and executed was satisfactory. But even Miss Summers knew that things
were not going well. All that practical direction which Madam had
brought to the business was lost. Everything that had given distinction
in the choice of material and style was in danger. There were new
purchases to be made, and new designs furnished. All that vast part in
the business which occurred before a customer entered into negotiations
had been managed entirely by Madam, and it was suspended in her absence.
Some of this work was routine, and could be conducted without her; but
as the days passed it became evident that important matters were being
delayed, that they were accumulating, that unless something could be
done quickly to check the slide the business would become mechanical and
its individuality be destroyed. Thus Sally learnt that her ambition had
led her to grasp at power which she could not wield. If she had been
able to go to work she could have learnt very easily. She had such quick
taste, and such confidence, that, with Miss Summers at her side, in
spite of many mistakes, she could have dealt with much that was now
slipping. But she was unable to leave Gaga. When she tried to explain
the needs of the moment to him Gaga turned weakly away, incapable of
grasping more than the fact that she was his wife and that he needed
her. At a speech concerning the business he shrugged his shoulders, and
became stupidly ineffective.
One night, when she was in bed, Sally thought of all this, and was first
despondent and then dispirited. The mood intensified. Once it had
gripped her she knew no peace. She was in helpless torment. Before she
knew quite what she was doing she had drawn the bedclothes over her head
and was bitterly sobbing. Little disjointed phrases were jerked from her
lips in this painful abandonment to fear and the sense of lonely
powerlessness. She was at last unrestrained in her admission of failure.
She did not know ... she did not _know_. By herself she could do
nothing. And there was nobody to whom she could turn for succour. Her
mother was useless, Mrs. Perce was useless. Her one support was Miss
Summers, and Miss Summers this evening had been unable to hide her
trepidation, but had sat licking her lips and blinking her eyes, which
held such concern that she could in no way disguise the cause of her
gloom. Miss Summers also, then, was full of foreboding; and Sally, tied
fast here, a child, thrown off her balance by illness and nervous
excitement, had lost confidence in her star.
When she was calm again she slept; but in the morning the preoccupation
returned to her, and her head ached, and the tears filled her eyes as
though she were fighting against grief. And her first visit to Gaga
disgusted her and made her feel the more miserable. She had often been
more poignantly affected, but never had she experienced such a sense of
complete distaste for life. She was like a child given an impossible
task to perform; and instead of being able to rise on the wings of her
arrogance as she was in the habit of doing, Sally was weighed down by
leaden sickness and fear. She went slowly downstairs to have her
breakfast, and sat solitary in the big brown dining-room which
overlooked a square of grass and a high wall. A dismal grey oppressed
the atmosphere, and an autumn chill. She could not eat, could only sniff
despairingly and drink a cup of tea and wander to the fire and lay her
forehead against the mantelpiece, which was cooling indeed, but without
comfort. Its hard coldness was unbearable. Sally's arms crept up as a
pillow. She stared downwards at the dead fire.
"O-o-oh!" she groaned bitterly. "I wish I was dead! I do wish I was
dead!" And at the sound of her wretched voice Sally once more gave way
completely and began to sob aloud. She was beaten, and her spirit was
gone.
xv
And so more days passed, each filled with a sort of numbing dread. Sally
thought of the business, of her future, of Toby--from whom she had
received several letter reflecting his moods of ferociousness and
resentment,--and of the bonds which kept her tied to the house. She knew
during all this time no peace. She grew thinner, and began to take less
care of herself. She was not aware of the beginning of a loss of
self-respect, but it was there. She--she who had always been so strict
in regard to her toilette and dress, whatever her state of mind--went
down to breakfast one morning in a kimono which she had found in Madam's
wardrobe and shortened for herself. It was a proof that she no longer
cared for her appearance. She lay through the nights often only
half-asleep, in a stupor which presently led her to an attitude almost
of indifference to the needs of the day. And for the rest of the time
Sally was so lethargic that it one morning occurred to her to think that
she had caught from Gaga whatever was the unnamed illness from which he
was suffering. The thought once arisen, flew to her head. It became a
horror. She had heard of bad fruit corrupting fruit that was sound and
this was a new preoccupation for her. When Gaga would have kissed her
lips she turned away in sudden nausea, fighting instinctively against a
subjection which her indifference had hitherto made allowable. And she
had several times to invent an excuse to be alone, so active had her
distress become; and in these absences she would walk vehemently up and
down the dining-room until she was forced by exhaustion to sit or by a
message from Gaga to return to his room.
