The Bazaar and Other Stories (9 page)

 

– soon, now – before they came out after her.

 

The satchel swung against her thigh at every step; the little
crocks and bottles in it rattled. In the pale social stare of April
sunshine she darted down the verdant avenues of Folkestone. When
she came out on the Leas she walked more slowly: people must
not notice. She looked straight ahead, her eyes were caverns, her
parched palate echoed with the biscuit. Her tongue, investigating
fearfully, dislodged some crumbs. She increased her pace, the
satchel whirled, the handle-strap cut deep into her arm. When she
reached her aunt’s house she stood looking up. In the first floor
window, between looped-up curtains, Mrs. Willyard-Lester sat in
profile at her writing table in the sunshine, by a vase of daffodils.
She was still immune, ignorant. She should be spared, she loved
Sibella . . . Sibella realised it would not be fair to go into her aunt’s
flat and be there arrested. Homeless she sat down on an iron seat,
stared out across the sea, and tried to reach, from her despair, its
calmness.

 

She
was
calmer when, panic having subsided, she perceived that
the profound moral indignation of Mr. Markham was unlikely to
pass over into legal action. She had a notion that a prosecution was
expensive; and she could not, either, visualise a Markham vehement
and implacable behind battalions of those kind young men.
Would
Mr. Markham even be so avaricious, so distrustful as to order those
exposed biscuits to be daily counted? Any distrust of Mr. Markham’s
would, as things were, have been tragically justified. But would he
readily expose, by her exposure, his avarice to the world? Actually,
the defection of the biscuit might be overlooked. But fear and
horror, having ceased to bludgeon her, assumed a needle point and
drove deep in. She had devoured furtively a stolen biscuit; her
stomach even now digested it. She was a thief.

 

Nancy would never do a thing like that, she was blisteringly,
probity’s very soul – besides, she wouldn’t have been smart enough
. . . For a minute, Sibella’s mind sweetened; she saw herself telling
Nancy about the biscuit, on a walk. She saw Nancy’s eyebrows
shoot up with amazement and horrified – admiration? “My dear, you
didn’t
! . . . My de-ar, how you could! . . . Tell about it, Sibella; go on!”
Then an arm crooked tight through her own, ecstatic; excited
Nancy pressing against her side. Then Nancy asking the others: “
Do
you know what Sibella did last holidays? Won’t tell,
swear
?” And
Nancy telling, proud raconteuse . . . But that was, alas, knowing
Nancy, not an aspect that long prevailed. Sibella now felt cold in her
stomach, seeing a lip curl, feeling an arm withdrawn. “
Stole
the
thing?” Oh, oh, oh, how Nancy would be bitter! She would lash
Sibella, always with slight restraint, then go off and write her a
letter. Then there would be nothing left in Sibella’s world; it would
be quite empty.

 

Aunt Marjory, though so confused and foolish, must be an honest
woman. She was always writing cheques in payment, she had a clear
round eye. Sibella had not yet fully gauged her aunt, she could not
be certain; but she imagined that, enlightened, she would with
flushed face and protruding eye at once return Sibella to her head
mistress, to be, on the first day of term, expelled. Aunt Marjory had
believed her young visitor to be beautiful and distinguished. When
she found that she had cherished, harboured this greedy thief . . .
Elizabeth Eldon would wince colourlessly, as among the skulls, and
Boniface fly trembling with repudiation to his mistress. Sibella felt
so naked, her very soul squirmed.

 

A clock struck one; Sibella realised that she had not yet delivered
the groceries. She went in reluctantly and gave the satchel to the
temporary. Mrs. Willyard-Lester had spent the morning trying to
darn a stocking; she was flushed (though not yet with anger), she
blinked; she said her eyes were tired. She said that she didn’t know
how she was to face that afternoon’s bridge; she kept bracing herself
heroically. Life was difficult sometimes, said Mrs. Willyard-Lester.
The room stared; sun streamed in through the curtains. Sibella at
lunch could hardly eat anything. This Aunt Marjory was too much
tired to notice; she did not notice, either, how humpily Sibella sat.

