Sally Bishop Part 19

"That'll never be," she said quietly--"never--never. I know it right away in here." She laid her hand upon her chest.

"But why?" Sally repeated petulantly, as though wishing it could alter the truth.

"Because I suppose I really want to do the fighting, however much I may think differently, when I see you and hear you talk, when your heart's going and there's all the meaning of it in your eyes. I've got to fight, and away inside me I want to. I suppose that's the compensation."

Then Mrs. Hewson brought the key, saying words over it--an incantation of half-hearted rebuke--and following Sally with her eyes as she walked out of the kitchen.

CHAPTER XIII

There is Bohemianism still--there will always be Bohemianism. But the present will never wear the same air of fantasy as the past. It is the same with all things. Every circ.u.mstance take its colour from the immediate surroundings, and you cannot expect to get the same light-hearted Bohemianism in the midst of an orderly, church-going, police-conducted district. What hope is there for a troubadour nowadays with the latest regulations upon street noises? We must dispense with troubadours and get our Romance elsewhere. So everything has to suit itself to its own time--Bohemianism with the rest.

One essential quality there is, however, in this Vie de Boheme that will never alter. It demands that those who live it, shall be careless of the morrow; it expects an absolute liberty of soul, let manners and conditions be what they may. You will still find that; you will always find it. Certain souls must be free and they always seek out the spots of the earth where social restrictions, social exigencies, are least of all in force. They live where life is freest; they eat their meals where it is not compulsory for them to be on their best behaviour. You cannot expect the Bohemian to be a slave, and to customs least of all. The only well-ruled line that he can follow is the customary prompting of his own instinct.

Such a spot--an ideal corner of all unconventionality--is Soho. They say that Greek Street is the worst street in London. You must say something is the worst, to show how bad and good things are. Then why not Greek Street? But for no definite reason. It is really no worse than many another and, with a few more lamps to light its darkened pathways, it might earn that reputation for respectability which would endear it to the most exacting of British matrons. All the doubtful deeds are only done in dark streets. Light is the sole remedy; you will see crime retreating before it like some crawling vermin that dares not show its face. Therefore, why blame Greek Street and those who live there? The county council are to blame that they do not cleanse the place with light.

Bad or good, though--whatever it may be--it is part of Soho; the refuge of Bohemianism to which district Traill brought Sally Bishop on that Thursday evening.

Outside the restaurant in Old Compton Street with its latticed windows, and its almost spotless white lintels and the low-roofed doorway, a barrel-organ was twirling tunes to which two or three girls danced a clumsy step. In the doorway itself, at the top of the precipitous flight of stairs that led immediately to the room below, stood Madame, the proprietor's wife--ready to welcome all who came.

Her round, French, good-natured face beamed when she saw Traill, and her little brown eyes gleamed with genuine approval as they swept over Sally.

"Bon soir, Monsieur; bon soir, Madame."

Every lady is Madame, however many during the week Monsieur may choose to bring, and she makes a romance of every single one of them.

Her own days are memories, but, being French, she still lives in the romance of others.

"Good evening," said Traill; "how's the business--good?"

"Mais, oui, Monsieur; les affaires vont a.s.sez bien."

They climbed down the narrow little staircase, made narrower and almost impa.s.sable by the pots of evergreens placed for decoration upon some of the steps. There, in the flood of light, the little room papered in gold, hung with pictures advertising the place, all done by needy customers--mostly French--who had given them to the establishment for a few francs, or out of the fullness of their hearts, they were greeted in welcome again by Berthe, the little waitress.

"Bon soir, Monsieur; bon soir, Madame."

It was like the cuckoo hopping from the clock to sing his note at every quarter.

There were little tables in every corner, all covered with virgin-white cloths and, in the centre of each, a vase full of chrysanthemums. It was all in order--all spick and span--French, every touch of it.

"Ou voulez-vous a.s.seoir, Monsieur? Sous l'escalier?"

Under the staircase by which they had just descended, two tiny tables had been placed--babies, thrust into the corner, looking plaintively for company. An Englishman would probably have made a cupboard of the place for odds and ends.

