Sally Bishop Part 52

As the curtain fell Traill proposed supper at a restaurant. They readily agreed. Mrs. Durlacher, in the best of spirits, thanking Providence for the weakness of human nature that had driven Sally to follow Traill to the theatre, still thrilling with the sound of his exclamation in her ears, would have lit the dullest entertainment in the world with the humour of her mood. There was a part for her to play. She played it. All her remarks, bristling with the pointed satires of spiteful criticism, were a foil to the gentle temper of Coralie's conversation.

"My G.o.d!" said Traill, as they walked down one of the pa.s.sages to the _foyer_, and he listened to his sister's verdict upon a woman who had gone out before them. "Do you women allow a st.i.tch of respectability to hang on each other's backs?"

"She'd want more than a st.i.tch," Mrs. Durlacher replied, "if she's not going to put on more clothes than that."

Traill shrugged his shoulders, half conscious of a comparison between his sister and the quiet reserve of this girl beside him.

He had thought her pretty, seeing her at a distance on the night when he had dined with Dolly. Meeting her the day before, in the dim light of the drawing-room at Sloane Street, he had found her still more attractive; but on this evening, in the glamour of bright lights--young, fresh, charming as she seemed to him--his senses were swept by her fascination.

At all times a beautiful woman is wonderful--the thing of beauty and the joy for ever; the phrase that comes naturally to the mind. But when, conscious of her own attractions, she lends that beauty to the expression of pleasure which she finds in the company of the man beside her, then, to possibly that man alone, but certainly to him, she is doubly beautiful. Nature indeed had been generous with Coralie Standish-Roe. Nature has her moods and her devilish humours. She was more than amiable when she bestowed her gifts upon Coralie. You may talk about the value of a n.o.ble heart beating in an empty corset, s.h.i.+ning out of pinched and tired eyes; but it is a value, unmarketable, where the good things in a woman's life are given in exchange. Janet Hallard and her like have learnt the realization of that. And of the qualities of n.o.ble-heartedness, Coralie possessed but very few. Her disposition was intensely selfish. She took all the admiration that she could get--and it was infinitely more than some women dream of--with a grace of grat.i.tude whose parallel may be found in the schoolboy galloping through one helping of food that he may begin another. Her hunger for it was insatiable, but she was too young as yet for any such reputation to have fastened itself upon her; too young for the manner which becomes the natural expression of women of this type to have blotted out her undeniable charm of youth. Youth saved her from Traill's critical appreciation of women. Two years later he would have pa.s.sed her with a momentary lifting of interest which she herself would unconsciously have dispelled at the first touch of acquaintance. Now, he was not only thrilled, he was interested. She was a child. He found her so--as much a child as Sally had been. Add her beauty to that--a beauty unquestionably greater than the simple charm of Sally's baby features--and add still again that fallacious sense of social position by which Traill realized that such a girl he could not ask promiscuously out to dinner, could not casually persuade to come to his rooms, and you have, besides the unavoidable comparison between the two in his mind, that subtle difference which a life of ease and a life of labour makes in the position of women to a man's conception of the s.e.x.

Immediately they stepped outside the theatre into the blaze of light where the attendants were rus.h.i.+ng for carriages, and men and women, in a confused ma.s.s, jostled each other to fight free of the crowd, Traill's eyes searched quickly for a sight of Sally. Mrs. Durlacher also was alert to the possibility of finding her watching their movements. But they saw no trace of her.

In the mouth of a little alley, deep with shadows, on the other side of St. Martin's Lane, she was standing, her heart throbbing, half timidly, half jealously, yet secure in the knowledge that she was safe from observation. With eyes, burnt in the fever of a fierce emotion, she watched them as they stepped into the car that drew up beneath the lighted portico. When she saw Mrs. Durlacher's gesture inviting Traill to sit between them on the back seat; when she saw him willingly accept, notwithstanding that there was more room, more comfort in the seat opposite, she drew in a breath between her teeth, and the nails of her fingers bit into the palms of her hands. Now, from what little she had seen in the theatre, and taking into greatest consideration of all the proof of her own eyes that the woman was beautiful, eclipsing herself at every point of attraction, Sally was full-swept into the mad whirlpool of unreasoning jealousy. Every action and every incident that her starved eyes fed upon were distorted, embittered to the taste as though the taint of aloes had crept into everything.

