He had arranged to meet Sally on Saturday in the National Gallery. She
was to come there as soon as she was released from the shop and had
agreed to lunch with him. Two days had passed since he had seen her,
and his exultation had not left him for a moment. It was because he
rejoiced in the feeling that he had not attempted to see her. He had
repeated to himself exactly what he would say to her and how he should
say it. Now his impatience was unbearable. He had written to Doctor
South and had in his pocket a telegram from him received that morning:
“Sacking the mumpish fool. When will you come?” Philip walked along
Parliament Street. It was a fine day, and there was a bright, frosty
sun which made the light dance in the street. It was crowded. There was
a tenuous mist in the distance, and it softened exquisitely the noble
lines of the buildings. He crossed Trafalgar Square. Suddenly his heart
gave a sort of twist in his body; he saw a woman in front of him who he
thought was Mildred. She had the same figure, and she walked with that
slight dragging of the feet which was so characteristic of her. Without
thinking, but with a beating heart, he hurried till he came alongside,
and then, when the woman turned, he saw it was someone unknown to him.
It was the face of a much older person, with a lined, yellow skin. He
slackened his pace. He was infinitely relieved, but it was not only
relief that he felt; it was disappointment too; he was seized with
horror of himself. Would he never be free from that passion? At the
bottom of his heart, notwithstanding everything, he felt that a
strange, desperate thirst for that vile woman would always linger. That
love had caused him so much suffering that he knew he would never,
never quite be free of it. Only death could finally assuage his desire.
But he wrenched the pang from his heart. He thought of Sally, with her
kind blue eyes; and his lips unconsciously formed themselves into a
smile. He walked up the steps of the National Gallery and sat down in
the first room, so that he should see her the moment she came in. It
always comforted him to get among pictures. He looked at none in
particular, but allowed the magnificence of their colour, the beauty of
their lines, to work upon his soul. His imagination was busy with
Sally. It would be pleasant to take her away from that London in which
she seemed an unusual figure, like a cornflower in a shop among orchids
and azaleas; he had learned in the Kentish hop-field that she did not
belong to the town; and he was sure that she would blossom under the
soft skies of Dorset to a rarer beauty. She came in, and he got up to
meet her. She was in black, with white cuffs at her wrists and a lawn
collar round her neck. They shook hands.
“Have you been waiting long?”
“No. Ten minutes. Are you hungry?”
“Not very.”
“Let’s sit here for a bit, shall we?”
“If you like.”
They sat quietly, side by side, without speaking. Philip enjoyed having
her near him. He was warmed by her radiant health. A glow of life
seemed like an aureole to shine about her.
“Well, how have you been?” he said at last, with a little smile.
“Oh, it’s all right. It was a false alarm.”
“Was it?”
“Aren’t you glad?”
An extraordinary sensation filled him. He had felt certain that Sally’s
suspicion was well-founded; it had never occurred to him for an instant
that there was a possibility of error. All his plans were suddenly
overthrown, and the existence, so elaborately pictured, was no more
than a dream which would never be realised. He was free once more.
Free! He need give up none of his projects, and life still was in his
hands for him to do what he liked with. He felt no exhilaration, but
only dismay. His heart sank. The future stretched out before him in
desolate emptiness. It was as though he had sailed for many years over
a great waste of waters, with peril and privation, and at last had come
upon a fair haven, but as he was about to enter, some contrary wind had
arisen and drove him out again into the open sea; and because he had
let his mind dwell on these soft meads and pleasant woods of the land,
the vast deserts of the ocean filled him with anguish. He could not
confront again the loneliness and the tempest. Sally looked at him with
her clear eyes.
“Aren’t you glad?” she asked again. “I thought you’d be as pleased as
Punch.”
He met her gaze haggardly. “I’m not sure,” he muttered.
“You are funny. Most men would.”
He realised that he had deceived himself; it was no self-sacrifice that
had driven him to think of marrying, but the desire for a wife and a
home and love; and now that it all seemed to slip through his fingers
he was seized with despair. He wanted all that more than anything in
the world. What did he care for Spain and its cities, Cordova, Toledo,
Leon; what to him were the pagodas of Burmah and the lagoons of South
Sea Islands? America was here and now. It seemed to him that all his
life he had followed the ideals that other people, by their words or
their writings, had instilled into him, and never the desires of his
own heart. Always his course had been swayed by what he thought he
should do and never by what he wanted with his whole soul to do. He put
all that aside now with a gesture of impatience. He had lived always in
the future, and the present always, always had slipped through his
fingers. His ideals? He thought of his desire to make a design,
intricate and beautiful, out of the myriad, meaningless facts of life:
had he not seen also that the simplest pattern, that in which a man was
born, worked, married, had children, and died, was likewise the most
perfect? It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept
defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.
He glanced quickly at Sally, he wondered what she was thinking, and
then looked away again.
“I was going to ask you to marry me,” he said.
“I thought p’raps you might, but I shouldn’t have liked to stand in
your way.”
“You wouldn’t have done that.”
“How about your travels, Spain and all that?”
“How d’you know I want to travel?”
“I ought to know something about it. I’ve heard you and Dad talk about
it till you were blue in the face.”
“I don’t care a damn about all that.” He paused for an instant and then
spoke in a low, hoarse whisper. “I don’t want to leave you! I can’t
leave you.”
She did not answer. He could not tell what she thought.
“I wonder if you’ll marry me, Sally.”
She did not move and there was no flicker of emotion on her face, but
she did not look at him when she answered.
“If you like.”
“Don’t you want to?”
“Oh, of course I’d like to have a house of my own, and it’s about time
I was settling down.”
He smiled a little. He knew her pretty well by now, and her manner did
not surprise him.
“But don’t you want to marry ME?”
“There’s no one else I would marry.”
“Then that settles it.”
“Mother and Dad will be surprised, won’t they?”
“I’m so happy.”
“I want my lunch,” she said.
“Dear!”
He smiled and took her hand and pressed it. They got up and walked out
of the gallery. They stood for a moment at the balustrade and looked at
Trafalgar Square. Cabs and omnibuses hurried to and fro, and crowds
passed, hastening in every direction, and the sun was shining.