Coquette

about the streets so late. Sally made noanswer. She looked in the mirror at the dilated pupils of her glowingeyes, and at her flushed cheeks and laughing lips; and her heart firstsank and then violently rebelled against the contrast of this hideousplace with the light and colour she had left. She was a rebel. Thecontrast was too great. How could she live in a room like this? Howcould anybody live? It was not life at all, but a mere grovelling. AndSally had tasted something that thrilled her. She had come into contactwith a life resembling the life led by those who travelled in the motorbroughams she so much admired. She was ravenous for such a life. Hernatural arrogance was roused and inflamed by the comparison she soinstinctively made between her natural surroundings and those to whichshe felt she was entitled by her capacities. She thought with contemptof the other girls at Madame Gala's. The wine she had drunk, the noisesshe had heard, mounted higher. She was primed with conceit andexcitement. Hitherto she had only determined by ambition to use theworld and attain comfort and success. Now she felt the _power_ to attainthis success. She could not experience the feeling without despisingevery other feeling. She looked round the room in scorn--at the dull,shabby bed, and the meagre furniture, and at the little old woman whosat by the empty fireplace with so miserable an air of confirmedpoverty. She looked higher, at Miss Jubb, and saw afresh the stupidincompetence of such a creature. Even old Perce and Mrs. Perce led inher new vision a life that was good enough for them, but not good enoughfor Sally. There was a better way, and Sally would not rest until shehad secured that way. And she had the opportunity opening to her. Gagahad shown her as much. With the vehement exaggeration of youth that isstill half-childhood, Sally saw her own genius. She felt that the worldwas already in her grasp. She felt like a financier before a coup. Shefelt like a commander who sees the enemy waver. For this night triumphseemed at hand, through some means which the heat of her brain did notallow her to analyse, but only to relish with exultation.

  x

  In the morning Sally had a heavy head as the result of her unusualentertainment, and she awoke to a sense of disillusion. The room was thesame ugly room, but her dreams had fled. So must Cinderella have feltupon awaking after her first ball. The colours had faded; the rapturousconsciousness of power had died in the night. Sally felt a little girlonce more, younger and more impotent than she had been for months. Thewalk to Regent Street restored her. She once again imagined herself intothe talk with Gaga; she stressed his offer of friendship and his pleafor help. It would be all right; it _was_ all right. She had made nomistake. Only, she was not as carelessly happy as she had been in thefirst realisation. She had recognised that the battle was not yet won,and that much had still to be done before she could claim the victorywhich last night had seemed in her hands. At all events, hatred of herlittle ugly home was undiminished. She felt horror of it.

  Arrived at the work room, Sally saw it in a new light. She waspermanently changed. The girls had become nothing; even Miss Summers hadbecome a very good sort of woman, but subtly inferior. There was notone of the girls who could help Gaga as she was going to do; not one ofthem who could earn the advantages which Sally was going to reap. Shesettled almost with impatience to work which last night had been leftunfinished. All the time that she was engaged upon it her thoughts werewith other prospects, other deliberate intentions. She was restless anduneasy--first of all until she had seen Gaga and gauged her effect uponhim in the morning's grey, finally because another secret conflict wasgoing on beneath her attention. She did not understand what she wasfeeling, and this made her the more easily exasperated when cottonknotted or a sudden noise made her head throb. "I'm out of sorts," shethought. She tried to laugh in saying: "The morning after the nightbefore." 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 faintlyyellowish tinge like the white of a stale egg. In shooting her firstlightning observation of him Sally clicked "Bilious." There was a littlesmile between them, and Gaga went out of the room again, languid andindifferent to everything that was occurring round him. Sally had animpulse to find some reason for going into his room, but she did notdare to go. She sewed busily. Perhaps she would see him later. Shepeeped into the room at lunch-time, but he was not there, and in theafternoon she heard from Miss Summers that he was unwell, and would notbe coming back that day. She heard the news with relief; but also withsudden fright. If--if--if he should have become afraid of her! If heshould have repented! If, instead of allowing her to help and tobenefit, Gaga should become her enemy! Men were so strange in the waythey behaved to girls--so suspicious and funny and brusque--thatanything might have happened in Gaga's mind. Sally recollected herself.This mood was a bad mood; any loss of self-confidence was with her asign of temporary ill-health. She magnificently recovered her naturalconceitedness. She was Sally.

