Dick Povey kept his word. At a quarter-past five he drew up in front of No. 49, Deansgate, Manchester. “There you are!” he said, not without pride. “Now, we’ll come back in about a couple of hours or so, just to take your orders, whatever they are.” He was very comforting, with his suggestion that in him Sophia had a sure support in the background.
Without many words Sophia went straight into the shop. It looked like a jeweller’s shop, and a shop for bargains generally. Only the conventional sign over a side-entrance showed that at heart it was a pawnbroker’s. Mr. Till Boldero did a nice business in the Five Towns, and in other centres near Manchester, by selling silver-ware second-hand, or nominally second hand, to persons who wished to make presents to other persons or to themselves. He would send anything by post on approval. Occasionally he came to the Five Towns, and he had once, several years before, met Constance. They had talked. He was the son of a cousin of the late great and wealthy Boldero, sleeping partner in Birkinshaws, and Gerald’s uncle. It was from Constance that he had learnt of Sophia’s return to Bursley. Constance had often remarked to Sophia what a superior man Mr. Till Boldero was.
The shop was narrow and lofty. It seemed like a menagerie for trapped silver-ware. In glass cases right up to the dark ceiling silver vessels and instruments of all kinds lay confined. The top of the counter was a glass prison containing dozens of gold watches, together with snuff-boxes, enamels, and other antiquities. The front of the counter was also glazed, showing vases and large pieces of porcelain. A few pictures in heavy gold frames were perched about. There was a case of umbrellas with elaborate handles and rich tassels. There were a couple of statuettes. The counter, on the customers’ side, ended in a glass screen on which were the words ‘Private Office.’ On the seller’s side the prospect was closed by a vast safe. A tall young man was fumbling in this safe. Two women sat on customers’ chairs, leaning against the crystal counter. The young man came towards them from the safe, bearing a tray.
“How much is that goblet?” asked one of the women, raising her parasol dangerously among such fragility and pointing to one object among many in a case high up from the ground.
“That, madam?”
“Yes.”
“Thirty-five pounds.”
The young man disposed his tray on the counter. It was packed with more gold watches, adding to the extraordinary glitter and shimmer of the shop. He chose a small watch from the regiment.
“Now, this is something I can recommend,” he said. “It’s made by Cuthbert Butler of Blackburn. I can guarantee you that for five years.” He spoke as though he were the accredited representative of the Bank of England, with calm and absolute assurance.
The effect upon Sophia was mysteriously soothing. She felt that she was among honest men. The young man raised his head towards her with a questioning, deferential gesture.
“Can I see Mr. Boldero?” she asked. “Mrs. Scales.”
The young man’s face changed instantly to a sympathetic comprehension.
“Yes, madam. I’ll fetch him at once,” said he, and he disappeared behind the safe. The two customers discussed the watch. Then the door opened in the glass screen, and a portly, middle-aged man showed himself. He was dressed in blue broad-cloth, with a turned-down collar and a small black tie. His waistcoat displayed a plain but heavy gold watch-chain, and his cuff-links were of plain gold. His eye-glasses were gold-rimmed. He had grey hair, beard and moustache, but on the backs of his hands grew a light brown hair. His appearance was strangely mild, dignified, and confidence-inspiring. He was, in fact, one of the most respected tradesmen in Manchester.
He peered forward, looking over his eye-glasses, which he then took off, holding them up in the air by their short handle. Sophia had approached him.
“Mrs. Scales?” he said, in a very quiet, very benevolent voice. Sophia nodded. “Please come this way.” He took her hand, squeezing it commiseratingly, and drew her into the sanctum. “I didn’t expect you so soon,” he said. “I looked up th’ trains, and I didn’t see how you could get here before six.”
Sophia explained.
He led her further, through the private office, into a sort of parlour, and asked her to sit down. And he too sat down. Sophia waited, as it were, like a suitor.
“I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you, Mrs. Scales,” he said, still in that mild, benevolent voice.
“He’s dead?” Sophia asked.
Mr. Till Boldero nodded. “He’s dead. I may as well tell you that he had passed away before I telegraphed. It all happened very, very suddenly.” He paused. “Very, very suddenly!”
“Yes,” said Sophia, weakly. She was conscious of a profound sadness which was not grief, though it resembled grief. And she had also a feeling that she was responsible to Mr. Till Boldero for anything untoward that might have occurred to him by reason of Gerald.
“Yes,” said Mr. Till Boldero, deliberately and softly. “He came in last night just as we were closing. We had very heavy rain here. I don’t know how it was with you. He was wet, in a dreadful state, simply dreadful. Of course, I didn’t recognize him. I’d never seen him before, so far as my recollection goes. He asked me if I was the son of Mr. Till Boldero that had this shop in 1866. I said I was. ‘Well,’ he says, 'you’re the only connection I’ve got. My name’s Gerald Scales. My mother was your father’s cousin. Can you do anything for me?’ he says. I could see he was ill. I had him in here. When I found he couldn’t eat nor drink I thought I’d happen better send for th’ doctor. The doctor got him to bed. He passed away at one o’clock this afternoon. I was very sorry my wife wasn’t here to look after things a bit better. But she’s at Southport, not well at all.”
“What was it?” Sophia asked briefly.
Mr. Boldero indicated the enigmatic. “Exhaustion, I suppose,” he replied.
“He’s here?” demanded Sophia, lifting her eyes to possible bedrooms.
“Yes,” said Mr. Boldero. “I suppose you would wish to see him?”
“Yes,” said Sophia.
“You haven’t seen him for a long time, your sister told me?” Mr. Boldero murmured, sympathetically.
“Not since ‘seventy,” said Sophia.
“Eh, dear! Eh, dear!” ejaculated Mr. Boldero. “I fear it’s been a sad business for ye, Mrs. Scales. Not since ‘seventy!” He sighed. “You must take it as well as you can. I’m not one as talks much, but I sympathize, with you. I do that! I wish my wife had been here to receive you.”
Tears came into Sophia’s eyes.
“Nay, nay!” he said. “You must bear up now!”
“It’s you that make me cry,” said Sophia, gratefully. “You were very good to take him in. It must have been exceedingly trying for you.”
“Oh,” he protested, “you mustn’t talk like that. I couldn’t leave a Boldero on the pavement, and an old man at that! ... Oh, to think that if he’d only managed to please his uncle he might ha’ been one of the richest men in Lancashire. But then there’d ha’ been no Boldero Institute at Strangeways!” he added.
They both sat silent a moment.