 

Later, the outcast crept down the Lower Sandgate Road, through
the pines, in an agony of spirit. Girls of her age went past her, arms
linked, as herself and Nancy were not to walk again. Elderly couples
turned, and Sibella knew how her desolation intrigued them. She
was, however, as nearly as possible unconscious of Sibella’s
appearance.
⁴
She climbed up a bank to be out of everyone’s way and
sat leaning sideways against a pine tree, arm crocked round the
trunk, cheek pressed to the scaly bark. It appeared that her spiritual
life had ended in this pit of deadness; she ground her heels into the
sandy soil. Even God seemed perplexed; she strained closer against
the tree. One companion alone was left her – this unshrinking pine.
She saw the green beneficent sweep of the branches, where wind,
lingering like a memory, faintly hummed. Thin spring dusk now
deepened between the pine trunks; she discovered with awe that it
was six and she did not want any tea: it might be better to stay here,
then to be found next morning clinging to the tree trunk – dead.

 

Then she had shot down the bank and in the middle of the path
stood as though she had sprung from the earth, with arms outspread.
For the future had blazed suddenly with amazement and hope. For
by reparation she could return – it was biblical – to a positive
innocence. What an immense vocation: to retrieve sin. She tugged
out her purse and, inaccurately, counted the contents twice over. Of
the pound of holiday pocket-money she had still, with a fortnight to
expire, seven and sixpence left. Seven and sixpence – all she had in
the world for her pier money, crêpe de Chine handkerchiefs, sweets,
that daily stamp destined for Nancy. A great light shone above the
sacrifice. Thumping internally, she fled like a hare down the Lower
Sandgate Road, and breasted the first flight of steps that zigzagged
up the sheer face of the Leas to Folkestone.

 

The sun set, the sophisticated faces of houses shone in the afterglow. Blue watery dusk flowed down the avenues; gardens, metallic,
softened. In a hotel drawing-room, a girl behind a foam of
geraniums sang to a violin accompaniment: under the open window
Sibella paused, noting a strange prick: tears of happiness. Rooms
were everywhere, orange or lemon with electricity: as Sibella
approached Markham’s (which, by intention, stayed open on Fridays
till half-past six) the shop front suddenly gorgeously blazed. Sibella
did feel there was joy in Heaven. She advanced exaltedly into the
beaming shop. A young man like St. Michael, grave and beautiful,
came to meet her.

 

“Madam?”

 

“Rejoice with me!” sang Sibella’s heart wildly. Aloud, she asked:
“How much are those coloured biscuits?”

 

“
Coloured
biscuits, madam?” said the young man, surprised.

 

“The ones with the plain, smooth tops,” she said. They
approached the table.

 

“Ah,” said he, smiling with infinite comprehension. “Yes, madam.
Three shillings a pound.”

 

She calculated. “I should like two pounds and a half.”

 

He brought a small shovel and very big bag. “If you don’t mind,”
said Sibella, “I’d like them all pink.”

 

“All pink, madam? . . . You would find the lemon and chocolate
flavours highly satisfactory . . . ”

 

“I would rather they were all pink,” said Sibella, firmly. The
young man bowed and sighed, “Certainly, madam.” He shovelled
pink biscuits one by one into the paper bag. There were not many
pink in evidence, and the search for more took rather a long time.
Once or twice the young man paused to straighten his back for a
moment, sigh, and glance a shade restively round the shop. Then he
returned to his labours, raking the biscuits over and over again.
Finally, straightening himself, he with flushed face carried the bag
across the shop, weighed it, and delivered it into the hands of
Sibella, who received it reverently. It was a large tight bag, highly
glazed. Having given up her three half-crowns, she pinched her
purse to assure herself that it was quite empty. Then she walked
slowly across to the Cheese and Bacon.

 

Here the young men lounged god-like against the marbled
shelves. The swift steel wheels were silent; only one old lady broke
in on the hush. Sibella, assuming a very great abstraction, slowly
walked down along the counter, awaited her moment. She paused,
eyed the young men, then stealthily put down the bag of biscuits,
forcing it between two enormous cheeses. Then, like the thief she
no longer was, she turned and fled over to the door. Not a young
man stirred.

 

Towards the Leas homewards went Sibella; melted into the
evening itself with peace. Innocence was an ecstasy. Light from the
windows followed her with halos; her shadow looked thin with
asceticism.
⁵
Tonight she would go early to bed, open her window on
the sea, and write a long, long letter telling Nancy everything. She
would borrow a stamp next day from Elizabeth Eldon.

