Sally on the Rocks, page 23
Robert Kantyre made no answer; he had turned his face to the wall.
“Oh, just whimsies!” said the good woman indignantly. “You’ll catch it when I tell on you. She’ll give it you proper, Miss Sally will!”
chapter xxiv
“How fond you are of The Mountain!”
“There, Miss Sally,” pointed out Mrs. Gillet next day, “I said as I’d tell on him, wasting good stuff shameful. No supper last night, and scarce tasted his breakfast this morning!”
Sally thought the patient looked paler than usual. “Don’t you feel so well?” she asked anxiously.
He avoided her eyes. “I am quite well, thank you.”
“Then why didn’t you eat your meals?”
“Because I get sick of being stuffed like—a capon,” he said ungraciously. “It’s eat, eat all day and half the night. A fellow has got to put his foot down somewhere.”
“Never mind your foot,” retorted Sally, “it’s the food you’ve got to put down. Now you are going to have a bowl of bread-and-milk for being so tiresome.”
If there was one thing he abhorred it was bread-and-milk, but his tyrant stood over him till it had all disappeared.
“Now own you feel better,” she said, laughing, and smoothing the bed-clothes.
But Robert showed more than a hint of temper. “I feel a jolly sight worse,” he growled; “everything is beastly, and, please, I would like to be left alone.”
Sally opened her eyes very wide, and started with amazement. “Do you mean you want me to leave you alone, to go? Not to come?”
She felt sore and angry. Here was gratitude! Here was logic! One day hating her out of his sight, the next unable to bear her within it! Of course it was the sick, irresponsible child who spoke, and it was obvious from the tumbled condition of the clothes that he had had a bad night; but she had never expected him to turn on her like this. Indeed, it gave her almost a shock. Could one never count on a man?
He turned his face from her, staring at the whitewashed wall. “I don’t want anybody to make a martyr of themselves out of good-nature and charity,” he said stiffly. “I have no right to take you away from—from more congenial company.”
He remembered with a sick, jealous heart that Mr. Bingley was occupied from nine to four, and that it was between these hours he saw most of Sally. Very kind of her to kill time with him like that!
“Oh, the other company can wait,” said Sally, puzzled. She had not been able to spend much of the previous day with him, and patients got a little exacting.
“Very good of it, I’m sure,” snorted Robert, “but I am the last person in the world to deprive another man of his rights.”
He looked at her left hand. The engagement finger was ringless. Did that mean that Mr. Bingley had not yet had time to get a ring? He would probably send to town.
“Another man!” echoed Sally; “what other man?”
He had been about to say “that Bingley fellow,” but said instead, in a sulky voice, “I mean Mr. Bingley of the bank, of course. I am sure I congratulate you both and wish you every happiness.”
Sally was taken aback. “You don’t sound very congratulatory,” she managed to say lightly, “but as there happens to be some mistake, that does not matter.”
His eyes grew eager and hopeful. “Do you mean you are not engaged to the fellow?”
“Certainly not,” said Sally, with the more emphasis that she had every hope of being so very shortly. Mr. Bingley was advancing very close to the flame these days; he was already more than a trifle scorched.
“I’m glad,” said Robert at last; “I could not have borne that.” Then he remembered, and flushing, added quickly, “I mean, of course, he’s not half good enough for you. Pompous ass!”
“A kind ass,” Sally felt compelled to say of her future husband.
“Oh, then I am merely being premature?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
He lay very still, and then he changed the subject of his own accord. “You have the paper, I see. Any news?”
Sally started, and her face grew very grave. She laid her hand on his for a moment, then she said:
“Bad news—for you.”
“The boy—Cecil is in the casualty list?”
“Second Lieutenant C. K. Kantyre, Canadian Forces, killed.”
“Invaluable, wanted, and so taken,” he said rather bitterly, “while I lie here a useless log, and an outcast. His is the luck. Asphyxiated—my God!”
