________________________________________________
_ "Well, have you got your letter?" Sophia demanded cheerfully of
Constance when she entered the bedroom the next morning.
Constance merely shook her head. She was very depressed. Sophia's
cheerfulness died out. As she hated to be insincerely optimistic,
she said nothing. Otherwise she might have remarked: "Perhaps the
afternoon post will bring it." Gloom reigned. To Constance
particularly, as Amy had given notice and as Cyril was 'remiss,'
it seemed really that the time was out of joint and life unworth
living. Even the presence of Sophia did not bring her much
comfort. Immediately Sophia left the room Constance's sciatica
began to return, and in a severe form. She had regretted this,
less for the pain than because she had just assured Sophia, quite
honestly, that she was not suffering; Sophia had been sceptical.
After that it was of course imperative that Constance should get
up as usual. She had said that she would get up as usual. Besides,
there was the immense enterprise of obtaining a new servant!
Worries loomed mountainous. Suppose Cyril were dangerously ill,
and unable to write! Suppose something had happened to him!
Supposing she never did obtain a new servant!
Sophia, up in her room, was endeavouring to be philosophical, and
to see the world brightly. She was saying to herself that she must
take Constance in hand, that what Constance lacked was energy,
that Constance must be stirred out of her groove. And in the
cavernous kitchen Amy, preparing the nine-o'clock breakfast, was
meditating upon the ingratitude of employers and wondering what
the future held for her. She had a widowed mother in the
picturesque village of Sneyd, where the mortal and immortal
welfare of every inhabitant was watched over by God's vicegerent,
the busy Countess of Chell; she possessed about two hundred pounds
of her own; her mother for years had been begging Amy to share her
home free of expense. But nevertheless Amy's mind was black with
foreboding and vague dejection. The house was a house of sorrow,
and these three women, each solitary, the devotees of sorrow. And
the two dogs wandered disconsolate up and down, aware of the
necessity for circumspection, never guessing that the highly
peculiar state of the atmosphere had been brought about by nothing
but a half-shut door and an incorrect tone.
As Sophia, fully dressed this time, was descending to breakfast,
she heard Constance's voice, feebly calling her, and found the
convalescent still in bed. The truth could not be concealed.
Constance was once more in great pain, and her moral condition was
not favourable to fortitude.
"I wish you had told me, to begin with," Sophia could not help
saying, "then I should have known what to do."
Constance did not defend herself by saying that the pain had only
recurred since their first interview that morning. She just wept.
"I'm very low!" she blubbered.
Sophia was surprised. She felt that this was not 'being a Baines.'
During the progress of that interminable April morning, her
acquaintance with the possibilities of sciatica as an agent
destructive of moral fibre was further increased. Constance had no
force at all to resist its activity. The sweetness of her
resignation seemed to melt into nullity. She held to it that the
doctor could do nothing for her.
About noon, when Sophia was moving anxiously around her, she
suddenly screamed.
"I feel as if my leg was going to burst!" she cried.
That decided Sophia. As soon as Constance was a little easier she
went downstairs to Amy.
"Amy," she said, "it's a Doctor Stirling that your mistress has
when she's ill, isn't it?"
"Yes, m'm."
"Where is his surgery?"
"Well, m'm, he did live just opposite, with Dr. Harrop, but
latterly he's gone to live at Bleakridge."
"I wish you would put your things on, and run up there and ask him
to call as soon as he can."
"I will, m'm," said Amy, with the greatest willingness. "I thought
I heard missis cry out." She was not effusive. She was better than
effusive: kindly and helpful with a certain reserve.
"There's something about that woman I like," said Sophia, to
herself. For a proved fool, Amy was indeed holding her own rather
well.
Dr. Stirling drove down about two o'clock. He had now been
established in the Five Towns for more than a decade, and the
stamp of success was on his brow and on the proud forehead of his
trotting horse. He had, in the phrase of the Signal, 'identified
himself with the local life of the district.' He was liked, being
a man of broad sympathies. In his rich Scotch accent he could
discuss with equal ability the flavour of whisky or of a sermon,
and he had more than sufficient tact never to discuss either
whiskies or sermons in the wrong place. He had made a speech
(responding for the learned professions) at the annual dinner of
the Society for the Prosecution of Felons, and this speech (in
which praise of red wine was rendered innocuous by praise of
books--his fine library was notorious) had classed him as a wit
with the American consul, whose post-prandial manner was modelled
on Mark Twain's. He was thirty-five years of age, tall and
stoutish, with a chubby boyish face that the razor left chiefly
blue every morning.
