The Old Wives' Tale
Book III
SOPHIA
Chapter I
THE ELOPEMENT
I
Her soberly rich dress had a countrified
air, as she waited, ready for the streets, in the bedroom of the London hotel on
the afternoon of the first of July, 1866; but there was nothing of the
provincial in that beautiful face, nor in that bearing at once shy and haughty;
and her eager heart soared beyond geographical boundaries.
It was the Hatfield Hotel, in Salisbury Street, between the Strand
and the river. Both street and hotel are now gone, lost in the vast foundations
of the Savoy and the Cecil; but the type of the Hatfield lingers with
ever-increasing shabbiness in Jermyn Street. In 1866, with its dark passages and
crooked stairs, its candles, its carpets and stuffs which had outlived their
patterns, its narrow dining-room where a thousand busy flies ate together at one
long table, its acrid stagnant atmosphere, and its disturbing sensation of dirt
everywhere concealing itself, it stood forth in rectitude as a good average
modern hotel. The patched and senile drabness of the bedroom made an environment
that emphasized Sophia's flashing youth. She alone in it was unsullied.
There was a knock at the door, apparently gay and jaunty. But she
thought, truly: "He's nearly as nervous as I am!" And in her sick nervousness
she coughed, and then tried to take full possession of herself. The moment had
at last come which would divide her life as a battle divides the history of a
nation. Her mind in an instant swept backwards through an incredible three
months.
The schemings to obtain and to hide Gerald's letters at the shop,
and to reply to them! The far more complex and dangerous duplicity practised
upon her majestic aunt at Axe! The visits to the Axe post-office! The three
divine meetings with Gerald at early morning by the canal-feeder, when he had
told her of his inheritance and of the harshness of his uncle Boldero, and with
a rush of words had spread before her the prospect of eternal bliss! The nights
of fear! The sudden, dizzy acquiescence in his plan, and the feeling of
universal unreality which obsessed her! The audacious departure from her aunt's,
showering a cascade of appalling lies! Her dismay at Knype Station! Her blush as
she asked for a ticket to London! The ironic, sympathetic glance of the porter,
who took charge of her trunk! And then the thunder of the incoming train! Her
renewed dismay when she found that it was very full, and her distracted plunge
into a compartment with six people already in it! And the abrupt reopening of
the carriage-door and that curt inquisition from an inspector: "Where for,
please? Where for? Where for?" Until her turn was reached: "Where for, miss?"
and her weak little reply: "Euston"! And more violent blushes! And then the
long, steady beating of the train over the rails, keeping time to the rhythm of
the unanswerable voice within her breast: "Why are you here? Why are you here?"
And then Rugby; and the awful ordeal of meeting Gerald, his entry into the
compartment, the rearrangement of seats, and their excruciatingly painful
attempts at commonplace conversation in the publicity of the carriage! (She had
felt that that part of the enterprise had not been very well devised by Gerald.)
And at last London; the thousands of cabs, the fabulous streets, the general
roar, all dream-surpassing, intensifying to an extraordinary degree the
obsession of unreality, the illusion that she could not really have done what
she had done, that she was not really doing what she was doing!
Supremely and finally, the delicious torture of the clutch of
terror at her heart as she moved by Gerald's side through the impossible
adventure! Who was this rash, mad Sophia? Surely not herself!
The knock at the door was impatiently repeated.
"Come in," she said timidly.
Gerald Scales came in. Yes, beneath that mien of a commercial
traveller who has been everywhere and through everything, he was very nervous.
It was her privacy that, with her consent, he had invaded. He had engaged the
bedroom only with the intention of using it as a retreat for Sophia until the
evening, when they were to resume their travels. It ought not to have had any
disturbing significance. But the mere disorder on the washstand, a towel lying
on one of the cane chairs, made him feel that he was affronting decency, and so
increased his jaunty nervousness. The moment was painful; the moment was
difficult beyond his skill to handle it naturally.
