CHAPTER XVII
SALLY LAYS A GHOST
1
The blood flowed slowly back into Sally's face, and her heart, which
had leaped madly for an instant at the sound of his voice, resumed its
normal beat. The suddenness of the shock over, she was surprised to find
herself perfectly calm. Always when she had imagined this meeting,
knowing that it would have to take place sooner or later, she had felt
something akin to panic: but now that it had actually occurred it hardly
seemed to stir her. The events of the night had left her incapable of
any violent emotion.
"Hullo, Sally!" said Gerald.
He spoke thickly, and there was a foolish smile on his face as he stood
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 face
was white and puffy, and about him there hung like a nimbus a sodden
disreputableness.
Sally did not speak. Weighed down before by a numbing exhaustion, she
seemed now to have passed into that second phase in which over-tired
nerves enter upon a sort of Indian summer of abnormal alertness. She
looked at him quietly, coolly and altogether dispassionately, as if he
had 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
tear rolled down his cheek. His intoxication had reached the maudlin
stage.
"Sally... S-Sally... I'm very miserable." He slurred awkwardly over the
difficult syllables. "Heard your voice. Saw the door open. Thought I'd
come in."
Something flicked at the back of Sally's mind. She seemed to have been
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. Nothing
about him seemed to touch her now, neither the sight of him nor his
shameless misery.
"What's the use? Can't sleep. No good. Couldn't sleep. Sally, you
don't know how worried I am. I see what a fool I've been."
Sally made a quick gesture, to check what she supposed was about to
develop into a belated expression of regret for his treatment of
herself. She did not want to stand there listening to Gerald apologizing
with tears for having done his best to wreck her life. But it seemed
that it was not this that was weighing upon his soul.
"I was a fool ever to try writing plays," he went on. "Got a winner
first time, but can't repeat. It's no good. Ought to have stuck to
newspaper work. I'm good at that. Shall have to go back to it. Had
another frost to-night. No good trying any more. Shall have to go back
to 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
safe support of the door. For an instant Sally's artificial calm was
shot through by a swift stab of contempt. It passed, and she was back
again in 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 worked
through to Gerald's muddled intelligence, for he winced, and his manner
took on a deeper melancholy.
"May not be alive in the morning," he said solemnly. "Good mind to end
it all. End it all!" he repeated with the beginning of a sweeping
gesture 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 indifference
which had gripped her was beginning to pass, leaving in its place a
growing feeling of resentment--resentment against Gerald for degrading
himself like this, against herself for ever having found glamour in the
man. It humiliated her to remember how utterly she had once allowed his
personality to master hers. And under the sting of this humiliation she
felt hard and pitiless. Dimly she was aware that a curious change had
come over her to-night. Normally, the sight of any living thing in
distress was enough to stir her quick sympathy: but Gerald mourning over
the prospect of having to go back to regular work made no appeal to
her--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 a
push. Gerald, still clinging to his chosen support, moved out into the
passage, attached to the handle, with the air of a man the foundations
of whose world have suddenly lost their stability. He released the
handle and moved uncertainly across the passage. Finding his own door
open before him, he staggered over the threshold; and Sally, having
watched him safely to his journey's end, went into her bedroom with the
intention 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, and went
into the kitchen to ascertain whether her commissariat arrangements
would permit of a glass of hot milk.
She had just remembered that she had that morning presented the last of
the milk to a sandy cat with a purposeful eye which had dropped in
through the window to take breakfast with her, when her regrets for
this thriftless hospitality were interrupted by a muffled crash.
She listened intently. The sound had seemed to come from across the
passage. She hurried to the door and opened it. As she did so, from
behind the door of the apartment opposite there came a perfect fusillade
of crashes, each seeming to her strained hearing louder and more
appalling than the last.
There is something about sudden, loud noises in the stillness of the
night which shatters the most rigid detachment. A short while before,
Gerald, toying with the idea of ending his sorrows by violence, had left
Sally unmoved: but now her mind leapt back to what he had said, and
apprehension succeeded indifference. There was no disputing the fact
that Gerald was in an irresponsible mood, under the influence of which
he was capable of doing almost anything. Sally, listening in the
doorway, felt a momentary panic.
A brief silence had succeeded the fusillade, but, as she stood there
hesitating, the noise broke out again; and this time it was so loud and
compelling that Sally hesitated no longer. She ran across the passage
and beat on the door.
