London in mid-May, slogging at its pleasures under the pale sun, might read one morning of an affray in Yorkshire, of a magistrate assaulted, or undergardener in arms, and forget it in half-an-hour; but to Sanchia, unaccustomed to cower, some such chance paragraph seemed one spot the more upon her vesture, which contact with the Fulham Road had smirched already. She had never taken cover before—and how could one be in such a place but to hide in it? With contracted brows and bosom oppressed, she watched the drifting millions go by, and her heart sank. Was she become as one of these? Is not to be ashamed to be shameful? And had she not been put to shame? If she was to hold up the head and feel the mouth of the winged steed that she rode, she must stable him elsewhere.
She wished to forget Wanless. Let it be as if it was not, and had never been. But she found that Glyde and his outrageous act made that not possible. They brought her down to London's level—her in her white robe out of stainless air; here she was still, as Glyde had made her there, just a woman for men to quarrel over, or a bone for dogs. Her heart surged hot against Wanless; she could not, if she would, forget it—least of all in the Fulham Road.
She felt spotted in Mrs. Benson's spotless dwelling—largely because it was Mrs. Benson's, partly because a smell of fried herrings drifted in daily from the street. She felt herself the chosen of a servant, one for whom a clown had held battle; and then she found herself resenting the phrases, growing hot over them. A servant—Mrs. Benson, that staunch protectress! A clown—Struan—his thin frame throbbing with fire, and his eyes of a hawk in a cage, farset, communing with invisible things! Why, when he was rapt in his work he never saw her at all. She was a speck at his feet! He had sent her away once. “I'm busy,” he had said, without looking at her; and she had gone away on tiptoe. These things vexed her to remember, and she felt that Mrs. Benson's dwelling could not be hers.
Mrs. Benson, too, it must be owned, had an incumbrance, which she kept as far as might be in the lower regions of her house, but which was now and again encountered on the stair—a shambling son, one Joe, mostly in shirt—sleeves, distilling familiarity and beer from every pore. He was a ne'er-do-well, whom it was his mother's cross and crown to keep in complete idleness. He cast dreadful looks, as of an equal in snugness, a fellow-minion, at the chiselled profile of our goddess, and was not long before he tried for a full-faced effect. Sanchia's eyes of clear amaze should have cut him down, but they did not. His “Morning, Miss,” was daily reminder of a shared clay. Sanchia made herself inaccessible, and Mrs. Benson agonised.
To apologise for her son had been as futile as to make excuses for death; but she tried it. “You'll overlook the partiality of a mother, Miss Percival? What am I to do? It's not that I want him to lap syrup from a spoon—far from that. Idleness leads to impiety, and impiety anywhere, from Tattersal's to the public, we all know. But think of what stings me. I can't abide the thought that here am I, large Mrs. Benson, with money to spare, turning my back upon my fatherless child. Yet nothing short of that will do it.” Sanchia readily excused her; and then she turned her own back upon the Fulham Road. Pimlico found her a lodging, at the gates of whose dingy mysteries were parks, Westminster, the sky and the river, eternal things, making for tranquillity.
It had been her first impulse, the moment she reached London, to go to her father, with whom alone she had corresponded during her years of exile. There was Vicky Sinclair, to be sure, her sister next in age; but Vicky was married to a man she knew nothing of, and she found herself shy. Fought for! Blared across London in a paragraph—championed by a clown! How was she to meet a Captain Sinclair? Her father, surely, was different. She never doubted his love, nor that he would take her to his heart if she asked to go there. But could she? It would have to be done by stealth; she must go to the city, to his office—for her mother ruled in Great Cumberland Place, and she could not go there. She hated secrets, and couldn't pose as a culprit; so she delayed and delayed. It was a comfort to her to know that he was at hand: meantime, she sought about for scope to spread her wings.
For a fortnight she drank of the gales of liberty, filled her bosom with beauty, and let art smooth out her brows. She listened to music, looked at pictures, renewed her reader's ticket, and spent whole days browsing under the Bloomsbury dome. Climbing the heights, she planned out schemes of work, felt her critical faculties renewed, studied men and women, and found her old pleasure in quiet chuckling over their shifts. But she had to chuckle alone, for she never spoke to a soul. For a fortnight or so all went well—and then, quite suddenly, without any warning, going, as it were, to the fountain for water, she found there was no bottom to her cruse. She went to bed sanguine, she awoke morose. She saw the day with jaundiced eyes, scorned herself, cried “Liver!” and took medicine. She was glued to her books all day, returned late to her lodging, and found herself in tears. She discovered a tenderness, a yearning; she lay awake dreaming of her childhood, of her girlhood, of Vicky, of her father's knee, of Senhouse, her dear, preposterous friend, whose grey eyes quizzed while they loved her. Golden days with him—golden nights when she dreamed over his eager, profuse, interminable letters! All these sweet, seemly things were dead! Ah, no, not that, else must she die. She cried softly, and stretched out her arms in the dark to the gentle ghosts that peopled it. Then, being practical in grain, she jumped up, lit candles, and wrote deliberately to each of her sisters—finally, after much biting of the pen, to her father. Before her mood could cool she dressed hastily, slipped out, and posted her letters. Coming back to bed, she paused in the act to enter it—one knee upon it. Wide-eyed she wondered why she had not written to Senhouse. To him, of all people in the world, first of all! And his answer—a certainty. Hot came the reply to her question, and smote her in the face. Never to him again—never. There are certain things no woman can bring herself to do. The more she has need of a man the less possible is it to tell him so. She sighed as she got into her bed, and her eyes were very kind.