Approaching her with factitious ease, he kissed her through her
veil, which she then lifted with an impulsive movement, and he kissed her again,
more ardently, perceiving that her ardour was exceeding his. This was the first
time they had been alone together since her flight from Axe. And yet, with his
worldly experience, he was naive enough to be surprised that he could not put
all the heat of passion into his embrace, and he wondered why he was not
thrilled at the contact with her! However, the powerful clinging of her lips
somewhat startled his senses, and also delighted him by its silent promise. He
could smell the stuff of her veil, the sarsenet of her bodice, and, as it were
wrapped in these odours as her body was wrapped in its clothes, the faint
fleshly perfume of her body itself. Her face, viewed so close that he could see
the almost imperceptible down on those fruit-like cheeks, was astonishingly
beautiful; the dark eyes were exquisitely misted; and he could feel the secret
loyalty of her soul ascending to him. She was very slightly taller than her
lover; but somehow she hung from him, her body curved backwards, and her bosom
pressed against his, so that instead of looking up at her gaze he looked down at
it. He preferred that; perfectly proportioned though he was, his stature was a
delicate point with him. His spirits rose by the uplift of his senses. His fears
slipped away; he began to be very satisfied with himself. He was the inheritor
of twelve thousand pounds, and he had won this unique creature. She was his
capture; he held her close, permittedly scanning the minutiae of her skin,
permittedly crushing her flimsy silks. Something in him had forced her to lay
her modesty on the altar of his desire. And the sun brightly shone. So he kissed
her yet more ardently, and with the slightest touch of a victor's condescension;
and her burning response more than restored the self-confidence which he had
been losing.
"I've got no one but you now," she murmured in a melting
voice.
She fancied in her ignorance that the expression of this sentiment
would please him. She was not aware that a man is usually rather chilled by it,
because it proves to him that the other is thinking about his responsibilities
and not about his privileges. Certainly it calmed Gerald, though without
imparting to him her sense of his responsibilities. He smiled vaguely. To Sophia
his smile was a miracle continually renewed; it mingled dashing gaiety with a
hint of wistful appeal in a manner that never failed to bewitch her. A less
innocent girl than Sophia might have divined from that adorable half-feminine
smile that she could do anything with Gerald except rely on him. But Sophia had
to learn.
"Are you ready?" he asked, placing his hands on her shoulders and
holding her away from him.
"Yes," she said, nerving herself. Their faces were still very near
together.
"Well, would you like to go and see the Dore pictures?"
A simple enough question! A proposal felicitous enough! Dore was
becoming known even in the Five Towns, not, assuredly, by his illustrations to
the Contes Drolatiques of Balzac—but by his shuddering Biblical conceits. In
pious circles Dore was saving art from the reproach of futility and frivolity.
It was indubitably a tasteful idea on Gerald's part to take his love of a
summer's afternoon to gaze at the originals of those prints which had so deeply
impressed the Five Towns. It was an idea that sanctified the profane
adventure.
Yet Sophia showed signs of affliction. Her colour went and came;
her throat made the motion of swallowing; there was a muscular contraction over
her whole body. And she drew herself from him. Her glance, however, did not
leave him, and his eyes fell before hers.
"But what about the—wedding?" she breathed.
That sentence seemed to cost all her pride; but she was obliged to
utter it, and to pay for it.
"Oh," he said lightly and quickly, just as though she had reminded
him of a detail that might have been forgotten, "I was just going to tell you.
It can't be done here. There's been some change in the rules. I only found out
for certain late last night. But I've ascertained that it'll be as simple as ABC
before the English Consul at Paris; and as I've got the tickets for us to go
over to-night, as we arranged …" He stopped.
She sat down on the towel-covered chair, staggered. She believed
what he said. She did not suspect that he was using the classic device of the
seducer. It was his casualness that staggered her. Had it really been his
intention to set off on an excursion and remark as an afterthought: "BY THE WAY,
we can't be married as I told you at half-past two to-day"? Despite her extreme
ignorance and innocence, Sophia held a high opinion of her own commonsense and
capacity for looking after herself, and she could scarcely believe that he was
expecting her to go to Paris, and at night, without being married. She looked
pitiably young, virgin, raw, unsophisticated; helpless in the midst of dreadful
dangers. Yet her head was full of a blank astonishment at being mistaken for a
simpleton! The sole explanation could be that Gerald, in some matters, must
himself be a confiding simpleton. He had not reflected. He had not sufficiently
realized the immensity of her sacrifice in flying with him even to London. She
felt sorry for him. She had the woman's first glimpse of the necessity for some
adjustment of outlook as an essential preliminary to uninterrupted
happiness.
"It'll be all right!" Gerald persuasively continued.
He looked at her, as she was not looking at him. She was nineteen.
But she seemed to him utterly mature and mysterious. Her face baffled him; her
mind was a foreign land. Helpless in one sense she might be; yet she, and not
he, stood for destiny; the future lay in the secret and capricious workings of
that mind.
"Oh no!" she exclaimed curtly. "Oh no!"
"Oh no what?"
"We can't possibly go like that," she said.
