________________________________________________
_ A week before Easter the guests of the Rutland Hotel in the Broad
Walk, Buxton, being assembled for afternoon tea in the "lounge" of
that establishment, witnessed the arrival of two middle-aged
ladies and two dogs. Critically to examine newcomers was one of
the amusements of the occupants of the lounge. This apartment,
furnished "in the oriental style," made a pretty show among the
photographs in the illustrated brochure of the hotel, and, though
draughty, it was of all the public rooms the favourite. It was
draughty because only separated from the street (if the Broad Walk
can be called a street) by two pairs of swinging-doors--in charge
of two page-boys. Every visitor entering the hotel was obliged to
pass through the lounge, and for newcomers the passage was an
ordeal; they were made to feel that they had so much to learn, so
much to get accustomed to; like passengers who join a ship at a
port of call, they felt that the business lay before them of
creating a niche for themselves in a hostile and haughty society.
The two ladies produced a fairly favourable impression at the
outset by reason of their two dogs. It is not every one who has
the courage to bring dogs into an expensive private hotel; to
bring one dog indicates that you are not accustomed to deny
yourself small pleasures for the sake of a few extra shillings; to
bring two indicates that you have no fear of hotel-managers and
that you are in the habit of regarding your own whim as nature's
law. The shorter and stouter of the two ladies did not impose
herself with much force on the collective vision of the Rutland;
she was dressed in black, not fashionably, though with a certain
unpretending richness; her gestures were timid and nervous;
evidently she relied upon her tall companion to shield her in the
first trying contacts of hotel life. The tall lady was of a
different stamp. Handsome, stately, deliberate, and handsomely
dressed in colours, she had the assured hard gaze of a person who
is thoroughly habituated to the inspection of strangers. She
curtly asked one of the page-boys for the manager, and the
manager's wife tripped rapidly down the stairs in response, and
was noticeably deferential--Her voice was quiet and commanding,
the voice of one who gives orders that are obeyed. The opinion of
the lounge was divided as to whether or not they were sisters.
They vanished quietly upstairs in convoy of the manager's wife,
and they did not re-appear for the lounge tea, which in any case
would have been undrinkably stewed. It then became known, by the
agency of one of those guests, to be found in every hotel, who
acquire all the secrets of the hotel by the exercise of unabashed
curiosity on the personnel, that the two ladies had engaged two
bedrooms, Nos. 17 and 18, and the sumptuous private parlour with a
balcony on the first floor, styled "C" in the nomenclature of
rooms. This fact definitely established the position of the new
arrivals in the moral fabric of the hotel. They were wealthy. They
had money to throw away. For even in a select hotel like the
Rutland it is not everybody who indulges in a private sitting-
room; there were only four such apartments in the hotel, as
against fifty bedrooms.
At dinner they had a small table to themselves in a corner. The
short lady wore a white shawl over her shoulders. Her almost
apologetic manner during the meal confirmed the view that she must
be a very simple person, unused to the world and its ways. The
other continued to be imperial. She ordered half-a-bottle of wine
and drank two glasses. She stared about her quite self-
unconsciously, whereas the little woman divided her glances
between her companion and her plate. They did not talk much.
Immediately after dinner they retired. "Widows in easy
circumstances" was the verdict; but the contrast between the pair
held puzzles that piqued the inquisitive.
