Chapter XXI

Superficially, training is everything. The heaven-born genius comes once in a century of decades to remind us, as it were, that there is such a thing as creation; but beyond the heaven-born genius, training, on a day of superficialities, must win.

This moment, when Sally stood but a few paces within Traill's room, and looked--half-appealing, half-guardedly--at Mrs. Durlacher, the perfect woman of society--perfectly robed, perfectly mannered, perfectly painted, was a moment as superficial as one, so charged with possibilities, could be. And through that moment, over it, almost as if it were an occurrence of her daily life, Mrs. Durlacher rode as a swallow rides on an upland wind--pinions stretched straightly out--the consummate absence of effort; all the training of numberless years and numberless birds of the air in its wings.

"Dolly--this is Miss Bishop--my sister, Mrs. Durlacher." Traill stamped through the ceremony, like a man through a ploughed field.

In the minute fraction of time that followed--so short that no one in reason could call it a pause--Mrs. Durlacher had moulded a swift impression of Sally. Two facts--guide-ropes across a swinging bridge--she held to for support in her sudden calculation. Firstly, Sally's appearance--the quiet, inexpensive display of a gentle taste. The blouse, showing through the little short-waisted coat--home-made--that, seen at a glance. The hat, with its quite artistic and unobtrusive colours--self-trimmed--the frame-work a year behind the fashion. The gloves, no holes in them, but well-worn. The skirt--not badly cut, but obviously a cheap material. The person, herself--more than probably a milliner's assistant. Secondly, the fact that she was in her brother's rooms. She knew Jack's dealings with women--did not even close her eyes to them--admitted them to be human and natural so long as he refrained from tying himself up with any one of them and thereby irretrievably separating himself from her and her set. With these two facts, then, she made her ultimate deduction of Sally's identity--a milliner's assistant, with a pardonable freedom of thought in the matter of propriety--and on that deduction, she acted accordingly. Ah, but it was acting that was finished and superb!

Her manner was gracious--she was compelled to accept her brother at his word, that he would let no one in who could offend her sense of propriety--yet it was graciousness which you saw through a polished glass, but could not touch. When Sally half-ventured forward with hand tentatively lifting, she bowed first--made it plain to Sally that in such a manner introductions were taken--then generously offered her hand, palpably to ease Sally's confusion.

Dressed as she was, looking as she did, in comparison with Sally, she held all the weapons. She could play them, wield them, just as she wished. Well-frocked, looking her best, a woman is a dangerous animal; but throw her in contact with another of her sex who is but poorly clad, socially beneath her, and in training her inferior, and you may behold all the grace, all the symmetry of the cobra as it unwinds its beautiful, sinuous body before the eyes of its panic-stricken prey.

The fact that her brother had admitted Sally to the room, made Mrs. Durlacher realize that he held her in special regard. Notwithstanding that Miss Bishop called upon him at his own rooms at half-past nine at night, when all young ladies who valued their reputations would be either playing incompetent bridge in the suburban home, or going respectably with relations to a harmless piece at the theatre, she took the other fact well into consideration--gave it full weight--and all in that brief moment of a pause, realized that as yet there was no intimacy between these two.

She did not look upon women as a class--the class he mixed with--as dangerous to her brother's ultimate salvation; but coming across the individual in Sally, quiet, unobtrusive--the type that valued its own possessions, and would certainly expect substantial settlement, if not marriage itself--she felt called into action and answered the call, as only such women with her training know how.

When she had shaken hands, she leant back again with one graceful elbow, bared, upon the mantelpiece--the pose of absolute ease. Sally, who, except for the students' balls, to which Janet had sometimes taken her, had not been in the presence of people in evening dress since she left home, stood, hiding her nervousness, but not hiding the fact that it was concealed. Traill's heart warmed to her. He knew his sister through and through--guessed every thought that was taking shape in her mind. But Sally--even her presence there alone--was more or less of an enigma and, seeing her almost pathetic perturbation of manner, he paid all the attentions he roughly knew to her.

"Here--you must sit down," he said easily. "We're not going to let you rush away before you've come."

For that plural of the pronoun, Sally thanked him generously in her heart; for that also, Mrs. Durlacher smiled inwardly and saw visions of the power by which Jack would eventually win his way.

"Will you have some coffee?" he added, when she had accepted the chair he proffered. "We've just had some. Good--wasn't it, Dolly?"

"Excellent."

"Will you have some?" he repeated.

"No, thank you--well--yes,--yes, I think I will."

Even to take coffee is action--action that it is an aid to conceal.

"Some milk?"

"No, thank you--black, please."

She trusted that he would not remember that she had taken it with milk before. She always did take it with milk, but the eyes of that woman by the mantelpiece were on her, and she knew well enough how coffee ought to be taken.

