Of Human Bondage (114 page)

  Philip slept like a log and awoke with a start to
find Harold tickling his face with a feather. There was a shout of
delight when he opened his eyes. He was drunken with sleep.

  "Come on, lazybones," said Jane. "Sally says she
won't wait for you unless you hurry up."

  Then he remembered what had happened. His heart
sank, and, half out of bed already, he stopped; he did not know how
he was going to face her; he was overwhelmed with a sudden rush of
self-reproach, and bitterly, bitterly, he regretted what he had
done. What would she say to him that morning? He dreaded meeting
her, and he asked himself how he could have been such a fool. But
the children gave him no time; Edward took his bathing-drawers and
his towel, Athelstan tore the bed-clothes away; and in three
minutes they all clattered down into the road. Sally gave him a
smile. It was as sweet and innocent as it had ever been.

  "You do take a time to dress yourself," she said. "I
thought you was never coming."

  There was not a particle of difference in her
manner. He had expected some change, subtle or abrupt; he fancied
that there would be shame in the way she treated him, or anger, or
perhaps some increase of familiarity; but there was nothing. She
was exactly the same as before. They walked towards the sea all
together, talking and laughing; and Sally was quiet, but she was
always that, reserved, but he had never seen her otherwise, and
gentle. She neither sought conversation with him nor avoided it.
Philip was astounded. He had expected the incident of the night
before to have caused some revolution in her, but it was just as
though nothing had happened; it might have been a dream; and as he
walked along, a little girl holding on to one hand and a little boy
to the other, while he chatted as unconcernedly as he could, he
sought for an explanation. He wondered whether Sally meant the
affair to be forgotten. Perhaps her senses had run away with her
just as his had, and, treating what had occurred as an accident due
to unusual circumstances, it might be that she had decided to put
the matter out of her mind. It was ascribing to her a power of
thought and a mature wisdom which fitted neither with her age nor
with her character. But he realised that he knew nothing of her.
There had been in her always something enigmatic.

  They played leap-frog in the water, and the bathe
was as uproarious as on the previous day. Sally mothered them all,
keeping a watchful eye on them, and calling to them when they went
out too far. She swam staidly backwards and forwards while the
others got up to their larks, and now and then turned on her back
to float. Presently she went out and began drying herself; she
called to the others more or less peremptorily, and at last only
Philip was left in the water. He took the opportunity to have a
good hard swim. He was more used to the cold water this second
morning, and he revelled in its salt freshness; it rejoiced him to
use his limbs freely, and he covered the water with long, firm
strokes. But Sally, with a towel round her, went down to the
water's edge.

  "You're to come out this minute, Philip," she
called, as though he were a small boy under her charge.

  And when, smiling with amusement at her
authoritative way, he came towards her, she upbraided him.

  "It is naughty of you to stay in so long. Your lips
are quite blue, and just look at your teeth, they're
chattering."

  "All right. I'll come out."

  She had never talked to him in that manner before.
It was as though what had happened gave her a sort of right over
him, and she looked upon him as a child to be cared for. In a few
minutes they were dressed, and they started to walk back. Sally
noticed his hands.

  "Just look, they're quite blue."

  "Oh, that's all right. It's only the circulation. I
shall get the blood back in a minute."

  "Give them to me."

  She took his hands in hers and rubbed them, first
one and then the other, till the colour returned. Philip, touched
and puzzled, watched her. He could not say anything to her on
account of the children, and he did not meet her eyes; but he was
sure they did not avoid his purposely, it just happened that they
did not meet. And during the day there was nothing in her behaviour
to suggest a consciousness in her that anything had passed between
them. Perhaps she was a little more talkative than usual. When they
were all sitting again in the hop-field she told her mother how
naughty Philip had been in not coming out of the water till he was
blue with cold. It was incredible, and yet it seemed that the only
effect of the incident of the night before was to arouse in her a
feeling of protection towards him: she had the same instinctive
desire to mother him as she had with regard to her brothers and
sisters.

  It was not till the evening that he found himself
alone with her. She was cooking the supper, and Philip was sitting
on the grass by the side of the fire. Mrs. Athelny had gone down to
the village to do some shopping, and the children were scattered in
various pursuits of their own. Philip hesitated to speak. He was
very nervous. Sally attended to her business with serene competence
and she accepted placidly the silence which to him was so
embarrassing. He did not know how to begin. Sally seldom spoke
unless she was spoken to or had something particular to say. At
last he could not bear it any longer.

  "You're not angry with me, Sally?" he blurted out
suddenly.

  She raised her eyes quietly and looked at him
without emotion.

  "Me? No. Why should I be?"

  He was taken aback and did not reply. She took the
lid off the pot, stirred the contents, and put it on again. A
savoury smell spread over the air. She looked at him once more,
with a quiet smile which barely separated her lips; it was more a
smile of the eyes.

  "I always liked you," she said.

