Philip spent the few weeks that remained before the beginning of the
winter session in the out-patients’ department, and in October settled
down to regular work. He had been away from the hospital for so long
that he found himself very largely among new people; the men of
different years had little to do with one another, and his
contemporaries were now mostly qualified: some had left to take up
assistantships or posts in country hospitals and infirmaries, and some
held appointments at St. Luke’s. The two years during which his mind
had lain fallow had refreshed him, he fancied, and he was able now to
work with energy.
The Athelnys were delighted with his change of fortune. He had kept
aside a few things from the sale of his uncle’s effects and gave them
all presents. He gave Sally a gold chain that had belonged to his aunt.
She was now grown up. She was apprenticed to a dressmaker and set out
every morning at eight to work all day in a shop in Regent Street.
Sally had frank blue eyes, a broad brow, and plentiful shining hair;
she was buxom, with broad hips and full breasts; and her father, who
was fond of discussing her appearance, warned her constantly that she
must not grow fat. She attracted because she was healthy, animal, and
feminine. She had many admirers, but they left her unmoved; she gave
one the impression that she looked upon love-making as nonsense; and it
was easy to imagine that young men found her unapproachable. Sally was
old for her years: she had been used to help her mother in the
household work and in the care of the children, so that she had
acquired a managing air, which made her mother say that Sally was a bit
too fond of having things her own way. She did not speak very much, but
as she grew older she seemed to be acquiring a quiet sense of humour,
and sometimes uttered a remark which suggested that beneath her
impassive exterior she was quietly bubbling with amusement at her
fellow-creatures. Philip found that with her he never got on the terms
of affectionate intimacy upon which he was with the rest of Athelny’s
huge family. Now and then her indifference slightly irritated him.
There was something enigmatic in her.
When Philip gave her the necklace Athelny in his boisterous way
insisted that she must kiss him; but Sally reddened and drew back.
“No, I’m not going to,” she said.
“Ungrateful hussy!” cried Athelny. “Why not?”
“I don’t like being kissed by men,” she said.
Philip saw her embarrassment, and, amused, turned Athelny’s attention
to something else. That was never a very difficult thing to do. But
evidently her mother spoke of the matter later, for next time Philip
came she took the opportunity when they were alone for a couple of
minutes to refer to it.
“You didn’t think it disagreeable of me last week when I wouldn’t kiss
you?”
“Not a bit,” he laughed.
“It’s not because I wasn’t grateful.” She blushed a little as she
uttered the formal phrase which she had prepared. “I shall always value
the necklace, and it was very kind of you to give it me.”
Philip found it always a little difficult to talk to her. She did all
that she had to do very competently, but seemed to feel no need of
conversation; yet there was nothing unsociable in her. One Sunday
afternoon when Athelny and his wife had gone out together, and Philip,
treated as one of the family, sat reading in the parlour, Sally came in
and sat by the window to sew. The girls’ clothes were made at home and
Sally could not afford to spend Sundays in idleness. Philip thought she
wished to talk and put down his book.
“Go on reading,” she said. “I only thought as you were alone I’d come
and sit with you.”
“You’re the most silent person I’ve ever struck,” said Philip.
“We don’t want another one who’s talkative in this house,” she said.
There was no irony in her tone: she was merely stating a fact. But it
suggested to Philip that she measured her father, alas, no longer the
hero he was to her childhood, and in her mind joined together his
entertaining conversation and the thriftlessness which often brought
difficulties into their life; she compared his rhetoric with her
mother’s practical common sense; and though the liveliness of her
father amused her she was perhaps sometimes a little impatient with it.
Philip looked at her as she bent over her work; she was healthy,
strong, and normal; it must be odd to see her among the other girls in
the shop with their flat chests and anaemic faces. Mildred suffered
from anaemia.
After a time it appeared that Sally had a suitor. She went out
occasionally with friends she had made in the work-room, and had met a
young man, an electrical engineer in a very good way of business, who
was a most eligible person. One day she told her mother that he had
asked her to marry him.
“What did you say?” said her mother.
“Oh, I told him I wasn’t over-anxious to marry anyone just yet awhile.”
She paused a little as was her habit between observations. “He took on
so that I said he might come to tea on Sunday.”
It was an occasion that thoroughly appealed to Athelny. He rehearsed
all the afternoon how he should play the heavy father for the young
man’s edification till he reduced his children to helpless giggling.
