silence. Mrs. Minto yawned. She looked at Sally making her preparations,
and into her face came a watchful anxiety that was mingled with profound
esteem. There was a _chic_ about her girl that made Mrs. Minto assume
this expression quite often, and Sally knew it. She knew it now, and was
elaborately unconscious of it. As she waited for the kettle and moved
the lamp so that it would illumine the washstand, she whistled to show
how blind she was to any sign of emotion from her mother. When the
whistle was unavailing, she said sharply:
"Don't you think this is a pretty frock, ma?"
Mrs. Minto sighed heavily, and pulled herself up out of her chair.
"Far _too_ pretty, if you ask me," she said. "Looks to me fast." She was
full of concern, and did not try to hide it from Sally.
"Oo!" cried Sally. "You _are_ stupid, ma!" And with that she whipped the
dress over her head and revealed the fact that she wore no petticoat.
Her mother was the more outraged.
Sally began to sing.
"'When you and I go down the love path together,
Stars shall be shining and the night so fair.'"
"Well, it's a good thing nobody else sees you like that," sniffed her
mother, rebukingly. "I don't know what they _would_ think!"
Sally forebore to make the obvious retort. Her mother prepared for bed.
ix
For the next fortnight Sally did not see Gaga, and only at the end of
the period did she learn that he had been away from London on business.
This was one of the journeys of which Miss Summers had spoken, to the
agricultural districts. Sally could not discover whether Gaga actually
acted as traveller for his own firm; but she gathered that he found it
useful to see how the country was behaving itself in the matter of
agriculture. She suspected also that he went away for his health. She
speculated as to what he looked like with his handsome coat off, and
recalled wrists that could have been spanned with ease by her own small
fingers. In contrast, when she saw Toby, she saw with swelling pride how
big his hands were, and felt his already increased muscles. Once he
swung her clear from the ground with one arm, so that her feet kicked
against his leg in helplessness. He was getting stronger and stouter
than ever, and his eyes were clear and his skin tanned and smoothed by
the breeze. She adored him. He wanted her to go away with him during one
of his leaves; but Sally did not dare to go, because her mother had been
specially grumbling and suspicious. So they saw each other rarely for
the rest of the year, and their meetings became the more precious for
that reason.
Soon after Gaga returned, Madam went away. She had had no holiday, and
she had fallen ill, with headaches and bilious attacks and a threat of
jaundice. So it happened that Gaga came each day to the dressmaking
establishment and took charge of the cash and the accounts, while Miss
Summers and Miss Rapson interviewed any customers who came about
dresses. Miss Rapson, a tall, thin, dark woman, was in another room,
with eight girls under her; but Miss Summers was really in charge while
Madam was away, because she understood the whole business, and was a
more experienced woman than Miss Rapson. Sally had hardly ever seen Miss
Rapson until this time, so much did she keep to her own room; but now,
when the two who were in charge had to arrange their work together,
there was more interchange. Sally had often to go into the other room
with messages or work, and she came to understand very quickly what went
on there. Miss Rapson was strict, and rather disagreeable. Her girls
were like mice, unless she was absent; and her sallow face gave the clue
to her disagreeableness. She did not like Sally at all, because she was
jealous of her. Sally was quick to perceive this, but she did not
retaliate. She formed her own cool conclusions about Miss Rapson. She
understood the complexion, and she was more concerned with the details
of the work than with anything else. Besides, she was in a strong
position. She had nothing to fear from Miss Rapson. She soon recognised
that she had not much to learn from her, either. Miss Rapson was forty,
angular, shortsighted. She was inclined to be fussy and self-important
and lacking in self-reliance. If anything went wrong she lost first her
head and then her temper. "Hysterics!" thought Sally, cruelly. And Miss
Rapson was very anxious indeed to have the reversion of Miss Summers'
place of trust. She had set her heart upon it, although she knew that as
Miss Summers was no older than herself, and as little likely to marry,
she might fruitlessly wait a lifetime. Anything which suggested a
possible rival, even though it might only be in the distant future, was
a cause of sleeplessness to her, and after a sleepless night, when all
possible causes of grief, summoned from memory and the inventions of her
own unquiet spirit, came into her head, Miss Rapson was one of the most
insufferable women in the dressmaking. "If I was boss here," thought
Sally, "and I had any trouble with her, she'd go like a shot. Easily get
someone in _her_ place." But she did not show that she was thinking
this. She said: "Yes, Miss Rapson. No, Miss Rapson. I'll tell Miss
Summers, Miss Rapson," in the most respectful way. It was Miss Rapson
who first suspiciously sounded Miss Summers about Sally. "Do you think
she's _deep_?" she asked.