"Why, whatever's _come_ to me?" she demanded. "It's awful! I'm ill."
The doctor called every day to see Gaga, and spoke as though there was a
definite improvement in his patient's health. The medicine Gaga was
taking would finally give him strength. Already he was beginning to eat
more, and beginning also to retain what he had eaten.
"It's nerves, you know," the doctor told Sally one day. "Mere nerves.
Your husband's run down. He's not strong. He's had a shock. As soon as
he's well enough he ought to be got away for a holiday. You take him
away. About the end of next week, if he makes good progress. Take him to
the sea."
"He hates it," cried Sally. "Upsets him."
"Oh." The doctor considered. "Where did you go for your honeymoon?
Penterby--well, that would do, if you can take drives to the sea. He
doesn't want too bracing a place. And now, Mrs. Merrick, I've been
noticing _you_ lately. You're run down, too. We can't have you ill.
You've been very plucky; but you've had a great strain, and all this
nursing has worn you out. I'm going to have a look at you...."
Sally was conscious of a sinking of the heart.
"I'm quite all right!" she protested. She could not have told what
intuition had created this panic; but her heart had begun instantly to
thump in her breast, and she became, as she had done once before, almost
dizzy. She could not say anything more. She submitted to his
examination, and answered his questions. It was an ordeal, and she
watched his serious face with its cold eyes, and felt his chilly hand,
and guessed at what he would say. The doctor seemed appallingly slow,
appallingly deliberate and immovable and ruthless in his perceptions.
She was terrified. The room wavered before her; and her fright grew
greater and greater. He was very patient. She felt strange trust in him;
but always the same dread, which made her teeth chatter a little. Soon
he had finished; and then he looked at her with a slight smile and a
nod.
"Yes," he said, reflectively. "Oh, there's nothing to be alarmed about
at all. Nothing. All you've got to do is to take care of yourself, and
not worry; and it will do you good to get away. Women in your condition,
especially if it's the first, often...."
"_My_ condition!" exclaimed Sally. It was like a blow. "Doctor!"
"Nothing to be alarmed at," he repeated. "You'll be very happy after a
bit. You know, you're going to have a baby." He stood away from her,
smiling in a friendly way.
"A baby!" Sally was shaken from head to foot. She stared at the doctor
in an extremity of horror. "A baby!"
He patted her arm. Before she was able to collect herself he had gone--a
busy doctor with a long round and a large practice. Sally sat looking
at the fire. Then she rose. A scream came to her lips. Again and again
she shuddered. A baby! A baby! Toby's baby!
xvi
The news confirmed what Sally had never consciously thought, but what
she now felt she had known for days. If anything had been needed to
complete her despair it was this. She felt suicidal. She could have
borne illness, even failure in the business, even all the complications
of distress which she had been already experiencing; but the knowledge
of ultimate disgrace so inevitable drove her mad. Vainly Sally's mind
flew in every direction for relief--the doctor might be wrong; the
coming of babies could be prevented; perhaps Gaga might never know--she
could persuade him to go away, could go away herself, could do a hundred
things to tide over the difficulty. And at the end of all these
twistings of the mind she would find herself still terribly in danger,
and would fight against hideous screaming fits by lying on the floor or
on a couch and crushing her handkerchief into her mouth. She was quite
overcome by her new disaster, the fruit of wild temptation, and the
consequence of her whole course of action. Used as Sally was to meeting
every emergency with cool shrewdness, she could not bring to her present
situation the necessary philosophy, because she was ill, and
fear-stricken, and made crazy by the impossibility of finding a solution
to her anxieties.
Hour after hour was spent with horrible nightmarish imaginings, in
frenzied self-excuses and improvised expedients. And never did there
come one moment of peace in the midst of all this panic. Sally had no
friend. More and more she began to realise this. She had no friend. She
had made use of people, they were fond of her, would submit to her; but
she had no friend. More than anything in the world she now needed a
friend. There was nobody in whom she could confide, from whose love and
sympathy she could draw the strength which at this point she so greatly
needed. She had a husband, a lover, a mother--to none of these could she
go with the truth. It needed all Sally's egotism to make the truth seem
capable of justification, or indeed to make it seem even credible, so
different is the standard by which we judge our own actions from that
which we apply to others. Sally saw everything so much in relation to
all that she had ever thought and felt that she could not understand how
her impulses might horrify one coming to them only after translation
into action. She only knew that she could not betray herself
unreservedly to anybody with the hope of being found innocent. The
knowledge made her at first full of terror; and the terror and the
successive elaborate self-explanation, given to an unresponsive silence
which she could easily suppose to be hostile, made her obstinate; then
she became the more passionately afraid. She could have stormed, lied,
wriggled; but she could never hope to escape the consequences that she
dreaded.
