Before she left the office that evening, Sally picked up the volume
of _Who's Who?_ kept there mainly because Mr. Bonsfield had a brother
whose name figured with some credit upon one of its pages. She turned
quickly over the leaves, until the name of Traill leapt out from the
print to hold her eye.
"John Hewitt Traill"--she read it with self-conscious
interest--"barrister-at-law and journalist. Born 1871; son of late
Sir William Hewitt Traill, C.B., of Apsley Manor, near High Wycombe,
Bucks. Address: Regent Street. _Clubs:_ National Liberal, and Savage.
_Recreations:_ riding, shooting, fishing."
That was all--the registration of a nonentity, it might have
seemed--in a wilderness of names. But it meant more than that to her.
Each word vibrated in her consciousness. Reading that--slight,
uncommunicative as it was--had made her feel a pride in their
acquaintance. Her imagination was stirred by the name of the house
where his father had lived, where he had probably been brought up.
Apsley Manor; she said it half aloud, and the picture was thrust into
her mind. She could see red gables, old tiled roofs, latticed windows,
overlooking sloping lawns, herbaceous borders with the shadows of
yew trees lying lazily across them. She could smell the scent of
stocks. The colours of sweet-peas and climbing roses filled her eyes.
In that moment, she had fallen into the morass of romance, and through
it all, like a gift of God, permeated the sense that it belonged to
this man who had dropped like a meteor upon the cold, uncoloured world
of her existence.
This is the beginning, the opening of the bud, whose petals wrapped
round the heart of Sally Bishop. Romance is the gate through which
almost every woman enters into the garden of life. Her first glimpse
is the path of flowers that stretches on under the ivied archways,
and there for a moment she stands, drugged with delight.
After supper that evening, Mr. Arthur followed her into the
sitting-room.
"Can you spare me a few minutes?" he asked.
His method of putting the question reminded her of Mr. Bonsfield's
chief clerk--the son of a pawnbroker in Camberwell. He assumed the
same attitude of body. Certainly Mr. Arthur did not fold his hands
together before him--he did not sniff through his nostrils; but her
imagination supplied these deficiencies in the likeness.
She agreed quite willingly. The prospect of what she knew was coming,
held no terrors for her. The only real terror is that of doubt. She
knew the course she was about to take. There was no hesitation in
her mind. The fate of Mr. Arthur in moulding the destiny of Sally's
life was weighed out, apportioned, sealed. It had only to be
delivered into his hands.
If this is a short time for so much to have happened, it can only
be said that Romance is a fairy tale where seven-leagued-boots and
magic carpets are essential properties of the mind. In a fairy tale
you are here and you are there by the simple turning of a ring.
Matter--the body--is a thing of nought. It is the same with Romance;
but there you deal with magical translations of the mind. From the
grim depths of the valley of despair, you are transported on to the
summit of the great mountain of delight; from the tangled forest of
doubt, in one moment of time you may be swept on the wings of the
genie of love into the sun-lit country of content.
Happening upon this fairy tale--as every woman must--had come Sally
Bishop. It would seem a foolish thing to think that Apsley Manor,
in the county of Buckinghamshire, should play a part in so great a
change in the life of any human being; it would seem strange to
believe that out of a two hours' acquaintance could arise the
beginning of a whole life's desire; yet in the fairy story of romance,
all such things are possible; nay, they are even the circumstances
that one expects.
When she walked out along the river-side that evening with Mr. Arthur,
there was an unreasoning content in her mind. The lights from the
bridge danced for her in the black water, reflecting the lightness
of her heart. She was in that pleasant attitude of mind--poised--like
a diver on a summer day, before he plunges into the glittering green
water. A few more days, another meeting, and she knew that she would
be immersed--deeply in love. Now she toyed with it, held the moment
at arm's length, and let her eyes feast on the seeming voluptuous
certainty of it. And when Mr. Arthur began the long preface to the
point towards which his mind was set, it sounded distant, aloof, as
the monotonous voice of a priest, chanting dull prayers in an empty
church, must sound in the ears of one whose whole soul is struggling
to lift to a communion with God Himself.
"I only want to know if you have made up your mind?" he said, when
he had finished his preamble.
