ON general grounds—on the grounds, for instance, of anything so out-of-date and out of reason as filial piety—Ada was quite indifferent to Peter’s “consent,” and wanted it only to shackle Sam more firmly. She had not much doubt that Peter would consent, as in fact he did, though not so readily as she had anticipated. She did not exhibit an engagement ring at church next day for the reason that she had none to exhibit. Peter kept Sam too late for that.

Of course Ada was wrong about Peter: she thought him a good man and consequently a perfect fool, whereas his foolishness was imperfect, and he was subject, like most unworldly people, to streaks of acumen about worldly affairs. They come sometimes, these disconcerting fits of perception, as if a dam had burst, and usually the times are inconvenient to those who have reckoned on the unworldliness.

Peter answered her expectation so far as to say, “Bless my soul,” and so far only. After that, he began an elaborate and skilful catechism of Sam, which pretended to be a friendly talk about books, but was really an examination of Sam Branstone, his character and disposition. At the beginning Peter knew little of Sam beyond what his observations at the Concentrics had told him, and Sam’s volunteered remarks about his salary and his prospects interested Peter to a very slight extent. At the end Peter decided that Sam was to be trusted to make things easy for Ada on the material side, and that spiritually he was not beyond hope.

But he had not, spiritually, been touched as yet. Would Ada touch him? That was the question for Peter, who knew his Ada. Ada could be led. He admitted that he himself had failed with her, but he was not a strong man. A strong man, with love as his ally, could lead Ada, could form her, and Sam had strength, and, Peter thought, love. It depended, then, on whether Sam’s love for Ada, reacting on him, would quicken his latent spirituality so that the lead he gave to Ada would be good. And on the whole Peter thought there was a reasonable chance. He believed in the power of love, he believed that love is God and God is love, and confronted with his pair of self-confessed lovers he read their future optimistically in the light of his belief. What else could Peter do? They said they were in love, they appeared to be in love, they had the symptoms of the state of love. He could only judge the case on the evidence before the court.

He could not know that with Sam the symptoms, though real, were temporary, and with Ada an intelligent mimicry. He gave his assent to their engagement formally and very solemnly.

Sam left the house late, thrilling with Ada’s “Good-night” kiss, but the glow was quick to fade, and he found himself thinking rather of Peter than of Ada, whom of course, he loved. If ever probe was gentle, it was Peter’s: nevertheless, Sam had felt the probe antagonistically. He had shivered naked before Peter’s inquisition, he had understood that he was under examination, and resented it. It was, however disguisedly, opposition, and the thought of that kindly opponent led him to think of one from whom, also, opposition was to be expected, and, probably, less tactfully. It led to Anne.

Well, that was the fate of lovers: it was the way to deepen love and, perhaps already a little doubtful of his love, he welcomed the idea of Anne in opposition. It was curious that, while he thought of Ada as the one woman in the world, he should expect Anne to be hostile not merely to the idea of his marriage in general, but to marriage with Ada in particular. It was hardly loyal to Ada, who should have reigned unchallengably queen; and he could offer Anne the argument of the advantages of being Peter Struggles’ son-in-law. But, with it all, he looked for friction, and Anne was not to disappoint him there, although at first she took it with a calmness which disarmed him.

He came in, of course, late, and ate his supper, silently hoping that she would give him an opening, but Anne asked no questions, though she had not seen him since early morning, and Sam was not often out for meals. She asked no questions because she wanted to watch him first. It was clear to her at a glance that he was in one of two conditions: he was drunk or he was in love, and she wanted to make no mistake. If it was drink she would move very promptly and directly: if love, cannily and by devious ways. She found quickly that it was not drink. It was more serious.

Her silence awed him. “Mother,” he asked by way of breaking it, “aren’t you well?”

“Aye,” she said grimly, “I’m well. Are you?”

“I’ve eaten a good supper.”

“I noticed that. I’ll clear away now.”

“Wait a bit. I’ve something to tell you.”

