CHAPTER IV

OLD MAXHAM

MR. MOKES' shop was the general and long-established shop of Old Maxham, a shop which had existed when Old Maxham was Maxham whole and entire, with no brisk young growing town of the same name to cast it into the shade, and when no other shop of any kind was to be found for nearly a couple of miles in any direction.

Things now were different. New Maxham, hardly a mile distant, possessed shops in plenty; but Old Maxham, though no longer a place of one shop, was still a primitive village, very much behind the age.

How much longer it could remain so was doubtful. Already lengthening arms of red houses in rows stretched affectionately outwards from the younger town, threatening by-and-by to engulf in their embrace the whole parent village. However, this consummation lay yet in the future; and the shop of Old Maxham, while partly supplanted by young aspirants, still held its own, as an institution venerable through antiquity and altogether reliable after generations of honesty.

It was only to be expected that, as the place grew, fresh shops should be started. Mr. Mokes was a reasonable man in most respects; and he viewed the question on the whole reasonably.

He did not expect his family—ancestors and descendants, inclusive of himself—to retain through ages a complete monopoly of Old Maxham trade. That a butcher should start his little shop was only to be looked for; he never had taken to that branch of trade, and people had gone to a neighbouring village or to New Maxham for their meat. A fishmonger was equally right; and a greengrocer, a small ironmonger, even a draper, came one and all in the natural course of events.

But when a man from New Maxham, Groates by name, chose to set up in the same street with himself a rival house to his own—a second "general," following in almost every respect his own particular lines, with the one exception of the Post-office—then Mr. Mokes, mild-tempered though he might be, did "turn" like the proverbial worm. He could not stand with patience such barefaced competition—grocery on one side and everything else on the other side; and outside shady seats among trees, with little tables for tea and fruit! The whole thing was a careful imitation, with improvements, which made the matter worse.

Flesh and blood could not be expected to endure such conduct. Mr. Mokes objected strongly, and his indignant dislike to the man extended to the man's whole family. When Groates was so impudent as to rent a pew in Church exactly in front of the Mokes' pew, Mr. Mokes actually quitted the pew of his forefathers, and went to another as far removed as possible.

By this means he lost one of his Sunday pleasures: the attentive perusal of a long and wordy inscription upon a certain stone slab, detailing all the virtues of his deceased Mokes' grandfather, who apparently had been a benefit to the neighbourhood, a blessing to his acquaintances, a model man, and an ideal tradesman. Mr. Mokes had always rejoiced in the reflected glory of that esteemed monument. But to sit and see just below it the row of Groateses, big and little, was too much for his equanimity. He couldn't do it, he avowed, and "feel like a Christian."

Of course Jessie Perkins knew all the ins and outs of Old Maxham society and politics. She had lived at Periwinkle Cottage ever since she became an orphan, at the age of four. Miss Perkins had adopted and brought her up. Miss Perkins was practically very good to Jessie, and no doubt was sincerely fond of her. Unhappily, the fondness was not apparent, and the goodness was far from attractive in its manifestations. And Jessie was not very fond of her aunt.

It was the same thing over again as with Jessie's father—Miss Perkins' only brother. Miss Perkins would have worked her fingers to the bone to serve him, but somehow she had not managed to keep his love. She had too many angles and corners, too testy and jealous a temper, to be lovable. Two or three friends or cronies she did possess, but then they had never lived under the same roof with Miss Perkins. There were many who pitied Jessie; and while she tried to be patient and dutiful to her aunt, her affections turned elsewhere.

Among the girl's oldest friends, after a sort, were the Mokeses opposite; among her newest were the Groateses, down the same main village street to the west.

Miss Perkins just knew the Groateses civilly, and no more. She did not like them or care to know them better. Jessie, on the contrary, had somehow slipped into a fast-growing intimacy, and, after the frequent fashion of young people, she gave much more ardent love to the new friends than to the old.

Perhaps this was not altogether surprising, since she had chosen the new friends for herself, while the others had been chosen for her. But she seldom spoke of the Groateses to the Mokeses or even to her aunt: not from any wish for secrecy, but simply because such speaking was apt to produce a snubbing. The growth of her new friendship was not fully understood therefore by others.

Mokes' shop was a genuine country concern, of a mixed and heterogeneous nature. Country shops are like country doctors: they go in for all round treatment. Specialists are a growth of town necessities.

The droll little old-fashioned windows—Groates' plate-glass panes were no copy of these—showed an astonishing assortment of articles within. On one side were groceries, using the word in its most elastic sense; on the other side were drapery goods, fancy articles, toys, wools, stationery. At the back was the Post-office. So Mokes had a good deal to attend to in his calling,—even with the help of his wife, of one very capable daughter, and of one most incompetent son. He had only two children, not seven like Groates.

Exactly opposite Groates' Store was a creeper-grown cottage, much after the model of Periwinkle Cottage, which stood in like manner just opposite Mokes' shop; and on the little gate of the tiny front garden, a more slip of bed and gravel, was a plate intimating that here resided "The Misses Coxen, Dressmakers."

On this particular afternoon the two sisters sat, as indeed was their usual habit, close to the prim little bay-window, one on either side, occasionally moving their respective needles, but on the whole more intent upon the outer than upon the inner world.

They were a well-meaning pair of little women; and they took an enormous interest in their neighbours' concerns,—not an unkind interest, though at times a degree meddlesome in kind.

It was no doubt natural that they should take this interest, since they really had no concerns of their own, beyond the new dress for the butcher's wife, or the latest frock for the linen-draper's little girl, or the question of how many darns were needed in the household linen each week, or the fluctuating health of their dearly beloved tabby cat, of Persian breed, the pride of the whole village.