Now that Miss Summers had more to do, Sally was very useful to her.
Also, Sally came to admire Miss Summers more than ever. She might be
funny, with her eternally cold nose and her cat-like appearance, but she
was an extraordinarily capable woman. She rose to emergencies, which is
the sign of essential greatness. Not once did Sally see Miss Summers
lose her nerve. True, there was no need for diplomacy or large
generalship; but when work has to be arranged so that all customers are
satisfied, not only with its quality but with the promptness of its
delivery, a good deal of skill and management is required. It was
forthcoming; and Sally was at hand to give important aid. The weak spot
in the government of the business seemed to be Gaga, who betrayed
incessant vacillation, and came in so often to consult Miss Summers that
she became quite ruffled and indignant with him. "Such nonsense!" she
would say to Sally. "A grown up man like that asking such silly
questions. Why a _girl_ would do it better." She had all the capable
woman's contempt for the average member of her own sex. "Girls!" she
would sniff. Shrewdly, Sally watched the comedy; but for all her
shrewdness she never quite understood the cause of Gaga's weakness. It
was that Madam had insisted upon early obedience in days when Gaga's
precocious ill-health made him pliable; and a docile child becomes a
tractable boy and finally a man who needs constant guidance. Sally only
saw the last stage. She nodded grimly to herself one day. "Wants
somebody to look after him," she said. "Somebody to manage him." With
one of her unerring supplements she added confidently: "I could manage
him. And look after him, too, for that matter. Poor lamb!"
The extra work kept Miss Summers and Miss Rapson late almost every
evening, and Sally also stayed, so that in the evenings she often saw
Gaga. She even, once or twice, when Miss Summers had gone to consult
Miss Rapson (who stood upon her dignity and kept to her own room),
sought pretexts for going into the room where Gaga was. She went in to
look at the Directory, or she pretended that she had supposed Miss
Summers with him; and on these occasions she stood at the door, and
talked, until Miss Summers' imminent return made her fly innocently back
to her seat. She enjoyed observing Gaga's pleasure, and even excitement,
at her approach. It gratified her naughty vanity and her impulse to the
exploitation of others. One evening when she had thus stolen five
minutes, she found Gaga ruffling his hair over an account, and at his
great sigh of bewilderment she turned from the book she was needlessly
consulting.
"Got a headache, Mr. Bertram?" she timidly and commiseratingly asked.
Gaga looked up at her gratefully, a comic expression of dismay upon his
face. The books lay before him upon the table, and an account had been
transferred from one to another. A litter of papers was also there. He
was in the last stages of perplexity.
"No," he said. "It's this account. I can't make it out. See if you can."
Sally went and stood close to him, leaning over to examine the books, so
that his shoulder touched her side. She knew that the contact thrilled
him, and for an instant was so occupied with the recognition that she
could not collect her thoughts. He had been adding up in pencil on a
sheet of paper the two series of entries, and there was a discrepancy
between them. Sally checked his figures: there seemed nothing wrong with
them. She herself added the two series of entries. Then, with a pointed
finger she counted the entries. One of them had been omitted. Another
examination showed which of them it was. She had solved his
mystification. Her small forefinger pointed to that entry which
accounted for the difference in the two casts. Gaga looked up at her in
wondering admiration.
"What a marvellous girl you are!" he impulsively ejaculated. "I've been
worrying over this for ten minutes. Thank you. Er--thank you."
Still she did not immediately leave him, and he made no attempt to move.
