Gaga

“ Sally had confounded Gaga. Neither he nor she was quite as mentally alert as they had both been when [Pg 178] hungry; and the Chianti was beginning to make them drowsy and rather slow-witted. But having embarked upon the question of possible knowledge of character they could not, in consideration of their slight heaviness, be expected to relinquish a topic so circular and so suggestive of personal intimacy. As the wine acted more powerfully upon them it was more and more to themselves that their thoughts and speeches turned.
"I feel sometimes that I'm a great fool," confessed Gaga. ”

“ But Nana was astonished to find Gaga in her carriage, sitting with Bijou and Louiset on her knees. Gaga had indeed decided on this course of action in order to be near La Faloise, but she told Nana that she had been anxious to kiss Baby. She adored children. ”

“ Die Antwoord refused to sign up as the opening act for Lady Gaga and also broke with Interscope to release their Ten$ion album on their own label, Zef Recordz. Ninja remarked that:
Weird shit's been happening, like Lady Gaga asked us to tour with her and we're like, "No, don't worry about it" Our stuff is like fucking hardcore like solid heavyweight! We want it to be like a secret mind-fuck!... We like making pop music, but we like making hardcore music at the same time, mixing them, but they've got like, soul. It's not like weak, superficial shit. ”

“ Simonne listened with the greatest interest to this fresh piece of information.
As to Clarisse, she had been raging for a week past. Just fancy, that beast La Faloise, whom she had succeeded in chucking into Gaga’s venerable embrace, was coming into the fortune of a very rich uncle! It was just her luck; she had always been destined to make things cozy for other people. Then, too, that pig Bordenave had once more given her a mere scrap of a part, a paltry fifty lines, just as if she could not have played Geraldine! She was yearning for that role and hoping that Nana would refuse it. ”

“ A flash told her now that they were all on tiptoe, and her nonchalance was a piece of acting which she enjoyed for its effect upon the others. She most mischievously enjoyed her privilege. And she had a new cause for triumph, a double success. She felt herself a schemer, an intriguer, which she was not. She was merely an opportunist, seizing the main [Pg 168] chance. Not only had she a secret understanding with Gaga; she had also a secret understanding with Gaga's mother. ”

“ She so greatly craved the power which only Gaga could give her. Well, what did he want? It was not enough that she should recognise her power to excite him: she needed much more than a few odd favours. And she was afraid to do anything to force him to grant whatever he could. In any case, what could he give her? She was too observant to be deceived as to his powerlessness. She saw him as a cypher; but as one who might one day—perhaps quite soon—own the whole business. Who else was there to make him do anything with it? There was nobody. Sally knew her own strength. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gaga was unlike Toby. He had not the assurance of the physically vigorous. He was gentle, mild, stammering, and ineffective. But he was giving Sally a glorious evening's entertainment. At one step they had overleapt all that separated them, and were friends. He began to tell her, unasked, about his business, about his mother, about everything.
"My mother's a wonderful woman," he said. "Wonderful! She's made that business with her own hands. She began in a small way, and the business is almost out of her control. Not quite; but.... She's done it all herself. All herself. Wonderful woman. ”

“ Sally shook her head. She was silhouetted against the light.
"No," she told him. "Not often." It was strange how refined her voice automatically became when she was talking to Gaga. She was altogether restrained. "You can't if you've got to earn your own living. And have to get here early in the morning."
Gaga hesitated, half turned away, came back. ”

“ Gaga gave a cry of terror and the intruder drew back for an instant.
The boy knew that the man whose figure he had seen outlined against the star-sprinkled sky was the man he had seen standing by the couch of the owner of the Daily Planet on the night of the robbery, the man he had seen later in the Chester camp in the jungle. 219
“For the love of Heaven!” the prisoner whispered.
The entreaty struck home to the heart of the boy. He had always prided himself on his love of fair play. ”

