_ Her soberly rich dress had a countrified air, as she waited, ready
for the streets, in the bedroom of the London hotel on the
afternoon of the first of July, 1866; but there was nothing of the
provincial in that beautiful face, nor in that bearing at once shy
and haughty; and her eager heart soared beyond geographical
boundaries.
It was the Hatfield Hotel, in Salisbury Street, between the Strand
and the river. Both street and hotel are now gone, lost in the
vast foundations of the Savoy and the Cecil; but the type of the
Hatfield lingers with ever-increasing shabbiness in Jermyn Street.
In 1866, with its dark passages and crooked stairs, its candles,
its carpets and stuffs which had outlived their patterns, its
narrow dining-room where a thousand busy flies ate together at one
long table, its acrid stagnant atmosphere, and its disturbing
sensation of dirt everywhere concealing itself, it stood forth in
rectitude as a good average modern hotel. The patched and senile
drabness of the bedroom made an environment that emphasized
Sophia's flashing youth. She alone in it was unsullied.
There was a knock at the door, apparently gay and jaunty. But she
thought, truly: "He's nearly as nervous as I am!" And in her sick
nervousness she coughed, and then tried to take full possession of
herself. The moment had at last come which would divide her life
as a battle divides the history of a nation. Her mind in an
instant swept backwards through an incredible three months.
The schemings to obtain and to hide Gerald's letters at the shop,
and to reply to them! The far more complex and dangerous duplicity
practised upon her majestic aunt at Axe! The visits to the Axe
post-office! The three divine meetings with Gerald at early
morning by the canal-feeder, when he had told her of his
inheritance and of the harshness of his uncle Boldero, and with a
rush of words had spread before her the prospect of eternal bliss!
The nights of fear! The sudden, dizzy acquiescence in his plan,
and the feeling of universal unreality which obsessed her! The
audacious departure from her aunt's, showering a cascade of
appalling lies! Her dismay at Knype Station! Her blush as she
asked for a ticket to London! The ironic, sympathetic glance of
the porter, who took charge of her trunk! And then the thunder of
the incoming train! Her renewed dismay when she found that it was
very full, and her distracted plunge into a compartment with six
people already in it! And the abrupt reopening of the carriage-
door and that curt inquisition from an inspector: "Where for,
please? Where for? Where for?" Until her turn was reached: "Where
for, miss?" and her weak little reply: "Euston"! And more violent
blushes! And then the long, steady beating of the train over the
rails, keeping time to the rhythm of the unanswerable voice within
her breast: "Why are you here? Why are you here?" And then Rugby;
and the awful ordeal of meeting Gerald, his entry into the
compartment, the rearrangement of seats, and their excruciatingly
painful attempts at commonplace conversation in the publicity of
the carriage! (She had felt that that part of the enterprise had
not been very well devised by Gerald.) And at last London; the
thousands of cabs, the fabulous streets, the general roar, all
dream-surpassing, intensifying to an extraordinary degree the
obsession of unreality, the illusion that she could not really
have done what she had done, that she was not really doing what
she was doing!
Supremely and finally, the delicious torture of the clutch of
terror at her heart as she moved by Gerald's side through the
impossible adventure! Who was this rash, mad Sophia? Surely not
herself!
The knock at the door was impatiently repeated.
"Come in," she said timidly.
Gerald Scales came in. Yes, beneath that mien of a commercial
traveller who has been everywhere and through everything, he was
very nervous. It was her privacy that, with her consent, he had
invaded. He had engaged the bedroom only with the intention of
using it as a retreat for Sophia until the evening, when they were
to resume their travels. It ought not to have had any disturbing
significance. But the mere disorder on the washstand, a towel
lying on one of the cane chairs, made him feel that he was
affronting decency, and so increased his jaunty nervousness. The
moment was painful; the moment was difficult beyond his skill to
handle it naturally.
