Sally Bishop | Page 6

little then, so
long as you can secure a peaceful oblivion.
So, in the face of others who turned back, she mounted the stairway on
to the roof of the 'bus. There she was alone, and, pulling the tarpaulin
covering around her, she seated herself on the little bench farthest from

the driver. The little bell tinkled twice, viciously--all drivers and
conductors are made vicious by a steady rain--and they moved out into
the swim of the traffic, as a steamer puts out from its pier.
On bright evenings it was the most enjoyable part of the journey home,
this ride from Piccadilly Circus to Hammersmith. From there onwards
in the tram to Kew Bridge, it became uninteresting. The shops were not
so bright; the people not so well dressed. It always gave her a certain
amount of quaint amusement to envy the ladies in their carriages and
motor-cars. The envy was not malicious. You would have found no
socialistic tendencies in her. In her mind, utterly untutored in the sense
of logic, she found birth to be a full and sufficient reason for possession.
But there was always alive in her consciousness the orderly desire to
also be a possessor herself. It never led her actually into a definite
discontent with her own conditions of life, irksome, wearying,
exhausting though she found them to be. But subconsciously within her
was the feeling that she was not really meant to be denied the joy of
luxuries. That instinct showed itself in many little ways. She was
sometimes extravagant--bought a silk petticoat when a cotton one
would have done just as well, but, oh heavens! it was cheap! You
would scarcely have thought it possible to buy silk petticoats at the
price. And no doubt the appearance of the silk was only superficial. But
it gave her a great deal of pleasure. When any lady stepped down from
her carriage to go into one of those West End shops, Sally always
noticed the petticoat that she wore. Women will--men too, perhaps.
But on this dismal evening, when whenever she lifted her head the fine
rain sprayed upon her face, there was no pleasure to be found in
watching the people in the streets below. Carriages were huddled up in
line upon the stands and the coachmen shivered miserably on their
seats, the rain dripping in steady drops from the brims of their hats into
the laps of their mackintoshes. So she kept her head down, and when
she heard footsteps mounting the stairway, approaching her, she held
out the three coppers for her fare without looking up. When her mind,
anticipating the answering ring of the conductor's ticket-puncher,
realized the mistake, she raised her head, then twisted back, electrically,
as though some current had been passed through her body. Seated on

the bench at the other side of the passage-way, was the man whom she
had found in King Street outside the premises of Bonsfield & Co.
Her first thought was to get off the 'bus. She made a preparatory
movement, leaning forward with her hand upon the back of the seat in
front of her. Possibly the man saw it and had no desire to be foiled a
second time. Whatever may have been his purpose, he moved nearer to
her and held out the umbrella with which he was sheltering himself.
"You'd better let me lend you an umbrella--hadn't you?" he said.
There is a quality of voice that commands. It neither considers nor
admits of refusal. He had it. Women of strong personality it irritates;
women with no personality it affrights; but the women who are women
obey--with reluctance probably, struggling against it, but in the end
they obey. There is, again, a quality of voice that hall-marks the man of
birth. Long years of careful preservation of the breed have refined it
down. It may cloak a mind that is vicious to a thought; but there is a
ring in it--a ring of true metal, well tried in the furnace. He had that also.
From him, dressed none too carefully, it sounded almost misplaced and
therefore was the more noticeable. The effect of it upon her was
obvious. Instead of taking his suggestion as an insult, which
undoubtedly she would have done had the offer been made in any other
type of voice, Sally checked the offended toss of the head, restrained
the contemptuous flash of eye, and merely said, "No, thank you." She
said it coldly. There was no warmth of encouragement, either in her
tone of voice or the unrecognizing eye which she turned upon him
without trace of sympathy.
"Isn't that rather foolish?" he suggested. "You'll get wet through. How
far are you going?"
"Hammersmith."
He had asked the question with such apparent inconsequence that the