She thought she saw him lay his hand upon hers as he took the place beside her. In that position she knew that they would be wedged close together, their limbs touching, thrilling his senses as she well knew she herself had thrilled them by even slighter proximity than that.

Here, too, she judged again by the lowest of standards, if judgment it can be said of a wild flinging of thoughts--vitriol hurled in a moment of madness. Yet against him she could find no bitterness. The woman, kissing the hand that strikes her, to s.h.i.+eld it from the falling of the law, is a type that has made no history; but in the hearts of men she is to be found with her ineffaceable record.

It was against the two women, against Mrs. Durlacher with her d.a.m.nable cunning, against the other with her still more d.a.m.nable fascination, that all the blinding acid of Sally's thoughts was cast.

The woman who had hoodwinked him with her lies about her husband, the woman who had crept in, seizing the moment of his blindness--these were the two people in the world whom she could willingly have strangled with her little hands that gripped and loosened in the mad emotion of her rage. Under her breath she muttered--hissing the words--the vain things that she would do. All the civilized refinement of humanity was burnt out of her. She was not human. She had lost control. The thoughts that revelled in her brain were animal; the savage fury of the beast starved of its food and then deprived of the flesh and blood that are s.n.a.t.c.hed from the very clutching of its claws.

It is not so far a call, even now, for this divine humanity, weaned upon the nutritious food of intelligence, nursed in the refining lap of civilization, to hark back, driven by one rush of events, to the lowest forms of nature that exist. If, in the hour of death, seeking immunity from peril, there live men who have trodden down the bodies of women, beaten them with naked fists, severed arms from their bleeding hands that held to safety in order that they might find their own escape; then, surely it is no very wonderful thing for a woman, threatened with the destruction of all her happiness, to give herself over to the mad riot of murderous intent that shouts the cry of b.l.o.o.d.y revolution through her brain!

In these moments nothing human could have been accounted for in Sally.

In these moments the fire of the enraged animal glittered in her eyes, the incoherent mutterings of dumb pa.s.sion vibrated in her breath.

A man pa.s.sing down through the dark shadows of the alley into the street, turned and gazed at her. She took no notice. Did not even see him. The car was just beginning to move out into the traffic.

As it turned, too eager to follow it, she stepped on to the pavement.

Traill's eyes caught her then, saw her begin to quicken her steps, break even into a run following their tardy progress as they squeezed a way through the press of other vehicles. He looked out through the small, square window in the back of the hood and could still see her, forcing her way through the crowds of people, sometimes jostling them upon the path, then running in the gutter for the greater freedom of pa.s.sage.

"G.o.d!" he muttered under his breath, as he turned back again.

"What is it?" asked Coralie.

"Oh, nothing," he replied; "nothing."

Mrs. Durlacher caught her lips between her teeth to crush the smile that rose to them. Now she was sure at least that Sally's power was broken. Her subtle use of that word "allow" had served its double purpose. Not only had it delicately questioned the possession of that authority which she knew he held above all things; but also, in permitting it, the admission had been deftly drawn from him that Sally was his mistress. She had known it before, as women do know things. Now she was certain of it and, in her certainty, realized that this was the moment--to strike when he was weakest. A man, shaken free of the ties that bind him to one woman, is more ready than another in the reaction of indifference which follows to fetter himself again in order that life may seem less void, less hollow than he finds it.

To Coralie, then, in the dressing-room of the restaurant, as they took off their cloaks, she said--

"My dear girl, you're making that brother of mine in love with you."

