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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Carnival, by Compton Mackenzie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Carnival
+
+Author: Compton Mackenzie
+
+Release Date: June 28, 2010 [EBook #33012]
+[Last updated: February 29, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARNIVAL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images available by The Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CARNIVAL
+
+BY
+
+COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT"
+
+NEW YORK
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+1912
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
+
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+
+_Published March, 1912_
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+TO
+MARTIN SECKER
+
+
+_"Put out the light; and then--put out the light."_
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+CHAPTER                                    PAGE
+
+I. THE BIRTH OF COLUMBINE                     1
+
+II. FAIRIES AT THE CHRISTENING                8
+
+III. DAWN SHADOWS                            18
+
+IV. THE ANCIENT MISCHIEF                     30
+
+V. PRETTY APPLES IN EDEN                     40
+
+VI. SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR                      51
+
+VII. AMBITION WAKES                          61
+
+VIII. AMBITION LOOKS IN THE GLASS            71
+
+IX. LIFE, ART, AND LOVE                      89
+
+X. DRURY LANE AND COVENT GARDEN             108
+
+XI. THE ORIENT PALACE OF VARIETIES          120
+
+XII. GROWING OLD                            131
+
+XIII. THE BALLET OF CUPID                   140
+
+XIV. RAIN ON THE ROOF                       152
+
+XV. CRAS AMET                               153
+
+XVI. LOVE'S HALCYON                         165
+
+XVII. COLUMBINE ASLEEP                      175
+
+XVIII. SWEET AND TWENTY                     176
+
+XIX. THE GIFT OF OPALS                      186
+
+XX. FÊTE GALANTE                            199
+
+XXI. EPILOGUE                               216
+
+XXII. THE UNFINISHED STATUE                 221
+
+XXIII. TWO LETTERS                          234
+
+XXIV. JOURNEY'S END                         241
+
+XXV. MONOTONE                               249
+
+XXVI. IN SCYROS                             255
+
+XXVII. QUARTETTE                            271
+
+XXVIII. ST. VALENTINE'S EVE                 282
+
+XXIX. COLUMBINE AT DAWN                     288
+
+XXX. LUGETE, O VENERES                      289
+
+XXXI. A DOCUMENT IN MADNESS                 298
+
+XXXII. PAGEANTRY OF DEATH                   303
+
+XXXIII. LOOSE ENDS                          310
+
+XXXIV. MR. Z. TREWHELLA                     317
+
+XXXV. MARRIAGE OF COLUMBINE                 332
+
+XXXVI. THE TRAGIC LOADING                   341
+
+XXXVII. COLUMBINE IN THE DARK               349
+
+XXXVIII. THE ALIEN CORN                     350
+
+XXXIX. INTERMEZZO                           359
+
+XL. HARVEST HOME                            367
+
+XLI. COLUMBINE HAPPY                        370
+
+XLII. SHADED SUNLIGHT                       371
+
+XLIII. BOW BELLS                            377
+
+XLIV. PICKING UP THREADS                    382
+
+XLV. LONDON PRIDE                           389
+
+XLVI. MAY MORNING                           394
+
+XLVII. NIGHTLIGHT TIME                      399
+
+XLVIII. CARNI VALE                          404
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I: _The Birth of Columbine_
+
+
+All day long over the gray Islington Street October, casting pearly
+mists, had turned the sun to silver and made London a city of meditation
+whose tumbled roofs and parapets and glancing spires appeared hushed and
+translucent as in a lake's tranquillity.
+
+The traffic, muted by the glory of a fine autumn day, marched, it
+seemed, more slowly and to a sound of heavier drums. Like mountain
+echoes street cries haunted the burnished air, while a muffin-man,
+abroad too early for the season, swung his bell intermittently with a
+pastoral sound. Even the milk-cart, heard in the next street, provoked
+the imagination of distant armor. The houses seemed to acquire from the
+gray and silver web of October enchantment a mysterious immensity. There
+was no feeling of stressful humanity even in the myriad sounds that, in
+a sheen of beauty, floated about the day. The sun went down behind roofs
+and left the sky plumed with rosy feathers. There was a cold gray minute
+before dusk came stealing in, richly and profoundly blue: then night
+sprang upon the street, and through the darkness an equinoctial wind
+swept, moaning.
+
+Along the gutters the brown leaves danced: the tall plane tree at the
+end of the street would not be motionless until December should freeze
+the black branches in diapery against a somber sky. Along the gutters
+the leaves whispered and ran and shivered and leaped, while the gas-jets
+flapped in pale lamps.
+
+There was no starshine on the night Jenny Raeburn was born, only a
+perpetual sound of leaves dancing and the footsteps of people going
+home.
+
+Mrs. Raeburn had not been very conscious of the day's calm beauty. Her
+travail had been long: the reward scarcely apprehended. Already two
+elder children had closed upon her the gates of youth, and she was
+inclined to resent the expense of so much pain for an additional tie.
+There was not much to make the great adventure of childbirth endurable.
+The transitory amazement of a few relatives was a meager consolation for
+the doubts and agonies of nine slow months. But the muslin curtains,
+tied back with raffish pink bows, had really worried her most of all.
+Something was wrong with them: their dinginess or want of symmetry
+annoyed her.
+
+With one of those rare efforts towards imaginative comprehension, which
+the sight of pain arouses in dull and stolid men, her husband had
+inquired, when he came back from work, whether there was anything he
+could do.
+
+"Those curtains," she had murmured.
+
+"Don't you get worrying yourself about curtains," he had replied.
+"You've got something better to do than aggravate yourself with
+curtains. The curtains is all right."
+
+Wearily she had turned her face to the sad-colored wallpaper. Wearily
+she had transferred her discontent to the absence of one of the small
+brass knobs at the foot of the bed.
+
+"And that knob. You never remember to get a new one."
+
+"Now it's knobs!" he had exclaimed, wondering at the foolishness of a
+woman's mind in the shadows of coming events. "Don't you bother your
+head about knobs, either. Try and get a bit of sleep or something, do."
+
+With this exhortation, he had retired from the darkening room, to wander
+round the house lighting various jets of gas, turning them down to the
+faintest blue glimmer, and hoping all the while that one of his wife's
+sisters would not emerge from the country at the rumor of the baby's
+arrival, in order to force her advice upon a powerless household.
+
+Edith and Alfred, his two elder children, had been carried off by the
+other aunt to her residence in Barnsbury, whence in three weeks they
+would be brought back to home and twilight speculations upon the arrival
+of a little brother or sister. In parenthesis, he hoped it would not be
+twins. They would be so difficult to explain, and the chaps in the shop
+would laugh. The midwife came down to boil some milk and make final
+arrangements. The presence of this ample lady disturbed him. The gale
+rattling the windows of the kitchen did not provide any feeling of
+firelight snugness, but rather made his thoughts more restless, was even
+so insistent as to carry them on its wings, weak, formless thoughts, to
+the end of Hagworth Street, where the bar of the "Masonic Arms" spread a
+wider and more cheerful illumination than was to be found in the harried
+kitchen of Number Seventeen. So Charlie Raeburn went out to spend time
+and money in piloting several friends across the shallows of Mr.
+Gladstone's mind.
+
+Upstairs Mrs. Raeburn, left alone, again contemplated the annoying
+curtains; though by now they were scarcely visible against the gloom
+outside. She dragged herself off the bed and, moving across to the
+window, stood there, rubbing the muslin between her fingers. She
+remained for a while thus, peering at the backs of the houses opposite
+that, small though they really were, loomed with menace in the lonely
+dusk. Shadows of women at work, always at work, went to and fro upon the
+blinds. They were muffled sounds of children crying, the occasional
+splash of emptied pails, and against the last glimmer of sunset the
+smoke of chimneys blown furiously outwards. To complete the air of
+sadness and desolation, the faded leaf of a dried-up geranium was
+lisping against the window-pane. She gave up fingering the muslin
+curtains and came back to the middle of the room, wondering vaguely when
+the next bout of pain was due and why the "woman" didn't come upstairs
+and make her comfortable. There were matches on the toilet-table; so she
+lit a candle, whose light gave every piece of ugly furniture a shadow
+and made the room ghostly and unfamiliar. Presently she held the light
+beside her face and stared at herself in the glass, and thought how
+pretty she still looked, and, flushed by the fever, how young.
+
+She experienced a sensation of fading personality. She seemed actually
+to be losing herself. Eyes, bright with excitement, glittered back from
+the mirror, and suddenly there came upon her overwhelmingly the fear of
+death.
+
+And if she died, would anybody pity her, or would she lie forgotten
+always after the momentary tribute of white chrysanthemums? Death,
+death, she found herself saying over to the tune of a clock ticking in
+the passage. But she had no desire to die. Christmas was near, with its
+shoplit excursions and mistletoe and merriment. Why should she die? No,
+she would fight hard. A girl or a boy? What did it matter? Nothing
+mattered. Perhaps a girl would be nicer, and she should be called Rose.
+And yet, on second thoughts, when you came to think of it, Rose was a
+cold sort of a name, and Rosie was common. Why not call her Jenny? That
+was better--with, perhaps, Pearl or Ruby to follow, when its
+extravagance would pass unnoticed. A girl should always have two names.
+But Jenny was the sweeter. Nevertheless, it would be as well to support
+so homely a name with a really lady-like one--something out of the
+ordinary.
+
+Why had she married Charlie? All her relatives said she had married
+beneath her. Father had been a butcher--a prosperous man--and even he,
+in the family tradition, had not been considered good enough for her
+mother, who was a chemist's daughter. Yet, she, Florence Unwin, had
+married a joiner. Why _had_ she married Charlie? Looking back over the
+seven years of their married life, she could not remember a time when
+she had loved him as she had dreamed of love in the airy room over the
+busy shop, as she had dreamed of love staring through the sunny window
+away beyond the Angel, beyond the great London skies. Charlie was so
+stupid, so dull; moreover, though not a drunkard, he was fond of
+half-pints and smelt of sawdust and furniture polish. Her sisters never
+liked, never would like him. She had smirched the great tradition of
+respectability. What would her grandfather, the chemist, have said, that
+dignified old man in brown velvet coat, treated always with deference,
+even by her father, the jolly, handsome butcher? Florence Unwin married
+to a joiner--a man unable to afford to keep his house free from the
+inevitable lodger who owned the best bedroom--the bedroom that by right
+should have been hers. She had disgraced the family and for no high
+motive of passion--and once she was young and pretty. And still young,
+after all, and still pretty. She was only thirty-three now. Why had she
+married at all? But then her sisters did give themselves airs, and the
+jolly, handsome butcher had enjoyed too well and too often those drives
+to Jack Straw's Castle on fine Sunday afternoons under the rolling
+Hampstead clouds, had left little enough when he died, and Charlie came
+along, and perhaps even marriage with him had been less intolerable than
+existence among the frozen sitting-rooms of her two sisters, drapers
+wives though they both were.
+
+And the aunts, those three severe women? She might, perhaps, have lived
+with them when the jolly, handsome butcher died, with them in their
+house at Clapton, with them eternally dusting innumerable china
+ornaments and correcting elusive mats. The invitation had been extended,
+but was forbidding as a mourning-card or the melancholy visit of an
+insurance agent with his gossip of death. Death? Was she going to die?
+
+It did not matter. The pain was growing more acute. She dragged herself
+to the door and called down to the midwife; called two or three times.
+
+There was no answer except from the clock, with its whisper of Death and
+Death. Where was the woman? Where was Charlie? She called again. Then
+she remembered, through what seemed years of grinding agony, that the
+street door was slammed some time ago. Charlie must have gone out. With
+the woman? Had he run away with her? Was she, the wife, forever
+abandoned? Was there no life in all the world to reach her solitude? The
+house was fearfully, unnaturally silent. She reached up to the cold gas
+bracket, and the light flared up without adding a ray of cheerfulness to
+the creaking passage. Higher still she turned it, until it sang towards
+the ceiling, a thin geyser of flame. The chequers upon the oil-cloth
+became blurred, as tears of self-pity welled up in her eyes. She was
+deserted, and in pain.
+
+Her mind sailed off along morbid channels to the grim populations of
+hysteria. She experienced the merely nervous sensation of many black
+beetles running at liberty around the empty kitchen. It was a
+visualization of tingling nerves, and, fostered by the weakening
+influence of labor pains, it extended beyond the mere thought to the
+endowment of a mental picture with powerful and malign purpose, so that,
+after a moment or two, she came to imagining that between her and the
+world outside black beetles were creating an impassable barrier.
+
+Could Charlie and the woman really have run away? She called again and
+peered over the flimsy balustrade down to the ground floor. Or was the
+woman lying in the kitchen drunk? Lying there, incapable of action,
+among the black beetles? She called again:
+
+"Mrs. Nightman! Mrs. Nightman!"
+
+How dry her hands were, how parched her tongue; and her eyes, how they
+burned.
+
+Was she actually dying? Was this engulfing silence the beginning of
+death? What was death?
+
+And what was that? What were those three tall, black figures, moving
+along the narrow passage downstairs? What were they, so solemn and tall
+and silent, moving with inexorable steps, higher and higher?
+
+"Mrs. Nightman, Mrs. Nightman!" she shrieked, and stumbled in agony of
+body and horror of mind back to the flickering bedroom, back to the
+bed.
+
+And then there was light and a murmur of voices, saying: "We have come
+to see how you are feeling, Florence," and sitting by her bed she
+recognized the three aunts from Clapton, in their bugles and cameos and
+glittering bonnets.
+
+There was a man, too, whom she had only just time to realize was the
+doctor, not the undertaker, before she was aware that the final effort
+of her tortured body was being made without assistance from her own will
+or courage.
+
+She waved away the sympathizers. She was glad to see the doctor and Mrs.
+Nightman herding them from the room, like gaunt, black sheep; but they
+came back again as inquisitive animals will when, after what seemed a
+thousand thousand years of pain, she could hear something crying and the
+trickle of water and the singing of a kettle.
+
+Perhaps it was Aunt Fanny who said: "It's a dear little girl."
+
+The doctor nodded, and Mrs. Raeburn stirred, and with wide eyes gazed at
+her baby.
+
+"It is Jenny, after all," she murmured; then wished for the warmth of a
+new-born child against her breast.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II: _Fairies at the Christening_
+
+
+A fortnight after the birth of Jenny, her three great-aunts, black and
+stately as ever, paid a second visit to the mother.
+
+"And how is Florrie?" inquired Aunt Alice.
+
+"Going on fine," said Florrie.
+
+"And what is the baby to be called?" asked Aunt Fanny.
+
+"Jenny, and perhaps Pearl as well."
+
+"Jenny?"
+
+"Pearl?"
+
+"Jenny Pearl?"
+
+The three aunts disapproved the choice with combined interrogation.
+
+"We were thinking," announced Aunt Alice; "your aunts were thinking,
+Florrie, that since we have a good deal of room at Carminia House----"
+
+"It would be a capital plan for the baby to live with us," went on Aunt
+Mary.
+
+"For since our father died" (old Frederick Horner, the chemist, had been
+under a laudatory stone slab at Kensal Green for a quarter of a
+century), "there has been room and to spare at Carminia House," said
+Aunt Fanny.
+
+"The baby would be well brought up," Aunt Alice declared.
+
+"Very well brought up, and sent to a genteel academy for young--ladies."
+The break before the last word was due to Miss Horner's momentary but
+distinctly perceptible criticism of the unladylike bedroom, where her
+niece lay suckling her baby girl.
+
+"We should not want her at once, of course," Aunt Fanny explained. "We
+should not expect to be able to look after her properly--though I
+believe there are now many infant foods very highly recommended even by
+doctors."
+
+Perhaps it was the pride of chemical ancestry that sustained Miss
+Frances Horner through the indelicacy of the last announcement. But old
+maids' flesh was weak, and the carmine suffusing her waxen cheeks drove
+the eldest sister into an attempt to cover her confusion by adding that
+she, for one, was glad in these days of neglected duties to see a mother
+nursing her own child.
+
+"We feel," she went on, "that the arrival of a little girl shows very
+clearly that the Almighty intended us to adopt her. Had it--had she
+proved to be a boy, we should have made no suggestions about her,
+except, perhaps, that her name should be Frederick after our father, the
+chemist."
+
+"With possibly Philip as a second name," Miss Mary Horner put in.
+
+"Philip?" her sisters asked.
+
+And now Miss Mary blushed, whether on account of a breach of sisterly
+etiquette, or whether for some guilty memory of a long-withered
+affection, was never discovered by her elders or any one else, either.
+
+"Philip?" her sisters repeated.
+
+"It is a very respectable name," said Miss Mary apologetically, and for
+the life of her could only recall Philip of Spain, whose admirable
+qualities were not enough marked to justify her in breaking in upon Miss
+Horner's continuation of the discussion.
+
+"Feeling as we do," the latter said, "that a divine providence has given
+a girl-child to the world on account of our earnest prayers, we think we
+have a certain right to give our advice, to urge that you, my dear
+Florence, should allow us the opportunity of regulating her education
+and securing her future. We enjoy between us a comfortable little sum of
+money, half of which we propose to set aside for the child. The rest
+has already been promised to the Reverend Williams, to be applied as he
+shall think fit."
+
+"Like an ointment, I suppose," said Florrie.
+
+"Like an ointment? Like what ointment?"
+
+"You seem to think that money will cure everything--if it's applied. But
+who's going to look after Jenny if you die? Because," she went on,
+before they had time to answer, "Jenny isn't going to be applied to the
+Reverend Williams. She isn't going to mope all day with Bibles as big as
+tramcars on her knees. No, thank you, Aunt Alice, Jenny'll stay with her
+mother."
+
+"Then you won't allow us to adopt her?" snapped Miss Horner, sitting up
+so straight in the cane-bottomed chair that it creaked again and again.
+
+"I don't think," Aunt Fanny put in, "that you are quite old enough to
+understand the temptations of a young girl."
+
+"Aren't I?" said Florence. "I think I know a sight more about 'em than
+you do, Aunt Fanny. I am a mother, when all's said and done."
+
+"But have you got salvation?" asked Miss Horner.
+
+"I don't see what salvation and that all's got to do with my Jenny,"
+Mrs. Raeburn argued.
+
+"But you would like her to be sure of everlasting happiness?" inquired
+Miss Fanny mildly, amazed at her niece's obstinacy.
+
+"I'd like her to be a good girl, yes."
+
+"But how can she be good till she has found the Lord? We're none of us
+good," declared Miss Mary, "till we have been washed in the blood of the
+Lamb."
+
+"I quite believe you're in earnest, Aunt Alice," declared Mrs. Raeburn,
+"in earnest, and anxious to do well by Jenny, but I don't hold and never
+did hold with cooping children up. Poor little things!"
+
+"There wouldn't be any cooping up. As a child of grace, she would often
+go out walking with her aunts, and sometimes, perhaps often, be allowed
+to carry the tracts."
+
+Mrs. Raeburn looked down in the round blue eyes of Jenny.
+
+"Perhaps you'd like her to jump to glory with a tambourine?" she said.
+
+"Jump to glory with a tambourine?" echoed Miss Horner.
+
+"Or bang the ears off of Satan with a blaring drum? Or go squalling up
+aloft with them saucy salvation hussies?"
+
+The austere old ladies were deeply shocked by the levity of their
+niece's inquiries.
