BOOK TWO: GAGA

i

Ten days later, Sally began her work with Madame Gala. She arrived punctually, but found Nosey before her, keeping a record of arrivals. She also found one or two other girls, who stared at her in an inquisitive fashion and went on talking among themselves. Only when a forewoman—Miss Summers—arrived did the big room take on any air of being used for work, and within five minutes all the girls were in a state of preparation. Sally saw that they all had sleeved pinafores or overalls; she had none. As she had not a farthing to buy material to make such a thing, and had only a couple of slices of bread and margarine in her coat pocket for lunch, and would have to walk all the way home, Sally could not fight against the chilling of her heart which quick glances about the workroom produced. The girls were of all sorts and sizes, some of them smartly dressed and coiffed; others wearing clothes less expensive even than her own, and with a general air of not knowing how to make the best of themselves. Looking round at the faces she could see none that indicated cleverness or special intelligence. One ferrety-looking little thing seemed as though she might be either sharp or half-witted; a tall dark girl who was rather pretty and had beautiful hair used her hands with assurance; but observation did not make Sally feel ashamed of herself or of her ability. These girls could do almost as they were told, but not quite. But the pinafore was a serious question. Sally had never been used to such a thing. She had not even brought an apron.

While the others settled down, whispering among themselves and looking sharply at Sally, the forewoman, after a greeting, ignored her until she had attended to all that was more important. In her hands was the giving out of work. Sally saw that she was supposed to know what each girl could do. She also saw that some girls were favourites and others not. If she were to make progress here she must be a favourite. She must show quickly that she had the brains and could work well. It took a very short time to make her realise that. For a moment she was inclined to be over-confident; but that mood collapsed before a side glance and a titter from two of the girls. Their instinctive ridicule warned and stiffened Sally. They did not know her. She would have to prove her qualities. She then concentrated upon Miss Summers, watching how she turned, how she smiled and frowned, and how she explained what had to be done to each girl who was receiving new work. Miss Summers was a short stout woman with cat's eyes and a long nose. She licked her lips like a cat. She was inconsistent and short-tempered; but Sally afterwards found that while she was extraordinarily vain she was rarely unkind. But in general she was severe, because severity was the only course to pursue with these chattering girls, who were full of scratches and jealousies, and who would have taken advantage of weakness with rapid unscrupulousness. So the little stout woman, feline and easily exasperated, was a good person to control the room. Her kindness might be part of her vanity, but it was not assumed. She loved her work, and she was always glad to praise good work from the girls, and to encourage it by favouritism to good workers. It was not the pretty ones or the sly ones who were the favourites. It was the workers. Following each girl with her eye, Sally could not observe that at the beginning; but it did not take her long to add it to her now formidable collection of facts.

When at last Sally was called to Miss Summers's side, and questioned, she walked the length of the room feeling as though her legs had no joints, and as though her shoulders were fixed. There were only eleven girls in the room besides herself, but they were all looking at her. And when she stood before Miss Summers in her little black dress she looked so slight, with her slim body and thin pale face, that several of the girls went on with their work again immediately, having lost interest in her. Sally, confronted by Miss Summers's cat-like eyes, which were a gooseberry green, twisted her fingers, and blurted out:

"I'm sorry, I got no pinafore. I didn't know I had to have one."

She was relieved when Miss Summers smiled and licked her lips.

"Well, let's make you one for a start-off. Shall we?"

Sally could have fallen down, so astonished was she at this retort. Still she blurted further:

"I got no money for the material."

Again Miss Summers smiled. She might almost have given a purr. She rubbed her cold nose with the back of her hand, like a cat washing its face.

"That's all right," she said. "We'll find some stuff. It can come off your wages. I want to see what you can do, d'you see? And that's as good a way as any. I shall be able to notice how you do it, and give you a word of advice if you want it. And you won't waste much time, and you won't waste much material. And so why not? Just stand here while I get the length." As she measured the length of Sally's frock, and allowed a few additional inches for the pinafore, she sharply said in a low voice that only Sally could hear: "That's right: never use scent. It's vulgar. From the look of you I was afraid you'd use scent and be saucy. But I'm glad you aren't."

"Oh, no, miss," answered Sally. Quite truthfully, she added: "I've never thought of using scent. I don't like it. Only common girls use it." Unconsciously she was emphasising all her sibilants.

"Well, some of the girls here do," said Miss Summers. "Hold still."

The pinafore was a simple matter for both Miss Summers and Sally; and before the morning was over Miss Summers had visited Madame Gala.

"The new little girl's a quick worker," she said. "Very clever. I think she'll be very useful."

At which Madame Gala raised her straight brows and looked piercingly at Miss Summers. If Sally could have heard and appreciated the speech as Madame Gala did she would have known that she had become a favourite at a bound. She did not even guess it, so absorbed was she in deserving commendation, until the end of the week, when she received her full wages, without deduction. She was tempted. How easy to say nothing, and take the risk of it being remembered! She could easily say she was sorry she had forgotten all about it. Then some strong impulse of honesty made her go up to Miss Summers.

"You haven't taken off the money for the pinafore," she whispered.

"That's all right," said Miss Summers. "Good girl to come to me about it."

Good girl! Sally wondered if she really was such a very good girl.

ii

She was not, morally, being a very good girl; for her mother was still in the hospital, and she and Toby were taking risks. So far there had been no discovery; but they were getting bolder, and only the day before going to Madame Gala's, when his aunt had been out for the afternoon and evening, Toby had had Sally to tea in his aunt's room, and they had sat together over a good fire, and had silently made love to each other for hours. The more love-making they had, the more they wanted, and Sally had been living all the week for the time she spent with Toby. But her mother would be coming home soon, even though she would be unable to work; and both knew that the wild ecstasy would end with her return. It was that, probably, which made them less careful, or, if not less careful, at any rate less cautious in the use of their opportunity. Sally had a dread, which she would not face, and if Toby had any dread he never told her. For all her feeling of intimacy with him, Sally never reached below his manner and his strength; and her ignorance of him it was that gave the whole relation its charm for her. He was mysterious, a compelling strength outside her, a strange man who responded to all her wishes and who loved her as she wished to be loved—brutally and dominatingly. She was dazzled and infatuated. But already, in her first days with Madame Gala, she had recovered sufficient of her old coolness to be set upon definite personal success. This was her strongest impulse. Her love was outside it, a gratification now, and not a torment. She had no sense whatever of wrong-doing; only of hostility to her mother because her mother's return would interrupt the tenour of her life. Once only she said to Toby, secure in her trust of his love and care: "Toby ... if I have a baby, you'll ... you'll marry me, won't you?" And Toby gave her the necessary promise in obvious good faith. Neither, therefore, troubled about the future. They were both too anxious to live only in the exhilarating present.

