Sally Bishop Part 12

"You want a woman in here," she said, thinking that she was paving the way for herself--"to warm things up a bit--you know what I mean--make things more cosy."

He put a chair out for her by the fire. It had a rush-bottomed seat to it, and for the first few moments she worried about in it, trying vainly to make herself comfortable.

"What would you do?" he asked quietly, filling a well-burnt pipe from a tobacco-jar.

She took this as encouragement--jumped to it, as an animal to the food above it.

"Do? Well, first of all I'd have a nice thick carpet." There was no need to force the note of interest into her voice. She was already absorbed with it. She confidently thought that she could impress him with the comfort that she could bring into his life. Her eyes, quick to grasp certain facts, had shown her that he lived alone. Long study of men from certain standpoints had made that easy for her to appreciate. This moment to her was as the gap in the wall of riders before him is to the jockey; in that moment she saw clear down the straight to the winning-post. She took it. Ten minutes before she had not known where to turn. The race had seemed impossible. Two or three times she had opened her reticule bag and counted the four coppers that jingled within the pocket. She had had no dinner. No music hall was possible to her with such capital. You know something of life when you have only fourpence in the world and vice is the only trade for which your hand has acquired any deftness.

"I pray G.o.d no man 'll offer me ten bob to-night," she had said to another woman.

"Why?"

"Why? Gos.h.!.+ I'd take it."

Here then, out of nowhere, in the dull impenetrable wall was torn the gap through which she saw the chance, such a chance as she had never been offered by the generosity of circ.u.mstance before. She seized it--no hesitation--no lack of inspiring confidence. It did not even cross her mind that she looked tired. She was in no way thwarted by the knowledge that she was not so young, not so pretty as when first she had known him. The opportunity was too great for that. It had fallen so obviously at her feet, that she felt it was meant for her.

She shuffled her feet on the cold clean matting and said again, "I'd have a nice thick carpet--"

"What colour?"

She looked up to the ceiling to think--not at the room around her.

"I don't know--Turkey red, I think--that's warmest. You know my carpet--well, it used to be nice. It's worn a bit now and there's not so much colour in it as when it was new. That was Turkey red."

"And what else?" He sat on the corner of an old table and smoked his pipe--swinging his legs and looking at her.

"Well, I'd have electric lights instead of these candles--you can't expect a woman to see with candles;--'lectric light's twice as cheap and it's much brighter. And they make lovely new fittings now--quite inexpensive--oxidized copper, I think they call it; I like bra.s.s best myself."

"You think bra.s.s is better?"

"Yes; don't you? Those bra.s.s candlesticks that you've got are all right, only they're so plain."

"You like things more ornate?"

"More what?"

"More ornate--more highly finished--more elaborate?"

"Yes; don't you?"

He took no notice of that question. "What else would you do?" he asked.

The smoke curled up in clouds from the bowl of his pipe as he sat listening to her.

She looked round the room contemplatively.

"Oh--lots of things," she said. "I'd have a sofa--one of those settee sort of things--"

"Upholstered in red?"

"Yes--to go with the carpet. And a comfortable armchair--really comfortable, I mean--something that you could chuck your legs about it--less like a straight jacket than this thing I'm sitting in."

"Upholstered in red?" he repeated.

"Um--of course."

"Then how about this wall-paper?" he questioned. "It's green--do you think that would go with all the red?"

She looked round the walls, then tried to blur her eyes in an effort to give scope to her imagination. She put her whole heart into it.

This was the chance of her life. Thrilling through her, like some warm current that forces its way through cold water, was the consciousness that she was making him seriously consider the benefits of having a woman to live with him, to look after his needs, attend to his comforts, as she pictured herself so well able to do.

After due deliberation, she delivered her opinion.

"I don't think the green would go so badly as you'd think," she said slowly--"I suppose it would be expensive to change. But red would look better of course."

He took his pipe out of his mouth and blew a long scroll of smoke from between his lips as he looked at her.

"In fact," he said at last--"you'd like to make this little room of mine look like h.e.l.l."

It was a brutal thing to have said. Yet he knew her mind no more than she knew his. He knew but little of women. Her knowledge of men was limited to one point of view. When her flat had been newly decorated, newly furnished for her, she had boasted of its comforts to every man she met. Nearly all of them had said that they liked it. It was clean then, and all they had appreciated was the cleanliness. But she had not known that. She thought they had approved of her taste.

So, with this narrow knowledge of the s.e.x, she had made her bid for security and failed.

And he, when he saw the drop in her face, when he saw features and expression fall from the lofty height of antic.i.p.ation as a pile of cards topple in a ma.s.s upon the table, he was sorry. Her mouth opened--gaped. She looked as if a flat hand had struck her.

"I don't mean that unkindly," he said--"but it would be h.e.l.l--red h.e.l.l--to me."

She sat and stared at him. "Can't understand you," she said at last.

"Why not?"

"What did you let me go on talking for?"

"It was rather amusing to compare your taste with mine."

"Amusing? G.o.d!"

She lifted herself to her feet and went across to the mantelpiece, leaning her elbows on it, her head in her hands. All her exhaustion had returned. She felt a thousand times more tired in that moment than when she had rested on the landing. All that afternoon she had been walking the streets--all that evening too. From Regent Street to Oxford Street, from Oxford Street to Bond Street, from Bond Street through the Burlington Arcade into Piccadilly, then over the whole course again, smiling cheerfully at this man, looking knowingly at that--all a forced effort, all a spurious energy; and pain throbbed in her limbs--a dominant note of pain. She could feel a pulse in her brain that kept time to it. These are the ecstatic pleasures of vice--the charms, the allurements of the gay life.

At last she turned round and faced him. "I don't want any of those d.a.m.ned red carpets and things," she said,--"if you'll let me come and live with you--look after you."

She crossed the room and laid her hands heavily on his shoulders; bent towards him to kiss his lips.

"We should be sick to death of each other in a week," he said, meeting her eyes.

"No, we shouldn't."

He gazed steadily at her for a moment. "What makes you think I want any one to live here with me?" he asked curiously.

"I don't know--you do. I saw it the first second I entered the room.

I felt it the first moment you asked me to come up here. You know you do yourself. You're sick of this--aren't you?"