“ It meant nothing: "I, Sarah, Margaret Minto, call on these present...." It was all a part of a game, a rather exciting game; and Gaga was no more to her after the ceremony than he had been before it. He was a tall agitated grey creature, very tremulous and muffled in his speech, and nothing like a husband. What was a husband? How did one feel towards a husband? All Sally knew was that her husband was a stranger. He was one man out of millions of men, no more and no less than the others. The thought that she was binding herself to him for life did not trouble her. ”

“ Other girls— Rose Anstey.... They're soppy. They can't do anything. I can do all sorts of things because I'm clever— I can sew, and ... you know, all sorts of things."
Gaga glowed at her words.
"I know," he eagerly agreed. "That's why you're so wonderful. Most girls can only do one thing. They can't even do that very well."
"That's true. Takes them a week to do it; and then somebody has to do it over again for them. They haven't got any brains. They got no sense. They don't think." Sally was impetuous.
"They've got no brains at all," said Gaga. "They're like vegetables." ”

“ But she also knew that a husband is a different sort of person from a lover. He seemed to her to be a sort of omnipresent nuisance. Her trouble was that thoughts and ambitions were in conflict with Gaga's [Pg 226] amorousness. He could never understand her. He could understand her no better than Toby, and as she had no use for him otherwise than as the instrument of her ambition, she was already, within two days of marriage, bored with him. Sally awaited Gaga's arrival with calm unwillingness. She did not realise how rapid would be her instinctive progress to repugnance ”

“ Lucy came downstairs in solitary state behind them. After which Gaga had to carry off La Faloise, ill, sobbing like a child, calling after Clarisse, who had long since gone off with her two gentlemen. Simonne, too, had vanished. Indeed, none remained save Tatan, Léa and Maria, whom Labordette complaisantly took under his charge.
“Oh, but I don’t the least bit want to go to bed!” said Nana. “One ought to find something to do.”
She looked at the sky through the windowpanes. It was a livid sky, and sooty clouds were scudding across it. It was six o’clock in the morning. ”

“ Now Miss Summers——"
"Don't let's talk about the business," pleaded Gaga. Sally was arrested.
"Funny!" she exclaimed. "We haven't, have we!"
"It's so much nicer being ... friends."
One of Gaga's hands was stretched across the table. With a sense of mischief Sally allowed him to take her own hand. Then she moved it quickly.
"They're looking at us," she whispered to him. "Those waitress girls." Instantly she was free. She had the thought that a real man would have held her hand for a moment longer. All the same, she enjoyed her power over Gaga. ”

“ The mood lasted perhaps a minute Then it changed ever so slightly. "Would Madam mind?" next urged Sally.
Gaga's face clouded. She was watching him breathlessly, and saw his fists clenched. His tongue moistened the lips so lately compressed. His head was inclined. At last, dubiously, he spoke.
"I wonder," he muttered. "I haven't said anything to her. I don't think...." His face fell still more, until it was undetermined. "I'm afraid.... I'm afraid ... perhaps she mightn't like it. You see, she's ... she's ... rather.... She doesn't like anybody.... She mightn't quite ... understand." ”

“ She mustn't drink too much. She must mind her step. Then, irresistibly: "What a lark!" murmured Sally. She was very demure upon Miss Summers' return, and listened with equanimity to a few remarks made by Miss Summers as to the capacity of Miss Rapson. In reality her thoughts were occupied with speculations as to the entertainment which lay ahead. So Gaga had never given Rose anything; more fool Rose! Rose! She didn't know how to manage a man! She didn't know anything at all. She had been born pretty, and she thought that was all you had to do. Sally had not been born pretty ”

“ Scarcely had he left the room than the footman ushered in three newcomers. Nay, this time the thing was becoming ridiculous; one certainly could never take them all in. Nana was beginning to grow angry and in her haughtiest manner announced that such conduct was scarcely in good taste. But seeing two more arrive, she began laughing; it was really too funny. So much the worse. People would have to fit in anyhow! The company were all on their feet save Gaga and Rose and Bordenave, who alone took up two armchairs. ”

