iv

They left Penterby by a very early train on the Monday morning, and while Gaga took the two bags to an hotel where the Merricks were to stay for the present Sally went direct to Madame Gala's. She had obtained special permission to be an hour late in the morning, and so she entered the workroom without confusion. It was the same as it had always been—the long benches, and the girls, and Miss Summers sitting apart, as plump and feline as ever. There was, of course, curiosity about Sally. Few of the girls supposed that she had been away with a girl friend, which had been the story; and all looked at her with a knowing suspicion. Only Miss Summers was completely trusting. Sally had slipped off her wedding-ring, and it lay in her purse. She took in the whole scene as she entered, and measured the assumptions of the girls with cool indifference. But she would have done that in any case; for Sally had nothing to learn about workgirls and their thoughts and interpretations, and she had also none of the false self-consciousness which makes wrong-doers imagine that their actions have been providentially revealed to all observers. Had she and Gaga arrived together the case would have been different; but nothing had occurred to make the girls suppose that there was any relation between them, and Sally was perfectly safe from that most dangerous of all recognitions. She was still, to the girls, Sally Minto; and to some of them still the white-faced cocket of Rose Anstey's jealous outburst. Sally looked boldly at Rose as she sat industriously working. Then, with greater stealth, at Miss Summers. That plump face had a solemnly preoccupied expression that gave Sally a faint start of doubt. Immediately, however, she knew that Miss Summers must be worried, not upon Sally's account, but on account of some message respecting Madam which had been received earlier in the morning. This made her seize an excuse to approach Miss Summers.

"How's Madam?" she whispered, surreptitiously.

Miss Summers shook her head with foreboding.

"Still the same. No better; no worse. Sally, I'm afraid."

Sally looked down at Miss Summers. How strangely their relation had been altered by this weekend's doings! Wherever Sally glanced she knew that what she saw was now potentially her own. By the simple act of marrying Gaga she had become, as it were, mistress of the place. And she knew it. She knew it plainly and without swollen conceitedness. Not yet was her power unquestionable; but it was none the less genuine. Even Miss Summers....

"I hope she gets better," said Sally.

Miss Summers shot a quick glance upwards. She started, and a faint redness came into her plump cheeks. The tip of her nose was irritated, and she rubbed it with her knuckle.

"Oh, I do hope so," breathed Miss Summers. "It would be awful—awful for all of us—if she didn't. You see...."

"She'll have to die some time," remarked Sally.

"But now!" The head was shaken afresh. Miss Summers gave a heavy sigh. She had no such youthful confidence as Sally's. She was a born follower, a born sheep; and with Madam removed she could see nothing ahead but disaster to the business. Sally had a little difficulty in keeping back her smile. She thought of this poor old pussycat in fear of her life, and her lip slightly curled at the knowledge that she alone had superior knowledge of the situation. Already Sally was casting round for channels in which her new power might be used. She wanted opportunity. It was both a chagrin and a secret relief to her that Madam could not yet be told of the marriage. If she knew it, and disapproved, as Sally knew that she must do, Madam could at any moment annul Sally's hopes of taking a leading part in the business. She could alter her will. Therefore, if she lived, she must be kept ignorant. It would be a trouble. And yet in spite of her assurance Sally was still suspicious of her own ability to master every detail in time to carry on the whole establishment without a great lapse into momentary failure. She planned as a middle-aged woman. At eighteen her plans were profound. But instinctively, and in spite of colossal conceit, she understood that eighteen was not an age at which control can successfully be taken of a large business. Therefore she was fighting against unacknowledged fear.

During that day she hardly saw Gaga at all. He was at home with his mother, and did not come to business until the afternoon. Only in the evening did she creep into his room and submit to his endearments. She then left, and went to the hotel at which for the present they were to stay; and here, in the little sitting-room attached to their bedroom, she was for the first time able to be alone for half-an-hour with her post-nuptial reflections. They were not all pleasant, and they called for the exercise of her natural resoluteness. She had comfort, and the knowledge that she need never again trouble about food and clothing. But she also knew that a husband is a different sort of person from a lover. He seemed to her to be a sort of omnipresent nuisance. Her trouble was that thoughts and ambitions were in conflict with Gaga's amorousness. He could never understand her. He could understand her no better than Toby, and as she had no use for him otherwise than as the instrument of her ambition, she was already, within two days of marriage, bored with him. Sally awaited Gaga's arrival with calm unwillingness. She did not realise how rapid would be her instinctive progress to repugnance; but she had no illusions about her marriage.

At last Gaga arrived, his own eagerness unabated, but he was still shaken by the fact that his mother was seriously ill. With Sally in his arms he whispered or murmured alternately professions of love and anxiety. She was all the time secretly astonished at his devotion to Madam, because it corresponded to nothing in her own nature; but she comforted Gaga because it was her impulse to do so. She did not dislike him in this mood. She felt pity for him. It was only for his tremulous persistency in caress that Sally felt contempt. Gradually she began to be able to divert his mind to other matters—to their own future, and the flat they were to take and to furnish; and to the plans they must make for a slow change of her position in the business. Already Sally was obtaining a grasp of the details, but she could go little further until her access to the books and accounts was free. She could do nothing until some scheme had been made. So the two sat together after dinner and discussed what they were to do, and where they were to live, and how the rooms of the flat were to be furnished. It was all, upon Sally's side, practical and clear; and for Gaga a wonderful revelation of Sally's wisdom. He became more and more infatuated, as Sally became more and more cool. And they talked the whole evening through, without realising that with each moment Sally's dominion was more firmly established.

It was only towards the end of the evening that Gaga, unhinged by excitement, became desperately pale, and confessed to a headache. He found his customary drugs, and took them. But to Sally this headache was a new and emphatic indication of Gaga's troublesome temperament. Ugliness and squalor she knew; but sickliness was new to her. In face of a groaning and prostrate man, she turned away. Her heart sank a little. Then, with a shrug, she turned to the advertisements of flats to let in London which she found in various newspapers; and made notes of the addresses of house agents. This occupation she continued until Gaga called almost fretfully from the next room, when she turned off the electric light and joined him. An hour later, while Gaga still lay staring into the darkness, Sally was fast asleep. She had no dreams. For the present she was occupied with facts alone; and she did not suspect that she was unhappy, because she had been absorbing too many details to be able to reflect upon the sinking of her heart and its meaning.