Approaching her with factitious ease, he kissed her through her
veil, which she then lifted with an impulsive movement, and he
kissed her again, more ardently, perceiving that her ardour was
exceeding his. This was the first time they had been alone
together since her flight from Axe. And yet, with his worldly
experience, he was naive enough to be surprised that he could not
put all the heat of passion into his embrace, and he wondered why
he was not thrilled at the contact with her! However, the powerful
clinging of her lips somewhat startled his senses, and also
delighted him by its silent promise. He could smell the stuff of
her veil, the sarsenet of her bodice, and, as it were wrapped in
these odours as her body was wrapped in its clothes, the faint
fleshly perfume of her body itself. Her face, viewed so close that
he could see the almost imperceptible down on those fruit-like
cheeks, was astonishingly beautiful; the dark eyes were
exquisitely misted; and he could feel the secret loyalty of her
soul ascending to him. She was very slightly taller than her
lover; but somehow she hung from him, her body curved backwards,
and her bosom pressed against his, so that instead of looking up
at her gaze he looked down at it. He preferred that; perfectly
proportioned though he was, his stature was a delicate point with
him. His spirits rose by the uplift of his senses. His fears
slipped away; he began to be very satisfied with himself. He was
the inheritor of twelve thousand pounds, and he had won this
unique creature. She was his capture; he held her close,
permittedly scanning the minutiae of her skin, permittedly
crushing her flimsy silks. Something in him had forced her to lay
her modesty on the altar of his desire. And the sun brightly
shone. So he kissed her yet more ardently, and with the slightest
touch of a victor's condescension; and her burning response more
than restored the self-confidence which he had been losing.
"I've got no one but you now," she murmured in a melting voice.
She fancied in her ignorance that the expression of this sentiment
would please him. She was not aware that a man is usually rather
chilled by it, because it proves to him that the other is thinking
about his responsibilities and not about his privileges. Certainly
it calmed Gerald, though without imparting to him her sense of his
responsibilities. He smiled vaguely. To Sophia his smile was a
miracle continually renewed; it mingled dashing gaiety with a hint
of wistful appeal in a manner that never failed to bewitch her. A
less innocent girl than Sophia might have divined from that
adorable half-feminine smile that she could do anything with
Gerald except rely on him. But Sophia had to learn.
"Are you ready?" he asked, placing his hands on her shoulders and
holding her away from him.
"Yes," she said, nerving herself. Their faces were still very near
together.
"Well, would you like to go and see the Dore pictures?"
A simple enough question! A proposal felicitous enough! Dore was
becoming known even in the Five Towns, not, assuredly, by his
illustrations to the Contes Drolatiques of Balzac--but by his
shuddering Biblical conceits. In pious circles Dore was saving art
from the reproach of futility and frivolity. It was indubitably a
tasteful idea on Gerald's part to take his love of a summer's
afternoon to gaze at the originals of those prints which had so
deeply impressed the Five Towns. It was an idea that sanctified
the profane adventure.
Yet Sophia showed signs of affliction. Her colour went and came;
her throat made the motion of swallowing; there was a muscular
contraction over her whole body. And she drew herself from him.
Her glance, however, did not leave him, and his eyes fell before
hers.
"But what about the--wedding?" she breathed.
That sentence seemed to cost all her pride; but she was obliged to
utter it, and to pay for it.
"Oh," he said lightly and quickly, just as though she had reminded
him of a detail that might have been forgotten, "I was just going
to tell you. It can't be done here. There's been some change in
the rules. I only found out for certain late last night. But I've
ascertained that it'll be as simple as ABC before the English
Consul at Paris; and as I've got the tickets for us to go over to-
night, as we arranged ..." He stopped.
She sat down on the towel-covered chair, staggered. She believed
what he said. She did not suspect that he was using the classic
device of the seducer. It was his casualness that staggered her.
Had it really been his intention to set off on an excursion and
remark as an afterthought: "BY THE WAY, we can't be married as I
told you at half-past two to-day"? Despite her extreme ignorance
and innocence, Sophia held a high opinion of her own commonsense
and capacity for looking after herself, and she could scarcely
believe that he was expecting her to go to Paris, and at night,
without being married. She looked pitiably young, virgin, raw,
unsophisticated; helpless in the midst of dreadful dangers. Yet
her head was full of a blank astonishment at being mistaken for a
simpleton! The sole explanation could be that Gerald, in some
matters, must himself be a confiding simpleton. He had not
reflected. He had not sufficiently realized the immensity of her
sacrifice in flying with him even to London. She felt sorry for
him. She had the woman's first glimpse of the necessity for some
adjustment of outlook as an essential preliminary to uninterrupted
happiness.
"It'll be all right!" Gerald persuasively continued.
He looked at her, as she was not looking at him. She was nineteen.