The immediate effect of his arrival on Constance was miraculous.
His presence almost cured her for a moment, just as though her
malady had been toothache and he a dentist. Then, when he had
finished his examination, the pain resumed its sway over her.
In talking to her and to Sophia, he listened very seriously to all
that they said; he seemed to regard the case as the one case that
had ever aroused his genuine professional interest; but as it
unfolded itself, in all its difficulty and urgency, so he seemed,
in his mind, to be discovering wondrous ways of dealing with it;
these mysterious discoveries seemed to give him confidence, and
his confidence was communicated to the patient by means of faint
sallies of humour. He was a highly skilled doctor. This fact,
however, had no share in his popularity; which was due solely to
his rare gift of taking a case very seriously while remaining
cheerful.
He said he would return in a quarter of an hour, and he returned
in thirteen minutes with a hypodermic syringe, with which he
attacked the pain in its central strongholds.
"What is it?" asked Constance, breathing gratitude for the relief.
He paused, looking at her roguishly from under lowered eyelids.
"I'd better not tell ye," he said. "It might lead ye into
mischief."
"Oh, but you must tell me, doctor," Constance insisted, anxious
that he should live up to his reputation for Sophia's benefit.
"It's hydrochloride of cocaine," he said, and lifted a finger.
"Beware of the cocaine habit. It's ruined many a respectable
family. But if I hadn't had a certain amount of confidence in yer
strength of character, Mrs. Povey, I wouldn't have risked it."
"He will have his joke, will the doctor!" Constance smiled, in a
brighter world.
He said he should come again about half-past five, and he arrived
about half-past six, and injected more cocaine. The special
importance of the case was thereby established. On this second
visit, he and Sophia soon grew rather friendly. When she conducted
him downstairs again he stopped chatting with her in the parlour
for a long time, as though he had nothing else on earth to do,
while his coachman walked the horse to and fro in front of the
door.
His attitude to her flattered Sophia, for it showed that he took
her for no ordinary woman. It implied a continual assumption that
she must be a mine of interest for any one who was privileged to
delve into her memory. So far, among Constance's acquaintance,
Sophia had met no one who showed more than a perfunctory curiosity
as to her life. Her return was accepted with indifference. Her
escapade of thirty years ago had entirely lost its dramatic
quality. Many people indeed had never heard that she had run away
from home to marry a commercial traveller; and to those who
remembered, or had been told, it seemed a sufficiently banal
exploit--after thirty years! Her fear, and Constance's, that the
town would be murmurous with gossip was ludicrously unfounded. The
effect of time was such that even Mr. Critchlow appeared to have
forgotten even that she had been indirectly responsible for her
father's death. She had nearly forgotten it herself; when she
happened to think of it she felt no shame, no remorse, seeing the
death as purely accidental, and not altogether unfortunate. On two
points only was the town inquisitive: as to her husband, and as to
the precise figure at which she had sold the pension. The town
knew that she was probably not a widow, for she had been obliged
to tell Mr. Critchlow, and Mr. Critchlow in some hour of
tenderness had told Maria. But nobody had dared to mention the
name of Gerald Scales to her. With her fashionable clothes, her
striking mien of command, and the legend of her wealth, she
inspired respect, if not awe, in the townsfolk. In the doctor's
attitude there was something of amaze; she felt it. Though the
dull apathy of the people she had hitherto met was assuredly not
without its advantageous side for her tranquillity of mind, it had
touched her vanity, and the gaze of the doctor soothed the smart.
He had so obviously divined her interestingness; he so obviously
wanted to enjoy it.
"I've just been reading Zola's 'Downfall,'" he said.
Her mind searched backwards, and recalled a poster.
"Oh!" she replied. "'La Debacle'?"
"Yes. What do ye think of it?" His eyes lighted at the prospect of
a talk. He was even pleased to hear her give him the title in
French.
