You make me almost glad that your father died even as he did.
He has, at any rate, been spared this."
Those words 'died even as he did' achieved the intimidation of Sophia.
They seemed to indicate that Mrs. Baines, though she had magnanimously never mentioned the subject to Sophia, knew exactly how the old man had died.
Sophia escaped from the room in fear, cowed. Nevertheless, her thought was,
"She hasn't killed me.
I made up my mind I wouldn't talk, and I didn't."
In the evening, as she sat in the shop primly and sternly sewing at hats--while her mother wept in secret on the first floor, and Constance remained hidden on the second--Sophia lived over again the scene at the old shaft; but she lived it differently, admitting that she had been wrong, guessing by instinct that she had shown a foolish mistrust of love.
As she sat in the shop, she adopted just the right attitude and said just the right things. Instead of being a silly baby she was an accomplished and dazzling woman, then.
When customers came in, and the young lady assistants unobtrusively turned higher the central gas, according to the regime of the shop, it was really extraordinary that they could not read in the heart of the beautiful Miss Baines the words which blazed there; "YOU'RE THE FINEST GIRL I EVER MET," and
"I SHALL WRITE TO YOU."
The young lady assistants had their notions as to both Constance and Sophia, but the truth, at least as regarded Sophia, was beyond the flight of their imaginations.
When eight o'clock struck and she gave the formal order for dust-sheets, the shop being empty, they never supposed that she was dreaming about posts and plotting how to get hold of the morning's letters before Mr. Povey.
CHAPTER VII
A DEFEAT
I
It was during the month of June that Aunt Harriet came over from Axe to spend a few days with her little sister, Mrs. Baines.
The railway between Axe and the Five Towns had not yet been opened; but even if it had been opened Aunt Harriet would probably not have used it.
She had always travelled from Axe to Bursley in the same vehicle, a small waggonette which she hired from Bratt's livery stables at Axe, driven by a coachman who thoroughly understood the importance, and the peculiarities, of Aunt Harriet.
Mrs. Baines had increased in stoutness, so that now Aunt Harriet had very little advantage over her, physically.
But the moral ascendency of the elder still persisted.
The two vast widows shared Mrs. Baines's bedroom, spending much of their time there in long, hushed conversations--interviews from which Mrs. Baines emerged with the air of one who has received enlightenment and Aunt Harriet with the air of one who has rendered it.
The pair went about together, in the shop, the showroom, the parlour, the kitchen, and also into the town, addressing each other as 'Sister,' 'Sister.'
Everywhere it was 'sister,' 'sister,' 'my sister,' 'your dear mother,' 'your Aunt Harriet.'
They referred to each other as oracular sources of wisdom and good taste.
Respectability stalked abroad when they were afoot.
The whole Square wriggled uneasily as though God's eye were peculiarly upon it.
The meals in the parlour became solemn collations, at which shone the best silver and the finest diaper, but from which gaiety and naturalness seemed to be banished. (I say 'seemed' because it cannot be doubted that Aunt Harriet was natural, and there were moments when she possibly considered herself to be practising gaiety--a gaiety more desolating than her severity.) The younger generation was extinguished, pressed flat and lifeless under the ponderosity of the widows.
Mr. Povey was not the man to be easily flattened by ponderosity of any kind, and his suppression was a striking proof of the prowess of the widows; who, indeed, went over Mr. Povey like traction- engines, with the sublime unconsciousness of traction-engines, leaving an inanimate object in the road behind them, and scarce aware even of the jolt.
Mr. Povey hated Aunt Harriet, but, lying crushed there in the road, how could he rebel?
He felt all the time that Aunt Harriet was adding him up, and reporting the result at frequent intervals to Mrs. Baines in the bedroom.
He felt that she knew everything about him--even to those tears which had been in his eyes.
He felt that he could hope to do nothing right for Aunt Harriet, that absolute perfection in the performance of duty would make no more impression on her than a caress on the fly- wheel of a traction-engine.
Constance, the dear Constance, was also looked at askance.
There was nothing in Aunt Harriet's demeanour to her that you could take hold of, but there was emphatically something that you could not take hold of--a hint, an inkling, that insinuated to Constance,
"Have a care, lest peradventure you become the second cousin of the scarlet woman."
Sophia was petted.
Sophia was liable to be playfully tapped by Aunt Harriet's thimble when Aunt Harriet was hemming dusters (for the elderly lady could lift a duster to her own dignity).
Sophia was called on two separate occasions, 'My little butterfly.'
And Sophia was entrusted with the trimming of Aunt Harriet's new summer bonnet.
Aunt Harriet deemed that Sophia was looking pale.
As the days passed, Sophia's pallor was emphasized by Aunt Harriet until it developed into an article of faith, to which you were compelled to subscribe on pain of excommunication. Then dawned the day when Aunt Harriet said, staring at Sophia as an affectionate aunt may: "That child would do with a change."
And then there dawned another day when Aunt Harriet, staring at Sophia compassionately, as a devoted aunt may, said:
"It's a pity that child can't have a change."
And Mrs. Baines also stared--and said:
"It is."
And on another day Aunt Harriet said:
"I've been wondering whether my little Sophia would care to come and keep her old aunt company a while."
There were few things for which Sophia would have cared less.
The girl swore to herself angrily that she would not go, that no allurement would induce her to go.