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_ On the night when Matthew Peel-Swynnerton spoke to Mrs. Scales,
Matthew was not the only person in the Pension Frensham who failed
to sleep. When the old portress came downstairs from her errand,
she observed that her mistress was leaving the mahogany retreat.
"She is sleeping tranquilly, the poor one!" said the portress,
discharging her commission, which had been to learn the latest
news of the mistress's indisposed dog, Fossette. In saying this
her ancient, vibrant voice was rich with sympathy for the
suffering animal. And she smiled. She was rather like a figure out
of an almshouse, with her pink, apparently brittle skin, her tight
black dress, and frilled white cap. She stooped habitually, and
always walked quickly, with her head a few inches in advance of
her feet. Her grey hair was scanty. She was old; nobody perhaps
knew exactly how old. Sophia had taken her with the Pension, over
a quarter of a century before, because she was old and could not
easily have found another place. Although the clientele was almost
exclusively English, she spoke only French, explaining herself to
Britons by means of benevolent smiles.
"I think I shall go to bed, Jacqueline," said the mistress, in
reply.
A strange reply, thought Jacqueline. The unalterable custom of
Jacqueline was to retire at midnight and to rise at five-thirty.
Her mistress also usually retired about midnight, and during the
final hour mistress and portress saw a good deal of each other.
And considering that Jacqueline had just been sent up into the
mistress's own bedroom to glance at Fossette, and that the
bulletin was satisfactory, and that madame and Jacqueline had
several customary daily matters to discuss, it seemed odd that
madame should thus be going instantly to bed. However, Jacqueline
said nothing but:
"Very well, madame. And the number 32?"
"Arrange yourself as you can," said the mistress, curtly.
"It is well, madame. Good evening, madame, and a good night."
Jacqueline, alone in the hall, re-entered her box and set upon one
of those endless, mysterious tasks which occupied her when she was
not rushing to and fro or whistling up the tubes.
Sophia, scarcely troubling even to glance into Fossette's round
basket, undressed, put out the light, and got into bed. She felt
extremely and inexplicably gloomy. She did not wish to reflect;
she strongly wished not to reflect; but her mind insisted on
reflection--a monotonous, futile, and distressing reflection.
Povey! Povey! Could this be Constance's Povey, the unique Samuel
Povey? That is to say, not he, but his son, Constance's son. Had
Constance a grown-up son? Constance must be over fifty now,
perhaps a grandmother! Had she really married Samuel Povey?
Possibly she was dead. Certainly her mother must be dead, and Aunt
Harriet and Mr. Critchlow. If alive, her mother must be at least
eighty years of age.
The cumulative effect of merely remaining inactive when one ought
to be active, was terrible. Undoubtedly she should have
communicated with her family. It was silly not to have done so.
After all, even if she had, as a child, stolen a trifle of money
from her wealthy aunt, what would that have mattered? She had been
proud. She was criminally proud. That was her vice. She admitted
it frankly. But she could not alter her pride. Everybody had some
weak spot. Her reputation for sagacity, for commonsense, was, she
knew, enormous; she always felt, when people were talking to her,
that they regarded her as a very unusually wise woman. And yet she
had been guilty of the capital folly of cutting herself off from
her family. She was ageing, and she was alone in the world. She
was enriching herself; she had the most perfectly managed and the
most respectable Pension in the world (she sincerely believed),
and she was alone in the world. Acquaintances she had--French
people who never offered nor accepted hospitality other than tea
or wine, and one or two members of the English commercial colony--
but her one friend was Fossette, aged three years! She was the
most solitary person on earth. She had heard no word of Gerald, no
word of anybody. Nobody whatever could truly be interested in her
fate. This was what she had achieved after a quarter of a century
of ceaseless labour and anxiety, during which she had not once
been away from the Rue Lord Byron for more than thirty hours at a
stretch. It was appalling--the passage of years; and the passage
of years would grow more appalling. Ten years hence, where would
she be? She pictured herself dying. Horrible!
Of course there was nothing to prevent her from going back to
Bursley and repairing the grand error of her girlhood. No, nothing
except the fact that her whole soul recoiled from the mere idea of
any such enterprise! She was a fixture in the Rue Lord Byron. She
was a part of the street. She knew all that happened or could
happen there. She was attached to it by the heavy chains of habit.
In the chill way of long use she loved it. There! The incandescent
gas-burner of the street-lamp outside had been turned down, as it
was turned down every night! If it is possible to love such a
phenomenon, she loved that phenomenon. That phenomenon was a
portion of her life, dear to her.
An agreeable young man, that Peel-Swynnerton! Then evidently,
since her days in Bursley, the Peels and the Swynnertons, partners
in business, must have intermarried, or there must have been some
affair of a will. Did he suspect who she was? He had had a very
self-conscious, guilty look. No! He could not have suspected who
she was. The idea was ridiculous. Probably he did not even know
that her name was Scales. And even if he knew her name, he had
probably never heard of Gerald Scales, or the story of her flight.
Why, he could not have been born until after she had left Bursley!
Besides, the Peels were always quite aloof from the ordinary
social life of the town. No! He could not have suspected her
identity. It was infantile to conceive such a thing.
And yet, she inconsequently proceeded in the tangle of her
afflicted mind, supposing he had suspected it! Supposing by some
queer chance, he had heard her forgotten story, and casually put
two and two together! Supposing even that he were merely to
mention in the Five Towns that the Pension Frensham was kept by a
Mrs. Scales. 'Scales? Scales?' people might repeat. 'Now, what
does that remind me of?' And the ball might roll and roll till
Constance or somebody picked it up! And then ...