+
+Sincerely happy, sincerely good, they were unable to understand any one
+not burning to feel at home in the whitewashed chapel which to them was
+an abode of murmurous peace. They wanted everybody to recognize with
+glad familiarity every text that decorated the bleak walls with an
+assurance of heavenly joys. Their quiet encounters with spiritual facts
+had nothing in common with those misguided folk who were escorted by
+brass bands along the shining road to God. They were happy in the
+exclusiveness of their religion, not from any conscious want of charity,
+but from the exaltation aroused by the privilege of divine intimacy and
+the joyful sense of being favorites in heavenly places. The Rev. Josiah
+Williams, for all his liver-colored complexion and clayey nose, was to
+them a celestial ambassador. His profuse outpourings of prayer took them
+higher than any skylark with its quivering wings. His turgid discourses,
+where every metaphor seemed to have escaped from a store's price-list,
+were to them more fruitful of imaginative results than any poet's song.
+His grave visits, when he seemed always to be either washing his hands
+or wiping his boots, left in the hearts of the three old maids memories
+more roseate than any sunset of the Apennines. Therefore, when Mrs.
+Raeburn demanded to know if they were anxious for Jenny to jump to glory
+with a tambourine, the religious economy of the three Miss Horners was
+upset. On consideration, even jumping to glory without a tambourine
+struck them as an indelicate method of reaching Paradise.
+
+"And wherever did you get the notion of adopting Jenny?" continued the
+niece. "For I'm sure I never suggested any such thing."
+
+"We got the notion from above, Florence," explained Miss Fanny. "It was
+a direct command from our Heavenly Father. I had a vision."
+
+"Your Aunt Fanny," proclaimed the elder sister, "dreamed she was nursing
+a white rabbit. Now, we have not eaten rabbits since, on an occasion
+when the Reverend Williams was taking a little supper with us, we
+unfortunately had a bad one--a high one. There had been nothing to
+suggest rabbits, let alone white rabbits, to your Aunt Fanny. So I said:
+'Florence is going to have a baby. It must be a warning.' We consulted
+the Reverend Williams, who said it was very remarkable, and must mean
+the Almighty was calling upon us as he called upon the infant Samuel. We
+inquired first if either of your sisters was going to have a baby, also.
+Caroline Threadgale wrote an extremely rude letter, and Mabel Purkiss
+was even ruder. So, evidently, it is the will of God that we should
+adopt your baby girl. We prayed to Him to make it a little girl, because
+we are more familiar with little girls, never having had a brother and
+our father having died a good while ago now. Well, it is a girl. So
+plainly--oh, my dear niece, can't you see how plainly--God commands you
+to obey Him?"
+
+Then Miss Horner stood up and looked so tall and severe that her niece
+was frightened for a moment, and half expected to see the flutter of an
+angel's wing over the foot of the bedstead. She nerved herself, however,
+to resist the will of Heaven.
+
+"Dreaming of rabbits hasn't got nothing to do with babies. I forget what
+it does mean--burglars, or something, but not babies, and you sha'n't
+have Jenny."
+
+"Think, my dear niece, before you refuse," Miss Horner remonstrated.
+"Think before you condemn your child to everlasting damnation, for
+nothing but the gates of Hell can come from denying the Heavenly Will.
+Think of your child growing up in wickedness and idle places, growing
+old in ignorance and contempt of God. Think of her dancing along the
+broad ways of Beelzebub, eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree,
+kissing and waltzing and making love and theater-going and riding
+outside omnibuses. Think of her journeying from vanity unto vanity and
+becoming a prey to evil and lascivious men. Remember the wily serpent
+who is waiting for her. Give her to us, that she may be washed in the
+blood of the Lamb, and crying Hallelujah, may have a harp in the Kingdom
+of Heaven.
+
+"If you reject us," the old lady went on, her marble face taking on the
+lively hues of passion, her eyes on fire with the greatness of her
+message, "you reject God. Your daughter will go by ways you know not of;
+she will be lost in the mazes of destruction, she will fall in the pit
+of sin. She will be trampled under foot on the Day of Judgment, and be
+flung forever into wailing and gnashing of teeth. Her going out and
+coming in will be perilous. Her path will be set with snares of the
+giant of Iniquity. Listen to us, my dear niece, lest your child become a
+daughter of pleasure, a perpetual desire to the evil-minded. Give her us
+that we may keep her where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and no
+thieves break in and steal."
+
+The old lady, exhausted by the force of her prophecy, sank down into the
+chair, and, elated by the splendors of the divine wrath, seemed indeed
+to be a noble and fervid messenger from God.
+
+In Mrs. Raeburn, however, these denunciations wakened a feeling of
+resentment.
+
+"Here," she cried, "are you cursing my Jenny?"
+
+"We are warning you."
+
+"Well, don't sit nodding there like three crows; your cursing will come
+to nothing, because you don't know nothing about London, nor about life,
+nor about nothing. What's the good of joring about the way to Heaven,
+when you don't know the way to Liverpool Street without asking a
+policeman? I say Jenny shall be happy. I say she shall be jolly and
+merry and laugh when she's a mind to, bless her, and never come to no
+harm with her mother to look after her. She sha'n't be a Plain Jane and
+No Nonsense, with her hair screwed back like a broom, but she shall be
+Jenny, sweet and handsome, with lips made for kissing and eyes that will
+sparkle and shine like six o'clock of a summer morning."
+
+Mrs. Raeburn was sitting up in bed, holding high the unconscious infant.
+
+"And she _shall_ be happy, d'ye hear? And you sha'n't have her, so get
+out, and don't wag your bonnets at my Jenny."
+
+The three aunts looked at each other.
+
+"I see the footprints of Satan in this room," said Miss Horner.
+
+"Not a bit of it," contradicted her niece. "It's your own muddy feet."
+
+Outside, a German band, seduced from hibernation by St. Luke's summer,
+played the "March of the Priests" from "Athalie," leaving out the more
+important notes, and soon a jaded omnibus, with the nodding bonnets of
+the three Miss Horners, jogged slowly back to Clapton.
+
+When the Miss Horners withdrew from the dingy bedroom the swish and
+rustle of their occupation, Mrs. Raeburn was at first relieved,
+afterwards indignant, finally anxious.
+
+Could this strawberry-colored piece of womanhood beside her really be
+liable to such a life of danger and temptation and destruction? Could
+this wide-eyed stolidity ever become a spark to set men's hearts afire?
+Would those soft, uncrumpling hands know some day love's fever? No, no,
+her Jenny should be a home-bird--always a home-bird, and marry some nice
+young chap who could afford to give her a comfortable house where she
+could smile at children of her own, when the three old aunts had
+moldered away like dry sticks of lavender. All that babble of flames and
+hell was due to religion gone mad, to extravagant perusal of
+brass-bound Bibles, to sour virginity. With some perception of human
+weakness, Mrs. Raeburn began to realize that her aunts' heads were full
+of heated imaginations because they had never possessed an outlet in
+youth. The fierce adventures of passion had been withheld from them, and
+now, in old age, they were playing with fires that should have been
+extinguished long ago. Fancy living with those terrible old women at
+Clapton, hearing nothing but whispers of hell-fire. All that talk of
+looking after Jenny's soul was just telling the tale. There must be some
+scheme behind it all. Perhaps they wanted to save money in a servant,
+and thought to bring on Jenny by degrees to a condition of undignified
+utility.
+
+Mrs. Raeburn was by no means a harsh judge of human nature, but her
+aunts having arrived at an unpropitious moment, she could not see their
+offer from a reasonable standpoint. Moreover, she had the proud woman's
+invariable suspicion of a gift; withal, there was a certain cynicism
+which made her say "presents weren't given for nothing in this world."
+Anyway, she decided, they were gone, and a good riddance, and she
+wouldn't ask them to Hagworth Street again in a hurry. The problem of
+getting in a woman to help now arose. Mrs. Nightman was off to-morrow;
+Alf and Ede would be back in a week, and Charlie's breakfast must be
+attended to. Mrs. Nightman informed her she knew where a likely girl of
+fifteen was to be found--a child warranted to be willing and clean and
+truthful. To-morrow, Mrs. Raeburn settled, this paragon must be
+interviewed.
+
+To-morrow dawned, and in the wake of sunrise came the paragon. She still
+wore the dresses of childhood, but paid toll to responsibleness by
+screwing up her mouse-colored hair to the likeness of a cockle-shell,
+adding thereby, in her mother's estimation, eighteen months, in her own,
+ten years, to her age. She was a plum-faced child, with glazed cheeks.
+Her nose, Mrs. Raeburn observed with pleasure, did not drip like palings
+on a wet day. The paragon was just an ordinary old little girl, pitched
+into life with a pair of ill-fitting boots, a pinafore, and half a dozen
+hairpins. But she would do. Wait a minute. Was she inclined to loll or
+mouch? No. Was she bound to tilt a perambulator? No. Must she read light
+fiction when crossing a road? She didn't like reading.
+
+Mrs. Raeburn decided more than ever that she would do.
+
+Was she good at washing unwilling children? She washed many brothers and
+sisters with yellow soap and dried them thoroughly every Saturday night.
+Did she want the place? Mother would be glad if she got it. What was her
+name? Ruby. Mrs. Raeburn thanked goodness she had abandoned Ruby as a
+possible suffix to Jenny. Her surname? O'Connor. Irish? She didn't know.
+Yes, she should have a week's trial.
+
+So the paragon became a part of the household as integral as the
+furniture and almost as ugly, and, as she grew older, almost as
+unnecessarily decorated. Alfie, the young Tartar, tried to break her in
+by severe usage, but succumbed to the paragon's complete imperviousness.
+Edie was too young to regard her as anything but an audience for long
+and baseless fits of weeping.
+
+The two children were brought back by Aunt Mabel from her house at
+Barnsbury, where they had sojourned during the birth of their sister.
+
+Mrs. Raeburn was softer and plumper and shorter than her sister. She had
+a rosy complexion, and eyes as bright as a bird's. She had, too, the
+merriest laugh in the world till Jenny grew older and made it sound
+almost mirthless beside her own. It was this capacity for laughter which
+made her resent the aunts' attempt to capture Jenny for melancholy.
+
+Although, before the child's birth, she had not been particularly
+enthusiastic about its arrival, the baby already possessed a personality
+so compelling that the mother esteemed her above both the elder
+children, not because she was the last born, but because she genuinely
+felt the world was the richer by her baby. If she had been asked to
+express this conviction in words, she would have been at a loss. She
+would have been embarrassed and self-conscious, sure that you were
+laughing at her. She did venture once to ask Mabel if she thought Jenny
+prettier than the other two; but Mabel laughed indulgently, and Mrs.
+Raeburn could not bring herself to enlarge upon the point.
+
+She wished somehow that her mother could have lived to see Jenny, and
+her father, too. Of this desire she was not aware when Alfie and Edie
+arrived. She felt positive her father would have considered Jenny full
+of life. Paradoxically enough for a butcher, Mr. Unwin had admired life
+more than anything else. Perhaps Mrs. Raeburn experienced an elation
+akin to that felt of old by wayside nymphs who bore children to Apollo
+and other divine philanderers. She knew that, however uneventful the
+rest of her life might be, in achieving Jenny she had done something
+comparable to her dreams as a girl in the sunny Islington window that
+looked away down to the Angel. She could not help feeling a subtle pity
+for her elder sister, whose first-born was due in May. Boy or girl, it
+would be a putty statuette beside her Jenny. The latter was alive. How
+amazingly she was conscious of that vitality in the darkness, when she
+felt the baby against her breast.
+
+Her own eyes were bright, but Jenny's eyes were stars that made her own
+look like pennies beside them. Such fancies she found herself weaving,
+lying awake in the night-time.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III: _Dawn Shadows_
+
+
+Jenny reached the age of two years and a few months without surprising
+her relatives by any prodigious feats of intelligence or wickedness. But
+in Hagworth Street there was not much leisure to regard the progress of
+babyhood. There was no time for more than physical comparisons with
+other children. It would be pleasant to pretend that Jenny gazed at the
+stars, clapping a welcome to Caesiopea and singing to the Pleiades; but,
+as a matter of fact, it was not very easy to regard the heavens from the
+kitchen window of Number Seventeen. I should be happy to say that
+flowers were a joy to her from the beginning, but very few flowers came
+to Hagworth Street--groundsel for the canary sometimes, and plantains,
+but not much else. The main interest of Jenny's earliest days lay rather
+with her mother than herself.
+
+The visit of the three old aunts roused Mrs. Raeburn to express her
+imagination at first, but gradually assumed a commonplace character as
+the months rolled by without another visit and as Jenny, with a chair
+pushed before her, learned to walk rather earlier than most children,
+but showed no other sign of suffering or benefiting by that grim
+intervention. Perhaps, when she pushed her wooden guide so quickly along
+the landing that chair and child bumped together down every stair, her
+mother was inclined to think she was lucky not to be killed. Anyway, she
+said so to the child, who was shrieking on the mat in the hall; and in
+after years Jenny could remember the painful incident. Indeed, that and
+a backward splash into the washtub on the first occasion of wearing a
+frock of damson velveteen, were the only events of her earliest life
+that impressed themselves at all sharply or completely upon her mind.
+Through time's distorted haze she could also vaguely recall an adventure
+with treacle when, egged on by Alfie, she had explored the darkness of
+an inset cupboard and wedged the stolen tin of golden syrup so tightly
+round her silvery curls that Alfie had shouted for help. The sensation
+of the sticky substance trickling down her face in numerous thin streams
+remained with her always.
+
+People were only realized in portions. For example, Ruby O'Connor
+existed as a rough, red hand, descending upon her suddenly in the midst
+of baby enjoyments. Alfie and Edie were two noises, acquiring with
+greater nearness the character of predatory birds. That is to say, in
+Jenny's mind the intimate approach of either always announced loss or
+interruption of a pleasure. Her father she first apprehended as a pair
+of legs forming a gigantic archway, vast as the Colossus of Rhodes must
+have loomed to the triremes of the Confederacy. Better than kisses or
+admonitions, she remembered her mother's skirt, whether as support or
+sanctuary. The rest of mankind she did not at all distinguish from trees
+walking. She was better able to conceive a smile than a face, but the
+realization of either largely depended upon its association with the
+handkerchief of "peep-bo."
+
+Seventeen Hagworth Street was familiar, first of all, through the step
+of the front door, which she invariably was commanded to beware. She did
+not grasp its propinquity from the perambulator, for, when lifted out of
+the latter and told to run in to mother, it was only the step which
+assured her of the vast shadowy place of warmth and familiar smells in
+which she spent most of her existence. Of the smells, the best
+remembered in after-life was that of warm blankets before the kitchen
+fire. Her only approach to an idea of property rested in the security of
+a slice of bread and butter, which could be devoured slowly without
+wakening Alfie's cupidity. On the other hand, when jam was added, the
+slice must be gobbled, not from greediness, but for fear of losing it.
+This applied also to the incidental booty of stray chocolates or paints.
+Her notion of territory was confined to places where she could sit or
+lie at ease. The patchwork hearthrug, which provided warmth, softness,
+something to tug at, and, sometimes, pieces of coal to chew, was
+probably her earliest conception of home, and perhaps her first
+disillusionment was due to a volatile spark burning her cheek. Bed
+struck her less as a prelude to the oblivion of sleep than as a spot
+where she was not worried about sucking her thumb. Perhaps her first
+emotion of mere sensuousness was the delicious anticipation of
+thumb-sucking as Ruby O'Connor propelled her upstairs with the knee, a
+sensuousness that was only very slightly ruffled by the thought of soap
+and flannelette. Suspicion was born when once she was given a spoonful
+of jam, whose melting sweetness disclosed a clammy sediment of gray
+powder, so that ever afterwards the offer of a spoon meant kicks and
+yells, dribbles and clenched resistance. Her first deception lay in
+pretending to be asleep when she was actually awake, as animals
+counterfeit death to avoid disturbance. Whether, however, she had any
+idea of being what she was not, is unlikely, as she did not yet possess
+a notion of being. Probably "peep-bo," when first practiced by herself,
+helped to formulate an embryonic egotism.
+
+The birth of light on summer mornings kindled a sense of wonder when she
+realized that light did not depend on human agency. Later on, dawn was
+connected in her mind with the suddenly jerky movement of the
+night-light's luminous reflection upon the ceiling, at which she would
+stare for hours in meditative content. This movement was always followed
+by the splutter and hiss of the drowning wick, and her first feeling of
+nocturnal terror was experienced when once these symptoms occurred and
+were followed, not by morning light, but by darkness. Then she shrieked,
+not because she feared anything in the darkness yet, but because she
+could not understand it.
+
+The sensations of this Islington baby may have resembled those of a
+full-grown Carib or Hottentot in their simple acceptance of primary
+facts, in a desire for synthetic representation which distinguishes an
+unsophisticated audience of plays, in that odd passion for accuracy
+whose breach upsets a habit, whose observance confirms dogs, children
+and savages in their hold upon life.
+
+As was natural for one more usually occupied with effects than causes,
+Jenny took delight in colored chalks and beads, and probably a vivid
+scarlet _pélisse_ first awoke her dormant sense of beauty. The
+appearance of this vestment was more important than its purpose, but the
+tying on of her "ta-ta"--at first a frilled bonnet, later on a rakish
+Tam o' Shanter--was clapped as the herald of drowsy glidings in cool
+airs. She would sit in the perambulator staring solemnly at Ruby, and
+only opening her eyes a little wider when she was bumped down to take a
+crossing and up to regain the pavement. Passers-by, who leaned over to
+admire her, gained no more appreciation than a puzzled blink, less than
+was vouchsafed to the sudden shadow of a bird's flight across her
+vision.
+
+Then came hot summer days and a sailor hat which enrolled her in the
+crew of the H.M.S. _Goliath_. This hat she disliked on account of the
+elastic, which Alfie loved to catch hold of and let go with a smacking
+sound that hurt her chin dreadfully; and sometimes in tugging at it, she
+would herself let it slip so that it caught her nose like a whip.
+
+These slow promenades up and down the shady side of Hagworth Street were
+very pleasant; although the inevitable buckling of the strap began to
+impede her ideas of freedom, so much so in time that it became a duty to
+herself to wriggle as much as possible before she let Ruby fasten it
+round her waist. Perhaps the first real struggle for self-expression
+happened on a muddy day, when she discovered that, by letting her podgy
+hand droop over the edge of the perambulator, the palm of it could be
+exquisitely tickled by the slow and moist revolutions of the wheel. Ruby
+instantly forbade this. Jenny declined to obey the command. Ruby leaned
+over and slapped the offending hand. Jenny shrieked and kicked. Edie
+fell down and became involved with the wheels of the perambulator. Alfie
+knelt by a drain to pretend he was fishing. Jenny screamed louder and
+louder. An errand-boy looked on. An old lady rebuked the flustered Ruby.
+The rabbit-skin rug palpitated with angry little feet, Ruby put up the
+hood and tightened the strap round Jenny, making her more furious than
+ever. It came on to rain. It came on to blow. It was altogether a
+thoroughly unsatisfactory morning.
+
+"I'll learn you, Miss Artful, when I gets you home. You will have your
+own way, will you? Young Alfie, come out of the gutter, you naughty boy.
+I'll tell your father. Get up, do, Edie."
