________________________________________________
_ That afternoon Sophia, too busy with her own affairs to notice
anything abnormal in the relations between her mother and
Constance, and quite ignorant that there had been an unsuccessful
plot against her, went forth to call upon Miss Chetwynd, with whom
she had remained very friendly: she considered that she and Miss
Chetwynd formed an aristocracy of intellect, and the family indeed
tacitly admitted this. She practised no secrecy in her departure
from the shop; she merely dressed, in her second-best hoop, and
went, having been ready at any moment to tell her mother, if her
mother caught her and inquired, that she was going to see Miss
Chetwynd. And she did go to see Miss Chetwynd, arriving at the
house-school, which lay amid trees on the road to Turnhill, just
beyond the turnpike, at precisely a quarter-past four. As Miss
Chetwynd's pupils left at four o'clock, and as Miss Chetwynd
invariably took a walk immediately afterwards, Sophia was able to
contain her surprise upon being informed that Miss Chetwynd was
not in. She had not intended that Miss Chetwynd should be in.
She turned off to the right, up the side road which, starting from
the turnpike, led in the direction of Moorthorne and Red Cow, two
mining villages. Her heart beat with fear as she began to follow
that road, for she was upon a terrific adventure. What most
frightened her, perhaps, was her own astounding audacity. She was
alarmed by something within herself which seemed to be no part of
herself and which produced in her curious, disconcerting, fleeting
impressions of unreality.
In the morning she had heard the voice of Mr. Scales from the
showroom--that voice whose even distant murmur caused creepings of
the skin in her back. And she had actually stood on the counter in
front of the window in order to see down perpendicularly into the
Square; by so doing she had had a glimpse of the top of his
luggage on a barrow, and of the crown of his hat occasionally when
he went outside to tempt Mr. Povey. She might have gone down into
the shop--there was no slightest reason why she should not; three
months had elapsed since the name of Mr. Scales had been
mentioned, and her mother had evidently forgotten the trifling
incident of New Year's Day--but she was incapable of descending
the stairs! She went to the head of the stairs and peeped through
the balustrade--and she could not get further. For nearly a
hundred days those extraordinary lamps had been brightly burning
in her head; and now the light-giver had come again, and her feet
would not move to the meeting; now the moment had arrived for
which alone she had lived, and she could not seize it as it
passed! "Why don't I go downstairs?" she asked herself. "Am I
afraid to meet him?"
The customer sent up by Constance had occupied the surface of her
life for ten minutes, trying on hats; and during this time she was
praying wildly that Mr. Scales might not go, and asserting that it
was impossible he should go without at least asking for her. Had
she not counted the days to this day? When the customer left
Sophia followed her downstairs, and saw Mr. Scales chatting with
Constance. All her self-possession instantly returned to her, and
she joined them with a rather mocking smile. After Mr. Povey's
strange summons had withdrawn Constance from the corner, Mr.
Scales's tone had changed; it had thrilled her. "You are YOU," it
had said, "there is you--and there is the rest of the universe!"
Then he had not forgotten; she had lived in his heart; she had not
for three months been the victim of her own fancies! ... She saw
him put a piece of folded white paper on the top edge of the
screening box and flick it down to her. She blushed scarlet,
staring at it as it lay on the counter. He said nothing, and she
could not speak. ... He had prepared that paper, then, beforehand,
on the chance of being able to give it to her! This thought was
exquisite but full of terror. "I must really go," he had said,
lamely, with emotion in his voice, and he had gone--like that! And
she put the piece of paper into the pocket of her apron, and
hastened away. She had not even seen, as she turned up the stairs,
her mother standing by the till--that spot which was the conning-
tower of the whole shop. She ran, ran, breathless to the bedroom.
"I am a wicked girl!" she said quite frankly, on the road to the
rendezvous. "It is a dream that I am going to meet him. It cannot
be true. There is time to go back. If I go back I am safe. I have
simply called at Miss Chetwynd's and she wasn't in, and no one can
say a word. But if I go on--if I'm seen! What a fool I am to go
on!"
And she went on, impelled by, amongst other things, an immense,
naive curiosity, and the vanity which the bare fact of his note
had excited. The Loop railway was being constructed at that
period, and hundreds of navvies were at work on it between Bursley
and Turnhill. When she came to the new bridge over the cutting, he
was there, as he had written that he would be.
