When Sally stepped off the 'bus at Knightsbridge on that November
evening, her mind was seething with indignation.
To lay a wager! It was an insult! Did he think her acquaintance was
to be bought for a sum of money? It would not be long before he found
out his mistake. And what a sum! Ten pounds! It was ridiculous! What
man would spend all that money simply upon the mere making of an
acquaintance? Of course she knew that if ever she did speak to him
again, he would never pay it. It was quite safe to boast like that--it
was a boast. Ten pounds! Why with ten pounds she could buy a real
silk petticoat, a new frock, a new hat, another feather boa--all of
the most expensive too, and still have money in her pocket.
All the amiable and interested impressions that she had obtained of
him went when he made that bet. It was so easy to boast--so cheap.
But if he thought that the sound of that sum of money had impressed
her, he would learn his mistake.
She caught another 'bus on to Hammersmith and tried vainly to forget
all about it.
Miss Hallard was home from the School of Art before her. In the
bedroom which they shared in a house on Strand-on-Green, she was
combing out her short hair, her blouse discarded, her thin arms bent
at acute angles, and between her lips a Virginian cigarette.
"Wet?" she said laconically, without turning round.
"Dripping." Sally threw her hat on the bed.
"If you bought umbrellas instead of cheap silk petticoats--"
"I knew you'd say that," said Sally.
"Was it raining when you walked from the tram?"
"No. It's stopped now. But it was up in town, and all the 'buses were
full up inside."
"Cheerful," said Miss Hallard.
She twisted her hair into some sort of shape and secured it
indiscriminately with pins.
This girl is the revolutionary. Hers is the type that has been the
revolutionary through all ages. It will be revolutionary to the end,
no matter what force may be in power. She has little or nothing to
do with the class to which Sally Bishop belongs. Her temperament is
the corrective which Nature always uses for the natural functions
of her own handiwork--Sally Bishop is Nature herself, enlisted into
this civil warfare because she must. In her revolutionary ideas, Miss
Hallard follows the temperament of her inclinations. Whatever
position women might hold, she would have disagreed with it. She is
one of those of whom--like some strange animal that one sees,
following instincts which seem the very reverse to Nature's
needs--one wonders what her place in the scheme of things can be.
Of this type are those whom the straining of a vocabulary has
called--Suffragette. They are merely Nature's correctives. Of
definite change in the position of women they will effect nothing.
They are not regulars in the great army; only the wandering
adventurers who take up arms for any cause, that they may be in the
noise of the battle. It is the paid army--the regular troops--who
finally place the standard upon the enemy's heights; for it is only
the forces of Life itself that, in this life, are unconquerable.
This, then, is Miss Hallard--adventuress in a great philosophy. Her
thin lips, her shifting, disconcerting eyes, set deep beneath the
brows; the long and narrow face, the high forehead on which the hair
hangs heavily; that thin, reedy body, that ill-formed, unnatural
breast which never was meant to suckle a child or nurse the drooping
of a man's head--all these are the signs of her calling. A woman--by
the irony of a fate that has thwarted the original design of Nature.
Sally Bishop is a woman before everything. Miss Hallard is a woman
last of all. How these two, in their blatant contrasts, were brought
together, is an example of one of those mysterious forces in the great
machinery of life which we are unable to comprehend. It is like the
harnessing of electricity to the needs of civilization. We can make
it do what we will; but of what it is, we know nothing. So we are
just as ignorant of that law which governs the contact of
personalities. It cannot be luck; it cannot be chance. There is too
much method in the mad tumble of it all, too much plot and
counter-plot, too much cunning intent--which even we can
appreciate--for us to think that it has no meaning. Why, the very
wind that blows has its assured direction and carries the pollen of
this flower to the heart of that.
But there is no need to understand it. The thing happens--that is
all. Miss Janet Hallard and Sally are intimates; that is really
sufficient.
Yet they were not really intimate enough as yet for Sally to sit down
on the bed directly she came into the room and break into an excited
description of her adventure. She knew the cold look of inquiry in
Janet's eyes. She could foresee the disconcerting questions that
would be asked. Janet's questions, coming dryly--all on one
note--from those thin lips of hers, drove sometimes to a point that
was almost too deep for Sally's comprehension. And Sally is a woman
of sex, not of intellect.
"You can have the glass now if you want it," said Janet, moving away
to her bed.
Sally rose wearily and began to take off her things.
"I am fagged!" she exclaimed.
Janet said nothing. The blue lines under Sally's eyes, that
indescribable drawing of the flesh of those round cheeks, had told
her that long ago.
Sally gazed at herself in the glass. "Look at my eyes!" she exclaimed.
"I know."
"Awful, aren't they?"
"Pretty bad. Can't think why you don't stick out for more money when
they work you overtime."
"It's no good--they'd get somebody else."
"Let 'em."
"Well then, what should I do?"
"Go on the stage."
Sally looked critically at herself again in the little
mahogany-framed glass that stood on the dressing-table. With an
effort she tried to forget the lines under the eyes, tried to efface
the look of weariness. The thought of being an actress did not enter
her thoughts. It was her appearance she considered.
"Do you think I look well enough?" she asked.