“I reckon it’ll keep till morning. You mayn’t have known it, but you came in late. It’s bed-time and beyond.”

“Still,” he said, “I’d like you to hear this tonight.”

“You sound serious,” said Anne, and sat. “What is it, Sam?”

“It’s something rather wonderful, mother.”

“It would be,” said Anne. “What’s her name?”

Sam rose, astonished at her perspicacity. “You guessed!”

“I’m none in my dotage yet.” Anne was grim.

“Mother, I hope you’re pleased. You must be pleased. It’s all so wonderful to me.”

“I asked you her name,” said Anne.

“It’s Ada Struggles. You know,” he went on hurriedly, “how much we all admire her father.”

“I know, but I don’t know Ada.”

“You will soon,” said Sam enthusiastically.

“I will that,” said Anne, and there was menace in her voice. She took her candle. “Good-night, my son,” she said, kissing him, which was not habitual.

“Is that all?” he asked. “All that you have to say?”

“I don’t know Ada yet,” she said, and so was gone to bed.

Peter and Anne went opposite ways in their search to know whether this marriage was the right thing for their children’s happiness. Peter ignored the bread and butter problem, or took it for granted: and his was the higher wisdom. He knew that Sam was not made of the stuff that starves for bread; not in his body but in his soul was Sam likely to be pinched.

Anne took the earthlier view that happiness resulted from home comforts. Ada, as she knew, was no shining beauty, and the better for that. Beauty is skin-deep. But she looked frail, only so, for the matter of that, did some of the toughest girls, and she took it that Sam had had the horse-sense to make some preliminary inquiries before he committed himself. Sam, it appeared, had not.

Was Ada strong and healthy? Was she economical? Could she cook? Was she her own dressmaker? And when she found that Sam could answer none of these questions, she said ironically: “Well, at least, you’ve eyes in your head. Is their house clean?”

Sam could only say that he supposed so, and Anne looked witheringly at him. “Yes, you’re in love all right,” she said. “They say love’s blind. You’re leaving a lot to me.”

“Mother,” he said, alarmed, “what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to get acquainted with Ada,” she said. “One of us must know her, and you don’t.”

“If you’ll be fair to her,” said Sam. “I’m not afraid.”

“I’ll be fair,” said Anne, and meant to be; but is a mother ever fair to the prospective wife of her only son? Perhaps, and in that case Anne went to Ada with an open mind. “After all,” she reflected, “I daresay Tom Branstone’s mother didn’t think much of me, though Tom was one of ten and it makes a difference. It oughtn’t to, though”——she pulled herself up. “Anne, you’ll be fair to the girl.” She looked indulgently at Ada’s curtains and rang Ada’s bell.

But Ada was wearing silver bangles on her wrists and her shoes were made for show. Anne had the sort of pleasure which comes from having one’s worst fears realized. She may have generalized too sweepingly, but she held that only shallow people wear silver bangles and shoes whose aim is daintiness and not durability.

First impressions, at any rate, went heavily against Ada, but Anne remembered her promise to be fair. It was possible that when Tom Branstone took Anne to see his mother, that lady did not like Anne’s way of doing her hair. To each generation the symbols of its youth and perhaps bangles on Ada were not more skittish than a cairngorn brooch had been on Anne.

“I have tea ready, Mrs. Branstone,” said Ada. “Sam told me you were coming.”

“Did he?” Anne was surprised into saying. She had not told Sam of her intention and his guess at it and his warning of Ada had spoilt her plan of coming upon Ada unawares. She wanted Ada unprepared and unadorned: Ada at home, not Ada “at home.” And Ada was very much “at home.” The room had been “turned out”—and so had Peter that it might be—company manners and the company tea-pot were on exhibition, and everything was formal and obviously thought out. And, as Anne had to admit, not badly thought out either. Ada had not been to that expensive boarding school for nothing; she had an air to awe a porter’s widow. Anne didn’t like her trick of putting the milk in the cup before she poured the tea, nor her dogmatic way of asserting that it improved the flavour and that “everybody did it now.” Everybody, did not do it, Anne did not do it; but, again, perhaps this was the modern touch, and Anne had come to be fair.

