She had no such youthful confidence as Sally's. She was a born follower,
a born sheep; and with Madam removed she could see nothing ahead but
disaster to the business. Sally had a little difficulty in keeping back
her smile. She thought of this poor old pussycat in fear of her life,
and her lip slightly curled at the knowledge that she alone had superior
knowledge of the situation. Already Sally was casting round for channels
in which her new power might be used. She wanted opportunity. It was
both a chagrin and a secret relief to her that Madam could not yet be
told of the marriage. If she knew it, and disapproved, as Sally knew
that she must do, Madam could at any moment annul Sally's hopes of
taking a leading part in the business. She could alter her will.
Therefore, if she lived, she must be kept ignorant. It would be a
trouble. And yet in spite of her assurance Sally was still suspicious of
her own ability to master every detail in time to carry on the whole
establishment without a great lapse into momentary failure. She planned
as a middle-aged woman. At eighteen her plans were profound. But
instinctively, and in spite of colossal conceit, she understood that
eighteen was not an age at which control can successfully be taken of a
large business. Therefore she was fighting against unacknowledged fear.
During that day she hardly saw Gaga at all. He was at home with his
mother, and did not come to business until the afternoon. Only in the
evening did she creep into his room and submit to his endearments. She
then left, and went to the hotel at which for the present they were to
stay; and here, in the little sitting-room attached to their bedroom,
she was for the first time able to be alone for half-an-hour with her
post-nuptial reflections. They were not all pleasant, and they called
for the exercise of her natural resoluteness. She had comfort, and the
knowledge that she need never again trouble about food and clothing. But
she also knew that a husband is a different sort of person from a lover.
He seemed to her to be a sort of omnipresent nuisance. Her trouble was
that thoughts and ambitions were in conflict with Gaga's amorousness.
He could never understand her. He could understand her no better than
Toby, and as she had no use for him otherwise than as the instrument of
her ambition, she was already, within two days of marriage, bored with
him. Sally awaited Gaga's arrival with calm unwillingness. She did not
realise how rapid would be her instinctive progress to repugnance; but
she had no illusions about her marriage.
At last Gaga arrived, his own eagerness unabated, but he was still
shaken by the fact that his mother was seriously ill. With Sally in his
arms he whispered or murmured alternately professions of love and
anxiety. She was all the time secretly astonished at his devotion to
Madam, because it corresponded to nothing in her own nature; but she
comforted Gaga because it was her impulse to do so. She did not dislike
him in this mood. She felt pity for him. It was only for his tremulous
persistency in caress that Sally felt contempt. Gradually she began to
be able to divert his mind to other matters--to their own future, and
the flat they were to take and to furnish; and to the plans they must
make for a slow change of her position in the business. Already Sally
was obtaining a grasp of the details, but she could go little further
until her access to the books and accounts was free. She could do
nothing until some scheme had been made. So the two sat together after
dinner and discussed what they were to do, and where they were to live,
and how the rooms of the flat were to be furnished. It was all, upon
Sally's side, practical and clear; and for Gaga a wonderful revelation
of Sally's wisdom. He became more and more infatuated, as Sally became
more and more cool. And they talked the whole evening through, without
realising that with each moment Sally's dominion was more firmly
established.
It was only towards the end of the evening that Gaga, unhinged by
excitement, became desperately pale, and confessed to a headache. He
found his customary drugs, and took them. But to Sally this headache was
a new and emphatic indication of Gaga's troublesome temperament.
Ugliness and squalor she knew; but sickliness was new to her. In face of
a groaning and prostrate man, she turned away. Her heart sank a little.
Then, with a shrug, she turned to the advertisements of flats to let in
London which she found in various newspapers; and made notes of the
addresses of house agents. This occupation she continued until Gaga
called almost fretfully from the next room, when she turned off the
electric light and joined him. An hour later, while Gaga still lay
staring into the darkness, Sally was fast asleep. She had no dreams. For
the present she was occupied with facts alone; and she did not suspect
that she was unhappy, because she had been absorbing too many details to
be able to reflect upon the sinking of her heart and its meaning.