They were very nervous, they greeted each other stiffly and as
though they had met then for the first time that day. Nothing was
said about his note, nor about her response to it. Her presence
was treated by both of them as a basic fact of the situation which
it would be well not to disturb by comment. Sophia could not hide
her shame, but her shame only aggravated the stinging charm of her
beauty. She was wearing a hard Amazonian hat, with a lifted veil,
the final word of fashion that spring in the Five Towns; her face,
beaten by the fresh breeze, shone rosily; her eyes glittered under
the dark hat, and the violent colours of her Victorian frock--
green and crimson--could not spoil those cheeks. If she looked
earthwards, frowning, she was the more adorable so. He had come
down the clayey incline from the unfinished red bridge to welcome
her, and when the salutations were over they stood still, he
gazing apparently at the horizon and she at the yellow marl round
the edges of his boots. The encounter was as far away from
Sophia's ideal conception as Manchester from Venice.
"So this is the new railway!" said she.
"Yes," said he. "This is your new railway. You can see it better
from the bridge."
"But it's very sludgy up there," she objected with a pout.
"Further on it's quite dry," he reassured her.
From the bridge they had a sudden view of a raw gash in the earth;
and hundreds of men were crawling about in it, busy with minute
operations, like flies in a great wound. There was a continuous
rattle of picks, resembling a muffled shower of hail, and in the
distance a tiny locomotive was leading a procession of tiny
waggons.
"And those are the navvies!" she murmured.
The unspeakable doings of the navvies in the Five Towns had
reached even her: how they drank and swore all day on Sundays, how
their huts and houses were dens of the most appalling infamy, how
they were the curse of a God-fearing and respectable district! She
and Gerald Scales glanced down at these dangerous beasts of prey
in their yellow corduroys and their open shirts revealing hairy
chests. No doubt they both thought how inconvenient it was that
railways could not be brought into existence without the aid of
such revolting and swinish animals. They glanced down from the
height of their nice decorum and felt the powerful attraction of
similar superior manners. The manners of the navvies were such
that Sophia could not even regard them, nor Gerald Scales permit
her to regard them, without blushing.
In a united blush they turned away, up the gradual slope. Sophia
knew no longer what she was doing. For some minutes she was as
helpless as though she had been in a balloon with him.
"I got my work done early," he said; and added complacently, "As a
matter of fact I've had a pretty good day."
She was reassured to learn that he was not neglecting his duties.
To be philandering with a commercial traveller who has finished a
good day's work seemed less shocking than dalliance with a
neglecter of business; it seemed indeed, by comparison,
respectable.
"It must be very interesting," she said primly.
"What, my trade?"
"Yes. Always seeing new places and so on."
"In a way it is," he admitted judicially. "But I can tell you it
was much more agreeable being in Paris."
"Oh! Have you been to Paris?"
"Lived there for nearly two years," he said carelessly. Then,
looking at her, "Didn't you notice I never came for a long time?"
"I didn't know you were in Paris," she evaded him.
"I went to start a sort of agency for Birkinshaws," he said.
"I suppose you talk French like anything."
"Of course one has to talk French," said he. "I learnt French when
I was a child from a governess--my uncle made me--but I forgot
most of it at school, and at the Varsity you never learn anything-
-precious little, anyhow! Certainly not French!"
She was deeply impressed. He was a much greater personage than she
had guessed. It had never occurred to her that commercial
travellers had to go to a university to finish their complex
education. And then, Paris! Paris meant absolutely nothing to her
but pure, impossible, unattainable romance. And he had been there!
The clouds of glory were around him. He was a hero, dazzling. He
had come to her out of another world. He was her miracle. He was
almost too miraculous to be true.
She, living her humdrum life at the shop! And he, elegant,
brilliant, coming from far cities! They together, side by side,
strolling up the road towards the Moorthorne ridge! There was
nothing quite like this in the stories of Miss Sewell.
"Your uncle ...?" she questioned vaguely.
"Yes, Mr. Boldero. He's a partner in Birkinshaws."
"Oh!"
"You've heard of him? He's a great Wesleyan."
"Oh yes," she said. "When we had the Wesleyan Conference here, he-
-"
"He's always very great at Conferences," said Gerald Scales.
"I didn't know he had anything to do with Birkinshaws."
"He isn't a working partner of course," Mr. Scales explained. "But
he means me to be one. I have to learn the business from the
bottom. So now you understand why I'm a traveller."
