xiv

During the week following, Sally had no time for any thing but attendance upon Gaga. She was herself feeling sick and wretched; and Gaga was very ill indeed. He was sometimes extremely feeble, so that a lethargy fell upon him and he lay so quiet that Sally believed him to be asleep. But at her first movement he would unclose his eyes and groan her name, groping with his finger to detain her. So she sat in his big square bedroom with the drab walls and the plain furniture, watching the daylight fade and pondering to herself. It was a gloom period, and it had a perceptible effect upon her vitality. At other times Gaga would rally, would even sit up and talk in his old stammer, his grey face whitened and sharpened by illness. Always he demanded her kisses, although at times she had such horror of being made love to by one so ill that she was pricked by a perfect frenzy of nerves. He would sit by the fire, passing his thin hand across her shoulders, stooping and caressing her and catching her neck with his fingers in order to bring her cheek the more submissively to his own. His lips were ever encroaching, and his fevered clasp was so incessant and so vibrant with overstrung excitement as to create a sense of repulsion. It was a tyranny, to which Sally listlessly yielded because she had not the spirit to resist. She also knew that resistance would make him ill again; and however much she chafed at his kisses she chafed still more at the constant attention demanded by Gaga's state of health, which kept her ever there and delayed intolerably the execution of those plans which would have interposed a relief from these intimacies. Then again he would be seized with fits of vomiting which shook his frame and made him so ill that he had to be helped back to bed and comforted as if he were a child. It was a weary time, much shorter than it appeared to be in her slow watching of the clock; and she could not have endured it at all if her resolution had been less tough. Sometimes, too, Sally knew that she was rather fond of Gaga. Her feeling for him was a mixture of emotion; but she never actively disliked him, even when she was bored by his constant show of possessiveness. The truth was that she had grown to be afraid. She was like a Frankenstein, and her monstrous plan had become too great to be carried through alone. She was frightened that Gaga would die; and she did not want him to die. He was necessary to her, because at present he was the key to her scheme of immediate life.

Each evening Miss Summers came; and the tale she brought of orders given and executed was satisfactory. But even Miss Summers knew that things were not going well. All that practical direction which Madam had brought to the business was lost. Everything that had given distinction in the choice of material and style was in danger. There were new purchases to be made, and new designs furnished. All that vast part in the business which occurred before a customer entered into negotiations had been managed entirely by Madam, and it was suspended in her absence. Some of this work was routine, and could be conducted without her; but as the days passed it became evident that important matters were being delayed, that they were accumulating, that unless something could be done quickly to check the slide the business would become mechanical and its individuality be destroyed. Thus Sally learnt that her ambition had led her to grasp at power which she could not wield. If she had been able to go to work she could have learnt very easily. She had such quick taste, and such confidence, that, with Miss Summers at her side, in spite of many mistakes, she could have dealt with much that was now slipping. But she was unable to leave Gaga. When she tried to explain the needs of the moment to him Gaga turned weakly away, incapable of grasping more than the fact that she was his wife and that he needed her. At a speech concerning the business he shrugged his shoulders, and became stupidly ineffective.

One night, when she was in bed, Sally thought of all this, and was first despondent and then dispirited. The mood intensified. Once it had gripped her she knew no peace. She was in helpless torment. Before she knew quite what she was doing she had drawn the bedclothes over her head and was bitterly sobbing. Little disjointed phrases were jerked from her lips in this painful abandonment to fear and the sense of lonely powerlessness. She was at last unrestrained in her admission of failure. She did not know ... she did not know. By herself she could do nothing. And there was nobody to whom she could turn for succour. Her mother was useless, Mrs. Perce was useless. Her one support was Miss Summers, and Miss Summers this evening had been unable to hide her trepidation, but had sat licking her lips and blinking her eyes, which held such concern that she could in no way disguise the cause of her gloom. Miss Summers also, then, was full of foreboding; and Sally, tied fast here, a child, thrown off her balance by illness and nervous excitement, had lost confidence in her star.

When she was calm again she slept; but in the morning the preoccupation returned to her, and her head ached, and the tears filled her eyes as though she were fighting against grief. And her first visit to Gaga disgusted her and made her feel the more miserable. She had often been more poignantly affected, but never had she experienced such a sense of complete distaste for life. She was like a child given an impossible task to perform; and instead of being able to rise on the wings of her arrogance as she was in the habit of doing, Sally was weighed down by leaden sickness and fear. She went slowly downstairs to have her breakfast, and sat solitary in the big brown dining-room which overlooked a square of grass and a high wall. A dismal grey oppressed the atmosphere, and an autumn chill. She could not eat, could only sniff despairingly and drink a cup of tea and wander to the fire and lay her forehead against the mantelpiece, which was cooling indeed, but without comfort. Its hard coldness was unbearable. Sally's arms crept up as a pillow. She stared downwards at the dead fire.

"O-o-oh!" she groaned bitterly. "I wish I was dead! I do wish I was dead!" And at the sound of her wretched voice Sally once more gave way completely and began to sob aloud. She was beaten, and her spirit was gone.