_ On Thursday afternoon of the same week the youth whom Constance
had ended by hiring for the manipulation of shutters and other
jobs unsuitable for fragile women, was closing the shop. The clock
had struck two. All the shutters were up except the last one, in
the midst of the doorway. Miss Insull and her mistress were
walking about the darkened interior, putting dust-sheets well over
the edges of exposed goods; the other assistants had just left.
The bull-terrier had wandered into the shop as he almost
invariably did at closing time--for he slept there, an efficient
guard--and had lain down by the dying stove; though not venerable,
he was stiffening into age.
"You can shut," said Miss Insull to the youth.
But as the final shutter was ascending to its position, Mr.
Critchlow appeared on the pavement.
"Hold on, young fellow!" Mr. Critchlow commanded, and stepped
slowly, lifting up his long apron, over the horizontal shutter on
which the perpendicular shutters rested in the doorway.
"Shall you be long, Mr. Critchlow?" the youth asked, posing the
shutter. "Or am I to shut?"
"Shut, lad," said Mr. Critchlow, briefly. "I'll go out by th' side
door."
"Here's Mr. Critchlow!" Miss Insull called out to Constance, in a
peculiar tone. And a flush, scarcely perceptible, crept very
slowly over her dark features. In the twilight of the shop, lit
only by a few starry holes in the shutters, and by the small side-
window, not the keenest eye could have detected that flush.
"Mr. Critchlow!" Constance murmured the exclamation. She resented
his future ownership of her shop. She thought he was come to play
the landlord, and she determined to let him see that her mood was
independent and free, that she would as lief give up the business
as keep it. In particular she meant to accuse him of having
deliberately deceived her as to his intentions on his previous
visit.
"Well, missis!" the aged man greeted her. "We've made it up
between us. Happen some folk'll think we've taken our time, but I
don't know as that's their affair."
His little blinking eyes had a red border. The skin of his pale
small face was wrinkled in millions of minute creases. His arms
and legs were marvellously thin and sharply angular. The corners
of his heliotrope lips were turned down, as usual, in a mysterious
comment on the world; and his smile, as he fronted Constance with
his excessive height, crowned the mystery.
Constance stared, at a loss. It surely could not after all be
true, the substance of the rumours that had floated like vapours
in the Square for eight years and more!
"What ...?" she began.
"Me, and her!" He jerked his head in the direction of Miss Insull.
The dog had leisurely strolled forward to inspect the edges of the
fiance's trousers. Miss Insull summoned the animal with a noise of
fingers, and then bent down and caressed it. A strange gesture
proving the validity of Charles Critchlow's discovery that in
Maria Insull a human being was buried!
Miss Insull was, as near as any one could guess, forty years of
age. For twenty-five years she had served in the shop, passing
about twelve hours a day in the shop; attending regularly at least
three religious services at the Wesleyan Chapel or School on
Sundays, and sleeping with her mother, whom she kept. She had
never earned more than thirty shillings a week, and yet her
situation was considered to be exceptionally good. In the eternal
fusty dusk of the shop she had gradually lost such sexual
characteristics and charms as she had once possessed. She was as
thin and flat as Charles Critchlow himself. It was as though her
bosom had suffered from a prolonged drought at a susceptible
period of development, and had never recovered. The one proof that
blood ran in her veins was the pimply quality of her ruined
complexion, and the pimples of that brickish expanse proved that
the blood was thin and bad. Her hands and feet were large and
ungainly; the skin of the fingers was roughened by coarse contacts
to the texture of emery-paper. On six days a week she wore black;
on the seventh a kind of discreet half-mourning. She was honest,
capable, and industrious; and beyond the confines of her
occupation she had no curiosity, no intelligence, no ideas.
Superstitions and prejudices, deep and violent, served her for
ideas; but she could incomparably sell silks and bonnets, braces
and oilcloth; in widths, lengths, and prices she never erred; she
never annoyed a customer, nor foolishly promised what could not be
performed, nor was late nor negligent, nor disrespectful. No one
knew anything about her, because there was nothing to know.
Subtract the shop-assistant from her, and naught remained.
Benighted and spiritually dead, she existed by habit.