Moreover--a detail of which she had at first unaccountably failed
to mark the significance--this Peel-Swynnerton was a friend of the
Mr. Povey as to whom he had inquired. In that case it could not be
the same Povey. Impossible that the Peels should be on terms of
friendship with Samuel Povey or his connections! But supposing
after all they were! Supposing something utterly unanticipated and
revolutionary had happened in the Five Towns!
She was disturbed. She was insecure. She foresaw inquiries being
made concerning her. She foresaw an immense family fuss, endless
tomfoolery, the upsetting of her existence, the destruction of her
calm. And she sank away from that prospect. She could not face it.
She did not want to face it. "No," she cried passionately in her
soul, "I've lived alone, and I'll stay as I am. I can't change at
my time of life." And her attitude towards a possible invasion of
her solitude became one of resentment. "I won't have it! I won't
have it! I will be left alone. Constance! What can Constance be to
me, or I to her, now?" The vision of any change in her existence
was in the highest degree painful to her. And not only painful! It
frightened her. It made her shrink. But she could not dismiss it.
... She could not argue herself out of it. The apparition of
Matthew Peel-Swynnerton had somehow altered the very stuff of her
fibres.
And surging on the outskirts of the central storm of her brain
were ten thousand apprehensions about the management of the
Pension. All was black, hopeless. The Pension might have been the
most complete business failure that gross carelessness and
incapacity had ever provoked. Was it not the fact that she had to
supervise everything herself, that she could depend on no one?
Were she to be absent even for a single day the entire structure
would inevitably fall. Instead of working less she worked harder.
And who could guarantee that her investments were safe?
When dawn announced itself, slowly discovering each object in the
chamber, she was ill. Fever seemed to rage in her head. And in and
round her mouth she had strange sensations. Fossette stirred in
the basket near the large desk on which multifarious files and
papers were ranged with minute particularity.
"Fossette!" she tried to call out; but no sound issued from her
lips. She could not move her tongue. She tried to protrude it, and
could not. For hours she had been conscious of a headache. Her
heart sank. She was sick with fear. Her memory flashed to her
father and his seizure. She was his daughter! Paralysis! "Ca
serait le comble!" she thought in French, horrified. Her fear
became abject! "Can I move at all?" she thought, and madly jerked
her head. Yes, she could move her head slightly on the pillow, and
she could stretch her right arm, both arms. Absurd cowardice! Of
course it was not a seizure! She reassured herself. Still, she
could not put her tongue out. Suddenly she began to hiccough, and
she had no control over the hiccough. She put her hand to the
bell, whose ringing would summon the man who slept in a pantry off
the hall, and suddenly the hiccough ceased. Her hand dropped. She
was better. Besides, what use in ringing for a man if she could
not speak to him through the door? She must wait for Jacqueline.
At six o'clock every morning, summer and winter, Jacqueline
entered her mistress's bedroom to release the dog for a moment's
airing under her own supervision. The clock on the mantelpiece
showed five minutes past three. She had three hours to wait.
Fossette pattered across the room, and sprang on to the bed and
nestled down. Sophia ignored her, but Fossette, being herself
unwell and torpid, did not seem to care.
Jacqueline was late. In the quarter of an hour between six o'clock
and a quarter past, Sophia suffered the supreme pangs of despair
and verged upon insanity. It appeared to her that her cranium
would blow off under pressure from within. Then the door opened
silently, a few inches. Usually Jacqueline came into the room, but
sometimes she stood behind the door and called in her soft,
trembling voice, "Fossette! Fossette!" And on this morning she did
not come into the room. The dog did not immediately respond.
Sophia was in an agony. She marshalled all her volition, all her
self-control and strength, to shout:
"Jacqueline!"
It came out of her, a horribly difficult and misshapen birth, but
it came. She was exhausted.
"Yes, madame." Jacqueline entered.
As soon as she had a glimpse of Sophia she threw up her hands.
Sophia stared at her, wordless.
"I will fetch the doctor--myself," whispered Jacqueline, and fled.
"Jacqueline!" The woman stopped. Then Sophia determined to force
herself to make a speech, and she braced her muscles to an
unprecedented effort. "Say not a word to the others." She could
not bear that the whole household should know of her illness.
Jacqueline nodded and vanished, the dog following. Jacqueline
understood. She lived in the place with her mistress as with a
fellow-conspirator.
Sophia began to feel better. She could get into a sitting posture,
though the movement made her dizzy. By working to the foot of the
bed she could see herself in the glass of the wardrobe. And she
saw that the lower part of her face was twisted out of shape.
The doctor, who knew her, and who earned a lot of money in her
house, told her frankly what had happened. Paralysie glosso-labio-
laryngee was the phrase he used. She understood. A very slight
attack; due to overwork and worry. He ordered absolute rest and
quiet.
"Impossible!" she said, genuinely convinced that she alone was
indispensable.
"Repose the most absolute!" he repeated.
She marvelled that a few words with a man who chanced to be named
Peel-Swynnerton could have resulted in such a disaster, and drew a
curious satisfaction from this fearful proof that she was so
highly-strung. But even then she did not realize how profoundly
she had been disturbed. _
Read next: BOOK IV WHAT LIFE IS: CHAPTER I - FRENSHAM'S: PART V
Read previous: BOOK IV WHAT LIFE IS: CHAPTER I - FRENSHAM'S: PART III
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