“Will you come now? Or will you wait a bit?” asked Mr. Boldero, gently. “Just as you wish. I’m sorry as my wife’s away, that I am!”
“I’ll come now,” said Sophia, firmly. But she was stricken.
He conducted her up a short, dark flight of stairs, which gave on a passage, and at the end of the passage was a door ajar. He pushed the door open. “I’ll leave you for a moment,” he said, always in the same very restrained tone. “You’ll find me downstairs, there, if you want me.” And he moved away with hushed, deliberate tread.
Sophia went into the room, of which the white blind was drawn. She appreciated Mr. Boldero’s consideration in leaving her. She was trembling. But when she saw, in the pale gloom, the face of an aged man peeping out from under a white sheet on a naked mattress, she started back, trembling no more—rather transfixed into an absolute rigidity. That was no conventional, expected shock that she had received. It was a genuine unforeseen shock, the most violent that she had ever had. In her mind she had not pictured Gerald as a very old man. She knew that he was old; she had said to herself that he must be very old, well over seventy. But she had not pictured him. This face on the bed was painfully, pitiably old. A withered face, with the shiny skin all drawn into wrinkles! The stretched skin under the jaw was like the skin of a plucked fowl. The cheek-bones stood up, and below them were deep hollows, almost like egg-cups. A short, scraggy white beard covered the lower part of the face. The hair was scanty, irregular, and quite white; a little white hair grew in the ears. The shut mouth obviously hid toothless gums, for the lips were sucked in. The eyelids were as if pasted down over the eyes, fitting them like kid. All the skin was extremely pallid; it seemed brittle. The body, whose outlines were clear under the sheet, was very small, thin, shrunk, pitiable as the face. And on the face was a general expression of final fatigue, of tragic and acute exhaustion; such as made Sophia pleased that the fatigue and exhaustion had been assuaged in rest, while all the time she kept thinking to herself horribly: “Oh! how tired he must have been!”
Sophia then experienced a pure and primitive emotion, uncoloured by any moral or religious quality. She was not sorry that Gerald had wasted his life, nor that he was a shame to his years and to her. The manner of his life was of no importance. What affected her was that he had once been young, and that he had grown old, and was now dead. That was all. Youth and vigour had come to that. Youth and vigour always came to that. Everything came to that. He had ill-treated her; he had abandoned her; he had been a devious rascal; but how trivial were such accusations against him! The whole of her huge and bitter grievance against him fell to pieces and crumbled. She saw him young, and proud, and strong, as for instance when he had kissed her lying on the bed in that London hotel—she forgot the name—in 1866; and now he was old, and worn, and horrible, and dead. It was the riddle of life that was puzzling and killing her. By the corner of her eye, reflected in the mirror of a wardrobe near the bed, she glimpsed a tall, forlorn woman, who had once been young and now was old; who had once exulted in abundant strength, and trodden proudly on the neck of circumstance, and now was old. He and she had once loved and burned and quarrelled in the glittering and scornful pride of youth. But time had worn them out. “Yet a little while,” she thought, “and I shall be lying on a bed like that! And what shall I have lived for? What is the meaning of it?” The riddle of life itself was killing her, and she seemed to drown in a sea of inexpressible sorrow.
Her memory wandered hopelessly among those past years. She saw Chirac with his wistful smile. She saw him whipped over the roof of the Gare du Nord at the tail of a balloon. She saw old Niepce. She felt his lecherous arm round her. She was as old now as Niepce had been then. Could she excite lust now? Ah! the irony of such a question! To be young and seductive, to be able to kindle a man’s eye—that seemed to her the sole thing desirable. Once she had been so! ... Niepce must certainly have been dead for years. Niepce, the obstinate and hopeful voluptuary, was nothing but a few bones in a coffin now!
She was acquainted with affliction in that hour. All that she had previously suffered sank into insignificance by the side of that suffering.
She turned to the veiled window and idly pulled the blind and looked out. Huge red and yellow cars were swimming in thunder along Deansgate; lorries jolted and rattled; the people of Manchester hurried along the pavements, apparently unconscious that all their doings were vain. Yesterday he too had been in Deansgate, hungry for life, hating the idea of death! What a figure he must have made! Her heart dissolved in pity for him. She dropped the blind.
“My life has been too terrible!” she thought. “I wish I was dead. I have been through too much. It is monstrous, and I cannot stand it. I do not want to die, but I wish I was dead.”
There was a discreet knock on the door.
“Come in,” she said, in a calm, resigned, cheerful voice. The sound had recalled her with the swiftness of a miracle to the unconquerable dignity of human pride.
Mr. Till Boldero entered.
“I should like you to come downstairs and drink a cup of tea,” he said. He was a marvel of tact and good nature. “My wife is unfortunately not here, and the house is rather at sixes and sevens; but I have sent out for some tea.”
She followed him downstairs into the parlour. He poured out a cup of tea.
“I was forgetting,” she said. “I am forbidden tea. I mustn’t drink it.”
She looked at the cup, tremendously tempted. She longed for tea. An occasional transgression could not harm her. But no! She would not drink it.
“Then what can I get you?”
“If I could have just milk and water,” she said meekly.
Mr. Boldero emptied the cup into the slop basin, and began to fill it again.
“Did he tell you anything?” she asked, after a considerable silence.
“Nothing,” said Mr. Boldero in his low, soothing tones. “Nothing except that he had come from Liverpool. Judging from his shoes I should say he must have walked a good bit of the way.”
“At his age!” murmured Sophia, touched.
“Yes,” sighed Mr. Boldero. “He must have been in great straits. You know, he could scarcely talk at all. By the way, here are his clothes. I have had them put aside.”
Sophia saw a small pile of clothes on a chair. She examined the suit, which was still damp, and its woeful shabbiness pained her. The linen collar was nearly black, its stud of bone. As for the boots, she had noticed such boots on the feet of tramps. She wept now. These were the clothes of him who had once been a dandy living at the rate of fifty pounds a week.
“No luggage or anything, of course?” she muttered.
“No,” said Mr. Boldero. “In the pockets there was nothing whatever but this.”
He went to the mantelpiece and picked up a cheap, cracked letter case, which Sophia opened. In it were a visiting card—‘Senorita Clemenzia Borja’—and a bill-head of the Hotel of the Holy Spirit, Concepcion del Uruguay, on the back of which a lot of figures had been scrawled.
“One would suppose,” said Mr. Boldero, “that he had come from South America.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing.”
Gerald’s soul had not been compelled to abandon much in the haste of its flight.