At times Sally could not bear to be with Gaga at all. She told him she
was ill, and that the doctor said she must go out; and in spite of his
protests she would run from the house and walk rapidly for an hour about
Kensington, and even into Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. The weather
made no difference to her. She was desperate, and must seek some relief
from the horror of being cooped up in that house with her secret. She
had begged the doctor to give no hint of it to Gaga, and had tried to
pretend to herself that he had been mistaken in his diagnosis; but her
pretence was of no avail, because each day she became more certain that
he had been right. And still she could not think of any way out. She had
been betrayed by a single act of irresistible passion.
Presently, as her frenzy spent itself, Sally began to think more
collectedly. She remembered Toby's last letter. She began to think of
him. She thought even that she could run away and be divorced and
abandon all her schemes for the sake of the baby. But as soon as Sally
had such an imagining she knew that it was an impossibility for her.
Only as a last resource could she accept her disaster. All her
self-confidence fought against it. She must find some other way. At
first she thought it would be simple to do so; but as her brain worked
upon the problem she found so many difficulties in the way that she
again lost hope. The baby would ruin everything. Finally the return of
Toby seemed to her to be the first necessity. She must see him. She
could do nothing until she saw him. Longing seized her--a quick sense
that at least he was her lover, and therefore her partner. She wrote to
Toby, asking him to come and meet her as soon as he reached London. Then
she waited, her exhausted torments having left her in a mood of
glittering-eyed sullen misery that might at any moment rise sharply to
angry shrillness. Calm hid genuine fear, and it was the calm of one who
has no hope other than self-control.
Gradually Sally came to know the big house in exact detail, because in
these days she was forced to find occupation for herself. The
drawing-room, the dining-room, all the rooms upstairs, were ransacked.
They held no treasures, indeed; but they gave Sally a rather distracting
interest because they aroused her sense of possession. She had wanted to
own things--and these, although they were not what she had pictured,
were property. There was the beginning of bourgeoise acquisitiveness
and pride of ownership in her, after all. Scratch the worker and you
found the bourgeoise. There were carefully-hoarded lengths of rich
material in the cupboards, lace and ribbons and shawls in different
chests of drawers; upon Madam's dressing-table was a manicure set and a
set of tortoiseshell-backed brushes; in the drawers of the same table
were perfumes in great variety. Far below stairs, Sally found the wine
cellar, and although it was small in size it contained more kinds of
wine than she had been able to imagine hitherto, and filled her with an
almost grinning satisfaction. Not yet was her sense of social ambition
roused; but it was born. She began to look ahead. Parties, with the wine
as a feature of them, were imagined. She began, in a manner, to picture
what she would lose by defeat. The baby would ruin all. And she was
helpless, because she could speak to nobody. She was condemned. There
would be ruin, dreadful ruin, and she was glimpsing the very things
which she might have enjoyed. Fresh paroxysms shook Sally.
Somehow--somehow, and by some means not as yet to be discovered, she
must save the situation. And Toby must save her. Toby must find a way.
He must do it because he loved her. It was his duty. He _must_ find a
way to save her. And even as she frantically said this, Sally knew that
she herself must control the situation. Thus early in her life she had
learnt that for a girl of her type men, whatever her desire for any
other state, must always be employed under her direction. Toby would
obey. He might do the donkey-work; but in fact Sally must lead. It was
her fate, the fate of the girl with her own star to follow.
Nevertheless, it was upon Toby that the immediate future depended. Not
yet has woman the power to attain her ends except by and through men.
