The dinner was fixed some few days later for seven o'clock in a little
restaurant in Soho.
"_Don't think because I chose this place_," concluded Traill's
letter, "_that I am considering the fact that we are not dressing,
and that, therefore, it ought not to be some ultra-fashionable place.
You shall come to those another time if you wish. This particular
evening I want to be quiet, and this is the quietest place I know.
I leave the theatre to your choosing. Anything will suit me, I have
seen them all._"
Janet watched her across the breakfast-table as she folded the letter
and crumpled it into her pocket. Their eyes met and they smiled.
"I shan't be in to dinner this evening, Mrs. Hewson," Sally said
presently.
Mrs. Hewson looked up from a plate of shrimps which had been left
over from the last evening's supper. Her sharp little eyes criticized
Sally. Janet often stayed out for the evening; that was by no means
an uncommon occurrence. Art students are convivial souls; they love
the unconventionality of the evenings in each other's company.
Sometimes Sally went with her to a small impromptu dance or a musical
at-home in the purlieus of Chelsea. But never before had she
announced that she was going out by herself. Mrs. Hewson did not
profess to have any control over the morals of her lodgers, so long
as they did not reflect in any way upon her own respectability; but
she could not refrain from that British desire for interference in
other people's affairs in the cause of morality itself.
Morality itself, not as any means to an end, but just its bare
superficial display of conventional morals, is treasure in heaven
to the average English mind. And their morality itself is a poor
business--cheap at the best. To be respectable, to do what others
expect of you, is the backbone of all their virtue. It has been said,
we are a nation of shopkeepers. If that is true, then all the shops
are in one street, packed tight, the one against the other. For we
are a nation of neighbours too, prone to do what is being done next
door, and a lax king upon the throne of England could turn our morals
upside down. All things are fashions--even moralities--they take
longer to come and longer to go, but they change with the rest of
things nevertheless, and we follow, doing what is at the moment the
thing to do.
In Mrs. Hewson's eyes, as she looked up at Sally, was a considerate
inquiry blent with curiosity, touched with suspicion which she tried
in vain to conceal.
"Going out to dinner, Miss Bishop?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Oh--that's nice for you--isn't it?"
"Very."
Though Janet had finished her breakfast, she waited on with amusement
concealed behind an expressionless exterior.
"Of course, Mr. Arthur can afford it," Mrs. Hewson went on. Sally
made no reply. Mr. Hewson simpered affectedly. "Of course, I'm only
supposin' it's Mr. Arthur. P'raps I may be quite wrong." Sally still
resorted to silence. "Are you going to a theayter with him?" She shot
the last bolt--went as far as decency in such matters and such
surroundings would permit, and it succeeded--it forced Sally to
retort.
"It's not Mr. Arthur, Mrs. Hewson--there is no need to worry
yourself." She snapped the words--broke them crisp and sharp with
pardonable irritation and spirit.
"Oh--indeed--I'm not worrying meself. I'm sorry to have made you so
offended like--it's no affair of mine. I'm quite aware of that--only
that I thought, seeing you've been here nigh on two years and never
gone out by yourself before like--I was only just making--whatcher
might call--friendly inquiry about it--see?"
She brushed the heads of the shrimps into the slop-basin with her
hand and stood up, evidently offended, from the table.
"Of course, it's no business of mine, and I have no cause to complain
of anything you do; you give no offence to me, I must say that. I
never had better be'aved lodgers than I've got at present."
"But you felt curious?" suggested Janet.
"Me? Curious? Well, I think that's the last thing you could accuse
me of. I've got enough affairs of me own without worrying about other
people's. Me? Curious?" She laughed at the impossibility of such a
thing, and began to clear away the breakfast things with more noise
than was actually necessary.
"Well, there's nothing to be excited about, then," said Janet.
Mrs. Hewson laid a cup and saucer with such gentleness upon a pile
of plates that the absence of noise was oppressive.
"I'm not excited," she said with crimson cheeks.
"Sorry," said Janet, laconically; "thought you were. If there's a
thing more hateful than another, I think it's the vexation of a person
who can't satisfy their curiosity about some other body's business.
Don't you think so, Mrs. Hewson?"
"I'm sure I don't know. Those abstruse matters don't worry me."
"No? Well, that is so, and it's about the commonest weakness of
humanity. If I thought you worried about our affairs--of course, I
know you don't, you're most reasonable--I wouldn't stay here another
minute."
The colour in Mrs. Hewson's cheeks went from red to white.
"But you said I was curious," she said in a reserved voice.
"Oh yes, that was only fun! Hadn't you better get a key, Sally, if
you're going to be late. Can you spare Miss Bishop a key, Mrs.
Hewson?"
"Certainly; of course; I'll go and get it."
They both laughed when she had gone out. Sally told Janet that she
was wonderful.
"She'll never meddle again," she said. "I couldn't have done it like
you did."
"Of course you couldn't."
"But why not? I wouldn't be afraid to, but simply I shouldn't think
of things; and why shouldn't I?"
"Because you're not meant to fight, you have to be fought for, like
Mr. Arthur fought for you in his own particular way, like this man
you're going to meet to-night is fighting for you too."
Sally's eyes looked wonderingly before her. "Do you think things are
really like that?" she asked.
"I'm sure of it."
"But why?--why, for instance, are you meant to fight?"
"Do you want me to answer the riddle of the Universe?"
"I don't see why it should be such a riddle."
"Well, it is. I don't know who arranged these things, no more than
any one else, though a good many make a comfortable income by telling
you that they do. But it's pretty obvious that it is so; that's enough
for me."
"I don't see why it's obvious," Sally persisted.
Janet stood away from the table and held out her arms--the thin,
fleshless arms--straight, no deviation to the ungainly shoulders.
There was unconscious drama in it. Yet she was the last person in
the world to act.
"Well, _look_ at me," she said.
Sally only looked at her eyes, and her lips twitched compassionately.
"You may be all wrong," she said. "I may have to fight as well--you
don't know--and somebody, you can never tell, may fight for you."
Janet took the round, warm cheeks in her hands and caressed them with
the long, sensitive fingers.
"That'll never be," she said quietly--"never--never. I know it right
away in here." She laid her hand upon her chest.
"But why?" Sally repeated petulantly, as though wishing it could
alter the truth.
"Because I suppose I really want to do the fighting, however much
I may think differently, when I see you and hear you talk, when your
heart's going and there's all the meaning of it in your eyes. I've
got to fight, and away inside me I want to. I suppose that's the
compensation."
Then Mrs. Hewson brought the key, saying words over it--an
incantation of half-hearted rebuke--and following Sally with her
eyes as she walked out of the kitchen.