"But don't I tell you it'll be all right?" he protested. "If we
stay here and they come after you…! Besides, I've got the tickets and all."
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" she demanded.
"But how could I?" he grumbled. "Have we had a single minute
alone?"
This was nearly true. They could not have discussed the
formalities of marriage in the crowded train, nor during the hurried lunch with
a dozen cocked ears at the same table. He saw himself on sure ground here.
"Now, could we?" he pressed.
"And you talk about going to see pictures!" was her reply.
Undoubtedly this had been a grave error of tact. He recognized
that it was a stupidity. And so he resented it, as though she had committed it
and not he.
"My dear girl," he said, hurt, "I acted for the best. It isn't my
fault if rules are altered and officials silly."
"You ought to have told me before," she persisted sullenly.
"But how could I?"
He almost believed in that moment that he had really intended to
marry her, and that the ineptitudes of red-tape had prevented him from achieving
his honourable purpose. Whereas he had done nothing whatever towards the
marriage.
"Oh no! Oh no!" she repeated, with heavy lip and liquid eye. "Oh
no!"
He gathered that she was flouting his suggestion of Paris.
Slowly and nervously he approached her. She did not stir nor look
up.
Her glance was fixed on the washstand. He bent down and murmured:
"Come, now. It'll be all right. You'll travel in the ladies'
saloon on the steam-packet."
She did not stir. He bent lower and touched the back of her neck
with his lips. And she sprang up, sobbing and angry. Because she was mad for him
she hated him furiously. All tenderness had vanished.
"I'll thank you not to touch me!" she said fiercely. She had given
him her lips a moment ago, but now to graze her neck was an insult.
He smiled sheepishly. "But really you must be reasonable," he
argued.
"What have I done?"
"It's what you haven't done, I think!" she cried. "Why didn't you
tell me while we were in the cab?"
"I didn't care to begin worrying you just then," he replied: which
was exactly true.
The fact was, he had of course shirked telling her that no
marriage would occur that day. Not being a professional seducer of young girls,
he lacked skill to do a difficult thing simply.
"Now come along, little girl," he went on, with just a trifle of
impatience. "Let's go out and enjoy ourselves. I assure you that everything will
be all right in Paris."
"That's what you said about coming to London," she retorted
sarcastically through her sobs. "And look at you!"
Did he imagine for a single instant that she would have come to
London with him save on the understanding that she was to be married immediately
upon arrival? This attitude of an indignant question was not to be reconciled
with her belief that his excuses for himself were truthful. But she did not
remark the discrepancy.
Her sarcasm wounded his vanity.
"Oh, very well!" he muttered. "If you don't choose to believe what
I say!" He shrugged his shoulders.
She said nothing; but the sobs swept at intervals through her
frame, shaking it.
Reading hesitation in her face, he tried again. "Come along,
little girl. And wipe your eyes." And he approached her. She stepped back.
"No, no!" she denied him, passionately. He had esteemed her too
cheaply. And she did not care to be called 'little girl.'
"Then what shall you do?" he inquired, in a tone which blended
mockery and bullying. She was making a fool of him.
"I can tell you what I shan't do," she said. "I shan't go to
Paris."
Her sobs were less frequent.
"That's not my question," he said icily. "I want to know what you
will do."
There was now no pretence of affectionateness either on her part
or on his. They might, to judge from their attitudes, have been nourished from
infancy on mutual hatred.
"What's that got to do with you?" she demanded.
"It's got everything to do with me," he said.
"Well, you can go and find out!" she said.
It was girlish; it was childish; it was scarcely according to the
canons for conducting a final rupture; but it was not the less tragically
serious. Indeed, the spectacle of this young girl absurdly behaving like one, in
a serious crisis, increased the tragicalness of the situation even if it did not
heighten it. The idea that ran through Gerald's brain was the ridiculous folly
of having anything to do with young girls. He was quite blind to her beauty.
"'Go'?" he repeated her word. "You mean that?"
"Of course I mean it," she answered promptly.
The coward in him urged him to take advantage of her ignorant,
helpless pride, and leave her at her word. He remembered the scene she had made
at the pit shaft, and he said to himself that her charm was not worth her
temper, and that he was a fool ever to have dreamed that it was, and that he
would be doubly a fool now not to seize the opportunity of withdrawing from an
insane enterprise.
"I am to go?" he asked, with a sneer.
She nodded.
"Of course if you order me to leave you, I must. Can I do anything
for you?"
She signified that he could not,
"Nothing? You're sure?"
She frowned.
"Well, then, good-bye." He turned towards the door.
