The girls made way for him to pass them at the head of the
twisting stairs which led down to the parlour. Constance followed,
and Sophia followed Constance.
"Have father's chair," said Constance.
There were two rocking-chairs with fluted backs covered by
antimacassars, one on either side of the hearth. That to the left
was still entitled "father's chair," though its owner had not sat
in it since long before the Crimean war, and would never sit in it
again.
"I think I'd sooner have the other one," said Mr. Povey, "because
it's on the right side, you see." And he touched his right cheek.
Having taken Mrs. Baines's chair, he bent his face down to the
fire, seeking comfort from its warmth. Sophia poked the fire,
whereupon Mr. Povey abruptly withdrew his face. He then felt
something light on his shoulders. Constance had taken the
antimacassar from the back of the chair, and protected him with it
from the draughts. He did not instantly rebel, and therefore was
permanently barred from rebellion. He was entrapped by the
antimacassar. It formally constituted him an invalid, and
Constance and Sophia his nurses. Constance drew the curtain across
the street door. No draught could come from the window, for the
window was not 'made to open.' The age of ventilation had not
arrived. Sophia shut the other two doors. And, each near a door,
the girls gazed at Mr. Povey behind his back, irresolute, but
filled with a delicious sense of responsibility.
The situation was on a different plane now. The seriousness of Mr.
Povey's toothache, which became more and more manifest, had
already wiped out the ludicrous memory of the encounter in the
showroom. Looking at these two big girls, with their short-sleeved
black frocks and black aprons, and their smooth hair, and their
composed serious faces, one would have judged them incapable of
the least lapse from an archangelic primness; Sophia especially
presented a marvellous imitation of saintly innocence. As for the
toothache, its action on Mr. Povey was apparently periodic; it
gathered to a crisis like a wave, gradually, the torture
increasing till the wave broke and left Mr. Povey exhausted, but
free for a moment from pain. These crises recurred about once a
minute. And now, accustomed to the presence of the young virgins,
and having tacitly acknowledged by his acceptance of the
antimacassar that his state was abnormal, he gave himself up
frankly to affliction. He concealed nothing of his agony, which
was fully displayed by sudden contortions of his frame, and
frantic oscillations of the rocking-chair. Presently, as he lay
back enfeebled in the wash of a spent wave, he murmured with a
sick man's voice:
"I suppose you haven't got any laudanum?"
The girls started into life. "Laudanum, Mr. Povey?"
"Yes, to hold in my mouth."
He sat up, tense; another wave was forming. The excellent fellow
was lost to all self-respect, all decency.
"There's sure to be some in mother's cupboard," said Sophia.
Constance, who bore Mrs. Baines's bunch of keys at her girdle, a
solemn trust, moved a little fearfully to a corner cupboard which
was hung in the angle to the right of the projecting fireplace,
over a shelf on which stood a large copper tea-urn. That corner
cupboard, of oak inlaid with maple and ebony in a simple border
pattern, was typical of the room. It was of a piece with the deep
green "flock" wall paper, and the tea-urn, and the rocking-chairs
with their antimacassars, and the harmonium in rosewood with a
Chinese paper-mache tea-caddy on the top of it; even with the
carpet, certainly the most curious parlour carpet that ever was,
being made of lengths of the stair-carpet sewn together side by
side. That corner cupboard was already old in service; it had held
the medicines of generations. It gleamed darkly with the grave and
genuine polish which comes from ancient use alone. The key which
Constance chose from her bunch was like the cupboard, smooth and
shining with years; it fitted and turned very easily, yet with a
firm snap. The single wide door opened sedately as a portal.
The girls examined the sacred interior, which had the air of being
inhabited by an army of diminutive prisoners, each crying aloud
with the full strength of its label to be set free on a mission.
"There it is!" said Sophia eagerly.
And there it was: a blue bottle, with a saffron label, "Caution.
POISON. Laudanum. Charles Critchlow, M.P.S. Dispensing Chemist.
St. Luke's Square, Bursley."
Those large capitals frightened the girls. Constance took the
bottle as she might have taken a loaded revolver, and she glanced
at Sophia. Their omnipotent, all-wise mother was not present to
tell them what to do. They, who had never decided, had to decide
now. And Constance was the elder. Must this fearsome stuff, whose
very name was a name of fear, be introduced in spite of printed
warnings into Mr. Povey's mouth? The responsibility was
terrifying.
"Perhaps I'd just better ask Mr. Critchlow," Constance faltered.
The expectation of beneficent laudanum had enlivened Mr. Povey,
had already, indeed, by a sort of suggestion, half cured his
toothache.
"Oh no!" he said. "No need to ask Mr. Critchlow ... Two or three
drops in a little water." He showed impatience to be at the
laudanum.
The girls knew that an antipathy existed between the chemist and
Mr. Povey.
"It's sure to be all right," said Sophia. "I'll get the water."
With youthful cries and alarms they succeeded in pouring four
mortal dark drops (one more than Constance intended) into a cup
containing a little water. And as they handed the cup to Mr. Povey
their faces were the faces of affrighted comical conspirators.