+
+At last they reached Number Seventeen. Summoned by yells, Mrs. Raeburn
+came to the door.
+
+"Whatever have you been doing to the children, Ruby?"
+
+"Lor', mum, they've been that naughty, I haven't known if I was on my
+head or my heels."
+
+The interfering old lady came up at this moment.
+
+"That girl of yours was beating your baby disgracefully."
+
+"No, I never," declared Ruby.
+
+"I shall report you to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
+Children."
+
+"That's right, Mother Longnose, you'll do a lot," said Ruby, whose Irish
+ancestry was flooding her cheeks.
+
+"Were you whipping Jenny?" inquired Mrs. Raeburn.
+
+"I slapped her wrist."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Because she wouldn't keep her hands off of the wheel. I told her not
+to, but she would go on."
+
+"I shall report you all," announced the old lady.
+
+This irritated Mrs. Raeburn, who replied that she would report the old
+lady as a wandering lunatic. Jenny's right to act as she wished was in
+the balance. The old lady, like many another before, ruined freedom's
+cause by untimely propaganda. Mrs. Raeburn plucked her daughter from the
+perambulator, shook her severely, and said: "You bad, naughty girl,"
+several times in succession. Jenny paused for a moment in surprise, then
+burst into yells louder by far than she had ever achieved before, and
+was carried into the house out of reach of sympathy.
+
+From that moment she was alert to combat authority. From that moment to
+the end of her days, life could offer her nothing more hateful than
+attempted repression. That this struggle over the wheel of a
+perambulator endowed her with a consciousness of her own personality, it
+would be hard to assert positively, but it is significant that about
+this age (two years and eight months) she no longer always spoke of
+herself as Jenny, but sometimes took the first personal pronoun. Also,
+about this age, she began to imagine that people were laughing at her,
+and, being taken by her mother into a shop on one occasion, set up a
+commotion of tears, because, she insisted, the ladies behind the counter
+were laughing at her, when really the poor ladies were trying to be
+particularly pleasant. When Jenny was three, another baby came to
+Hagworth Street--dark-eyed, puny, and wan-looking. Jenny was put on the
+bed beside her.
+
+"This is May," said her mother.
+
+"I love May," said Jenny.
+
+"Very much, do you love her?"
+
+"Jenny loves May. I love May. May is Jenny's dolly."
+
+And from that moment, notwithstanding the temporary interruptions of
+many passionate quarrels, Jenny made that dark-eyed little sister one of
+the great facts in her life. This was well for May, because, as she grew
+older, she grew into a hunchback.
+
+Two more years went by of daily walks and insignificant adventures.
+Jenny was five. Alfie and Edie were now stalwart scholars, who rushed
+off in the mornings, the former armed, according to the season, with
+chestnuts, pegtops or bags of marbles, the latter full of whispers and
+giggles, always one of a bunch of other little girls distinguishable
+only by dress. About this time Jenny came to the conclusion she did not
+want to be a girl any longer. But the bedrock of sexual differences
+puzzled her: obviously one vital quality of boyishness was the right to
+wear breeches. Jenny took off her petticoats and stalked about the
+kitchen.
+
+"You rude thing!" said Ruby, shocked by the exhibition.
+
+"I'm not a rude thing," Jenny declared; "I'm being a boy."
+
+"And wherever is your petticoats?"
+
+"I frowed 'em away," said Jenny. "I'm a boy."
+
+"You're rude little girl."
+
+"I'm not a girl. I won't be a girl. I want to be a boy." Jenny darted
+for the street, encountering by the gate the outraged blushes of Edie
+and her bunch of secretive companions.
+
+"Did you ever?" said the ripest. "Look at Edie's sister."
+
+Boys opposite began to "holler." Alfie appeared bent double in an effort
+to secure a blood ally. He lost at once the marble and the respect of
+his schoolfellows. His confusion was terrible. His sister skirtless
+before the public eye! Young Jenny making him look like a fool!
+
+"Go on in, you little devil," he shouted. He ground his teeth.
+
+"Go on in!"
+
+Ruby was by this time in pursuit of the rebel. Mrs. Raeburn had been
+warned and was already at the gate. Alfie, haunted by a thousand mocking
+eyes, fled to his room and wept tears of shame. Edie broke away from her
+friends, and stood, breathing very fast, in petrified anticipation.
+Jenny was led indoors and up to bed.
+
+"Why can't I be a boy?" she moaned.
+
+"Well, there's a sauce!" said Ruby. "However on earth can you be a boy
+when you've been made a girl?"
+
+"But I don't want to be a girl."
+
+"Well, you've got to be, and that's all about it. You'll be fidgeting
+for the moon next. Besides, if you go trapesing round half-dressed, the
+policeman'll have you."
+
+Jenny had heard of the powers of the policeman for a long time. Those
+guardians of order stood for her as sinister, inhuman figures, always
+ready to spring on little girls and carry them off to unknown places.
+She was never taught to regard them as kindly defenders on whom one
+could rely in emergencies, but looked upon them with all the suspicion
+of a dog for a uniform. Their large quiescence and their habit of
+looming unexpectedly round corners shed a cloud upon the sunniest
+moment. They were images of vengeance at whose approach even boys
+huddled together, shamefaced.
+
+Mrs. Raeburn came upstairs to interview her discontented daughter.
+
+"Don't you ever do any such thing again. Behaving like a tomboy!"
+
+"Why mayn't I be a boy?"
+
+"Because you're a girl."
+
+"Who said so?"
+
+"God."
+
+"Who's God?"
+
+"That's neither here nor there."
+
+God was another shadow upon enjoyment. He was not to be found by pillar
+boxes. He did not lurk in archways, it is true. He was apparently not a
+policeman, but something bigger, even, than a policeman. She had seen
+His picture--old and irritable, among the clouds.
+
+"Why did God say so?"
+
+"Because He knows best."
+
+"But I want to be a boy."
+
+"Would you like me to cut off all your curls?"
+
+"No--o--o."
+
+"Well, if you want to be a boy, off they'll have to come. Don't make any
+mistake about that--every one, and I'll give them to May. Then you'll be
+a sight."
+
+"Am I a girl because I'm pretty?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is that what girls are for?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+This adventure made Jenny much older because it set her imagination
+working, or rather it made her imagination concentrate. Reasons and
+causes began to float nebulously before her mind. She began to ask
+questions. Gone was the placid acceptance of facts. Gone was the stolid
+life of babyhood. Darkness no longer terrified her because it was not
+light, but because it was populated with inhabitants both dismal and
+ill-minded. At first these shapes were undefined, mere cloudy
+visualizations of Ruby's vague threats. Bogymen existed in cupboards and
+other places of secluded darkness, but without any appearance capable of
+making a pictorial impression. It was a Punch and Judy show that first
+endowed the night with visible and malicious shadows.
+
+The sound of the drum boomed from the far end of Hagworth Street. The
+continual reiteration of the pipes' short phrase of melody summoned boys
+and girls from every area. The miniature theater stood up tall in a
+mystery of curtains. Row after row of children was formed, row upon row
+waited patiently till the showman left off his two instruments and gave
+the word to begin. Down below, ineffably magical, sounded the squeaking
+voice of Punch. Up he came, swinging his little legs across the sill; up
+he came in a glory of red and yellow, and a jingle of bells. Jenny gazed
+spell-bound from her place in the very front row. She laughed gayly at
+this world of long noses and squeaking merriment, of awkward, yet
+incredibly agile movement. She turned round to see how the bigger
+children behind enjoyed it all, and fidgeted from one foot to the other
+in an ecstasy of appreciation. She laughed when Punch hit Judy; she
+laughed louder still when he threw the baby into the street. She
+gloried in his discomfiture of the melancholy showman with squeaky wit.
+He was a wonderful fellow, this Punch; always victorious with stick and
+tongue. His defeat of the beadle was magnificent; his treatment of Jim
+Crow a triumph of strategy. To be sure, he was no match for Joey, the
+clown. But lived there the mortal who could have contended successfully
+with such a jovial and active and indefatigable assailant?
+
+Jenny was beginning to see the world with new eyes. The kitchen of
+Number Seventeen became a dull place; the street meant more to her than
+ever now, with the possibility of meeting in reality this enchanted
+company, to whom obedience, repression, good-behavior were just so many
+jokes to be laughed out of existence. How much superior to Jenny's house
+was Punch's house. How delicious it would be to bury dogs in coffins.
+But the clown! After all, he could have turned even Jenny's house into
+one long surprise. He summed up all Jenny's ideas of enjoyment. She
+heard Ruby behind her commenting upon his action as "owdacious." The
+same unsympathetic tyrant had often called her "owdacious," and here,
+before her dancing deep eyes, was audacity made manifest. How she longed
+to be actually of this merriment, not merely a spectator at the back of
+whose mind bed loomed as the dull but inevitable climax of all delight.
+
+Then came the episode of the hangman, and the quavering note of fear in
+Punch's voice found a responsive echo in her own.
+
+"He's going to be hanged," said Ruby gloatingly.
+
+Jenny began to feel uneasy. Even in this irresponsible world, there was
+unpleasantness in the background.
+
+Then came the ghost--a terrifying figure. And then came a green dragon,
+with cruel, snapping jaws--even more terrifying--but most terrifying of
+all was Ruby's answer to her whispered inquiry:
+
+"Why was all that?"
+
+"Because Punch was a bad, wicked man."
+
+The street so crudely painted on the back of the puppet-show took on
+suddenly a strange and uninviting emptiness, seemed to stand out behind
+the figures with a horrid likeness to Hagworth Street, to Hagworth
+Street in a bad dream devoid of friendly faces. Was a green dragon the
+end of pleasure? It was all very disconcerting.
+
+The play was over; the halfpennies had been gathered in. The lamplighter
+was coming round, and through the dusk the noise of pipe and drums
+slowly grew faint in the distance with a melancholy foreboding of
+finality.
+
+Jenny's brain was buzzing with a multitude of self-contradictory
+impressions. For once, in a way, she was glad to hold tightly on to
+Ruby's rough, red hand. But the conversation between Ruby and another
+big girl on the way home was not encouraging.
+
+"And she was found in an area with her throat cut open in a stream of
+blood, and the man as did it got away and ain't been caught yet."
+
+"There's been a lot of these murders lately," said Ruby.
+
+"Hundreds," corroborated her friend.
+
+"Every night," added Ruby, "sometimes two."
+
+"I've been afraid to sleep alone. You can hear the paper boys calling of
+'em out."
+
+True enough, that very night, Jenny, lying awake, heard down the street
+cries gradually coming nearer in colloquial announcement of sudden
+death, in hoarse revelations of blood and disaster.
+
+"Could I be murdered?" she asked next day.
+
+"Of course you could," was Ruby's cheerful reply. "Especially if you
+isn't a good girl."
+
+Jenny went over in her mind the drama of Punch and Judy. Murder meant
+being knocked on the head with a stick and thrown out of the window.
+
+That night again the cries went surging up and down the street. Details
+of mutilation floated in through the foggy air till the flickering
+night-light showed peeping hangmen in every dim corner. Jenny covered
+herself with the blankets and pressed hot, sleepless eyelids close to
+her eyes, hoping to distract herself from the contemplation of horror by
+the gay wheels of dazzling colors which such an action always produces.
+The wheels appeared, but presently turned to the similitude of blood-red
+spots. She opened her eyes again. The room seemed monstrously large.
+Edie was beside her. She shook her sleeping sister.
+
+"Wake up; oh, Edie, do wake up!"
+
+"Whatever is it, you great nuisance?"
+
+In the far distance, "Another Horrible Murder in Whitechapel," answered
+Edie's question, and Jenny began to scream.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV: _The Ancient Mischief_
+
+
+There was nothing to counterbalance the terrors of childhood in Hagworth
+Street. Outside the hope of one day being able to do as she liked, Jenny
+had no ideals. Worse, she had no fairyland. Soon she would be given at
+school a bald narrative of Cinderella or Red Riding Hood, where every
+word above a monosyllable would be divided in such a way that hyphens
+would always seem of greater importance than elves.
+
+About this time Jenny's greatest joy was music, and in connection with
+this an incident occurred which, though she never remembered it herself,
+had yet such a tremendous importance in some of its side-issues as to
+deserve record.
+
+It was a fine day in early summer. All the morning, Jenny, on account of
+household duties, had been kept indoors, and, some impulse of freedom
+stirring in her young heart, she slipped out alone into the sunlit
+street. Somewhere close at hand a piano-organ was playing the intermezzo
+from "Cavalleria," and the child tripped towards the sound. Soon she
+came upon the player, and stood, finger in mouth, abashed for a moment,
+but the Italian beamed at her--an honest smile of welcome, for she was
+obviously no bringer of pence. Wooed by his friendliness, Jenny began to
+dance in perfect time, marking with little feet the slow rhythm of the
+tune.
+
+In scarlet serge dress and cap of scarlet stockinette, she danced to the
+tinsel melody. Unhampered by anything save the need for self-expression,
+she expressed the joyousness of a London morning as her feet took the
+paving-stones all dappled and flecked with shadows of the tall plane
+tree at the end of Hagworth Street. She was a dainty child, with
+silvery curls and almond eyes where laughter rippled in a blue so deep
+you would have vowed they were brown. The scarlet of her dress, through
+long use, had taken on the soft texture of a pastel.
+
+Picture her, then, dancing alone in the quiet Islington street to this
+faded tune of Italy, as presently down the street that seemed stained
+with the warmth of alien suns shuffled an old man. He stopped to regard
+the dancing child over the crook of his ebony walking-stick.
+
+"Aren't you Mrs. Raeburn's little girl?" he asked.
+
+Jenny melted into shyness, lost nearly all her beauty, and became
+bunched and ordinary for a moment.
+
+"Yes," she whispered.
+
+"Humph!" grunted the old man, and solemnly presented the organ grinder
+with a halfpenny.
+
+Ruby O'Connor's voice rang out down the street.
+
+"Come back directly, you limb!" she called. Jenny looked irresolute, but
+presently decided to obey.
+
+That same evening the old man tapped at the kitchen door.
+
+"Come in," said Mrs. Raeburn. "Is that you, Mr. Vergoe? Something gone
+wrong with your gas again? I do wish Charlie would remember to mend it."
+
+"No, there's nothing the matter with the gas," explained the lodger.
+(For Mr. Vergoe was the lodger of Number Seventeen.) "Only I think that
+child of yours'll make a dancer some day."
+
+"Make a what?" said the mother.
+
+"A dancer. I was watching her this morning. Wonderful notion of time.
+You ought to have her trained, so to speak."
+
+"My good gracious, whatever for?"
+
+"The stage, of course."
+
+"No, thank _you_. I don't want none of my children gadding round
+theaters."
+
+"But you like a good play yourself?"
+
+"That's quite another kettle of fish. Thank you all the same, Mr.
+Vergoe, Jenny'll not go on to the stage."
+
+"You're making a great mistake," he insisted. "And I suppose I know
+something about dancing, or ought to, as it were."
+
+"I have my own ideas what's good for Jenny."
+
+"But ain't she going to have a say in the matter, so to speak?"
+
+"My dear man, she isn't seven yet."
+
+"None too early to start dancing."
+
+"I'd rather not, thank you, and please don't start putting fancies in
+the child's head."
+
+"Of course, I shouldn't. Of course not. That ain't to be thought of."
+
+But the very next day Mr. Walter Vergoe invited Jenny to come and see
+some pretty picture-books, and Jenny, with much finger and pinafore
+sucking and buried cheeks, followed him through the door near which she
+had always been commanded not to loiter.
+
+"Come in, my dear, and look at Mr. Vergoe's pretty pictures. Don't be
+shy. Here's a bag of lollipops," he said, holding up a pennyworth of
+bull's-eyes.
+
+On the jolly June morning the room where the old clown had elected to
+spend his frequently postponed retirement was exceedingly pleasant. The
+sun streamed in through the big bay-window: the sparrows cheeped and
+twittered outside, and on the window-sill a box of round-faced pansies
+danced in the merry June breeze. The walls were hung with silhouettes of
+the great dead and tinsel pictures of bygone dramas and harlequinades
+and tragedies. There were daguerreotypes of beauties in crinolines, of
+ruddy-cheeked actors and apple-faced old actresses. There was a
+pinchbeck crown and scepter hung below a small sword with guard of cut
+steel. There were framed letters and testimonials on paper gradually
+rusting, written with ink that was every day losing more and more of its
+ancient blackness. There were steel engravings of this or that pillared
+Theatre Royal, stuck round with _menus_ of long-digested suppers; and on
+the mantlepiece was a row of champagne corks whose glad explosions
+happened years ago. There was a rosewood piano, whose ivory keys were
+the color of coffee, whose fretwork displayed a pleated silk that once
+was crimson as wine. But the most remarkable thing in the room was a
+clown's dress hanging below a wreath of sausages from a hook on the
+door. It used, in the days of the clown's activity, to hang thus in his
+dressing-room, and when he came out of the stage door for the last time
+and went home to stewed tripe and cockles with two old friends, he took
+the dress with him in a brown-paper parcel and hung it up after supper.
+It confronted him now like a disembodied joy whose race was over.
+Rheumatic were the knees that once upon a time were bent in the wide
+laugh of welcome, while in the corner a red-hot poker's vermilion fire
+was harmless forevermore. Dreaming on winter eves near Christmas time,
+Mr. Vergoe would think of those ample pockets that once held
+inexhaustible supplies of crackers. Dreaming on winter eves by the
+fireside, he would hear out of the past the laughter of children and the
+flutter of the footlights, and would murmur to himself in whistling
+accents: "Here we are again."
+
+There he was again, indeed, an old man by a dying fire, sitting among
+the ashes of burnt-out jollities.
+
+But on the morning of Jenny's visit the clown was very much awake. For
+all Mrs. Raeburn's exhortations not to put fancies in the child's head,
+Mr. Vergoe was very sure in his own mind of Jenny's ultimate destiny. He
+was not concerned with the propriety of Clapton aunts, with the
+respectability of drapers' wives. He was not haunted by the severe ghost
+of Frederick Horner, the chemist. As he watched Jenny dancing to the
+sugared melodies of "Cavalleria," he beheld an artist in the making:
+that was enough for Mr. Vergoe. He owed no obligations to anything
+except Art, and no responsibleness to anybody except the public.
+
+"Here's a lot of pretty things, ain't there, my dear?"
+
+"Yes," Jenny agreed, with eyes buried deep in a scarlet sleeve.
+
+"Come along now and sit on this chair, which belonged, so they say, so
+they told me in Red Lion Court where I bought it, to the great Joseph
+Grimaldi. But then, you never heard of Grimaldi. Ah, well, he must have
+been a very wonderful clown, by all accounts, though I never saw him
+myself. Perhaps you don't even know what a clown is? Do you? What's a
+clown, my dear?"
+
+"I dunno."
+
+"Well, he's a figure of fun, so to speak, a clown is. He's a cove
+dressed all in white with a white face."
+
+"Was it a clown in Punch and Judy?"
+
+"That's right. That's it. My stars and garters, if you ain't a knowing
+one. Well, I was a clown once."
+
+"When you was a little boy?"
+
+"No, when I was a man, as you might say."
+
+"Are clowns good?" inquired Jenny.
