The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett (carter reed txt) 📕

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 tonight, 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.