But at last Mrs. Minto returned, and by that time Sally was living upon money borrowed from Mrs. Perce, her one friend and protector. Mrs. Minto could not work. She wrote to Aunt Emmy, and Aunt Emmy helped her from her prizewinnings, and for several weeks they were thus enabled to stave off want. Once Mrs. Minto was back at home the old order of parsimony was revived, and it cost them very little to keep life going on from day to day. Sally's seven shillings a week helped. And at last Mrs. Minto was allowed to go out, and Mrs. Roberson took her back. Slowly, half-starving, they managed to exist. Sally still had her evenings with Toby, with their glory dimmed; and as the weeks went on she knew that she was safe from the causes of her dread, and carried herself jauntily, and she began to earn a little extra money by working in the evenings for Miss Jubb. This meant that she saw Toby less often, and Toby now had a man friend from the works where he was employed, and was sometimes with this man Jackson. Sally had her seventeenth birthday: her figure had improved, and so had her appearance. She was still meagre, because she had not enough to eat; but some compensation of Nature allowed her to maintain her health and to mature.

One day, when she had gone to practise upon Mrs. Perce's piano, as she had not done all the time they had been away from the flat, Sally attracted Mrs. Perce's attention by singing unusually well. Her friend listened; and then looked into the room.

"What's that you're singing?" she demanded. "Suits you. You'll never be able to play the piano, Sally, because you'd have to practise every day for hours to do that; but you've got a big voice for your body. I suppose your lungs are good. Ever heard me sing? It's like a baby crying. But that song 'The Love Path' suits you. You might do something with your voice. Not much, I expect; but something. You just try and get hold of somebody who knows about such things. Might do a turn on the Halls. You never know. If I come across anybody I'll ask them; but I don't see many people now, and what I do are all in the 'public' line. It's worth thinking about, for a girl like you, with your way to make. Unless you marry, of course; and you say you're not going to do that in a hurry. So there you are. Make the most of yourself, I say; and let the Devil go hang himself if he's a mind to it."

Sally, who had never thought of such a thing, promised. For a time she was flattered by the vision of singing to audiences. But that soon faded. She met nobody outside Madame's, except for one or two young men who spoke to her on the way home; and so she kept to her sewing and machining for Miss Jubb. It pleased her to be able to tell Toby, who, however, frowned, and did not seem pleased.

"Seems to me you're always thinking you'll do something wonderful," he said sourly. "Doesn't seem to come to much, as fur as I can see."

"Oh, doesn't it!" cried Sally. She shook herself free from him, and marched off in anger. And Toby did not follow. It was a tiff. By the next evening both were contrite, and the matter was never spoken of again. All the same, Sally remembered it. She remembered it the more unforgivingly because Toby's remark had been true. Nothing so far had happened to prove definitely that her confidence in exceptional powers was justified. He was jealous of her! Sally laughed almost scornfully. Fancy a big fellow like Toby being jealous of a little thing like her. Men! They were all alike. All right as long as they were playing first fiddle! That was it: Toby didn't want her to have a chance at all. He wanted her always to be number two. Sally shook her head obstinately.

"All right, Master Toby!" she said to herself. There was no more in it than that—a momentary revolt;—but once the notion had arisen it began to revolve in her mind. She could not remember if she had ever told Toby of her plan to be a successful dressmaker; but what would he say to that? Would he like his wife to make money, and to have real ladies coming to her as they did to Madam? It seemed from this that he would not. He preferred to be top dog. Sally was to be nothing upon her own account—merely to fetch and carry, and do what she was told, and husband his paltry little earnings. He'd rather be poor than owe anything to his wife, in case she became bigger than himself. Was that it? Was that Master Toby's idea? If so, it was not Sally's. She suddenly understood that Toby thought of her as his wife, as his chattel; and that she had never ceased, except in the passionate excitement of their early relations, to think of herself as one who belonged to herself and was going to make some sort of life for herself. This came as a shock to Sally. She had never thought of it before. She was beginning to grow up. From that time she first began to criticise Toby. Until then he had been the burly man she loved. Her thoughts of him, as her love for him, had been merely physical. She was now to search more deeply into the needs of life, still crudely, but examiningly. It was not enough, then, to love a man if you were going to have something else to do in life besides love him. The idea was new. It puzzled her. It was something outside the novelettes she had read, and outside her own precocious thoughts. Love was love—all knew that. She loved Toby; she had given herself to him; they were practically married; and now it appeared that something was wrong somewhere. Toby did not want her to be Sally: he wanted her to be just a sort of moon-Toby. Another girl would have wanted nothing better. Sally told herself that she was different. She went out by herself, one evening, instead of working; and walked up to Highgate. And as she went up the hill she sang to herself the ballad "The Love Path." It began:

"When you and I go down the love path together,

Birds shall be singing and the day so long,"

and she could play the simple accompaniment to it with very few mistakes. She remembered Mrs. Perce's words. What if she could do something with her voice? Did she sing well? She allowed herself to glimpse another glorious future.

In the middle of the walk Sally stopped dead.

