Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham.mobi [237]
“Mother says, shall she come and have tea with you?” she asked. “I can give the children their tea.”
“Tell your mother that we shall be proud and honored if she will favor us with her company,” said Athelny.
It seemed to Philip that he could never say anything without an oratorical flourish.
“Then I’ll lay for her,” said Sally.
She came back again in a moment with a tray on which were a cottage loaf, a slab of butter, and a jar of strawberry jam. While she placed the things on the table her father chaffed her. He said it was quite time she was walking out; he told Philip that she was very proud, and would have nothing to do with aspirants to that honor who lined up at the door, two by two, outside the Sunday school and craved the honor of escorting her home.
“You do talk, father,” said Sally, with her slow, good-natured smile.
“You wouldn’t think to look at her that a tailor’s assistant has enlisted in the army because she would not say how d’you do to him, and an electrical engineer, an electrical engineer, mind you, has taken to drink because she refused to share her hymn-book with him in church. I shudder to think what will happen when she puts her hair up.”
“Mother’ll bring the tea along herself,” said Sally.
“Sally never pays any attention to me,” laughed Athelny, looking at her with fond, proud eyes. “She goes about her business indifferent to wars, revolutions, and cataclysms. What a wife she’ll make to an honest man!”
Mrs. Athelny brought in the tea. She sat down and proceeded to cut bread and butter. It amused Philip to see that she treated her husband as though he were a child. She spread jam for him and cut up the bread and butter into convenient slices for him to eat. She had taken off her hat; and in her Sunday dress, which seemed a little tight for her, she looked like one of the farmer’s wives whom Philip used to call on sometimes with his uncle when he was a small boy. Then he knew why the sound of her voice was familiar to him. She spoke just like the people round Blackstable.
“What part of the country d’you come from?” he asked her.
“I’m a Kentish woman. I come from Ferne.”
“I thought as much. My uncle’s Vicar of Blackstable.”
“That’s a funny thing now,” she said. “I was wondering in church just now whether you was any connexion of Mr. Carey. Many’s the time I’ve seen ’im. A cousin of mine married Mr. Barker of Roxley Farm, over by Blackstable Church, and I used to go and stay there often when I was a girl. Isn’t that a funny thing now?”
She looked at him with a new interest, and a brightness came into her faded eyes. She asked him whether he knew Feme. It was a pretty village about ten miles across country from Blackstable, and the Vicar had come over sometimes to Blackstable for the harvest thanksgiving. She mentioned names of various farmers in the neighborhood. She was delighted to talk again of the country in which her youth was spent, and it was a pleasure to her to recall scenes and people that had remained in her memory with the tenacity peculiar to her class. It gave Philip a queer sensation too. A breath of the countryside seemed to be wafted into that panelled room in the middle of London. He seemed to see the flat Kentish fields with their stately elms; and his nostrils dilated with the scent of the air; it is laden with the salt of the North Sea, and that makes it keen and sharp.
Philip did not leave the Athelnys’ till ten o’clock. The children came in to say good night at eight and quite naturally put up their faces for Philip to kiss. His heart went out to them. Sally only held out her hand.
“Sally never kisses gentlemen till she’s seen them twice,” said her father.
“You must ask me again then,” said Philip.
“You mustn’t take any notice of what father says,” remarked Sally, with a smile.
“She’s a most self-possessed young woman,” added her parent.
They had supper of bread and cheese and beer while Mrs. Athelny was putting the children to bed; and when Philip went into the kitchen to bid her good night (she had been sitting there, resting herself and reading The Weekly Dispatch) she invited him cordially to come again.