A servant announced that Mrs. Scales’s friends were waiting for her outside in the motor-car. Sophia glanced at Mr. Till Boldero with an exacerbated anxiety on her face.
“Surely they don’t expect me to go back with them tonight!” she said. “And look at all there is to be done!”
Mr. Till Boldero’s kindness was then redoubled. “You can do nothing for HIM now,” he said. “Tell me your wishes about the funeral. I will arrange everything. Go back to your sister to-night. She will be nervous about you. And return tomorrow or the day after.... No! It’s no trouble, I assure you!”
She yielded.
Thus towards eight o’clock, when Sophia had eaten a little under Mr. Boldero’s superintendence, and the pawnshop was shut up, the motor-car started again for Bursley, Lily Holl being beside her lover and Sophia alone in the body of the car. Sophia had told them nothing of the nature of her mission. She was incapable of talking to them. They saw that she was in a condition of serious mental disturbance. Under cover of the noise of the car, Lily said to Dick that she was sure Mrs. Scales was ill, and Dick, putting his lips together, replied that he meant to be in King Street at nine-thirty at the latest. From time to time Lily surreptitiously glanced at Sophia—a glance of apprehensive inspection, or smiled at her silently; and Sophia vaguely responded to the smile.
In half an hour they had escaped from the ring of Manchester and were on the county roads of Cheshire, polished, flat, sinuous. It was the season of the year when there is no night—only daylight and twilight; when the last silver of dusk remains obstinately visible for hours. And in the open country, under the melancholy arch of evening, the sadness of the earth seemed to possess Sophia anew. Only then did she realize the intensity of the ordeal through which she was passing.
To the south of Congleton one of the tyres softened, immediately after Dick had lighted his lamps. He stopped the car and got down again. They were two miles Astbury, the nearest village. He had just, with the resignation of experience, reached for the tool-bag, when Lily exclaimed: “Is she asleep, or what?” Sophia was not asleep, but she was apparently not conscious.
It was a difficult and a trying situation for two lovers. Their voices changed momentarily to the tone of alarm and consternation, and then grew firm again. Sophia showed life but not reason. Lily could feel the poor old lady’s heart.
“Well, there’s nothing for it!” said Dick, briefly, when all their efforts failed to rouse her.
“What—shall you do?”
“Go straight home as quick as I can on three tyres. We must get her over to this side, and you must hold her. Like that we shall keep the weight off the other side.”
He pitched back the tool-bag into its box. Lily admired his decision.
It was in this order, no longer under the spell of the changing beauty of nocturnal landscapes, that they finished the journey. Constance had opened the door before the car came to a stop in the gloom of King Street. The young people considered that she bore the shock well, though the carrying into the house of Sophia’s inert, twitching body, with its hat forlornly awry, was a sight to harrow a soul sturdier than Constance.
When that was done, Dick said curtly: “I’m off. You stay here, of course.”
“Where are you going?” asked Lily.
“Doctor!” snapped Dick, hobbling rapidly down the steps.
The extraordinary violence of the turn in affairs was what chiefly struck Constance, though it did not overwhelm her. Less than twelve hours before—nay, scarcely six hours before—she and Sophia had been living their placid and monotonous existence, undisturbed by anything worse than the indisposition or death of dogs, or the perversity of a servant. And now, the menacing Gerald Scales having reappeared, Sophia’s form lay mysterious and affrightening on the sofa; and she and Lily Holl, a girl whom she had not met till that day, were staring at Sophia side by side, intimately sharing the same alarm. Constance rose to the crisis. She no longer had Sophia’s energy and decisive peremptoriness to depend on, and the Baines in her was awakened. All her daily troubles sank away to their proper scale of unimportance. Neither the young woman nor the old one knew what to do. They could loosen clothes, vainly offer restoratives to the smitten mouth: that was all. Sophia was not unconscious, as could be judged from her eyes; but she could not speak, nor make signs; her body was frequently convulsed. So the two women waited, and the servant waited in the background. The sight of Sophia had effected an astonishing transformation in Maud. Maud was a changed girl. Constance could not recognize, in her eager deferential anxiety to be of use, the pert naughtiness of the minx. She was altered as a wanton of the middle ages would have been altered by some miraculous visitation. It might have been the turning-point in Maud’s career!
Doctor Stirling arrived in less than ten minutes. Dick Povey had had the wit to look for him at the Federation meeting in the Town Hall. And the advent of the doctor and Dick, noisily, at breakneck speed in the car, provided a second sensation. The doctor inquired quickly what had occurred. Nobody could tell him anything. Constance had already confided to Lily Holl the reason of the visit to Manchester; but that was the extent of her knowledge. Not a single person in Bursley, except Sophia, knew what had happened in Manchester. But Constance conjectured that Gerald Scales was dead—or Sophia would never have returned so soon. Then the doctor suggested that on the contrary Gerald Scales might be out of danger. And all then pictured to themselves this troubling Gerald Scales, this dark and sinister husband that had caused such a violent upheaval.
Meanwhile the doctor was at work. He sent Dick Povey to knock up Critchlow’s, if the shop should be closed, and obtain a drug. Then, after a time, he lifted Sophia, just as she was, like a bundle on his shoulder, and carried her single-handed upstairs to the second floor. He had recently been giving a course of instruction to enthusiasts of the St. John’s Ambulance Association in Bursley. The feat had an air of the superhuman. Above all else it remained printed on Constance’s mind: the burly doctor treading delicately and carefully on the crooked, creaking stairs, his precautions against damaging Sophia by brusque contacts, his stumble at the two steps in the middle of the corridor; Sophia’s horribly limp head and loosened hair; and then the tender placing of her on the bed, and the doctor’s long breath and flourish of his large handkerchief, all that under the crude lights and shadows of gas jets! The doctor was nonplussed. Constance gave him a second-hand account of Sophia’s original attack in Paris, roughly as she had heard it from Sophia. He at once said that it could not have been what the French doctor had said it was. Constance shrugged her shoulders. She was not surprised. For her there was necessarily something of the charlatan about a French doctor. She said she only knew what Sophia had told her. After a time Dr. Stirling determined to try electricity, and Dick Povey drove him up to the surgery to fetch his apparatus. The women were left alone again. Constance was very deeply impressed by Lily Holl’s sensible, sympathetic attitude. “Whatever I should have done without Miss Lily I don’t know!” she used to exclaim afterwards. Even Maud was beyond praise. It seemed to be the middle of the night when Dr. Stirling came back, but it was barely eleven o’clock, and people were only just returning from Hanbridge Theatre and Hanbridge Music Hall. The use of the electrical apparatus was a dead spectacle. Sophia’s inertness under it was agonizing. They waited, as it were, breathless for the result. And there was no result. Both injections and electricity had entirely failed to influence the paralysis of Sophia’s mouth and throat. Everything had failed. “Nothing to do but wait a bit!” said the doctor quietly. They waited in the chamber. Sophia seemed to be in a kind of coma. The distortion of her handsome face was more marked as time passed. The doctor spoke now and then in a low voice. He said that the attack had ultimately been determined by cold produced by rapid motion in the automobile. Dick Povey whispered that he must run over to Hanbridge and let Lily’s parents know that there was no cause for alarm on her account, and that he would return at once. He was very devoted. On the landing out-side the bedroom, the doctor murmured to him: “U.P.” And Dick nodded. They were great friends.