+
+"Good as gold--so to speak--good as gold, clowns are. A bit
+high-spirited when they come on in the harlequinade, but all in good
+part. I suppose, taking him all round, you wouldn't find a better fellow
+than a clown. Only a bit high-spirited, I'd have you understand. 'Oh,
+what a lark,' that's their motto, as it were."
+
+Ensconced in the great Grimaldi's chair, Jenny regarded the ancient
+Mischief with wondering glances and, as she sucked one of his lollipops,
+thoroughly approved of him.
+
+"Look at this pretty lady," he said, placing before her a colored print
+of some famous Columbine of the past.
+
+"Why is she on her toes?" asked Jenny.
+
+"Light as a fairy, she was," commented Mr. Vergoe, with a bouquet of
+admiration in his voice.
+
+"Is she trying to reach on to the mantlepiece?" Jenny wanted to know.
+
+"My stars and garters, not she! She's dancing--toe-dancing, as they call
+it."
+
+"I don't dance like that," said Jenny.
+
+"Of course you don't, but you could with practice. With practice, I
+wouldn't say as you mightn't be as light as a pancake, so to speak."
+
+"I can stand on my toes," declared Jenny proudly.
+
+"Can you now?" said Mr. Vergoe admiringly.
+
+"To reach fings off of the table."
+
+"Ah, but then you'd be holding on to it, eh? Tight as wax, you'd be
+holding on to it. That won't do, that won't. You must be able to dance
+all over the room on your toes."
+
+"Can you?"
+
+"Not now, my dear, not now. I could once, though. But I never cared for
+playing Harlequin."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"That's a fellow you haven't met yet."
+
+"Is he good?"
+
+"Good--in a manner of speaking--but an awkward sort of a laddie with his
+saber and all. But no malice at bottom, I'm sure of that."
+
+"Can I be a C'mbine?"
+
+"Why not?" exclaimed the old man. "Why not?" And he thumped the table to
+mark the question's emphasis.
+
+Jenny became very thoughtful and wished she had a petticoat all silver
+and pink, like the pretty lady on her toes.
+
+"Would I be pretty?" she asked at length.
+
+"Wonderfully pretty, I should say."
+
+"Would all the people say--'pretty Jenny'?"
+
+"No more wouldn't that surprise me," declared Mr. Vergoe.
+
+"Would I be good?"
+
+The old man looked puzzled.
+
+"There's nothing against it," he affirmed. "Nothing, in a manner of
+speaking; but there, what some call good, others don't, and I can't say
+as I've troubled much which way it was, so to speak, as long as they was
+good pals and jolly companions everyone."
+
+"What's pals?"
+
+"Ah, there you've put your finger on it--as it were--what's a pal? Well,
+I should say he was a hearty fellow--in a manner of speaking--a fellow
+as would come down handsome on Treasury night when you hadn't paid your
+landlady the week before. A pal wouldn't ever crab your business,
+wouldn't stare too hard if you happened to use his grease. A pal
+wouldn't let you sleep over the train-call on a Sunday morning. A pal
+wouldn't make love to your girl on a wet, foggy afternoon in Blackburn
+or Warrington. What's pals? Pals are fellows who stand on the prompt
+side of life--so to speak--and stick there to the Ring Down."
+
+All of which may or may not be an excellent definition of "paliness,"
+but left Jenny, if possible, more completely ignorant of the meaning of
+a pal than she was when Mr. Vergoe set out to answer her inquiry.
+
+"What's pals?" she reiterated therefore.
+
+"Not quite clear in your little head yet--as it were--well, I should
+say, we're pals, me and you."
+
+"Are pals good?"
+
+"The best. The very, very best. Now you just listen to me for a minute.
+My granddaughter, Miss Lilli Vergoe, that is, she's wonderfully fond of
+the old man, that is your humble. Now next time she comes round to see
+him, I'll send up the call-boy--as it might be."
+
+Hereupon Mr. Vergoe closed his left eye, put his forefinger very close
+to the other eye, and shook it knowingly several times.
+
+"Now you'd better go on or there'll be a stage wait, and get back to ma
+as quick as you like."
+
+Jenny prepared to obey.
+
+"Wait a minute, though, wait a minute," and the old man fumbled in a
+drawer from which at last he extracted a cracker. "See that? That's a
+cracker, that is. Sometimes one or two used to get hidden in my pockets
+on last nights, and--well, I used to keep 'em as a recollection of good
+times, so to speak. This one was Exeter, not so very long ago neither.
+Now you hook on to that end and I'll hook on to this, and, when I say
+'three,' pull as hard as you like." The antagonists faced each other.
+The cracker came in half with the larger portion in Jenny's hand, but
+the powder had long ago lost all power of report. Age and damp had
+subdued its ferocity.
+
+"A wrong 'un," muttered the old man regretfully. "Too bad, too bad!
+Well, accidents will happen--as it were. Come along, open your half."
+
+Jenny produced a compact cylinder of mauve paper.
+
+"Is it a sweet?" she wondered.
+
+"No, it's a cap. By gum, it's a cap. Don't tear it. Steady! Careful does
+it."
+
+Mr. Vergoe was tremendously excited by the prospect. At last between
+them they unrolled a gilded paper crown, which he placed round Jenny's
+curls.
+
+"There you are," he observed proudly. "Fairy Queen as large as life and
+twice as natural. Now all you want is a wand with a gold star on the end
+of it, and there's nothing you couldn't do, in a manner of speaking. Now
+pop off to ma and show her your crown." He held her for a moment up to
+the glass, in which Jenny regarded herself with a new interest, and when
+he set her down again she went out of the room with the careful step of
+one who has imagined greatness.
+
+Downstairs she was greeted by her mother with exclamations of
+astonishment.
+
+"Whatever have you got on your head?"
+
+"A crown."
+
+"Who gave it you, for Heaven's sake?"
+
+"The lodger."
+
+"Mr. Vergoe?"
+
+Jenny nodded.
+
+"I may wear it, mayn't I, mother?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose so," said Mrs. Raeburn grudgingly. "But don't get
+putting it in your mouth."
+
+"There's a Miss Vain," said Ruby.
+
+"I'm not."
+
+"Peacocks like looking-glasses," nagged Ruby.
+
+"I isn't a peacock. I's a queen."
+
+"There's a sauce! Whoever heard?" commented Ruby.
+
+The clown's sentimental and pleasantly rhetorical descriptions had no
+direct influence on the child's mind. But when his granddaughter, Miss
+Lilli Vergoe, all chiffon and ostrich plumes, took her upon a _peau de
+soie_ lap, and clasped her rosy cheeks to a frangipani breast, Jenny
+thought she had never experienced any sensation half so delicious.
+
+Amid the heavy glooms and fusty smells of the old house in Hagworth
+Street, Miss Lilli Vergoe blossomed like an exotic flower, or rather, in
+Jenny's own simile, like lather. Her china-blue eyes were amazingly
+attractive. Her honey-colored hair and Dresden cheeks fascinated the
+impressionable child with all the wonder of an expensive doll. There was
+no part of her that was not soft and beautiful to stroke. She woke in
+Jenny a cooing affection such as had never been by her bestowed upon a
+living soul.
+
+Moreover, what Mr. Vergoe talked about, Lilli showed her how to achieve;
+so that, unknown to Mrs. Raeburn, Jenny slowly acquired that ambition
+for public appreciation which makes the actress. Terpischore herself,
+carrying credentials from Apollo, would not have been a more powerful
+mistress than Lilli Vergoe, a second line girl in the _Corps de Ballet_
+of the Orient Palace of Varieties. Under her tuition Jenny learned a
+hundred airs and graces, which, when re-enacted in the kitchen of Number
+Seventeen, either caused a command to cease fidgeting or an invitation
+to look at the comical child.
+
+She learned, too, more than mere airs and graces. She was grounded very
+thoroughly in primary technique, so that, as time went on, she could
+step passably well upon her toes and achieve the "splits" and "strides"
+and "handsprings" of a more acrobatic mode.
+
+Therefore, though in the September just before her seventh birthday
+Mrs. Raeburn decided it was time to begin Jenny's education, it is very
+obvious that Jenny's education was really begun on the sunlit morning
+when Mr. Vergoe saw her dancing to a sugared melody from "Cavalleria."
+
+School, however, meant for Jenny not so much the acquirement of
+elementary knowledge, the ability to distinguish a cow from a sheep, as
+an opportunity to exhibit more satisfactory attainments she had
+developed from the instigation of Miss Lilli Vergoe. Neither her mother
+nor Ruby nor Alfie nor Edie nor anyone in the household had been a
+perfect audience. Her schoolfellows, on the other hand, marveled with
+delighted respect at her _pas seuls_ upon the asphalt playground of the
+board school and clapped and jumped their praise.
+
+Jenny had no idea of the stage at present. She had never yet been inside
+a theater; and was still far from any conception of art as a profession.
+It merely happened that she could dance, that dancing pleased her, and,
+less important, that it made her popular with innumerable little girls
+of her own age, and even older.
+
+By some instinct of advisable concealment, she kept this habit of
+publicity a secret from her family. Edie, to be sure, was aware of it,
+and warned her once or twice of the immorality of showing off; but Edie
+was too indolent to go into the matter more deeply and too conscious of
+her own comparative greatness through seniority to spend much time in
+the guardianship of a younger sister.
+
+So for a year Jenny practiced and became daily more proficient, and
+danced every morning to school.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V: _Pretty Apples in Eden_
+
+
+Shortly after her eighth birthday Jenny was puzzled by an incident
+which, with its uneasy suggestions, led her to postulate to herself for
+the first time that mere escape from childhood did not finally solve the
+problem of existence.
+
+She had long been aware of the incomplete affection between her parents;
+that is to say, she always regarded her father as something that seemed
+like herself or a chair to be perpetually in her mother's way.
+
+She had no feeling of awe towards Mr. Charles Raeburn, but rather looked
+upon him as a more extensive counterpart of Alfie, both prone to many
+deeds of mischief. She had no conception of her father as a
+bread-winner; her mother was so plainly the head of the house.
+
+In the early morning her father vanished to work and only came back just
+before bedtime to eat a large tea, like Alfie, in the course of which he
+was reprimanded and pushed about and ordered, like Alfie, to behave
+himself. To be sure, he had liberty of egress at a later hour, for once,
+when in the midst of nightly fears she had rushed in the last breath of
+a dream along the landing to her mother's room, she saw him coming
+rosily up the stairs. He made no attempts to justify his late arrival
+with tales of goblin accidents as Alfie was wont to do. He did not
+ascribe the cracked egg appearance of his bowler hat to the onset of a
+baker's barrow. He seemed so far indifferent to the unfinished look of
+his clothes as not to bother to lay the blame on the butcher's boy. Her
+mother merely said:
+
+"Oh, it's you?"
+
+To which Mr. Raeburn replied: "Yes, Flo, it's me," and began to sing
+"Ta-ra-ra--boom--de--ay."
+
+Even Ruby O'Connor, who, in earlier days at Hagworth Street, used to
+quell Alfie with terrible threats of a father's vengeance, gave them up
+as ineffective; for the bland and cheerful Charlie, losing the while not
+a morsel of blandness or cheerfulness, was fast becoming an object of
+contemptuous toleration in his own house. He was a weak and unsuccessful
+man, fond of half-pints and tales of his own prowess, with little to
+recommend him to his family except an undeniable gift of humorous
+description. Yet, even with this, he possessed no imagination. He was
+accustomed to treat the world as he would have treated a spaniel. "Poor
+old world," he would say in pitying intention; "poor old world." He
+would pat the universe on its august head as a pedagogue slaps a
+miniature globe in the schoolroom. He never expected anything from the
+world, which was just as well, for he certainly never received very
+much. To his wife's occasional inquiry of amazed indignation, "Why ever
+did I come to marry you?" he would answer:
+
+"I don't know, Floss. Because you wanted to, I reckon."
+
+"I never wanted to," she would protest.
+
+"Well, you didn't," he would say. "Some people acts funny."
+
+"That's quite right."
+
+Hers was the last word: his, however, the pint of four ale that drowned
+it.
+
+Jenny at this stage in her life was naturally incapable of grasping the
+fact of her mother throwing herself away in matrimony; but she was able
+to ponder the queer result that, however much her mother might be
+annoyed by Charlie, she did not seem able to get rid of him.
+
+Alfie, with his noise and clumping boots, was an equally unpleasant
+appendage to her life, but for Alfie she was responsible. In whatever
+way children came about, it was not to be supposed they happened
+involuntarily like bedtime or showers of rain. Moreover, mystery hung
+heavy over their arrival. Edie and Alfie would giggle in corners, look
+at each other with oddly lighted eyes, and blush when certain subjects
+arose in conversation. Human agency was implied, and all that talk of
+strawberry-beds and cabbage leaves so much trickery. Alfie, bad habits
+and all, was due to her father and mother being married.
+
+But why be married when Alfies were the result? Why not close the door
+against her father and be rid of him? And take somebody else in
+exchange? Who was there? Nobody.
+
+One foggy afternoon early in January, Jenny came back from school to the
+smell of a good cigar. She did not know it was a good cigar, but the
+perfume hung about the dark hall of Number Seventeen with a strange
+richness never associated in her mind with the smell of her father's
+smoke. She was conscious, too, from the carefully closed doors both of
+the parlor and the kitchen, that company was present. The voice of a
+polite conscience warned her not to bang about, not to shout "Is tea
+ready, mother?" but rather to tread discreetly the little distance to
+the kitchen and there to await developments. If Alfie and Edie were
+already arrived by a punctual chance, she would learn from them the
+manner and kind of the company hid in the parlor.
+
+The kitchen was empty. No tea was laid. Over her stole an extraordinary
+sensation of misgiving. She felt as if she were standing at the foot of
+a ladder watching Alfie about some mischievous business.
+
+Presently Ruby returned from the scullery, like a sudden draught.
+
+"However did you get in so quiet?" asked the newcomer. Then Jenny
+remembered the street door had been open.
+
+"Who's in along of mother?"
+
+"That's right. Be nosey."
+
+"Tell us, Rube."
+
+"I can't tell what I don't know."
+
+"But you do know," persisted Jenny; "so tell us."
+
+"D'you think we all wants to poke in where we isn't wanted, like you,
+Miss Meddlesome? How should I know?"
+
+"Well, I told you yesterday what teacher called Edie, so tell us, Rube;
+you might tell us."
+
+"There isn't nothing to tell, you great inquisitive monkey," Ruby
+declared.
+
+Then there was a sound in the hall of a man's voice, a rich voice that
+suited somehow the odor of the cigar. Jenny longed to peep round the
+kitchen door at the visitor, but she was afraid that Ruby would carry on
+about it. A moment or two's conversation, and the street door slammed,
+and when her mother came back from the kitchen, Jenny was afraid to ask
+bluntly:
+
+"Who was that?"
+
+Instead she announced:
+
+"We did sewing this afternoon. Teacher said I sewed well."
+
+"You sew on with your tea," said Mrs. Raeburn. "And wherever can Edie
+and Alfie have got to?"
+
+A week or two afterwards Jenny returned to the same smell of cigar, the
+same impression of a rich and unusual visitor, but this time the parlor
+door gaped to a dark and cold interior, and when Jenny followed Ruby
+into the kitchen, he was there, a large florid man, with a big cigar and
+heavy mustache and a fur coat open to a snowy collar and shining
+tie-pin.
+
+"And this is Jenny, is it?" he said in the cigar voice.
+
+Jenny kissed him much as she would have kissed the walrus he slightly
+resembled; then she retreated, finger in mouth, backwards until she
+bumped against the table by which she leaned to look at the stranger,
+much as she would have looked at a walrus.
+
+Her father came in after a while, and his wife said:
+
+"Mr. Timpany."
+
+"Eh?" said Charlie.
+
+"Mr. Timpany, a friend of father's."
+
+"Oh," said Charlie. "Pleased to meet you," with which he retired to a
+chair in a dusky corner and was silent for a long time. At last he
+asked:
+
+"Have you been to Paris, Mr.... Tippery? Thrippenny, I should say."
+
+"Timpany, Charlie. I wish you'd listen. Have you got cloth ears? Of
+course he's been to Paris, and, for gracious, don't you start your
+stories. One would think to hear you talk as you were the only man on
+earth as had ever been further than Islington."
+
+"I was in Paris once some years back--on business," Charlie remarked. "I
+think Paris is a knockout, as towns go. Not but what I like London
+better. Only you see more life in Paris," and he relapsed into silence,
+until finally Mr. Timpany said he must be going.
+
+"Who's he?" demanded Mr. Raeburn, when his wife came back from escorting
+her visitor to the door.
+
+"I told you once--a friend of father's."
+
+"Ikey sort of a bloke. He hasn't made a mistake coming here, has he? I
+thought it was the Duke of Devonshire when I see him sitting there."
+
+"You are an ignorant man," declared Mrs. Raeburn. "Don't you know a
+gentleman when you see one? Even if you have lost your own shop and got
+to go to work every morning like a common navvy, you can tell a
+gentleman still."
+
+"Are you bringing in any more dukes or markisses home to tea?" asked
+Charlie. "Because let me know next time and I'll put on a clean pair of
+socks."
+
+Mrs. Raeburn did not bring any more dukes or marquises home to tea; but
+Mr. Timpany came very often, and Charlie took to returning from work
+very punctually, and, though he was always very polite to Mr. Timpany
+when he was there, he was very rude indeed about him when he was gone,
+and Jenny used to think how funny it was to wait for Mr. Timpany's
+departure before he began to make a fuss.
+
+Vaguely she felt her father was afraid to say much. She could understand
+his fear, because Mr. Timpany was very large and strong, so large and
+strong that even her mother spoke gently and always seemed anxious to
+please him. And looking at the pair side by side, her father appeared
+quite small--her father whom she had long regarded as largeness
+personified.
+
+One day Jenny came home late from school and found her parents in the
+middle of a furious argument.
+
+"I ar'n't going to have him here," Charlie was saying, "not no more, not
+again, the dirty hound!"
+
+"You dare say that, you vulgar beast."
+
+"I shall say just whatever I please. You're struck on him, that's what
+you are, you soft idiot."
+
+"I'm no such thing," declared Mrs. Raeburn. "Nice thing that a friend of
+father's can't come and have a cup of tea without your carrying on like
+a mad thing."
+
+"Not so much 'cup of tea,' Mrs. Raeburn. It's not the tea I minds. It's
+while the kettle's boiling as I objects to."
+
+"You're drunk," said the wife scornfully.
+
+"And it's ---- lucky I am drunk. You're enough to make a fellow drunk
+with your la-di-da behavior. Why, God help me, Florrie, you've been
+powdering your face. Let me get hold of the----. I'll learn him to come
+mucking round another man's wife."
+
+On the very next day Mr. Timpany came to tea for the last time. Possibly
+Mrs. Raeburn had told her husband it was to be the last time, for he did
+not put in an appearance. Ruby had gone out by permission. May was
+secured by a fortified nursing-chair. Alfie was away on some twilight
+adventure of bells and string. Edie was immerged in a neighboring
+basement with two friends, a plate of jam, and the cordial teasing of
+the friends' brother, young Bert; and Jenny, urged on by a passionate
+inquisitiveness, crept along the passage and listened to the following
+conversation:
+
+"You're wasted here, Flo, wasted--a fine woman like you is absolutely
+wasted. Why won't you come away with me? Come away to-night, I'll always
+be good to you."
