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, d.a.m.n 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.s, 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 pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sage. 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 gla.s.s 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 m.u.f.fled crash.
She listened intently. The sound had seemed to come from across the pa.s.sage. 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 pa.s.sage and beat on the door.
2
Whatever devastating happenings had been going on in his home, it was plain a moment later that Gerald had managed to survive them: for there came the sound of a dragging footstep, and the door opened. Gerald stood on the threshold, the weak smile back on his face.
"Hullo, Sally!"
At the sight of him, disreputable and obviously unscathed, Sally"s brief alarm died away, leaving in its place the old feeling of impatient resentment. In addition to her other grievances against him, he had apparently frightened her unnecessarily.
"Whatever was all that noise?" she demanded.
"Noise?" said Gerald, considering the point open-mouthed.
"Yes, noise," snapped Sally.
"I"ve been cleaning house," said Gerald with the owl-like gravity of a man just conscious that he is not wholly himself.
Sally pushed her way past him. The apartment in which she found herself was almost an exact replica of her own, and it was evident that Elsa Doland had taken pains to make it pretty and comfortable in a niggly feminine way. Amateur interior decoration had always been a hobby of hers. Even in the unpromising surroundings of her bedroom at Mrs. Meecher"s boarding-house she had contrived to create a certain daintiness which Sally, who had no ability in that direction herself, had always rather envied. As a decorator Elsa"s mind ran in the direction of small, fragile ornaments, and she was not afraid of over-furnishing. Pictures jostled one another on the walls: china of all description stood about on little tables: there was a profusion of lamps with shades of parti-coloured gla.s.s: and plates were ranged along a series of shelves.
One says that the plates were ranged and the pictures jostled one another, but it would be more correct to put it they had jostled and had been ranged, for it was only by guess-work that Sally was able to reconstruct the scene as it must have appeared before Gerald had started, as he put it, to clean house. She had walked into the flat briskly enough, but she pulled up short as she crossed the threshold, appalled by the majestic ruin that met her gaze. A sh.e.l.l bursting in the little sitting-room could hardly have created more havoc.
The psychology of a man of weak character under the influence of alcohol and disappointed ambition is not easy to plumb, for his moods follow one another with a rapidity which baffles the observer. Ten minutes before, Gerald Foster had been in the grip of a clammy self-pity, and it seemed from his aspect at the present moment that this phase had returned. But in the interval there had manifestly occurred a brief but adequate spasm of what would appear to have been an almost Berserk fury. What had caused it and why it should have expended itself so abruptly, Sally was not psychologist enough to explain; but that it had existed there was ocular evidence of the most convincing kind. A heavy niblick, flung petulantly--or remorsefully--into a corner, showed by what medium the destruction had been accomplished.
Bleak chaos appeared on every side. The floor was littered with every imaginable shape and size of broken gla.s.s and china. Fragments of pictures, looking as if they had been chewed by some prehistoric animal, lay amid heaps of shattered statuettes and vases. As Sally moved slowly into the room after her involuntary pause, china crackled beneath her feet. She surveyed the stripped walls with a wondering eye, and turned to Gerald for an explanation.
Gerald had subsided on to an occasional table, and was weeping softly again. It had come over him once more that he had been very, very badly treated.
"Well!" said Sally with a gasp. "You"ve certainly made a good job of it!"
There was a sharp crack as the occasional table, never designed by its maker to bear heavy weights, gave way in a splintering flurry of broken legs under the pressure of the master of the house: and Sally"s mood underwent an abrupt change. There are few situations in life which do not hold equal potentialities for both tragedy and farce, and it was the ludicrous side of this drama that chanced to appeal to Sally at this moment. Her sense of humour was tickled. It was, if she could have a.n.a.lysed her feelings, at herself that she was mocking--at the feeble sentimental Sally who had once conceived the absurd idea of taking this preposterous man seriously. She felt light-hearted and light-headed, and she sank into a chair with a gurgling laugh.
The shock of his fall appeared to have had the desirable effect of restoring Gerald to something approaching intelligence. He picked himself up from the remains of a set of water-colours, gazing at Sally with growing disapproval.
"No sympathy," he said austerely.
"I can"t help it," cried Sally. "It"s too funny."
"Not funny," corrected Gerald, his brain beginning to cloud once more.
"What did you do it for?"
Gerald returned for a moment to that mood of honest indignation, which had so strengthened his arm when wielding the niblick. He bethought him once again of his grievance.
"Wasn"t going to stand for it any longer," he said heatedly. "A fellow"s wife goes and lets him down... ruins his show by going off and playing in another show... why shouldn"t I smash her things? Why should I stand for that sort of treatment? Why should I?"
"Well, you haven"t," said Sally, "so there"s no need to discuss it. You seem to have acted in a thoroughly manly and independent way."
"That"s it. Manly independent." He waggled his finger impressively.
"Don"t care what she says," he continued. "Don"t care if she never comes back. That woman..."
Sally was not prepared to embark with him upon a discussion of the absent Elsa. Already the amusing aspect of the affair had begun to fade, and her hilarity was giving way to a tired distaste for the sordidness of the whole business. She had become aware that she could not endure the society of Gerald Foster much longer. She got up and spoke decidedly.
"And now," she said, "I"m going to tidy up."
Gerald had other views.
"No," he said with sudden solemnity. "No! Nothing of the kind. Leave it for her to find. Leave it as it is."
"Don"t be silly. All this has got to be cleaned up. I"ll do it. You go and sit in my apartment. I"ll come and tell you when you can come back."
"No!" said Gerald, wagging his head.