At intervals the doctor, who never knew when he was beaten, essayed new methods of dealing with Sophia’s case. New symptoms followed. It was half-past twelve when, after gazing with prolonged intensity at the patient, and after having tested her mouth and heart, he rose slowly and looked at Constance.
“It’s over?” said Constance.
And he very slightly moved his head. “Come downstairs, please,” he enjoined her, in a pause that ensued. Constance was amazingly courageous. The doctor was very solemn and very kind; Constance had never before seen him to such heroic advantage. He led her with infinite gentleness out of the room. There was nothing to stay for; Sophia had gone. Constance wanted to stay by Sophia’s body; but it was the rule that the stricken should be led away, the doctor observed this classic rule, and Constance felt that he was right and that she must obey. Lily Holl followed. The servant, learning the truth by the intuition accorded to primitive natures, burst into loud sobs, yelling that Sophia had been the most excellent mistress that servant ever had. The doctor angrily told her not to stand blubbering there, but to go into her kitchen and shut the door if she couldn’t control herself. All his accumulated nervous agitation was discharged on Maud like a thunderclap. Constance continued to behave wonderfully. She was the admiration of the doctor and Lily Holl. Then Dick Povey came back. It was settled that Lily should pass the night with Constance. At last the doctor and Dick departed together, the doctor undertaking the mortuary arrangements. Maud was hunted to bed.
Early in the morning Constance rose up from her own bed. It was five o’clock, and there had been daylight for two hours already. She moved noiselessly and peeped over the foot of the bed at the sofa. Lily was quietly asleep there, breathing with the softness of a child. Lily would have deemed that she was a very mature woman, who had seen life and much of it. Yet to Constance her face and attitude had the exquisite quality of a child’s. She was not precisely a pretty girl, but her features, the candid expression of her disposition, produced an impression that was akin to that of beauty. Her abandonment was complete. She had gone through the night unscathed, and was now renewing herself in calm, oblivious sleep. Her ingenuous girlishness was apparent then. It seemed as if all her wise and sweet behaviour of the evening could have been nothing but so many imitative gestures. It seemed impossible that a being so young and fresh could have really experienced the mood of which her gestures had been the expression. Her strong virginal simplicity made Constance vaguely sad for her.
Creeping out of the room, Constance climbed to the second floor in her dressing-gown, and entered the other chamber. She was obliged to look again upon Sophia’s body. Incredible swiftness of calamity! Who could have foreseen it? Constance was less desolated than numbed. She was as yet only touching the fringe of her bereavement. She had not begun to think of herself. She was drenched, as she gazed at Sophia’s body, not by pity for herself, but by compassion for the immense disaster of her sister’s life. She perceived fully now for the first time the greatness of that disaster. Sophia’s charm and Sophia’s beauty—what profit had they been to their owner? She saw pictures of Sophia’s career, distorted and grotesque images formed in her untravelled mind from Sophia’s own rare and compressed recitals. What a career! A brief passion, and then nearly thirty years in a boarding-house! And Sophia had never had a child; had never known either the joy or the pain of maternity. She had never even had a true home till, in all her sterile splendour, she came to Bursley. And she had ended—thus! This was the piteous, ignominious end of Sophia’s wondrous gifts of body and soul. Hers had not been a life at all. And the reason? It is strange how fate persists in justifying the harsh generalizations of Puritan morals, of the morals in which Constance had been brought up by her stern parents! Sophia had sinned. It was therefore inevitable that she should suffer. An adventure such as she had in wicked and capricious pride undertaken with Gerald Scales, could not conclude otherwise than it had concluded. It could have brought nothing but evil. There was no getting away from these verities, thought Constance. And she was to be excused for thinking that all modern progress and cleverness was as naught, and that the world would be forced to return upon its steps and start again in the path which it had left.
Up to within a few days of her death people had been wont to remark that Mrs. Scales looked as young as ever, and that she was as bright and as energetic as ever. And truly, regarding Sophia from a little distance—that handsome oval, that erect carriage of a slim body, that challenging eye!—no one would have said that she was in her sixtieth year. But look at her now, with her twisted face, her sightless orbs, her worn skin—she did not seem sixty, but seventy! She was like something used, exhausted, and thrown aside! Yes, Constance’s heart melted in an anguished pity for that stormy creature. And mingled with the pity was a stern recognition of the handiwork of divine justice. To Constance’s lips came the same phrase as had come to the lips of Samuel Povey on a different occasion: God is not mocked! The ideas of her parents and her grandparents had survived intact in Constance. It is true that Constance’s father would have shuddered in Heaven could he have seen Constance solitarily playing cards of a night. But in spite of cards, and of a son who never went to chapel, Constance, under the various influences of destiny, had remained essentially what her father had been. Not in her was the force of evolution manifest. There are thousands such.
Lily, awake, and reclothed with that unreal mien of a grown and comprehending woman, stepped quietly into the room, searching for the poor old thing, Constance. The layer-out had come.
By the first post was delivered a letter addressed to Sophia by Mr. Till Boldero. From its contents the death of Gerald Scales was clear. There seemed then to be nothing else for Constance to do. What had to be done was done for her. And stronger wills than hers put her to bed. Cyril was telegraphed for. Mr. Critchlow called, Mrs. Critchlow following—a fussy infliction, but useful in certain matters. Mr. Critchlow was not allowed to see Constance. She could hear his high grating voice in the corridor. She had to lie calm, and the sudden tranquillity seemed strange after the feverish violence of the night. Only twenty-four hours since, and she had been worrying about the death of a dog! With a body crying for sleep, she dozed off, thoughts of the mystery of life merging into the incoherence of dreams.
