Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs

Author:Winifred Boggs [Boggs, Winifred]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Canada, love triangle, inheritance, emigration, gossip, scandal, sexual morality
Publisher: British Library Publishing
Published: 2021-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

chapter xvii

“Here’s luck to my husband’s wife!”

It was later in the day, and Sally had started for a climb. She was trying to feel absolutely certain that everything would turn out for the best and she would still know security and success. Happiness? Well, happiness was far to seek, and lay behind her. There had only been one thing to matter in her life, and that was over and done with years ago. It was a dead thing; let the dead past bury its dead. To let what had been spoil what might be was against her whole philosophy of logic and life. It meant walking in the shadows instead of the sunshine; clinging to the dead hands instead of the living.

She would forget. Only it was awkward when the past became the present, as it had a way of doing, and came hurtling into the life that sought to thrust it back. Here was Jimmy at her very doors, making the thing alive; just the same Jimmy—save that another woman owned him.

She climbed The Mountain, and looked at the sea lying in the light like a sword. So was Jimmy and the best part of life set for ever beyond her reach.

She came down and turned towards the moor road. A strong, keen wind blew from the east, ruffling the hair on her brow. It ran like wine and fire through her veins; she thrilled to the mere pagan love of life.

“What is money, after all?” she thought. “What can it buy really worth having? Love? Peace of soul? Happiness? One inch of the sky? What is its purchasing power? Just a cage to live in. Here I am free. The earth, the sky, the very wind is mine. Money could neither give me that nor lack of money take it from me.”

She stood drawing in deep breaths. How mean and low was her ambition! How fatal in its consequences, a selfish ambition. One sought world-dominion, but Death was still overlord, his power omnipotent, his throne unshakable; to him went the victory.

“Selfishness is the root of all evil,” she told herself. “I can realise it, but I won’t alter it.” She thought how selfish she had been all her life, how self-seeking. “I’m a true Lunton, there’s no doubt about that.”

She put herself by Mr. Lovelady and his thought and life lived for others, and did not like the contrast. She almost forgot Jimmy; she quite forgot Mr. Bingley.

Yet Mr. Bingley had not forgotten her. All the way back in the train he thought of her. Should he, should he not? At home, as he changed into a grey suit that seemed to him just the correct sort of mourning for a relation who had made him his heir—it was a pleasing grey, smartly cut, but not frivolous—he thought of Sally. Did grey make him look less slim than blue? To be, or not to be?

He decided to go for a walk till dinner-time and think it over. His luncheon had been most unsatisfactory.

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