+
+"The children," said their mother.
+
+"They'll get on all right by themselves. Bring the little one--what's
+her name, with fair hair and dark eyes?"
+
+"Jenny."
+
+"Yes, Jenny. Bring her with you. I don't mind."
+
+"It wouldn't be fair to her. She'd never have a chance."
+
+"Rubbish! She'd have more chance in a cosy little house of your own than
+stuck in this rat's hole. You'd have a slap-up time, Flo. A nice little
+Ralli cart, if you're fond of horses, and--oh, come along, come now. I
+want you."
+
+"No; I've fixed myself up. I was done with life when I married Charlie,
+and I'm fixed up."
+
+"You're in a cage here," he argued.
+
+"Yes; but I've got my nest in it," she said.
+
+"Then it's good-bye?"
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+"I'm damned if I can understand why you won't come. I'd be jolly good to
+you."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+"You're a cold woman, aren't you?"
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"I think you are."
+
+"It doesn't always do to show one's feelings."
+
+"You're a regular icicle."
+
+"Perhaps," whispered Mrs. Raeburn.
+
+Jenny stole back to the kitchen greatly puzzled. Whether the florid Mr.
+Timpany kissed Mrs. Raeburn before he went out to look for the hansom
+cab that was to jingle him out of her life, I do not know; but she waved
+to him once as she saw him look round under a lamp post, for Jenny had
+crept back and was standing beside her when she did so.
+
+"You come on in, you naughty girl," said Mrs. Raeburn, drowning love in
+a copper bubbling with clothes.
+
+"Would you like that man better than father?" Jenny inquired presently,
+pausing in the erection of a tower of bricks for the benefit of May, who
+watched with somber eyes the quivering feat of architecture.
+
+"What do you mean?" said Mrs. Raeburn sharply.
+
+"Would you like father to go away and never, never come back here along
+of us ever again and always have that man?"
+
+"Of course, I shouldn't, you silly child."
+
+"I would."
+
+"You would?"
+
+"Yes," said Jenny; "he smelt nice."
+
+"Ah, miss, when one's married, one's married."
+
+"Could I be married?"
+
+"When you grow up. Of course."
+
+"Could I have little boys and girls?"
+
+"Of course you could if you were married."
+
+"Could I have lots and lots?"
+
+"More than you bargain for, I daresay," declared her mother.
+
+"Did you marry to have a little girl like me?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+Encouraged by her mother's unusual amenity to questions, Jenny went on:
+
+"Did you really, though?"
+
+"For that and other reasons."
+
+"Were you glad when you saw me first?"
+
+"Very glad."
+
+"Did I come in by the door?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Who brought me?"
+
+"The doctor."
+
+"Did he ring the bell?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did father know I was coming?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was I a present from father?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Would you like that gentleman to give you a present?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Would you like him to give you a li'l' girl like me?"
+
+"Not at all; and you stop asking questions, Mrs. Chatter."
+
+Her mother was suddenly aware of Jenny's cross-examinations, which she
+had been answering mechanically with thoughts far away with a florid man
+in a jingling hansom cab. Jenny was conscious of her dreaming and knew
+in her sly baby heart that her mother was in a weak mood. But it was too
+good to last long enough for Jenny to find out all she wanted to know.
+
+"Why don't you send father away and have that gentleman as a lodger?"
+
+"I told you once; don't keep on."
+
+"But why don't you?"
+
+"Because I don't want to."
+
+In bed that night Jenny lay awake and tried to understand the
+conversation in the parlor. At present her intelligence could only grasp
+effect. Analysis had not yet entered her mind.
+
+She saw, in pictures on the ceiling, her mother and the rich strange
+gentleman. She saw her father watching. She saw them all three as
+primitive folks see tragedies, dimly aware of great events, but
+powerless to extract any logical sequence. Lying awake, she planned
+pleasant surprises, planned to bring back Mr. Timpany and banish her
+father. It was like the dreams of Christmas time, when one lay awake and
+thought of presents. She remembered how pleased her mother had professed
+herself by the gift of a thimble achieved on Jenny's side by a great
+parsimony in sweets. The gentleman had offered a cosy house. At once she
+visualized it with lights in every window and the delicious smell that
+is wafted up from the gratings of bakers' shops. But what was a Ralli
+cart? Something to do with riding? And Jenny was to come, too, and share
+in all this. He had said so distinctly. If he gave mother a house, why
+should he not give her a doll's house such as Edie boasted of in the
+house of a friend, such as Edie had promised to show her some day. She
+began to feel a budding resentment against her mother for saying "No" to
+all these delights, a resentment comparable with her emotions not so
+long ago when her mother refused to let her go for a ride on an omnibus
+with Mr. Vergoe.
+
+Good things came along very seldom, and when they did come, grown-up
+people always spoiled them. Life, as Jenny lay awake, seemed made up of
+small repressions. Life was a series of hopes held out and baffled
+desires, of unjust disappointments and aspirations unreasonably
+neglected. She lay there, a mite in flowing time, sensible only of
+having no free will.
+
+Why couldn't she grow up all of a sudden and do as she liked? But then
+grown-up people, whom she always regarded as entirely at liberty, did
+not seem to be able to do as they liked. Her mother had said, "No, thank
+you," to a cosy house, just as she was taught to say, "No, thank you,"
+to old gentlemen who offered her pennies to turn somersaults over
+railings--surely a harmless way of getting money. But her mother had not
+wanted to say "No, thank you." That Jenny recognized as a fact,
+although, if she had been asked why, she would have had nothing
+approaching a reason.
+
+"I will do as I like," Jenny vowed to herself. "I will, I will. I won't
+be told." Here she bit the sheet in rage at her powerlessness. Desire
+for action was stirring strongly in her now. "Why can't I grow up all at
+once? Why must I be a little girl? Why can't I be like a kitten?"
+Kittens had become cats within Jenny's experience.
+
+"I will be disobedient. I will be disobedient. I won't be stopped."
+Suddenly a curious sensation seized her of not being there at all. She
+bit the bedclothes again. Then she sat up in bed and looked at her
+petticoats hanging over the chair. She was there, after all, and she
+fell asleep with wilful ambitions dancing lightly through the gay
+simplicities of her child's brain, and, as she lay there with tightly
+closed, determined lips, her mother with shaded candle looked down at
+her and wondered whether, after all, she and Jenny would not have been
+better off under the rich-voiced, cigar-haunted protection of Mr.
+Timpany.
+
+And then Mrs. Raeburn went to bed and fell asleep to the snoring of
+Charlie, just as truly unsatisfied as most of the women in this world.
+
+Only Charlie was all right. He had spent a royal evening in bragging to
+a circle of pipe-armed friends of his firmness and virility at a moment
+of conjugal stress.
+
+And outside the cold January stars were reflected in the puddles of
+Hagworth Street.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI: _Shepherd's Calendar_
+
+
+It was unlikely that Jenny's dancing could always be kept a secret. The
+day came at last when her mother, in passing the playground of the
+school, looked over the railings and saw her daughter's legs above a
+semicircle of applauding children. Mrs. Raeburn was more than shocked:
+she was profoundly alarmed. The visit of the aunts rose up before her
+like a ghost from the heart of forgotten years. They had faded into a
+gradual and secure insignificance, only momentarily displaced by the
+death of Aunt Fanny. But the other two lived on in Carminia House like
+skeletons of an outraged morality.
+
+Something must be done about this dancing craze. Something must be done
+to check the first signs of a prophecy fulfilled. She thought of
+Barnsbury; but Mrs. Purkiss had now two pasty-faced boys of her own, and
+was no longer willing to act as deputy-mother to the children of her
+sister. Something must certainly be done about Jenny's wilfulness.
+
+"How dare you go making such an exhibition of yourself?" she demanded,
+when Jenny came home. "How dare you, you naughty girl?"
+
+Jenny made no reply but an obstinate frown.
+
+"You dare sulk and I'll give you a good whipping."
+
+The teacher was written to; was warned of Jenny's wild inclinations. The
+teacher, a fish-like woman in a plaid skirt, remonstrated with her
+pupil.
+
+"Nice little girls," she asserted "don't kick their legs up in the
+air."
+
+The class was forbidden to encourage the dancer; a mountain was made of
+a molehill; Jenny was raised to the giddy pinnacle of heroism. She wore
+about her the blazing glories of a martyr; she began to be conscious of
+possessing an exceptional personality, for there had never been such a
+fuss over any other girl's misdemeanor. She began to feel more acutely
+the injustice of grown-up repression. She tried defiance and danced
+again in the playground, but learned that humanity's prime
+characteristic is cowardice; perceived, with Aristotle, that man is a
+political animal, a hunter in packs. She thought the school would
+support her justifiable rebellion, but, alas, the school deserted her.
+Heroine she might be in corner conferences. Heroine she might be in
+linked promenades; but when her feelings were crystallized in action,
+the other girls thought of themselves. They applauded her intentions,
+but shrank from the prominence of the visible result. Jenny abandoned
+society. The germ of cynicism was planted in her soul. She came to
+despise her fellows. In scarlet cloak she traveled solitary to school,
+and hated everybody.
+
+The immediate and obvious result of this self-imposed isolation was her
+heightened importance in the eyes of boys. One by one they approached
+her with offers of escort, with tribute from sticky pockets. Little by
+little she became attached to their top-spinning, marble-flicking
+journeys to and from school; gradually she was admitted to the more
+intimate fellowship of outlawry. She found that, in association with
+boys, she could prosecute her quarrel with the world. With them she
+wandered far afield from Hagworth Street; with them she tripped along on
+many a marauding expedition. For them she acted as decoy, as scout
+against policemen. With them she rang the bells of half a street at a
+run. With them she broke the windows of empty houses; climbed ladders
+and explored roofs and manipulated halfpennies stuck with wax to the
+paving-stones. She was queen of the robbers' camp on a tin-sprinkled
+waste of building-land. She acquired a fine contempt of girls, and
+wished more than ever she had been fortunate enough to be born a boy.
+Even Alfie condescended not merely to take notice of her, but also
+sometimes to make use of her activity. She looked back with wonder to
+the time when she had regarded her brother with a shrinking distaste. He
+became her standard of behavior. She saw his point of view when nobody
+else could, as on the occasion when he asked Edie if she dared him to
+hit her on the head with the bar of iron he was swinging, and when Edie,
+having in duty bound dared, found herself with a large cut on the
+forehead. Alfie, finding other boys admired it, encouraged her dancing;
+and they used to flock round the organs while Jenny learned step-dancing
+from big, rough girls who were always to be found in the middle of the
+music.
+
+One day, however, Mrs. Raeburn and Mrs. Purkiss, coming back together
+from a spring hat foray, walked right into one of Jenny's performances.
+Mrs. Raeburn might have endured the shame of it alone, but the company
+of her sister upset her power of dealing with an awkward situation. If
+in the past she had been inclined to compare Percy and Claude, her
+pasty-faced nephews, unfavorably with her own children, on the present
+occasion their mother drained the cup of revenge to the dregs.
+
+With Jenny between them, the two sisters walked back to Hagworth Street.
+
+"It isn't as if it was just showing her legs," said Mrs. Purkiss.
+"That's bad enough, but I happened to notice she had a hole in her
+stocking....
+
+"And those great, common girls she was hollering with. Wherever on earth
+can she have picked up with them? Some of Charlie's friends, I
+suppose....
+
+"It seems funny that Alfie shouldn't have more shame than go letting his
+sister make such a sight of herself, but there, I suppose Alfie takes
+after his father....
+
+"All I'm thankful for is that Bill wasn't with us, he being a man as
+anything like that upsets for a week. He never did have what you might
+call a good liver, and anything unpleasant turns his bile all the wrong
+way. Only last week, when Miss Knibbs, our first assistant, sent an
+outsize in combinations to a customer who's _very_ particular about any
+remark being passed about her stoutness, Bill was sick half of the
+night....
+
+"I can't think why you don't send her away to Carrie's. The country
+would do her good, and Carrie's got no children of her own. I'd like to
+have her myself, only I'm afraid she'd be such a bad example to Percy
+and Claude."
+
+Mrs. Raeburn was silent. Vulnerable through Jenny's lapse from modesty,
+she had no sting for her nephews.
+
+Finally it was settled that Jenny should spend a year with Mrs.
+Threadgale at Galton. It was laid on the shoulders of Hampshire to curb
+her naughtiness. It remained to be seen how far country sights and
+sounds would civilize her rudeness.
+
+Having made up her mind to banish the child, Mrs. Raeburn began at once
+to regret the decision. With all her disobedience, Jenny was still the
+favorite. "She was such a character," in her mother's words; and her
+gay, dark eyes and silvery curls would be missed from Hagworth Street.
+But the day of departure came along. A four-wheeler threw a shadow on
+the door. There were kisses and handkerchiefs and last injunctions and
+all the paraphernalia of separation. Jenny was bundled in. Mrs. Raeburn
+followed.
+
+"Now mind, Ruby," cried the latter from the window, "don't you let May
+get putting nothing in her mouth, and see Mr. Raeburn has his tea
+comfortable, and, Alfie, you dare misbehave while I'm away. Good-bye,
+all."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last the train drew up at Galton along a gray gravel platform that
+smelt fresh and flowery after the railway carriage. There was lilac in
+bloom and red hawthorn, and a pile of tin trunks, and when the train had
+puffed on, Jenny could hear birdsong everywhere.
+
+While the two sisters embraced, the little girl surveyed her new aunt.
+She was more like her mother than Aunt Mabel. Nicer altogether than Aunt
+Mabel, though she disliked the flavor of veil that was mingled with the
+kisses of welcome.
+
+"They'll wheel the luggage along on a barrow," said Aunt Caroline. "It's
+not far where we live."
+
+They turned into the wide country street with its amber sunlight and
+sound of footsteps, and very soon arrived before the shop of James
+Threadgale, Draper and Haberdasher. Jenny hoped they would go in through
+the shop itself, but Mrs. Threadgale opened a door at the side and took
+them upstairs to a big airy parlor that seemed to Jenny's first glance
+all sunbeams and lace. Having been afforded a glimpse of Paradise, they
+were taken downstairs again into the back parlor, which would have been
+very dull had it not looked out on to a green garden sloping down to a
+small stream.
+
+Uncle James, with pale, square face and quiet voice, came in from the
+shop to greet them. Jenny thought he talked funny with his broad
+Hampshire vowels. Ethel, the maid, came in, too, with her peach-bloom
+cheeks and creamy neck and dewy crimson mouth. Jenny compared her with
+"our Rube," greatly to our Rube's disadvantage.
+
+Mrs. Raeburn stayed a week, and Jenny said good-bye without any feeling
+of home-sickness. She liked her new uncle and aunt. There were no
+pasty-faced cousins, and Ethel was very nice. She was not sent to the
+National School. Such a course would have been derogatory to Mr. and
+Mrs. Threadgale's social position. So she went to a funny old school at
+the top of the town kept by an old lady called Miss Wilberforce--a dear
+old lady with white caps and pale blue ribbons and a big pair of
+tortoise-shell spectacles. The school was a little gray house with three
+gables and diamond lattices and a door studded with great nails over
+which was an inscription that said, "Mrs. Wilberforce's School, 1828."
+
+In the class-room on one side was heard a perpetual humming of bees
+among the wallflowers in the front garden, and through the windows on
+the far side, which looked away over the open country, floated the
+distant tinkle of sheep-bells. All along one side hung rows of cloaks
+and hats, and all over the other walls hung pictures of sheep and cows
+and dogs and angels and turnips and wheat and barley and Negroes and Red
+Indians: there were also bunches of dried grasses and glass cases full
+of butterflies and birds' eggs and fossils, and along the window-sills
+were pots of geraniums. On her desk Miss Wilberforce had an enormous
+cane, which she never used, and a bowl of bluebells or wild flowers of
+the season and a big ink-horn and quill pens and books and papers which
+fluttered about the room on a windy day. There was a dunce's stool with
+a fool's-cap beside it, and a blackboard full of the simplest little
+addition sums. All the children's desks were chipped and carved and
+inked with the initials of bygone scholars, and all the forms were
+slippery with the fidgetings of innumerable little girls. About the air
+of the warm, murmurous schoolroom hung the traditions of a dead system
+of education.
+
+Jenny learned to darn and sew; to recite Cowper's "Winter Walk" after
+Miss Wilberforce, who was never called "teacher," but always "ma'am"; to
+deliver trite observations upon the nature of common animals, such as
+"The dog is a sagacious beast," "The sheep is the friend of man," and to
+acquire a slight acquaintance with uncommon animals such as the quagga,
+the yak, and the ichneumon, because they won through their initials an
+undeserved prominence in the alphabet. She learned that Roman Catholics
+worshiped images and, incidentally, the toe of the Pope, and wondered
+vaguely if the latter were a dancer. She was told homely tales about
+Samuel and Elijah. She was given a glazed Bible which smelt of
+oil-cloth, and advised to read it every morning and every evening
+without any selection of suitable passages. She learned a hymn called
+"Now the day is over," which always produced an emotion of exquisite
+melancholy. She was awarded a diminutive plot of ground and given a
+penny packet of nasturtium seeds to sow, but, being told by another
+girl that they were good to eat, she ate them instead, and her garden
+was a failure.
+
+There were delightful half-holiday rambles over the countryside, when
+she, still in her scarlet serge, and half a dozen girls and boys danced
+along the lanes picking flowers and playing games with chanted refrains
+like "Green Gravel" and "Queen of Barbary." She made friends with
+farmers' lads, and learned to climb trees and call poultry and find
+ducks' eggs. Hay-making time came on, when she was allowed to ride on
+the great swinging loads right into the setting sun, it seemed. She used
+to lie on her back, lulled by the sounds of eventide, and watch the
+midges glinting on the air of a golden world.
+
+She slept in a funny little flowery room next to her uncle and aunt, and
+she used to lie awake in the slow summer twilights sniffing in the
+delicious odor of pinks in full bloom below her window. Sometimes she
+would lean out of the window and weave fancies round the bubbling stream
+beyond the grass till the moon came up from behind a hop-garden and
+threw tree-shadows all over the room. Below her sill she could pick
+great crimson roses that looked like bunches of black velvet in the
+moonlight, and in the morning she used to suck the honey from the sweet,
+starry flowers of the jasmine that flung its green fountains over the
+kitchen porch.
+
+Summer went on; the hay was cut, and in the swimming July heat she used
+to play in the meadows till her face grew freckled as the inside of a
+cowslip. Now was the time when she could wear foxglove blooms on every
+finger. Now was the time to watch the rabbits scampering by the wood's
+edge in the warm dusk. The corn turned golden, and there were
+expeditions for wild raspberries. The corn was cut, and blackberry time
+arrived, bringing her mother, who was pleased to see how well Jenny
+looked and went back to Hagworth Street with a great bunch of fat purple
+dahlias.
+
+In October there was nutting--best of all the new delights,
+perhaps--when she wandered through the hazel coppices and shook the
+smooth boughs until the ripe nuts pattered down on the damp, woodland
+earth. Nutting was no roadside adventure. She really penetrated into the
+heart of the woods and with her companions would peep out
+half-affrighted by the lips of the October leaves along the glades,
+half-afraid of the giant beeches with their bare gray branches twisted
+to the likeness of faces and figures. She and her playmates would peep
+out from the hazel coppice and dart across the mossy way out of the
+keeper's eye, and lose themselves in the dense covert and point with
+breathless whisper to a squirrel or scurrying dormouse. Home again in
+the silvery mists or moaning winds, home again with bags of nuts slung
+across shoulders, to await the long winter evenings and fireside
+pleasures.