"I suppose you'd leave me here without money or anything?" she
said in a cold, cutting voice. And her sneer was far more destructive than his.
It destroyed in him the last trace of compassion for her.
"Oh, I beg pardon!" he said, and swaggeringly counted out five
sovereigns on to a chest of drawers.
She rushed at them. "Do you think I'll take your odious money?"
she snarled, gathering the coins in her gloved hand.
Her first impulse was to throw them in his face; but she paused
and then flung them into a corner of the room.
"Pick them up!" she commanded him.
"No, thanks," he said briefly; and left, shutting the door.
Only a very little while, and they had been lovers, exuding
tenderness with every gesture, like a perfume! Only a very little while, and she
had been deciding to telegraph condescendingly to her mother that she was 'all
right'! And now the dream was utterly dissolved. And the voice of that hard
commonsense which spake to her in her wildest moods grew loud in asserting that
the enterprise could never have come to any good, that it was from its inception
an impossible enterprise, unredeemed by the slightest justification. An enormous
folly! Yes, an elopement; but not like a real elopement; always unreal! She had
always known that it was only an imitation of an elopement, and must end in some
awful disappointment. She had never truly wanted to run away; but something
within her had pricked her forward in spite of her protests. The strict notions
of her elderly relatives were right after all. It was she who had been wrong.
And it was she who would have to pay.
"I've been a wicked girl," she said to herself grimly, in the
midst of her ruin.
She faced the fact. But she would not repent; at any rate she
would never sit on that stool. She would not exchange the remains of her pride
for the means of escape from the worst misery that life could offer. On that
point she knew herself. And she set to work to repair and renew her pride.
Whatever happened she would not return to the Five Towns. She
could not, because she had stolen money from her Aunt Harriet. As much as she
had thrown back at Gerald, she had filched from her aunt, but in the form of a
note. A prudent, mysterious instinct had moved her to take this precaution. And
she was glad. She would never have been able to dart that sneer at Gerald about
money if she had really needed money. So she rejoiced in her crime; though,
since Aunt Harriet would assuredly discover the loss at once, the crime
eternally prevented her from going back to her family. Never, never would she
look at her mother with the eyes of a thief!
(In truth Aunt Harriet did discover the loss, and very creditably
said naught about it to anybody. The knowledge of it would have twisted the
knife in the maternal heart.)
Sophia was also glad that she had refused to proceed to Paris. The
recollection of her firmness in refusing flattered her vanity as a girl
convinced that she could take care of herself. To go to Paris unmarried would
have been an inconceivable madness. The mere thought of the enormity did outrage
to her moral susceptibilities. No, Gerald had most perfectly mistaken her for
another sort of girl; as, for instance, a shop-assistant or a barmaid!
With this the catalogue of her satisfactions ended. She had no
idea at all as to what she ought to do, or could do. The mere prospect of
venturing out of the room intimidated her. Had Gerald left her trunk in the
hall? Of course he had. What a question! But what would happen to her? London …
London had merely dazed her. She could do nothing for herself. She was as
helpless as a rabbit in London. She drew aside the window-curtain and had a
glimpse of the river. It was inevitable that she should think of suicide; for
she could not suppose that any girl had ever got herself into a plight more
desperate than hers. "I could slip out at night and drown myself," she thought
seriously. "A nice thing that would be for Gerald!"
Then loneliness, like a black midnight, overwhelmed her, swiftly
wasting her strength, disintegrating her pride in its horrid flood. She glanced
about for support, as a woman in the open street who feels she is going to
faint, and went blindly to the bed, falling on it with the upper part of her
body, in an attitude of abandonment. She wept, but without sobbing.
II
Gerald Scales walked about the Strand, staring up at its high
narrow houses, crushed one against another as though they had been packed,
unsorted, by a packer who thought of nothing but economy of space. Except by
Somerset House, King's College, and one or two theatres and banks, the monotony
of mean shops, with several storeys unevenly perched over them, was unbroken,
Then Gerald encountered Exeter Hall, and examined its prominent facade with a
provincial's eye; for despite his travels he was not very familiar with London.
Exeter Hall naturally took his mind back to his Uncle Boldero, that great and
ardent Nonconformist, and his own godly youth. It was laughable to muse upon
what his uncle would say and think, did the old man know that his nephew had run
away with a girl, meaning to seduce her in Paris. It was enormously funny!
