been at work. It was the same squalid house, and the same squalid room
that she reached after the splendour of her dinner. And it was the same
fretful mother who complained of her lateness and chided her for the
dangers she ran in being about the streets so late. Sally made no
answer. She looked in the mirror at the dilated pupils of her glowing
eyes, and at her flushed cheeks and laughing lips; and her heart first
sank and then violently rebelled against the contrast of this hideous
place with the light and colour she had left. She was a rebel. The
contrast was too great. How could she live in a room like this? How
could anybody live? It was not life at all, but a mere grovelling. And
Sally had tasted something that thrilled her. She had come into contact
with a life resembling the life led by those who travelled in the motor
broughams she so much admired. She was ravenous for such a life. Her
natural arrogance was roused and inflamed by the comparison she so
instinctively made between her natural surroundings and those to which
she felt she was entitled by her capacities. She thought with contempt
of the other girls at Madame Gala's. The wine she had drunk, the noises
she had heard, mounted higher. She was primed with conceit and
excitement. Hitherto she had only determined by ambition to use the
world and attain comfort and success. Now she felt the _power_ to attain
this success. She could not experience the feeling without despising
every other feeling. She looked round the room in scorn--at the dull,
shabby bed, and the meagre furniture, and at the little old woman who
sat by the empty fireplace with so miserable an air of confirmed
poverty. She looked higher, at Miss Jubb, and saw afresh the stupid
incompetence of such a creature. Even old Perce and Mrs. Perce led in
her new vision a life that was good enough for them, but not good enough
for Sally. There was a better way, and Sally would not rest until she
had secured that way. And she had the opportunity opening to her. Gaga
had shown her as much. With the vehement exaggeration of youth that is
still half-childhood, Sally saw her own genius. She felt that the world
was already in her grasp. She felt like a financier before a coup. She
felt like a commander who sees the enemy waver. For this night triumph
seemed at hand, through some means which the heat of her brain did not
allow her to analyse, but only to relish with exultation.
x
In the morning Sally had a heavy head as the result of her unusual
entertainment, and she awoke to a sense of disillusion. The room was the
same ugly room, but her dreams had fled. So must Cinderella have felt
upon awaking after her first ball. The colours had faded; the rapturous
consciousness of power had died in the night. Sally felt a little girl
once more, younger and more impotent than she had been for months. The
walk to Regent Street restored her. She once again imagined herself into
the talk with Gaga; she stressed his offer of friendship and his plea
for help. It would be all right; it _was_ all right. She had made no
mistake. Only, she was not as carelessly happy as she had been in the
first realisation. She had recognised that the battle was not yet won,
and that much had still to be done before she could claim the victory
which last night had seemed in her hands. At all events, hatred of her
little ugly home was undiminished. She felt horror of it.
Arrived at the work room, Sally saw it in a new light. She was
permanently changed. The girls had become nothing; even Miss Summers had
become a very good sort of woman, but subtly inferior. There was not
one of the girls who could help Gaga as she was going to do; not one of
them who could earn the advantages which Sally was going to reap. She
settled almost with impatience to work which last night had been left
unfinished. All the time that she was engaged upon it her thoughts were
with other prospects, other deliberate intentions. She was restless and
uneasy--first of all until she had seen Gaga and gauged her effect upon
him in the morning's grey, finally because another secret conflict was
going on beneath her attention. She did not understand what she was
feeling, and this made her the more easily exasperated when cotton
knotted or a sudden noise made her head throb. "I'm out of sorts," she
thought. She tried to laugh in saying: "The morning after the night
before." Her malaise was something more than that.
Gaga came into the room during the morning, haggard and anxious-looking.
The lines in his pallid face were emphasised; his eyes had a faintly
yellowish tinge like the white of a stale egg. In shooting her first
lightning observation of him Sally clicked "Bilious." There was a little
smile between them, and Gaga went out of the room again, languid and
indifferent to everything that was occurring round him. Sally had an
impulse to find some reason for going into his room, but she did not
dare to go. She sewed busily. Perhaps she would see him later. She
peeped into the room at lunch-time, but he was not there, and in the
afternoon she heard from Miss Summers that he was unwell, and would not
be coming back that day. She heard the news with relief; but also with
sudden fright. If--if--if he should have become afraid of her! If he
should have repented! If, instead of allowing her to help and to
benefit, Gaga should become her enemy! Men were so strange in the way
they behaved to girls--so suspicious and funny and brusque--that
anything might have happened in Gaga's mind. Sally recollected herself.