But she seemed to him utterly mature and mysterious. Her face
baffled him; her mind was a foreign land. Helpless in one sense
she might be; yet she, and not he, stood for destiny; the future
lay in the secret and capricious workings of that mind.
"Oh no!" she exclaimed curtly. "Oh no!"
"Oh no what?"
"We can't possibly go like that," she said.
"But don't I tell you it'll be all right?" he protested. "If we
stay here and they come after you ...! Besides, I've got the
tickets and all."
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" she demanded.
"But how could I?" he grumbled. "Have we had a single minute
alone?"
This was nearly true. They could not have discussed the
formalities of marriage in the crowded train, nor during the
hurried lunch with a dozen cocked ears at the same table. He saw
himself on sure ground here.
"Now, could we?" he pressed.
"And you talk about going to see pictures!" was her reply.
Undoubtedly this had been a grave error of tact. He recognized
that it was a stupidity. And so he resented it, as though she had
committed it and not he.
"My dear girl," he said, hurt, "I acted for the best. It isn't my
fault if rules are altered and officials silly."
"You ought to have told me before," she persisted sullenly.
"But how could I?"
He almost believed in that moment that he had really intended to
marry her, and that the ineptitudes of red-tape had prevented him
from achieving his honourable purpose. Whereas he had done nothing
whatever towards the marriage.
"Oh no! Oh no!" she repeated, with heavy lip and liquid eye. "Oh
no!"
He gathered that she was flouting his suggestion of Paris.
Slowly and nervously he approached her. She did not stir nor look
up. Her glance was fixed on the washstand. He bent down and
murmured:
"Come, now. It'll be all right. You'll travel in the ladies'
saloon on the steam-packet."
She did not stir. He bent lower and touched the back of her neck
with his lips. And she sprang up, sobbing and angry. Because she
was mad for him she hated him furiously. All tenderness had
vanished.
"I'll thank you not to touch me!" she said fiercely. She had given
him her lips a moment ago, but now to graze her neck was an
insult.
He smiled sheepishly. "But really you must be reasonable," he
argued. "What have I done?"
"It's what you haven't done, I think!" she cried. "Why didn't you
tell me while we were in the cab?"
"I didn't care to begin worrying you just then," he replied: which
was exactly true.
The fact was, he had of course shirked telling her that no
marriage would occur that day. Not being a professional seducer of
young girls, he lacked skill to do a difficult thing simply.
"Now come along, little girl," he went on, with just a trifle of
impatience. "Let's go out and enjoy ourselves. I assure you that
everything will be all right in Paris."
"That's what you said about coming to London," she retorted
sarcastically through her sobs. "And look at you!"
Did he imagine for a single instant that she would have come to
London with him save on the understanding that she was to be
married immediately upon arrival? This attitude of an indignant
question was not to be reconciled with her belief that his excuses
for himself were truthful. But she did not remark the discrepancy.
Her sarcasm wounded his vanity.
"Oh, very well!" he muttered. "If you don't choose to believe what
I say!" He shrugged his shoulders.
She said nothing; but the sobs swept at intervals through her
frame, shaking it.
Reading hesitation in her face, he tried again. "Come along,
little girl. And wipe your eyes." And he approached her. She
stepped back.
"No, no!" she denied him, passionately. He had esteemed her too
cheaply. And she did not care to be called 'little girl.'
"Then what shall you do?" he inquired, in a tone which blended
mockery and bullying. She was making a fool of him.
"I can tell you what I shan't do," she said. "I shan't go to
Paris." Her sobs were less frequent.
"That's not my question," he said icily. "I want to know what you
will do."
There was now no pretence of affectionateness either on her part
or on his. They might, to judge from their attitudes, have been
nourished from infancy on mutual hatred.
"What's that got to do with you?" she demanded.
"It's got everything to do with me," he said.
"Well, you can go and find out!" she said.
It was girlish; it was childish; it was scarcely according to the
canons for conducting a final rupture; but it was not the less
tragically serious. Indeed, the spectacle of this young girl
absurdly behaving like one, in a serious crisis, increased the
tragicalness of the situation even if it did not heighten it. The
idea that ran through Gerald's brain was the ridiculous folly of
having anything to do with young girls. He was quite blind to her
beauty.
"'Go'?" he repeated her word. "You mean that?"