However, he had done with all that. He was well out of it. She had
told him to go, and he had gone. She had money to get home; she had nothing to
do but use the tongue in her head. The rest was her affair. He would go to Paris
alone, and find another amusement. It was absurd to have supposed that Sophia
would ever have suited him. Not in such a family as the Baineses could one
reasonably expect to discover an ideal mistress. No! there had been a mistake.
The whole business was wrong. She had nearly made a fool of him. But he was not
the man to be made a fool of. He had kept his dignity intact.
So he said to himself. Yet all the time his dignity, and his pride
also, were bleeding, dropping invisible blood along the length of the Strand
pavements.
He was at Salisbury Street again. He pictured her in the bedroom.
Damn her! He wanted her. He wanted her with an excessive desire. He hated to
think that he had been baulked. He hated to think that she would remain
immaculate. And he continued to picture her in the exciting privacy of that
cursed bedroom.
Now he was walking down Salisbury Street. He did not wish to be
walking down Salisbury Street; but there he was!
"Oh, hell!" he murmured. "I suppose I must go through with
it."
He felt desperate. He was ready to pay any price in order to be
able to say to himself that he had accomplished what he had set his heart
on.
"My wife hasn't gone out, has she?" he asked of the
hall-porter.
"I'm not sure, sir; I think not," said the hall-porter.
The fear that Sophia had already departed made him sick. When he
noticed her trunk still there, he took hope and ran upstairs.
He saw her, a dark crumpled, sinuous piece of humanity, half on
and half off the bed, silhouetted against the bluish-white counterpane; her hat
was on the floor, with the spotted veil trailing away from it. This sight seemed
to him to be the most touching that he had ever seen, though her face was
hidden. He forgot everything except the deep and strange emotion which affected
him. He approached the bed. She did not stir.
Having heard the entry and knowing that it must be Gerald who had
entered, Sophia forced herself to remain still. A wild, splendid hope shot up in
her. Constrained by all the power of her will not to move, she could not stifle
a sob that had lain in ambush in her throat.
The sound of the sob fetched tears to the eyes of Gerald.
"Sophia!" he appealed to her.
But she did not stir. Another sob shook her.
"Very well, then," said Gerald. "We'll stay in London till we can
be married. I'll arrange it. I'll find a nice boarding-house for you, and I'll
tell the people you're my cousin. I shall stay on at this hotel, and I'll come
and see you every day."
A silence.
"Thank you!" she blubbered. "Thank you!"
He saw that her little gloved hand was stretching out towards him,
like a feeler; and he seized it, and knelt down and took her clumsily by the
waist. Somehow he dared not kiss her yet.
An immense relief surged very slowly through them both.
"I—I—really—" She began to say something, but the articulation was
lost in her sobs.
"What? What do you say, dearest?" he questioned eagerly.
And she made another effort. "I really couldn't have gone to Paris
with you without being married," she succeeded at last. "I really couldn't."
"No, no!" he soothed her. "Of course you couldn't. It was I who
was wrong. But you didn't know how I felt…. Sophia, it's all right now, isn't
it?"
She sat up and kissed him fairly.
It was so wonderful and startling that he burst openly into tears.
She saw in the facile intensity of his emotion a guarantee of their future
happiness. And as he had soothed her, so now she soothed him. They clung
together, equally surprised at the sweet, exquisite, blissful melancholy which
drenched them through and through. It was remorse for having quarrelled, for
having lacked faith in the supreme rightness of the high adventure. Everything
was right, and would be right; and they had been criminally absurd. It was
remorse; but it was pure bliss, and worth the quarrel! Gerald resumed his
perfection again in her eyes! He was the soul of goodness and honour! And for
him she was again the ideal mistress, who would, however, be also a wife. As in
his mind he rapidly ran over the steps necessary to their marriage, he kept
saying to himself, far off in some remote cavern of the brain: "I shall have
her! I shall have her!" He did not reflect that this fragile slip of the Baines
stock, unconsciously drawing upon the accumulated strength of generations of
honest living, had put a defeat upon him.
After tea, Gerald, utterly content with the universe, redeemed his
word and found an irreproachable boarding-house for Sophia in Westminster, near
the Abbey. She was astonished at the glibness of his lies to the landlady about
her, and about their circumstances generally. He also found a church and a
parson, close by, and in half an hour the formalities preliminary to a marriage
were begun. He explained to her that as she was now resident in London, it would
be simpler to recommence the business entirely. She sagaciously agreed. As she
by no means wished to wound him again, she made no inquiry about those other
formalities which, owing to red-tape, had so unexpectedly proved abortive! She
knew she was going to be married, and that sufficed. The next day she carried
out her filial idea of telegraphing to her mother.