"Oh, doesn't it...." she said aloud. "Well, we'll just see. We'll just see about it. That's all." And having as it were made her formal protest she resumed the journey, and arrived home tired out, ready for bed; and before she had been in bed more than two minutes she was fast asleep, dreaming of motor cars and footmen standing on the pavement with fur rugs in their hands. In her dream she was alone in the cars. Even the chauffeur had no smallest resemblance to Toby. And yet she still loved him with all her heart, and when she was with him she felt that she extraordinarily belonged to him. Love had again at last encountered ambition, and battle was joined.

iii

Dreams of luxurious motor-cars, and footmen with fur capes and long fawn-coloured overcoats, holding fur rugs to cover her knees, were now constant in Sally's mind. She saw such things occasionally in Regent Street, and loved to look in at the windows of motor broughams upholstered in fawn-coloured corduroy, with arm straps and little hanging vases of fresh flowers. The freshness of these cars was her delight. She had no notion of the income it was necessary to have in order to possess such cars, with their attendant footman and chauffeur; but that income, whatever it was, became her ideal. Money! Lots of money! With money you could have comfort. When she said that, and was warned by conventional wiseacres that money did not produce happiness, she sneered at the timid ones. "Bet I'd be happy," she said. "What's happiness?" She wondered what it was. For her it had been oblivion in Toby's arms. It was so no longer. That was not all she desired. It was not by any means all. And she shrank more and more strongly from a life of squalid toil such as her mother had had—such as she would still have had if Mr. Minto had been a sober man. All her life she had slaved and slaved, and now she was worn out with it. Not for Sally! She had other plans. She had gone to the West End, and the West End was in her blood. She was looking round at life with some of her old calculating determination to exploit it. The death of her father, the passion for Toby,—these had distracted her. With increasing confidence in her position at Madam's, and a new sense of what money could actually do in the way of procuring food and clothes and ordinary or extraordinary physical comforts, Sally had returned to her old faith. She began to have a little money to buy things for herself. Once or twice Miss Summers gave her quite good-sized pieces of material, and there were always scraps to be gathered and utilized. And Sally was enabled to dress carefully. She became the smartest of the girls in the room, for she had a natural sense of smartness. The other girls did not like her, but they all envied her and admired her. It was not that she was unpopular; but that they felt in her the hard determination to get on, and were resentful of her manifest ability to achieve what she meant to do.

The other girls were all sorted out in Sally's mind. There was not one of them into whose nature she had not some biting insight. She had become so practised that she knew all their dresses (as of course all the others did, so that a new one was an event), and knew what everything they owned had cost. She could recognise anything that had been dyed, any brooch or adornment, any stockings. She would have made a good house-detective. But she never told tales. If she knew, she knew, and that was all. It was not for Sally to play the policeman. All knowledge went into her memory. It would be devastatingly produced on the occasion of a row, but Sally rarely quarrelled. With her, nothing ever came to a quarrel. There was no need for it to do so. She was neither jealous nor censorious. One does not quarrel with one who neither loves nor blames nor is stupid or too anxious to show cleverness. Sally merely "was," and the other girls knew it. For this reason she was not liked, but neither was she feared or unpopular. They did not hide things from her, but they did not show them eagerly. Sally was Sally. She enjoyed being Sally. She meant always to be Sally.

And at last there came into Sally's life, when she had been at Madame Gala's for about six months, a new interest, and a singular one. One day, when they were all working very hard, and the electric light was on, Madame came into the workroom with another person. And this person was a young man with a grey, thin face, rather tall and stooping, with a hesitating manner, and a general air of weakness. He followed Madame Gala round the room in an idle way, nodding to several of the girls; and Sally thought he had a very attractive smile. She found him looking at herself with a pair of large soft brown eyes, like chocolate which has been in a warm place. It was a rather dumb look. A little nick came between Sally's brows. She was busy making an inventory of the young man visitor's traits, his features, his clothes. He dressed well, and he was not bad-looking. With more stamina he might have been almost handsome; but he was obviously not in good health. The stoop, the vagueness of all his movements, his soft eye, all betokened as much. Sally turned to Muriel Barrett, who worked next to her.

"Who's he?" she asked, indicating the stranger.

"That's Bertram ... Madame's son. Mr. Merrick, his real name is. But we call him Gaga."

"Wodjer call him that for?" asked Sally. "Isn't he right in his head?"

"Oo, well one of the gels—she's gone now, Mary Smith,—made it up. She said he was Mr. Gala, you know. Then she called him Bertie Gaga, for fun; and it got to Gaga. I never spoken to him, so I don't know. Look out, he's looking at us. Oo, I believe he's got a crush on you, Sally."

Presently the young man followed his mother out of the room, and there was a little buzz when they were gone. The girls leaned together, and whispered, laughing among themselves. Muriel Barrett turned again to Sally, and became confidential. She herself was a pink, snub-nosed blonde, with untidy hair, who was always sniffing over her work. She jerked her head at Rose Anstey, the tall dark girl whom Sally had noticed when first she came.

"Rose thought he was in love with her once," Muriel said. "Well, he was, a bit; but not as much as she thought. I mean, he used to look at her, and all that, but he never give her anything, or took her out. I think ... you know ... she's a bit struck on him. That's more like it. She thinks he's a very tall handsome man. Well, he's not my taste. Funny, if you're tall, I s'pose you want a tall man to fall in love with you. It's different, being small, I suppose. My Elf's only about inch taller than me. You can't hardly see there's any difference between us. If I've got my hair frizzed he looks...."

Muriel went on talking. Sally took a glance at Rose, who, with eyes downcast, was sewing rapidly. Sally wished she had known that about Rose and Gaga while he was in the room: then she would have been able to look at Rose and make up her mind about that affair. She did not suppose really that there was anything in it, either way. Muriel was a little fool—like a little pink pig. That was just what she was like. And she chattered like a monkey. She had said that because he looked at her twice Gaga had got a crush on Sally. Well, Sally didn't mind. He could have any old crush he liked, for all she cared. Gaga was dismissed from her immediate attention, although she sometimes recollected a pair of soft brown eyes, that made her want to say "Moo" as if in response to their dumb longing.

The outcome of this visit, which occurred towards the end of May, was a day's outing for the girls at the beginning of June. They all went into the country by train, on a day which at first promised to be typical of all days unfortunately chosen for staff outings, but which cheered up later and became brilliantly fine. Only the girls were there, with Miss Summers and another forewoman, Miss Rapson, to see that nobody fell into mischief. They had a good picnic lunch in woods, and ran or walked or sat about all the afternoon, until it was time for tea. They then trooped into an hotel in which a room had been engaged, and scrimmaged for places round a big table. The tea was an enormous meal: Sally, who had not hitherto enjoyed herself any more than most of the other girls had noisily done, felt herself grown to twice her normal size. It was the biggest meal she had ever eaten, and there were cream and milk and sugar, and there were cakes and lettuce and jam and all sorts of other encouragements to appetite. And every time anybody laughed the sound went up to the varnished rafters, and billowed so much that the two elder women had at last to break in upon a laughter competition. Sally held aloof from the laughter, scornfully regarding the laughers. She had been rather serious all day.

