________________________________________________
_ On the dark winter morning when Samuel set off to the grand
assize, Constance did not ask his views as to what protection he
would adopt against the weather. She silently ranged special
underclothing, and by the warmth of the fire, which for days she
had kept ablaze in the bedroom, Samuel silently donned the special
underclothing. Over that, with particular fastidious care, he put
his best suit. Not a word was spoken. Constance and he were not
estranged, but the relations between them were in a state of
feverish excitation. Samuel had had a cold on his flat chest for
weeks, and nothing that Constance could invent would move it. A
few days in bed or even in one room at a uniform temperature would
have surely worked the cure. Samuel, however, would not stay in
one room: he would not stay in the house, nor yet in Bursley. He
would take his lacerating cough on chilly trains to Stafford. He
had no ears for reason; he simply could not listen; he was in a
dream. After Christmas a crisis came. Constance grew desperate. It
was a battle between her will and his that occurred one night when
Constance, marshalling all her forces, suddenly insisted that he
must go out no more until he was cured. In the fight Constance was
scarcely recognizable. She deliberately gave way to hysteria; she
was no longer soft and gentle; she flung bitterness at him like
vitriol; she shrieked like a common shrew. It seems almost
incredible that Constance should have gone so far; but she did.
She accused him, amid sobs, of putting his cousin before his wife
and son, of not caring whether or not she was left a widow as the
result of this obstinacy. And she ended by crying passionately
that she might as well talk to a post. She might just as well have
talked to a post. Samuel answered quietly and coldly. He told her
that it was useless for her to put herself about, as he should act
as he thought fit. It was a most extraordinary scene, and quite
unique in their annals. Constance was beaten. She accepted the
defeat, gradually controlling her sobs and changing her tone to
the tone of the vanquished. She kissed him in bed, kissing the
rod. And he gravely kissed her.
Henceforward she knew, in practice, what the inevitable, when you
have to live with it, may contain of anguish wretched and
humiliating. Her husband was risking his life, so she was
absolutely convinced, and she could do nothing; she had come to
the bed-rock of Samuel's character. She felt that, for the time
being, she had a madman in the house, who could not be treated
according to ordinary principles. The continual strain aged her.
Her one source of relief was to talk with Cyril. She talked to him
without reserve, and the words 'your father,' 'your father,' were
everlastingly on her complaining tongue. Yes, she was utterly
changed. Often she would weep when alone.
Nevertheless she frequently forgot that she had been beaten. She
had no notion of honourable warfare. She was always beginning
again, always firing under a flag of truce; and thus she
constituted a very inconvenient opponent. Samuel was obliged,
while hardening on the main point, to compromise on. lesser
questions. She too could be formidable, and when her lips took a
certain pose, and her eyes glowed, he would have put on forty
mufflers had she commanded. Thus it was she who arranged all the
details of the supreme journey to Stafford. Samuel was to drive to
Knype, so as to avoid the rigours of the Loop Line train from
Bursley and the waiting on cold platforms. At Knype he was to take
the express, and to travel first-class.
After he was dressed on that gas-lit morning, he learnt bit by bit
the extent of her elaborate preparations. The breakfast was a
special breakfast, and he had to eat it all. Then the cab came,
and he saw Amy put hot bricks into it. Constance herself put
goloshes over his boots, not because it was damp, but because
indiarubber keeps the feet warm. Constance herself bandaged his
neck, and unbuttoned his waistcoat and stuck an extra flannel
under his dickey. Constance herself warmed his woollen gloves, and
enveloped him in his largest overcoat.
Samuel then saw Cyril getting ready to go out. "Where are you
off?" he demanded.
"He's going with you as far as Knype," said Constance grimly.
"He'll see you into the train and then come back here in the cab."
She had sprung this indignity upon him. She glared. Cyril glanced
with timid bravado from one to the other. Samuel had to yield.
Thus in the winter darkness--for it was not yet dawn--Samuel set
forth to the trial, escorted by his son. The reverberation of his
appalling cough from the cab was the last thing that Constance
heard.
During most of the day Constance sat in 'Miss Insull's corner' in
the shop. Twenty years ago this very corner had been hers. But
now, instead of large millinery-boxes enwrapped in brown paper, it
was shut off from the rest of the counter by a rich screen of
mahogany and ground-glass, and within the enclosed space all the
apparatus necessary to the activity of Miss Insull had been
provided for. However, it remained the coldest part of the whole
shop, as Miss Insull's fingers testified. Constance established
herself there more from a desire to do something, to interfere in
something, than from a necessity of supervising the shop, though
she had said to Samuel that she would keep an eye on the shop.
Miss Insull, whose throne was usurped, had to sit by the stove
with less important creatures; she did not like it, and her
underlings suffered accordingly.
It was a long day. Towards tea-time, just before Cyril was due
from school, Mr. Critchlow came surprisingly in. That is to say,
his arrival was less of a surprise to Miss Insull and the rest of
the staff than to Constance. For he had lately formed an irregular
habit of popping in at tea-time, to chat with Miss Insull. Mr.