"Of course I mean it," she answered promptly.
The coward in him urged him to take advantage of her ignorant,
helpless pride, and leave her at her word. He remembered the scene
she had made at the pit shaft, and he said to himself that her
charm was not worth her temper, and that he was a fool ever to
have dreamed that it was, and that he would be doubly a fool now
not to seize the opportunity of withdrawing from an insane
enterprise.
"I am to go?" he asked, with a sneer.
She nodded.
"Of course if you order me to leave you, I must. Can I do anything
for you?"
She signified that he could not,
"Nothing? You're sure?"
She frowned.
"Well, then, good-bye." He turned towards the door.
"I suppose you'd leave me here without money or anything?" she
said in a cold, cutting voice. And her sneer was far more
destructive than his. It destroyed in him the last trace of
compassion for her.
"Oh, I beg pardon!" he said, and swaggeringly counted out five
sovereigns on to a chest of drawers.
She rushed at them. "Do you think I'll take your odious money?"
she snarled, gathering the coins in her gloved hand.
Her first impulse was to throw them in his face; but she paused
and then flung them into a corner of the room.
"Pick them up!" she commanded him.
"No, thanks," he said briefly; and left, shutting the door.
Only a very little while, and they had been lovers, exuding
tenderness with every gesture, like a perfume! Only a very little
while, and she had been deciding to telegraph condescendingly to
her mother that she was 'all right'! And now the dream was utterly
dissolved. And the voice of that hard commonsense which spake to
her in her wildest moods grew loud in asserting that the
enterprise could never have come to any good, that it was from its
inception an impossible enterprise, unredeemed by the slightest
justification. An enormous folly! Yes, an elopement; but not like
a real elopement; always unreal! She had always known that it was
only an imitation of an elopement, and must end in some awful
disappointment. She had never truly wanted to run away; but
something within her had pricked her forward in spite of her
protests. The strict notions of her elderly relatives were right
after all. It was she who had been wrong. And it was she who would
have to pay.
"I've been a wicked girl," she said to herself grimly, in the
midst of her ruin.
She faced the fact. But she would not repent; at any rate she
would never sit on that stool. She would not exchange the remains
of her pride for the means of escape from the worst misery that
life could offer. On that point she knew herself. And she set to
work to repair and renew her pride.
Whatever happened she would not return to the Five Towns. She
could not, because she had stolen money from her Aunt Harriet. As
much as she had thrown back at Gerald, she had filched from her
aunt, but in the form of a note. A prudent, mysterious instinct
had moved her to take this precaution. And she was glad. She would
never have been able to dart that sneer at Gerald about money if
she had really needed money. So she rejoiced in her crime; though,
since Aunt Harriet would assuredly discover the loss at once, the
crime eternally prevented her from going back to her family.
Never, never would she look at her mother with the eyes of a
thief!
(In truth Aunt Harriet did discover the loss, and very creditably
said naught about it to anybody. The knowledge of it would have
twisted the knife in the maternal heart.)
Sophia was also glad that she had refused to proceed to Paris. The
recollection of her firmness in refusing flattered her vanity as a
girl convinced that she could take care of herself. To go to Paris
unmarried would have been an inconceivable madness. The mere
thought of the enormity did outrage to her moral susceptibilities.
No, Gerald had most perfectly mistaken her for another sort of
girl; as, for instance, a shop-assistant or a barmaid!
With this the catalogue of her satisfactions ended. She had no
idea at all as to what she ought to do, or could do. The mere
prospect of venturing out of the room intimidated her. Had Gerald
left her trunk in the hall? Of course he had. What a question! But
what would happen to her? London ... London had merely dazed her.
She could do nothing for herself. She was as helpless as a rabbit
in London. She drew aside the window-curtain and had a glimpse of
the river. It was inevitable that she should think of suicide; for
she could not suppose that any girl had ever got herself into a
plight more desperate than hers. "I could slip out at night and
drown myself," she thought seriously. "A nice thing that would be
for Gerald!"
Then loneliness, like a black midnight, overwhelmed her, swiftly
wasting her strength, disintegrating her pride in its horrid
flood. She glanced about for support, as a woman in the open
street who feels she is going to faint, and went blindly to the
bed, falling on it with the upper part of her body, in an attitude
of abandonment. She wept, but without sobbing. _