v
The next evening Sally went to see her mother. Her first object was to
get Mrs. Minto away from the room in which they had lived; because it
was essential that if Toby came back, as she believed he could not do
for some days, he should be unable to trace Sally or her mother. It was
for fear of Toby that the removal was to be made. Once get Mrs. Minto
away, to some other part of North London, and Toby might seek news of
Sally in vain. Only if he came and waited outside Madam's would he be
able to find her; and in that case she could still baulk him, as she was
going to stay late every evening for the future in order to work with
Gaga. But first of all, Sally must arrange to get her mother out of the
old house. She would not want to go. She must go. She would pretend
that she could keep herself. She would show the stubborn pride of many
old people of the working class, who will work until they kill
themselves rather than accept charitable doles. Very well, Sally knew
that Mrs. Minto could not keep herself; and she knew also that these
same old people have no similar delicacy in taking from their children's
earnings. She was going to explain that she was still working, and that
what Mrs. Minto would receive came from Sally herself, and not from
Sally's husband. And she would herself find a room for her mother in
Stoke Newington, a suburb which is farther from Holloway than many more
distant places for the reason that no dweller in Holloway has any
curiosity about Stoke Newington or any impulse to go there as an
adventure.
Sally found Mrs. Minto in a familiar attitude, stooping over a very
small fire; but as she ran up the stairs very softly, with a nervous
dread of Toby, she had no conception of the welcome which awaited her.
She opened the door and went into the dingy room, and stood smiling; and
to her great surprise she saw her mother rise almost wildly and come
towards her. Two thin arms pressed and fondled her, and a thin old cheek
was pressed hard against her own. To herself Mrs. Minto was ejaculating
in a shivering way: "My baby, my baby!" Only then did Sally understand
how much the separation had meant to her mother. She herself had never
once thought of that lonely figure at home.
"Poor old thing!" Sally found herself saying. "Was she lonely then?" She
patted her mother's bony shoulders, and hugged her, affected by this
involuntary betrayal of love. Mrs. Minto had never been demonstrative.
"I wish I'd brought you something, now. A present. I never thought of
it."
"Is it all right? Are you happy, my dearie?" demanded Mrs. Minto, with a
searching glance.
"I knew what I was doing, ma," proclaimed Sally. "There's not much I
don't know."
It was an evasion; a confession of something quite other than the
happiness about which she had been asked.
"Ah, that's what I was afraid of...." breathed her mother. "That's what
young people always think. You don't know nothing at all, Sally."
"I know more'n you do!" It was a defiance.
"You think you do. Why, you're only a baby...." Mrs. Minto shook her
head several times, with lugubrious effect. But her last words had been
full of a smothered affection, more truly precious than a hundred of
Gaga's kisses or a dozen of Toby's animal hugs.
"In your days I should have been." Sally withdrew herself, and led her
mother back to her chair. "Not know! Why, the girls know a lot more now
than they used to when _you_ was a girl. No more timid little
creatures."
"They only _think_ they know more," declared Mrs. Minto, trembling. "And
it takes 'em longer to find out they don't know nothing at all. It takes
a lot of time to get to know. You're in too much of a hurry, my gel. You
don't know nothing. Nothing whatever, for all your talk of it. I been
thinking about it all these days--frantic, I've been."
"All these _years_!" jeered Sally. "Look here, ma.... Here's my marriage
license!" And as she spoke she waved the folded paper before her
mother's eyes in such a way that it fell open and showed the official
entries. Even as she did this so lightly, Sally was able to catch the
sharply hidden expression of relief which crossed Mrs. Minto's face at
the reassurance. She made no pretence of misunderstanding. "Say I don't
know anything?" she demanded. "Think I don't know enough for that? Silly
old fool? What did I tell you? There's about twenty million things I
know that you don't know. And never _will_ know, what's more. Wake up! I
tell you one thing, ma. The people who _don't_ know think a lot worse
than the people who do. They fancy more. See? It's a little way they
got. All goes on inside their heads, and shakes about. People like me
haven't got time to think a lot of muck. We _do_ things ... and do them
thorough."
Mrs. Minto, reproved, sank into contemplation.
"Well, I don't know, Sally," she went on, after a pause. "You talk a
lot. I'd rather think than talk. You say he's rich. Sometimes girls get
left."