Sophia had conquered again. Once more Sophia had resolved to
accomplish a thing and she had accomplished it. Events had fallen
out thus. The advertisement for a general servant in the Signal
had been a disheartening failure. A few answers were received, but
of an entirely unsatisfactory character. Constance, a great deal
more than Sophia, had been astounded by the bearing and the
demands of modern servants. Constance was in despair. If Constance
had not had an immense pride she would have been ready to suggest
to Sophia that Amy should be asked to 'stay on.' But Constance
would have accepted a modern impudent wench first. It was Maria
Critchlow who got Constance out of her difficulty by giving her
particulars of a reliable servant who was about to leave a
situation in which she had stayed for eight years. Constance did
not imagine that a servant recommended by Maria Critchlow would
suit her, but, being in a quandary, she arranged to see the
servant, and both she and Sophia were very pleased with the girl--
Rose Bennion by name. The mischief was that Rose would not be free
until about a month after Amy had left. Rose would have left her
old situation, but she had a fancy to go and spend a fortnight
with a married sister at Manchester before settling into new
quarters. Constance and Sophia felt that this caprice of Rose's
was really very tiresome and unnecessary. Of course Amy might have
been asked to 'stay on' just for a month. Amy would probably have
volunteered to do so had she been aware of the circumstances. She
was not, however, aware of the circumstances. And Constance was
determined not to be beholden to Amy for anything. What could the
sisters do? Sophia, who conducted all the interviews with Rose and
other candidates, said that it would be a grave error to let Rose
slip. Besides, they had no one to take her place, no one who could
come at once.
The dilemma was appalling. At least, it seemed appalling to
Constance, who really believed that no mistress had ever been so
'awkwardly fixed.' And yet, when Sophia first proposed her
solution, Constance considered it to be a quite impossible
solution. Sophia's idea was that they should lock up the house and
leave it on the same day as Amy left it, to spend a few weeks in
some holiday resort. To begin with, the idea of leaving the house
empty seemed to Constance a mad idea. The house had never been
left empty. And then--going for a holiday in April! Constance had
never been for a holiday except in the month of August. No! The
project was beset with difficulties and dangers which could not be
overcome nor provided against. For example, "We can't come back to
a dirty house," said Constance. "And we can't have a strange
servant coming here before us." To which Sophia had replied: "Then
what SHALL you do?" And Constance, after prodigious reflection on
the frightful pass to which destiny had brought her, had said that
she supposed she would have to manage with a charwoman until
Rose's advent. She asked Sophia if she remembered old Maggie.
Sophia, of course, perfectly remembered. Old Maggie was dead, as
well as the drunken, amiable Hollins, but there was a young Maggie
(wife of a bricklayer) who went out charing in the spare time left
from looking after seven children. The more Constance meditated
upon young Maggie, the more was she convinced that young Maggie
would meet the case. Constance felt she could trust young Maggie.
This expression of trust in Maggie was Constance's undoing. Why
should they not go away, and arrange with Maggie to come to the
house a few days before their return, to clean and ventilate? The
weight of reason overbore Constance. She yielded unwillingly, but
she yielded. It was the mention of Buxton that finally moved her.
She knew Buxton. Her old landlady at Buxton was dead, and
Constance had not visited the place since before Samuel's death;
nevertheless its name had a reassuring sound to her ears, and for
sciatica its waters and climate were admitted to be the best in
England. Gradually Constance permitted herself to be embarked on
this perilous enterprise of shutting up the house for twenty-five
days. She imparted the information to Amy, who was astounded. Then
she commenced upon her domestic preparations. She wrapped Samuel's
Family Bible in brown paper; she put Cyril's straw-framed copy of
Sir Edwin Landseer away in a drawer, and she took ten thousand
other precautions. It was grotesque; it was farcical; it was what
you please. And when, with the cab at the door and the luggage on
the cab, and the dogs chained together, and Maria Critchlow
waiting on the pavement to receive the key, Constance put the key
into the door on the outside, and locked up the empty house,
Constance's face was tragic with innumerable apprehensions. And
Sophia felt that she had performed a miracle. She had.
On the whole the sisters were well received in the hotel, though
they were not at an age which commands popularity. In the
criticism which was passed upon them--the free, realistic and
relentless criticism of private hotels--Sophia was at first set
down as overbearing. But in a few days this view was modified, and
Sophia rose in esteem. The fact was that Sophia's behaviour
changed after forty-eight hours. The Rutland Hotel was very good.
