She was so young and fresh, such an incarnation of the spirit of health, and he was so far gone in decay and corruption, that there seemed in this contact of body with body something unnatural and repulsive.
But Sophia did not so feel it.
"Sophia," he addressed her, and made preparatory noises in his throat while she waited.
He continued after an interval, now clutching her arm,
"Your mother's been telling me you don't want to go in the shop."
She turned her eyes on him, and his anxious, dim gaze met hers. She nodded.
"Nay, Sophia," he mumbled, with the extreme of slowness. "I'm surprised at ye. . .Trade's bad, bad!
Ye know trade's bad?"
He was still clutching her arm.
She nodded.
She was, in fact, aware of the badness of trade, caused by a vague war in the United States.
The words
"North" and
"South" had a habit of recurring in the conversation of adult persons.
That was all she knew, though people were starving in the Five Towns as they were starving in Manchester.
"There's your mother," his thought struggled on, like an aged horse over a hilly road.
"There's your mother!" he repeated, as if wishful to direct Sophia's attention to the spectacle of her mother.
"Working hard!
Con--Constance and you must help her. . . . Trade's bad!
What can I do. . .lying here?"
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She wanted to move, but she could not have withdrawn her arm without appearing impatient.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!