And when the noise and fun were at their height Madam and Gaga and another man and woman came into the room, having motored to the hotel, taken their tea in another room, and determined to join the party. The tea had been so late, and so prolonged, that it was already nearly eight o'clock, and as the sky had grown overcast and the day was drawing to a close the lights suddenly popped up to illumine the faces of both feasters and visitors. A piano was opened at the far end of the room, and the woman who was with Madam sat down at it and began to play. But only one or two of the girls danced: the others had eaten too much to be able to do so. Then Rose sang a song, in which she said that her heart was aching and breaking at somebody's forsaking, and the girls looked at one another significantly; and there were more songs, and the girls sat back in their chairs with flushed faces, and each of them in turn seemed to be doing something to entertain the party. With a bored feeling, Sally was sipping her last cup of tea, when she became aware that Gaga had taken the chair next to her, and with his chocolate eyes was looking pleadingly into her face.

"Don't you sing?" he asked. "I wish you'd sing."

"I got no music," said Sally.

"Mrs. Roach would be able to make an accompaniment. She understands music very well—if you hummed her a song. I wish you'd sing."

Sally rose to her feet. The other girls all watched her with narrowed eyes. She was wearing such a pretty dress of light grey cotton poplin that she looked smarter than ever, they thought—in fact, almost pretty. She went close to the piano, and spoke to the pianist. "Oo, swank!" whispered the girls, when they saw that Sally was to play her own accompaniment. It was a thing none of them could have done.

"'When you and I go down the love path together,

Birds shall be singing and the day so long....'"

sang Sally, in her clear voice, and made everybody arch their brows in surprise.

"'Your heart mine, and mine in your keeping,

List while I sing to you love's tender song.

Ah, love, have done with your repining,

See how the day is clear;

Heart of my heart,

On your fond heart reclining

Dear, oh my Dear....'"

She played with care, and struck no false notes. She sang her best. Her voice was the best voice of the afternoon, a mezzo-soprano, but with clear upper register and a fulness that suggested training. It was not a great performance, but it thrilled the others. Sally had triumphed. With one accord the girls clapped.

"My best worker," said Miss Summers, rubbing her cold nose and turning to the accompanist of the afternoon.

"A clever little girl," agreed her neighbour.

But Gaga was stupefied. He had remained in the chair next to Sally's, and when she resumed her place his mouth was still open with delight and admiration. Again he leaned forward, and she met his melting chocolate eyes.

"That was beautiful," he said, in a low tone of commendation. "Beautiful!"

"Glad you liked it," she said, almost brusquely. Instinctively she shot a glance in Rose's direction. Rose, her cheeks mantling, was observing the two with interest. Sally's brain clicked an impression, and she listened to a stammering from Gaga which aroused her contempt. "He's hardly a man at all," she thought. "He's soppy. Rose can have him. I wish her joy of him. She can have him—and twenty like him, if she wants.... I don't know so much about that. Why should she? She's stuck up. Why shouldn't I have some fun, if I want to? It's nothing to do with Rose Anstey what I do, and what Gaga does...."

Her demand was unanswerable, because it was addressed to one who did not habitually withdraw herself lest she should give pain to others. If Rose was jealous, that showed the sort of cat she was. And in any case, who was Rose? Sally was bright in her responses to the soft voice, so that Gaga was pleased; but the girls could all see that her manner was cool, and not the flustered eagerness of a beggar. Rose's neighbour whispered. When the evening was over and Gaga and his mother had gone, and the girls had all piled into two railway compartments, somebody, whose voice was unrecognisable in the darkness, called from the other carriage:

"What price Gaga on the love path? Whey!"

There was great laughter. Even Sally joined in it. Going home, the other girls in her carriage all insisted upon hearing the song again, and as they all had the quick ear of Cockneys they could sing it in chorus by the time the train reached its journey's end. Sally had become, for a time, the heroine of the occasion. Only Rose, in the other carriage, had made her protest against the song and its singer.

"Love path!" she said, in a warm voice of indignation. "She's nothing but a cocket—a white-faced cocket. That's what she is. She nothing but a white-faced cocket, that Sally Minto!"

From that time onward that was Sally's name among the girls—"Cocket," or "White-faced Cocket." Rose had coined the phrase which would stick. When Sally heard her name the next day, through Muriel's indiscretion, she looked over at Rose with pinched nostrils and a little dry smile. She was flattered. The name was the product of Rose's jealousy and injured vanity; but it was life to Sally, for it was a testimony—the first she had ever had—to her charm and her dangerousness.

iv

She did not tell Toby the next night about her singing. She rather carefully refrained from telling him, not out of considerateness, but from a sort of scorn for his jealousy. To herself she said "Anything for a quiet life." Toby never dreamed that such a person as Gaga existed, any more than he guessed at any of Sally's encounters with young men on the way home. Sally had discretion. Had he been a lover, she might have told him; but as he was more to her than that she saw no reason to arouse his jealousy. And really, if a man spoke to her, and looked all right, where was the harm in letting him walk a little way with her? She never made appointments, and after a time, when they found she could take care of herself, and did not want a non-committed male friend, these fellow-pedestrians soon left her alone. For Sally, each of them was practice. To mention them to Toby would have been to give them all too great importance. And he might have made a fuss, and unnecessarily interrupted her fun. "Where ignorance is bliss," thought Sally, "'tis folly to call out the guard." And, further, "Let sleeping dogs lie until the milk is stolen." And so Toby pursued his own path, and never knew a tenth of what went on in Sally's life and mind. Compared with Sally, he knew nothing at all. She grew each day more rusée, more cunning in knowledge of the world. And Toby blundered where he should have been most astute. It was his fate.

Sally told him about the outing, because she saw he was in a gloomy mood on the day—a Sunday—after the girls' treat. She described it at length as they walked in Waterlow Park, hanging on to his arm, and all the time searching his tell-tale face and guessing at the cause of his manifest depression. She told about the picnic and the woods, and the tea, and the journey home; and she saw his mouth slightly open as he grunted. She could see the tiny points of hair that were beginning to make a perceptible blueness upon his chin, and the moulding of his cheek, and a little patch of fine down upon his cheek bone, and the hair at his temples which she had so often kissed. And she knew by his averted eye that something was the matter with him. She began to try drawing him on the subject—his aunt, had he heard from his mother (who had married again when Toby was a baby, and lived with her husband in the North), what had he been doing at the Works? Ah! That was it. Toby had started, and frowned. It was something at the Works. Oh, he was easy for Sally to read!