All that Traill had told her of his sister, was racing wildly through her thoughts. She knew she was being criticized, knew that her position there was being looked upon in the least charitable light of all. She should never have come into the room. The fact that her voice had been heard, would have made no difference. But who thinks of such things when the moment is a goad, pricking mercilessly? Now she was there, her position could scarcely be worse. She would have given her life almost, in those first few moments, to sink into obscurity, no matter what peals of ironical laughter might ring in her ears as she vanished. But the thing was done now, and for every little attention he paid her, she thanked Traill with a full heart.

"What on earth have you got in that parcel?" he asked her, as he crushed down the saucepan of coffee to heat upon the fire.

Her cheeks reddened--flamed. It felt to her as if the eyes of his sister were lenses concentrating a burning sun upon her face.

"Oh it's nothing," she said, mastering confusion; "only something that I was taking home."

His eyes questioned her, noting the flaming cheeks while his sister studied the muscular development and forbidding features of James Brownrigg--heavy-weight champion in the fifties, whose portrait hung over the mantelpiece.

"Isn't this the type of man you'd call a bruiser?" she asked, with a pretty trace of doubtful confidence in her technical knowledge on the last word.

"That chap--Brownrigg? No. I should call him a gentleman. I'd have given a good deal to see him fight. He always allowed his man to have his chance, though there wasn't one in England he couldn't have knocked out in the first round. He used to keep that glorious left of his tucked up, as quiet as a pet spaniel under a lady's arm, till he'd given his man time to show what he was worth. Then he'd shake his shoulders, grin a bit with that ugly mouth--never with his eyes--and plant his blow, the kick of a mule, and his man curled up like a caterpillar on a hot brick. That stroke got to be known as James Brownrigg's Waiting Left. I've met him. He kept a public house up in Islington. Died about four years ago, with both fists clenched, and his left still waiting. It's quite possible he kept it waiting till he got to the gates of heaven."

Mrs. Durlacher looked up at the portrait again and then half-shuddered her graceful shoulders.

"I suppose a man can be a gentleman and look like that," she said. "But some one ought to have told him to grow his hair a little longer. As it is, it has a fatal suggestion of three years' imprisonment for assault and battery."

"Or the army," suggested Traill, with a laugh.

She took that well and laughed with him. "Yes, quite so; or the army; but they don't look so much like convicts as they used to. What do you think, Miss Bishop? Would you say, to look at him, that James Brownrigg was a gentleman?"

This, in a period of ten minutes, was the first remark that she had addressed to Sally. Coming, as it did, after that space of time, pitched on the casual note, the eyebrows gently lifted, there was a whip in it that stung across Sally's sensitive cheeks. The words in themselves, of course, were nothing. Traill, in fact, thought that this icicle of a sister of his was beginning to thaw, and looked towards Sally for her answer in encouraging expectancy.

Sally rose to her feet and crossed to the mantelpiece. The spirit in her prompted her to considered lethargy, as though the remark were as inconsequent to her as it had been to the maker; but the gentleness of her nature made it impossible for her to give insult for insult. Her steps were not slow--they were almost eager--and her lips smiled. She gave the very impression that she would have died rather than create--the apparent sense of pleasure in which she felt in being addressed at all.

For a moment she stood looking into the impassive, brutal face of James Brownrigg. Her expression was one of studiousness and consideration; yet the face of James Brownrigg was completely blurred in her vision. She had to force her eyes to see, and spur her mind to think. Then she turned, facing Mrs. Durlacher.

"I think if you're going to judge everybody by their outward appearance," she said, "you certainly might feel inclined to say that he wasn't a gentleman. But outward appearances always seem to me so terribly deceptive. I should never let myself be led away by them."

This was a declaration! Even Sally, in her own gentle way, could declare war. The perfect curve of her upper lip grew thin as she said it, like a bow that straightens itself after the arrow has sped. Traill cast a swift glance at her, comprehending that there lay some meaning behind her words, yet knowing nothing of the duel that was being fought under his very eyes.

Mrs. Durlacher smiled. She took the thrust as gracefully as she had given her own.

To the trained hand and to the practised eyes, these things can not only be done with dexterity, they can be done with ease and with style. There are many who imagine that the days of romance are over because gentlemen do no longer saunter through the salons of the rich with pointed rapiers tapping at their heels. But romance did not go out with the duel. The duel itself has never gone out. Words, looks--these are the weapons of romance now. They are sheathed in their scabbards of velvet politesse, but just as easy of drawing, just as light to flash out and tingle in the air as ever were the dainty little Toledo blades of some odd two hundred years ago.

"Jack," said Mrs. Durlacher, "you've introduced me to a diplomatist. She says what she means without telling you what she says."