The news was abroad in the Square before nine o’clock. There were persons who had witnessed the arrival of the motorcar, and the transfer of Sophia to the house. Untruthful rumours had spread as to the manner of Gerald Scales’s death. Some said that he had dramatically committed suicide. But the town, though titillated, was not moved as it would have been moved by a similar event twenty years, or even ten years earlier. Times had changed in Bursley. Bursley was more sophisticated than in the old days.
Constance was afraid lest Cyril, despite the seriousness of the occasion, might exhibit his customary tardiness in coming. She had long since learnt not to rely upon him. But he came the same evening. His behaviour was in every way perfect. He showed quiet but genuine grief for the death of his aunt, and he was a model of consideration for his mother. Further, he at once assumed charge of all the arrangements, in regard both to Sophia and to her husband. Constance was surprised at the ease which he displayed in the conduct of practical affairs, and the assurance with which he gave orders. She had never seen him direct anything before. He said, indeed, that he had never directed anything before, but that there appeared to him to be no difficulties. Whereas Constance had figured a tiresome series of varied complications. As to the burial of Sophia, Cyril was vigorously in favour of an absolutely private funeral; that is to say, a funeral at which none but himself should be present. He seemed to have a passionate objection to any sort of parade. Constance agreed with him. But she said that it would be impossible not to invite Mr. Critchlow, Sophia’s trustee, and that if Mr. Critchlow were invited certain others must be invited. Cyril asked: “Why impossible?” Constance said: “Because it would be impossible. Because Mr. Critchlow would be hurt.” Cyril asked: “What does it matter if he is hurt?” and suggested that Mr. Critchlow would get over his damage. Constance grew more serious. The discussion threatened to be warm. Suddenly Cyril yielded. “All right, Mrs. Plover, all right! It shall be exactly as you choose,” he said, in a gentle, humouring tone. He had not called her ‘Mrs. Plover’ for years. She thought the hour badly chosen for verbal pleasantry, but he was so kind that she made no complaint. Thus there were six people at Sophia’s funeral, including Mr. Critchlow. No refreshments were offered. The mourners separated at the church. When both funerals were accomplished Cyril sat down and played the harmonium softly, and said that it had kept well in tune. He was extraordinarily soothing.
He had now reached the age of thirty-three. His habits were as industrious as ever, his preoccupation with his art as keen. But he had achieved no fame, no success. He earned nothing, living in comfort on an allowance from his mother. He seldom spoke of his plans and never of his hopes. He had in fact settled down into a dilletante, having learnt gently to scorn the triumphs which he lacked the force to win. He imagined that industry and a regular existence were sufficient justification in themselves for any man’s life. Constance had dropped the habit of expecting him to astound the world. He was rather grave and precise in manner, courteous and tepid, with a touch of condescension towards his environment; as though he were continually permitting the perspicacious to discern that he had nothing to learn—if the truth were known! His humour had assumed a modified form. He often smiled to himself. He was unexceptionable.
On the day after Sophia’s funeral he set to work to design a simple stone for his aunt’s tomb. He said he could not tolerate the ordinary gravestone, which always looked, to him, as if the wind might blow it over, thus negativing the idea of solidity. His mother did not in the least understand him. She thought the lettering of his tombstone affected and finicking. But she let it pass without comment, being secretly very flattered that he should have deigned to design a stone at all.
Sophia had left all her money to Cyril, and had made him the sole executor of her will. This arrangement had been agreed with Constance. The sisters thought it was the best plan. Cyril ignored Mr. Critchlow entirely, and went to a young lawyer at Hanbridge, a friend of his and of Matthew Peel-Swynnerton’s. Mr. Critchlow, aged and unaccustomed to interference, had to render accounts of his trusteeship to this young man, and was incensed. The estate was proved at over thirty-five thousand pounds. In the main, Sophia had been careful, and had even been parsimonious. She had often told Constance that they ought to spend money much more freely, and she had had a few brief fits of extravagance. But the habit of stern thrift, begun in 1870 and practised without any intermission till she came to England in 1897, had been too strong for her theories. The squandering of money pained her. And she could not, in her age, devise expensive tastes.
Cyril showed no emotion whatever on learning himself the inheritor of thirty-five thousand pounds. He did not seem to care. He spoke of the sum as a millionaire might have spoken of it. In justice to him it is to be said that he cared nothing for wealth, except in so far as wealth could gratify his eye and ear trained to artistic voluptuousness. But, for his mother’s sake, and for the sake of Bursley, he might have affected a little satisfaction. His mother was somewhat hurt. His behaviour caused her to revert in meditation again and again to the futility of Sophia’s career, and the waste of her attributes. She had grown old and hard in joyless years in order to amass this money which Cyril would spend coldly and ungratefully, never thinking of the immense effort and endless sacrifice which had gone to its collection. He would spend it as carelessly as though he had picked it up in the street. As the days went by and Constance realized her own grief, she also realized more and more the completeness of the tragedy of Sophia’s life. Headstrong Sophia had deceived her mother, and for the deception had paid with thirty years of melancholy and the entire frustration of her proper destiny.
After haunting Bursley for a fortnight in elegant black, Cyril said, without any warning, one night: “I must go the day after to-morrow, mater.” And he told her of a journey to Hungary which he had long since definitely planned with Matthew Peel-Swynnerton, and which could not be postponed, as it comprised ‘business.’ He had hitherto breathed no word of this. He was as secretive as ever. As to her holiday, he suggested that she should arrange to go away with the Holls and Dick Povey. He approved of Lily Holl and of Dick Povey. Of Dick Povey he said: “He’s one of the most remarkable chaps in the Five Towns.” And he had the air of having made Dick’s reputation. Constance, knowing there was no appeal, accepted the sentence of loneliness. Her health was singularly good.
When he was gone she said to herself: “Scarcely a fortnight and Sophia was here at this table!” She would remember every now and then, with a faint shock, that poor, proud, masterful Sophia was dead.