He was reading with horror of the damnable gases employed.
“But the road to Calais held,” said Sally, “and the world is ringing with the undying fame of our grand Canadian Force.”
“My poor uncle! This will about finish him. First son, and then grandson; they worthily lost in battle, and a disgraced man the sole Kantyre left to carry on the family tradition. Oh, to have fought again! He may burn the letter, but I must write just the same. Might I have those things off the shelf?”
The letter was written with some difficulty, and Sally promised to post it. She was glad he did not return to the matter of Mr. Bingley. She did not care for lying for its own sake, and he pushed her rather close to falsehood.
By the time she was engaged to Mr. Bingley, and her future happily secured, Robert Kantyre would be up and about, quite strong and well again, and she would have him off her mind. At present he was very much on it.
“War nerves, that’s what’s the matter with me,” she decided. “After all, the war is bound to come into our lives directly or indirectly. Robert Kantyre the last Kantyre, I the last Lunton, but with what different traditions behind us! He must be noble for the sake of them, but I have nothing to make myself uncomfortable for, thank goodness!”
The next time she saw Robert he was much better. Soon he was allowed up, and then out. In an incredibly short time he returned to work of his own accord, and seemed none the worse for it. It was difficult to believe he had been ill. He had changed though, in other ways, become a little shy of Sally, sometimes even brusque, though his eyes held their welcome.
In the evenings he would climb The Mountain, and he usually found Sally there. They would sit on the boulders and stare down at the sea. Sometimes they would talk a great deal, at other times they would sit there in complete silence. At all times the name of Mr. Bingley was most carefully avoided between them.
He had decided to go out to Canada before long. He did not say why he still remained in Little Crampton, or mention why he had come to love The Mountain he had once thought so ridiculous, and the sea lying like a distant mirage at their feet. He remembered he was outcast and penniless, and that some things must be for ever set beyond his reach. He would reach his heart’s desire when he reached that sea.
“I wish I wasn’t the last Kantyre,” he burst out one evening.
“Let’s hope you are not the last,” she returned; “that would be a misfortune indeed. I like to think of you building up your life afresh in the Colonies, making good, and of some splendid woman, such as there are out there, helping you, and of sons to consolidate what you have begun.”
The picture did not seem to appeal to Robert. He plucked at the short grass, his eyes very intent on his task.
“I shall never marry now,” he said with finality in his tones.
Sally laughed. “Oh, thirty-five is not the end of everything,” she said. “When you have the home ready I feel sure Fate will see to it that the woman will be ready too. Of course you must marry, that is absolutely the duty of the last, and a big responsibility. You must carry on worthily so that the Kantyre family goes on. Your mistake will be quickly forgotten, and the country will have reason to be proud of the next generation.”
“No,” he said with determination, “that is absolutely finished.”
Sally felt a tide of anger and regret sweep over her as she looked down on the magnificent specimen lying at her feet.
“Ridiculous! It would be absurd, wrong! I am the last Lunton, but I should be sorry to think there would be no more of the race, in blood if not in name.”
She broke off abruptly, her face flooded with scarlet. She could have cut out her tongue for her rash speech. That race! Bingley-Luntons! The Luntons had been bad, but the Bingleys would be ridiculous. The Luntons had been wicked but handsome; the Bingleys would be frightful. No, hers would be no fine progeny to do fine things, useful things, to make her proud. Her sense of humour told her she was being ridiculous, but some other sense made her loathe this unborn generation.
“How much one forgets; how serious it all is, after all,” she thought, and groaned. “Fat, bald, pasty!”
She conjured up an awful mental vision. She saw little girls with pigtails so tight that their tiny eyes were always watering; little boys filling their suits so fully that the buttons wore a weary look. They stood in rows gazing awestruck at the sacred bank.
She knew this was absurd, really funny, but somehow she could not laugh.