It would have been the easiest thing for Gaga to encircle her with his
arm, but he did not do so. At last Sally started away.
"I must go," she said breathlessly.
"Thank you, Miss Minto. I'm.... I'm so much ... obliged," stammered
Gaga. She was at the door. "Oh, Miss Minto...." Sally turned, a
mischievous expectancy upon her face. "Er...." Gaga swallowed. A faint
colour rose to his grey cheeks. "I say, I wish you'd come out to dinner
with me. I...."
"Oh, Mr. Bertram," murmured Sally. "It's very kind of you. I...."
"_Do_ come. I'm ... so much obliged to you, you know. I mean, I...."
Sally gave a quick nod. She peeped to see that Miss Summers had not
returned.
"Well, you see," she said. Then: "All right, I will. Thank you very
much."
"To-night? In half an hour? Splendid. I'll be at the corner of the
street. Just outside that big corner place. Thank you. That'll be fine."
He was jubilant. Sally went back to her place with her mouth puckered
into a curious smile that nobody could have understood. She felt that
she had embarked at last upon the inevitable adventure with Gaga, and
her sensation for the moment was one of pure triumph. A moment later,
triumph was suffused with a faint derision. She thought how easy it was
to handle Gaga. She felt how easy, how temptingly easy, it would be
always to handle him. But all the same she was rather excited. It was
the first time she had been out to dinner with a man. She knew he would
look handsome and like a gentleman; she knew he would have plenty of
money. She was glad to think that she was wearing her newest frock, the
smartest she had. Well, she demanded of herself, why not? It'll please
him, or he wouldn't have asked me! Would they have wine to drink? she
wondered. A momentary self-distrust seized her in the matter of
table-manners; but she shook it off. She would watch what Gaga did. She
mustn't drink too much. She must mind her step. Then, irresistibly:
"What a lark!" murmured Sally. She was very demure upon Miss Summers'
return, and listened with equanimity to a few remarks made by Miss
Summers as to the capacity of Miss Rapson. In reality her thoughts were
occupied with speculations as to the entertainment which lay ahead. So
Gaga had never given Rose anything; more fool Rose! Rose! She didn't
know how to manage a man! She didn't know anything at all. She had been
born pretty, and she thought that was all you had to do. Sally had not
been born pretty; she had had to fight against physical disadvantages.
It had taught her a great deal. It had taught her the art of tactics.
Sally was very much wiser than she had been a year earlier. She had
learnt immeasurably from her contact with Toby. She had kept her eyes
open. She was unscrupulous. It was of no use to be scrupulous in this
world; you lost all the fun of the fair. Sally was hilarious at her own
irreverent unscrupulousness.
Half an hour later she slipped out, and along the street Gaga was
waiting. He raised his hat--a thing Toby would never have done if he had
left her so recently--and fell into step beside her. Sally shot a bright
eye full of assurance. As Gaga showed himself nervous, so her assurance
increased.
"Where would you like to go?" asked Gaga.
"Oo, you know better than ... I do," answered Sally, meekly. He stopped
for a moment; then turned eastward; then stopped afresh, hesitating
until Sally slightly frowned.
"Yes, we'll go to the Singe d'Or," he explained. "Unless you.... No,
we'll go to the Rezzonico. You'd like to have music, I expect. You know,
it's awfully good of you to come. I've wanted to talk to you ever since
I heard you sing so beautifully."
The Love Path! Sally gave a start. What had Mrs. Perce said! Sally might
not have a fortune in her voice, she mischievously thought; but at least
she had a dinner! Well, master Toby; and what did he think of that, if
you please?
"I'm very fond of music," she said, glibly.
"I could tell...." There was a pause. "Do you ... do you sing much?"
"No, not much." Sally was speaking like a lady. "Ai ... a ... don't get
very much taime. I'm very fond of. It's so ... it's so...." She was
rather lost for a phrase that should sound well.
"Quite, quite," agreed Gaga, eagerly.