"I see," she said, still more deeply impressed.
"I'm an orphan," said Gerald. "And Uncle Boldero took me in hand
when I was three."
"I SEE!" she repeated.
It seemed strange to her that Mr. Scales should be a Wesleyan--
just like herself. She would have been sure that he was 'Church.'
Her notions of Wesleyanism, with her notions of various other
things, were sharply modified.
"Now tell me about you," Mr. Scales suggested.
"Oh! I'm nothing!" she burst out.
The exclamation was perfectly sincere. Mr. Scales's disclosures
concerning himself, while they excited her, discouraged her.
"You're the finest girl I've ever met, anyhow," said Mr. Scales
with gallant emphasis, and he dug his stick into the soft ground.
She blushed and made no answer.
They walked on in silence, each wondering apprehensively what
might happen next.
Suddenly Mr. Scales stopped at a dilapidated low brick wall, built
in a circle, close to the side of the road.
"I expect that's an old pit-shaft," said he.
"Yes, I expect it is."
He picked up a rather large stone and approached the wall.
"Be careful!" she enjoined him.
"Oh! It's all right," he said lightly. "Let's listen. Come near
and listen."
She reluctantly obeyed, and he threw the stone over the dirty
ruined wall, the top of which was about level with his hat. For
two or three seconds there was no sound. Then a faint reveberation
echoed from the depths of the shaft. And on Sophia's brain arose
dreadful images of the ghosts of miners wandering for ever in
subterranean passages, far, far beneath. The noise of the falling
stone had awakened for her the secret terrors of the earth. She
could scarcely even look at the wall without a spasm of fear.
"How strange," said Mr. Scales, a little awe in his voice, too,
"that that should be left there like that! I suppose it's very
deep."
"Some of them are," she trembled.
"I must just have a look," he said, and put his hands on the top
of the wall.
"Come away!" she cried.
"Oh! It's all right!" he said again, soothingly. "The wall's as
firm as a rock." And he took a slight spring and looked over.
She shrieked loudly. She saw him at the distant bottom of the
shaft, mangled, drowning. The ground seemed to quake under her
feet. A horrible sickness seized her. And she shrieked again.
Never had she guessed that existence could be such pain.
He slid down from the wall, and turned to her. "No bottom to be
seen!" he said. Then, observing her transformed face, he came
close to her, with a superior masculine smile. "Silly little
thing!" he said coaxingly, endearingly, putting forth all his
power to charm.
He perceived at once that he had miscalculated the effects of his
action. Her alarm changed swiftly to angry offence. She drew back
with a haughty gesture, as if he had intended actually to touch
her. Did he suppose, because she chanced to be walking with him,
that he had the right to address her familiarly, to tease her, to
call her 'silly little thing' and to put his face against hers?
She resented his freedom with quick and passionate indignation.
She showed him her proud back and nodding head and wrathful
skirts; and hurried off without a word, almost running. As for
him, he was so startled by unexpected phenomena that he did
nothing for a moment--merely stood looking and feeling foolish.
Then she heard him in pursuit. She was too proud to stop or even
to reduce her speed.
"I didn't mean to--" he muttered behind her.
No recognition from her.
"I suppose I ought to apologize," he said.
"I should just think you ought," she answered, furious.
"Well, I do!" said he. "Do stop a minute."
"I'll thank you not to follow me, Mr. Scales." She paused, and
scorched him with her displeasure. Then she went forward. And her
heart was in torture because it could not persuade her to remain
with him, and smile and forgive, and win his smile.
"I shall write to you," he shouted down the slope.
She kept on, the ridiculous child. But the agony she had suffered
as he clung to the frail wall was not ridiculous, nor her dark
vision of the mine, nor her tremendous indignation when, after
disobeying her, he forgot that she was a queen. To her the scene
was sublimely tragic. Soon she had recrossed the bridge, but not
the same she! So this was the end of the incredible adventure!
When she reached the turnpike she thought of her mother and of
Constance. She had completely forgotten them; for a space they had
utterly ceased to exist for her. _
Read next: BOOK I MRS. BAINES: CHAPTER VI - ESCAPADE: PART IV
Read previous: BOOK I MRS. BAINES: CHAPTER VI - ESCAPADE: PART II
Table of content of Old Wives' Tale
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