It was so good as to disturb Sophia's profound beliefs that there
was in the world only one truly high-class pension, and that
nobody could teach the creator of that unique pension anything
about the art of management. The food was excellent; the
attendance in the bedrooms was excellent (and Sophia knew how
difficult of attainment was excellent bedroom attendance); and to
the eye the interior of the Rutland presented a spectacle far
richer than the Pension Frensham could show. The standard of
comfort was higher. The guests had a more distinguished
appearance. It is true that the prices were much higher. Sophia
was humbled. She had enough sense to adjust her perspective.
Further, she found herself ignorant of many matters which by the
other guests were taken for granted and used as a basis for
conversation. Prolonged residence in Paris would not justify this
ignorance; it seemed rather to intensify its strangeness. Thus,
when someone of cosmopolitan experience, having learnt that she
had lived in Paris for many years, asked what had been going on
lately at the Comedie Francaise, she had to admit that she had not
been in a French theatre for nearly thirty years. And when, on a
Sunday, the same person questioned her about the English chaplain
in Paris, lo! she knew nothing but his name, had never even seen
him. Sophia's life, in its way, had been as narrow as Constance's.
Though her experience of human nature was wide, she had been in a
groove as deep as Constance's. She had been utterly absorbed in
doing one single thing.
By tacit agreement she had charge of the expedition. She paid all
the bills. Constance protested against the expensiveness of the
affair several times, but Sophia quietened her by sheer force of
individuality. Constance had one advantage over Sophia. She knew
Buxton and its neighbourhood intimately, and she was therefore in
a position to show off the sights and to deal with local
peculiarities. In all other respects Sophia led.
They very soon became acclimatized to the hotel. They moved easily
between Turkey carpets and sculptured ceilings; their eyes grew
used to the eternal vision of themselves and other slow-moving
dignities in gilt mirrors, to the heaviness of great oil-paintings
of picturesque scenery, to the indications of surreptitious dirt
behind massive furniture, to the grey-brown of the shirt-fronts of
the waiters, to the litter of trays, boots and pails in long
corridors; their ears were always awake to the sounds of gongs and
bells. They consulted the barometer and ordered the daily carriage
with the perfunctoriness of habit. They discovered what can be
learnt of other people's needlework in a hotel on a wet day. They
performed co-operative outings with fellow-guests. They invited
fellow-guests into their sitting-room. When there was an
entertainment they did not avoid it. Sophia was determined to do
everything that could with propriety be done, partly as an outlet
for her own energy (which since she left Paris had been
accumulating), but more on Constance's account. She remembered all
that Dr. Stirling had. said, and the heartiness of her own
agreement with his opinions. It was a great day when, under
tuition of an aged lady and in the privacy of their parlour, they
both began to study the elements of Patience. Neither had ever
played at cards. Constance was almost afraid to touch cards, as
though in the very cardboard there had been something unrighteous
and perilous. But the respectability of a luxurious private hotel
makes proper every act that passes within its walls. And Constance
plausibly argued that no harm could come from a game which you
played by yourself. She acquired with some aptitude several
varieties of Patience. She said: "I think I could enjoy that, if I
kept at it. But it does make my head whirl."
Nevertheless Constance was not happy in the hotel. She worried the
whole time about her empty house. She anticipated difficulties and
even disasters. She wondered again and again whether she could
trust the second Maggie in her house alone, whether it would not
be better to return home earlier and participate personally in the
cleaning. She would have decided to do so had it not been that she
hesitated to subject Sophia to the inconvenience of a house upside
down. The matter was on her mind, always. Always she was
restlessly anticipating the day when they would leave. She had
carelessly left her heart behind in St. Luke's Square. She had
never stayed in a hotel before, and she did not like it. Sciatica
occasionally harassed her. Yet when it came to the point she would
not drink the waters. She said she never had drunk them, and
seemed to regard that as a reason why she never should. Sophia had
achieved a miracle in getting her to Buxton for nearly a month,
but the ultimate grand effect lacked brilliance.
