Yet this distance, all those abysses unbridged and then unbridgeable by radio, television, cheap travel and the rest, was not wholly bad. People knew less of each other, perhaps, but they felt more free of each other, and so were more individual. The entire world was not for them only a push or a switch away. Strangers were strange, and sometimes with an exciting, beautiful strangeness. It may be better for humanity that we should communicate more and more. But I am a heretic, I think our ancestors’ isolation was like the greater space they enjoyed: it can only be envied. The world is only too literally too much with us now.

Sam could, did give the appearance, in some back taproom, of knowing all there was to know about city life—and then some. He was aggressively contemptuous of anything that did not emanate from the West End of London, that lacked its go. But deep down inside, it was another story. There he was a timid and uncertain person—not uncertain about what he wanted to be (which was far removed from what he was) but about whether he had the ability to be it.

Now Mary was quite the reverse at heart. She was certainly dazzled by Sam to begin with: he was very much a superior being, and her teasing of him had been pure self-defense before such obvious cultural superiority: that eternal city ability to leap the gap, find shortcuts, force the pace. But she had a basic solidity of character, a kind of artless self-confidence, a knowledge that she would one day make a good wife and a good mother; and she knew, in people, what was what… the difference in worth, say, between her mistress and her mistress’s niece. After all, she was a peasant; and peasants live much closer to real values than town helots.

Sam first fell for her because she was a summer’s day after the drab dollymops and gays [5] who had constituted his past sexual experience. Self-confidence in that way he did not lack—few Cockneys do. He had fine black hair over very blue eyes and a fresh complexion. He was slim, very slightly built; and all his movements were neat and trim, though with a tendency to a certain grandiose exaggeration of one or two of Charles’s physical mannerisms that he thought particularly gentlemanly. Women’s eyes seldom left him at the first glance, but from closer acquaintance with London girls he had never got much beyond a reflection of his own cynicism. What had really knocked him acock was Mary’s innocence. He found himself like some boy who flashes a mirror—and one day does it to someone far too gentle to deserve such treatment. He suddenly wished to be what he was with her; and to discover what she was.

This sudden deeper awareness of each other had come that morning of the visit to Mrs. Poulteney. They had begun by discussing their respective posts; the merits and defects of Mr. Charles and Mrs. Tranter. She thought he was lucky to serve such a lovely gentleman. Sam demurred; and then, to his own amazement, found himself telling this mere milkmaid something he had previously told only to himself.

His ambition was very simple: he wanted to be a haberdasher. He had never been able to pass such shops without stopping and staring in the windows; criticizing or admiring them, as the case might require. He believed he had a flair for knowing the latest fashion. He had traveled abroad with Charles, he had picked up some foreign ideas in the haberdashery field…

All this (and incidentally, his profound admiration for Mr. Freeman) he had got out somewhat incoherently—and the great obstacles: no money, no education. Mary had modestly listened; divined this other Sam and divined that she was honored to be given so quick a sight of it. Sam felt he was talking too much. But each time he looked nervously up for a sneer, a giggle, the least sign of mockery of his absurd pretensions, he saw only a shy and wide-eyed sympathy, a begging him to go on. His listener felt needed, and a girl who feels needed is already a quarter way in love.

The time came when he had to go. It seemed to him that he had hardly arrived. He stood, and she smiled at him, a little mischievous again. He wanted to say that he had never talked so freely—well, so seriously—to anyone before about himself. But he couldn’t find the words.

“Well. Dessay we’ll meet tomorrow mornin’.”

“Happen so.”

“Dessay you’ve got a suitor an’ all.”

“None I really likes.”

“I bet you ‘ave. I ‘eard you ‘ave.”

“’Tis all talk in this ol’ place. Us izzen ‘lowed to look at a man an’ we’m courtin’.”

He fingered his bowler hat. “Like that heverywhere.” A silence. He looked her in the eyes. “I ain’t so bad?”

“I never said ‘ee wuz.”

Silence. He worked all the way round the rim of his bowler.

“I know lots o’ girls. AH sorts. None like you.”

“Taren’t so awful hard to find.”

“I never ‘ave. Before.” There was another silence. She would not look at him, but at the edge of her apron. “’Ow about London then? Fancy seein’ London?”

She grinned then, and nodded—very vehemently.

“Expec’ you will. When they’re a-married orf hupstairs. I’ll show yer round.”

“Would ‘ee?”

He winked then, and she clapped her hand over her mouth. Her eyes brimmed at him over her pink cheeks.

“All they fashional Lunnon girls, ‘ee woulden want to go walkin’ out with me.”

“If you ‘ad the clothes, you’d do. You’d do very nice.”

“Doan believe ‘ee.”

“Cross my ‘eart.”

Their eyes met and held for a long moment. He bowed elaborately and swept his hat to cover his left breast.

“A demang, madymosseile.”

“What’s that then?”

“It’s French for Coombe Street, tomorrow mornin’—where yours truly will be waitin’.”

She turned then, unable to look at him. He stepped quickly behind her and took her hand and raised it to his lips. She snatched it away, and looked at it as if his lips might have left a sooty mark. Another look flashed between them. She bit her pretty lips. He winked again; and then he went.

Whether they met that next morning, in spite of Charles’s express prohibition, I do not know. But later that day, when Charles came out of Mrs. Tranter’s house, he saw Sam waiting, by patently contrived chance, on the opposite side of the street. Charles made the Roman sign of mercy, and Sam uncovered, and once again placed his hat reverentially over his heart—as if to a passing bier, except that his face bore a wide grin.

Which brings me to this evening of the concert nearly a week later, and why Sam came to such differing conclusions about the female sex from his master’s; for he was in that kitchen again. Unfortunately there was now a duenna present—Mrs. Tranter’s cook. But the duenna was fast asleep in her Windsor chair in front of the opened fire of her range. Sam and Mary sat in the darkest corner of the kitchen. They did not speak. They did not need to. Since they were holding hands. On Mary’s part it was but self-protection, since she had found that it was only thus that she could stop the hand trying to feel its way round her waist. Why Sam, in spite of that, and the silence, should have found Mary so understanding is a mystery no lover will need explaining.