+
+Jenny was allowed to celebrate her ninth birthday by a glorious
+tea-party in the kitchen, when little girls in clean pinafores and
+little boys in clean collars stumped along the flagged passage and sat
+down to tea and munched buns and presented Jenny with dolls'
+tea-services and pop-guns and Michaelmas daisies with stalks warm from
+the tight clasp of warm hands.
+
+She grew to love her Aunt Carrie and Uncle James with the quiet voice
+and thin, damp hair.
+
+Winter went by to the ticking of clocks and patter of rain. But there
+was snow after Christmas and uproarious snow-balling and slides in
+Galton High Street. There was always a fine crackling fire in the
+kitchen, and a sleek tabby cat, and copper kettles singing on the hob.
+There was Ethel's love affair with the grocer's assistant to talk and
+giggle over amid the tinkle and clatter of washing up the tea-things.
+
+And then in March Mrs. Threadgale caught cold and died quite suddenly;
+and Jenny put some white violets on her grave and wore a black dress and
+went home to Islington.
+
+The effect of this wonderful visit was not much more permanent than the
+surprise of a new picture-book. Galton had meant not so much a
+succession of revelations as a volley of sensations. She was sad at
+leaving the country; she missed the affection of her uncle and aunt. She
+missed the easy sway she had wielded over everybody at Galton. But she
+had very little experience to carry back to Hagworth Street. One would
+like to say she carried the memory of that childish wondertime right
+through her restless life, but, actually, she never remembered much
+about it. It very soon became merely a vague interval between two long
+similarities of existence, like a break in a row of houses that does not
+admit one to anything more than an added space of sky. She never
+communed with elves, or, like young Blake, saw God's forehead pressed
+against the window-pane. Jenny was no mystic of nature, and the roar of
+humanity would always move her more than the singing of waves and forest
+leaves.
+
+Her great hold upon life was the desire of dancing. This she had
+fostered on many a level stretch of sward, with daisy chains hung all
+about her. She had danced with damson-stained mouth like a young
+Bacchante. She had danced while her companions made arches and hoops of
+slender willow-stems. She had danced the moon up and the sun down; and
+once, when the summer dusk was like wine cooled by woodland airs, when a
+nightingale throbbed in every roadside tree and glow-worms spangled the
+grass, she had taken a spray of eglantine and led an inspired band of
+childish revelers down into the twinkling lamplight of Galton.
+
+Yet this wonderful year became a date in her chronicle chiefly because
+age or sunlight or wind tarnished her silver curls to that uncertain
+tint which is, unjustly to mice, always called mouse-colored; so that
+her arrival at Number Seventeen was greeted by a chorus of disapproval.
+
+"Good gracious!" cried Mrs. Raeburn, when she saw her. "Will you only
+look at her hair?"
+
+"What's gone with it?" asked Jenny.
+
+"Why, what a terrible color. No color at all, you might say. I feel
+quite disgusted."
+
+"Perhaps she won't be quite such a Miss Vain now," Ruby put in.
+
+Jenny was discouraged. The London spring was trying after Galton, and
+one day, a month or two after she came back, she felt horribly ill, and
+her face was flushed.
+
+"The child's ill," said Mrs. Raeburn.
+
+"Ill? Nonsense!" argued Charlie. "Why, look at her color. Ill? Whoever
+heard? Never saw no one look better in my life. Look how bright her eyes
+is."
+
+"You ignorant man!" said his wife, and sent for the doctor.
+
+The doctor said it was scarlet fever, and Jenny was taken away in
+blankets to the hospital. She felt afraid at first in the long, quiet
+ward with all the rows of nurses and palms and thin beds from which
+heads suddenly popped up.
+
+"Do you think you'll go to heaven when you die?" the charge-nurse
+whispered to Jenny as she tucked her in.
+
+"I don't care where I go," said Jenny; "as long as there isn't no
+castor-oil."
+
+As she lay waiting to get better and watched the lilac buds breaking
+into flower outside the big windows, she could not help wishing she were
+in Galton again, although in a way she liked the peace and regularity of
+hospital life. It amused her to have breakfast at half-past five and
+lunch at nine. The latter she laughed at all the time she was in the
+hospital. Her convalescence was an exceptionally long one, but she had
+two jolly weeks before she left, when she could run about and help to
+carry the meals to the other patients. She danced once or twice then for
+the benefit of the ward and was glad that everybody clapped her so
+loudly. She cried when she left in August to go home to her family.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII: _Ambition Wakes_
+
+
+The great event came about because Mrs. Raeburn, in return for similar
+favors in the past, went to superintend the behavior of pasty-faced
+Claude and Percy so that her sister could spend a fortnight with a
+brother-in-law lately elected to the Urban Council of an unimportant
+town in Suffolk. So, with some misgivings on the side of his wife,
+Charlie was left in charge of 17 Hagworth Street.
+
+One day Mr. Vergoe came downstairs to ask his landlord if he would let
+Jenny and Alfie and Edie accompany him to the pantomime of "Aladdin" at
+the Grand Theater. Charlie saw no harm in it, and the party was
+arranged. It appeared that Miss Lilli Vergoe had been temporarily
+released from the second line of girls at the Orient Theater of
+Varieties in order to make one of a quartette of acrobatic dancers in
+the pantomime. Under the circumstances, her grandfather considered
+himself bound to attend at least one performance, although he felt
+rather like a mute at his own obsequies.
+
+It was a clear winter's evening when they set out, a rosy-cheeked,
+chattering, skipping party. Mr. Vergoe, wrapped in a muffler almost as
+wide as a curtain, walked in the middle. Jenny held his hand. Edie
+jigged on the inside, and Alfie, to whom had been intrusted the great
+responsibility of the tickets, walked along the extreme edge of the
+curb, occasionally jolting down with excitement into the frozen gutter.
+They hurried along the wide raised pavement that led up to the theater.
+They hurried past the golden windows of shops still gay with the
+aftermath of Christmas. They hurried faster and faster till presently
+the great front of the theater appeared in sight, when they all huddled
+together for a wild dash across the crowded thoroughfare. Ragged boys
+accosted them, trying to sell old programmes. Knowing men inquired if
+they wanted the shortest way to the pit.
+
+"No, thank you," said Mr. Vergoe proudly. "We have seats in the dress
+circle."
+
+The knowing men looked very respectful and moved aside from the welded
+plutocracy of Edie, Alfie, Jenny and Mr. Vergoe. Fat women with baskets
+of fat oranges tried to tempt them by offering three at once, but Mr.
+Vergoe declined. Oranges would not be polite in the dress circle.
+
+In the vestibule Alfie was commanded to produce the tickets. There was a
+terrible moment of suspense while Alfie, nearly as crimson as the plush
+all around him, dug down into one pocket after another. Were the tickets
+lost? Edie and Jenny looked daggers. No; there they were: Row A, numbers
+7, 8, 9, and 10. "Upstairs, please," said a magnificent gentleman in
+black and gold. "This way, please," said a fuzzy-haired attendant. The
+children walked over the thick carpet in awed silence. A glass door
+swung open. They were in the auditorium of the Grand Theater, Islington,
+in the very front row, by all that was fortunate; and, having bestowed
+their hats and coats beneath the elegant and comfortable tip-up chairs,
+they hung over the red-plush ledge of the circle and gazed down into
+what seemed the whole of the population of London. The orchestra had not
+yet come in. Down in the pit the people were laughing and talking. Up in
+the gallery they were laughing and talking. Babies were crying; mothers
+were comforting them. Everybody down below seemed to be eating oranges
+or buns or chocolate. Alfie let his programme flutter down, and Jenny
+nearly burst into tears because she thought they would all be turned out
+of the theater.
+
+The whole of the vast audience was there for enjoyment. Enjoyment was in
+the air like a great thrill of electricity. What could be more
+magnificent than the huge drop curtain, with its rich landscape and
+lightly clothed inhabitants? What could be more exciting than the
+entrance, one by one, of the amazingly self-possessed musicians?
+
+The orchestra was tuning up. The conductor appeared to the welcoming
+taps of fiddle-bows. One breathless moment he held aloft his baton and
+looked round at his attentive company, then altogether the fiddles and
+the drums and the flutes and the cornets, the groaning double-bass and
+the 'cello and the clarinets and the funny little piccolo and the big
+bassoon and the complicated French horns and the trombones and the
+triangle (perhaps the best-enjoyed instrument of all) and the stupendous
+cymbals started off with the overture of the Christmas pantomime of the
+Grand Theater, Islington.
+
+Could it be borne, this enthusiastic overture? Was it not almost too
+much for children, this lilting announcement of mirth and beauty? Would
+not Jenny presently fall head-foremost into the pit? Would not Alfie be
+bound to break the seat by his perpetual leaps into the air? Would not
+Edie explode in her anxiety to correct Jenny, devour bull's-eyes and see
+more of a mysterious figure that kept peering through a little square
+hole in the corner of the proscenium?
+
+The orchestra stopped for a moment. A bell had rung, shrill and pregnant
+with great events. Green lights appeared, and red lights: there was
+hardly a sound in the house. Was anything the matter?
+
+"They're just ringing up," said Mr. Vergoe.
+
+Slowly the rich landscape and lightly clothed inhabitants vanished into
+the roof.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Jenny.
+
+"Hush!" whispered Edie.
+
+"My Gosh!" said Alfie.
+
+A weird melody began. Demons leaped maliciously round a caldron. Green
+demons and red demons danced with pitchforks. The caldron bubbled and
+steamed. There was a crash from the cymbals. A figure sprang from the
+caldron, alighting on the board with a loud "ha-ha." Evil deeds were
+afoot, and desperate dialogue of good and ill.
+
+The scene changed to a Chinese market-place. There were comic policemen,
+comic laundrywomen. There was the Princess Balroubadour in a palanquin
+more beautiful than the very best lampshade of the Hagworth Street
+parlor. There was the splendidly debonair Aladdin. There was the
+excruciatingly funny Widow Twankey. There was the Emperor with bass
+voice and mustaches trailing to the ground to be continually trodden on
+by humorists of every size and sort.
+
+It would be impossible to relate every scene. It was like existence in a
+precious stone, so much sparkle and color was everywhere. The cave was
+wonderful. The journey to the Enchanted Palace through Cloudland was
+amazing. Then there were gilded tables, heaped with gigantic fruits,
+that rose from the very ground itself. There was the devilishly cunning
+Abanazar. There were songs and dances and tinsel and movement and
+jingles and processions and laughter and gongs and lanterns and painted
+umbrellas and magic doors and an exhaustingly funny bathing scene with
+real water. There was the active and slippery Genius of the Lamp, the
+lithe and agile Genius of the Ring, who ran right round the ledge of the
+circle and slid down a golden pillar back on to the stage amid thunders
+of applause.
+
+To Jenny, perhaps the most real excitement of all was the appearance of
+her darling Lilli, first in gold and blue, and then in white, and then
+in black, and finally in a dress that must have been stolen from the
+very heart of a rainbow, such scintillating streams of color flickered
+and gleamed and radiated from its silken folds.
+
+How gloriously golden looked her hair, how splendidly crimson her lips,
+how nobly brilliant were her eyes. And how she danced, first on one leg,
+then on the other; then upside down and inside out, and over one girl
+and under another. How the people clapped her and how pleased she
+looked, and how Jenny waved to her till Alfie and Edie simultaneously
+suppressed such an uncontrolled and conspicuous display of feelings.
+Then there was the transformation scene, which actually surpassed all
+that had gone before, with its bouquets of giant roses turning into
+fairies, with its clouds and lace and golden rocks and jewels and silver
+trees and view of magic oceans and snowy mountains and gaudy birds.
+
+Suddenly crimson lights flared. There was a jovial shout from somewhere,
+and "Here we are again!" cried Joey, as round and round to "Ring a ring
+o' roses" galloped Clown and Pantaloon and Harlequin and Columbine.
+Jenny looked shyly up into Mr. Vergoe's face and could just see tears
+glittering in his eyes.
+
+Down came the front cloth of the harlequinade with shops and mischievous
+boys and everlastingly mocked policemen and absent-minded nursemaids and
+swaggering soldiers. Inspiring were the feats achieved by the Clown,
+wild were the transformations and substitutions effected by the trim and
+ubiquitous Harlequin. But what Jenny loved most were the fairy entrances
+of Columbine, as, like a pink feather, she danced before the footlights
+and in and out of the shops. Oh, to be a Columbine, she thought, to
+dance in silver and pink down Hagworth Street with a thousand eyes to
+admire her, a thousand hands to acclaim the beautiful vision.
+
+It came to an end, the pantomime of Aladdin. It came to an end with the
+Clown's shower of crackers. Triumph of triumphs, Jenny actually caught
+one.
+
+"You and me will pull it," she whispered to Mr. Vergoe, clasping his
+hand in childish love.
+
+But it came to an end, the pantomime of Aladdin; and home they went
+again to Hagworth Street. Home they went, all three children's hearts
+afire with the potential magic of every street corner. Home they went,
+talking and laughing and interrupting and imitating and recalling, while
+Mr. Vergoe thought of old days. How quiet and dark Hagworth Street
+seemed when they reached it.
+
+But it was very delightful to rush in past Ruby and turn somersaults
+all the way to the kitchen. It was very delightful to stand in a knot
+round their father and tell him the whole story and recount each
+separate splendor, while he and Mr. Vergoe sipped a glass of Mr.
+Vergoe's warm whisky with a slice of lemon added. It was good fun to
+disconcert Ruby by tripping her up. It was fine to seize the poker and
+chase her all round the kitchen.
+
+The bedtime of this never-to-be-forgotten evening came at last. Jenny
+and Edie lay awake and traced in the ceiling shadows startling
+similarities to the action of the harlequinade. Edie fell asleep, but
+Jenny still lay awake, her heart going pitter-pat with a big resolve,
+her breath coming in little gasps with the birth of a new ambition. She
+must go on the stage. She must dance for all the world to gaze at her.
+She would. She would. She must. What a world it was, this wonderful
+world of the stage--an existence of color and scent and movement and
+admiration.
+
+The oilcloth of Hagworth Street seemed more than usually cold and dreary
+on the following day. Alfie, too, was in a very despondent mood, having
+fallen deeply in love with Miss Letty Lightbody, who had played the part
+of Pekoe, Aladdin's friend and confidant. An air of staleness permeated
+everything for a week. Then Mrs. Raeburn came back from Barnsbury, and
+Jenny raised the question of going on the stage.
+
+The former was very angry with her husband for allowing the visit to the
+pantomime. Mr. Vergoe tried to take the blame, but Mrs. Raeburn was
+determined the brunt of the storm should fall on Charlie. Jenny was
+ordered to give up all ideas of the stage. Schooltime came round again,
+and the would-be dancer behaved more atrociously than ever. She was the
+despair of her mistresses, and at home she would sit by the fire
+sulking. She began to grow thin, and her mother began to wonder whether,
+after all, it would not be wiser to let her have her own way. She went
+upstairs to consult Mr. Vergoe.
+
+"You'll make a big mistake," he assured her, "if you keep her from what
+she's set her heart on, so to speak. She has it in her, too. A proper
+little dancer she'll make."
+
+Mrs. Raeburn was still loath to give in. She had a dread of putting
+temptation in the child's path. She did not know how to decide, while
+Jenny continued to sulk, to be more and more unmanageable, to fret and
+pine and grow thinner and thinner.
+
+"Where could she go and learn this dancing?" the bewildered mother
+asked.
+
+"Madame Aldavini's," said the old clown. "That's where my granddaughter
+learned."
+
+It was a profession, after all, thought Mrs. Raeburn. What else would
+Jenny do? Go into service? Somehow she could not picture her in a
+parlormaid's cap and apron. Well, why not the stage, if it had got to
+be? She discussed the project with her sister Mabel, who was horrified.
+
+"A ballet-girl? Are you mad, Florence? Why, what a disgrace. Whatever
+would Bill say? An actress? Better put her on the streets at once."
+
+Mrs. Raeburn could not make up her mind.
+
+"If any daughter of yours goes play-acting," went on Mrs. Purkiss, "I
+can't allow her to come to tea with my Percy and my Claude any more, and
+that's all about it."
+
+"Jenny doesn't think going to tea with her cousins anything to wave
+flags over."
+
+"Pig-headed, that's what you are, Florence. All the years you've been a
+sister of mine, I've known you for a pig-headed woman. It doesn't matter
+whether you're ill or well, right or wrong, no one mustn't advise you.
+That's how you come to marry Charlie."
+
+The opposition of Mrs. Purkiss inclined her sister to give way before
+Jenny's desire. It only needed a little more family interference, and
+the child would be taken straight off to Madame Aldavini's School for
+Dancing.
+
+Miss Horner supplied it; for, two or three days after, a letter came
+from Clapton, written in a quavering hand crossed and recrossed on thin,
+crackling paper, deeply edged in black.
+
+     CARMINIA HOUSE,
+
+     February 20th.
+
+     DEAR FLORENCE,
+
+     My niece Mabel writes to tell us you intend to make your little
+     girl an actress. This news has been a great shock to me. You must
+     not forget that she is a granddaughter of Frederick Horner, the
+     Chymist. She must not be a harlot given over to paint and powder.
+     God is jealous of the safety of His lambs. This plan of dancing is
+     a snare of Satan. You should read the Word, my dear niece. You will
+     read of young maidens who danced before the Ark of the Covenant in
+     the joy of the Lord, but that is not to say your little girl should
+     dance for lewdness and gold when she might be singing the sweet
+     songs of Salvation and joining in the holy mirth of the Children of
+     Israel. If you had let us adopt her, this desire would not have
+     come. We do not let the Devil into our house. You will be the cause
+     of my death, niece, with your wicked intentions. I am an old woman
+     very near to Emmanuel. This great sin must not be.
+
+     Your loving aunt,
+
+     ALICE HORNER.
+
+     P. S.--I am in bed, but with the warmer weather I shall come to see
+     you, my dear niece, and warn you again.--A. H.
+
+"Good thing she is in bed," commented Mrs. Raeburn, as she finished
+reading her aunt's letter.
+
+"What's all this about Jenny going for a dancer?" asked Charlie that
+evening.
+
+"Whatever has it got to do with you, I should like to know?" said his
+wife.
+
+"Well, I am her father, when all's said and done. Aren't I?"
+
+"And a nice example to a child. I suppose somebody's got to look after
+you when I die."
+
+"I expect the old man will die first. I've been feeling very poorly this
+year."
+
+"First I've heard of it."
+
+"Why, only last night my finger was hurting something chronic."
+
+"Show me."
+
+"Be careful." Mr. Raeburn offered the sick finger for his wife's
+inspection.
+
+"I can't see nothing."
+
+"There, blessed if I'm not showing of you the wrong hand."
+
+"You must have been shocking bad."
+
+"Well, it's better now."
+
+"That's enough of you and your fingers. Why shouldn't Jenny be a
+dancer?" persisted Mrs. Raeburn.