"What's the matter?" she suddenly asked. Toby flushed and scowled down at her, very dark and ugly in his irritation, his mouth twisted.

"Matter?" he demanded. "What d'you mean? Nothing's the matter."

"That's why you're so cheerful, I suppose," retorted Sally—"At the Works, I mean." Toby gave her a quick, angry look in which there was an admixture of fear and suspicion.

"There's nothing the matter," he said, in a tyrannic voice.

"Have you got the sack?" Sally was merciless. She replied to his tyrannic voice with one as hard and stabbing as a gimlet. "Ah, I thought that was it. What you been doing?"

"Nothing," said Toby. "And anyway, what's it to do with you?"

"Well, I'm out walking with you. See? And I got to do all the talking. See? And if you're going to be surly I'll go home by myself. That's what it's got to do with me. And, besides, it is something to do with me, and don't you forget it. You got no right to keep things from me."

Toby was cowed by her handling of him. He might be strong, but brains are always more potent than muscle in such circumstances. And men are always afraid of the women they love.

"Yes, I got the push," he defiantly said.

"And what's that for?" demanded Sally, with the severity of a mother to her baby. There was no answer. "What's that for?" she repeated. "Come on, Toby, you'll feel better if you tell me about it. Toby, d'you love me? Well, there's nobody about ... quick!" They kissed, and her arms had been round his neck, and Toby was her sheepish, scowling, smiling slave. Sally had a faint consciousness of joy in her power.

"Well, you see...." he began, haltingly. "Jackson and I ... we been ... well, we wanted to make a bit, you see. And—tiddent his fault, but he...."

"Been pinching stuff," said Sally. "Clumsy. Got found out. Well?"

"Well, they found out about me, too."

"What had you been doing?"

"I never took anything; but I found a lot of old things among the rubbish, and I showed them to Jackson. Well, they asked him if anybody had been with him; and he said 'no.'"

"That was all right," Sally said. "I like Jackson."

"But then the man he'd been dealing with said Jackson had talked about his 'mate.' And they knew that was me. And I ... told 'em a tale."

"I bet!" cried Sally, scornfully. "And got caught in it, too. Badly!"

"Well, they fired us both yesterday, and said we was lucky they didn't prosecute."

"Did they pay you? What you going to do now?"

"I dunno." Toby stared stubbornly before him. "Get something else, I suppose. Jackson's going for a sailor. Guess I'll do that, too."

"Go for a sailor?" demanded Sally, with a heart that went dump into her boots. "What d'you want to do that for?"

"I'd be with Jackson, see, if I went for a sailor."

"And what about me?" Sally's voice was no longer hard or dry. "D'you want to leave me? Are you tired of me, Toby? I believe you are. Are you?"

"No, I'm not. And I don't want to leave you. But if I went for a sailor I'd make a bit of money, perhaps, and then after a little while I could come back and begin again. It would get over having no reference. They'd say 'Where you been working?' and I'd say 'Been at sea for the last year.' Then they wouldn't know anything but what I told 'em. I wouldn't go long voyages, Sally. Only just short ones. I'd often come home, and we'd have a spree."

Sally's quick brain was at work. She did not want him to go; but if he went, and if she saw him often, in spite of his being away, perhaps it would not be so bad.

"But suppose you got wrecked?" she exclaimed.

"Rot. D'you suppose every ship gets wrecked? Don't be a fool!"

"No. But yours might get wrecked. How am I to know, supposing there's a storm? It won't not get wrecked because you're on it. Would you come home very often? Would you wear sailor clothes? Wonder how you'd look! Oh, I know—you mean a jersey. Would it have letters across your chest? Where d'you have to go?"

Sally was so interested that she was even making up Toby's mind for him. By the time they went in it was decided that he and Jackson were going to sea, and that Sally should be taken down to visit his ship if it happened to be at the Docks or at Tilbury. She had dancing visions of Toby in a navy blue jersey, with "Queen of the Earth" or "La Marguerite" or "Juanita" across it in white letters. She could see his dark hair blown by the wind, and the veins in his wrists standing out as he hauled a rope. It was rather fun! she thought. "My boy's a sailor." She would be able to touch him for luck. Sailors were lucky. She sang to herself a song one of the workgirls knew:

"Sailors are lads. Sailors are lads.

Sailors they make you laugh!"

Before night she was wholly reconciled to the idea that Toby would go to sea. She soon had a dim perception of the fact that it would do him good to go. It would get him away from the atmosphere of the Works, where there seemed to be a lot of stupid larking and work-dodging. Now that he was dismissed she began to realise all this. She was glad he was away from it. She was glad he was going to sea. It would be a complete change. It would do him good. He had been fiddling about too long at the Works, in his overalls and in the grime and oil and general dodginess of the place. The ship would take him about, and show him the way people did things. It would open his eyes and his brains. Electrically, something self-protective within her added the further message: it would keep him out of the way for a time. Sally breathed deeply. An unreadable smile was upon her lips, and no smile at all was in her eyes. Afar off she scented change; but what manner of change she did not as yet recognise. It was her instinct at work, her instinct for turning life to her own advantage. It was an infallible instinct, like that of birds for a coming storm.

v

It was some weeks before Sally again saw Gaga, and this time he came into the premises of Madame Gala one Saturday morning. Sally had taken something in to Madam, and was waiting her judgment, when one door opened and Gaga came in. He was dressed, as usual, in a morning coat and top hat, and his trousers were creased to an inconceivable point of accuracy. Besides which, his tailors had been able to do what most tailors cannot achieve; the creases arrived at the precise centre of Gaga's fawn spats. Sally was not such an expert in male clothing to recognise from this that Gaga's tailors were supermen; but she could tell that he looked like a gentleman of leisure. She was the more astonished, therefore, to see him carrying a parcel of some size under his arm. His mother was evidently quite as astonished.

"What on earth's that, Bertie?" she demanded. Gaga looked at her in a timid way.

