The Old Wives' Tale. Arnold Bennett
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 Povey’s strange summons had withdrawn Constance from the corner, Mr.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