Just before he was due Athelny routed out an Egyptian tarboosh and
insisted on putting it on.
“Go on with you, Athelny,” said his wife, who was in her best, which
was of black velvet, and, since she was growing stouter every year,
very tight for her. “You’ll spoil the girl’s chances.”
She tried to pull it off, but the little man skipped nimbly out of her
way.
“Unhand me, woman. Nothing will induce me to take it off. This young
man must be shown at once that it is no ordinary family he is preparing
to enter.”
“Let him keep it on, mother,” said Sally, in her even, indifferent
fashion. “If Mr. Donaldson doesn’t take it the way it’s meant he can
take himself off, and good riddance.”
Philip thought it was a severe ordeal that the young man was being
exposed to, since Athelny, in his brown velvet jacket, flowing black
tie, and red tarboosh, was a startling spectacle for an innocent
electrical engineer. When he came he was greeted by his host with the
proud courtesy of a Spanish grandee and by Mrs. Athelny in an
altogether homely and natural fashion. They sat down at the old
ironing-table in the high-backed monkish chairs, and Mrs. Athelny
poured tea out of a lustre teapot which gave a note of England and the
country-side to the festivity. She had made little cakes with her own
hand, and on the table was home-made jam. It was a farm-house tea, and
to Philip very quaint and charming in that Jacobean house. Athelny for
some fantastic reason took it into his head to discourse upon Byzantine
history; he had been reading the later volumes of the Decline and Fall;
and, his forefinger dramatically extended, he poured into the
astonished ears of the suitor scandalous stories about Theodora and
Irene. He addressed himself directly to his guest with a torrent of
rhodomontade; and the young man, reduced to helpless silence and shy,
nodded his head at intervals to show that he took an intelligent
interest. Mrs. Athelny paid no attention to Thorpe’s conversation, but
interrupted now and then to offer the young man more tea or to press
upon him cake and jam. Philip watched Sally; she sat with downcast
eyes, calm, silent, and observant; and her long eye-lashes cast a
pretty shadow on her cheek. You could not tell whether she was amused
at the scene or if she cared for the young man. She was inscrutable.
But one thing was certain: the electrical engineer was good-looking,
fair and clean-shaven, with pleasant, regular features, and an honest
face; he was tall and well-made. Philip could not help thinking he
would make an excellent mate for her, and he felt a pang of envy for
the happiness which he fancied was in store for them.
Presently the suitor said he thought it was about time he was getting
along. Sally rose to her feet without a word and accompanied him to the
door. When she came back her father burst out:
“Well, Sally, we think your young man very nice. We are prepared to
welcome him into our family. Let the banns be called and I will compose
a nuptial song.”
Sally set about clearing away the tea-things. She did not answer.
Suddenly she shot a swift glance at Philip.
“What did you think of him, Mr. Philip?”
She had always refused to call him Uncle Phil as the other children
did, and would not call him Philip.
“I think you’d make an awfully handsome pair.”
She looked at him quickly once more, and then with a slight blush went
on with her business.
“I thought him a very nice civil-spoken young fellow,” said Mrs.
Athelny, “and I think he’s just the sort to make any girl happy.”
Sally did not reply for a minute or two, and Philip looked at her
curiously: it might be thought that she was meditating upon what her
mother had said, and on the other hand she might be thinking of the man
in the moon.
“Why don’t you answer when you’re spoken to, Sally?” remarked her
mother, a little irritably.
“I thought he was a silly.”
“Aren’t you going to have him then?”
“No, I’m not.”
“I don’t know how much more you want,” said Mrs. Athelny, and it was
quite clear now that she was put out. “He’s a very decent young fellow
and he can afford to give you a thorough good home. We’ve got quite
enough to feed here without you. If you get a chance like that it’s
wicked not to take it. And I daresay you’d be able to have a girl to do
the rough work.”
Philip had never before heard Mrs. Athelny refer so directly to the
difficulties of her life. He saw how important it was that each child
should be provided for.
“It’s no good your carrying on, mother,” said Sally in her quiet way.
“I’m not going to marry him.”
“I think you’re a very hard-hearted, cruel, selfish girl.”
“If you want me to earn my own living, mother, I can always go into
service.”
“Don’t be so silly, you know your father would never let you do that.”
Philip caught Sally’s eye, and he thought there was in it a glimmer of
amusement. He wondered what there had been in the conversation to touch
her sense of humour. She was an odd girl.