Robert did not look at her, but his figure had stiffened a little. She wondered if his thoughts had travelled the same road as hers, and hoped not. It made her feel ashamed. She jumped suddenly to her feet and shook out her skirts.
“Well, I must be going, or Lovey will be cross, or at least as cross as an angel can be. Good night, Mr. Kantyre. By the bye, I shan’t be able to come here tomorrow.”
“No,” he said slowly, “I suppose not. I quite understand.” He knew there was a small dinner-party to be given in honour of the return of a wounded Little Cramptonian from the Front, and that Sally and Mr. Bingley were among the guests. “It is very good of you to come at all, Miss Lunton.”
“Oh, what rot!” said Sally brusquely.
“I want to thank you,” he went on with some difficulty, “for all you have done for me. I did not know a girl could do so much for a man. It has—it has been wonderful, more than one can talk of. I shall never forget it, wherever I may be, or whatever happens. I know our paths lie far apart, but indeed, if I may, I say—God bless you and make you happy always.” He pressed his lips to her hand.
“Oh, don’t!” she cried, and ran with all her might homewards.
Mr. Lovelady, who was in the garden, watched her flight and reproved her. “You might break your neck.”
“Serve me right if I did!” was her snappish reply.
“How fond you are of The Mountain!” he said unsuspiciously. He guessed nothing of the man who climbed up from the other side, and of what the boulders hid. “But what a cross Sally! Does your head ache?”
“It aches like the very devil!” she said curtly.
Mr. Lovelady did not reprove her. “Well, Sally,” he said, smiling, “the Scriptures say nothing of the devil aching, so I can’t refute you by text, but won’t you go and lie down?” He wondered if she was going to have influenza; her eyes looked very wild.
“Lie down be—be bothered!” was all he got for that suggestion. She seized his spade and began to dig like a fury.
The poor man pointed piteously to the devastating effect upon his bulbs. “Oh, Sally, you are digging them all up!”
She banged them down again, face downwards, most of them. “Well, I always do the wrong thing, and always shall,” she asserted; “it’s in my blood. Anyway, I hate the nasty, fat, pasty, bulgy, bulby things! So there! I shan’t have any bulbs in my garden—or roses either. I shall just grow sensible things to eat. Oh, dash everything! There—now I’ve gone through that rose-tree root! What a nuisance things are, all over the place!”
Mr. Lovelady wrested the spade from her by main force. “Oh, Sally, what an element of destruction in those slim white hands of yours!”
chapter xxv
“After all, what could mother really know? She wasn’t a man”
Mr. Bingley enjoyed the dinner-party, but he did not think much of the man from the Front, a short, ugly little man devoid of charm or conversation, and considered rather an absurd fuss was being made about him. He did full justice to the excellent dinner and the conversation of Sally, whom he took in. She not only shone, but saw to it that he shone as well. Looking round him, Mr. Bingley was quite aware that they were the only two people in the room who counted at all.
Miss Maggie was there. She had to be asked to social entertainments, otherwise they would be labelled ‘failures,’ and any trifling catastrophe would grow into a disaster. Mr. Bingley looked at her. That woman! She did not count in the least. What was she? Just a gossiping old maid of appalling plainness. When she exhibited her own particular skeleton in her one evening gown she was enough to destroy the appetites of the unaccustomed, but everyone there had got hardened by time. They knew the very number of her bones.
The conversation was scarcely brilliant, or in any way interesting. There was, however, no stiffness; all were intimates.
“Such a bridal month, May, the blossom all out!” murmured a rather sentimental person present.
“But it’s unlucky to be married in May, you know,” some one objected.
It was here that Miss Maggie came in, though the conversation was not addressed to her. “Not as unlucky as not getting married at all,” was her contribution.
Her partner was an old bachelor by the name of Joicy. “Or being married any time,” he retorted. After dinner, in the smoking-room, he told the other men he had seen one skeleton coming out of the cupboard.
