The Old Wives’ Tale

the penalties of pedagogy. She lived under the eyes of her pupils. Her life was one ceaseless effort to avoid doing anything which might influence her charges for evil or shock the natural sensitiveness of their parents. She had to wind her earthly way through a forest of the most delicate susceptibilities⁠—fern-fronds that stretched across the path, and that she must not even accidentally disturb with her skirt as she passed. No wonder she walked mincingly! No wonder she had a habit of keeping her elbows close to her sides, and drawing her mantle tight in the streets! Her prospectus talked about “a sound and religious course of training,” “study embracing the usual branches of English, with music by a talented master, drawing, dancing, and calisthenics.” Also “needlework plain and ornamental;” also “moral influence;” and finally about terms, “which are very moderate, and every particular, with references to parents and others, furnished on application.” (Sometimes, too, without application.) As an illustration of the delicacy of fern-fronds, that single word “dancing” had nearly lost her Constance and Sophia seven years before!

She was a pinched virgin, aged forty, and not “well off;” in her family the gift of success had been monopolized by her elder sister. For these characteristics Mrs. Baines, as a matron in easy circumstances, pitied Miss Chetwynd. On the other hand, Miss Chetwynd could choose ground from which to look down upon Mrs. Baines, who after all was in trade. Miss Chetwynd had no trace of the local accent; she spoke with a southern refinement which the Five Towns, while making fun of it, envied. All her O’s had a genteel leaning towards “ow,” as ritualism leans towards Romanism. And she was the fount of etiquette, a wonder of correctness; in the eyes of her pupils’ parents not so much “a perfect lady” as “a perfect lady.” So that it was an extremely nice question whether, upon the whole, Mrs. Baines secretly condescended to Miss Chetwynd or Miss Chetwynd to Mrs. Baines. Perhaps Mrs. Baines, by virtue of her wifehood, carried the day.

Miss Chetwynd, carefully and precisely seated, opened the conversation by explaining that even if Mrs. Baines had not written she should have called in any case, as she made a practice of calling at the home of her pupils in vacation time: which was true. Mrs. Baines, it should be stated, had on Friday afternoon sent to Miss Chetwynd one of her most luxurious notes⁠—lavender-coloured paper with scalloped edges, the selectest mode of the day⁠—to announce, in her Italian hand, that Constance and Sophia would both leave school at the end of the next term, and giving reasons in regard to Sophia.

Before the visitor had got very far, Maggie came in with a lacquered tea-caddy and the silver teapot and a silver spoon on a lacquered tray. Mrs. Baines, while continuing to talk, chose a key from her bunch, unlocked the tea-caddy, and transferred four teaspoonfuls of tea from it to the teapot and relocked the caddy.

“Strawberry,” she mysteriously whispered to Maggie; and Maggie disappeared, bearing the tray and its contents.

“And how is your sister? It is quite a long time since she was down here,” Mrs. Baines went on to Miss Chetwynd, after whispering “strawberry.”

The remark was merely in the way of small-talk⁠—for the hostess felt a certain unwilling hesitation to approach the topic of daughters⁠—but it happened to suit the social purpose of Miss Chetwynd to a nicety. Miss Chetwynd was a vessel brimming with great tidings.

“She is very well, thank you,” said Miss Chetwynd, and her expression grew exceedingly vivacious. Her face glowed with pride as she added, “Of course everything is changed now.”

“Indeed?” murmured Mrs. Baines, with polite curiosity.

“Yes,” said Miss Chetwynd. “You’ve not heard?”

“No,” said Mrs. Baines. Miss Chetwynd knew that she had not heard.

“About Elizabeth’s engagement? To the Reverend Archibald Jones?”

It is the fact that Mrs. Baines was taken aback. She did nothing indiscreet; she did not give vent to her excusable amazement that the elder Miss Chetwynd should be engaged to anyone at all, as some women would have done in the stress of the moment. She kept her presence of mind.

“This is really most interesting!” said she.

It was. For Archibald Jones was one of the idols of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection, a special preacher famous throughout England. At “Anniversaries” and “Trust sermons,” Archibald Jones had probably no rival. His Christian name helped him; it was a luscious, resounding mouthful for admirers. He was not an itinerant minister, migrating every three years. His function was to direct the affairs of the “Book Room,” the publishing department of the Connection. He lived in London, and shot out into the provinces at weekends, preaching on Sundays and giving a lecture, tinctured with bookishness, “in the chapel” on Monday evenings. In every town he visited there was competition for the privilege of entertaining him. He had zeal, indefatigable energy, and a breezy wit. He was a widower of fifty, and his wife had been dead for twenty years. It had seemed as if women were not for this bright star. And here Elizabeth Chetwynd, who had left the Five Towns a quarter of a century before at the age of twenty, had caught him! Austere, moustached, formidable, desiccated, she must have done it with her powerful intellect! It must be a union of intellects! He had been impressed by hers, and she by his, and then their intellects had kissed. Within a week fifty thousand women in forty counties had pictured to themselves this osculation of intellects, and shrugged their shoulders, and decided once more that men were incomprehensible. These great ones in London, falling in love like the rest! But no! Love was a ribald and voluptuous word to use in such a matter as this. It was generally felt that the Reverend Archibald Jones and Miss Chetwynd the elder would lift marriage to what would now be termed an astral plane.

After tea had been served, Mrs. Baines gradually recovered her position,