The Old Wives' Tale - Arnold Bennett [135]
She sat down on the towel-covered chair, staggered. She believed what he said. She did not suspect that he was using the classic device of the seducer. It was his casualness that staggered her. Had it really been his intention to set off on an excursion and remark as an afterthought: "BY THE WAY, we can't be married as I told you at half-past two to-day"? Despite her extreme ignorance and innocence, Sophia held a high opinion of her own commonsense and capacity for looking after herself, and she could scarcely believe that he was expecting her to go to Paris, and at night, without being married. She looked pitiably young, virgin, raw, unsophisticated; helpless in the midst of dreadful dangers. Yet her head was full of a blank astonishment at being mistaken for a simpleton! The sole explanation could be that Gerald, in some matters, must himself be a confiding simpleton. He had not reflected. He had not sufficiently realized the immensity of her sacrifice in flying with him even to London. She felt sorry for him. She had the woman's first glimpse of the necessity for some adjustment of outlook as an essential preliminary to uninterrupted happiness.
"It'll be all right!" Gerald persuasively continued.
He looked at her, as she was not looking at him. She was nineteen. But she seemed to him utterly mature and mysterious. Her face baffled him; her mind was a foreign land. Helpless in one sense she might be; yet she, and not he, stood for destiny; the future lay in the secret and capricious workings of that mind.
"Oh no!" she exclaimed curtly. "Oh no!"
"Oh no what?"
"We can't possibly go like that," she said.
"But don't I tell you it'll be all right?" he protested. "If we stay here and they come after you…! Besides, I've got the tickets and all."
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" she demanded.
"But how could I?" he grumbled. "Have we had a single minute alone?"
This was nearly true. They could not have discussed the formalities of marriage in the crowded train, nor during the hurried lunch with a dozen cocked ears at the same table. He saw himself on sure ground here.
"Now, could we?" he pressed.
"And you talk about going to see pictures!" was her reply.
Undoubtedly this had been a grave error of tact. He recognized that it was a stupidity. And so he resented it, as though she had committed it and not he.
"My dear girl," he said, hurt, "I acted for the best. It isn't my fault if rules are altered and officials silly."
"You ought to have told me before," she persisted sullenly.
"But how could I?"
He almost believed in that moment that he had really intended to marry her, and that the ineptitudes of red-tape had prevented him from achieving his honourable purpose. Whereas he had done nothing whatever towards the marriage.
"Oh no! Oh no!" she repeated, with heavy lip and liquid eye. "Oh no!"
He gathered that she was flouting his suggestion of Paris.
Slowly and nervously he approached her. She did not stir nor look up.
Her glance was fixed on the washstand. He bent down and murmured:
"Come, now. It'll be all right. You'll travel in the ladies' saloon on the steam-packet."
She did not stir. He bent lower and touched the back of her neck with his lips. And she sprang up, sobbing and angry. Because she was mad for him she hated him furiously. All tenderness had vanished.
"I'll thank you not to touch me!" she said fiercely. She had given him her lips a moment ago, but now to graze her neck was an insult.
He smiled sheepishly. "But really you must be reasonable," he argued.
"What have I done?"
"It's what you haven't done, I think!" she cried. "Why didn't you tell me while we were in the cab?"
"I didn't care to begin worrying you just then," he replied: which was exactly true.
The fact was, he had of course shirked telling her that no marriage would occur that day. Not being a professional seducer of young girls, he lacked skill to do a difficult thing simply.
"Now come along, little girl," he went on, with just a trifle of impatience. "Let's go out and enjoy ourselves. I assure you that everything will be all right in Paris."