+
+"Don't go blaring it all over the neighborhood, anyhow, and don't give
+me the blame for it if anything goes wrong."
+
+"Look here, Charlie, when I married you, I hadn't got nothing better to
+do, had I?"
+
+Charlie shook his head in sarcastic astonishment.
+
+"Yes," went on Mrs. Raeburn. "You can wag your great, silly head, but
+I'm not going to have my Jenny marrying _any_body. She's going to be
+able to say, 'No, thank you,' to a sight of young chaps. And if I can't
+look after her sharp when she's at the theater, I can't look after her
+anywhere else, that's very certain."
+
+"Well, I call it rank nonsense--rank nonsense, that's what I call it,
+and don't you turn round on me and say I put it into her head. What
+theater's she going to?"
+
+"You silly man, she's got to learn first."
+
+"Learn what?"
+
+"Learn dancing--at a school."
+
+"Learn dancing? If she's got to learn dancing, what's the sense in her
+going for an actress?"
+
+"You had to learn carpentering, didn't you?"
+
+"Of course, but that's very different to dancing. Anybody can
+dance--some better than others; but _learn_ dancing--well, there, the
+ideas some women gets in their heads, it's against all nature."
+
+"Have you finished? Because I got my washing to see to. You go and talk
+it over at the 'Arms.' I reckon they've got more patience than me."
+
+Jenny was in bed when her mother told her she should become a pupil of
+Madame Aldavini.
+
+"Aren't you glad?" she asked, as her daughter made no observation.
+
+"Yes; it's all right," said Jenny, coldly it seemed.
+
+"You are a comical child."
+
+"Shall I go to-morrow?"
+
+"We'll see."
+
+Mrs. Raeburn thought to herself, as she left the room, how strange
+children were; and, having settled Jenny's future, she began to worry
+about May, who was just then showing symptoms of a weak spine, and lay
+awake thinking of her children half the night.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII: _Ambition Looks in the Glass_
+
+
+On Mr. Vergoe's recommendation, Madame Aldavini granted an interview to
+Mrs. Raeburn and her daughter, and the old clown was to accompany them
+on the difficult occasion.
+
+It was a warm April day when they set out, with a sky like the matrix of
+turquoise. The jagged purple clouds were so high that all felt the
+outside of an omnibus was the only place on such a day. Mrs. Raeburn and
+Jenny sat in front, and Mr. Vergoe sat immediately behind them, pointing
+out every object of interest on the route. At least, he pointed out
+everything until they reached Sadlers Wells Theater, after which
+reminiscences of Sadlers Wells occupied the rest of the journey. They
+swung along Rosebery Avenue and into Theobald's Road and pulled up at
+last by Southampton Row. Then they walked through a maze of narrow
+streets to Madame Aldavini's school, in Great Queen Street. No longer
+can it be found; whatever ghosts of dead _coryphées_ haunt the portals
+must spend a draughty purgatory in the very middle of Kingsway.
+
+It was a tall, gray Georgian house, with flat windows and narrow sills
+and a suitable cornice of dancing Loves and Graces over the door, which
+had a large brass plate engraved with "School of Dancing," and more
+bells beside it than Jenny had ever seen beside one door in her life.
+She thought what games could be played with Great Queen Street and its
+inhabitants, if it were in Islington and all the houses had as many
+bells. Mr. Vergoe pressed a button labeled "Aldavini," and presently
+they were walking along a dark, dusty passage into a little paneled room
+with a large desk and pictures of dancers in every imaginable kind of
+costume. At the desk sat Madame Aldavini herself in a dress of tawny
+satin. Jenny thought she looked like an organ-woman, with her dark,
+wrinkled face and glittering black eyes.
+
+"And how is Mr. Vergoe?" she inquired.
+
+"How are _you_, Madame?" he replied, with great deference.
+
+"I am very well, thank you."
+
+Mrs. Raeburn was presented and dropped her umbrella in embarrassment,
+making Jenny feel very much ashamed of her mother and wish she were
+alone with Mr. Vergoe. Then she was introduced herself, and as Madame
+Aldavini fixed her with a piercing eye, Jenny felt so shy that she was
+only able to murmur incoherent politeness to the floor.
+
+The dancing-mistress got up from her desk and looked critically at the
+proposed pupil.
+
+"You think the child will make a dancer?" she said, turning sharply to
+Mrs. Raeburn.
+
+"Oh, well, really I--well, she's always jigging about, if that's
+anything to go by."
+
+Madame Aldavini gave a contemptuous sniff.
+
+"I think she will make a very good dancer," Mr. Vergoe put in.
+
+"You've seen her?"
+
+"Many times," he said. "In fact, this visit is due to me--in a manner of
+speaking."
+
+"Come, we'll see what she can do," said the mistress, and led the way
+out of the little room along a glass-covered arcade into the
+dancing-room.
+
+The latter was probably a Georgian ballroom with fine proportions and
+Italian ceiling. A portion of it was curtained off for the pupils to
+change into practice dress, and all the way round the walls was a rail
+for toe-dancing. At the far end was a dais with a big arm-chair and a
+piano, over which hung a large oil painting of some bygone ballet at the
+Théâtre de l'Opéra in Paris, and also an engraving of Taglioni signed
+affectionately by that great Prima Ballerina Assoluta.
+
+Madame Aldavini rang a bell, and presently Miss Carron, her pianist and
+assistant teacher, came in. Miss Carron was a Frenchwoman, who had lived
+so long in London that she spoke English better than French, except in
+moments of great anger, when her native tongue returned to her with an
+added force of expression from such long periods of quiescence.
+
+"What tune do you like, miss?" inquired Madame. "What is her name?
+Jenny? _Si_, I have no Jenny at present."
+
+But the would-be dancer had no tune by name.
+
+"Play the what's it called from what's its name," suggested Mr. Vergoe,
+to help matters along.
+
+"_Hein?_" said Miss Carron sharply.
+
+"The--you know--the--the--well, anyway, it goes like this," and he
+hummed the opening bars of the Intermezzo from "Cavalleria."
+
+"Ah!" said Miss Carron. "But that's no tune to dance to. You want
+something to show off the twiddly-bits."
+
+"Play the Intermezzo," commanded Madame Aldavini.
+
+Miss Carron began, but Jenny could only wriggle in a shamefaced way, and
+was too shy to start.
+
+"You great stupid," said her mother.
+
+"One, two, three, off," said Mr. Vergoe.
+
+"You are frightened, yes? Timid? Come, I shall not eat you," declared
+Madame.
+
+At last the novice produced a few steps.
+
+"Enough," said Madame. "I take her. She will come once a week for the
+first year, twice a week for the second year, three times a week the
+third year and every day--how old is she?"
+
+"Ten."
+
+"Every day when she is thirteen."
+
+The further details of Jenny's apprenticeship were settled in the
+little paneled room, while Jenny listened to wonderful instructions
+about stockings and shoes and skirts. When it was all over the three
+visitors walked out of the gray house, where Jenny was to spend so many
+hours of childhood, into Great Queen Street and an April shower
+sprinkling the pavement with large preliminary drops. Mr. Vergoe
+insisted on standing tea at a shop in Holborn for the luck of the
+adventure. Jenny's first chocolate _éclair_ probably made a more abiding
+impression on her mind than the first meeting with Madame Aldavini.
+
+So Jenny became a dancer and went, under her mother's escort, to Great
+Queen Street once a week for a year.
+
+The pupils of Madame Aldavini all wore pink tarlatan skirts, black
+stockings clocked with pink, and black jerseys with a large pink A
+worked on the front. There were about twenty girls in Jenny's class, who
+all had lockers and pegs of their own in the anteroom curtained off by
+black velvet draperies. Fat theatrical managers with diamond rings and
+buttonholes sometimes used to sit beside Madame and watch the pupils.
+She sat on the dais, whence her glittering black eyes and keen face
+could follow the dancers everywhere. Jenny used to think the mistress
+was like a black note of the piano come to life. There was something so
+clean and polished and clear-cut about Madame. Her eyes, she used to
+think, were like black currants. Madame's feet in black satin shoes were
+restless all the while beneath her petticoats; but she never let them
+appear, so that the children should have no assistance beyond the long
+pole with which she used to mark the beat on the floor and sometimes on
+the shoulders of a refractory dancer.
+
+Two years rolled by, and Jenny was able to go alone now. She was
+considered one of Madame Aldavini's best pupils, and several managers
+wanted her for fairy parts, but Mrs. Raeburn always refused, and Madame
+Aldavini, because she thought that Jenny might be spoilt by too
+premature a first appearance, did not try persuasion.
+
+As might have been expected, the instant that Jenny had her own way and
+was fairly set on the road to the gratification of her wishes, she
+began to be lazy. She was so far a natural dancer that nearly every step
+came very easily to her. This facility was fatal, for unless she learned
+at once, she would not take the trouble to learn at all. Madame used to
+write home to Hagworth Street complaints of her indolence, and Mrs.
+Raeburn used to threaten to take her away from the school. Then for a
+very short time Jenny would work really hard.
+
+At thirteen she went every day to the dancing school, and at thirteen
+Jenny had deliciously slim legs and a figure as lithe as a hazel wand.
+Her almond eyes were of some fantastic shade of sapphire-blue with deep
+gray twilights in them and sea-green laughters. They were extraordinary
+eyes whose under-lids always closed first. Her curls never won back the
+silver they lost in the country; but her complexion had the bloom and
+delicate texture of a La France rose, although in summer her straight
+little nose was freckled like a bird's egg. Her hands were long and
+white; her lips very crimson and translucent, but the under-lip
+protruded slightly, and bad temper gave it a vicious look. Her teeth
+were small, white, and glossy as a cat's. She cast a powerful
+enchantment over all the other girls, so that when, from tomboy
+loiterings and mischievous escorts, she arrived late for class, they
+would all run round for her with shoes and petticoats and stockings,
+like little slaves. Laughingly, she would let them wait upon her and
+wonder very seldom why she was the only girl so highly favored. She had
+a sharp tongue and no patience for the giggles and enlaced arms of
+girlhood. She had no whispered secrets to communicate. She never put out
+a finger to help her companions, although sometimes she would prompt the
+next girl through a difficult step. She was entirely indifferent to
+their adoration. As if the blood of queens ran in her veins, she
+accepted homage naturally. Perhaps it was some boyish quality of
+debonair assurance in Jenny that made the rest of them disinclined to
+find any fault in her. She seemed as though she ought to be spoilt, and
+if, like most spoilt children, she was unpleasant at home, she was very
+charming abroad. Her main idea of amusement was to be "off with the
+boys," by whom she was treated as an equal. There was no sentiment about
+her, and an attempted kiss would have provoked spitfire rage. There was
+something of Atalanta about her, and in Hellas Artemis would have
+claimed her, running by the thyme-scented borders of Calydon.
+
+Madame Aldavini, with some disapproval, watched her progress. She was
+not satisfied with her pupil and determined to bring her down to the
+hard facts of the future. Jenny was called up for a solo lesson. These
+solo lessons, when Madame used to show the steps by making her fingers
+dance on her knees, were dreaded by everybody.
+
+"Come along now," she said, and hummed an old ballet melody, tapping her
+fingers the while.
+
+Jenny started off well enough, but lost herself presently in trying to
+follow those quick fingers.
+
+"Again, foolish one," cried the mistress. "Again, I say. Well can you do
+it, if you like."
+
+"I can't," declared Jenny sulkily. "It's too difficult."
+
+Madame Aldavini seized her long pole and brandished it fiercely.
+
+"Again, self-willed baby, again."
+
+Jenny, with half a screwed-up eye on the pole, made a second attempt;
+the pole promptly swung round and caught her on the right shoulder. She
+began to cry and stamp.
+
+"I can't do it; I can't do it."
+
+"You will do it. You shall do it."
+
+Once more Jenny started, and this time succeeded so well that it was
+only at the very end of the new step that Madame angrily pushed the pole
+between her pretty ankles, rattling it from side to side to show her
+contempt for Jenny's obstinacy.
+
+"For it is obstinacy," she declared. "It is not stupidity. Bah! well can
+you do it, if you like."
+
+So Madame conquered in the end with her long pole and her sharp tongue,
+and Jenny learned the new and difficult step.
+
+"Listen to me," said the former. "Do you not wish to become a Prima
+Ballerina?"
+
+"Yes," murmured Jenny, the sooner to be out of Madame's reach, and back
+with the boys in Islington.
+
+"You have not the banal smile of the _danseuse_ who takes her strength
+from her teeth. You have not the fat forearm or dreadful wrist of those
+idiots who take their strength from them, and, thanks to me, you might
+even become a Prima Ballerina Assoluta."
+
+The words of an old comic song about a girl called Di who hailed from
+Utah and became a Prima Ballerina Assoluta returned, with its jingling
+tune, to Jenny's head, while Madame was talking.
+
+"Whistle not while I talk, inattentive one," cried her mistress, banging
+the pole down with a thump.
+
+"Have you dreams of success, of bouquets and sables and your own
+carriage? Look around you, lazy one. Look at the great Taglioni whom
+emperors and kings applauded. Yet you, miserable child, you can only now
+make one 'cut.' Why do you come here unless you have ambition to
+succeed, to be _maîtresse_ of your art, to sweep through the stage door
+with silk dresses? Do I choose you from the others to dance to me,
+unless I wish your fortune--eh? If, after this, you work not, I finish
+with you. I let you go your own pig-headed way."
+
+Jenny did work for a while, and even persevered and practiced so
+diligently as to be able to do a double cut and a fairly high beat,
+sweeping all the cups and saucers off the kitchen table as she did so.
+But when she had achieved this accomplishment, how much nearer was she
+to a public appearance, a triumphant success? What was the use of
+practicing difficult steps for the eyes of Ruby? What was the use of
+holding on to the handle of the kitchen door and putting one leg
+straight up till her toes twinkled over the top of it? Ruby only said,
+"You unnatural thing," or drew her breath in through ridged teeth in
+horrified amazement. What was the good of slaving all day? It was better
+to enjoy one's self by standing on the step of young Willie Hopkins' new
+bicycle and floating round Highbury Barn with curls and petticoats
+flying, and peals of wild laughter. It was much more pleasant to shock
+old ladies by puffing the smoke of cigarettes before them, or to play
+Follow my Leader over the corrugated-iron roof of an omnibus depot.
+
+Sometimes she took to playing truant for wind-blown afternoons by
+Highgate Ponds in the company of boys, and always made the same excuse
+to Madame of being wanted at home, until Madame grew suspicious and
+wrote to Mrs. Raeburn.
+
+Her mother asked why Jenny had not gone to her dancing-lesson, and where
+she had been.
+
+"I _was_ there," vowed Jenny. "Madame can't have noticed me."
+
+So Mrs. Raeburn wrote and explained the mistake, and Jenny managed with
+great anxiety to obtain possession of the letter, ostensibly in order to
+post it, but really in order to tear it to a hundred pieces round the
+corner.
+
+She was naturally a truthful child, but the long restraint of childhood
+had to be mitigated somehow, and lying to those in authority was no
+sacrifice of her egotism, the basis of all essential truthfulness. With
+her contemporaries she was always proudly, indeed painfully, frank.
+
+This waiting to grow up was unendurable. Everybody else was emancipated
+except herself. Ruby went away to be married--a source of much
+speculation to Jenny, who could not understand anybody desiring to live
+in a state of such corporeal intimacy with Ruby.
+
+"I'm positive he don't know she snores," said Jenny to her mother.
+
+"Well, what's it got to do with you?"
+
+What, indeed, had anything to do with her? It was shocking how utterly
+unimportant she was to Hagworth Street.
+
+Edie had gone away to learn dressmaking, and Alfie had vanished into
+some Midland town to learn something else, and occupying his room there
+was another lodger whom she liked. Then one day he came into the kitchen
+in a queer brown suit and said he was "off to the Front."
+
+"Gone for a soldier?" said her father, when he heard of it. "Good Lord!
+some people don't know when they're well off, and that's a fact."
+
+There was nobody to inflame Jenny with the burning splendors of
+patriotism. It became merely a matter of clothes, like everything else.
+She gathered it was the correct thing to wear khaki ties, sometimes with
+scarlet for the soldiers or blue for the sailors. It was also not
+outrageous to wear a Union Jack waistcoat. But any conception of a small
+nation fighting inch by inch for their sun-parched country, of a great
+nation sacrificing even its sense of humor to consolidate an empire and
+avenge a disgrace, was entirely outside her imaginative experience.
+
+What had it got to do with her?
+
+There was nobody to implant ideals of citizenship or try to show her
+relation to the rest of mankind. Her education at the board school was
+mechanical; the mistresses were like mental coffee-grinders, who, having
+absorbed a certain number of hard facts roasted by somebody else,
+distributed them in a more easily assimilated form. They tried to give
+children the primary technique of knowledge, but without any suggestions
+as to the manner of application. She had enough common sense to grasp
+the ultimate value of drearily reiterated practice steps in dancing. She
+perceived that they were laying the foundation of something better. It
+was only her own impatience which nullified some of the practical
+results of much academic instruction. But of her intellectual education
+the foundations were not visible at all. The teachers were building on
+sand a house which would topple over as soon as she was released from
+attendance at school. Jenny was a sufferer from the period of transition
+through which educational theories were passing, and might have been
+better off under the old system of picturesque misapprehensions of
+truth, or even with no deliberate education at all. It is important to
+understand the stark emptiness of Jenny's mind now and for a long while
+afterwards. Life was a dragging, weary affair unless she was being
+amused. There had been no mental adventures since, flashing and
+glorious, the idea of dancing came furiously through the night as she
+lay awake thinking of the pantomime. The fault was not hers. She was the
+victim of sterile imaginations. Her soul was bleak and cold as the life
+of man in the days before Prometheus stole fire from heaven.
+
+If it had not been for May, Jenny would have been even less satisfactory
+than she was. But May, with her bird-like gayety--not obstreperous like
+a blackbird's, but sweet and inconspicuous as the song of a goldfinch
+dipping through the air above apple-orchards--May, with her easy
+acceptance of physical deformity, shamed her out of mere idle
+discontent. Jenny would talk to her of the dancing-school till May knew
+every girl's peculiarity.
+
+"She's funny, my sister. She's a caution, is young May. Poor kid, a
+shame about her back."
+
+They quarreled, of course, over trifles, but May was the only person to
+whom Jenny would behave as if she were sorry for anything she had done
+or said. She never admitted her penitence in word to anybody on earth.
+It was a pleasure to Mrs. Raeburn, this fondness of Jenny for May, and
+once in a rare moment of confidence, she told the elder child that she
+depended on her to look after May when she herself was gone.
+
+"With her poor little back she won't ever be able to earn her
+living--not properly, and when you're on the stage and getting good
+money, you mustn't leave May out in the cold."
+
+Here was something vital, a tangible appeal, not a sentiment broadly
+expressed without obvious application like the culminating line of a
+hymn. Here was a reason, and Jenny clung fast to it as a drowning
+seafarer will clutch at samphire, unconscious of anything save greenery
+and blessed land. People were not accustomed to give Jenny reasons. When
+she had one, usually self-evolved, she held fast to it, nor cared a jot
+about its possible insecurity. Reasons were infrequent bits of greenery
+to one battered by a monotonous and empty ocean; for Jenny's mind was
+indeed sea-water with the flotsam of wrecked information, with wonderful
+hues evanescent, with the sparkle and ripple of momentary joys, with the
+perpetual booming of discontent, sterile and unharvested.