This mood was a bad mood; any loss of self-confidence was with her a
sign of temporary ill-health. She magnificently recovered her natural
conceitedness. She was Sally.
In the evening she went home early, to her mother's interest and
pleasure; but there was nothing to do at home and the atmosphere was
insufferable. It drove her forth, and she walked in the twilight,
longing for Toby to be with her. He would not have understood all she
was thinking--he would angrily have hated most of it--but his company
would have distracted her mind and occupied her attention. She thought
of Toby at sea on this beautiful evening, with the stars pale in an opal
sky; and she could see him standing upon the deck of the "Florence
Drake" in his blue jersey without a hat, with the breeze playing on his
crisp hair and his brown face. A yearning for Toby filled her. Tears
started to her eyes. She loved him, she felt, more than she had ever
done: she needed him with her, not to understand her, but to brace her
with the support of his strong arms. Sally dried her eyes and blew her
nose. "Here!" she said to herself. "Stop it! I'm getting soppy!"
She presently passed the ugly building of a Board School, not the one
which she had attended, but one nearer her present home. Outside it, and
within the railings protecting the asphalted playground from the
footpath, was a notice-board upon which was pasted a bill advertising
the evening classes which would be held there during the Autumn Session.
Idly, Sally stopped to read down the list of subjects--and the first
that caught her eye, of course, was dressmaking. She gave a sniff. Funny
lot of girls would go to that. Girls trying to do Miss Jubb out of a
job. Sally glimpsed their efforts. She had seen girls in dresses which
they had made themselves. Poor mites! she thought. Paper patterns for
somebody twice their size, and bad calculations of the necessary
reductions. Tape-measures round their own waists, and twisted two or
three times at the back, which they could not see. Blunt scissors,
clumsy hands, bad material.... It was a nightmare to Sally. She did not
go far enough to imagine the despairs, the aching hands, the tears,
which attended the realisation of an evening's botch. She was not really
a very humane person. She had both too much imagination for that
infirmity of the will, and not enough. She passed from dressmaking to
the other subjects.
There was one that made her jump, so much did it seem to be named there
for her own especial benefit. It was "Book-keeping." Sally was taken
aback. She scanned the details. Two lessons a week, on Mondays and
Thursdays, at eight o'clock. A disdain filled her. She would not be as
the other girls. She would learn book-keeping. She would understand
figures. Then she could help Gaga with precisely that work which he
confessed himself unable to do. Sally memorised the details. It was
enough; she was ready for anything. As the following Monday was the
first night of the session she would be present then.
And so, her ambition mounting once more to arrogance, Sally returned to
bed and her mother, and bread and margarine, and the dingy room on the
second-floor-back.
xi
The book-keeping class was held in one of the ordinary classrooms,
separated from others by high partitions of wood which were continued to
the ceiling in panes of glass. The room was filled with forms and desks,
but the class was so small that all those composing it (and there were
fewer still after the first six lessons) were put into the first two or
three rows of desks. The teacher was a little sandy man who made
well-trodden jokes and talked in a wheezy voice well suited to his
appearance. He used the blackboard, and stood upon tiptoe to scrawl upon
it in a large handwriting. That was at the beginning. Later, methods
developed; but for the present Sally and the others were merely
initiated into the first movements of the difficult craft. With
amazement she began to learn the mysteries of the signs "Dr." and "Cr.",
the words "Balances", "carried forward", etc. and the meanings of such
things as ruled diagonal lines. It was to her like the game of learning
chess, and she had the additional pleasure of knowing that with the
solution of each problem she was adding appreciably to her knowledge,
and to a knowledge which henceforward would not be wasted, as she could
turn it, as of all things she most desired, to immediate use. Madam's
accounts would no longer be a source of trouble or bewilderment to her.
She knew very soon that they would be mere child's play to her
instructed intelligence.
From the teacher and the lessons, Sally turned to her fellow pupils.