"I haven't read it," she said, and she was momentarily sorry that
she had not read it, for she could see that he was dashed. The
doctor had supposed that residence in a foreign country involved a
knowledge of the literature of that country. Yet he had never
supposed that residence in England involved a knowledge of English
literature. Sophia had read practically nothing since 1870; for
her the latest author was Cherbuliez. Moreover, her impression of
Zola was that he was not at all nice, and that he was the enemy of
his race, though at that date the world had scarcely heard of
Dreyfus. Dr. Stirling had too hastily assumed that the opinions of
the bourgeois upon art differ in different countries.
"And ye actually were in the siege of Paris?" he questioned,
trying again.
"Yes."
"AND the commune?"
"Yes, the commune too."
"Well!" he exclaimed. "It's incredible! When I was reading the
'Downfall' the night before last, I said to myself that you must
have been through a lot of all that. I didn't know I was going to
have the pleasure of a chat with ye so soon."
She smiled. "But how did you know I was in the siege of Paris?"
she asked, curious.
"How do I know? I know because I've seen that birthday card ye
sent to Mrs. Povey in 1871, after it was over. It's one of her
possessions, that card is. She showed it me one day when she told
me ye were coming."
Sophia started. She had quite forgotten that card. It had not
occurred to her that Constance would have treasured all those
cards that she had despatched during the early years of her exile.
She responded as well as she could to his eagerness for personal
details concerning the siege and the commune. He might have been
disappointed at the prose of her answers, had he not been
determined not to be disappointed.
"Ye seem to have taken it all very quietly," he observed.
"Eh yes!" she agreed, not without pride. "But it's a long time
since."
Those events, as they existed in her memory, scarcely warranted
the tremendous fuss subsequently made about them. What were they,
after all? Such was her secret thought. Chirac himself was now
nothing but a faint shadow. Still, were the estimate of those
events true or false, she was a woman who had been through them,
and Dr. Stirling's high appreciation of that fact was very
pleasant to her. Their friendliness approached intimacy. Night had
fallen. Outside could be heard the champing of a bit.
"I must be getting on," he said at last; but he did not move.
"Then there is nothing else I am to do for my sister?" Sophia
inquired.
"I don't think so," said he. "It isn't a question of medicine."
"Then what is it a question of?" Sophia demanded bluntly.
"Nerves," he said. "It's nearly all nerves. I know something about
Mrs. Povey's constitution now, and I was hoping that your visit
would do her good."
"She's been quite well--I mean what you may call quite well--until
the day before yesterday, when she sat in that draught. She was
better last night, and then this morning I find her ever so much
worse."
"No worries?" The doctor looked at her confidentially.
"What CAN she have in the way of worries?" exclaimed Sophia.
"That's to say--real worries."
"Exactly!" the doctor agreed.
"I tell her she doesn't know what worry is," said Sophia.
"So do I!" said the doctor, his eyes twinkling.
"She was a little upset because she didn't receive her usual
Sunday letter from Cyril yesterday. But then she was weak and
low."
"Clever youth, Cyril!" mused the doctor.
"I think he's a particularly nice boy," said Sophia, eagerly,
"So you've seen him?"
"Of course," said Sophia, rather stiffly. Did the doctor suppose
that she did not know her own nephew? She went back to the subject
of her sister. "She is also a little bothered, I think, because
the servant is going to leave."
"Oh! So Amy is going to leave, is she?" He spoke still lower.
"Between you and me, it's no bad thing."
"I'm so glad you think so."
"In another few years the servant would have been the mistress
here. One can see these things coming on, but it's so difficult to
do anything. In fact ye can't do anything."
"I did something," said Sophia, sharply. "I told the woman
straight that it shouldn't go on while I was in the house. I
didn't suspect it at first--but when I found it out ... I can tell
you!" She let the doctor imagine what she could tell him.
He smiled. "No," he said. "I can easily understand that ye didn't
suspect anything at first. When she's well and bright Mrs. Povey
could hold her own--so I'm told. But it was certainly slowly
getting worse."
"Then people talk about it?" said Sophia, shocked.
"As a native of Bursley, Mrs. Scales," said the doctor, "ye ought
to know what people in Bursley do!" Sophia put her lips together.
The doctor rose, smoothing his waistcoat. "What does she bother
with servants at all for?" he burst out. "She's perfectly free.
She hasn't got a care in the world, if she only knew it. Why
doesn't she go out and about, and enjoy herself? She wants
stirring up, that's what your sister wants."
"You're quite right," Sophia burst out in her turn. "That's
precisely what I say to myself; precisely! I was thinking it over
only this morning. She wants stirring up. She's got into a rut."
