Sally Bishop | Page 5

in all ways to the authority of convention, chastity has been
taught from the cradle--taught as a means to an end. It is mostly, if not
altogether, in the lower middle classes that you will find chastity to be
an end in itself. The destructive philosophy of education has not swept
out the gentler virtues from them. As yet they have not come under the

keen edge of its influence. For their chastity, then, they are interesting;
whereas the manufactured virtue of the upper middle class is like the
hothouse strawberry--forced in May--a tempting fruit to lay upon a dish,
but tasteless, as is wool, between the teeth.
It is this virtue--this real quality, breeding self-respect--that you will
find in the mind of Sally Bishop. Here is no strategy of movement, no
well-considered campaign. She quickens her steps, and her heart
thumps within her, because that virtue, which is her priceless
possession, is in danger of being assailed. In the very soul of her is the
desire to escape. There are thousands of women whom education has
nursed who set the pace as well, whenever a man starts in pursuit; but
the course of their flight leads straight to the altar and they run neither
too fast, nor too slow, lest by any chance the hunter should weary of the
chase. But here you have none of this. The woman is obeying instincts
that Nature gave her with her soul. Sally Bishop is pure--the chaste
woman. Where men most look for her, she is hard to find.
This journey from King Street to Piccadilly Circus was performed
every evening. In Piccadilly she found the 'bus that took her to
Hammersmith. It was a pleasurable little journey; she looked forward
to it. It amused her to dally on the way, stopping to look in the shop
windows. The bright lights lifted her spirits. After a time she had
become acquainted with the prints that hung in the print-seller's
windows in Garrick Street; they always stayed there long enough to
grow familiar. There was also a jeweller's shop in Coventry Street; it
sold second-hand silver--old Sheffield-plated candle-sticks, cream
ewers and sugar bowls; George III. silver tea-services, and
quaint-shaped wine strainers--they stood there in the window in
profusion. In themselves, for the daintiness of their design, or the value
of their antiquity, they did not interest her. She liked the look of them
glittering there; they conveyed a sense of the embarrassment of riches
which touched her ideas of romance. It was the tray of old-fashioned
ornaments, brooches in the design of flimsy baskets of flowers, each
flower represented by a different coloured stone--old signet rings, old
seals, quaint little figures of men and beasts in silver, sometimes in
gold; these were the things that caught her fancy; she pored over them,

choosing, every time she passed, some fresh trinket that she would like
to possess.
But on this evening in November she did not stop. At the print-seller's
in Garrick Street, she hesitated, but one glance over her shoulder sped
her onwards. The apprehension most prominent in her mind was that if
she continually looked behind her, the man might fancy she was
encouraging him. Once having consciously decided that, she turned no
more until she had reached the protection of the fountain in the middle
of the Circus. There she stopped and glanced back. He was gone. In all
the hundreds of human beings who mingled and churned like a swarm
of ants upon an ant-hill, he was nowhere to be seen. With a genuine
sigh of relief, she crossed over to the Piccadilly side and walked beside
a Hammersmith 'bus, as if slowed gradually down to the regulated
place where the conditions of traffic permit vehicles to collect their
passengers.
A little crowd of people, like flies upon fallen fruit, clung about the
steps of the 'bus as it moved towards its resting-place. She joined in
with them, jostled along the pavement by their efforts to secure an
advantageous position by the steps. When finally it did come to a
standstill and she had reached the conductor's platform, the
announcement, "Outside only," met her attempt to force a passage
within.
It was still raining--persistent mist of rain that steals a way through any
clothing. Should she wait? She had no umbrella. But she had known
what it was to wait on such occasions before. The next 'bus would
probably be full up inside, and the next, and the next. Twenty minutes
might well be wasted before she could start on her way home, and you
have little energy left within you to care about a wetting, when from
nine o'clock in the morning until six, when it is dark, you have been
beating the keys of a typewriter. Your mind demands but