The Old Wives' Tale

The story picks up shortly after the events of Chapter 5. Constance is adjusting to life without Samuel. She faces her circumstances as bravely as she can and refocuses her attention on Cyril. Cyril, however, is exerting his independence—and his bad habits—more forcefully than when his father was alive. Within a few days of the funeral, Cyril is pushing back against long-set boundaries. These developments trouble Constance; she’s still grounded in her perception of Cyril’s innate goodness, but that foundation is beginning to show cracks. Whereas before she always spoke with assurance that Cyril was a good boy, she now phrases it differently: “He really must be a good boy. He must!” (284). Cyril expresses his desire to attend evening classes at the School of Art, a project his father had decided against. Constance resists at first but ultimately gives in: “If we must be happy together only when I give way to him, I must give way to him” (287). This is far more of a sacrifice for Constance than Cyril realizes, as he’s her only companion in the evening hours of their family life, and now she’s surrendering three of those evenings each week to his aspirations for art.

Constance encounters a new challenge: The longtime landowner of many of the buildings in St. Luke’s Square, to whom the Baines family paid the lease for their home and business, has just passed away. His property is being put up for auction. Constance expects the new landowner to carry on with business as usual, and she goes to the auction to see the sale through. Her neighbor, Mr. Critchlow, emerges as the buyer, a result not entirely to Constance’s liking.

Further surprises follow: The narrative reveals that Mr. Critchlow and Miss Insull, the latter one of the Baines’s employees, have a longstanding romantic interest in each other. Now that Mr. Critchlow owns the properties of both his own shop and the Baines’s, he proposes to buy out Constance’s lease while allowing her to retain her home, walling up the openings between the two parts of the building. Once that’s done and Mr. Critchlow marries Miss Insull, the draper’s shop would continue its operations under the new Mrs. Critchlow’s supervision. Constance is initially skeptical of the proposal but thinks it through: “Constance’s pride urged her to refuse the offer. But in truth her sole objection to it was that she had not thought of the scheme herself” (297). She gives her consent, their home is walled off from the business, and a new sign is hung out in front of the draper’s shop.

This chapter opens by describing the changes in Cyril’s aspect as he grows up and becomes a man. Between his work and his studies at the School of Art, he’s seldom present at the family home, and although he’s still willful and self-absorbed, in other ways he has changed: He’s now tall, thin, and confident in his movements. Constance, undeterred by his indifference, goes to great lengths to please her son:

[S]he lived for nothing but to please him; he was, however, exceedingly difficult to please […] Constance, in order to satisfy her desire of pleasing, had to make fifty efforts, in the hope that he might chance to notice one (302).

Cyril is making great strides in his artistic endeavors and announces to his mother that one of his pieces was selected for the prestigious National Scholarship, which includes an invitation to study art in London. Constance feels torn by this. Although she’s proud of the honor he has won, she feels the unfairness of having him taken away from her after all she has done for him. Book 2 ends with this turmoil in Constance’s inner life. While the death of her husband didn’t tempt her to view her own life as over, the departure of her son does:

Her soul only kept on saying monotonously: ‘I’m a lonely old woman now. I’ve nothing to live for any more, and I’m no use to anybody. Once I was young and proud. And this is what my life has come to! This is the end!’ (310).