Miss Maggie was equal to him. “Ah,” she said, “but you old bachelors are always so cynical.” She glanced across at Mr. Bingley and caught his eye. “Aren’t you, Mr. Bingley? Personally I always think the valuable ones get snapped up early.”
She looked round her triumphantly. Her elderly partner disappeared into his collar, and Mr. Bingley frowned.
“Do you still go up The Mountain every evening?” she asked Sally. “Such a delightful view. I suppose you know it too, Mr. Bingley? You really should go and see for yourself some evening, shouldn’t he, Sally? You’ll be quite surprised, I’m sure.”
“I’m sure I shall,” said the unconscious bank-manager, glancing down at the girl by his side with an expression that gave him away to more than one present.
Ha, ha! Miss Sally up to her old tricks! But this would be a good provision.
Sally gave a nervous little laugh. She was not enjoying herself. It seemed a long time since she had enjoyed anything. What a lot of money to spend on mere food! How dull the ‘hero’ was, though none the less a hero! The whole world seemed out of joint. Why must Miss Maggie remind her of The Mountain and all that it stood for? It frightened her a little. How complicated life was! Of course, if Mr. Bingley took to visiting it, Robert would have to cease to do so.
She gave a sharp little sigh.
“Yes, the war has spoiled everything, everything,” she heard herself saying mechanically as they all rose from the table.
Mr. Bingley frowned. Were there not other things to talk of in Little Crampton save the war?
He saw Sally home, pressed her hand at parting, and went down the road humming a little tune in a pleasant enough and musical voice. He felt very young. That woman and her ‘old bachelors’! Of course poor Joicy was an elderly bore—never been any competition for him. He ought to have got married while there was a chance of getting a presentable wife; now it was too late. Serve the old buffer right.
Mr. Bingley was not going to be a selfish uncared-for bachelor. No, no, he was quite ready to do the right and noble thing. How the others would stare at his dinner-parties and his brilliant hostess-wife! Some day at the board there would sit one fair and correct Bingley daughter, tall and slim, and three worthy Bingley sons. That was a good solid British family; neither extravagant nor parsimonious. Old Joicy was without a stake in the country, a being of no account, and no value. Up to a certain age, say forty, it was tempting and pleasant to be a bachelor, but after a certain age one merely became ridiculous or pitiable. Now the reign of the desirable bachelor should be changed for that of enviable young husband and father. Now to make the right and wise choice, and stick to it!
He opened The Book.
“Don’t marry a woman with a big chin, a big nose, or a big mouth; she won’t be malleable.”
Mr. Bingley was jarred; his dream struggled in his grasp. Mrs. Dalton had a big chin and rather a big nose, but it was Sally who had the big mouth. Finely-cut and expressive, oh yes, but still very wide, many times the size of Mr. Bingley’s own very neat little affair which was now buttoned up in consternation. Of course it was obviously better to marry a woman with one disability than a woman with two; still, he knew very well that he owed it to himself to marry a wife without any disability whatsoever. And—would Sally be malleable? Had she not expressed opinions, the wrong sort of opinions, more than once, and stuck to them?
“Don’t marry a plain woman in the hope of plain virtues. She may be just as selfish and conceited as a pretty woman without her saving grace.”
That was all right. Mr. Bingley was not going to marry a plain woman; it was the last thing he would do. He really had no use for plain people; they annoyed him. He knew it was wrong, for they were to be pitied, not blamed, but there it was—they just got on his nerves. That fat fool Boliver! Mr. Bingley credited himself with enough of the artistic temperament to be interesting, though not, of course, with enough to be in the least disreputable. No, a plain woman could not hope for a Bingley.
“Don’t ask a woman to marry you more than once. She will be sure to remind you of it at those times when you are filled with amazement inasmuch as you asked her at all.”
There was nothing to object to in that. He absolutely agreed. He preened himself a little. How could that advice apply to him? Mr. Bingley of the bank asking anyone twice! But then came the pull!