Of the five fair daughters of Thomas Welbore Percival, East India Merchant in The Poultry, Philippa, the eldest, the trenchant and clear-sighted, lived in Bryanston Square, mother of three children. Her husband, Mr. Tompsett-King, was a solicitor, but he was much more than that, An elderly, quiet gentleman, who talked in a whisper, and seemed to walk in one too, he presided over more than one learned Society, and spoke at Congresses on non-controversial topics. A sound churchman, he deplored Romish advance on the one hand and easy divorce on the other. The salvation of human society lay, he held, within these limits. Distrust the emotions; submit all things to reason-love of God and love of women. On these terms he prospered like his father before him. It all seemed very simple to him. The handsome Philippa respected him, obeyed him particularly, and never differed from him in opinion. But she coloured every compliance with his decrees with an idiosyncrasy so marked as to make them seem her own. Where he held that Rome pandered to the emotions, she laughed it to scorn as a forcing—house of spiritual foppery; where he saw in divorce a treason to the law of contract, she said that it tempted women to fall. Is it not easy enough to sin? Must we legalise it? Why put a tax upon marriage? Mr. Tompsett-King deprecated all dottings of iotas; when Philippa stormed at society he hummed a sad little tune. Before he left for Bedford Row he patted her shoulder and said, “Gently does it.” Some such scene must ensue upon the prodigal's letter.
Hawise, Lady Pinwell, next in age to Philippa, lived in the country. Her husband was a baronet, and a handsome blond. A pretty, apple-cheeked, round-eyed girl, very much of a kitten, she was now grown plump, sleek, rather slow to move, and many times a mother. She deferred to her husband in all things, and by his wish received her parents on a formal visit once a year. She saw very little of her sisters, and as for Sanchia—the thing was not to be heard of, not even mentioned to Sir George. As, in fact, she burned the child's letter before she left her bedroom, she does not come into the tale at all.
But the pensive Melusine, three years younger than Philippa, seven older than Sanchia, may be reckoned with. She was also married, to a Mr. Gerald Scales, the son of a baronet. He was not, however, to inherit the title, for he had a brother, Sir Matthew, and frequent nephews. But his means were ample for his rank and discreet amusements, and went further and did more for him than prolific Sir Matthew's; for Melusine gave him no sons. His circle of being, in and through which trailed with charming languor his wife, was of more dappled sheen and of ampler circumference than that of Bryanston Square. Having its centre in Kensington Gore, it reached to Ranelagh on one side, to Maidenhead on the other. There was a riverside villa down there, where Mrs. Scales gave parties in the summertime and was punted about by flushed gentlemen in pink shirts. She was the tallest of the five sisters, and the most graceful; near-sighted enough for lorgnettes, an elegant young woman. She had an instinct for attitudes, turns of the head, which were useful in tete-a-tete conversations. Mentally, she was not strong, and perhaps her manner was too elaborate: she draped herself when she sat down as if her skirts were window-curtains. Toy Pomeranians were a hobby of hers, and the early Florentine masters. She could read off the names of the saints in a sacred conversation as easily as you or I a row of actresses in a photograph shop. Mrs. Jameson's books were at her fingers' ends. Her mother favoured her more than any of her children, and was often at her house on visits. Gerald Scales called her the Dowager, and pleased her vastly. He himself was Tubby to his friends.
Vicky, a year older than Sanchia, had married a Captain Sinclair, who was stationed at Aldershot. She had been the romp of former days and, when the storm had burst, hotly on the culprit's side. But Vicky had been flighty, and marriage changes one. Sanchia's eyes grew wistful as she sat, her letters on the wing, and thought of Vicky.
Her first response was from Melusine, in a telegram from Taplow which read, “Darling, alas!” and no more. Her comment was shrewd: “Mamma is there”—and she was right. Then came her father's letter, to pluck at her heart-strings. He invited her to the Poultry at “any hour of the day—and the sooner the better;” but was clear that she could not visit Great Cumberland Place without writing to Mamma. “Doing the civil” was his jocular way of putting it—one of Papa's little ways when he meant more. She knew that he was right, and postponed the fond man and his injunction. His love might be taken for granted by a favourite child. Just now it was her sisters' judgment she craved.
Philippa wrote with her accustomed steel. It might have been a bayonet: yet she meant to be kind.
BRYANSTON SQUARE,
Thursday.
