She did not want to be hard. She did not want to grow hard and bitter. She had seen women who were both, and she disliked them. But with Gaga she would have to be hard. Otherwise he would bore her to desperation. So there was at this moment no longer any softness in Sally's heart towards Gaga. She resented him. As they pushed through the crowd at Victoria, Sally had a sudden impulse to run away. A shudder fled through her. A girl with less resolute will, or perhaps of greater delicacy, would have made some movement. But Sally merely stood with her head lowered, and considered the position. It was not his love that she minded; it was his hysterical possessiveness, the sense that he would always be there and claiming convulsively those small incessant intimacies which accompany marriage. Sally could not put her perception into coherent terms; but she was assured of the fact. Gaga would want too much, and that not in an adorably masterful way, but with exacting and pertinacious excitement bred from his weakness and neurotic avidity. The domination of the weak man would be a tyranny, as it always is. Sally thought: "He'll be a nuisance. I shall want to do him in by the time we get back. Oh, Lor! You done for yourself, Sally, my gel! You come a mucker! Look at your husband! Look at him!" She could see Gaga in the distance, moving agitatedly about a porter and the guard, and tripping over luggage, and interrupting other eager passengers, and stretching his long arm over their shoulders in order to touch the guard. "That's your husband, that is! Man who's lost his head. Man they all love. Fancy living with it for fifty years! Oh, Lor! A whole lifetime. Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days in the year, too. All day, every day! Makes you start thinking!" And she watched Gaga speeding exultantly towards her.
"All right. We've got a first," he panted, quite out of breath. "To ourselves. I've tipped the guard. It's ... it's all right. Come along. This way. Come along!"
"Oo!" cried Sally, with archness. "To ourselves! What a surprise! Strange!" And to herself, returning to her own sober thoughts: "If you did too much thinking you'd lose the use of your legs. And if girls thought a bit before they got marrying, they'd.... Funny! I wonder what they would do!"
ii
What she would herself have done Sally had no time to consider; for they were hurried to their compartment and were locked in by the obliging and amused guard. They then sat demurely upon opposite sides of the carriage until the train began to move. Every time anybody peered in at the window Sally, who had recovered her good spirits, began to laugh; and Gaga was full of consternation. But at last even that anxiety was removed, and in the afternoon sunlight the country began to glow under their eyes and race round in a sweeping circle with an intoxicating effect not to be appreciated by those who are staled for railway travelling. Sally allowed Gaga to embrace her; but she kept her face resolutely turned from him for a long time while she relished her new joy in rushing thus through the increasingly-beautiful districts which bordered the track. It was only when Gaga became expostulatory that she abandoned this pleasure and yielded to his tumultuous affection, with a listlessness and a sense of criticism which was new to her. Silly fool; why couldn't he sit still and be quiet! She belonged to herself, not to him. Almost, she thrust him away from her.
They reached Penterby by four o'clock in the afternoon, and were turned out upon the platform with their two light bags, like the stranded wanderers they were. And then they walked out into the roughly paved road leading through the town to higher land behind, and onward, along a road to which they turned their backs, and which wavered, past the railroad station, up an incline in the direction of the distant sea. Gaga carried both bags, and led the way, and Sally saw for the first time a wide street, and shops and houses quaintly built, and a church spire with houses below it, arranged in terraces, all warm in the dying sun. It was still summer here, she thought, and the atmosphere was pleasant. The houses were not at all crowded, but stood up at the first glance as if they were proud of great age and their height above the road from the station.
"We going up there?" demanded Sally, pointing to the hill, and the houses erect upon it.
"No, darling.... See ... that ... that ... lamp."
Sally looked up at Gaga's face. Oh, if it had only been Toby! The blood suddenly rushed to her cheeks. Toby! She wanted Toby! As quickly, she was chilled by fear. What would Toby do? What would he try to do? Yes, well Toby didn't know yet that she was married. And she was married to Gaga, and she had done this thing with her eyes open. There was no going back. Marriage was a thing you could not repudiate. It was final. The blood flowed away from Sally's face. She was cool again in an instant. Her eyes were fixed upon the lamp which Gaga had indicated, and upon the ivy behind it. Upon a suspended board she read in gold the letters "RIVER HOTEL", and as she appreciated the meaning of this name Sally observed that the street went onward past the hotel over an unmistakable bridge.
"Is that the river?" she asked. "Is the hotel on the river? Where we stay?"