"Oh—er—it's ... it's a new fertiliser," he said. "I.... I'm going to take it on to the office after lunch. Goodmayes is coming back then. Perrip says it's wonderful stuff, and I want Goodmayes to go into it. We're going into all that matter—good morning, Miss Minto—this afternoon. I.... I think we may be able to get through quite a lot. You see, as it's Saturday, we shan't be interrupted...."

"That will do, Sally," said Madam, gravely and slowly nodding her head in dismissal.

Sally went with regret. She had been interested in the conversation. She had taken it for granted that Gaga did nothing for a living. Now he talked of going to an office, and of two men whose opinions he evidently valued, and of fertiliser; and although his words and his manner were still those of a hesitating man he did not speak as an absolute fool. Sally felt a stir of curiosity. What sort of business was it that he was in? Fertiliser ... wonderful stuff ... something to do with gardening, would it be? As she was closing the door, Sally looked back and saw mother and son standing together. The likeness was remarkable. Both were tall, grey-faced, and slightly stooping. Gaga was weak-looking for a man, and Madam had more severity; but there were such lines upon her face that she looked like an old woman. A sudden realisation shook Sally. As she went back to Miss Summers with an explanation of Madam's deferred judgment she had this sharp new knowledge about Madame Gala.

"Well she won't live for ever," thought Sally, definitely.

And then she had recourse to her usual informant, Muriel, and asked her Gaga's business. Muriel did not know. Sally was therefore left to conjecture. She forgot all about Madam and Gaga, for Toby was going to meet her after business on his first leave from the "Florence Drake." She was dressed in her most destructive raiment, had searched the skies for rain, and was watching the clock. So fertilisers went the way of all secondary things, and Toby became her dominating thought. He had become the more splendid by his absence. She imagined him standing in the street below, dressed equally in his best clothes, and looking the finest boy on earth. They were going into Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, and he had promised to take her in a boat on the Serpentine, if one could be hired, and somewhere to tea, and at night to the Marlborough Theatre in Holloway Road. It was worth while to lose him for a time in order to recover a Toby more dear, and so much more extravagant on her behalf. He explained his generosity by the fact that he would be drawing his wages that day. Good to be a sailor, and have your money in a lump like that! Sally thought she would not altogether mind if he remained at sea for a time. He could save, and she could get on; and then they would both be happy, with a house somewhere, and a maid, and everything spick and span. No babies. Sally had taken that to heart, and she appreciated the value of old Perce's advice. A girl who wanted to get on did not need babies to drag her down. She wanted freedom.

As the clock slowly crawled to the hour of liberation all the girls began to put away their things, so that a real busyness was observable in the room. Sally was apparently no more eager than the others, and yet she could hardly keep herself from running to the window to see if Toby was in the street below. Sedately she prepared to leave, walking down the stairs slowly instead of rushing at them as she wished to do. She buttoned her little gloves, and set her hat straight, and made herself appear nonchalant. And that was how it happened that Gaga overtook her at the front door, and stood with her for a moment upon the doorstep.

"Lovely day it is," Gaga said, agreeably. "You going to get away?"

"Away? Oh, no, I'm going home," Sally said brightly. Then, looking at him, she saw that there was nothing to disturb the impression that he was a gentleman of leisure. "Oh Mr. Ga— Mr. Bertram ... you haven't got your parcel!" she cried.

He slapped one hand upon the other, with a most dramatic gesture.

"Idiot!" he exclaimed. "Thank you so much, Miss Minto. You've saved my afternoon." And with that, raising his top hat, he went back up the stairs, leaving Sally to congratulate herself upon her memory and her presence of mind. For she knew the rooms would all be locked by Miss Summers before she left.

She looked round for Toby, and saw him, as fine as a bird, upon the opposite path. Crossing over, she took his arm with such pride and delight that Toby, who had been frowning as he greeted her, was almost appeased. She looked so charming in her very pale green dress with the artfully-brimmed hat that he also had looked proud and happy at her first appearance. But Toby had received a shock. Standing there in his dark tweed suit, with a rakish Trilby hat and a fascinating cane, he had felt a fit companion for any girl, and as he was shaven, and his square face was browned with the sun and the sea wind, he had been content. And then Sally, looking like a princess....

"Who the devil's that silly fop?" he demanded, jerking his head.

Sally gave a jump, and a mischievous peep up into Toby's brown face.

"Jealous?" she asked. "That's right: be a man. They're never happy unless they're jealous. That's Gaga. And if you want to know who Gaga is, he's Madam's son. See?"

"Well, he'd better not come fooling around you," growled Toby. "Or he'll get a thick ear. With his top hat and his kid gloves and all."

"Hark at it!" jeered Sally. "Quite the little man! Don't you think he's awfully good-looking, Toby? We're all mad about him. All us girls."

"No, I don't," said Toby, deliberately. "But I expect he's the sort the girls like. Well, he's got a harem there, and no mistake, all fussing round him. Is he there all the time?"

"No. Toby, what's fertilisers?" Sally's curiosity had been revived. "Don't you know? Oh, shut up about Gaga. Anybody'd think he was a devil. He isn't. He's soppy. He wouldn't dare to make love to any of us girls. If I was to look at him he'd run away."

"Yes," said Toby, grimly. "I see he didn't like you looking at him."

"Well, I'll tell you something else, Toby," added Sally, with a persuasively dry candour. "If Madam was to see me looking at him I should get the sack—spiff! See?"

Toby was impressed. More, he was silenced. They spent a happy afternoon and evening, with no further reference to Gaga. Nor did Sally think of Gaga during the whole of the weekend. He might have been mixed and pounded with his own fertiliser for all she cared. For Sally had Toby.

vi

One night Miss Summers and Sally were working late upon a "rush job," and Madam was also in her room. The girls had all gone; but Sally had been chosen by Miss Summers to help her, and Sally was always ready to do this because it meant a small addition to her weekly money. Madam was doing her books, and Gaga was helping her. Sally was sewing busily—beautiful fine work that caused Miss Summers to purr and lick her lips with relish;—and as they worked they exchanged remarks which would have been impossible if they had not been alone. Miss Summers always spoke of the business, which absorbed her, and Sally gleaned innumerable details in this way, without seeming to be doing such a thing. She, on her side, gave Miss Summers a low-toned picture of her own life, concentrating upon domestic circumstances and enhancing Miss Summers' respect for her bravery and her willingness. When they had been silent once for a little while, and Sally had finished the first of her difficult and gratifying tasks, Sally fell into thought, and at last said to Miss Summers:

"Wish I knew about accounts. I don't know anything. Is it hard to learn?"