My Dear Sanchia,—I may as well say at once that I am not surprised to hear from you; in fact, I have been expecting some such letter as yours ever since I read in the Times of Claire Ingram's death. Poor unhappy woman, it was time! Some of the Pierpoints (the Godfrey P's) are intimate friends of ours: we dined there last week; no party—just ourselves—and heard all about it. I learned that Mr. Ingram had gone abroad, but imagine that he will be in London before the end of the season. Have you written to Mamma? If not, pray do so. I assure you that it will be taken as it is meant. Nothing but good can come of it. Of that I am sure.
Now, as to your proposals. I think I will ask you to come to me here. I am very busy, with calls a thousand ways. I really have no afternoons free for as far forward as I can see—except Sundays, which I devote entirely to Tertius and religion. No woman ought to separate the two—love of God, love of husband in God. Sooner or later, all women learn it. Then the mornings are naturally occupied with the house and the children. They have Miss Meadows; but she is young and absurdly inconsequent. I don't see how you can expect a girl in her teens to work miracles. In fact, I don't want her to, and am at hand to see that she doesn't.
I have spoken to Tertius, and you must forgive me for saying that we both think, under the circumstances, it would look, and be, better in every way if you came here, in the first instance. Without discussing what is done, and (I pray) done with, you will see, I think, that for me to seek you out would be, to say the least of it, unusual. You left our father's house for reasons of your own; I had left it to be married to Tertius. Forgiveness, if you wish it from me, is yours: countenance of the step you took—never. You will not ask it. So come here any morning that suits you, and I shall be pleased. You will find me ready to do everything I can, to put you on your proper footing in the sphere to which you were born.—Believe me, my dear Sanchia, your affectionate sister, PHILIPPA TOMPSETT-KING.
P. S.—The Church's arms are very wide. One cannot be too thankful, as things have turned out, that Claire Ingram never sued for divorce. God is most merciful.
There was some knitting of brows over this, and some chuckling. Comedy is the Art of the Chuckle; but it is very seldom that one of the persons in the play can practise that which delights us. Sanchia was such a person. She could detach herself from herself, see her own floutings and thwackings, and be amused. At the same time her reply to Philippa was curt.
“You,” she wrote, “are busy, and I am not. I will come to you one of these fine mornings, and must trust to Miss Meadows' sense of fitness not to work miracles that day.”
A day or two later came a telegram from Vicky Sinclair. “Just got your letter. Coming at twelve. Vicky.” Sanchia glowed. “Just like her, the darling.” Philippa's astringent proposal was put aside.
At twelve thirty-five there lit from a hansom an eager and pretty little lady, all in gauzy tissues and lace scarf, who knocked at the door like a postman and flew up the stair into Sanchia's arms. “Oh, Sancie, Sancie, how sweet of you to write! Now we are all going to be happy again forever after. Oh, and here's Cuthbert—I forgot.” In the doorway stood the erect form, and smiled the bronzed face of Captain Sinclair of the Greys. His “How d'ye do, Miss Sanchia!” was accompanied by a look of such curious enquiry that Sanchia gave him two fingers, said, “Quite well, thank you,” and no more. Much more had been expected, and the Captain was somewhat taken aback. He had been ready to welcome the prodigal and admire her too. What's more, he had already very much admired her. To have one's generous motions damped by a coolness of that sort is sickening. But there it was: what could one say? what could one do? He went to the window and stood there, whistling in a whisper until his wife dismissed him. To the Cavalry Club stalked he, working himself into virtuous heat. There, at luncheon with a friend, he expatiated, which was unwise and unmannerly at once. But his own wrongs swallowed up his wife's rights.
“I'll be damned, Jack,” he took up his parable, “I'll be damned if ever I do a woman a good turn any more. Never, never again. Gel I know—relative of mine she is, by marriage—goes a purler with a chap. Knew something of the chap too—so did you, I expect. Not a bad chap, by any means, barring this sort of thing. Well, now she's in town—all over—settled down, y'know. Writes to my wife. Well, I thought it was no good bein' stiff in these things. Against the spirit of the age—what? So I said we'd do the handsome thing and go up. We both wanted a spell of easy—so it was handy. Besides, I wanted to see the gel. I own to that. And there's no doubt she's a clinker; quiet, you know, and steady; looks right at you, far in; sees the lot at a glance. Palish gel, not too big; but well set up. Square shoulders—deep-chested gel. That sort.” He stared at the table-cloth hard.
“I was taken by her, mightily taken. So when she and my wife had done kissin', I put in my little oar. 'How d'ye do, Miss—' I won't mention names, though upon my dick I don't know why I should be squeamish. But there it was; and I'd have kissed her, as you do kiss your wife's—well, cousin, let's say—if you want to. Bless you, not a bit of it. Proud as pepper. Gives me a finger. 'Quite well,' says she. 'Quite well, thank you—' and drops me. Drops me! Good Lord!”
He drank deeply of beer. “Well now, I tell you, that's the last time, absolutely the last time I do the civil thing to—well, to that sort, if she's my wife's grandmother.” He stared out of window, mist over his blue eyes. “They're all for marrying her now. It seems it can be done. Chap's to be screwed up. Then she'll be patronising me, you'll see. Because I was decently civil—that was as far as I was prepared to you!' Oh, damn it. Waiter—more beer.”
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