Coquette

friend from the works where he was employed, and was sometimeswith this man Jackson. Sally had her seventeenth birthday: her figurehad improved, and so had her appearance. She was still meagre, becauseshe had not enough to eat; but some compensation of Nature allowed herto maintain her health and to mature.

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

  "What's that you're singing?" she demanded. "Suits you. You'll never beable to play the piano, Sally, because you'd have to practise every dayfor hours to do that; but you've got a big voice for your body. Isuppose your lungs are good. Ever heard me sing? It's like a babycrying. But that song 'The Love Path' suits you. You might do somethingwith your voice. Not much, I expect; but something. You just try and gethold of somebody who knows about such things. Might do a turn on theHalls. You never know. If I come across anybody I'll ask them; but Idon'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 ina hurry. So there you are. Make the most of yourself, I say; and let theDevil go hang himself if he's a mind to it."

  Sally, who had never thought of such a thing, promised. For a time shewas flattered by the vision of singing to audiences. But that soonfaded. She met nobody outside Madame's, except for one or two young menwho spoke to her on the way home; and so she kept to her sewing andmachining 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," hesaid 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, andmarched off in anger. And Toby did not follow. It was a tiff. By thenext evening both were contrite, and the matter was never spoken ofagain. All the same, Sally remembered it. She remembered it the moreunforgivingly because Toby's remark had been true. Nothing so far hadhappened to prove definitely that her confidence in exceptional powerswas 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 firstfiddle! That was it: Toby didn't want her to have a chance at all. Hewanted her always to be number two. Sally shook her head obstinately.

  "All right, Master Toby!" she said to herself. There was no more in itthan that--a momentary revolt;--but once the notion had arisen it beganto revolve in her mind. She could not remember if she had ever told Tobyof her plan to be a successful dressmaker; but what would he say tothat? Would he like his wife to make money, and to have real ladiescoming to her as they did to Madam? It seemed from this that he wouldnot. He preferred to be top dog. Sally was to be nothing upon her ownaccount--merely to fetch and carry, and do what she was told, andhusband his paltry little earnings. He'd rather be poor than oweanything to his wife, in case she became bigger than himself. Was thatit? Was that Master Toby's idea? If so, it was not Sally's. She suddenlyunderstood that Toby thought of her as his wife, as his chattel; andthat she had never ceased, except in the passionate excitement of theirearly relations, to think of herself as one who belonged to herself andwas going to make some sort of life for herself. This came as a shock toSally. 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 beenthe burly man she loved. Her thoughts of him, as her love for him, hadbeen merely physical. She was now to search more deeply into the needsof life, still crudely, but examiningly. It was not enough, then, tolove a man if you were going to have something else to do in lifebesides love him. The idea was new. It puzzled her. It was somethingoutside the novelettes she had read, and outside her own precociousthoughts. Love was love--all knew that. She loved Toby; she had givenherself to him; they were practically married; and now it appeared thatsomething was wrong somewhere. Toby did not want her to be Sally: hewanted her to be just a sort of moon-Toby. Another girl would havewanted nothing better. Sally told herself that she was different. Shewent out by herself, one evening, instead of working; and walked up toHighgate. 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 fewmistakes. She remembered Mrs. Perce's words. What if she _could_ dosomething with her voice? Did she sing well? She allowed herself toglimpse 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'lljust see about it. That's all." And having as it were made her formalprotest she resumed the journey, and arrived home tired out, ready forbed; and before she had been in bed more than two minutes she was fastasleep, dreaming of motor cars and footmen standing on the pavement withfur rugs in their hands. In her dream she was alone in the cars. Eventhe chauffeur had no smallest resemblance to Toby. And yet she stillloved him with all her heart, and when she was with him she felt thatshe extraordinarily belonged to him. Love had again at last encounteredambition, and battle was joined.

  iii

  Dreams of luxurious motor-cars, and footmen with fur capes and longfawn-coloured overcoats, holding fur rugs to cover her knees, were nowconstant in Sally's mind. She saw such things occasionally in RegentStreet, and loved to look in at the windows of motor broughamsupholstered in fawn-coloured corduroy, with arm straps and littlehanging vases of fresh flowers. The freshness of these cars was herdelight. She had no notion of the income it was necessary to have inorder to possess such cars, with their attendant footman and chauffeur;but that income, whatever it was, became her ideal. Money! Lots ofmoney! With money you could have comfort. When she said that, and waswarned by conventional wiseacres that money did not produce happiness,she sneered at the timid ones. "Bet _I'd_ be happy," she said. "What'shappiness?" She wondered what it was. For her it had been oblivion inToby's arms. It was so no longer. That was not all she desired. It wasnot by any means all. And she shrank more and more strongly from a lifeof squalid toil such as her mother had had--such as she would still havehad if Mr. Minto had been a sober man. All her life she had slaved andslaved, and now she was worn out with it. Not for Sally! She had otherplans. 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 calculatingdetermination to exploit it. The death of her father, the passion forToby,--these had distracted her. With increasing confidence in herposition at Madam's, and a new sense of what money could actually do inthe way of procuring food and clothes and ordinary or extraordinaryphysical comforts, Sally had returned to her old faith. She began tohave a little money to buy things for herself. Once or twice MissSummers gave her quite good-sized pieces of material, and there werealways scraps to be gathered and utilized. And Sally was enabled todress carefully. She became the smartest of the girls in the room, forshe 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 wasunpopular; but that they felt in her the hard determination to get on,and were resentful of her manifest ability to achieve what she meant todo.

  The other girls were all sorted out in Sally's mind. There was not oneof them into whose nature she had not some biting insight. She hadbecome so practised that she knew all their dresses (as of course allthe others did, so that a new one was an event), and knew whateverything they owned had cost. She could recognise anything that hadbeen dyed, any brooch or adornment, any stockings. She would have made agood 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. Allknowledge went into her memory. It would be devastatingly produced onthe occasion of a row, but Sally
rarely quarrelled. With her, nothingever came to a quarrel. There was no need for it to do so. She wasneither jealous nor censorious. One does not quarrel with one whoneither loves nor blames nor is stupid or too anxious to showcleverness. Sally merely "was," and the other girls knew it. For thisreason she was not liked, but neither was she feared or unpopular. Theydid not hide things from her, but they did not show them eagerly. Sallywas 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 MadameGala's for about six months, a new interest, and a singular one. Oneday, when they were all working very hard, and the electric light wason, Madame came into the