Sally Bishop Part 18

CHAPTER XII

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-fas.h.i.+onable 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, p.r.o.ne 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 fas.h.i.+ons--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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 compa.s.sionately.

"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.