"Not me, though," Sally assured her. "Soppy ones do. I'm not soppy. And
I'll tell you what. I'm going to get you out of this place."
"I ain't going to live with you and him!" declared Mrs. Minto in alarm.
"I wouldn't!"
"No. You're going to live somewhere else. I want you to get away from
here. You're going to have two decent rooms ... in Stoke Newington. Real
paper on the walls, and a carpet, and new mattress that isn't like two
horse troughs."
"I won't take nothing from him."
"No. From me. Out of my wages."
"You ain't going to have.... Don't be silly. I'm well off where I am."
"I'm going to keep on at Madam's. I'm going to have plenty money. And
you're going to move. Got it? I'll see about it to-morrow night, get you
in Thursday or Friday. Won't take an hour to settle you in. Then you'll
be comfortable."
"I'm very well as I am," said Mrs. Minto, obstinately. "I can keep
myself. I'm not going to sponge on you. Not likely."
"You'll move Thursday or Friday, I tell you."
It was final. The poor thin little old woman had no fight in her. She
looked up at Sally, and her face was the anxious face of a monkey, or of
a sick beast that is being tended. Now that she had been comforted about
Sally she had nothing left to say. She made a last feeble effort.
"I don't want to move. Mrs. Roberson...."
"Fiddlesticks!"
"My 'ead!"
"Your head'll get better if you keep quiet and have real coal and a bath
or two." Sally was imperious, and enjoyingly so. Her spirits had risen.
She was a general. She looked down protectingly at her mother, and a
ghost of ancient love rose breathing in her heart. "Silly old thing!"
she murmured, with a touch of softness; and knelt suddenly. "Got to look
after you a bit," she added. "It's you who's the baby now. What a lot of
kids people are! Makes me feel a hundred--and over--when I see what
fools they are. I'm sorry for you, and that's the truth. You and Miss
Summers and Gaga."
"Who's Gaga?"
"He's Mr. Sally Minto," said Sally with mystic insolence. "That's who
Gaga is. He calls himself my husband, but he's no more my husband than
you are, ma. And never will be. But oh, Lor! He's going to be the worry
of my life! Ma, did Pa chase you all over the place when you was
married? I mean, chase you all about trying to kiss you and fuss you?"
"No, dear," said Mrs. Minto. "He was drunk. He didn't know what he was
doing."
"Hn," Sally grunted. Then she stood up again. "I'm going now," she
announced. "I'm going back to Gaga. He's ill. I expect he's being sick."
And before her mother could make startled enquiries, Sally had kissed
her and gone to the door. She ran in high spirits down the stairs and
out of the front door not laughing, but in a curious way moved by this
conversation and the strange turn which it had taken. She slammed the
door after her, and met with a sudden squall of wind. And as she went
away from the house she was conscious of a feeling of relief. She had
escaped from it, and her heart was beating rather fast. All the time,
under her speech and her thoughts, she had unconsciously been listening
for Toby's step upon the stair. Even now, she knew that her shoulders
were contracted with apprehensiveness.
She hurried along in the direction of Holloway Road, still flinching,
with her nerves uncommonly strained. It was such an odd feeling that she
had in thus revisiting her ugly old home. She had noticed it all
afresh--the tired linoleum, and the oil stove and the tiny fire made
from coal blocks, and the stupid old bed and the browned wallpaper--and
she felt that it all belonged to a time when she had been a different
girl altogether. She had never before been away from home, without her
mother, for so long. She had never once been away from this room for a
night, until her marriage. And to come thus into the dark street, in a
wind, with the door slamming behind her, took Sally's memories
uncontrollably back to the days which followed their first arrival, the
days when she had met Toby and talked to him and walked with him about
the streets. She recalled her visit to Mrs. Perce, and the sight of that
grim figure relentlessly waiting for her outside the Stores; and the
struggle with Toby, and her resultant happiness; and the night when he
had first come to the room while her mother lay in the hospital. Heigho!
She had been young in those days; now she felt an old woman, with all
the sense of ageless age which the young feel after a transition from
one kind of life to another. She was in a sense disillusioned. She had
taken her step, and cut the link that bound her to this neighbourhood
and the starveling room. She had cut the link that bound her to Toby.