They felt so old and they looked so young.
Mr. Povey imbibed eagerly of the potion, put the cup on the
mantelpiece, and then tilted his head to the right so as to
submerge the affected tooth. In this posture he remained, awaiting
the sweet influence of the remedy. The girls, out of a nice
modesty, turned away, for Mr. Povey must not swallow the medicine,
and they preferred to leave him unhampered in the solution of a
delicate problem. When next they examined him, he was leaning back
in the rocking-chair with his mouth open and his eyes shut.
"Has it done you any good, Mr. Povey?"
"I think I'll lie down on the sofa for a minute," was Mr. Povey's
strange reply; and forthwith he sprang up and flung himself on to
the horse-hair sofa between the fireplace and the window, where he
lay stripped of all his dignity, a mere beaten animal in a grey
suit with peculiar coat-tails, and a very creased waistcoat, and a
lapel that was planted with pins, and a paper collar and close-
fitting paper cuffs.
Constance ran after him with the antimacassar, which she spread
softly on his shoulders; and Sophia put another one over his thin
little legs, all drawn up.
They then gazed at their handiwork, with secret self-accusations
and the most dreadful misgivings.
"He surely never swallowed it!" Constance whispered.
"He's asleep, anyhow," said Sophia, more loudly.
Mr. Povey was certainly asleep, and his mouth was very wide open--
like a shop-door. The only question was whether his sleep was not
an eternal sleep; the only question was whether he was not out of
his pain for ever.
Then he snored--horribly; his snore seemed a portent of disaster.
Sophia approached him as though he were a bomb, and stared,
growing bolder, into his mouth.
"Oh, Con," she summoned her sister, "do come and look! It's too
droll!"
In an instant all their four eyes were exploring the singular
landscape of Mr. Povey's mouth. In a corner, to the right of that
interior, was one sizeable fragment of a tooth, that was attached
to Mr. Povey by the slenderest tie, so that at each respiration of
Mr. Povey, when his body slightly heaved and the gale moaned in
the cavern, this tooth moved separately, showing that its long
connection with Mr. Povey was drawing to a close.
"That's the one," said Sophia, pointing. "And it's as loose as
anything. Did you ever see such a funny thing?"
The extreme funniness of the thing had lulled in Sophia the fear
of Mr. Povey's sudden death.
"I'll see how much he's taken," said Constance, preoccupied, going
to the mantelpiece.
"Why, I do believe---" Sophia began, and then stopped, glancing at
the sewing-machine, which stood next to the sofa.
It was a Howe sewing-machine. It had a little tool-drawer, and in
the tool-drawer was a small pair of pliers. Constance, engaged in
sniffing at the lees of the potion in order to estimate its
probable deadliness, heard the well-known click of the little
tool-drawer, and then she saw Sophia nearing Mr. Povey's mouth
with the pliers.
"Sophia!" she exclaimed, aghast. "What in the name of goodness are
you doing?"
"Nothing," said Sophia.
The next instant Mr. Povey sprang up out of his laudanum dream.
"It jumps!" he muttered; and, after a reflective pause, "but it's
much better." He had at any rate escaped death.
Sophia's right hand was behind her back.
Just then a hawker passed down King Street, crying mussels and
cockles.
"Oh!" Sophia almost shrieked. "Do let's have mussels and cockles
for tea!" And she rushed to the door, and unlocked and opened it,
regardless of the risk of draughts to Mr. Povey.
In those days people often depended upon the caprices of hawkers
for the tastiness of their teas; but it was an adventurous age,
when errant knights of commerce were numerous and enterprising.
You went on to your doorstep, caught your meal as it passed,
withdrew, cooked it and ate it, quite in the manner of the early
Briton.
Constance was obliged to join her sister on the top step. Sophia
descended to the second step.
"Fresh mussels and cockles all alive oh!" bawled the hawker,
looking across the road in the April breeze. He was the celebrated
Hollins, a professional Irish drunkard, aged in iniquity, who
cheerfully saluted magistrates in the street, and referred to the
workhouse, which he occasionally visited, as the Bastile.
Sophia was trembling from head to foot.
"What ARE you laughing at, you silly thing?" Constance demanded.
Sophia surreptitiously showed the pliers, which she had partly
thrust into her pocket. Between their points was a most
perceptible, and even recognizable, fragment of Mr. Povey.
This was the crown of Sophia's career as a perpetrator of the
unutterable.
"What!" Constance's face showed the final contortions of that
horrified incredulity which is forced to believe.
Sophia nudged her violently to remind her that they were in the
street, and also quite close to Mr. Povey.
"Now, my little missies," said the vile Hollins. "Three pence a
pint, and how's your honoured mother to-day? Yes, fresh, so help
me God!"
Read next: BOOK I MRS. BAINES#CHAPTER II - THE TOOTH#PART I
Read previous: BOOK I MRS. BAINES#CHAPTER I - THE SQUARE#PART II
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