"I wish I could play," Sally hurried to say, feeling that she had failed
in effectiveness. He was loud in protest against her modesty. "Well, I
mean, I've never--well, hardly ever--had any lessons. No, nor my voice.
It's just ear. Mrs. P---- a friend of maine says I've got a very quick
ear." Every now and then Sally was betrayed into Nosey-like refinement.
She fought against it from an instinctive feeling that it was
meretricious. But at the same time she was speaking with instinctive
care, so as to avoid Cockney phrases, and pronunciations, and tones. She
wanted him to think her--something that she called "nice." They walked
the length of Regent Street, chatting thus; and at last reached the
gilded Rezzonico, where there were liveried men who seized Gaga's hat
and stick, and maitres d'hotel who hurried them this way and that in
search of a table in the crowded, din-filled room. The walls were
covered with enormous mirrors which were surrounded by gaudy mouldings.
Tables were everywhere, and all appeared to be occupied. Men and women
in evening dress, men and women in morning clothes, some of the women
painted, others ordinary respectable members of the bourgeoisie, were
sitting and dining and smoking and chattering loudly. Glasses,
cigarettes, bottles, all sorts of dishes, strewn upon the tables, caught
Sally's bewildered eye. Above all, a scratching orchestra rasped out a
selection from one of Verdi's operas. A huge unmanageable noise of talk
and laughter swelled the torrent of sound. Deafened, her nerve
destroyed, Sally timidly followed the apparently aimless wanderings
of Gaga and the maitres d'hotel, her shoulders stiff with
self-consciousness in face of so many staring eyes and well-fed,
well-dressed creatures; and at last they found a table. It was a bad
table, in the middle of the room, near the band and the cash desk and a
sort of sideboard into which bottles were ceaselessly dumped. A very old
waiter, with white side whiskers like those of the late Emperor Franz
Josef, very foreign and therefore particularly liable to misconstrue
Gaga's stammered orders, served them with hors d'oeuvres, slashing down
upon Sally's plate inconceivable mixtures of white and red and green
fragments; and then hurried away as fast as his bunions allowed. Gaga
was left to choose the wine, which he managed to do after many
consultations with Sally and the waiter, and many changes of mind upon
his own account. Sally riddled all his uncertainties with a merciless
eye. He apparently knew a wine-list when he saw one; but his nervousness
was so palpable that she was inclined even to suspect his knowledge. It
was an injustice. She soon realised that the band was too noisy for
talk, and the sideboard too shattering even for coherent thought. She
knew, in fact, at the first encounter, that this was a bad table, and
that bad tables were to be avoided by any expert eye. She knew the
waiter was a bad waiter, and that Gaga was a bad host. She had her first
lesson in the art of dining out at a restaurant.
But she dined! She drank more wine than she had intended to do, and it
went to her head. She laughed, and became talkative, forgetting her
refined accent, and thereby enjoying herself very much more than she
would otherwise have done, and becoming a good and lively companion for
the meal. Gaga could not respond to her talk, because it quickly became
evident that, with all the good will in the world, he could not talk;
but as the wine reached his head also he began to laugh at her remarks,
and to look at her with such an expression of adoration in his chocolate
eyes that Sally grew more and more at ease and more and more familiar
with the passing of each minute, and the increasing effect of the wine
she had taken. She sparkled, less in her speech than in her exhilarated
and exhilarating manner. She was all nerves, all dancing coquettry.
"_Don't_ look at me like that!" she pleaded, archly. Gaga's eyes
glowed, and his mouth was stretched with laughing. "Make me feel as
if...."
"How do I look at you? How does it make you feel?" asked Gaga with that
kind of persistent seriousness with which a man talks to a pretty girl
when he has drunk enough wine. "Tell me, Sally, how does it make you
feel, Sally?" He reached his hand across the table, and laid it upon
hers. "I mean, Sally.... I mean, if it makes you feel.... I'm sorry,
d'you see? I look at you as I feel. I don't know how I look at you. I
look at you...."
Gaga was not at all drunk; he was merely sententious and sentimental.