Critchlow was still defying time. He kept his long, thin figure
perfectly erect. His features had not altered. His hair and heard
could not have been whiter than they had been for years past. He
wore his long white apron, and over that a thick reefer jacket. In
his long, knotty fingers he carried a copy of the Signal.
Evidently he had not expected to find the corner occupied by
Constance. She was sewing.
"So it's you!" he said, in his unpleasant, grating voice, not even
glancing at Miss Insull. He had gained the reputation of being the
rudest old man in Bursley. But his general demeanour expressed
indifference rather than rudeness. It was a manner that said:
"You've got to take me as I am. I may be an egotist, hard, mean,
and convinced; but those who don't like it can lump it. I'm
indifferent."
He put one elbow on the top of the screen, showing the Signal.
"Mr. Critchlow!" said Constance, primly; she had acquired Samuel's
dislike of him.
"It's begun!" he observed with mysterious glee.
"Has it?" Constance said eagerly. "Is it in the paper already?"
She had been far more disturbed about her husband's health than
about the trial of Daniel Povey for murder, but her interest in
the trial was of course tremendous. And this news, that it had
actually begun, thrilled her.
"Ay!" said Mr. Critchlow. "Didn't ye hear the Signal boy hollering
just now all over the Square?"
"No," said Constance. For her, newspapers did not exist. She never
had the idea of opening one, never felt any curiosity which she
could not satisfy, if she could satisfy it at all, without the
powerful aid of the press. And even on this day it had not
occurred to her that the Signal might be worth opening.
"Ay!" repeated Mr. Critchlow. "Seemingly it began at two o'clock--
or thereabouts." He gave a moment of his attention to a noisy gas-
jet, which he carefully lowered.
"What does it say?"
"Nothing yet!" said Mr. Critchlow; and they read the few brief
sentences, under their big heading, which described the formal
commencement of the trial of Daniel Povey for the murder of his
wife. "There was some as said," he remarked, pushing up his
spectacles, "that grand jury would alter the charge, or summat!"
He laughed, grimly tolerant of the extreme absurdity. "Ah!" he
added contemplatively, turning his head to see if the assistants
were listening. They were. It would have been too much, on such a
day, to expect a strict adherence to the etiquette of the shop.
Constance had been hearing a good deal lately of grand juries, but
she had understood nothing, nor had she sought to understand.
"I'm very glad it's come on so soon," she said. "In a sense, that
is! I was afraid Sam might be kept at Stafford for days. Do you
think it will last long?"
"Not it!" said Mr. Critchlow, positively. "There's naught in it to
spin out."
Then a silence, punctuated by the sound of stitching.
Constance would really have preferred not to converse with the old
man; but the desire for reassurance, for the calming of her own
fears, forced her to speak, though she knew well that Mr.
Critchlow was precisely the last man in the town to give moral
assistance if he thought it was wanted.
"I do hope everything will be all right!" she murmured.
"Everything'll be all right!" he said gaily. "Everything'll be all
right. Only it'll be all wrong for Dan."
"Whatever do you mean, Mr. Critchlow?" she protested.
Nothing, she reflected, could rouse pity in that heart, not even a
tragedy like Daniel's. She bit her lip for having spoken.
"Well," he said in loud tones, frankly addressing the girls round
the stove as much as Constance. "I've met with some rare good
arguments this new year, no mistake! There's been some as say that
Dan never meant to do it. That's as may be. But if it's a good
reason for not hanging, there's an end to capital punishment in
this country. 'Never meant'! There's a lot of 'em as 'never
meant'! Then I'm told as she was a gallivanting woman and no
housekeeper, and as often drunk as sober. I'd no call to be told
that. If strangling is a right punishment for a wife as spends her
time in drinking brandy instead of sweeping floors and airing
sheets, then Dan's safe. But I don't seem to see Judge Lindley
telling the jury as it is. I've been a juryman under Judge Lindley
myself--and more than once--and I don't seem to see him, like!" He
paused with his mouth open. "As for all them nobs," he continued,
"including th' rector, as have gone to Stafford to kiss the book
and swear that Dan's reputation is second to none--if they could
ha' sworn as Dan wasn't in th' house at all that night, if they
could ha' sworn he was in Jericho, there'd ha' been some sense in
their going. But as it is, they'd ha' done better to stop at home
and mind their business. Bless us! Sam wanted ME to go!"
He laughed again, in the faces of the horrified and angry women.
"I'm surprised at you, Mr. Critchlow! I really am!" Constance
exclaimed.
And the assistants inarticulately supported her with vague sounds.
Miss Insull got up and poked the stove. Every soul in the
establishment was loyally convinced that Daniel Povey would be
acquitted, and to breathe a doubt on the brightness of this
certainty was a hideous crime. The conviction was not within the
domain of reason; it was an act of faith; and arguments merely
fretted, without in the slightest degree disturbing it.