Traill thought that it all alluded to the portrait of James Brownrigg--imagined that Sally agreed with him, yet did not like to contradict his sister, and he laughed with amusement at the smartness of her retort. But Sally returned to her seat, conscious that she had made an enemy. She could think of no reply that had not a lash of bitterness in it and, clinging to the dignity of silence, rather than the vigour of attack, she said nothing.

When Traill had handed her her coffee, his sister moved slowly across the room to the settle where her fur coat, scarf and gloves were lying.

"You're not going?" he asked, looking up.

"Yes, I must, my dear boy. It's getting on for ten. Harold's got some people coming in after the theatre, and I believe we've got a supper. Do you think you could get me a taxi?"

"There's not a stand here. But you can get any amount of hansoms."

"Yes, but I want to get home. You're sure to find heaps of empty ones in Piccadilly Circus just at this time. Run and see--do. I'll be putting on my coat."

Traill went--obedient. They heard him taking the stairs two at a time in the darkness. Then the door slammed.

"One of these days he'll break his neck down those stairs," said Mrs. Durlacher. "Do you live in Town, Miss Bishop?"

She ran one sentence into the other inconsequently, as if they had connection.

"Well--not exactly," said Sally. "I live in Kew."

"Oh yes--Kew--it's a very pretty place. There are some delightful old houses on the Green--the gardens side--I believe they're King's property, aren't they?"

"I know the ones you mean," said Sally; "they are very nice, but I don't live there." She added that with a smile--a generous admission that she made no pretension to what she was not. Upon Mrs. Durlacher it was wasted, as was all generosity. She had not the quality herself; understood it as little as she possessed it.

"Oh, I wasn't supposing that," she replied easily. "I was thinking that that was the only part of Kew I had noticed. I think I've only been there once or twice at the most. Have you known my brother long?"

Sally's fingers gripped tight about her little parcel. "Oh no, not so very long."

"He's a quaint, int'resting sort of person. Don't you find him so?"

To Sally, this description sounded ludicrous. The fashionable way of putting things was utterly unknown to her. To think of Traill as quaint, in the sense of the word as she understood it, seemed preposterous. She could not realize that the Society idea of quaintness is anything which does not passably imitate or become one of itself.

"Interesting--yes, I certainly think he is. This room alone would show that, wouldn't it?"

"Oh, well, I don't know so much about that. He'd have this sort of room anywhere, wherever he lived. It's the fact that he chooses to live here and slave and work that I think's uncommon--so quaint. But he'll give it up--he's bound to give it up after a time. You can't wash out what's in the blood. Do you think you can? He'll drop the Bohemian one day--it's merely a phase. I'm only just waiting, you know, to give the dinner on his coming out." She drew on her long gloves and smiled in her anticipation of the event.

None of the value of this did Sally lose--none of the intent that lay behind it. She perfectly realized that it was meant to convey a candid warning to her; that if she had pretensions, she might as well light their funeral pyre immediately, burn all her hopes and ambitions, a sacrifice before the altar of renunciation. But ambitions, she had none. With her nature, she would willingly have consented to their burning at such a command as this. What hopes she possessed, certainly, were shattered; but the flame of her passion, that was only kindled the more. Now that she realized how utterly he was beyond her reach, how immeasurably he was above her, she made silent concessions to the crying demands of her heart which she would not have dreamed of admitting to herself before.

Irretrievably he was gone now. All Janet had said, strong in truth as it may have seemed at the time, had only been based upon her extraordinary view of life in general. Some cases, perhaps, it might have applied to; it did not apply to this. Janet was utterly wrong; she was not winning him. In this chance meeting with his sister, brief though it may have been, she knew that she had lost him; arriving at which conclusion, she probably reached the most dangerous phase in the whole existence of a woman's temptations.

When Traill returned, he found them both in preparation for departure. Sally had replaced the little feather boa about her neck and one of her gloves, which she had taken off when he gave her the coffee, she was buttoning at the wrist.

"You're not going, are you?" he exclaimed.

"Yes; I must."

"But you haven't told me what you wanted to see me about yet."

"No, I know I haven't; but that must wait. I can easily write to you."

Mrs. Durlacher picked up her skirts, the silk rustling like leaves in an autumn wind. As she lowered her head in the movement, the dilation of her nostrils repressed a smile of satisfaction. "You mustn't let my going force you away," she said graciously.

"Oh, but I must go," said Sally.

Traill shrugged his shoulders. Let her have her way. When women are doing things for apparently no reason, they are the most obstinate. But at the door of the room as his sister passed out first, he caught Sally's elbow in a tense grip and for the instant held her back.

"I shall wait here for you for half an hour," he whispered.