When, on a June afternoon about twelve months later, Lily Holl walked into Mrs. Povey’s drawing-room overlooking the Square, she found a calm, somewhat optimistic old lady—older than her years—which were little more than sixty—whose chief enemies were sciatica and rheumatism. The sciatica was a dear enemy of long standing, always affectionately referred to by the forgiving Constance as ‘my sciatica’; the rheumatism was a new-comer, unprivileged, spoken of by its victim apprehensively and yet disdainfully as ‘this rheumatism.’ Constance was now very stout. She sat in a low easy-chair between the oval table and the window, arrayed in black silk. As the girl Lily came in, Constance lifted her head with a bland smile, and Lily kissed her, contentedly. Lily knew that she was a welcome visitor. These two had become as intimate as the difference between their ages would permit; of the two, Constance was the more frank. Lily as well as Constance was in mourning. A few months previously her aged grandfather, ‘Holl, the grocer,’ had died. The second of his two sons, Lily’s father, had then left the business established by the brothers at Hanbridge in order to manage, for a time, the parent business in St. Luke’s Square. Alderman Holl’s death had delayed Lily’s marriage. Lily took tea with Constance, or at any rate paid a call, four or five times a week. She listened to Constance.
Everybody considered that Constance had ‘come splendidly through’ the dreadful affair of Sophia’s death. Indeed, it was observed that she was more philosophic, more cheerful, more sweet, than she had been for many years. The truth was that, though her bereavement had been the cause of a most genuine and durable sorrow, it had been a relief to her. When Constance was over fifty, the energetic and masterful Sophia had burst in upon her lethargic tranquillity and very seriously disturbed the flow of old habits. Certainly Constance had fought Sophia on the main point, and won; but on a hundred minor points she had either lost or had not fought. Sophia had been ‘too much’ for Constance, and it had been only by a wearying expenditure of nervous force that Constance had succeeded in holding a small part of her own against the unconscious domination of Sophia. The death of Mrs. Scales had put an end to all the strain, and Constance had been once again mistress in Constance’s house. Constance would never have admitted these facts, even to herself; and no one would ever have dared to suggest them to her. For with all her temperamental mildness she had her formidable side.
She was slipping a photograph into a plush-covered photograph album.
“More photographs?” Lily questioned. She had almost exactly the same benignant smile that Constance had. She seemed to be the personification of gentleness—one of those feather-beds that some capricious men occasionally have the luck to marry. She was capable, with a touch of honest, simple stupidity. All her character was displayed in the tone in which she said: “More photographs?” It showed an eager responsive sympathy with Constance’s cult for photographs, also a slight personal fondness for photographs, also a dim perception that a cult for photographs might be carried to the ridiculous, and a kind desire to hide all trace of this perception. The voice was thin, and matched the pale complexion of her delicate face.
Constance’s eyes had a quizzical gleam behind her spectacles as she silently held up the photograph for Lily’s inspection.
Lily, sitting down, lowered the corners of her soft lips when she beheld the photograph, and nodded her head several times, scarce perceptibly.
“Her ladyship has just given it to me,” whispered Constance.
“Indeed!” said Lily, with an extraordinary accent.
'Her ladyship’ was the last and best of Constance’s servants, a really excellent creature of thirty, who had known misfortune, and who must assuredly have been sent to Constance by the old watchful Providence. They ‘got on together’ nearly perfectly. Her name was Mary. After ten years of turmoil, Constance in the matter of servants was now at rest.
“Yes,” said Constance. “She’s named it to me several times—about having her photograph taken, and last week I let her go. I told you, didn’t I? I always consider her in every way, all her little fancies and everything. And the copies came to-day. I wouldn’t hurt her feelings for anything. You may be sure she’ll take a look into the album next time she cleans the room.”
Constance and Lily exchanged a glance agreeing that Constance had affably stretched a point in deciding to put the photograph of a servant between the same covers with photographs of her family and friends. It was doubtful whether such a thing had ever been done before.
One photograph usually leads to another, and one photograph album to another photograph album.
“Pass me that album on the second shelf of the Canterbury; my dear,” said Constance.
Lily rose vivaciously, as though to see the album on the second shelf of the Canterbury had been the ambition of her life.
They sat side by side at the table, Lily turning over the pages. Constance, for all her vast bulk, continually made little nervous movements. Occasionally she would sniff and occasionally a mysterious noise would occur in her chest; she always pretended that this noise was a cough, and would support the pretence by emitting a real cough immediately after it.
“Why!” exclaimed Lily. “Have I seen that before?”
“I don’t know, my dear,” said Constance. “HAVE you?”
It was a photograph of Sophia taken a few years previously by ‘a very nice gentleman,’ whose acquaintance the sisters had made during a holiday at Harrogate. It portrayed Sophia on a knoll, fronting the weather.
“It’s Mrs. Scales to the life—I can see that,” said Lily.
“Yes,” said Constance. “Whenever there was a wind she always stood like that, and took long deep breaths of it.”
This recollection of one of Sophia’s habits recalled the whole woman to Constance’s memory, and drew a picture of her character for the girl who had scarcely known her.
“It’s not like ordinary photographs. There’s something special about it,” said Lily, enthusiastically. “I don’t think I ever saw a photograph like that.”
“I’ve got another copy of it in my bedroom,” said Constance. “I’ll give you this one.”
“Oh, Mrs. Povey! I couldn’t think—!”
“Yes, yes!” said Constance, removing the photograph from the page.
“Oh, THANK you!” said Lily.
“And that reminds me,” said Constance, getting up with great difficulty from her chair.
“Can I find anything for you?” Lily asked.
“No, no!” said Constance, leaving the room.
She returned in a moment with her jewel-box, a receptacle of ebony with ivory ornamentations.
“I’ve always meant to give you this,” said Constance, taking from the box a fine cameo brooch. “I don’t seem to fancy wearing it myself. And I should like to see you wearing it. It was mother’s. I believe they’re coming into fashion again. I don’t see why you shouldn’t wear it while you’re in mourning. They aren’t half so strict now about mourning as they used to be.”
“Truly!” murmured Lily, ecstatically. They kissed. Constance seemed to breathe out benevolence, as with trembling hands she pinned the brooch at Lily’s neck. She lavished the warm treasure of her heart on Lily, whom she regarded as an almost perfect girl, and who had become the idol of her latter years.
“What a magnificent old watch!” said Lily, as they delved together in the lower recesses of the box. “AND the chain to it!”
“That was father’s,” said Constance. “He always used to swear by it. When it didn’t agree with the Town Hall, he used to say: ‘Then th’ Town Hall’s wrong.’ And it’s curious, the Town Hall WAS wrong. You know the Town Hall clock has never been a good timekeeper. I’ve been thinking of giving that watch and chain to Dick.”
“HAVE you?” said Lily.
“Yes. It’s just as good as it was when father wore it. My husband never would wear it. He preferred his own. He had little fancies like that. And Cyril takes after his father.” She spoke in her ‘dry’ tone. “I’ve almost decided to give it to Dick—that is, if he behaves himself. Is he still on with this ballooning?”