And to Traill, she jested as they said good night--

"My dear boy, considering your obligations to other women, do you think it's fair? The girl's losing her heart to you, or will be if she sees you again."

CHAPTER X

The congestion of the traffic, the knotted lines of carriages conveying to their houses the thousands of people whom the theatres had disgorged into the streets, enabled Sally to keep Mrs.

Durlacher's car in sight until it pa.s.sed through the wide portals of a restaurant in the Strand where, from the street, she could see them dismount and pa.s.s into the building. They had gone to supper.

Traill had told her nothing about that. Then it had only been decided since he had met them; he must be enjoying himself in the society of these very people whose society he professed to abhor. That they might have pressed him to accompany them so that he found it impossible to refuse, did not enter the argument in her mind. All thoughts tended in one direction--instinct guiding them--instinct, drunk with the noxious ferment of jealousy, whipping her mind down paths where no reason could follow, yet bringing her invariably to the truth with that same generosity of Providence which watches over the besotted wanderings of a drunken man.

For some moments she stood there, watching the doors which a powdered flunkey had swung to after their entrance. Wild suggestions flung themselves before her consideration. She would go back to her room, dress herself in the best frock that Traill had given her and go to supper there herself. She would wait there an hour, an hour and a half if necessary, to see if he went home with them. That she had almost decided on, when a man of whose presence, pa.s.sing behind her once or twice upon the pavement, she had been unaware, stopped by her side.

"Waiting for some one?" he said, with that insinuating tone of voice which disposes of any need for introduction.

She drew away from him quickly in horror, fear driving cold through the hot blood of her jealousy. Then she turned, as he laughed to conceal his momentary embarra.s.sment, and hurried off in the direction of Trafalgar Square.

That incident proved her waiting to be impossible. She walked slowly home, all the spirit within her sinking down into an impenetrable mood of depression from which not even the persistent hope that love must win her back her happiness in the end had any power to raise her. Now she was crushed--burnt out. Only the charred cinders and the ashes of herself were left behind from the flames of that furnace which had torn its way through her.

Lighting just one candle, she sat in his room waiting for his return.

An hour pa.s.sed, and at last she blew the candle out. He might think it strange to find her there, sitting up for him; he might suspect, and as yet she was sublimely unconscious that he had seen her. She was sure when she had covered her face with the programme in the theatre that the action had been in time; moreover, she was by no means certain that from that distance his gla.s.ses had covered her at all.

Mounting the uncarpeted stairs from his room to the floor above, she stopped once or twice, thinking she heard a hansom pulling up in the street. Her heart stopped with her and she held a breath in suspense; but on each occasion it jingled on, losing the noise of its bells in the murmuring night sounds which never quite die into silence in that quarter.

When she reached her room, she lit a candle, holding it up before the mirror on the dressing-table and gazing at her face in its reflection.

"My G.o.d!" she whispered.

Truly, in the light of that one candle, she hardly recognized herself.

Violent sensations, deep emotions, these are the accelerations of time. They produce--momentarily no doubt--the same effect as do the pa.s.sing of years over which such intensity of feeling is more evenly distributed. In those few hours, since she had heard from Devenish that another woman was claiming the attentions of Traill's mind, Sally had aged--withered almost--in the fierce stress of her pa.s.sion of jealousy. It had pa.s.sed over her like the sirocco of the desert, leaving her parched, dried, shrivelled, as a child grown old before its years. No colour was there in her cheeks, no vestige of the sign that beneath a mere fraction's measurement of that white skin, the blood was flowing through her veins. Yet the skin was not really white.