"Fifty per cent. of them are a good deal worse in those musical
comedies."
"How much should I get?"
"Two pounds a week."
"That's as much as you."
"Yes; but you'd have to work for it. I don't."
"Oh yes; but what sort of work? Nothing to typewriting."
"Perhaps not. But they'd probably expect more than work out of you."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, when a stage manager gives an unknown girl a walk on in the
chorus of a musical comedy, he looks upon it in the light of a favour.
I suppose it is too. He puts her in the way of knowing a lot of
well-to-do young men, and he pays her two pounds a week for doing
nothing but look pretty under the most advantageous circumstances.
There are women who would pay to get a job like that."
Sally's face puckered with disgust. "I think life's beastly," she
said.
Janet smiled. "That's not life," she said; "that's musical comedy."
Then she lit another cigarette and sat there, watching Sally take
off her wet clothes; smiled at her, catching the garments with the
tips of her fingers, and shuddering when they touched her skin.
"You're too sensitive for this business, Sally," she said at last.
"You're too romantic. Why don't you get married?"
"I wish I could," said Sally.
"Well, you don't take your chances."
"What chances?"
"Mr. Arthur--"
They both laughed. Mr. Arthur Montagu was a bank clerk, lodging in
the same house on Strand-on-Green. He had had the same room for over
three years and had, through various stages of acquaintanceship,
come to be addressed by the landlady as Mr. Arthur.
For the first few weeks after the arrival of Sally and Janet, he had
chosen to take his meals in the kitchen--where all meals were
served--after they had finished. His, was a bed-sitting-room, the
only one the house contained, and, in social status, the possession
of it lifted him in rank above any of the other lodgers who shared
the general sitting-room with the landlady, Mrs. Hewson, and her
husband.
But one evening, Sally and he had returned together from Hammersmith
on the tram. They had walked together from the bridge along that river
way, with its tall houses and its little houses, its narrow alleys
and its low-roofed inns, which is perhaps the most picturesque part
of the river that the shattering march of time has left. He had made
intellectual remarks about the effects of the sunlight in the water.
He had drawn her attention to the beauty of the broad stretch of
stream as it bent away towards Chiswick out of sight. He felt that
he had made an impression of mentality upon the little typewriting
girl. And, after that, he had suggested to Mrs. Hewson that it might
seem churlish on his part not to have his meals with the rest.
Janet Hallard he did not like. When he talked about art her eyes hung
upon him and, waiting until he had finished, she then talked about
the Stock Exchange.
"Oh! I hate talking shop," he said one day.
"But you do it so well," she replied quietly. "It seems so much more
interesting than art when you talk about it. After all, art is only
some one person's idea about something they generally don't
understand."
There is no wonder that the man hated her. But for Sally, he formed
a deep attachment that was only kept in check and controlled by the
remembrance of the superiority of his position. Class bias is
universal, and is based almost entirely upon possession. The
school-boy who has more pocket-money, the lodger who has the only
bed-sitting-room in the house, and the man who has the largest
rent-roll, are always socially above those in their immediate
surroundings. Possession being nine points of the law is also nine
points of class superiority. That Mr. Arthur should have stepped down
from his high estate and condescended to have his meals with them,
was proof enough that the man was in earnest. But his interest in
her was not reciprocated.
"I couldn't marry Mr. Arthur," she said; "not even if he was the
manager of his old bank."
"But why not?"
"Because I could never love him; not even respect him."
"That's what fetters women."
"What?"
"That idea that they've got to marry the man they love. They've grown
to think--unconsciously almost--that to give him love, blinded, is
a fair exchange for his provision of a home. They'll never win their
independence that way."
"I don't want my independence," said Sally.
"Then why do you work for it?" asked Janet.
"Because I didn't want to be a clog on my own people--because I wanted
to be free to answer to myself."
"Then why don't you carry that idea further? Why make yourself free,
simply to tie yourself up again at the first chance you get?"
"I don't call it tying myself up to marry a man I'm in love with and
who loves me. That's happiness. I know I shall be perfectly happy."
Janet lifted her head and in a thoroughly professional manner blew
a long, thin stream of smoke from between her lips.
"How long do you think that happiness is going to last?" she asked.
"I don't know."
"You chance it?"
"Yes."
"And then when the end comes you have not even got yourself to fall
back upon. You're done for--sucked dry. You fall to pieces because
you've sold your independence."
Sally left the dressing-table and crossed to Janet's bed. Sitting
there, she put her bare arms on Janet's shoulders.
"It's no good your talking like that," she said gently. "You think
that way, and right or wrong I think the other. If I loved a man and
he loved me, I'd willingly sell my independence, willingly do
anything for him."
"Supposing he wasn't going to marry you?" said Janet, imperturbably.
"Then he wouldn't love me."
"Oh yes; he might."
"Then I don't know what you mean."
Janet stood up from the bed. "I can smell bloaters for supper," she
said; "if you don't hurry up, Mr. Hewson 'll get the best one. I can
see Mrs. Hewson picking it out for him. Come on. Put a blouse on.
There's a woman who's sold her independence. She doesn't get much
for it, as far as I can see. Come on. I'm going to talk to Mr. Arthur
about art to-night."