Sally darted a roguish eye, first round her, and then at Gaga, enjoying
very specially this stage of the meal. It was all fun to her, all
flattering to her vanity, all a part of the noise and excitement and
well-being that was making her spirits mount. She allowed her hand to
remain under his for a moment; then tried to draw it away; then pinched
his thumb gently and recovered her liberty. Gaga was unlike Toby. He had
not the assurance of the physically vigorous. He was gentle, mild,
stammering, and ineffective. But he was giving Sally a glorious
evening's entertainment. At one step they had overleapt all that
separated them, and were friends. He began to tell her, unasked, about
his business, about his mother, about everything.
"My mother's a wonderful woman," he said. "Wonderful! She's made that
business with her own hands. She began in a small way, and the business
is almost out of her control. Not quite; but.... She's done it all
herself. All herself. Wonderful woman. And yet, you know, Sally; she's
hard. I wonder if you understand what I mean? She's always been a good
mother to me. I wish I could _tell_ you how good. There's the business
I'm in, for example. But Sally.... I'm not a business man.... If I had
somebody to do the business side, I've got.... I can design dresses.
That's what I'm good at. She knows. She lets me design them, sometimes.
I've got a touch, d'you see? But she's hard. She's so afraid of anybody
meddling. She's made that business herself, and she won't let anybody
else touch it. She has me to help her with the accounts; but, as I say,
I'm not a business man. She thinks I'm a fool. _You_ don't think I'm a
fool, do you, Sally?"
"Me? You?" cried Sally, looking at him guilelessly. "Mr. Bertram!"
"She's very ill, Sally. Very ill indeed. I can see it. You know, you
_feel_ something. You see her keeping on and keeping on. Something's
bound to go, sooner or later. It worries me, Sally. It worries me." From
his long and unusually consecutive speech, Gaga fell into a silence.
Meaninglessly, he repeated: "It worries me. That's one reason I asked
you to come out to-night, Sally. I'm worried."
"Poor man!" murmured Sally.
"You know, you're kind, Sally. I can see your little bright eyes
shining; and they make me ... they make me...." He was once again the
old, incoherent Gaga, fingering his unused cheese knife and looking at
her with an expression of pathetic helplessness that made Sally wary
lest she should betray amusement. "I feel you understand. You're not
very old, Sally; but I feel you understand. And.... I've always felt
that. You're such a wonderful little girl. I mean...." He broke off with
a gesture of vague despair of his power to say what he actually did
mean. "I feel you can help me."
"Can I?" asked Sally, swiftly. "I'd love to."
"Would you really?" Gaga's tone was a fresh one, one of hope and light.
"Course I would," responded Sally. Already she was aware of practical
advantages. Her heightened spirits were sobered immediately. But her
face did not betray this. Her face continued the demure face of a young
girl, not from any artfulness, but because she was in fact a demure
young girl, and her hidden mental calculations did not yet show in her
habitual expression.
"You'll be friends with me?" Gaga said, as though he asked a great
favour.
"If you'll let me," answered Sally, as though she conferred one.
The movement of hands was almost simultaneous, but it began with Sally.
Gaga clasped her left one in his right. Only for a minute. Then Sally
could not resist a giggle, and the compact was unsignalised. They talked
further, Sally once again in a state of delight, and Gaga inclined to be
repetitious. And then, as it was nine o'clock, Sally said she must go.
He saw her to her omnibus, and they parted as friends. From her seat
inside, as the bus moved off, Sally waved to him; and afterwards settled
down to the journey, full of memories and reflections of a curious and
enchanting character. Not of Gaga were these reflections, save with an
occasionally frowning brow of doubt; but of the remarkable vista which
had been opened by his demand for friendship and help. An excited
recollection of the lights and the mirrors and the overwhelming noise of
the restaurant intoxicated her afresh. Her whole face was shining with
excitement. She smiled to herself, occupied with such a mixture of
sensations and imaginings that at one moment she wondered whether she
was Sally Minto at all, and whether some magician had not changed that
Sally for a new creature born to spend her days in gaudy restaurants and
among all the noise and luxury of such a life as she had led this
evening for an hour and a half.