Sally waited in ever-increasing excitement for some word from Toby,
some hint of his coming. She was kept within the house at all times
except during her short flights in the morning or afternoon. She could
not be long away from the house. And she must rely upon a letter, and
then perhaps a brief meeting, for her purposes. The time was going. Gaga
was getting better, was growing more and more like the man in whose
company she had gone to Penterby. His demand upon her presence was
increasing in power, because he was sitting up, leaving his room, coming
in search of her. Sally felt that already he was beginning to exercise
an inquisition. A tremor shook her nerves. Sometimes it seemed to her
that Gaga's glance held a strangeness, almost a faint suspicion. When
she thought that she was conscious of a feeling akin to aversion.
Aversion had not yet arrived. Gaga was still to be despised. But Sally
already felt that she might presently find her task of deception very
hard under the constant scrutiny of such futile devotedness as he
displayed. And Toby did not write. She had no means of knowing where he
was, whether the voyage upon which he was engaged would be long or
short, how much more time must elapse before their meeting. The suspense
was killing her. More than once, hearing Gaga calling to her, Sally had
hidden from him, and, at discovery, had been unable to conceal the hard
coldness of her feeling for him. If Toby would only come! If he would
only come! She thought that her nerve must before long give way, and
once it had gone she would be prematurely ruined. She felt trapped. She
even, desperately, would slip on a coat at nights and walk up and down
outside the house, in case Toby should be lurking near on the chance of
seeing her. She thought he might come thus. And on each occasion when
she went out of the house in this way she returned to find Gaga
standing in the dining-room, with the door open in such a way that he
could command a view of the inside of the front door. The knowledge that
he was waiting for her, and watching her, filled Sally with cold fury.
His innocent delight at her return had the air of being a pretence. She
could not suppose his eager caresses to be other than penitence for
suspicion or an assertion of his claims upon her in perpetuity. The
distress made her unresponsive, even repressive. Her foot tapped upon
the floor even while she could not wholly quell his convulsive nervous
embrace. And Toby did not come.
At last, one evening, her guess was justified. She had taken her coat,
and had walked to the end of the road; and just as she turned back,
without hope, she saw a burly figure almost opposite. It was Toby, in a
sailor's short thick jacket, and his neck muffled, and a cap over his
eyes. He was standing in the shadow, and as she crossed to him allowed
Sally to enter that same embracing darkness which safely hid them both.
She gave a little savage cry, and was in his strong arms, almost crazed
with relief and her physical sense of his so long withheld nearness. She
could feel herself shuddering and trembling, but she was not directly
conscious of this. All she felt was a passionate joy at being able to
abandon all her nervous self-control to this firmness and clenched
vigour.
"Oh, Toby, Toby!" she whimpered, clutching him; and then no more for
several minutes. Toby did not speak. He hugged Sally until she was
breathless, and his hot kiss made her cheek burn. She pressed her
forehead with all her strength against his breast, and longed that in
this moment she might for ever lose all knowledge of the trials which
beset her. The trembling persisted for a long time; and then, as she
was comforted, it began to subside.
"My girl, my girl!" muttered Toby, in a thick voice, warm against her
ear.
"Toby, listen.... Toby, I'm going to have a baby--it's your baby. What
_shall_ I do? Toby!" Sally clung to him. "I'm so frightened, Toby."
"Baby? Christ!" As suddenly, he repulsed her. "You say it's _me_. It's a
lie! How d'you know? You little liar, you. What's your game?"
"Of course it's yours," fiercely cried Sally. "I told you."
"D'you think I believe that!" He was brutally incredulous. He held her
away. "Why, you dirty little liar, you'd swear _anything_."
A ghastly anger took command of Sally.
"I told you," she steadily repeated. But she made no attempt to go back
to him. They stood quite apart in the difficult gloom.
"I know you did. You told me you loved me. You married _him_."
"I _told_ you," she obstinately went on. "I told you. I don't know what
to do. He'll find out. He's bound to find out."
"He'll think it's his," said Toby. "By God, I believe it is."
"You're mad!" cried Sally. "He knows it _can't_ be. And you know it,
too. I tell you I shall be found out and disgraced." She was not crying.
Her pride was aroused. She was full of scorn for one who could
disbelieve what she herself knew to be true.
"Well?" Toby demanded. "What of it? Whose fault is it?" He was brutally
angry, and a little frightened and blustering. They were still at arm's
length in the darkness of the deserted street. There was no lamp near
them, and the houses behind were unlighted. Sally's heart fell. She was
almost paralysed at Toby's tone. She was puzzled and chagrined and
angry. And then a change of mood came abruptly upon her.