Then came the fatal letter, the desolating letter, which
vindicated Constance's dark apprehensions. Rose Bennion calmly
wrote to say that she had decided not to come to St. Luke's
Square. She expressed regret for any inconvenience which might
possibly be caused; she was polite. But the monstrousness of it!
Constance felt that this actually and truly was the deepest depth
of her calamities. There she was, far from a dirty home, with no
servant and no prospect of a servant! She bore herself bravely,
nobly; but she was stricken. She wanted to return to the dirty
home at once.
Sophia felt that the situation created by this letter would demand
her highest powers of dealing with situations, and she determined
to deal with it adequately. Great measures were needed, for
Constance's health and happiness were at stake. She alone could
act. She knew that she could not rely upon Cyril. She still had an
immense partiality for Cyril; she thought him the most charming
young man she had ever known; she knew him to be industrious and
clever; but in his relations with his mother there was a hardness,
a touch of callousness. She explained it vaguely by saying that
'they did not get on well together'; which was strange,
considering Constance's sweet affectionateness. Still, Constance
could be a little trying--at times. Anyhow, it was soon clear to
Sophia that the idea of mother and son living together in London
was entirely impracticable. No! If Constance was to be saved from
herself, there was no one but Sophia to save her.
After half a morning spent chiefly in listening to Constance's
hopeless comments on the monstrous letter, Sophia said suddenly
that she must take the dogs for an airing. Constance did not feel
equal to walking out, and she would not drive. She did not want
Sophia to 'venture,' because the sky threatened. However, Sophia
did venture, and she returned a few minutes late for lunch, full
of vigour, with two happy dogs. Constance was moodily awaiting her
in the dining-room. Constance could not eat. But Sophia ate, and
she poured out cheerfulness and energy as from a source
inexhaustible. After lunch it began to rain. Constance said she
thought she should retire directly to the sitting-room. "I'm
coming too," said Sophia, who was still wearing her hat and coat
and carried her gloves in her hand. In the pretentious and banal
sitting-room they sat down on either side the fire. Constance put
a little shawl round her shoulders, pushed her spectacles into her
grey hair, folded her hands, and sighed an enormous sigh: "Oh,
dear!" She was the tragic muse, aged, and in black silk.
"I tell you what I've been thinking," said Sophia, folding up her
gloves.
"What?" asked Constance, expecting some wonderful solution to come
out of Sophia's active brain.
"There's no earthly reason why you should go back to Bursley. The
house won't run away, and it's costing nothing but the rent. Why
not take things easy for a bit?"
"And stay here?" said Constance, with an inflection that
enlightened Sophia as to the intensity of her dislike of the
existence at the Rutland.
"No, not here," Sophia answered with quick deprecation. "There are
plenty of other places we could go to."
"I don't think I should be easy in my mind," said Constance. "What
with nothing being settled, the house----"
"What does it matter about the house?"
"It matters a great deal," said Constance, seriously, and slightly
hurt. "I didn't leave things as if we were going to be away for a
long time. It wouldn't do."
"I don't see that anything could come to any harm, I really
don't!" said Sophia, persuasively. "Dirt can always be cleaned,
after all. I think you ought to go about more. It would do you
good--all the good in the world. And there is no reason why you
shouldn't go about. You are perfectly free. Why shouldn't we go
abroad together, for instance, you and I? I'm sure you would enjoy
it very much."
"Abroad?" murmured Constance, aghast, recoiling from the
proposition as from a grave danger.
"Yes," said Sophia, brightly and eagerly. She was determined to
take Constance abroad. "There are lots of places we could go to,
and live very comfortably among nice English people." She thought
of the resorts she had visited with Gerald in the sixties. They
seemed to her like cities of a dream. They came back to her as a
dream recurs.
"I don't think going abroad would suit me," said Constance.
"But why not? You don't know. You've never tried, my dear." She
smiled encouragingly. But Constance did not smile. Constance was
inclined to be grim.
