Sally Bishop Part 13

"You're right there."

She nodded her head sententiously--proud of her perceptive ability.

She wanted to go on saying other things that were just as true, showing how well she understood him; but she could think of nothing.

Then she made the fatal mistake. She threw a guess at a hazard.

"And you thought when you saw me that I was just the girl you wanted.

I saw that in your face when you turned round."

He smiled. "You've lost the scent," he said, drawing away from her hands. "Lost it utterly. And why do you want to come and live here?

You're not fond of me. You don't care a rap for me. Are you hard up?"

Pride--self-respect--they are lost qualities in a lost woman. You must not even look for them. For the moment, she was silent, saying nothing; but there was no moaning of wounded vanity in the heart of her. Two questions were weighing out the issue. If she said she were hard-up, then all opportunity of gaining the chance would be lost.

He would give her money--tell her to go. That would be all. If she refused to admit it, the opportunity--slight as it had become--would still be there. Which to do--which course to take? For a perceptible pa.s.sing of time she rocked--a weary pendulum of doubt--between the two. Then she gave it.

"I'm dead broke," she said thickly.

She saw the last hope vanish with that--looked after it with a curl of bravado on her lip. Lifting her eyes to his, she knew it was gone.

There, in the place of it, was the calculation of what he could spare--what he should give.

"How much do you want?" he asked.

The question was ludicrous to her. She wanted all she could get. Now that she had thrown away her chances of the future, her whole mind concentrated with uncontrolled desire upon the present.

"What's the good of asking me that?" she exclaimed bitterly. "I'll take what I can get. Reminds me of a girl--a friend of mine. She's an illegitimate child. Her father's pretty well off. She was down to the bottom of the bag the other day, so she went to her father and asked him for some money. 'My dear child,' he said--'I can't spare you a cent--I've just spent seven hundred and fifty pounds on a motor car--is a sovereign any good to you?'"

There was a bitter sense of humour in the story. She laughed at it--loud, uncontrolled laughter that rang as empty and as hollow as an echo.

"Give me what you can," she added. "Anything above a s.h.i.+lling's better than fourpence."

"Is that what you're down to?"

"Um--"

He took three sovereigns out of his pocket, and gave them to her.

She let them lie out flat in the palm of her hand--the three of them, all in a row. They glittered--even in the candle-light. They were her own.

"When are you coming to see me?"

She still looked at them.

"I'm not coming."

Her head shot up; her eyes filled with questions.

"Why not?"

He opened his hands expressively. If there were any answer to that question, she learnt that she was not going to get it.

"Are you going to be married?" she asked slowly.

He shook his head--laughing. Then understanding shot into her eyes, and a flash of jealousy came with it.

"I know," she exclaimed between thin lips.

"What do you know?"

"You're going to keep some woman here--some girl you're fond of."

It was the moment of intuition. She had struck deeper into his mind than even he was aware of himself.

"What makes you think that?"

"What you said."

"What did I say?"

"You admitted that you were sick of being here alone."

"Well--?"

She burst out laughing. "Well--?" She turned to the door. "Good Lord!

Isn't every blooming man the same!"

She opened her bag and dropped the three gold pieces into a pocket--one after another. You heard the dull sound of the first as it fell, then the clinking of the other two, when the metal touched metal. She shut the bag--the catch snapped sharp! Then she went.

CHAPTER X

You sow an idea--you sow a seed. It grows upwards through a soil of subliminal unconsciousness until it lifts its head into the clear air of realization. There is no limitation of time, no need for watchful dependence upon the season. Only the moment and the husbandry of circ.u.mstances are essential. With these, perhaps a single hour is all that may be required for the seed to open, the shoots to sprout, the plant itself to bear the fruit of action in the fierce light of reality.

In Traill's mind the idea was sown when he stood outside the office of Bonsfield & Co. in King Street. The soil was ready then--hungry for the seed. It fell lightly--unnoticed--into the subconscious strata of his mind. He had not even been aware of its existence. Then, with the woman who had accompanied him to his rooms, came the husbandry of circ.u.mstance. She fed the seed. She watered it. Before her foot had finished tapping on the wooden staircase, before the street and the thousand lights had swallowed her up again, his mind had grasped the knowledge of the need that was within him.

On Monday morning he went down to the chambers in the Temple where his name as a practising barrister was painted upon the lintel of the door. This was a matter of formality. Numberless barristers do it every day; numberless ones of them find the same as he did--nothing to be done. He had long since overcome the depression which such an announcement had used to bring with it. There should be no disappointment in the expected which invariably happens. The sanguine mind is a weak mind that suffers it. Traill turned away from the Temple, whistling a hymn tune as if it were a popular favourite.

From there he made his way down into the hub of journalism. The descent into h.e.l.l is easy. He rode there with a free lance--known by all the editors--capable in his way--a man to be relied upon for anything but imagination. From one office to another, he trudged; climbing numberless stairs, filling in numberless slips of paper with his name, saying nothing about his business. They knew his business--the ability to do anything that was going. He had written leaders on the advance of Socialism--criticized a play, reviewed a book. It says little beyond the fact that one is ready and willing to do these things.

So, until the nearing hour of lunch time, he went about--a scavenger of jobs--sweeping up the refuse of the paper's needs, as the boys in Covent Garden search through the barrows of sawdust for the stray, green grapes that have been thrown out with the brus.h.i.+ngs of the stalls.

If one knew how half the men in London find the way to live, one would stand amazed. Life is not the dreadful thing; it is the living of it. Life in the abstract is a gay pageant, the pa.s.sing of a show, caparisoned in armour, in ermine, in motley, in what you will. But see that man without his armour, this woman without her ermine, these in the crowd without their motley and the merry, merry jangling of the bells, and you will find how slender are the muscles that the armour lays bare, how shrivelled the breast that the ermine strips, how dragged and weary is that pitiable, naked figure which a few moments before was dancing fantastically, grimacing with its ape.

Traill took it as it came; the man forced to a crude philosophy, as Life, if we get enough of it, will force every soul of us. You must have a philosophy if you are going to accept Life. Even if you refuse it, you must have a philosophy, call it pessimistic, what you wish, it is still a point of view. The "temporary insanity" of the coroner's court is most times a vile hypocrisy, invented to soothe a Christian conscience.

So long as he found enough work to do, his spirits were light. He had a normal contempt for the temperament that is known as artistic, despised the variability of mood, ridiculed its April uncertainty.

This is the man who hews his way through Life, making no wide pa.s.sage perhaps, no definite pathway for the thousands who are looking for the broad and simple track; but cuts down, lops off, with the sheer strength of dogged determination, the hundred obstacles that beset his progress.