Traill consulted Sally. She did not mind. Anything in her mood would have pleased her. The atmosphere of all that was foreign in everything around her had lifted her above ordinary considerations.

Under the stairs, then, they sat, Traill's head almost touching the sloping roof above him.

"Well, what do you think you'd like to have?" he asked. And Berthe stood by, patiently waiting, content to study the little details that made up Madame's costume; her eyes were lit with the same romantic interest which the proprietress had shown on their arrival.

"I don't mind."

"Well, will you have escargots?"

"What's that?"

"Snails."

Sally shook her head with a grimace and smiled. Berthe t.i.ttered with laughter.

"Monsieur is funning, he would not eat escargots himself." She smiled at Sally, the smile that opens confidence and invites you within; no grudging of it between the teeth, ill-favoured and starved, as we do the thing in this country.

"However did you find this lovely little place?" asked Sally, when the girl had gone with Traill's order.

"Deux consommes, deux!" shouted Berthe through a door at the end of the room. "Deux consommes, deux!" came the distant echo from the kitchen.

Traill leant his elbow on the table and looked at her--let his eyes rest on every feature, last of all her eyes, and held them.

"By not looking for it," he said. "By pa.s.sing it one evening at about the time for dinner, seeing the new-old bottle-panes in the leaded windows, looking down these stairs and getting a rough-drawn impression that the place was cosy, a rough-drawn impression in which the bottle-panes suggested that they had some sort of ideas in their heads, these people--and the little pots of evergreen down the stairs with the ugly red frilled paper round them that made you think that they had known the country--lived in it. All that blurred together in a mazy idea that it was sure to be cosy. Then I came downstairs, saw all these little tables with their vases of flowers, the spotless serviettes sticking up like white horns out of the wine-gla.s.ses, saw the beaming face of Berthe over there; was greeted with, 'Bon soir, Monsieur;' and so I dined. That's a year and a half ago. I've had my dinner, on an average, three times a week here ever since."

"It must be nice to be a man," said Sally.

"Why?"

"Oh, I don't know; to dine where you like, find out these quaint little places, never to have to think of the impression you give by what you do."

He leaned back in his chair, and smiled at her. "We have to think just as much as you do, in most of the things we really want to do.

I didn't want particularly to dine in such a place as this, that evening I came here. It seemed no liberty to me. There are things I might give the world to be able to do, yet haven't the liberty.

What do you want with liberty--the liberty to come and go wherever you please?" He smiled at her again. "What good would it do you?"

Sally wondered what Miss Hallard would say if she were to hear this.

She wondered what she would have said herself, had the expression of such ideas come from Mr. Arthur. There was no doubt that she would have repudiated them with vehement denial. With Traill she said nothing--felt that he was right. Why was that? She could not tell.

It was beyond her power to a.n.a.lyze the situation as closely as it required. It was beyond her ability to realize that a man may say he is the son of G.o.d, if it be that he has behind the words the power of the personality of a Jesus Christ. Traill had the personality--the dominance behind him in what he said--that was all. He might have told her that women were only the chattels of men, born to slavery, the property of their masters, and she would not have denied it to him.

"What in the name of G.o.d are women?" he had said more than once in his life--"Is one of them ever worth all the while?" And he thought he had meant it. To a great extent, he acted up to it as well. These are the questions that men of the type put to themselves over and over again--but there are Cleopatras to mate with Antonys, Helens of Troy and Lady Hamiltons who can snap their fingers in the face of such odds and win. But Sally was not of this blood. She is the lamb that goes willing to the slaughter, the woman, whom a man like Traill, when once he holds the trembling threads of her affection, can drive to the uttermost.

"Then you give no liberty to a woman?" she said.

"No--not the liberty she talks about. Not the idea of liberty that she gets from these suffragist pamphleteers."

"I'd like you to meet my friend, Miss Hallard," said Sally.

"Why? Who's Miss Hallard? What is she?"

"She's an artist--I share rooms with her."

"Why would you like me to meet her?"