________________________________________________
_ 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 mould 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. _
Read next: BOOK IV WHAT LIFE IS: CHAPTER V - END OF CONSTANCE: PART I
Read previous: BOOK IV WHAT LIFE IS: CHAPTER IV END OF SOPHIA: PART III
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