The blood flowed slowly back into Sally's face, and her heart, whichhad leaped madly for an instant at the sound of his voice, resumed itsnormal beat. The suddenness of the shock over, she was surprised tofind herself perfectly calm. Always when she had imagined this meeting,knowing that it would have to take place sooner or later, she had feltsomething akin to panic: but now that it had actually occurred it hardlyseemed to stir her. The events of the night had left her incapable ofany violent emotion.
"Hullo, Sally!" said Gerald.
He spoke thickly, and there was a foolish smile on his face as hestood swaying with one hand on the door. He was in his shirt-sleeves,collarless: and it was plain that he had been drinking heavily. His facewas white and puffy, and about him there hung like a nimbus a soddendisreputableness.
Sally did not speak. Weighed down before by a numbing exhaustion, sheseemed now to have passed into that second phase in which over-tirednerves enter upon a sort of Indian summer of abnormal alertness. Shelooked at him quietly, coolly and altogether dispassionately, as if hehad been a stranger.
"Hullo!" said Gerald again.
"What do you want?" said Sally.
"Heard your voice. Saw the door open. Thought I'd come in."
"What do you want?"
The weak smile which had seemed pinned on Gerald's face vanished. A tearrolled down his cheek. His intoxication had reached the maudlin stage.
"Sally... S-Sally... I'm very miserable." He slurred awkwardly over thedifficult syllables. "Heard your voice. Saw the door open. Thought I'dcome in."
Something flicked at the back of Sally's mind. She seemed to havebeen through all this before. Then she remembered. This was simply Mr.Reginald Cracknell over again.
"I think you had better go to bed, Gerald," she said steadily. Nothingabout him seemed to touch her now, neither the sight of him nor hisshameless misery.
"What's the use? Can't sleep. No good. Couldn't sleep. Sally, you don'tknow how worried I am. I see what a fool I've been."
Sally made a quick gesture, to check what she supposed was aboutto develop into a belated expression of regret for his treatment ofherself. She did not want to stand there listening to Gerald apologizingwith tears for having done his best to wreck her life. But it seemedthat it was not this that was weighing upon his soul.
"I was a fool ever to try writing plays," he went on. "Got a winnerfirst time, but can't repeat. It's no good. Ought to have stuck tonewspaper work. I'm good at that. Shall have to go back to it. Hadanother frost to-night. No good trying any more. Shall have to go backto the old grind, damn it."
He wept softly, full of pity for his hard case.
"Very miserable," he murmured.
He came forward a step into the room, lurched, and retreated to the safesupport of the door. For an instant Sally's artificial calm was shotthrough by a swift stab of contempt. It passed, and she was back againin her armour of indifference.
"Go to bed, Gerald," she said. "You'll feel better in the morning."
Perhaps some inkling of how he was going to feel in the morning workedthrough to Gerald's muddled intelligence, for he winced, and his mannertook on a deeper melancholy.
"May not be alive in the morning," he said solemnly. "Good mind toend it all. End it all!" he repeated with the beginning of a sweepinggesture which was cut off abruptly as he clutched at the friendly door.
Sally was not in the mood for melodrama.
"Oh, go to bed," she said impatiently. The strange frozen indifferencewhich had gripped her was beginning to pass, leaving in its place agrowing feeling of resentment--resentment against Gerald for degradinghimself like this, against herself for ever having found glamour in theman. It humiliated her to remember how utterly she had once allowed hispersonality to master hers. And under the sting of this humiliation shefelt hard and pitiless. Dimly she was aware that a curious change hadcome over her to-night. Normally, the sight of any living thing indistress was enough to stir her quick sympathy: but Gerald mourningover the prospect of having to go back to regular work made no appeal toher--a fact which the sufferer noted and commented upon.
"You're very unsymp... unsympathetic," he complained.
"I'm sorry," said Sally. She walked briskly to the door and gave it apush. Gerald, still clinging to his chosen support, moved out into thepassage, attached to the handle, with the air of a man the foundationsof whose world have suddenly lost their stability. He released thehandle and moved uncertainly across the passage. Finding his own dooropen before him, he staggered over the threshold; and Sally, havingwatched him safely to his journey's end, went into her bedroom with theintention of terminating this disturbing night by going to sleep.
Almost immediately she changed her mind. Sleep was out of the question.A fever of restlessness had come upon her. She put on a kimono, andwent into the kitchen to ascertain whether her commissariat arrangementswould permit of a glass of hot milk.
She had just remembered that she had that morning presented the lastof the milk to a sandy cat with a purposeful eye which had dropped inthrough the window to take breakfast with her, when her regrets for thisthriftless hospitality were interrupted by a muffled crash.
She listened intently. The sound had seemed to come from across thepassage. She hurried to the door and opened it. As she did so, frombehind the door of the apartment opposite there came a perfect fusilladeof crashes, each seeming to her strained hearing louder and moreappalling than the last.
There is something about sudden, loud noises in the stillness of thenight which shatters the most rigid detachment. A short while before,Gerald, toying with the idea of ending his sorrows by violence, hadleft Sally unmoved: but now her mind leapt back to what he had said,and apprehension succeeded indifference. There was no disputing the factthat Gerald was in an irresponsible mood, under the influence ofwhich he was capable of doing almost anything. Sally, listening in thedoorway, felt a momentary panic.
A brief silence had succeeded the fusillade, but, as she stood therehesitating, the noise broke out again; and this time it was so loud andcompelling that Sally hesitated no longer. She ran across the passageand beat on the door.
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