  His heart gave a great thump against his ribs, and
he felt the blood rushing to his cheeks. He forced a faint
laugh.

  "I didn't know that."

  "That's because you're a silly."

  "I don't know why you liked me."

  "I don't either." She put a little more wood on the
fire. "I knew I liked you that day you came when you'd been
sleeping out and hadn't had anything to eat, d'you remember? And me
and mother, we got Thorpy's bed ready for you."

  He flushed again, for he did not know that she was
aware of that incident. He remembered it himself with horror and
shame.

  "That's why I wouldn't have anything to do with the
others. You remember that young fellow mother wanted me to have? I
let him come to tea because he bothered so, but I knew I'd say
no."

  Philip was so surprised that he found nothing to
say. There was a queer feeling in his heart; he did not know what
it was, unless it was happiness. Sally stirred the pot once
more.

  "I wish those children would make haste and come. I
don't know where they've got to. Supper's ready now."

  "Shall I go and see if I can find them?" said
Philip.

  It was a relief to talk about practical things.

  "Well, it wouldn't be a bad idea, I must say....
There's mother coming."

  Then, as he got up, she looked at him without
embarrassment.

  "Shall I come for a walk with you tonight when I've
put the children to bed?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, you wait for me down by the stile, and I'll
come when I'm ready."

  He waited under the stars, sitting on the stile, and
the hedges with their ripening blackberries were high on each side
of him. From the earth rose rich scents of the night, and the air
was soft and still. His heart was beating madly. He could not
understand anything of what happened to him. He associated passion
with cries and tears and vehemence, and there was nothing of this
in Sally; but he did not know what else but passion could have
caused her to give herself. But passion for him? He would not have
been surprised if she had fallen to her cousin, Peter Gann, tall,
spare, and straight, with his sunburned face and long, easy stride.
Philip wondered what she saw in him. He did not know if she loved
him as he reckoned love. And yet? He was convinced of her purity.
He had a vague inkling that many things had combined, things that
she felt though was unconscious of, the intoxication of the air and
the hops and the night, the healthy instincts of the natural woman,
a tenderness that overflowed, and an affection that had in it
something maternal and something sisterly; and she gave all she had
to give because her heart was full of charity.

  He heard a step on the road, and a figure came out
of the darkness.

  "Sally," he murmured.

  She stopped and came to the stile, and with her came
sweet, clean odours of the country-side. She seemed to carry with
her scents of the new-mown hay, and the savour of ripe hops, and
the freshness of young grass. Her lips were soft and full against
his, and her lovely, strong body was firm within his arms.

  "Milk and honey," he said. "You're like milk and
honey."

  He made her close her eyes and kissed her eyelids,
first one and then the other. Her arm, strong and muscular, was
bare to the elbow; he passed his hand over it and wondered at its
beauty; it gleamed in the darkness; she had the skin that Rubens
painted, astonishingly fair and transparent, and on one side were
little golden hairs. It was the arm of a Saxon goddess; but no
immortal had that exquisite, homely naturalness; and Philip thought
of a cottage garden with the dear flowers which bloom in all men's
hearts, of the hollyhock and the red and white rose which is called
York and Lancaster, and of love – in-a-mist and Sweet William, and
honeysuckle, larkspur, and London Pride.

  "How can you care for me?" he said. "I'm
insignificant and crippled and ordinary and ugly."

  She took his face in both her hands and kissed his
lips.

  "You're an old silly, that's what you are," she
said.

  When the hops were picked, Philip with the news in
his pocket that he had got the appointment as assistant
house-physician at St. Luke's, accompanied the Athelnys back to
London. He took modest rooms in Westminster and at the beginning of
October entered upon his duties. The work was interesting and
varied; every day he learned something new; he felt himself of some
consequence; and he saw a good deal of Sally. He found life
uncommonly pleasant. He was free about six, except on the days on
which he had out-patients, and then he went to the shop at which
Sally worked to meet her when she came out. There were several
young men, who hung about opposite the `trade entrance' or a little
further along, at the first corner; and the girls, coming out two
and two or in little groups, nudged one another and giggled as they
recognised them. Sally in her plain black dress looked very
different from the country lass who had picked hops side by side
with him. She walked away from the shop quickly, but she slackened
her pace when they met, and greeted him with her quiet smile. They
walked together through the busy street. He talked to her of his
work at the hospital, and she told him what she had been doing in
the shop that day. He came to know the names of the girls she
worked with. He found that Sally had a restrained, but keen, sense
of the ridiculous, and she made remarks about the girls or the men
who were set over them which amused him by their unexpected
drollery. She had a way of saying a thing which was very
characteristic, quite gravely, as though there were nothing funny
in it at all, and yet it was so sharp-sighted that Philip broke
into delighted laughter. Then she would give him a little glance in
which the smiling eyes showed she was not unaware of her own
humour. They met with a handshake and parted as formally. Once
Philip asked her to come and have tea with him in his rooms, but
she refused.