Sally Bishop Part 64

Sally said nothing.

"And to think that I've allowed the wretched little creature to live in my house and mix with my boys--a contaminating influence."

"It's horrible!" said the two girls.

"Oh, how unjust you all are!" exclaimed Sally, rising from the table with burning cheeks. "How can a boy of that age be a contaminating influence? How can he affect the innocence of all those other little wretches whom you simper over just because their mothers have it in their power to lift you in the society of this wretched little place?"

Mrs. Bishop had risen from her chair with white lips and distended nostrils. The two girls were staring at Sally with wide eyes and open mouths. For a moment there was a silence that thundered in all their ears.

"Sally," said her mother, biting her words before she foamed them from her, "if you weren't a daughter of mine, I'd--I'd say you were a wanton woman. You know in your heart, as your father always taught you--as you could read in the Bible now--if you ever do read your Bible--that the sins of the fathers, yes, and the mothers too, will fall on the children until the third and fourth generation; and do you think that child of sin isn't contaminated by the vice of his mother's wickedness?"

Elsie came to her mother's side with the proper affection of a daughter and laid her hand gently on her shoulder.

"Don't worry yourself, mother," she said. "He can't stay, of course he can't stay. Sally doesn't know what she's talking about."

"Certainly, he can't stay," reiterated Mrs. Bishop. "If I have to put him in the train myself to-day, and pack him off to London."

"But who'll meet him?" asked Dora.

"Oh, of course, I suppose I shall telegraph to her. I've got her address."

"But that's a terrible waste of money," Elsie objected. "If you wrote now and sent him by a later train, wouldn't she get it in time?"

"It can be charged to her bill," said Mrs. Bishop.

"And are you going to send Maurie alone, all the way up to London?"

Sally exclaimed, forced at last to break her silence.

"Of course," said Mrs. Bishop, with surprise. "You don't think I'm going to afford him the luxury of a travelling companion, do you?"

"You may not; but I shall."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"I shall go with him myself."

"If you do--if you a.s.sociate yourself with those disreputable people at all--you shall never enter this house again."

Her voice thrilled with the terror of her threat.

"I can look forward to the prospect of that with no great reluctance,"

said Sally quietly.

"Oh!" Mrs. Bishop exclaimed. "Oh!" Then her daughters wisely led her from the room.

"I've left my egg unfinished," she said brokenly as she departed.

They fondly believed that Sally could not face the ominous threat of her mother until they beheld her trunks ready packed in the hall.

Then Elsie came to her.

"Sally," she said, with the voice of one who carries out implacable orders, "do you realize that mother meant what she said?"

"Realize it? I suppose so. I haven't thought about it."

"You don't mean that. You must have thought about it. Do you realize that you'll never see her again?"

"Yes, quite. But not particularly because she says so. I'd never come back again if she were to beg me to. It means a lot to you perhaps, it means nothing to me."

Elsie looked at her in horrified alarm, as at one sinking into the nethermost h.e.l.l.

"I could never have believed you'd say anything like that," she murmured under her breath. "Can't you see that you're breaking the fifth commandment?"

"Can't mother see," retorted Sally, with vehemence, "that she's breaking all the unwritten commandments of charity--love your enemies--do good to them that hate you? I'd break the fifth commandment fifty times rather than come back and live with all of you again. You're narrow, you're cruel, you're hard, and you save yourselves from your own consciences by calling it Christianity."

When this was all repeated, as inwardly she hoped it would be, they could not believe her to be the same Sally. Mrs. Bishop came out into the hall where she and Maurie were waiting for the vehicle which was to convey them to the station.

"You're not going to say good-bye, Sally?" she asked, drawing her aside into the dining-room.

"I saw no necessity. Wouldn't it be a farce?"

"You can talk like that when you're never going to see me again?"

"I don't see why stating a fact should be unsuitable to the occasion.

It would be a farce. You hate me--I'm not fond of you. Yet you would be willing to kiss me--make a sentimental good-bye of it, because you want to do what you know is wrong--cruel, unkind--in the most Christian-like way."

Here indeed was the spirit of Janet speaking from Sally's lips. The contrast, in fact, which induced Janet to preach her philosophy to Sally, was now apparent to Sally herself, between her and her mother.

She saw through all the little petty sentimentalities, all the false self-deceits with which the worldly mind of many a clergyman's wife s.h.i.+elds itself from rebuke.

"How dare you say such things to me, Sally?" she whispered. "Do you absolutely forget that I'm your mother; that in pain and agony I brought you into the world, and nursed and fed you to life?"

"No, I don't forget that," said Sally, quietly. "But why do you think so much of yourself? Why can't you think a little of that poor woman up in London, trying to s.h.i.+eld Maurie from all the horror of this divorce case which now so easily may come to his ears? Why can't you let her leave him here in peace? She suffered just the same agony as you; but she's suffering it still--and you--you're as hard as you can be."

Mrs. Bishop paled with anger. Accusations, epithets, abuse, were the only words that bubbled to her lips.

"You're just as much a fool as your father!" she said chokingly. "He reduced us to this because he was a fool!"

"You know where it's written," Sally remarked, "'He that calleth his brother a fool.'" In a text-quoting atmosphere, she felt that a remark of this kind would carry more weight.

"Yes; but are you my brother? That's identically the same sort of remark that your father would have made."

"I see," said Sally, "you read your Bible literally. All good Christians do--sometimes. And you could call father a fool! If you had half the Christianity in you that he had in him, I shouldn't be shocking Elsie by breaking the fifth commandment."

The rumbling of the old vehicle outside mercifully put an end to that interview and, once in the train, Sally took Maurie in her arms, pressing his head silently to her breast.

"We're going to see mummie," she kept on telling him. "Mummie'll be at the station to meet us;" and she had to listen to the exclamations of delight that fell mercilessly from his lips.

From a photograph that Maurie had had upon the mantelpiece in his little room, she recognized the tall, stately lady as the train slowed down into the station. Maurie had been leaning out of the carriage and was frantically waving a handkerchief as she walked after them.

"That's mummie--that's mummie!" he said repeatedly, looking back into the carriage at her.