"Yes, Mr. Arthur, I have."
"You can't?"
He took the note in her voice. It rang there in answer to the
apprehension that was already in his mind.
"No, I can't."
"Why not?"
"The same reason I gave you before."
"You don't love me?"
"No; I'm sorry, but I don't."
"That'll come," he tried to say with confidence.
She thought he was really sure of it; but instead of being angry,
she felt sorry for him. He hoped for that--he had every right to
hope--but oh, he little realized how impossible it was--how utterly,
absolutely impossible it was now. There is no rate of exchange for
Romance in the heart of a woman; she gives her whole soul for it,
and nothing but Romance will she take in return.
"It's no good saying that," she replied; "things don't come when you
expect them to. It surely can't be right for people to marry when
they are only hoping that one of them may love the other."
"But you seem to forget the position I'm offering you," he said. "Is
that no inducement?"
"No; I'm not forgetting it. But do you think position is everything
to a woman?"
"No; but she likes a home."
"Then why do you think I gave up mine?"
"I didn't know you had given it up. I thought you had been compelled
to earn your living."
"No; not at all. My father was a clergyman down in Kent. He only died
last year. My mother still lives there and my two sisters. I could
have a home there if I wished to go back to it."
He looked at her in a little amazement. "I suppose I don't understand
women," he said genuinely.
She looked up into his uninteresting face--the weak, protruding
lower lip, the drooping moustache that hung on to it--then she
smiled.
"I suppose, really, you don't," she agreed. "I think we'll go back;
I'm getting cold."
They walked back silently together, all the night sounds of the river
soothing to her ears, jarring to his. A train rushed by, thundering
over the bridge from Gunnersbury way; he looked at it, frowning,
waiting for the noise to cease; she watched it contentedly, thinking
that it had come from the Temple where Traill was a barrister-at-law.
"Then I suppose it's no good my saying any more," said Mr. Arthur,
as he stood at the door with his latch-key ready in the lock. He waited
for her answer before he turned it.
"No, no good," she replied gently; "I'm so sorry, but it isn't. I
hope it won't be the cause of any unfriendliness; you have been very
good to me, and I do really appreciate the honour of it." The same
phrases, with but little variation, that every woman uses. It is an
understood thing amongst them that a man is conscious of paying them
honour when he asks them in marriage, and that it is better to show
him that they are sensitive to it. He thinks of nothing of the
kind--certainly not at the time. That last appreciation of the honour
is the final application of a caustic to the wound that smarts the
most of all--though in the end it may heal.
Mr. Arthur turned the key viciously in the lock, and pushed the door
open.
"I suppose you have to say that," he exclaimed, "but of course there's
no honour about it to you. If your father was a clergyman, you
probably look down on me. My father was in the grocery business. He
got me into the bank because he had an account there."
He stood by to let her pass him into the hall.
"You're really quite wrong," she began, then she saw that he was not
following her. "I thought you were coming in," she said.
"No; I'm not coming in yet. Good night."
He closed the door behind him, and left her abruptly in the darkness
of the hall.
She stood there for a moment, listening to the departure of his
footsteps as he slouched aimlessly away. He was nobody--nobody in
her life--but she felt sorry for him. On the verge of love--in love
itself--is a boundless capacity for sympathy. She turned to go
upstairs, still feeling pity for him in the pain she had unavoidably
caused him. She did not realize that this was simply a reflection,
the first shadowing of her love for Traill, that sought any outlet
in which to find expression.
In the bedroom, Janet was making a strange costume for a student's
fancy dress ball. She did not look up when Sally entered. With her
inexperienced needle, the work occupied her whole attention. Sally
stood and watched her laborious efforts with a smile of gentle
amusement.
"Let me do it for you," she said at last--"those stitches 'll never
hold."
In her mood she was willing--anxious to do anything for any one. She
felt no fatigue from her day's work. In the everlasting routine, it
is the mind that makes the body tired. Her mind was lifted above the
ordinary susceptibility to exhaustion.
Janet stuck her needle into the material on her knee, and looked up
searchingly.
"What's the matter with you to-night?" she asked.
"Nothing's the matter. Why?"
"You're so officiously agreeable."
Sally laughed.