And he was now swiftly back in her consciousness, in her heart; so that
she knew she would never forget him because he was the first man she had
loved, and thus forever her idea of a lover. So strong was her emotion
that she felt a strange little dryness in her throat and her burning
eyes, and fancied she heard his voice. It was as though two years had
been taken away, as though she once again--as she done two years
ago--longed and feared to meet Toby.
As Sally, with her head bent and her thoughts active, pressed onward,
she heard the clanging bell of a passing tramcar, and saw its brilliant
lights rush by along the Holloway Road. A cart rattled on the rough
stones of the road, and the wind blew the leaves of the bushes in the
gardens she passed. And as she shivered a little at the wind's onset she
again imagined that she heard Toby's voice, and inevitably turned in the
direction from which the sound had appeared to reach her. Everything was
quite dark; but there was a blackness just behind her that was like the
figure of a man. It took shape; it came nearer and nearer. Sally's heart
stopped beating, and she shrank back against the railing of one of the
houses. She felt a deadly sickness upon her, a dreadful horror.
"Sally!"
It _was_ Toby. He was abreast, inescapable. He loomed over her like a
figure of vengeance. Her heart was like water. She was hysterically
afraid.
vi
"Hallo, Sally!" Toby was by her side, and his arms round her, and his
kisses on her cheek. "Why, aren't you going to kiss me?"
Sally's eyes opened wide at his tone of innocent surprise. She suffered
him to kiss her lips. Toby had not received her letter! He was on leave,
and.... She gasped. An indescribable relief caused her to rest limply
and unprotestingly in his arms. Once again they were engulfed in
merciful darkness, hidden from each other and from anybody who might
happen to pass. She could not think at all; but she was thankful at this
reprieve. Not yet would he kill her. And as they stood embraced she was
suddenly happy, with a passion that astonished her. Toby-- Toby, her
love; and she herself in his arms again, as she had never thought to be.
A strange laugh, low and tender, came from her lips. Her cheek was
gently rubbed against his, and her body quite relaxed. Every one of
Sally's difficulties suffered an oblivion; they were all dispersed in
the extraordinary mist of sensation which enwrapped her.
"I _was_ surprised," she murmured, kissing him with all her heart.
"Didn't expect to see you. Funny to see you ... _so funny_ ... and when
I was thinking of you. I must have known you were coming."
"I just got in," Toby said. "I say, where you going, Sal?"
Sally flinched again. Immediately she was conscious of terror.
"Stoke Newington," she cried; in a flash. What was she to do? What _was_
she to do? She was desperate. Fear was strong; but love was stronger. It
was not only now that she did not dare to tell him the truth in case he
killed her; much more than that was her understanding of the fact that
she could not bear to lose him. Such gust of thankfulness had shaken
Sally when she knew that Toby had not received her letter that she was
brimming now with joy. It was impossible to lose her rapture at the
moment of its full glory. She _could_ not tell him.
"Stoke Newington? Whatever for? Here, wait till I've had some grub....
No, I'll come with you now. Get some grub later. Have you got to go
there now?"
"You musn't come, Toby."
"Why not?" He was instantly suspicious. His grip tightened, and he
forced her to look at him.
"Didn't you get my letter?"
"When? Now? I've had no letter. What you going to Stoke Newington for?
No, I want to know. You going to meet another chap? I believe you are,
you little devil! By Christ! If you.... I _will_ come!" Toby was now
fiercely suspicious. She could tell from his ferocious grip, and the
urgency of his tone. "If you're playing that game, I'll kill you. By
Christ, I will!"
"I'm not. I'm not," cried Sally. "You're hurting me, Toby!"
"You swear it?" He relaxed his hold, which was strangling her. In the
darkness he again strove to see her expression and judge for himself of
her honesty.
"I'm not going to see anybody. I swear I'm not."
"Why did you ask if I'd had your letter? What you bin writing to me?"
"Oo, a lot of lies...." breathed Sally. "Silly talk and rubbish. That's
all it was."
"What about?" He was still intense. Sally could hardly breathe, and her
courage was fading. They were so much in the darkness that they could
not be seen, and she was entirely dominated by Toby's physical strength.
Within his grasp she was helpless, and not all her dartingly-imagined
expedients would be enough to secure her escape. Hastily she improvised
a story.