Lily Smiled guiltily: “Oh yes!”
“Well,” said Constance, “I never heard the like! If he’s been up and come down safely, that ought to be enough for him. I wonder you let him do it, my dear.”
“But how can I stop him? I’ve no control over him.”
“But do you mean to say that he’d still do it if you told him seriously you didn’t want him to?”
“Yes,” said Lily; and added: “So I shan’t tell him.”
Constance nodded her head, musing over the secret nature of men. She remembered too well the cruel obstinacy of Samuel, who had nevertheless loved her. And Dick Povey was a thousand times more bizarre than Samuel. She saw him vividly, a little boy, whizzing down King Street on a boneshaker, and his cap flying off. Afterwards it had been motor-cars! Now it was balloons! She sighed. She was struck by the profound instinctive wisdom just enunciated by the girl.
“Well,” she said, “I shall see. I’ve not made up my mind yet. What’s the young man doing this afternoon, by the way?”
“He’s gone to Birmingham to try to sell two motor-lorries. He won’t be back home till late. He’s coming over here to-morrow.”
It was an excellent illustration of Dick Povey’s methods that at this very moment Lily heard in the Square the sound of a motor-car, which happened to be Dick’s car. She sprang up to look.
“Why!” she cried, flushing. “Here he is now!”
“Bless us, bless us!” muttered Constance, closing the box.
When Dick, having left his car in King Street, limped tempestuously into the drawing-room, galvanizing it by his abundant vitality into a new life, he cried joyously: “Sold my lorries! Sold my lorries!” And he explained that by a charming accident he had disposed of them to a chance buyer in Hanbridge, just before starting for Birmingham. So he had telephoned to Birmingham that the matter was ‘off,’ and then, being 'at a loose end,’ he had come over to Bursley in search of his betrothed. At Holl’s shop they had told him that she was with Mrs. Povey. Constance glanced at him, impressed by his jolly air of success. He seemed exactly like his breezy and self-confident advertisements in the Signal. He was absolutely pleased with himself. He triumphed over his limp—that ever-present reminder of a tragedy. Who would dream, to look at his blond, laughing, scintillating face, astonishingly young for his years, that he had once passed through such a night as that on which his father had killed his mother while he lay immovable and cursing, with a broken knee, in bed? Constance had heard all about that scene from her husband, and she paused in wonder at the contrasting hazards of existence.
Dick Povey brought his hands together with a resounding smack, and then rubbed them rapidly.
“AND a good price, too!” he exclaimed blithely. “Mrs. Povey, I don’t mind telling you that I’ve netted seventy pounds odd this afternoon.”
Lily’s eyes expressed her proud joy.
“I hope pride won’t have a fall,” said Constance, with a calm smile out of which peeped a hint of a rebuke. “That’s what I hope. I must just go and see about tea.”
“I can’t stay for tea—really,” said Dick.
“Of course you can,” said Constance, positively. “Suppose you’d been at Birmingham? It’s weeks since you stayed to tea.”
“Oh, well, thanks!” Dick yielded, rather snubbed.
“Can’t I save you a journey, Mrs. Povey?” Lily asked, eagerly thoughtful.
“No, thank you, my dear. There are one or two little things that need my attention.” And Constance departed with her jewel-box.
Dick, having assured himself that the door was closed, assaulted Lily with a kiss.
“Been here long?” he inquired.
“About an hour and a half.”
“Glad to see me?”
“Oh, Dick!” she protested.
“Old lady’s in one of her humours, eh?”
“No, no! Only she was just talking about balloons—you know. She’s very much up in arms.”
“You ought to keep her off balloons. Balloons may be the ruin of her wedding-present to us, my child.”
“Dick! How can you talk like that? ... It’s all very well saying I ought to keep her off balloons. You try to keep her off balloons when once she begins, and see!”
“What started her?”
“She said she was thinking of giving you old Mr. Baines’s gold watch and chain—if you behaved yourself.”
“Thank you for nothing!” said Dick. “I don’t want it.”
“Have you seen it?”
“Have I seen it? I should say I had seen it. She’s mentioned it once or twice before.”
“Oh! I didn’t know.”
“I don’t see myself carting that thing about. I much prefer my own. What do you think of it?”
“Of course it is rather clumsy,” said Lily. “But if she offered it to you, you couldn’t refuse it, and you’d simply have to wear it.”
“Well, then,” said Dick, “I must try to behave myself just badly enough to keep off the watch, but not badly enough to upset her notions about wedding-presents.”
“Poor old thing!” Lily murmured, compassionately.
Then Lily put her hand silently to her neck.
“What’s that?”
“She’s just given it to me.”
Dick approached very near to examine the cameo brooch. “Hm!” he murmured. It was an adverse verdict. And Lily coincided with it by a lift of the eyebrows.
“And I suppose you’ll have to wear that!” said Dick.
“She values it as much as anything she’s got, poor old thing!” said Lily. “It belonged to her mother. And she says cameos are coming into fashion again. It really is rather good, you know.”
“I wonder where she learnt that!” said Dick, drily. “I see you’ve been suffering from the photographs again.”
“Well,” said Lily, “I much prefer the photographs to helping her to play Patience. The way she cheats herself—it’s too silly! I—”
She stopped. The door which had after all not been latched, was pushed open, and the antique Fossette introduced herself painfully into the room. Fossette had an affection for Dick Povey.
“Well, Methusaleh!” he greeted the animal loudly. She could scarcely wag her tail, nor shake the hair out of her dim eyes in order to look up at him. He stooped to pat her.
“That dog does smell,” said Lily, bluntly.
“What do you expect? What she wants is the least dose of prussic acid. She’s a burden to herself.”
“It’s funny that if you venture to hint to Mrs. Povey that the dog is offensive she gets quite peppery,” said Lily.
“Well, that’s very simple,” said Dick. “Don’t hint, that’s all! Hold your nose and your tongue too.”
“Dick, I do wish you wouldn’t be so absurd.”
Constance returned into the room, cutting short the conversation.
“Mrs. Povey,” said Dick, in a voice full of gratitude, “Lily has just been showing me her brooch—”
He noticed that she paid no heed to him, but passed hurriedly to the window.
“What’s amiss in the Square?” Constance exclaimed. “When I was in the parlour just now I saw a man running along Wedgwood Street, and I said to myself, what’s amiss?”
Dick and Lily joined her at the window.