  In the evening she went home early, to her mother's interest andpleasure; but there was nothing to do at home and the atmosphere wasinsufferable. It drove her forth, and she walked in the twilight,longing for Toby to be with her. He would not have understood all shewas thinking--he would angrily have hated most of it--but his companywould have distracted her mind and occupied her attention. She thoughtof Toby at sea on this beautiful evening, with the stars pale in an opalsky; and she could see him standing upon the deck of the "FlorenceDrake" in his blue jersey without a hat, with the breeze playing on hiscrisp hair and his brown face. A yearning for Toby filled her. Tearsstarted to her eyes. She loved him, she felt, more than she had everdone: she needed him with her, not to understand her, but to brace herwith the support of his strong arms. Sally dried her eyes and blew hernose. "Here!" she said to herself. "Stop it! I'm getting soppy!"

  She presently passed the ugly building of a Board School, not the onewhich she had attended, but one nearer her present home. Outside it, andwithin the railings protecting the asphalted playground from thefootpath, was a notice-board upon which was pasted a bill advertisingthe evening classes which would be held there during the Autumn Session.Idly, Sally stopped to read down the list of subjects--and the firstthat caught her eye, of course, was dressmaking. She gave a sniff. Funnylot of girls would go to that. Girls trying to do Miss Jubb out of ajob. Sally glimpsed their efforts. She had seen girls in dresses whichthey had made themselves. Poor mites! she thought. Paper patterns forsomebody twice their size, and bad calculations of the necessaryreductions. Tape-measures round their own waists, and twisted two orthree times at the back, which they could not see. Blunt scissors,clumsy hands, bad material.... It was a nightmare to Sally. She did notgo far enough to imagine the despairs, the aching hands, the tears,which attended the realisation of an evening's botch. She was not reallya very humane person. She had both too much imagination for thatinfirmity of the will, and not enough. She passed from dressmaking tothe other subjects.

  There was one that made her jump, so much did it seem to be named therefor her own especial benefit. It was "Book-keeping." Sally was takenaback. She scanned the details. Two lessons a week, on Mondays andThursdays, at eight o'clock. A disdain filled her. She would not be asthe other girls. She would learn book-keeping. She would understandfigures. Then she could help Gaga with precisely that work which heconfessed himself unable to do. Sally memorised the details. It wasenough; she was ready for anything. As the following Monday was thefirst night of the session she would be present then.

  And so, her ambition mounting once more to arrogance, Sally returned tobed and her mother, and bread and margarine, and the dingy room on thesecond-floor-back.

  xi

  The book-keeping class was held in one of the ordinary classrooms,separated from others by high partitions of wood which were continued tothe ceiling in panes of glass. The room was filled with forms and desks,but the class was so small that all those composing it (and there werefewer still after the first six lessons) were put into the first two orthree rows of desks. The teacher was a little sandy man who madewell-trodden jokes
and talked in a wheezy voice well suited to hisappearance. He used the blackboard, and stood upon tiptoe to scrawl uponit in a large handwriting. That was at the beginning. Later, methodsdeveloped; but for the present Sally and the others were merelyinitiated into the first movements of the difficult craft. Withamazement she began to learn the mysteries of the signs "Dr." and "Cr.",the words "Balances", "carried forward", etc. and the meanings of suchthings as ruled diagonal lines. It was to her like the game of learningchess, and she had the additional pleasure of knowing that with thesolution of each problem she was adding appreciably to her knowledge,and to a knowledge which henceforward would not be wasted, as she couldturn it, as of all things she most desired, to immediate use. Madam'saccounts would no longer be a source of trouble or bewilderment to her.She knew very soon that they