She made her first score when Ada left the room for hot water. “This room’s been dusted to-day,” thought Anne. “I’ll see what her dusting is worth.” She put it to the test by running her finger along the top of the books on one of the shelves, and her finger was very black.

The only way to keep books clean in Manchester is the way taken by nine out of ten people: they have no books. Some of the others put books behind glass, like orchids, the rest have the habit of blowing hard at a book when they take it from its shelf, and of washing their hands before opening it.

Anne did not know that. She kept Sam’s few books clean by daily elbow-grease, and now furtively wiped her dirty finger on her stocking with the feeling that she had found out Ada. The dust on the books (and certainly it was thick) confirmed the impression left by the bangles, and Anne was not in the least ashamed of her spying. Sam had stolen a march on her by warning Ada and she paid him in his own coin.

And from then onwards the score rose steadily against Ada. There were cakes for tea. Now the only excuse for cakes was that one baked them oneself and Ada confessed that they came from Mrs. Stubbins and made the further mistake of showing an expert’s knowledge in the productions of Mrs. Stubbins’ confectionery shop. “Frivolous in food as well as dress,” was Anne’s comment. Her dress, Anne learnt, had been made by Madame Robinson.

“She’s dear,” said Ada, “but quite French. And, of course, she comes to church.”

No Nonconformists need apply; but Anne was thinking not of Madame’s religion but her bills. The employer of a quite French dressmaker called Robinson, born Duff, was no wife for Sam Branstone.

And by way of making Anne’s assurance doubly sure, Ada let slip something about being under the doctor.

But Anne was not sanguine. She saw clearly enough that it was precisely Ada’s weakness which was her strength with Sam. Sam had been leant upon by Madge and George, and liked it, as Anne herself, in that case, had liked it. But that was a different case from this. Madge had the claim of sisterhood; Anne could see nothing in Ada and Ada’s weakness to give her the claim to lean on Sam: and the leaning in marriage should not be one-sided. Ada could give Sam nothing except herself, and Anne did not think that gift worth having.

Sam, unfortunately, did and Anne doubted her power of changing his mind. Her first attempt, at all events, must be with Ada, and she felt cramped in Ada’s house, for the reason, perhaps, that it was Peter’s house, the shrine of his simplicity. She wanted Ada cut off from the defences of the tea-table and her own familiar surroundings, and saying something about the warmth of the evening, suggested a ride on the top of a tram-car.

“I often do it myself,” said Anne. “It blows the cobwebs away.”

She did it as a matter of fact not often, for so it would have lost its quality of a dissipation, but with a wise irregularity she escaped the thraldom of her house on a tram-car. Tram rides were her romance, her safety-valve, her glimpse at life. Six-pennyworth of tram is cheaper in the long run than fourpennyworth of gin: both carry one away, but the tram-car brings one safely back.

Anne’s lip tightened when she saw that Ada did not change the flimsy shoes and that her hat eclipsed their flimsiness. A “baby” hat, of imitation lace, from which her face peeped out like a drooping, sapless flower. “Yes,” thought Anne. “Men being men, that hat is clever. It’s a trap for fools and it caught my fool. Ada Struggles, you’re dangerous.”

They took the front seat on the tram and aloud she said, using purposely her roughest accent: “It’s queer to think of our Sam marrying a lady. I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve it, but his father were a railway porter and mine were a policeman. His sister was in service.”

“Sam wall get on,” said Ada, with conviction.