"I don't think it would," said she, obstinately. "I'm one of your
stay-at-homes. I'm not like you. We can't all be alike," she
added, with her 'tart' accent.
Sophia suppressed a feeling of irritation. She knew that she had a
stronger individuality than Constance's.
"Well, then," she said, with undiminished persuasiveness, "in
England or Scotland. There are several places I should like to
visit--Torquay, Tunbridge Wells. I've always under-stood that
Tunbridge Wells is a very nice town indeed, with very superior
people, and a beautiful climate."
"I think I shall have to be getting back to St. Luke's Square,"
said Constance, ignoring all that Sophia had said. "There's so
much to be done."
Then Sophia looked at Constance with a more serious and resolute
air; but still kindly, as though looking thus at Constance for
Constance's own good.
"You are making a mistake, Constance," she said, "if you will
allow me to say so."
"A mistake!" exclaimed Constance, startled.
"A very great mistake," Sophia insisted, observing that she was
creating an effect.
"I don't see how I can be making a mistake," Constance said,
gaining confidence in herself, as she thought the matter over.
"No," said Sophia, "I'm sure you don't see it. But you are. You
know, you are just a little apt to let yourself be a slave to that
house of yours. Instead of the house existing for you, you exist
for the house."
"Oh! Sophia!" Constance muttered awkwardly. "What ideas you do
have, to be sure!" In her nervousness she rose and picked up some
embroidery, adjusting her spectacles and coughing. When she sat
down she said: "No one could take things easier than I do as
regards housekeeping. I can assure you I let dozens of little
matters go, rather than bother myself."
"Then why do you bother now?" Sophia posed her.
"I can't leave the place like that." Constance was hurt.
"There's one thing I can't understand," said Sophia, raising her
head and gazing at Constance again, "and that is, why you live in
St. Luke's Square at all."
"I must live somewhere. And I'm sure it's very pleasant."
"In all that smoke! And with that dirt! And the house is very
old."
"It's a great deal better built than a lot of those new houses by
the Park," Constance sharply retorted. In spite of herself she
resented any criticism of her house. She even resented the obvious
truth that it was old.
"You'll never get a servant to stay in that cellar-kitchen, for
one thing," said Sophia, keeping calm.
"Oh! I don't know about that! I don't know about that! That
Bennion woman didn't object to it, anyway. It's all very well for
you, Sophia, to talk like that. But I know Bursley perhaps better
than you do." She was tart again. "And I can assure you that my
house is looked upon as a very good house indeed."
"Oh! I don't say it isn't; I don't say it isn't. But you would be
better away from it. Every one says that."
"Every one?" Constance looked up, dropping her work. "Who? Who's
been talking about me?"
"Well," said Sophia, "the doctor, for instance."
"Dr. Stirling? I like that! He's always saying that Bursley is one
of the healthiest climates in England. He's always sticking up for
Bursley."
"Dr. Stirling thinks you ought to go away more--not stay always in
that dark house." If Sophia had sufficiently reflected she would
not have used the adjective 'dark.' It did not help her cause.
"Oh, does he!" Constance fairly snorted. "Well, if it's of any
interest to Dr. Stirling, I like my dark house."
"Hasn't he ever told you you ought to go away more?" Sophia
persisted.
"He may have mentioned it," Constance reluctantly admitted.
"When he was talking to me he did a good deal more than mention
it. And I've a good mind to tell you what he said."
"Do!" said Constance, politely.
"You don't realize how serious it is, I'm afraid," said Sophia.
"You can't see yourself." She hesitated a moment. Her blood being
stirred by Constance's peculiar inflection of the phrase 'my dark
house,' her judgment was slightly obscured. She decided to give
Constance a fairly full version of the conversation between
herself and the doctor.
"It's a question of your health," she finished. "I think it's my
duty to talk to you seriously, and I have done. I hope you'll take
it as it's meant."