"You wanted to help Mrs. Hewson to make that mincemeat," Janet
continued; "now you want to help me; and you were the soul of
good-nature to Mr. Arthur. I'm sure he thinks you're going to accept
him."
"No, he doesn't."
"How do you know?"
"I told him after supper. He asked me to come out with him. I told
him I couldn't marry him."
Janet looked at her with curiosity, her eyes narrowed, judging the
tone of the words rather than the words themselves, as if they were
subject for her brush.
"How did he take it?" she asked, gaining time for the maturity of
her judgment.
"I feel awfully sorry for him. He went out again when I came in."
"Takes it badly, then?"
"I'm afraid so."
"You're sorry for him?"
"Yes."
"Why? You haven't thrown him over. He's taken his chance--he'll get
over it. You're very soft-hearted. It's all in the game. You'll have
to take your chance as well, and no one'll be sorry for you if you
come worst out of it."
Sally looked at her thoughtfully. "I don't believe you've got a heart,
Janet," she said.
"Don't you?"
"Well, have you?"
"It's not a weakness I care to confess to."
"That's as good as admitting it."
Janet was slowly driving to the point. In another moment, she knew
that she would have the truth.
"If having a heart means wasting one's sorrows on men like Mr. Arthur,
I'm glad I haven't." Janet threw her work over the end of her bed,
and looked up at Sally.
"Who is he, Sally?" she asked abruptly. "What's his name? Where does
he live?"
"Who?" She tried to lift her eyebrows in surprise, but the blood
rushed to her cheeks and burnt them red. "Who?" she repeated.
"The man you're in love with. I asked you before if there was some
one in the office; it's silly going on denying it. You'd never have
told Mr. Arthur so soon. You'd have hung it on and hung it on for
heaven knows how long. No, something's happened, happened to-day.
Do you think I can't see? You're bubbling over with it, longing to
tell me, and afraid I'll laugh at you." She rose to her feet and stuck
her needle into the pincushion, then she put her arm round Sally's
waist, and hugged her gently. "Poor, ridiculous, little Sally," she
said, the first soft note that had entered her voice. "I wouldn't
laugh at you. Don't you know you're made to be loved--not like me.
Men hate thin, bony faces and scraggy hair; they want something they
can pinch and pet. Lord! Imagine a man pinching my cheeks--it 'ud
be like picking up a threepenny bit off a glass counter. Who is he,
Sally?"
Sally lifted up her face and kissed the thin cheek.
"Let's get into bed," she whispered.
They undressed in silence. Once, when Sally was not looking, Janet
stole a glance at her soft round arms; then gazed contemplatively
at her own. They were thin, like the rest of her body--the elbows
thick, out of proportion to the arm itself. She bent it, and felt
the sharp bone tentatively with her hand. Sally looked up, and she
converted the motion of feeling into that of scratching, as though
the place had irritated. Then she continued with her undressing.
When once they were in bed and the light was out, Sally told her
everything. Janet made no comments. She listened with her eyes
glaring out into the darkness, sometimes moistening her lips as they
became dry. The unconscious note in Sally's voice thrilled her; it
was like that of a lark thanking God for the morning. She felt in
it the pulse of the great force of sex--nature rising like a trembling
god of power out of the drab realities of everyday existence.
It wakened a sleeping animal in her. She felt as though its stertorous
breaths were fanning across her cheeks and she lay there parched
under them.
"What's that?" exclaimed Sally under her breath when she had finished
her relation.
"What's what?"
"That noise."
They both listened, breaths held waiting between their lips, their
heads raised strainingly from their pillows.
On the other side of the wall was Mr. Arthur's room, and from their
beds they heard muffled sounds as of a person speaking. They waited
to hear the other voice in reply. There was none. He must be speaking
to himself. Sometimes the voice would stop. Then came one single
sound like a groan, only that it was more exclamatory. For a few
moments there was silence; then again a clattering noise. That was
recognizable--a boot being thrown on to the floor. It came again--the
second boot. Then another single sound of the voice, a sudden violent
creaking of springs as a heavy body was thrown on to the bed; then
silence.
"That's Mr. Arthur," said Janet. "He's drunk."
And whereas Janet found sympathy for him, Sally lost that which she
had.