Sally Bishop: A Romance

by E. Temple Thurston

"Well then, as soon as I get the car cleaned this afternoon, I'm going to have some rattin'. Here—put 'em in the 'all—here."

The gardener struggled obediently. The chauffeur did most of the looking on and practically all the talking.

From the mouths of babes and sucklings and from the lips of hired servants one gets wisdom in the one case and information in the other. All that the chauffeur had stated was quite true. Some five days before—and we have now three years behind us since that night when Sally Bishop tottered into Traill's arms—Mrs. Durlacher had received a letter from her brother, of whom she had seen nothing for almost six months, saying that he thought of going down to Apsley for the day. "But I make sure first," his letter concluded, "that the field is cleared. Down there, as you know, I prefer to be the only starter."

She had written in reply that she had only been down to Apsley once that year herself and, furthermore, on the day he mentioned, the place would be as deserted of human beings as London is in the heart of July—meaning thereby that any place is a wilderness which is empty of one's self and one's associates. That she had written by return of post; then, two days later, her mind had caught an impression—a wandering insect that the flimsy web of a spider clutches by chance. He had gone down to Apsley before this, many a time. She knew that he had a lingering fondness for the place which no amount of gluttony of Bohemianism could ever wipe out. But he had never taken these precautions before. He had chanced his luck; if he had found people there, then he had forced a retreat as soon as possible. But now he was going out of his way—writing a letter, an action foreign to the whole of his nature—to ensure that he should be alone.

The circumstance—for circumstance there must be, just as there is the puff of wind that drifts the wandering insect to the spider's web—that brought the impression to her mind, was the brief report of a cross-examination in the divorce courts, conducted by J.H. Traill. She knew that in the last two years he had, in a desultory way, been gleaning briefs from the great field where others reaped. That had stood for little in her mind; for though she had always realized that in temperament and intellect he would make an excellent barrister, she had never believed that he would throw aside the Bohemian side of his nature sufficiently to gain ambition. Now, in this stray report, she beheld between the lines the successful man. His cross-examination had won the case, for his side. Its ability was undoubted, even to her untutored mind, and from this, in that indirect method—taking no heed of the straight line—by which women come leaping to their admirable conclusions, she received the impression that when Traill came down to Apsley, he would not come alone.

It is scarcely possible to see how this is arrived at; yet, to the mind of a woman, it is simple enough. Her brother had, after all these years, breasted his way out of the slow-moving tide of mental indifference, into the rapid current of ambition. When a man does that, her intuition prompted her to know that it is more than likely that he brings a woman with him. It is always possible for a woman to recognize—apart from her own identity—that her sex is an encumbrance to most men which they cannot easily shake off. Witness the generous criticism of a woman upon any husband but her own. Combine with this intuitive knowledge the fact—hitherto unrecorded, even by Traill to Sally—that when he handed over Apsley Manor to his sister and took her ready money in exchange, Traill had made her sign a document granting him the right to repurchase possession with the same amount at any time that it might please him, and you have the apprehension of the woman who knows that possession constitutes but few points of the law when there is ink and parchment to nullify the whole transaction.

Jack, with a woman at his heels; a woman, moreover, whom he had probably brought with him out of that dark abyss of the past; might quite easily be a crushing blow to all her social power. Five thousand pounds perhaps would be a difficult sum for him to raise—certainly to raise immediately—but she had the proof before her that he was striding into eminence and, as has been mentioned before in this chapter, England is the only country in Europe which is a safe harbour for the Jews.

So then she leapt to the conclusion. He was bringing a woman with him to see the place. She pictured the creature vividly in her mind—a woman with a large hat, red lips, a woman with a bold figure who knew how to dress it brazenly, with eyes that danced to the whip of his remarks; a woman who as mistress of Apsley, would make it impossible for her ever to go near the place again. There was only one way to meet the situation—a situation it had definitely become in the sudden workings of her mind—and that was face to face, at Apsley, in possession, with the servants at her command and the most gracious of speeches on her lips. Tramping through the house alone, that woman would be assigning rooms to their different owners, as if she were already in possession; but with Mrs. Durlacher, the perfect artist, as Jack had called her—she laughed unfeelingly when that phrase came back to her mind—with herself at the woman's heels, telling her what they did with this room and how in the hunting season they used that, there would be little scope for exhibition of the proprietary sentiment and, whoever the person might be, Mrs. Durlacher guaranteed she should not shine on that occasion before her brother.

For that day, then, she had cancelled all her engagements. The opening of the bazaar, a function at which she had felt it her duty to be present, she crossed out of her book. From the dinner, to which she and her husband had been asked on the evening previous to Traill's visit to Apsley, she wrote and excused herself, saying she had been called out of Town; and on the next morning she had ordered the car to be round at the house in Sloane Street punctually at a quarter to ten.

"Can't see why you have to give up the dinner and drive me out of it as well because you have to go down to Apsley to-morrow," her husband had said when she had written to her hostess excusing their presence at dinner.