LITMIR.BIZ

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Ought she to hope, or ought she to despair? “O God, help me!” she kept whispering to Jehovah whenever the heavenly vision shone through the wrack of her meditation. “O God, help me!” She had a conscience that, when it was in the mood for severity, could be unspeakably cruel to her.

      And whenever she looked, with dry, hot eyes, through her gloved fingers, she saw in front of her on the wall a marble tablet inscribed in gilt letters, the cenotaph! She knew all the lines by heart, in their spacious grandiloquence; lines such as:

      EVER READY WITH HIS TONGUE HIS PEN AND HIS PURSE TO HELP THE CHURCH OF HIS FATHERS IN HER HE LIVED AND IN HER HE DIED CHERISHING A DEEP AND ARDENT AFFECTION FOR HIS BELOVED FAITH AND CREED.

      And again:

      HIS SYMPATHIES EXTENDED BEYOND HIS OWN COMMUNITY HE WAS ALWAYS TO THE FORE IN GOOD WORKS AND HE SERVED THE CIRCUIT THE TOWN AND THE DISTRICT WITH GREAT ACCEPTANCE AND USEFULNESS.

      Thus had Mr. Critchlow’s vanity been duly appeased.

      As the minutes sped in the breathing silence of the chapel the emotional tension grew tighter; worshippers sighed heavily, or called upon Jehovah for a sign, or merely coughed an invocation. And then at last the clock in the middle of the balcony gave forth the single stroke to which it was limited; the ministers rose, and the congregation after them; and everybody smiled as though it was the millennium, and not simply the new year, that had set in. Then, faintly, through walls and shut windows, came the sound of bells and of steam syrens and whistles. The superintendent minister opened his hymn-book, and the hymn was sung which had been sung in Wesleyan Chapels on New Year’s morn since the era of John Wesley himself. The organ finished with a clanguor of all its pipes; the minister had a few last words with Jehovah, and nothing was left to do except to persevere in well-doing. The people leaned towards each other across the high backs of the pews.

      “A happy New Year!”

      “Eh, thank ye! The same to you!”

      “Another Watch Night service over!”

      “Eh, yes!” And a sigh.

      Then the aisles were suddenly crowded, and there was a good-humoured, optimistic pushing towards the door. In the Corinthian porch occurred a great putting-on of cloaks, ulsters, goloshes, and even pattens, and a great putting-up of umbrellas. And the congregation went out into the whirling snow, dividing into several black, silent-footed processions, down Trafalgar Road, up towards the playground, along the market-place, and across Duck Square in the direction of St. Luke’s Square.

      Mr. Povey was between Mrs. Baines and Constance.

      “You must take my arm, my pet,” said Mrs. Baines to Sophia.

      Then Mr. Povey and Constance waded on in front through the drifts. Sophia balanced that enormous swaying mass, her mother. Owing to their hoops, she had much difficulty in keeping close to her. Mrs. Baines laughed with the complacent ease of obesity, yet a fall would have been almost irremediable for her; and so Sophia had to laugh too. But, though she laughed, God had not helped her. She did not know where she was going, nor what might happen to her next.

      “Why, bless us!” exclaimed Mrs. Baines, as they turned the corner into King Street. “There’s some one sitting on our door-step!”

      There was: a figure swathed in an ulster, a maud over the ulster, and a high hat on the top of all. It could not have been there very long, because it was only speckled with snow. Mr. Povey plunged forward.

      “It’s Mr. Scales, of all people!” said Mr. Povey.

      “Mr. Scales!” cried Mrs. Baines.

      And, “Mr. Scales!” murmured Sophia, terribly afraid.

      Perhaps she was afraid of miracles. Mr. Scales sitting on her mother’s doorstep in the middle of the snowy night had assuredly the air of a miracle, of something dreamed in a dream, of something pathetically and impossibly appropriate —‘pat,’ as they say in the Five Towns. But he was a tangible fact there. And years afterwards, in the light of further knowledge of Mr. Scales, Sophia came to regard his being on the doorstep as the most natural and characteristic thing in the world. Real miracles never seem to be miracles, and that which at the first blush resembles one usually proves to be an instance of the extremely prosaic.

      III

      “Is that you, Mrs. Baines?” asked Gerald Scales, in a half-witted voice, looking up, and then getting to his feet. “Is this your house? So it is! Well, I’d no idea I was sitting on your doorstep.”

      He smiled timidly, nay, sheepishly, while the women and Mr. Povey surrounded him with their astonished faces under the light of the gas-lamp. Certainly he was very pale.

      “But whatever is the matter, Mr. Scales?” Mrs. Baines demanded in an anxious tone. “Are you ill? Have you been suddenly —”

      “Oh no,” said the young man lightly. “It’s nothing. Only I was set on just now, down there,”— he pointed to the depths of King Street.

      “Set on!” Mrs. Baines repeated, alarmed.

      “That makes the fourth case in a week, that we KNOW of!” said Mr. Povey. “It really is becoming a scandal.”

      The fact was that, owing to depression of trade, lack of employment, and rigorous weather, public security in the Five Towns was at that period not as perfect as it ought to have been. In the stress of hunger the lower classes were forgetting their manners — and this in spite of the altruistic and noble efforts of their social superiors to relieve the destitution due, of course, to short-sighted improvidence. When (the social superiors were asking in despair) will the lower classes learn to put by for a rainy day? (They might have said a snowy and a frosty day.) It was ‘really too bad’ of the lower classes, when everything that could be done was being done for them, to kill, or even attempt to kill, the goose that lays the golden eggs! And especially in a respectable town! What, indeed, were things coming to? Well, here was Mr. Gerald Scales, gentleman from Manchester, a witness and victim to the deplorable moral condition of the Five Towns. What would he think of the Five Towns? The evil and the danger had been a topic of discussion in the shop for a week past, and now it was brought home to them.

      “I hope you weren’t —” said Mrs. Baines, apologetically and sympathetically.

      “Oh no!” Mr. Scales interrupted her quite gaily. “I managed to beat them off. Only my elbow —”

      Meanwhile it was continuing to snow.

      “Do come in!” said Mrs. Baines.

      “I couldn’t think of troubling you,” said Mr. Scales. “I’m all right now, and I can find my way to the Tiger.”

      “You must come in, if it’s only for a minute,” said Mrs. Baines, with decision. She had to think of the honour of the town.

      “You’re very kind,” said Mr. Scales.

      The door was suddenly opened from within, and Maggie surveyed them from the height of the two steps.

      “A happy New Year, mum, to all of you.”

      “Thank you, Maggie,” said Mrs. Baines, and primly added:

      “The same to you!” And in her own mind she said that Maggie could best prove her desire for a happy new year by contriving in future not to ‘scamp her corners,’ and not to break so much crockery.

      Sophia, scarce knowing what she did, mounted the steps.

      “Mr. Scales ought to let our New Year in, my pet,” Mrs. Baines stopped her.

      “Oh, of course, mother!” Sophia concurred with, a gasp, springing back nervously.

      Mr. Scales raised his hat, and duly let the new year, and much snow, into the Baines parlour. And there was a vast deal of stamping of feet, agitating of umbrellas, and shaking of cloaks and ulsters on the doormat in the corner by the harmonium. And Maggie

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