"She needs to be jolly. Why doesn't she go to some seaside place,
and live in a hotel, and enjoy herself? Is there anything to
prevent her?"
"Nothing whatever."
"Instead of being dependent on a servant! I believe in enjoying
one's self--when ye've got the money to do it with! Can ye imagine
anybody living in Bursley, for pleasure? And especially in St.
Luke's Square, right in the thick of it all! Smoke! Dirt! No air!
No light! No scenery! No amusements! What does she do it for?
She's in a rut."
"Yes, she's in a rut," Sophia repeated her own phrase, which he
had copied.
"My word!" said the doctor. "Wouldn't I clear out and enjoy myself
if I could! Your sister's a young woman."
"Of course she is!" Sophia concurred, feeling that she herself was
even younger. "Of course she is!"
"And except that she's nervously organized, and has certain
predispositions, there's nothing the matter with her. This
sciatica--I don't say it would be cured, but it might be, by a
complete change and throwing off all these ridiculous worries. Not
only does she live in the most depressing conditions, but she
suffers tortures for it, and there's absolutely no need for her to
be here at all."
"Doctor," said Sophia, solemnly, impressed, "you are quite right.
I agree with every word you say."
"Naturally she's attached to the place," he continued, glancing
round the room. "I know all about that. After living here all her
life! But she's got to break herself of her attachment. It's her
duty to do so. She ought to show a little energy. I'm deeply
attached to my bed in the morning, but I have to leave it."
"Of course," said Sophia, in an impatient tone, as though
disgusted with every person who could not perceive, or would not
subscribe to, these obvious truths that the doctor was uttering.
"Of course!"
"What she needs is the bustle of life in a good hotel, a good
hydro, for instance. Among jolly people. Parties! Games!
Excursions! She wouldn't be the same woman. You'd see. Wouldn't I
do it, if I could? Strathpeffer. She'd soon forget her sciatica. I
don't know what Mrs. Povey's annual income is, but I expect that
if she took it into her head to live in the dearest hotel in
England, there would be no reason why she shouldn't."
Sophia lifted her head and smiled in calm amusement. "I expect
so," she said superiorly.
"A hotel--that's the life. No worries. If ye want anything ye ring
a bell. If a waiter gives notice, it's some one else who has the
worry, not. you. But you know all about that, Mrs. Scales."
"No one better," murmured Sophia.
"Good evening," he said abruptly, sticking out his hand. "I'll be
down in the morning."
"Did you ever mention this to my sister?" Sophia asked him,
rising.
"Yes," said he. "But it's no use. Oh yes, I've told her. But she
does really think it's quite impossible. She wouldn't even hear of
going to live in London with her beloved son. She won't listen."
"I never thought of that," said Sophia. "Good night."
Their hand-grasp was very intimate and mutually comprehending. He
was pleased by the quick responsiveness of her temperament, and
the masterful vigour which occasionally flashed out in her
replies. He noticed the hardly perceptible distortion of her
handsome, worn face, and he said to himself: "She's been through a
thing or two," and: "She'll have to mind her p's and q's." Sophia
was pleased because he admired her, and because with her he
dropped his bedside jocularities, and talked plainly as a sensible
man will talk when he meets an uncommonly wise woman, and because
he echoed and amplified her own thoughts. She honoured him by
standing at the door till he had driven off.
For a few moments she mused solitary in the parlour, and then,
lowering the gas, she went upstairs to her sister, who lay in the
dark. Sophia struck a match.
"You've been having quite a long chat with the doctor," said
Constance. "He's very good company, isn't he? What did he talk
about this time?"
"He wanted to know about Paris and so on," Sophia answered.
"Oh! I believe he's a rare student."
Lying there in the dark, the simple Constance never suspected that
those two active and strenuous ones had been arranging her life
for her, so that she should be jolly and live for twenty years
yet. She did not suspect that she had been tried and found guilty
of sinful attachments, and of being in a rut, and of lacking the
elements of ordinary sagacity. It had not occurred to her that if
she was worried and ill, the reason was to be found in her own
blind and stupid obstinacy. She had thought herself a fairly
sensible kind of creature. _
Read next: BOOK IV WHAT LIFE IS: CHAPTER III TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE: PART III
Read previous: BOOK IV WHAT LIFE IS: CHAPTER III TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE: PART I
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