Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham.mobi [323]
“You’re not angry with me, Sally?” he blurted out suddenly.
She raised her eyes quietly and looked at him without emotion.
“Me? No. Why should I be?”
He was taken aback and did not reply. She took the lid off the pot, stirred the contents, and put it on again. A savoury smell spread over the air. She looked at him once more, with a quiet smile which barely separated her lips; it was more a smile of the eyes.
“I always liked you,” she said.
His heart gave a great thump against his ribs, and he felt the blood rushing to his cheeks. He forced a faint laugh.
“I didn’t know that.”
“That’s because you’re a silly.”
“I don’t know why you liked me.”
“I don’t either.” She put a little wood on the fire. “I knew I liked you that day you came when you’d been sleeping out and hadn’t had anything to eat, d’you remember? And me and mother, we got Thorpy’s bed ready for you.”
He flushed again, for he did not know that she was aware of that incident. He remembered it himself with horror and shame.
“That’s why I wouldn’t have anything to do with the others. You remember that young fellow mother wanted me to have? I let him come to tea because he bothered me so, but I knew I’d say no.”
Philip was so surprised that he found nothing to say. There was a queer feeling in his heart; he did not know what it was, unless it was happiness. Sally stirred the pot once more.
“I wish those children would make haste and come. I don’t know where they’ve got to. Supper’s ready now.”
“Shall I go and see if I can find them?” said Philip.
It was a relief to talk about practical things.
“Well, it wouldn’t be a bad idea, I must say.... There’s mother coming.”
Then, as he got up, she looked at him without embarrassment.
“Shall I come for a walk with you tonight when I’ve put the children to bed?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you wait for me down by the stile, and I’ll come when I’m ready.”
He waited under the stars, sitting on the stile, and the hedges with their ripening blackberries were high on each side of him. From the earth rose rich scents of the night, and the air was soft and still. His heart was beating madly. He could not understand anything of what happened to him. He associated passion with cries and tears and vehemence, and there was nothing of this in Sally; but he did not know what else but passion could have caused her to give herself. But passion for him? He would not have been surprised if she had fallen to her cousin, Peter Gann, tall, spare, and straight, with his sunburned face and long, easy stride. Philip wondered what she saw in him. He did not know if she loved him as he reckoned love. And yet? He was convinced of her purity. He had a vague inkling that many things had combined, things that she felt though was unconscious of, the intoxication of the air and the hops and the night, the healthy instincts of the natural woman, a tenderness that overflowed, and an affection that had in it something maternal and something sisterly! and she gave all she had to give because her heart was full of charity.
He heard a step on the road, and a figure came out of the darkness.
“Sally,” he murmured.
She stopped and came to the stile, and with her came sweet, clean odors of the countryside. She seemed to carry with her scents of the new-mown hay, and the savour of ripe hops, and the freshness of young grass. Her lips were soft and full against his, and her lovely, strong body was firm within his arms.
“Milk and honey,” he said. “You’re like milk and honey.”
He made her close her eyes and kissed her eyelids, first one and then the other. Her arm, strong and muscular, was bare to the elbow; he passed his hand over it and wondered at its beauty; it gleamed in the darkness; she had the skin that Rubens painted, astonishingly fair and transparent, and on one side were little golden hairs. It was the arm of a Saxon goddess; but no immortal had that exquisite, homely naturalness; and Philip thought of a cottage garden with the dear flowers which bloom in all men’s hearts, of the hollyhock and the red and white rose which is called York and Lancaster, and of love-in-a-mist and Sweet William, and honeysuckle, larkspur, and London Pride.