There were about twenty of these, the sexes almost equally represented,
but with the girls in a slight majority. One or two of the young men
were pale and spectacled, and so they did not interest her. The girls
were generally of a higher class than her own, were obviously already
employed as clerks in offices, and were rather older than herself. They
were the daughters of tradesmen or clerks, and all lived at home in the
better streets of the neighbourhood. They were neatly dressed, but she
was easily the smartest of the audience. The other girls looked at her
hair and her complexion, and then at each other; and a feud began. Sally
was consoled by the evident interest of the young men, who often cast
glances in her direction. She sat demurely, as if unconscious, but in
her wicked heart there was glee at the knowledge that this same young
person Sally, once the despised companion of May Pearcey, had in a year
attained such new charm as to be attractive to these young men. She
shrugged her shoulders at the thought of it. Had she been an onlooker
she would have been amused or cynical. As she was the cynosure of the
emotional eye of the whole class she could view the natural processes of
all such gatherings with satisfaction. Her shrugs were for the
respectable and alienated girls, who were like sparrows chattering over
a brilliant intruder; to the young men she offered an air of
imperviousness to their cajoleries which made her seem to at least three
of them a young person whom it might be pleasant and titillating to
know. The general arrangement of feelings towards her was evident at the
third lesson. By the fourth it had taken a quite definite form. She had
exchanged conversation with the three men: she had smiled provokingly at
the girls. The girls mentioned her at home, and to their friends; the
young men did not mention her to anybody.
The men were all older than she, were in employment, and although some
of them were still at home the majority of them were in lodgings in
Holloway, were lonely, and were desirous of improving their positions.
This was the case with Sally's three admirers. Of the three, her
immediate favourite, because he most nearly resembled Toby in physical
type, was a thickset dark young man with a budding black moustache and
polished eyes and a strong pink upon his cheekbones. But after she had
looked at him a few times she decided that he had Jewish blood, and Jews
were among her aversions. So, although his name was Robertson, she
passed him over in favour of a tall, rather bony fair youth of about
three and twenty with smooth hair and a lean, conceited humorous face.
He had assurance, which she adored, and his great length made it queer
to be talking to him, because she had to look high up to see his face.
He always wore a light-coloured tweed suit, and a knitted tie of about
ten different colours, and his aquiline nose and jaunty manner gave him
an air of knowingness which she much appreciated. He was a stockkeeper
in a publishing house, and came from the South of England. His voice was
light in tone, and he had a delightful burr. This young man, Harry
Simmons, became her friend and soon walked part of the way home with her
after each lesson. He talked politics to her, and explained all sorts of
things which she had never before known. He told her how books were
made, and how they were delivered unbound in great bales; and when she
said "a book" meaning "a paper," he corrected her. Sally liked him. Of
the three men she now knew well he was the best-informed. Accordingly
she learnt more, intellectually, from him than from either of the
others. He quickly fell in love with her, which was an added pleasure;
and she once or twice let him kiss her, without promising anything or
revealing the existence of Toby. She never kissed Harry in return, a
fact which she cherished as a proof of her innocence. But she liked him
very much, and told him more about herself than she had ever told
anybody else. And as there is nothing like the use of such care and such
flexible and uncertain kindness, when it is not calculated, for
tantalising a young man who is agreeably in love with a young girl,
Sally had a new delight, a new self-flattery, to cosset. The affair did
not become very desperate in Harry's case--he was too conceited, and he
knew the rules of the game too well--and at length it subsided normally;
but it lasted pleasantly and instructively enough for perhaps four
months, and the memory for both was one of smiling amusement,
untempered by chagrin. Sally's one dread in the whole course of her
friendship with Harry was a dread lest Toby should see them together.
That Harry should see her with Toby she did not mind, because she could
at any time have relinquished Harry without a qualm; but she loved Toby,
and took care to keep secret from him on their infrequent meetings
anything which might disturb his ardent thoughts of the little girl he
had left at home.
So book-keeping went on. And so Harry went on. But by now Sally's
interests had become many, for she was leading a busy life, and the
difficulty of maintaining all her affairs at the necessary pitch of
freshness and importance in her attention was increasing. She had to
think of her work, of Madam and her now frequent fits of illness, of
Gaga, of Miss Summers, of money, of Harry, of book-keeping, of clothes,
and of her mother. Mrs. Perce she rarely saw during this period, because
as Sally found new preoccupations she was bound to shed some of her old
ones. She thought very nicely of Mrs. Perce; but she had at the moment
no time for her. Mrs. Perce belonged to a passing stage, and had not yet
a niche in the new one. Toby she saw still more seldom than anybody; but
for Toby Sally's feelings underwent no obvious change. They developed as
her character matured, but they did not alter. She embraced him, as it
were, with her mind. Toby was somehow different from all the others. He
was a part of herself. She did not know why, but he stood alone,
whenever she thought of him, wonderfully strange, and strong, and
enduring, as much Toby as she was Sally. She did not fear him. In some
ways she despised him, for being so little pliable, so little supple in
his way of managing the world. But she adored him as a man, and as a
simple-minded baby who unerringly made her happy by his assurance, and
flighted her by behaving as though she was something belonging solely
to himself. So long as she was confident that about nine-tenths of her
life was outside the range of Toby's understanding, Sally enjoyed his
delusion. It gave her such a sense of superiority that she relished her
submission to his will in all trifles. She never felt that his absences
made him a stranger. Rather, she felt that they increased and
intensified her love and her desire for him. These at least were
unabated--more ardent than ever. And the absences certainly made Toby
all the more boisterously glad to see her whenever he returned from a
voyage, and more demonstratively affectionate when they were alone
together.