But for Charles Critchlow she happened to be an illusion. He had
cast eyes on her and had seen youth, innocence, virginity. During
eight years the moth Charles had flitted round the lamp of her
brilliance, and was now singed past escape. He might treat her
with what casualness he chose; he might ignore her in public; he
might talk brutally about women; he might leave her to wonder
dully what he meant, for months at a stretch: but there emerged
indisputable from the sum of his conduct the fact that he wanted
her. He desired her; she charmed him; she was something ornamental
and luxurious for which he was ready to pay--and to commit
follies. He had been a widower since before she was born; to him
she was a slip of a girl. All is relative in this world. As for
her, she was too indifferent to refuse him. Why refuse him?
Oysters do not refuse.
"I'm sure I congratulate you both," Constance breathed, realizing
the import of Mr. Critchlow's laconic words. "I'm sure I hope
you'll be happy."
"That'll be all right," said Mr. Critchlow.
"Thank you, Mrs. Povey," said Maria Insull.
Nobody seemed to know what to say next. "It's rather sudden," was
on Constance's tongue, but did not achieve utterance, being
patently absurd.
"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Critchlow, as though himself contemplating
anew the situation.
Miss Insull gave the dog a final pat.
"So that's settled," said Mr. Critchlow. "Now, missis, ye want to
give up this shop, don't ye?"
"I'm not so sure about that," Constance answered uneasily.
"Don't tell me!" he protested. "Of course ye want to give up the
shop."
"I've lived here all my life," said Constance.
"Ye've not lived in th' shop all ye're life. I said th' shop.
Listen here!" he continued. "I've got a proposal to make to you.
You can keep on the house, and I'll take the shop off ye're hands.
Now?" He looked at her inquiringly.
Constance was taken aback by the brusqueness of the suggestion,
which, moreover, she did not understand.
"But how--" she faltered.
"Come here," said Mr. Critchlow, impatiently, and he moved towards
the house-door of the shop, behind the till.
"Come where? What do you want?" Constance demanded in a maze.
"Here!" said Mr. Critchlow, with increasing impatience. "Follow
me, will ye?"
Constance obeyed. Miss Insull sidled after Constance, and the dog
after Miss Insull. Mr. Critchlow went through the doorway and down
the corridor, past the cutting-out room to his right. The corridor
then turned at a right-angle to the left and ended at the parlour
door, the kitchen steps being to the left.
Mr. Critchlow stopped short of the kitchen steps, and extended his
arms, touching the walls on either side.
"Here!" he said, tapping the walls with his bony knuckles. "Here!
Suppose I brick ye this up, and th' same upstairs between th'
showroom and th' bedroom passage, ye've got your house to
yourself. Ye say ye've lived here all your life. Well, what's to
prevent ye finishing up here? The fact is," he added, "it would
only be making into two houses again what was two houses to start
with, afore your time, missis."
"And what about the shop?" cried Constance.
"Ye can sell us th' stock at a valuation."
Constance suddenly comprehended the scheme. Mr. Critchlow would
remain the chemist, while Mrs. Critchlow became the head of the
chief drapery business in the town. Doubtless they would knock a
hole through the separating wall on the other side, to balance the
bricking-up on this side. They must have thought it all out in
detail. Constance revolted.
"Yes!" she said, a little disdainfully. "And my goodwill? Shall
you take that at a valuation too?"
Mr. Critchlow glanced at the creature for whom he was ready to
scatter thousands of pounds. She might have been a Phryne and he
the infatuated fool. He glanced at her as if to say: "We expected
this, and this is where we agreed it was to stop."
"Ay!" he said to Constance. "Show me your goodwill. Lap it up in a
bit of paper and hand it over, and I'll take it at a valuation.
But not afore, missis! Not afore! I'm making ye a very good offer.
Twenty pound a year, I'll let ye th' house for. And take th' stock
at a valuation. Think it over, my lass."
Having said what he had to say, Charles Critchlow departed,
according to his custom. He unceremoniously let himself out by the
side door, and passed with wavy apron round the corner of King
Street into the Square and so to his own shop, which ignored the
Thursday half-holiday. Miss Insull left soon afterwards. _