"Oh, of course!" Constance hastened to say. And she thought: "It
isn't yet three months that we've been together, and she's trying
already to get me under her thumb."
A pause ensued. Sophia at length said: "There's no doubt that both
your sciatica and your palpitations are due to nerves. And you let
your nerves get into a state because you worry over trifles. A
change would do you a tremendous amount of good. It's just what
you need. Really, you must admit, Constance, that the idea of
living always in a place like St. Luke's Square, when you are
perfectly free to do what you like and go where you like--you must
admit it's rather too much."
Constance put her lips together and bent over her embroidery.
"Now, what do you say?" Sophia gently entreated.
"There's some of us like Bursley, black as it is!" said Constance.
And Sophia was surprised to detect tears in her sister's voice.
"Now, my dear Constance," she remonstrated.
"It's no use!" cried Constance, flinging away her work, and
letting her tears flow suddenly. Her face was distorted. She was
behaving just like a child. "It's no use! I've got to go back home
and look after things. It's no use. Here we are pitching money
about in this place. It's perfectly sinful. Drives, carriages,
extras! A shilling a day extra for each dog. I never heard of such
goings-on. And I'd sooner be at home. That's it. I'd sooner be at
home." This was the first reference that Constance had made for a
long time to the question of expense, and incomparably the most
violent. It angered Sophia.
"We will count it that you are here as my guest," said Sophia,
loftily, "if that is how you look at it."
"Oh no!" said Constance. "It isn't the money I grudge. Oh no, we
won't." And her tears were falling thick.
"Yes, we will," said Sophia, coldly. "I've only been talking to
you for your own good. I--"
"Well," Constance interrupted her despairingly, "I wish you
wouldn't try to domineer over me!"
"Domineer!" exclaimed Sophia, aghast. "Well, Constance, I do
think--"
She got up and went to her bedroom, where the dogs were
imprisoned. They escaped to the stairs. She was shaking with
emotion. This was what came of trying to help other people!
Imagine Constance ...! Truly Constance was most unjust, and quite
unlike her usual self! And Sophia encouraged in her breast the
feeling of injustice suffered. But a voice kept saying to her:
"You've made a mess of this. You've not conquered this time.
You're beaten. And the situation is unworthy of you, of both of
you. Two women of fifty quarreling like this! It's undignified.
You've made a mess of things." And to strangle the voice, she did
her best to encourage the feeling of injustice suffered.
'Domineer!'
And Constance was absolutely in the wrong. She had not argued at
all. She had merely stuck to her idea like a mule! How difficult
and painful would be the next meeting with Constance, after this
grievous miscarriage!
As she was reflecting thus the door burst open, and Constance
stumbled, as it were blindly, into the bedroom. She was still
weeping.
"Sophia!" she sobbed, supplicatingly, and all her fat body was
trembling. "You mustn't kill me ... I'm like that--you can't alter
me. I'm like that. I know I'm silly. But it's no use!" She made a
piteous figure.
Sophia was aware of a lump in her throat.
"It's all right, Constance; it's all right. I quite understand.
Don't bother any more."
Constance, catching her breath at intervals, raised her wet, worn
face and kissed her.
Sophia remembered the very words, 'You can't alter her,' which she
had used in remonstrating with Cyril. And now she had been guilty
of precisely the same unreason as that with which she had
reproached Cyril! She was ashamed, both for herself and for
Constance. Assuredly it had not been such a scene as women of
their age would want to go through often. It was humiliating. She
wished that it could have been blotted out as though it had never
happened. Neither of them ever forgot it. They had had a lesson.
And particularly Sophia had had a lesson. Having learnt, they left
the Rutland, amid due ceremonies, and returned to St. Luke's
Square. _
Read next: BOOK IV WHAT LIFE IS: CHAPTER IV END OF SOPHIA: PART I
Read previous: BOOK IV WHAT LIFE IS: CHAPTER III TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE: PART V
Table of content of Old Wives' Tale
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