xii
Madame Gala had returned to work and Gaga had gone into the country by
the time Sally had joined her book-keeping class; and so that matter
seemed to be in abeyance. The ease with which the fabric of her newest
plan had been made to collapse discomfited Sally, who was always
impatient for quick results; but she did not abandon hope. She believed
in her star. She had seen very little of Gaga since their dinner. He had
avoided her, with some tokens of slight constraint, although his
greetings had been almost furtively reassuring. That alone would have
made her believe that he had not forgotten his promise. Sally bade
despair stand back. Always, hitherto, she had found her own level: she
would do it again in this instance. She had the grit of the ambitious
person who succeeds. Hers was not a vague or unwarrantable conceit: she
would work for its fulfilment. It is the mark of the great.
While she was waiting, she one day received a letter from Toby,
announcing his imminent arrival in London. He would wait outside Madame
Gala's, and they would spend his leave together. It was now the
beginning of October, and a fine Autumn had begun. The days, although
rapidly growing shorter, were warm and cordial. They were better than
the summer days. There was a crispness in the air, but there was no
chill. Filled with pleasure, Sally wore her prettiest clothes that
morning, and Toby was waiting in the sunshine at the corner of the
street, and they met with light hearts. It was just one o'clock. At once
they found a tea-shop, and had lunch; and then Toby sprang upon her a
proposal that they should go to Richmond for the afternoon, and to
Brighton the following day. He appeared to have plenty of money for both
jaunts. He had planned them as soon as he knew the date of his arrival.
"O-o-o!" cried Sally. "Brighton! The sea! Will you take me out in a
boat? Better not: I should be sick. Take me on the river this afternoon,
instead. No: we'll just walk in Richmond Park. Ever been to Kew, Toby?
The girls say it's lovely there. What's Brighton like? I went there once
when I was a kid. Wasn't half fine. What d'you do there? Sit on the
beach and throw stones in the water? We might paddle. Like to see me
paddling? What time do we start?"
"Here, hold on," said Toby. They were walking to catch a Richmond
omnibus. "You ask a lot of questions and don't wait for no answers. I
say ... look at that young woman there.... Look at her!"
"Well?" demanded Sally. "It's only because her shoes don't fit. She
doesn't know how to wear high heels. That's all it is. That frock cost a
bit."
"Did it?" Toby jerked his head. "Well, you ought to know, I suppose.
It's not as smart as yours."
"D'you like it, Toby?" asked Sally, eagerly. He had never said anything
before about her clothes. She was suddenly sportive with pride in his
interest.
Toby nodded. He had been betrayed into his speech of approval. It was
not natural to him.
"It's all right," he nonchalantly said. "I've seen worse."
Sally shook his arm, provoked by a variety of feelings. She loved him to
tease her. How strange! She felt a hundred years older than Toby, and
yet she felt like a little girl. And when she was with him she did not
have to mind her tongue, but could be as slangy and as natural as she
pleased. Toby did not know any better. She had not always to be
thinking, with him, of what a real lady might be expected to say. He was
a relaxation for her.
"That's right," she said. "Flatter me. Make me get swelled head. Don't
think of the consequences. Ladle it out. Tell me I look a little
princess."
"No, Sally. I wouldn't do that," answered Toby, possessively. "I don't
want you to get above yourself. You're a bit uppish as it is. Noticed
it? Well, I have. And that's a thing I want to talk to you about."
"Oh," said Sally in a dangerous tone. "What is? Look, there's a bus!"
With Sally's nimbleness and Toby's muscle they obtained seats upon the
top of the bus, and, seated together, resumed their conversation in low,
grumbling tones. She first repeated her question with new
aggressiveness, not at all deterred from the possibility of a row by her
delight in Toby's company.