"Don't you love me?" she mournfully asked. "I thought you did. I love
_you_, Toby. I thought you loved me.
"I used to," came the grim reply out of the night. He sounded cautious,
doubtful.
"Not any longer?" She withdrew herself wholly from him. They were
completely sundered. Toby was failing her. She was stone cold to
him--cold to all the world.
"Who says I don't?" asked Toby, in a grumbling way. He put out his arm,
but Sally stepped back. "Here."
"No," she cried, sharply. Toby was not to take her for granted, not to
hold her and make love to her. She was in earnest, and he was giving
himself away as one who had taken what he could get.
"I do." At last Toby's sullen assent reached Sally.
"You think I'm a liar," she persisted. "You don't love me." It was
bitter.
There was a silence. Toby was almost invisible. Both were lost in the
dull estrangement of that troubled mood.
"Yes, I do," he muttered. "You _are_ a liar."
"I'm not. It's true what I say. If Gaga finds out...."
"Well? What d'you suppose _I_ can do? _I_ can't do anything. It's you
who's got to do something."
Sally thought for a moment at that savagely bullying tone, which was
without love or understanding. She had a sudden sweep of hatred of Toby
as an animal that took no heed of responsibility or consequences. The
chill she had felt already deepened and filled her heart. Her loneliness
was intensified. She gave a short laugh of bitter distraction. A
greater fierceness shook her, and she began to walk slowly away from
him.
"Oh, well then, I'm done," she said, with cold recklessness. "All
right."
"Sally!" He came slowly after her; but his pursuit was not the old
vigorous insistence for which she longed. He wanted Sally--not a baby,
not a difficulty. He would shirk anything but the fulfilment of his
passion. Instantly, she felt that he never would have married her if the
time had come.
"No!" It was a harsh cry. "Don't touch me. Go on, push off.... I'm done
with you." She walked more rapidly. She was only a little way now from
the house, a hatless, disconsolate figure, oppressed and rigid.
"Sally." But he was still slow to follow. Sally cracked her fingers. She
was finished with him. Her heart and her feet alike were leaden. She was
too far gone for tears or sobs. It was not anguish that she felt; but
bitterness so great that she could only hate Toby. She had loved him so
much! And this was the end of him. She felt her love killed at a blow,
and she was without resource.
Suddenly strong fingers were upon Sally's shoulder. In other days she
would have been dominated. Not so now. She wrenched herself free, and
walked on. There was no attempt to run. She was finished ... finished.
Some further sound she heard; but it was unintelligible. Toby, presented
with a real problem which a man who loved her would have solved, had
been proved a doubting coward. She felt wronged, deceived. She had
always expected violence from him, but she had always expected him to
know that she truly loved him, whatever her actions might seem otherwise
to suggest. Realisation of his ignorance destroyed her. Even at the gate
Sally might still have been won; but as she came abreast of it she saw
that the front door was open, and Gaga standing upon the top step.
Coldly, she shut the gate; and walked resolutely up the steps. Toby was
left dodging out of the circle of light, a pitiful conspirator. Gaga was
silhouetted, a long lean figure, against the light of the hall. He
peered down into the darkness.
"Sally, is that you?" he exclaimed. "I was quite anxious."
"Were you?" It was listless, scornful.
As she passed him, Gaga gazed still into the darkness.
"Is that somebody with you?" he asked. "It looks...."
Sally went into the house, and as he followed her she closed the front
door quietly. It was strange to come from the black chilliness of the
street into this new solid warmth and comfort. In the hall they faced
one another. For once Sally was as grey as he--as grey and trembling.
"I thought.... I thought it was a man," said Gaga.
"Oh, did you?" Sally slipped off her coat, and threw it upon a chair.
She was listening intently.
"Wasn't it?" Gaga did not touch her. He looked down with a startled
expression. "It looked like a man out there.... Wasn't it?"
"You'd better go out and see," advised Sally, with snapping teeth. "Then
you'll be sure." As a fury possessed her, she turned upon him like a cat
at bay, all her teeth showing. "Funny if you were spying on me without
any reason, wouldn't it be!"
She was so reckless that she did not measure consequences. She was in no
mood to be cautious or considerate. Leaving him there Sally went into
the dining-room, and when Gaga entered upon her heels she went out of
the room again and slowly up the stairs.
xvii