"Well, I'm not living with ma any longer. I gone out to live in," she
lied.
"Stoke Newington?"
"No."
"Lost your job?"
"No."
He was baffled! but he knew that something was amiss. Sally could feel
him drawing deep breaths. In the shadow she could imagine that his jaw
was firmly set. It was strange to feel so happy in his arms, so afraid
of death, so frustrated in the composition of any tale by which she
could free herself and thus gain time to make some fresh plan. Sally had
never been in a comparable quandary.
"Where you living?" he next demanded.
"Don't be rough. You're hurting. Well, I'm living. I forget the address.
Only went there last night. I'm with a friend."
"What sort of a friend? A girl? What's her name?"
"Miss Summers."
Toby considered. He had heard that name, Sally knew, and must remember
it. She felt that at last she had stumbled upon something which would
seem to him probable enough to allay immediate suspicion.
"She's your forewoman or something, isn't she?" he demanded.
"Yes. She's very kind. She's ever so nice." Sally prayed that he might
believe her. There was a long pause of doubt, during which hysteria,
rising, nearly provoked a frantic struggle for freedom and flight. But
she remembered a former occasion, and her knees were weak at the
foreknowledge of failure. He would not be merciful. She feared him and
adored him.
"Well," Toby said at last, in a grumble; "when do I see you? Eh?" Thank
God, his voice had changed. He had spoken slowly and in acceptance of
the tale. Sally conquered a sob that would have betrayed her. Toby had
been tricked. There was still a chance that she might be able to manage
him for the present.
Sally thought for a moment, but in a distracted blur. All her plans,
made upon the assumption that he would be at sea for at least a week
longer, had miscarried. There was now no sense in moving her mother
hurriedly and secretly. Toby, in the room above, would be aware of
everything. She must arrange this differently. It would need a careful
scheme. When would Toby receive his letter? Probably it would not be
forwarded at all, but would be kept at the offices of the shipping
company. That was what had happened once or twice before. He would be at
home a week. She had a week. How tired she was! She must get away now,
and have a chance to think; but she must see Toby again. She _must_.
"To-morrow," Sally gasped. "To-morrow night. Eight o'clock. Marble Arch.
Eight o'clock, or a bit after. I might be kept a little late."
To her inexpressable thankfulness, Toby rather grumblingly agreed.
"We'll go to the pictures," he said. "There's a picture house there."
"Wherever you like. Toby, I _must_ go."
They kissed long and passionately; and when Sally was alone, sitting in
the tramcar on its way to Holborn, she found that she was trembling from
head to foot. She was in consternation, and prevented from crying only
by the steadily inquisitive stare of a stout woman opposite. Sally had
never been so afraid, so distraught. She had never been in such a
bewildering and terrifying difficulty. She was only half conscious.
vii
And when she reached the hotel their sitting-room was in darkness. Gaga
had evidently been home, for the evening paper had been thrown upon the
floor, and his hat and coat were upon one of the chairs. Sally
remembered what she had told her mother, and went quickly to the bedroom
door. It was true. Gaga lay groaning in bed, and there was a faint smell
of sickness in the air. Sally instinctively recoiled, and went back into
the sitting-room. Her hands came together and jerked in a gesture of
despair. Everything was against her. The white face was whiter; the
mischievous eyes were sombre. She was a lonely and frightened child
without any support in her life. She was too young, in spite of her
vivacity, to endure such trials unbroken; and in this situation she was
overwhelmed.
With her hands to her mouth, Sally stumbled to the hearthrug, and bowed
her head against the arm of a chair. Painful sobs shook her body.
"Oh, I wish I was dead! I wish I was dead!" she wailed.
In that moment of lost hope she was faced only with the impossibility of
dealing with all her trials. She had been over-excited, and she was
desperate. Everything had gone wrong. She was thus early face to face
with the consequences of her own blithe and over-confident actions; and
the consequences threatened disaster. Death would really at this moment
have seemed better than the effort she must make to grapple with her
problems. It would have been so much easier, and she was without
courage. Afraid lest her sobs might arouse Gaga and bring him groaning
to her side, she stifled them. But they made her body heave for a long
time, until at last with tear-filled eyes she stared at the fire, and
knew that the fit was over.