 

There came the scuff-scuff-scuff of someone running tidily on the
pavement. Someone was now hard upon her heels.

 

“Madam!” a voice gasped, “Madam!”

 

The young man like St. Michael was still running; his white apron
writhed round his legs, his coat flew behind him. Panting, he
stretched out the bag of biscuits towards Sibella, “Madam, you left
these behind.”

 

She stood, silent with despair, looking at him.

 

“Your biscuits, madam.”

 

“No yours – Mr. Markham’s – I
owe
them to him.”

 

“There is no Mr. Markham, madam: we are a company.”

 

Then became indeed, at the dissolution of Mr. Markham, a kind
of chimera. Sibella, backing away, said wildly: “It was atonement.”

 

“But you selected them specially, madam,” said the young man,
unintelligent as any saint.

 

“I ate one this morning,” said Sibella in a deadly voice.

 

“We are delighted that customers should sample our biscuits at
any time . . . If you would be so kind; it’s just on closing time.”

 

Her hands, passive as though under the force of mesmerism, were
drawn towards him. Placing the bag in them firmly, St. Michael
turned and ran, scuff-scuff, back to the shop. He vanished with a
flash of door.

 

Sibella stood quite still, holding her bag of pink biscuits.
Flavia
F
lavia set up in Bernard a charming susceptibility; the
everyday took on a quality of its own: there was no doubt she
educated him. The very mornings her letters arrived had character,
freshness – he was a poor waker, and meeting any day for the first
time under his eyelids would gladly have cut it dead. But the sun
might be said to rise, the wintry firelight to expand a Dickensian
nature, when he perceived her violet typescript on the blue Palm
Bond envelope by his coffee pot.
Très gourmet
also, she brought out
the faint exquisite smokiness in his Wiltshire bacon; her smile,
remotely intimate as the hour, was in the visibly mounting fragrance
above his coffee cup. Bernard was “well looked after,” fortunate in
his landlady; he liked intermissions of solitude and did not wish to
marry even Flavia.

On such mornings you could not have avoided noticing Bernard;
he noticed himself: his gait, his look, his manner had quite a new
consciousness. Caroline noticed him immediately.

He arrived for lunch at the Dobsons’ a little early, and was
announced while Caroline was alone in the drawing-room looking
out at Regent’s Park and wondering whether the Dobsons would
keep her till Tuesday. She was aware that the Dobsons expected a
Mr. Someone-or-other for lunch, not in any way outstanding. They
might not have asked him to lunch at all if Caroline had not been
with them. Helen Dobson thought he might entertain Caroline,
might pass for the kind of young man she expected to meet at their
house; the girl was not critical. Caroline recognised the kindness of
Helen’s intention, and accepted some qualification on the unknown
Bernard’s behalf. She knew she could not hope to attract a dis
tinguished man. Helen plainly thought she and Bernard might do for
each other – at least for lunch. Caroline had not caught the name of
Helen’s guest beforehand (she did not like to ask again in case this
appeared eager). She once more did not catch the name when he
was announced.

They had to introduce themselves, and effected the introduction.
“Oh,” said Caroline, surprised, “are

you
Mr. McArthur?”
“Yes,” said Bernard, pleased that she must have heard of him. She

was certainly very naïve. And though his taste was at present all
for Flavia’s type (what would be certainly Flavia’s type: thin, dark,
ironical, perhaps myopic for all her clear perception, for she had a
delightful habit of narrowing the eyes), he could not help liking
Caroline’s round pink face, turned so expectantly from the window.
He made a study of her for Flavia – she

was
quite a little study:
“the sort of girl one meets.” Her rather “general” quality, the rather
appealing obviousness of her remarks, remained engaging, then and
throughout lunch. Though he could not help resenting Mrs.
Dobson’s plain implication that Caroline was the sort of girl one
expected Bernard to like. He was annoyed by Helen’s benevolence,
by the way she and her husband withdrew from the conversation;
he was annoyed with them altogether, for Regent’s Park was a long
way from his office and they did not give him a good lunch. So
inevitably he smiled more and more at Caroline, and the Dobsons
“placed him” more and more fatally.