“ Not yet has woman the power to attain her ends except by and through men. Sally waited [Pg 276] in ever-increasing excitement for some word from Toby, some hint of his coming. She was kept within the house at all times except during her short flights in the morning or afternoon. She could not be long away from the house. And she must rely upon a letter, and then perhaps a brief meeting, for her purposes. The time was going. Gaga was getting better, was growing more and more like the man in whose company she had gone to Penterby. ”

“ She rather carefully refrained from telling him, not out of considerateness, but from a sort of scorn for his jealousy. To herself she said "Anything for a quiet life." Toby never dreamed that such a person as Gaga existed, any more than he guessed at any of Sally's encounters with young men on the way home. Sally had discretion. Had he been a lover, she might have told him; but [Pg 106] as he was more to her than that she saw no reason to arouse his jealousy. And really, if a man spoke to her, and looked all right, where was the harm in letting him walk a little way with her? ”

“ I daresay, from his experience in the confessional box, he knew his man pretty well, and the value of such emotional abjurations. The sick devil turned monk was not to his taste; and, if he ventured to intimate as much, the coldness which certainly befell between madam and him at this time was easily to be accounted for. It all amused me hugely; and I felt delightfully wicked while the fun lasted. But retribution, my friend, was to overtake your naughty little Diana.
One day, stealing into the studio, I found Gogo alone, grinding colours into a little mortar. ”

“ So she was. Her face had lost its vacancy, or rather its vacancy had become divine, having that look—not lost but gone before—which dance demands. Yes, she was a gem, even if she had a common soul. Tears came up in Gyp's eyes. It was so lovely—like a dove, when it flings itself up in the wind, breasting on up, up—wings bent back, poised. Abandonment, freedom—chastened, shaped, controlled!
When, after the dance, the girl came and sat down beside her, she squeezed her hot little hand, but the caress was for her art, not for this moist little person with the lips avid of sugar-plums. ”

“ I knew Gab for at least two years before it entered into my head that she was fond of me. She was always so calm, so silent, so undemonstrative, so unlike any other human being that only a supernatural personality, it seemed, would ever be able to understand her.
Her eyes and her hair are just alike, deep black and very brilliant. In her presence people never know for certain whether she is looking at them or not. Yet nothing about them escapes her, and through her half-closed eyes she penetrates to the very depths of their souls. She is neither tall nor slight, neither plump nor thin. ”

“ Miss Georgia came to a sudden halt, and, standing on tiptoe, gravely surveyed the new-comer, herself unseen.
Under the shadow of the overhanging rock, on the warm sands, lay a tall, slight, fashionably dressed youth, of sixteen or thereabouts, with handsome, regular features, a complexion of feminine fairness, a profusion of brown, curling hair, a high forehead, and unusually and aristocratically small hands and feet, the former as white as a lady's. The predominating expression of his face was a mixture of indolence and drollery ”

“ Gab is deeply serious. She has long, black eyes which seem to slumber perpetually. When she walks, despite her youth, she proceeds with slow and protracted steps, which give you an impression that she must be of a serious and meditative nature.
When I became acquainted with her she was living in a dark little apartment, furnished in Hindu style, where in her black velvet costume she looked like some Byzantine princess. Jean Aicard, the poet, said one day that her voice [Pg 251] is of velvet, her skin and locks are of velvet, her eyes are of velvet and her name ought to be Velours. ”

“ A light underwaist, a short jacket and a very simple cape completed my costume.
After seeing this Gab and her mother went home with their seats for next day’s matinee. This matinee impressed Gab to such a degree that on reaching home this child of fourteen wrote the following lines in my honour:
“A luminous and impalpable shadow. Across the dark brown night flits a pallid, palpitating reflection. And while petals fly in the air a supernatural golden flower rises toward the sky. It is not a sister of the terrestrial flowers which shed their dream particles upon our aching souls. ”