There was a pause.
"Well, you know best. ... Good night, Amy."
"Good night, m'm."
"She's a decent woman," thought Sophia, "but hopeless for this place now."
The sisters were fronted with the fact that Constance had a month in which to find a new servant, and that a new servant would have to be trained in well-doing and might easily prove disastrous.
Both Constance and Amy were profoundly disturbed by the prospective dissolution of a bond which dated from the seventies.
And both were decided that there was no alternative to the dissolution.
Outsiders knew merely that Mrs. Povey's old servant was leaving.
Outsiders merely saw Mrs. Povey's advertisement in the Signal for a new servant.
They could not read hearts.
Some of the younger generation even said superiorly that old-fashioned women like Mrs. Povey seemed to have servants on the brain, etc., etc.
II
"Well, have you got your letter?" Sophia demanded cheerfully of Constance when she entered the bedroom the next morning.
Constance merely shook her head.
She was very depressed.
Sophia's cheerfulness died out.
As she hated to be insincerely optimistic, she said nothing.
Otherwise she might have remarked:
"Perhaps the afternoon post will bring it."
Gloom reigned.
To Constance particularly, as Amy had given notice and as Cyril was 'remiss,' it seemed really that the time was out of joint and life unworth living.
Even the presence of Sophia did not bring her much comfort.
Immediately Sophia left the room Constance's sciatica began to return, and in a severe form.
She had regretted this, less for the pain than because she had just assured Sophia, quite honestly, that she was not suffering; Sophia had been sceptical.
After that it was of course imperative that Constance should get up as usual.
She had said that she would get up as usual.
Besides, there was the immense enterprise of obtaining a new servant!
Worries loomed mountainous.
Suppose Cyril were dangerously ill, and unable to write!
Suppose something had happened to him!
Supposing she never did obtain a new servant!
Sophia, up in her room, was endeavouring to be philosophical, and to see the world brightly.
She was saying to herself that she must take Constance in hand, that what Constance lacked was energy, that Constance must be stirred out of her groove.
And in the cavernous kitchen Amy, preparing the nine-o'clock breakfast, was meditating upon the ingratitude of employers and wondering what the future held for her.
She had a widowed mother in the picturesque village of Sneyd, where the mortal and immortal welfare of every inhabitant was watched over by God's vicegerent, the busy Countess of Chell; she possessed about two hundred pounds of her own; her mother for years had been begging Amy to share her home free of expense.
But nevertheless Amy's mind was black with foreboding and vague dejection.
The house was a house of sorrow, and these three women, each solitary, the devotees of sorrow.
And the two dogs wandered disconsolate up and down, aware of the necessity for circumspection, never guessing that the highly peculiar state of the atmosphere had been brought about by nothing but a half-shut door and an incorrect tone.
As Sophia, fully dressed this time, was descending to breakfast, she heard Constance's voice, feebly calling her, and found the convalescent still in bed.
The truth could not be concealed.
Constance was once more in great pain, and her moral condition was not favourable to fortitude.
"I wish you had told me, to begin with," Sophia could not help saying, "then I should have known what to do."
Constance did not defend herself by saying that the pain had only recurred since their first interview that morning.
She just wept.
"I'm very low!" she blubbered.
Sophia was surprised.
She felt that this was not 'being a Baines.'
During the progress of that interminable April morning, her acquaintance with the possibilities of sciatica as an agent destructive of moral fibre was further increased.
Constance had no force at all to resist its activity.
The sweetness of her resignation seemed to melt into nullity.