“I’m none doubting it,” said Anne. “But he’s had luck and it’s a question if the luck’ll hold. Mr. Travers took him up and sent him to Grammar School, and Sam didn’t do too well there. He disappointed me and he’s not gone on as he might have done. The fight’s ahead of him yet and he’ll need a fighter by his side. I’ve done my share for him this long while and I’m getting old. I shall be glad of a rest, Ada. Sam’s an early riser and it’s weary work getting up on a winter’s morning to light the fire and get his breakfast ready. Only that won’t trouble you. You’re young.”

“Of course,” said Ada, “we shall have a servant.”

“What!” exclaimed Anne, “on two pounds ten a week, with me to keep and all? I wouldn’t reckon on that, if I were you. Later on, perhaps. But I know it can’t be done at present, or Sam would have done it for me.” The idea of Anne Branstone with a wench about her house struck her as humorous. Anne might have help some day—when she was bed-ridden: till then, her house was her house. “No,” she went on, “you can take it from me that it’ll not run to a servant. I don’t know what his idea is about me, whether he will want me to live with you or not. Likely not. A man doesn’t want his mother about when he’s wed.”

“No,” agreed Ada hopefully. Anne oppressed her.

“No. And I can get on with a pound a week from him. That’ll leave you thirty shillings. Well, I’ve done it, so I know it can be done, though mind you, it’s a struggle all the time and double tides when the babies begin to come. But of course I’ll help you—with advice. I’m not for forcing myself on you, but naturally I know Sam’s ways and his likings about food. He’s a bit difficult at times, too, but that’s nothing. All men are and you’ll know that, having had your father to do for. I don’t say Sam’s finicky, but he likes what he likes and I hope you’re fond of the same things. It always turned me up to clean a rabbit, and I never liked the smell of onions, but that’s a favourite dish of Sam’s and so I’d just to grin and bear it. And I know you’ll do the same for Sam.”

Ada squirmed helplessly. She could have screamed. Anne sat at the outside of the seat and pinned her to it. The tram seemed a Juggernaut car which drove implacably over her dreams: a prison where she was tortured by a coarse old woman with work-roughened hands and an endless flow of vitriol. She wanted to tell Anne that she lied, that the more she deprecated Sam the more desirable Ada knew him to be, that her grapes were neither sour nor to be soured by Anne’s insane jealousy; and she could not do it. The ride seemed more of a nightmare with every moment that passed. The tram was a mad wheeled cage with a mad driver and a mad guard. It left the lines and careered wildly into desolation, and she was fettered in it to an avenging fury who would not stop talking, but with ruthless common sense pricked all the bubbles of her hopes. She shut her eyes and abandoned herself to misery. Each minute seemed an hour. She thought that somebody was throttling her, that the flying cage was her tomb, that vampires sucked her blood, and her naked, drained body was shackled to her seat until the car, driving inevitably through black space, bumped finally against a star in one consuming smash. She opened her eyes to find that the tram had stopped at its suburban terminus and that Anne was asking: “Shall we get down for a walk or shall we go back by the same car?”

So she was still in the living world, and with the consciousness of it courage returned to her. For a minute she was silent, fighting her demons off, catching at facts and weighing them. Anne was not a vampire, but an old worn woman who had, curiously, the right to call Sam Branstone son—Ada’s future mother-in-law, and a quaint one too; one to be put firmly and haughtily in her place and kept there.

“We’ll stay on this car,” she replied. Its madness had departed. It was a tram, quite eminently sane and usual. “I think,” she went on, “that you exaggerate the difficulties. I’ve no doubt that Sam will have more money by the time we’re married. You see, he has me to work for now.”

Not a simper with it either. Pure matter-of-fact statement, and the truth of it hit Anne, the cool assumption that Ada as a spur to effort was more competent than Anne. And this to Anne who had learnt algebra for Sam, to Anne who had underfed herself that he might wear the clothes a Grammar School boy ought to wear, to Anne who—oh, it was ineffable, but it defeated her because she knew, bitterly, gallingly, but undeniably, that it was true. This baby-faced chit, this fool in petticoats was more to Sam than the mother who bore him. Queen Anne was dead and Ada Struggles reigned in place of her.