Miss Summers shook her plump face, and rubbed the tip of her nose with the back of her hand.

"No," she reassuringly said. "It's easy. You know what twice one are? Well, that's all it is. You put down on one side how much you charged, and when you get the money you put it down on the other side, and draw a line to show they balance. And every month or every quarter you go through your books, and see who hasn't paid; and if it isn't anybody special you send them a fresh account. And if it's a real lady you don't worry her. You have to know who's who in a business like this. That's the chief thing."

"Does Gaga—Mr. Bertram know who's who?"

"No!" Miss Summers's tone was conclusive. "But his mother tells him who to write to, or who to send an account to, and he knows book-keeping, and how much is at the bank; and he draws cheques for her to sign, and that sort of thing. Between you and me, Sally—mind, this is quite between ourselves,—I don't think Mr. Bertram's got a very good head for figures. You have to be a bit smarter than he is. Of course, he's very kind and good-looking; but if I wanted good sound common sense I wouldn't go to him. Not a good head for figures. He's not very sharp. Now Madam's as sharp as a needle. It's funny how a really sharp woman sometimes has a son who's—well, not so sharp...."

"Would you say I was sharp?" asked Sally innocently.

"Like a knife," declared Miss Summers, with a quick dart of her feline eyes.

"Really?" Sally was eager. She gave a little chuckle of pleasure at such emphatic praise.

"You'd be able to do the books, but you're better where you are. When you've been here another three months, Sally, you'll be getting more money. It isn't only that you're a good worker, and quick, but you've got more sense than the other girls. I oughtn't to say this to you. I don't generally praise the girls here. But if you want to get on, you've only got to stay where you are. You'll find Madam appreciates you. And so do I."

"You've been awfully good to me," murmured Sally, with downcast eyes. "I'm not just saying that, Miss Summers; I mean it, every word. When I came here I didn't know anything; and now I don't know a lot; but...." She gave a small cluck of her tongue, and a smile to show how much she had learned. It was true. And she was even learning to speak better, through listening to Madam and Miss Summers and at times a customer; and she had enough sense to avoid the extravagant refinements of Nosey. Presently she resumed: "Miss Summers, what does Mr. Bertram do? He's got a business of his own, hasn't he?"

Miss Summers looked across at the door leading to Madam's room, and lowered her voice.

"It's only something Madam put him into. It's a business all to do with farms."

"Farms?" Sally laughed. "Well, he doesn't look much like a farmer."

"No, it isn't exactly farms; but chemical things they use on farms. Now you see there's the soil." Sally nodded, so deeply interested that she ceased her work. "Some soil's good for growing things, and some isn't. Well, when a soil's not good the farmers mix stuff with it, to make it better."

"I know," cried Sally, joyously. "Fertiliser."

"Yes. And then from the good soil they'll get a crop early in the year, and then, by using stuff, they'll get another crop later. All that sort of thing. And if cows have the mange, or the rickets, or whatever it is cows have, Mr. Bertram's got something to give them. D'you see what I mean? And all sorts of chemical things. Stuff to kill weeds, stuff to give chickens to make them have bigger eggs.... He's got an inventor, and a manager, and others who are interested in the business, and he's got a share, and he goes to the office and goes about the country sometimes." Miss Summers screwed up her nose and lips, looking very like an old pussy, and in a whisper added: "Doesn't really do very much." She put her finger to her lips at that, and Sally, resuming her work, reassured her by a glance. "Of course," said Miss Summers, "he's very agreeable, and good-looking, and he's got plenty of money."

Money! Sally's eyelids flickered. She gave a charming grin.

"Wish I'd got plenty money," she said.

"You will have," answered Miss Summers, confidently. "Don't fret. Your time's coming. You're young yet, and all sorts of things might happen to you."

Sally made no response. She fell into silence for a time. She had learnt with the greatest interest about Gaga's business, and about the books. She learned a great deal from Miss Summers, whom she had grown to like very much. She was by no means insensitive to kindness, although she was not sentimental over it. And, as she thought, she came round again to the two workers in the next room.

"D'you think Madam will live long?" she unexpectedly asked.

vii

Within half an hour the job was finished, and Miss Summers took it in to Madam. She closed the door after her, and so Sally could not hear what was said. She stood up, stretching her arms, and looking down into the street, for it was barely growing dusk, and she could see a few men and women walking along in either direction. She yawned slightly, raising her hand to her mouth, her muscles stiff. And as she stood thus she heard the door opened and closed again, and, still yawning, said sleepily:

"Oo, I'm so tired!"

"Are you?" she heard behind her, in a very soft and sympathetic voice. Sally wheeled.

"I thought it was Miss Summers," she cried.

Gaga stood there smiling shyly, and looking at her with his appealing eyes. In this light he looked very handsome, and Sally felt almost sorry to see that he also looked tired. His face was quite grey, and his movements were those of an exceedingly nervous person who would always shrink from roughness.

"I'm so sorry you should have had to work so late," he said.

"Oo, it's nothing," cried Sally. "Do me good. If I was at home I should only be working there," she added, explanatorily. "Work, work, work."

"Don't you ever get any fun?" asked Gaga, timidly. "I mean, go out, or anything?"

Sally shook her head. She was silhouetted against the light.

"No," she told him. "Not often." It was strange how refined her voice automatically became when she was talking to Gaga. She was altogether restrained. "You can't if you've got to earn your own living. And have to get here early in the morning."

Gaga hesitated, half turned away, came back.

"I'm very sorry," he said, in his gentle, weak way. "Don't you like it? I mean going out. Or is it just that you don't get the chance? Poor little girl. Er— I'm sorry. Er—it's a beautiful night, isn't it?"

"Lovely," agreed Sally. "I'm going to walk home."

He considered that. He did not seem to have anything more to say. Sally moved to her place, and mechanically put away her scissors and thimble. She was still in her pinafore, and she could not take that off and roll it up while Gage was in the room. So they stood there, separated by several yards. He took out a cigarette case, and lighted a cigarette, throwing the match under the long table at the side of the room.

