Daniel
had always been of the most distant. It was understood that Samuel
disapproved of Mrs. Daniel Povey even, more than the majority of
people disapproved of her. Mrs. Daniel Povey, however, was away
from home; probably, had she not been, Samuel would not even have
gone to the length of joining Daniel on the neutral ground of the
open Square. But having once broken the ice, Samuel was glad to be
on terms of growing intimacy with his cousin. The friendship
flattered him, for Daniel, despite his wife, was a figure in a
world larger than Samuel's; moreover, it consecrated his position
as the equal of no matter what tradesman (apprentice though he had
been), and also he genuinely liked and admired Daniel, rather to
his own astonishment.
Every one liked Daniel Povey; he was a favourite among all ranks.
The leading confectioner, a member of the Local Board, and a
sidesman at St. Luke's, he was, and had been for twenty-five
years, very prominent in the town. He was a tall, handsome man,
with a trimmed, greying beard, a jolly smile, and a flashing, dark
eye. His good humour seemed to be permanent. He had dignity
without the slightest stiffness; he was welcomed by his equals and
frankly adored by his inferiors. He ought to have been Chief
Bailiff, for he was rich enough; but there intervened a mysterious
obstacle between Daniel Povey and the supreme honour, a scarcely
tangible impediment which could not be definitely stated. He was
capable, honest, industrious, successful, and an excellent
speaker; and if he did not belong to the austerer section of
society, if, for example, he thought nothing of dropping into the
Tiger for a glass of beer, or of using an oath occasionally, or of
telling a facetious story--well, in a busy, broad-minded town of
thirty thousand inhabitants, such proclivities are no bar whatever
to perfect esteem. But--how is one to phrase it without wronging
Daniel Povey? He was entirely moral; his views were
unexceptionable. The truth is that, for the ruling classes of
Bursley, Daniel Povey was just a little too fanatical a worshipper
of the god Pan. He was one of the remnant who had kept alive the
great Pan tradition from the days of the Regency through the vast,
arid Victorian expanse of years. The flighty character of his wife
was regarded by many as a judgment upon him for the robust
Rabelaisianism of his more private conversation, for his frank
interest in, his eternal preoccupation with, aspects of life and
human activity which, though essential to the divine purpose, are
not openly recognized as such--even by Daniel Poveys. It was not a
question of his conduct; it was a question of the cast of his
mind. If it did not explain his friendship with the rector of St.
Luke's, it explained his departure from the Primitive Methodist
connexion, to which the Poveys as a family had belonged since
Primitive Methodism was created in Turnhill in 1807.
Daniel Povey had a way of assuming that every male was boiling
over with interest in the sacred cult of Pan. The assumption,
though sometimes causing inconvenience at first, usually conquered
by virtue of its inherent truthfulness. Thus it fell out with
Samuel. Samuel had not suspected that Pan had silken cords to draw
him. He had always averted his eyes from the god--that is to say,
within reason. Yet now Daniel, on perhaps a couple of fine
mornings a week, in full Square, with Fan sitting behind on the
cold stones, and Mr. Critchlow ironic at his door in a long white
apron, would entertain Samuel Povey for half an hour with Pan's
most intimate lore, and Samuel Povey would not blench. He would,
on the contrary, stand up to Daniel like a little man, and pretend
with all his might to be, potentially, a perfect arch-priest of
the god. Daniel taught him a lot; turned over the page of life for
him, as it were, and, showing the reverse side, seemed to say:
"You were missing all that." Samuel gazed upwards at the handsome
long nose and rich lips of his elder cousin, so experienced, so
agreeable, so renowned, so esteemed, so philosophic, and admitted
to himself that he had lived to the age of forty in a state of
comparative boobyism. And then he would gaze downwards at the
faint patch of flour on Daniel's right leg, and conceive that life
was, and must be, life.
Not many weeks after his initiation into the cult he was startled
by Constance's preoccupied face one evening. Now, a husband of six
years' standing, to whom it has not happened to become a father,
is not easily startled by such a face as Constance wore. Years ago
he had frequently been startled, had frequently lived in suspense
for a few days. But he had long since grown impervious to these
alarms. And now he was startled again--but as a man may be
startled who is not altogether surprised at being startled. And
seven endless days passed, and Samuel and Constance glanced at
each other like guilty things, whose secret refuses to be kept.
Then three more days passed, and another three. Then Samuel Povey
remarked in a firm, masculine, fact-fronting tone:
"Oh, there's no doubt about it!"
And they glanced at each other like conspirators who have lighted
a fuse and cannot take refuge in flight. Their eyes said
continually, with a delicious, an enchanting mixture of ingenuous
modesty and fearful joy:
"Well, we've gone and done it!"
There it was, the incredible, incomprehensible future--coming!
Samuel had never correctly imagined the manner of its heralding.
He had imagined in his early simplicity that one day Constance,
blushing, might put her mouth to his ear and whisper--something
positive. It had not occurred in the least like that. But things
are so obstinately, so incurably unsentimental.
"I think we ought to drive over and tell mother, on Sunday," said
Constance.
His impulse was to reply, in his grand, offhand style: "Oh, a
letter will do!"
But he checked himself and said, with careful deference: "You
think that will be better than writing?"
All was changed. He braced every fibre to meet destiny, and to
help Constance to meet it.
The weather threatened on Sunday. He went to Axe without
Constance. His cousin drove him there in a dog-cart, and he
announced that he should walk home, as the exercise would do him
good. During the drive Daniel, in whom he had not confided,
chattered as usual, and Samuel pretended to listen with the same
attitude as usual; but secretly he despised Daniel for a man who
has got something not of the first importance on the brain. His
perspective was truer than Daniel's.
He walked home, as he had decided, over the wavy moorland of the
county dreaming in the heart of England. Night fell on him in mid-
career, and he was tired. But the earth, as it whirled through
naked space, whirled up the moon for him, and he pressed on at a
good speed. A wind from Arabia wandering cooled his face. And at
last, over the brow of Toft End, he saw suddenly the Five Towns a-
twinkle on their little hills down in the vast amphitheatre. And
one of those lamps was Constance's lamp--one, somewhere. He lived,
then. He entered into the shadow of nature. The mysteries made him
solemn. What! A boneshaker, his cousin, and then this!
"Well, I'm damned! Well, I'm damned!" he kept repeating, he who
never swore. _
Read next: BOOK II CONSTANCE: CHAPTER III - CYRIL: PART I
Read previous: BOOK II CONSTANCE: CHAPTER II - CHRISTMAS AND THE FUTURE: PART III
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