The heat from his dry fingers was warming her arm. She wanted to move, but she could not have withdrawn her arm without appearing impatient. For a similar reason she would not avert her glance. A deepening flush increased the lustre of her immature loveliness as she bent over him. But though it was so close he did not feel that radiance. He had long outlived a susceptibility to the strange influences of youth and beauty.
“Teaching!” he muttered. “Nay, nay! I canna’ allow that.”
Then his white beard rose at the tip as he looked up at the ceiling above his head, reflectively.
“You understand me?” he questioned finally.
She nodded again; he loosed her arm, and she turned away. She could not have spoken. Glittering tears enriched her eyes. She was saddened into a profound and sudden grief by the ridiculousness of the scene. She had youth, physical perfection; she brimmed with energy, with the sense of vital power; all existence lay before her; when she put her lips together she felt capable of outvying no matter whom in fortitude of resolution. She had always hated the shop. She did not understand how her mother and Constance could bring themselves to be deferential and flattering to every customer that entered. No, she did not understand it; but her mother (though a proud woman) and Constance seemed to practise such behaviour so naturally, so unquestioningly, that she had never imparted to either of them her feelings; she guessed that she would not be comprehended. But long ago she had decided that she would never “go into the shop.” She knew that she would be expected to do something, and she had fixed on teaching as the one possibility. These decisions had formed part of her inner life for years past. She had not mentioned them, being secretive and scarcely anxious for unpleasantness. But she had been slowly preparing herself to mention them. The extraordinary announcement that she was to leave school at the same time as Constance had taken her unawares, before the preparations ripening in her mind were complete—before, as it were, she had girded up her loins for the fray. She had been caught unready, and the opposing forces had obtained the advantage of her. But did they suppose she was beaten?
No argument from her mother! No hearing, even! Just a curt and haughty “Let me hear no more of this”! And so the great desire of her life, nourished year after year in her inmost bosom, was to be flouted and sacrificed with a word! Her mother did not appear ridiculous in the affair, for her mother was a genuine power, commanding by turns genuine love and genuine hate, and always, till then, obedience and the respect of reason. It was her father who appeared tragically ridiculous; and, in turn, the whole movement against her grew grotesque in its absurdity. Here was this antique wreck, helpless, useless, powerless—merely pathetic—actually thinking that he had only to mumble in order to make her “understand”! He knew nothing; he perceived nothing; he was a ferocious egoist, like most bedridden invalids, out of touch with life—and he thought himself justified in making destinies, and capable of making them! Sophia could not, perhaps, define the feelings which overwhelmed her; but she was conscious of their tendency. They aged her, by years. They aged her so that, in a kind of momentary ecstasy of insight, she felt older than her father himself.
“You will be a good girl,” he said. “I’m sure o’ that.”
It was too painful. The grotesqueness of her father’s complacency humiliated her past bearing. She was humiliated, not for herself, but for him. Singular creature! She ran out of the room.
Fortunately Constance was passing in the corridor, otherwise Sophia had been found guilty of a great breach of duty.
“Go to father,” she whispered hysterically to Constance, and fled upwards to the second floor.
IV
At supper, with her red, downcast eyes, she had returned to sheer girlishness again, overawed by her mother. The meal had an unusual aspect. Mr. Povey, safe from the dentist’s, but having lost two teeth in two days, was being fed on “slops”—bread and milk, to wit; he sat near the fire. The others had cold pork, half a cold apple-pie, and cheese; but Sophia only pretended to eat; each time she tried to swallow, the tears came into her eyes, and her throat shut itself up. Mrs. Baines and Constance had a too careful air of eating just as usual. Mrs. Baines’s handsome ringlets dominated the table under the gas.
“I’m not so set up with my pastry today,” observed Mrs. Baines, critically munching a fragment of pie-crust.
She rang a little hand-bell. Maggie appeared from the cave. She wore a plain white bib-less apron, but no cap.
“Maggie, will you have some pie?”
“Yes, if you can spare it, ma’am.”
This was Maggie’s customary answer to offers of food.
“We can always spare it, Maggie,” said her mistress, as usual. “Sophia, if you aren’t going to use that plate, give it to me.”
Maggie disappeared with liberal pie.
Mrs. Baines then talked to Mr. Povey about his condition, and in particular as to the need for precautions against taking cold in the bereaved gum. She was a brave and determined woman; from start to finish she behaved as though nothing whatever in the household except her pastry and Mr. Povey had deviated that day from the normal. She kissed Constance and Sophia with the most exact equality, and called them “my chucks” when they went up to bed.
Constance, excellent kind heart, tried to imitate her mother’s tactics as the girls undressed in their room. She thought she could not do better than ignore Sophia’s deplorable state.
“Mother’s new dress is quite finished, and she’s going to wear it on Sunday,” said she, blandly.
“If you say another word I’ll scratch your eyes