"Yes," he said reflectively. "Are you going to have dinner first?"

"Me?" laughed Sally. She shook her head. "When I get home. If I had dinner in London it would take all my wages, and more, at a single go." She laughed again, but not woundingly.

Gaga looked at his shoes, again at Sally, again at his shoes.

"Look here," he blurted out, "I wish you'd...."

Sally's ears were pricked; but they heard only the opening of the door of Madam's room as Miss Summers returned. Both Sally and Gaga turned away, as if in slight chagrin. Then Gaga backed out of the workroom. The conversation was over. It was time to go home. Slowly Sally removed her pinafore and rolled it, thinking rapidly. Miss Summers was so pleased at Madam's satisfaction with the dress that she was beaming and purring and rubbing her hands together. She nodded benevolently at Sally.

"Well, you get off, Sally," she said, in a full tone of delight. "It's quite all right. Madam's very pleased with the dress. Don't hang about now, but get home to your supper. You've been a very good girl."

Sally put on her hat.

"Good night, Miss Summers." And as she passed the door of Madam's room she gave a little silent nod towards it, and a little grimace also. She was out upon the stairs. She was out of doors. And as she walked along she heard rapid footsteps behind her, shrank a little, and looked up to see Gaga standing beside her, quite breathless, as if with a hurried journey.

"Er— Miss Minto," he panted. "I'm sorry.... I ... will you take these? Er—good night."

He raised his hat, and went into the building, leaving Sally mutely clasping a box of chocolates which he had thrust into her hand. She looked round, but he had disappeared, and she began to march homeward, still clasping the chocolates. Only when she was in Regent Street with her treasure did Sally dare to laugh. Then the whole scene came back to her so vividly that she could control her mirth no longer, but stared, shaking, into a shop window. He must have hurried out to buy the chocolates after being interrupted by Miss Summers.

"My!" she whispered to herself. "My!" For a time that was all she could say; but as she resumed her journey she exclaimed: "Chocolates! He never gave Rose anything at all. Ee! He was going to ask me to dinner. Wish he had! He didn't dare! My word, he hasn't half got a crush on me! Old Gaga!" She was consumed with delighted laughter, that made her break into smiles at intervals during the whole of the dismal walk which followed.

viii

"Here, have a chocolate, ma," said Sally. Mrs. Minto was sitting beside the empty grate reading, with the aid of a magnifying glass, a piece of newspaper which had been wrapped around Sally's mended shoes. She looked very frail and meagre, but she was very much better than she had been, and but for the ugliness of the room and the drabness of her clothes she would not have appeared miserable. She was, in fact, a pathetic figure; but thanks to Sally they were no longer starving, or in immediate danger of it.

"Chocolates!" cried Mrs. Minto. Then, sternly and suspiciously, she said in her weak voice of warning, "Where did you get them from, Sally?"

"Won 'em in a raffle," declared Sally.

"Oo, gambling!" reproved Mrs. Minto. "It's very wrong of young girls——"

"Fiddlesticks! They're good chocolates, too," said Sally. "Don't make yourself sick. It's a nuisance. Besides, I want some myself. I am hungry. I've been working all the evening."

"Working!" grumbled her mother, incredulously.

"Well.... I ... have!" asserted Sally. "Perhaps you'd like me to get Miss Summers to give me a certificate? You'll see. I shall have a bit more money at the end of the week. Then you'll rub your eyes. You'll apologise—I don't think! No, I'm a bad girl, wasting my time gadding about. You never think of that when you get the money, or the money if I'm late."

"Hush! Hush!" begged her mother. "I never said you was a bad girl. You're a very good girl. But when you bring home a box of chocolates at this hour—nine o'clock, and past—and say you won them in a raffle, and you've been working—well!"

"What's that you're reading?" asked Sally, pointing to the small print.

Mrs. Minto straightened the sheet of newspaper, and held it up to the light.

"It's an old paper," she said. "A trial."

"Lor! Murder?" Sally almost left her supper. "What's it all about?"

"Well ... oo, he must a been a wicked wretch. He poisoned the old lady. He'd robbed her before he did it. Took all her money to give her an annuity, and then he poisoned her."

"Poison! Whew! What sort of poison?"

"Flypapers, it was. Not them sticky ones, but the brown, what you put in water. Got arsenic in them, they have."

"What's arsenic?"

Mrs. Minto looked over her magnifying glass at Sally in a bewildered way.

"I don't know. It's poison. I never poisoned anybody. Not that I know of."

"No," agreed Sally. She thought to herself: "She ought to have poisoned dad. All of us." Melancholy seized her, a dreadful passing fit of depression. Suddenly she longed for Toby. Aloud, she proceeded, more seriously: "If it's in the flypapers, why don't we all get poisoned, ma?"

"Well, it seems he soaked the papers, and drained off the water, with the poison in it, and mixed it with her food—beef tea, and that. She never noticed anything. She had awful pains, and diarrhœa, and was sick; and then she died, poor thing."

"Hn," said Sally, reaching out for the chocolates. "I'll read it. I like murders."

"Hush!" cried Mrs. Minto, in horror. "Read them—yes; but say you like murders! What wicked people there are in the world, to be sure. I hope they hanged him."

"Doesn't it say?" mumbled Sally, dealing with a chocolate with caramel inside it.

"It's torn across. It's what I got your shoes in, Sally. It's a.... It's 'Stories of Famous Trials,' in the Weekly Something.... I can't see what it is."

For the next quarter of an hour Sally ate chocolates and read about the trial of Seddon for murdering Miss Barrow.

"Miss Barrow!" she exclaimed. "Wonder if she was any relation to old Perce! I'll ask Mrs. Perce about it. Oo—fancy Tollington Park! Quite near us in Hornsey Road."

Mrs. Minto shuddered, and looked furtively at the clock, longing for her bedtime. Sally caught the glance, shut up the box of chocolates, and folded the paper.

"You going to work?" asked her mother.

"Wash my hair."

"You're always washing ... washing, you call it!" cried Mrs. Minto.

Sally ignored the sneer, and proceeded to her occupation. There was a 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 maîtres d'hôtel 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 maîtres d'hôtel, 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.

One moment at home was enough to convince Sally that no magician had 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.