Читать книгу The Old Wives' Tale - Arnold Bennett - Страница 28

“If anybody thinks I’m going to stand the cold in this showroom any longer, they’re mistaken,” said Sophia the next morning loudly, and in her mother’s hearing. And she went down into the shop carrying bonnets.

She pretended to be angry, but she was not. She felt, on the contrary, extremely joyous, and charitable to all the world. Usually she would take pains to keep out of the shop; usually she was preoccupied and stern. Hence her presence on the ground-floor, and her demeanour, excited interest among the three young lady assistants who sat sewing round the stove in the middle of the shop, sheltered by the great pile of shirtings and linseys that fronted the entrance.

Sophia shared Constance’s corner. They had hot bricks under their feet, and fine-knitted wraps on their shoulders. They would have been more comfortable near the stove, but greatness has its penalties. The weather was exceptionally severe. The windows were thickly frosted over, so that Mr. Povey’s art in dressing them was quite wasted. And — rare phenomenon! — the doors of the shop were shut. In the ordinary way they were not merely open, but hidden by a display of ‘cheap lines.’ Mr. Povey, after consulting Mrs. Baines, had decided to close them, foregoing the customary display. Mr. Povey had also, in order to get a little warmth into his limbs, personally assisted two casual labourers to scrape the thick frozen snow off the pavement; and he wore his kid mittens. All these things together proved better than the evidence of barometers how the weather nipped.

Mr. Scales came about ten o’clock. Instead of going to Mr. Povey’s counter, he walked boldly to Constance’s corner, and looked over the boxes, smiling and saluting. Both the girls candidly delighted in his visit. Both blushed; both laughed — without knowing why they laughed. Mr. Scales said he was just departing and had slipped in for a moment to thank all of them for their kindness of last night —‘or rather this morning.’ The girls laughed again at this witticism. Nothing could have been more simple than his speech. Yet it appeared to them magically attractive. A customer entered, a lady; one of the assistants rose from the neighbourhood of the stove, but the daughters of the house ignored the customer; it was part of the etiquette of the shop that customers, at any rate chance customers, should not exist for the daughters of the house, until an assistant had formally drawn attention to them. Otherwise every one who wanted a pennyworth of tape would be expecting to be served by Miss Baines, or Miss Sophia, if Miss Sophia were there. Which would have been ridiculous.

Sophia, glancing sidelong, saw the assistant parleying with the customer; and then the assistant came softly behind the counter and approached the corner.

“Miss Constance, can you spare a minute?” the assistant whispered discreetly.

Constance extinguished her smile for Mr. Scales, and, turning away, lighted an entirely different and inferior smile for the customer.

“Good morning, Miss Baines. Very cold, isn’t it?”

“Good morning, Mrs. Chatterley. Yes, it is. I suppose you’re getting anxious about those —” Constance stopped.

Sophia was now alone with Mr. Scales, for in order to discuss the unnameable freely with Mrs. Chatterley her sister was edging up the counter. Sophia had dreamed of a private conversation as something delicious and impossible. But chance had favoured her. She was alone with him. And his neat fair hair and his blue eyes and his delicate mouth were as wonderful to her as ever. He was gentlemanly to a degree that impressed her more than anything had impressed her in her life. And all the proud and aristocratic instinct that was at the base of her character sprang up and seized on his gentlemanliness like a famished animal seizing on food.

“The last time I saw you,” said Mr. Scales, in a new tone, “you said you were never in the shop.”

“What? Yesterday? Did I?”

“No, I mean the last time I saw you alone,” said he.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “It’s just an accident.”

“That’s exactly what you said last time.”

“Is it?”

Was it his manner, or what he said, that flattered her, that intensified her beautiful vivacity?

“I suppose you don’t often go out?” he went on.

“What? In this weather?”

“Any time.”

“I go to chapel,” said she, “and marketing with mother.” There was a little pause. “And to the Free Library.”

“Oh yes. You’ve got a Free Library here now, haven’t you?”

“Yes. We’ve had it over a year.”

“And you belong to it? What do you read?”

“Oh, stories, you know. I get a fresh book out once a week.”

“Saturdays, I suppose?”

“No,” she said. “Wednesdays.” And she smiled. “Usually.”

“It’s Wednesday today,” said he. “Not been already?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I shall go today. It’s too cold. I don’t think I shall venture out today.”

“You must be very fond of reading,” said he.

Then Mr. Povey appeared, rubbing his mittened hands. And Mrs. Chatterley went.

“I’ll run and fetch mother,” said Constance.

Mrs. Baines was very polite to the young man. He related his interview with the police, whose opinion was that he had been attacked by stray members of a gang from Hanbridge. The young lady assistants, with ears cocked, gathered the nature of Mr. Scales’s adventure, and were thrilled to the point of questioning Mr. Povey about it after Mr. Scales had gone. His farewell was marked by much handshaking, and finally Mr. Povey ran after him into the Square to mention something about dogs.

At half-past one, while Mrs. Baines was dozing after dinner, Sophia wrapped herself up, and with a book under her arm went forth into the world, through the shop. She returned in less than twenty minutes. But her mother had already awakened, and was hovering about the back of the shop. Mothers have supernatural gifts.

Sophia nonchalantly passed her and hurried into the parlour where she threw down her muff and a book and knelt before the fire to warm herself.

Mrs. Baines followed her. “Been to the Library?” questioned Mrs. Baines.

“Yes, mother. And it’s simply perishing.”

“I wonder at your going on a day like today. I thought you always went on Thursdays?”

“So I do. But I’d finished my book.”

“What is this?” Mrs. Baines picked up the volume, which was covered with black oil-cloth.

She picked it up with a hostile air. For her attitude towards the Free Library was obscurely inimical. She never read anything herself except The Sunday at Home, and Constance never read anything except The Sunday at Home. There were scriptural commentaries, Dugdale’s Gazetteer, Culpepper’s Herbal, and works by Bunyan and Flavius Josephus in the drawing-room bookcase; also Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And Mrs. Baines, in considering the welfare of her daughters, looked askance at the whole remainder of printed literature. If the Free Library had not formed part of the Famous Wedgwood Institution, which had been opened with immense eclat by the semi-divine Gladstone; if the first book had not been ceremoniously ‘taken out’ of the Free Library by the Chief Bailiff in person — a grandfather of stainless renown — Mrs. Baines would probably have risked her authority in forbidding the Free Library.

“You needn’t be afraid,” said Sophia, laughing. “It’s Miss Sewell’s Experience of Life.”

“A novel, I see,” observed Mrs. Baines, dropping the book.

Gold and jewels would probably not tempt a Sophia of these days to read Experience of Life; but to Sophia Baines the bland story had the piquancy of the disapproved.

The next day Mrs. Baines summoned Sophia into her bedroom.

“Sophia,” said she, trembling, “I shall be glad if you will not walk about the streets with young men until you have my permission.”

The girl blushed violently. “I— I—”

“You were seen in Wedgwood Street,” said Mrs. Baines.

“Who’s been gossiping — Mr. Critchlow, I suppose?” Sophia exclaimed scornfully.

“No one has been ‘gossiping,’” said Mrs. Baines. “Well, if I meet some one by accident in the street I can’t help it, can I?” Sophia’s voice shook.

“You know what I mean, my child,” said Mrs. Baines, with careful calm.

Sophia dashed angrily from the room.

“I like the idea of him having ‘a heavy day’!” Mrs. Baines reflected ironically, recalling a phrase which had lodged in her mind. And very vaguely, with an uneasiness scarcely perceptible, she remembered that ‘he,’ and no other, had been in the shop on the day her husband died.