"About you," said Toby. "You see, smartness is all very well; but if
you're going to be a sailor's wife you got to look where you're going.
Now, your last letter. It said you was being a good girl, and taking
evening classes--that's because I told you my aunt see you out with a
fellow one night, coming from the schools. Now what the Hell's the good
of evening classes to a sailor's wife; and who _is_ this fellow aunt
seen you with?"
"I suppose even a sailor's wife wants to know how to cook," remarked
Sally.
"Oh cooking," grimly said Toby. "Does the fellow learn cooking, too?"
Sally was impudent. She was enjoying herself. She rejoiced that he
should be so jealous and authoritative when she knew that she could
always play with him.
"I don't know which fellow your aunt saw," she answered flippantly.
"There's so many of them at the classes. I can't tell which it might be.
Did she tell you what he was like?"
"She told me you was arm in arm."
"That's a lie," said Sally, curtly. "Nosey old cat. She never saw me arm
in arm with anybody. And even if I had been, what business is it of
hers? What does she know about me? About me and you?"
"She see us last time I was home. See us twice. That's why she told me
about you and this other fellow. See? She says--that girl I see you with
seems to have got another young man--light come, light go."
"O-o-oh!" Sally gritted her teeth. "I _would_ like to have your aunt by
the back hair, Toby! Old cat! She's made it up, I expect. Interfering
old beast! But, after all, there's a lot of fellows at the class, and we
all come out together, and sometimes they walk a bit of the way home
with me. That's all it is. Nothing to make a fuss about. I'm not a nun,
got to pass men by on the other side of the road, am I?"
"Well, I won't have it!" cried Toby, restless in his seat. His dark face
was darker. There was a red under his tan, and a gleam of his teeth that
made him like an angry dog. "And that's enough of it. I won't have it.
You belong to me. See? And if I catch another fellow nosing round I'll
split his head open. Damned sauce! Just because I'm away, you think you
can go marching about...."
He sulked for several minutes, frowning, and biting a torn thumbnail.
"What you done to your thumb?" demanded Sally taking it quickly between
her own fingers. Toby made no answer, but, very flushed, drew his thumb
away. With her chin a little out, and an air of quietly humming to
herself, Sally looked at all the shops and houses upon their route, and
at the people walking sedately upon the pavements. As it was Saturday
afternoon, many of the West End stores were shuttered; but as the bus
went farther west, and into suburban areas, there was great marketing
activity. Sally watched all the people and observed all the shops with
an absorbed childish interest that was almost passionate in its
intensity. She took no notice of Toby for a quarter of an hour. He might
not have been there. This was his punishment for being outspoken and
suspicious. She was not going to have that sort of thing from anybody.
But if Sally was supercilious, Toby was stubborn. Once his grievance had
been voiced, and had been taken flippantly, he was reduced to glowering.
At Sally's continued disregard, and after a going over in his own mind
of all they had said, Toby began to feel uncomfortable. He began to feel
a fool. At the precise moment when his sensation of foolishness was
strongest upon him, Sally turned and slipped her arm within his, and
pressed his elbow warmly against her side. They did not speak; but peace
was made. Presently Sally began to draw Toby's attention to things they
passed, and although at first he was surly in his responses, Toby was
gradually and surely appeased by her masterly handling of him. He was
not free from suspicion--she did not want him to be, because it enhanced
her value; but he was dominated by her cajolery.
When they arrived in Richmond, and had climbed the hill, and had looked
down from the Terrace Gardens upon that lovely piece of the Thames which
is to be seen from the height, Sally and Toby walked arm in arm about
the Deer Park. They saw the leaves falling, quite yellow, although the
trees were still dense with foliage; and the crisp air exhilarated them.
In the sun it was hot and dazzlingly bright.
"Tell me about what you've seen, Toby," suddenly asked Sally.
"Seen?" Toby fumbled a minute in his mind. "What d'you mean--seen?"
"At sea, and when you go ashore. _You_ know. Ships and places."
Toby looked puzzled. "Well, what's there to tell?" he questioned. "A
ship's a ship. You wouldn't understand if I was to tell you I'd seen a
schooner, or a barque, or a cattle-boat, or a dinghy." He was rather
lofty. "I mean, you wouldn't _know_."
"How do _you_ know, then? How can _you_ tell the difference?" she
persisted.