Several people were hurrying down the Square, and then a man came running with a doctor from the market-place. All these persons disappeared from view under the window of Mrs. Povey’s drawing-room, which was over part of Mrs. Critchlow’s shop. As the windows of the shop projected beyond the walls of the house it was impossible, from the drawing-room window, to see the pavement in front of the shop.
“It must be something on the pavement—or in the shop!” murmured Constance.
“Oh, ma’am!” said a startled voice behind the three. It was Mary, original of the photograph, who had run unperceived into the drawing-room. “They say as Mrs. Critchlow has tried to commit suicide!”
Constance started back. Lily went towards her, with an instinctive gesture of supporting consolation.
“Maria Critchlow tried to commit suicide!” Constance muttered.
“Yes, ma’am! But they say she’s not done it.”
“By Jove! I’d better go and see if I can help, hadn’t I?” cried Dick Povey, hobbling off, excited and speedy. “Strange, isn’t it?” he exclaimed afterwards, “how I manage to come in for things? Sheer chance that I was here to-day! But it’s always like that! Somehow something extraordinary is always happening where I am.” And this too ministered to his satisfaction, and to his zest for life.
When, in the evening, after all sorts of comings and goings, he finally returned to the old lady and the young one, in order to report the upshot, his demeanour was suitably toned to Constance’s mood. The old lady had been very deeply disturbed by the tragedy, which, as she said, had passed under her very feet while she was calmly talking to Lily.
The whole truth came out in a short space of time. Mrs. Critchlow was suffering from melancholia. It appeared that for long she had been depressed by the failing trade of the shop, which was none of her fault. The state of the Square had steadily deteriorated. Even the 'Vaults’ were not what they once were. Four or five shops had been shut up, as it were definitely, the landlords having given up hope of discovering serious tenants. And, of those kept open, the majority were struggling desperately to make ends meet. Only Holl’s and a new upstart draper, who had widely advertised his dress-making department, were really flourishing. The confectionery half of Mr. Brindley’s business was disappearing. People would not go to Hanbridge for their bread or for their groceries, but they would go for their cakes. These electric trams had simply carried to Hanbridge the cream, and much of the milk, of Bursley’s retail trade. There were unprincipled tradesmen in Hanbridge ready to pay the car-fares of any customer who spent a crown in their establishments. Hanbridge was the geographical centre of the Five Towns, and it was alive to its situation. Useless for Bursley to compete! If Mrs. Critchlow had been a philosopher, if she had known that geography had always made history, she would have given up her enterprise a dozen years ago. But Mrs. Critchlow was merely Maria Insull. She had seen Baines’s in its magnificent prime, when Baines’s almost conferred a favour on customers in serving them. At the time when she took over the business under the wing of her husband, it was still a good business. But from that instant the tide had seemed to turn. She had fought, and she kept on fighting, stupidly. She was not aware that she was fighting against evolution, not aware that evolution had chosen her for one of its victims! She could understand that all the other shops in the Square should fail, but not that Baines’s should fail! She was as industrious as ever, as good a buyer, as good a seller, as keen for novelties, as economical, as methodical! And yet the returns dropped and dropped.
She naturally had no sympathy from Charles, who now took small interest even in his own business, or what was left of it, and who was coldly disgusted at the ultimate cost of his marriage. Charles gave her no money that he could avoid giving her. The crisis had been slowly approaching for years. The assistants in the shop had said nothing, or had only whispered among themselves, but now that the crisis had flowered suddenly in an attempted self-murder, they all spoke at once, and the evidences were pieced together into a formidable proof of the strain which Mrs. Critchlow had suffered. It appeared that for many months she had been depressed and irritable, that sometimes she would sit down in the midst of work and declare, with every sign of exhaustion, that she could do no more. Then with equal briskness she would arise and force herself to labour. She did not sleep for whole nights. One assistant related how she had complained of having had no sleep whatever for four nights consecutively. She had noises in the ears and a chronic headache. Never very plump, she had grown thinner and thinner. And she was for ever taking pills: this information came from Charles’s manager. She had had several outrageous quarrels with the redoubtable Charles, to the stupefaction of all who heard or saw them.... Mrs. Critchlow standing up to her husband! Another strange thing was that she thought the bills of several of the big Manchester firms were unpaid, when as a fact they had been paid. Even when shown the receipts she would not be convinced, though she pretended to be convinced. She would recommence the next day. All this was sufficiently disconcerting for female assistants in the drapery. But what could they do?
Then Maria Critchlow had gone a step further. She had summoned the eldest assistant to her corner and had informed her, with all the solemnity of a confession made to assuage a conscience which has been tortured too long, that she had on many occasions been guilty of sexual irregularity with her late employer, Samuel Povey. There was no truth whatever in this accusation (which everybody, however, took care not to mention to Constance); it merely indicated, perhaps, the secret aspirations of Maria Insull, the virgin. The assistant was properly scandalized, more by the crudity of Mrs. Critchlow’s language than by the alleged sin buried in the past. Goodness knows what the assistant would have done! But two hours later Maria Critchlow tried to commit suicide by stabbing herself with a pair of scissors. There was blood in the shop.
With as little delay as possible she had been driven away to the asylum. Charles Critchlow, enveloped safely in the armour of his senile egotism, had shown no emotion, and very little activity. The shop was closed. And as a general draper’s it never opened again. That was the end of Baines’s. Two assistants found themselves without a livelihood. The small tumble with the great.
Constance’s emotion was more than pardonable; it was justified. She could not eat and Lily could not persuade her to eat. In an unhappy moment Dick Povey mentioned—he never could remember how, afterwards—the word Federation! And then Constance, from a passive figure of grief became a menace. She overwhelmed Dick Povey with her anathema of Federation, for Dick was a citizen of Hanbridge, where this detestable movement for Federation had had its birth. All the misfortunes of St. Luke’s Square were due to that great, busy, grasping, unscrupulous neighbour. Had not Hanbridge done enough, without wanting to merge all the Five Towns into one town, of which of course itself would be the centre? For Constance, Hanbridge was a borough of unprincipled adventurers, bent on ruining the ancient 'Mother of the Five Towns’ for its own glory and aggrandizement. Let Constance hear no more of Federation! Her poor sister Sophia had been dead against Federation, and she had been quite right! All really respectable people were against it! The attempted suicide of Mrs. Critchlow sealed the fate of Federation and damned it for ever, in Constance’s mind. Her hatred of the idea of it was intensified into violent animosity; insomuch that in the result she died a martyr to the cause of Bursley’s municipal independence.