"Ye may be!" Mr. Critchlow gaily concurred. He was very content.
Just as he shuffled round to leave the shop, Cyril entered.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Critchlow," said Cyril, sheepishly polite.
Mr. Critchlow gazed hard at the boy, then nodded his head several
times rapidly, as though to say: "Here's another fool in the
making! So the generations follow one another!" He made no answer
to the salutation, and departed.
Cyril ran round to his mother's corner, pitching his bag on to the
showroom stairs as he passed them. Taking off his hat, he kissed
her, and she unbuttoned his overcoat with her cold hands.
"What's old Methuselah after?" he demanded.
"Hush!" Constance softly corrected him. "He came in to tell me the
trial had started."
"Oh, I knew that! A boy bought a paper and I saw it. I say,
mother, will father be in the paper?" And then in a different
tone: "I say, mother, what is there for tea?"
When his stomach had learnt exactly what there was for tea, the
boy began to show an immense and talkative curiosity in the trial.
He would not set himself to his home-lessons. "It's no use,
mother," he said, "I can't." They returned to the shop together,
and Cyril would go every moment to the door to listen for the cry
of a newsboy. Presently he hit upon the idea that perhaps newsboys
might be crying the special edition of the Signal in the market-
place, in front of the Town Hall, to the neglect of St. Luke's
Square. And nothing would satisfy him but he must go forth and
see. He went, without his overcoat, promising to run. The shop
waited with a strange anxiety. Cyril had created, by his restless
movements to and fro, an atmosphere of strained expectancy. It
seemed now as if the whole town stood with beating heart, fearful
of tidings and yet burning to get them. Constance pictured
Stafford, which she had never seen, and a court of justice, which
she had never seen, and her husband and Daniel in it. And she
waited.
Cyril ran in. "No!" he announced breathlessly. "Nothing yet."
"Don't take cold, now you're hot," Constance advised.
But he would keep near the door. Soon he ran off again.
And perhaps fifteen seconds after he had gone, the strident cry of
a Signal boy was heard in the distance, faint and indistinct at
first, then clearer and louder.
"There's a paper!" said the apprentice.
"Sh!" said Constance, listening.
"Sh!" echoed Miss Insull.
"Yes, it is!" said Constance. "Miss Insull, just step out and get
a paper. Here's a halfpenny."
The halfpenny passed quickly from one thimbled hand to another.
Miss Insull scurried.
She came in triumphantly with the sheet, which Constance
tremblingly took. Constance could not find the report at first.
Miss Insull pointed to it, and read--
"'Summing up!' Lower down, lower down! 'After an absence of
thirty-five minutes the jury found the prisoner guilty of murder,
with a recommendation to mercy. The judge assumed the black cap
and pronounced sentence of death, saying that he would forward the
recommendation to the proper quarter.'"
Cyril returned. "Not yet!" he was saying--when he saw the paper
lying on the counter. His crest fell.
Long after the shop was shut, Constance and Cyril waited in the
parlour for the arrival of the master of the house. Constance was
in the blackest despair. She saw nothing but death around her. She
thought: misfortunes never come singly. Why did not Samuel come?
All was ready for him, everything that her imagination could
suggest, in the way of food, remedies, and the means of warmth.
Amy was not allowed to go to bed, lest she might be needed.
Constance did not even hint that Cyril should go to bed. The dark,
dreadful minutes ticked themselves off on the mantelpiece until
only five minutes separated Constance from the moment when she
would not know what to do next. It was twenty-five minutes past
eleven. If at half-past Samuel did not appear, then he could not
come that night, unless the last train from Stafford was
inconceivably late.
The sound of a carriage! It ceased at the door. Mother and son
sprang up.
Yes, it was Samuel! She beheld him once more. And the sight of his
condition, moral and physical, terrified her. His great strapping
son and Amy helped him upstairs. "Will he ever come down those
stairs again?" This thought lanced Constance's heart. The pain was
come and gone in a moment, but it had surprised her tranquil
commonsense, which was naturally opposed to, and gently scornful
of, hysterical fears. As she puffed, with her stoutness, up the
stairs, that bland cheerfulness of hers cost her an immense effort
of will. She was profoundly troubled; great disasters seemed to be
slowly approaching her from all quarters.
Should she send for the doctor? No. To do so would only be a
concession to the panic instinct. She knew exactly what was the
matter with Samuel: a severe cough persistently neglected, no
more. As she had expressed herself many times to inquirers, "He's
never been what you may call ill." Nevertheless, as she laid him
in bed and possetted him, how frail and fragile he looked! And he
was so exhausted that he would not even talk about the trial.
"If he's not better to-morrow I shall send for the doctor!" she
said to herself. As for his getting up, she swore she would keep
him in bed by force if necessary. _
Read next: BOOK II CONSTANCE: CHAPTER V - ANOTHER CRIME: PART IV
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