It was an ugly grey, smirched with a colour that bore but the faintest resemblance to animation. Beneath the eyes deep shadows lay, smeared into the sockets. She lifted the candle to their level, but they did not disappear. Pain had cast them, and no s.h.i.+fting of material light would wipe them out. But it was the eyes themselves that startled her. When she looked into them--deep into the pupils--she realized how close she had drifted to the moment beyond which control is of no account--the moment of absolute madness. Even then, they glittered unnaturally. A gleam from the candle again? She moved it once more--this way and that--but still the light flickered there, frightening her into a sudden effort of restraint. She tried to pull herself together; put down the candle hurriedly and, feeling the leathern dryness in her mouth, caught at a carafe of water, drinking from it without use of the gla.s.s.

That steadied her. Thoughts drifted back into their channels and, coming with them, looming with its portentous realization above the others, the remembrance that only the evening before, he had drawn out the settlement upon her life. Now she knew why he had done it.

Now she found the absolute trending of his mind. He had said if he died! That was only to blind, only to tie a bandage about her eyes in order to conceal from her the true motive that had instigated him.

But she saw the true motive now. Under the bandages she had already tried to peer; now circ.u.mstance itself had wrenched them from her.

With feverish movements, she opened a drawer and took from it a little slip of paper. This was a copy of the settlement as he had drawn it out. He had presented it to her.

"You'd better keep it as a memorandum of the details," he had said and, without glancing at its contents, she had thrust it into this drawer. Now she hurriedly spread it open.

"In the event of my death, or the discontinuance of the relations which now exist between Miss Sally Bishop and myself--"

These were the first words that met her eyes. Her fingers closed automatically over the paper, crus.h.i.+ng it into her palm. Could she need any more proof than that? That a settlement and dealing with a relations.h.i.+p such as theirs must be worded in such a way, carried no weight with it to her mind. She knew then, that when he had alluded to the event of his death, it had been farthest from his thoughts.

He had meant their separation. In three years--a little more than three years it had come. He was tired of her. She knew well then how useless had been her efforts to move him to pa.s.sion the night before.

Her cheeks flamed, thinking that it had not been because he was unconscious of her attempt. He had seen it. There was no doubt in her mind that when he had told her to fasten her dressing-gown, when he had noticed the perfumes of scent from her hair, he had realized the motive that was acting within her. But he was tired--satiated.

And how he must have loathed her! Yet no greater than she, at that moment, loathed herself. He knew--of course he knew--that her coming down to get the book had all been an excuse. He had probably thought that her desire had been for herself. How could he possibly have known that she felt no desire, had been frigid, cold, without a strain of pa.s.sion in her thoughts, seeking only to tempt him to her side, for his pleasure alone, with the delights of her body? How could he have known? He did not know! Of a certainty he must have thought that it was her own satisfaction she was seeking. The blood raced back from her cheeks, leaving her s.h.i.+vering and cold. Oh, how he must have loathed her! Why had she done it? Why was there not some illuminating power to point out the intricacy of the ways when people came to such a maze in life as this?

In a torture of shame that blent with all her misery, she flung herself, dressed as she was, on to the bed. Let him find her there--what did it matter! She realized that she had lost everything.

And there she lay, eyes burning and dry, heart just beating faintly in her breast. But when she heard his footsteps mounting the stairs, she suddenly got up. If he knew that she had followed them, he would never forgive her. So, in the midst of her misery, she still found the strength to hope. Jumping up from the bed she stood before her mirror and began to take off her hat as though she had that moment returned.

When his knock fell on the door, she forced fear from her voice, drove eagerness into the place of it, and called him to enter.

The door opened. In the mirror's reflection, she could see him stop abruptly as he came into the room. With hands still lifted, extricating the pins from her hat, she turned. His lips were tight closed, his eyes merciless. So he had looked that day at Apsley when he had returned to find his sister with her in the dining-room. So he had directed his gaze upon the woman whom she had heard him cross-examine in the Law Courts. The suspicion leapt to her mind that he knew, that he had seen her; but having steeled herself to tell the lie, she did not attempt, in the sudden moment, to reconstruct her mind to a hasty admission of the truth. She must tell the lie, clinging to it through everything.