+
+One breezy June day, much the same sort of day as that when Jenny danced
+under the plane-tree, Madame Aldavini told her she could give her a
+place as one of the quartette of dancers in a Glasgow pantomime.
+
+"But, listen," said Madame, "what they want is acrobatic dancing. If you
+join this quartette, it does not mean you give up dancing--ballet-dancing,
+you understand; you will come back to me when the pantomime is over
+until you are able to join the Ballet at Covent Garden. You will not
+degrade your talent by sprawling over shoulders, by handsprings and
+splits and the tricks which an English audience likes. You understand?"
+
+Jenny did not really understand anything beyond the glorious fact that
+in December she would be away from Hagworth Street and free at last to
+do just as she liked.
+
+Mrs. Raeburn, when she heard of the proposal, declined to entertain its
+possibility. It was useless for Jenny to sulk and slam doors, and demand
+furiously why she had been allowed to learn dancing if she was not to be
+allowed ever to make a public appearance.
+
+"Time enough for that in the future," said her mother. "There'll always
+be plenty of theaters."
+
+Jenny became desperate. Her dreams of a glorious freedom were fading.
+That night she took to bed with her a knife.
+
+"What are you doing with that knife?" said May.
+
+"I'm going to kill myself," said Jenny.
+
+Pale as a witch, she sat on the edge of the bed. White was her face as
+a countenance seen in a looking-glass at dawn. Her lips were closed; her
+eyes burned.
+
+May shrieked.
+
+"Mother--dad--come quick: Jenny's going to kill herself with the
+carving-knife."
+
+Mrs. Raeburn rushed into the room and saw the child with the blade
+against her throat. She snatched away the knife.
+
+"Whatever was you going to do?"
+
+"I want to go to Glasgow," said Jenny; "and I'll kill myself if I
+don't."
+
+"I'll give you 'kill yourself,'" cried Mrs. Raeburn, slapping her
+daughter's cheeks so that a crimson mark burned on its dead paleness.
+
+"Well, I will," said Jenny.
+
+"We'll see about it," said Mrs. Raeburn. Jenny knew she had won; and
+deserved victory, for she had meant what she said. Her mother was
+greatly perplexed. Who would look after Jenny?
+
+Madame Aldavini explained that there would be three other girls, that
+they would all live together, that she herself would see them all
+established, as she had to go north herself to give the final touches to
+the ballet which she was producing; that no harm would come to Jenny;
+that she would really be more strictly looked after than she was at
+home.
+
+"That's quite impossible," said Mrs. Raeburn.
+
+Madame smiled sardonically.
+
+"However," Mrs. Raeburn went on, "I suppose she's got to make a start
+some time. So let her go."
+
+Now followed an interlude from toe-dancing--an interlude which Jenny
+enjoyed, although once she nearly strained herself doing the "strides."
+But acrobatic dancing came very easily to her, and progress was much
+more easily discernible than in the long and tiresome education for the
+ballet.
+
+Of the other three girls who were to make up the Aldavini Quartette,
+only one was still at the school. She was a plump girl called Eileen
+Vaughan, three years older than Jenny, prim and, in the latter's
+opinion, "very stuck up." Jenny hoped that the other two would be more
+fun than Eileen. Eileen was a pig, although she liked her name.
+
+Great problems arose in Hagworth Street out of Jenny's embarkation upon
+the ship of life. So long as she had been merely a pupil of Madame
+Aldavini's, family opposition to her choice of a profession had
+slumbered; but with the prospect of her speedy debut, it broke out again
+very fiercely.
+
+Old Miss Horner had died soon after her letter of protest against the
+dancing notion, and Miss Mary was left alone in Carminia House--in
+isolated survival, a pathetic more than a severe figure. However, she
+ventured to pay a visit to her niece in order to present a final
+remonstrance, but she lacked the power of her two elder sisters. What
+they commanded, she besought. What they declared, she hinted. Mrs.
+Raeburn felt quite sorry for the poor old thing, as she nodded on about
+salvation and temptation and the wages of sin. Old Miss Horner used to
+be able to wing her platitudes with the flame of God's wrath, but Miss
+Mary let them appear as the leaden things they really were. She made no
+impression but that of her own loneliness, went back to Carminia House
+after declining a slice of cherry cake, and died shortly afterwards, to
+the great comfort of the Primitive Methodists of Sion Chapel, who gained
+velvet cushions for the pews in consequence, and became less primitive
+than ever.
+
+Mrs. Raeburn could not help speculating for an hour or two upon the
+course of Jenny's life if she had accepted her aunts' offer, but went to
+sleep at the end of it thinking, anyway, it would be all the same a
+hundred years hence.
+
+Mrs. Purkiss came and registered a vow never to come again if Jenny
+really went; but she had registered so many vows in her sister's hearing
+that Mrs. Raeburn had come to regard them with something of that
+familiarity which must ultimately dull the surprise of a Commissioner
+for Oaths, and treated them as a matter of course.
+
+Uncle James Threadgale, with face as pale and square as ever, but with
+hair slightly damper and thinner, suggested that Jenny should come down
+to Galton for a bit and think it over. This offer being pleasantly
+declined, he gave her a roll of blue serge and asked a blessing on the
+undertaking.
+
+Charlie, having found that he was easily able to keep all knowledge of
+his daughter's lapse into publicity from his fellow-workmen at the shop
+in Kentish Town, decided to celebrate her imminent departure to the
+boreal pole (Glasgow soon achieved a glacial topography in Hagworth
+Street), by giving a grand supper-party.
+
+"We'll have old Vergoe and Madame Neverseenher"--his witty periphrasis
+for Aldavini--"and a brother of mine you've none of you never seen
+either, a rare comic, or he used to be, though where he is now, well,
+that wants knowing."
+
+"What's the good of saying he's to come to supper, then?" inquired Mrs.
+Raeburn.
+
+"Only if he's about," explained Charlie. "If he's about, I'd like Jenny
+here to meet him, because he was always a big hand at club concerts
+twenty years ago, before he went to Africa. Arthur his name _was_."
+
+"Oh, for goodness sake, stop your talking," said Mrs. Raeburn.
+
+"And you can't ask Madame," announced Jenny, who was horrified by the
+contemplation of a meeting between her father and the dancing-mistress.
+
+"_And_ why not? _And_ why not? Will anybody here kindly tell me why
+not?"
+
+"Because you can't," said Jenny decidedly.
+
+"Of course not. The child's quite right," Mrs. Raeburn corroborated.
+
+"Well, of course, you all know better than the old man. But I daresay
+she'd like to talk about Paris with your poor old dad."
+
+However, notwithstanding the elision of all Mr. Raeburn's proposed
+guests from the list of invitations, the supper did happen, and the
+master of the house derived some consolation from being allowed to
+preside at the head of his own table, if not sufficiently far removed
+from his wife to enjoy himself absolutely. Mr. Vergoe, getting a very
+old man now, came with Miss Lilli Vergoe, still a second-line girl at
+the Orient Theater of Varieties, and Edie arrived from Brixton, where
+she was learning to make dresses. Eileen Vaughan came, at Mrs. Raeburn's
+instigation and much to Jenny's disgust, and Mr. Smithers, the new
+lodger, a curly-headed young draper's assistant, tripped down from his
+room upstairs. May, of course, was present, and Alfie sent a picture
+postcard from Northampton, showing the after-effects of a party. This
+was put upon the mantelpiece and greatly diverted the company. Mrs.
+Purkiss was invited, and pasty-faced Percy and Claude and Mr. Purkiss
+were also invited, but Mrs. Purkiss signalized her disapproval by taking
+no notice of the invitation, thereby throwing Mrs. Raeburn into a
+regular flutter of uncertainty. Nevertheless, she turned up ten minutes
+late with both her offspring, to everybody's great disappointment and
+Mrs. Raeburn's great anxiety, when she saw with what a will her nephews
+settled down to the tinned tongue.
+
+The supper passed off splendidly, and nearly everything was eaten and
+praised. Mrs. Purkiss talked graciously to Mr. Smithers about the
+prospects of haberdashery and the principles of window-dressing and,
+somewhat tactlessly, about the advantage of cash registers. Charlie gave
+a wonderfully humorous description of his first crossing of the English
+Channel. Percy and Claude ate enormously, and Percy was sick, to his
+uncle's immense entertainment and profound satisfaction, as it gave him
+an excuse to tell the whole story of the Channel crossing over again,
+ending up with: "It's all right, Perce. Cheer up, sonny, Dover's in
+sight."
+
+Eileen ate self-consciously and gazed with considerable respectfulness
+at Miss Lilli Vergoe, who related pleasantly her many triumphs over the
+snares and duplicity of the new stage manager at the Orient. Mr. Vergoe
+chatted amiably with everybody in turn and made a great feature of
+helping the stewed tripe. May went into fits of laughter at everything
+and everybody, and Jenny discussed with Edie what style of dress should
+be made from the roll of blue serge presented to her by Uncle James.
+
+After supper everybody settled down to make the evening a complete
+success.
+
+Mr. Vergoe sang "Champagne Charlie" and "In Her Hair She Wore a White
+Camelia," and Mr. Raeburn joined in the chorus of the former with a note
+of personal satisfaction, while Mrs. Raeburn always said:
+
+    "Champagne Charlie _is_ his name,
+     Half a pint of porter _is_ his game."
+
+Neither Miss Vergoe nor Miss Vaughan would oblige with a dance, to the
+great disappointment of Mr. Smithers, who had hoped for a solution of
+many sartorial puzzles from such close proximity to two actresses.
+Jenny, however, was set on the table when the plates had been cleared
+away, and danced a breakdown to the great embarrassment of Mrs. Purkiss,
+who feared for pasty-faced Percy and Claude's sense of the shocking.
+
+Percy recited Casabianca, and Claude, though he did not recite himself,
+prompted his brother in so many of the lines that it became, to all
+purposes, a duet. Edie giggled in a corner with Mr. Smithers, and told
+the latter once or twice that he was a sauce-box and no mistake. Mr.
+Smithers himself sang "Queen of My Heart," in a mildly pleasant tenor
+voice, and, being encored, sang "Maid of Athens," and told Miss Vergoe,
+in confidence, that several persons had passed the remark that he was
+very like Lord Byron. To which Miss Vergoe, with great want of
+appreciation, replied, "Who cares?" and sent Mr. Smithers headlong back
+to the readier admiration of Edie.
+
+It was a very delightful evening, indeed, whose most delightful moment,
+perhaps, was Mrs. Purkiss's retirement with Percy and Claude, leaving
+the rest of the party to settle themselves round the kitchen fire, roast
+chestnuts, eat oranges and apples, smoke, and drink the various drinks
+that became their ages and tastes.
+
+"And what's Jenny going to call herself on the stage?" asked Mr. Vergoe.
+
+"What _does_ the man mean?" said Mrs. Raeburn.
+
+"Well, she must have a stage name. Raeburn is too long."
+
+"It's no longer than Vergoe," argued Mrs. Raeburn, looking at Lilli.
+
+"Oh, but she already had a stage name--so to speak," explained the old
+man proudly. "What's Jenny's second name?"
+
+"Pearl," said Mrs. Raeburn.
+
+"Oh, mother, you needn't go telling everybody."
+
+"There you are," said Charlie, who had waited for this moment fourteen
+years. "There you are; I told you she wouldn't thank you for it when you
+would give it her. Pearl! Whoever heard? Tut-tut!"
+
+"Why shouldn't she call herself Jenny Pearl--Miss Jenny Pearl?" said Mr.
+Vergoe. "If it isn't a good Christian name, it's a very showy stage
+name, as it were--or wait a bit--what about Jenny Vere? There was a
+queen or something called Jennivere--no now, I come to think of it, that
+was Guinevere."
+
+"I can't think whatever on earth she wants to call herself anything
+different from what she is," persisted the mother.
+
+"Well, I don't know either, but it's done. Even Lilli here, she spells
+her first name differently--L-i-double l-i, and Miss Vaughan here, I'll
+bet Vaughan ain't her own name--in a manner of speaking."
+
+"Yes it is," said Miss Vaughan, pursing up her mouth so that it looked
+like a red flannel button.
+
+But Mr. Vergoe was right--Miss Eileen Vaughan in Camberwell was Nellie
+Jaggs. Jenny soon found that out when they lived together, and wrote a
+postcard to Mr. Vergoe to tell him so.
+
+"But why must she be Jenny Pearl?" asked Mrs. Raeburn. "Although, mind,
+I don't say it isn't a very good name," she added, remembering it was
+her own conjunction.
+
+"It's done," Mr. Vergoe insisted. "More flowery--I suppose--so to
+speak."
+
+So Jenny Raeburn became Jenny Pearl, and her health was drunk and her
+success wished.
+
+A few weeks afterward she stood on Euston platform, with a queer
+feeling, half-way between sickness and breathlessness, and was met by
+Madame Aldavini with Eileen and two older girls, and bundled into a
+reserved compartment. Very soon she was waving a handkerchief to her
+mother and May, already scarcely visible in the murk of a London fog.
+Life had begun.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX: _Life, Art and Love_
+
+
+Eileen Vaughan was, of course, perfectly familiar to Jenny, but the two
+other girls who were to be her companions for several weeks had to be
+much observed during the first half-hour of the journey north.
+
+Madame Aldavini was in a first-class compartment, as she wanted to be
+alone in order to work out on innumerable sheets of paper the
+arrangement of a new ballet. So the Aldavini Quartette shared between
+them the four corners of a third-class compartment. Jenny felt important
+to the world, when she read on the slip pasted to the window: "Reserved
+for Aldavini's Quartette, Euston to Glasgow." It was written in
+looking-glass writing, to be sure, but that only made the slow
+deciphering of it the more delightful.
+
+However, it was read clearly at last, and Jenny turned round once more
+to look at her companions. Immediately opposite was Valérie Duval--a
+French girl with black fountains of hair, with full red lips and a
+complexion that darkened from ivory to warm Southern roses when the
+blood coursed to her cheeks. Her eyes glowed under heavy brown lids as
+she talked very sweetly in a contralto French accent. Soon she took
+Jenny on her knees and said:
+
+"You will tell me all your secrets--yes?"
+
+To which Jenny scoffingly answered:
+
+"Secrets? I'm not one for secrets."
+
+"But you will confide to me all your _passions_, your loves,--yes?"
+
+"Love?" said Jenny, looking round over her shoulder at Valérie. "Love's
+silly."
+
+Valérie smiled.
+
+The other new friend was Winnie Ambrose--raspberries and cream and
+flaxen hair and dimpled chin and upper lip curling and a snub nose. She
+was one of those girls who never suggest the presence of stays, who
+always wear white blouses of crêpe de chine, cut low round a plump neck.
+They have bangles strung on their arms, and each one possesses a locket
+containing the inadequate portrait of an inadequate young man. But
+Winnie was _very_ nice, always ready for a joke.
+
+The train swept them on northwards. Once, as it slowed to make a sharp
+curve, Jenny looked out of the window and saw the great express, like a
+line of dominoes with its black and white carriages. There was not much
+to look at, however, as they cleft the gray December airs, as they
+roared through echoing stations into tunnels and out again into the
+dreary light. They ate lunch, and Jenny drank Bass out of a bottle and
+spluttered and made queer faces and wrinkled up her gay, deep eyes in
+laughter unquenchable. They swept on through Lancashire with its
+chimneys and furnaces and barren heaps of refuse. They swung clear of
+these huddled populations and, through the gathering twilight, cut a way
+across the rolling dales of Cumberland. Jenny thought what horrible
+places they were, these sweeping moorland wastes with gray cottages no
+bigger than sheep, with switchback stone walls whence the crows flew as
+the train surged by. She was glad to be in the powdered, scented, untidy
+compartment in warmth and light. The child grew tired and, leaning her
+head on Valérie's breast, went to sleep; she was drowsily glad when
+Valérie kissed her, murmuring in a whisper melodious as the splash of
+the Saône against the warm piers of her native Lyons:
+
+"Comme elle est gentille, la gosse."
+
+Pillowed thus, Jenny spent the last hours of the journey with the dark
+crossing of the border, waking in the raw station air, waking to bundles
+being pulled down and papers gathered together and porters peering in
+through the door. Madame Aldavini said before she left them:
+
+"To-morrow, girls, eleven o'clock at the theater."
+
+And all the girls said, "Yes, Madame," and packed themselves into a cab
+with velvet cushions of faded peacock-blue and a smell of damp straps.
+There they sat with bundles heaped on their knees, and were jolted
+through the cold Glasgow streets. It was Saturday night, and all the
+curbstones were occupied by rocking drunkards, except in one wide street
+very golden and beautiful, from which they turned off to climb
+laboriously up the cobbles of a steep hill and pull up at last before a
+tall house in a tall, dark, quiet road.
+
+They walked up the stairs and rang the bell. The big door swung open, to
+Jenny's great surprise, apparently without human agency. They stood in
+the well of a great winding stone staircase, while a husky voice called
+from somewhere high above them to come up.
+
+They had a large sitting-room, too full of hangings and overburdened
+with photographs of rigid groups; but the fire was blazing up the
+chimney and the lamp was throwing a warm and comfortable halo on the
+ceiling. Jenny peeped out of the window and could see the black roofs of
+Glasgow in the starlight. They had tea when they arrived, with porridge,
+which Jenny disliked extremely, and oatcakes which made her cough; and
+after tea they unpacked. It was settled that Jenny should sleep with
+Valérie. The bedroom was cosy with slanting bits of ceiling flung
+anywhere, like a box of toy bricks put carelessly away. The bed, to
+Jenny's enormous diversion, was buried in a deep alcove.
+
+"Whoever heard?" she asked.
+
+"We'll be all to ourselves," said Valérie in her deep voice; and Jenny
+felt a thrill at the idea of lying snug in the alcove with Valérie's
+warm arm about her.
+
+The sitting-room looked a very different place when the four girls had
+scattered over it their various belongings, when they had flung all the
+antimacassars into the corner in a cold white heap, when they had stuck
+a fan-shaped line of photographs round the mirror over the
+mantelpiece--photographs of fluffy-haired girls in gay dancing
+attitudes, usually inscribed "Yours sincerely Lottie, or Amy, or Madge,
+or Violet."
+
+When she had pulled off most of the blobs on the valance of the
+mantelpiece and examined all the photographs, Jenny sat down on the
+white rabbit-skin rug with her back to the high iron fender and looked
+at her companions--at Winnie sprawling over a shining leather arm-chair,
+twisting one of the buttons that starred its round back, while she read
+"Will He Remember?"; at Eileen, writing home to Camberwell; at Valérie,
+as deep in a horse-hair sofa as the shape of it allowed, smoking a
+cigarette. She thought, while she sat there in the warmth and quiet, how
+jolly it was to be quit of the eternal sameness of Hagworth Street. She
+almost felt that Islington no longer existed, as if up here in this
+Glasgow flat she were in a new world.
+
+"This is nice," she said. "Give us a cigarette, Val, there's a duck."
+
+Bedtime came not at any fixed boring moment, but suddenly, with all the
+rapture of an inspiration. Bedtime came with Valérie taking, it seemed,
+hours to undress as she wandered round the room in a maze of white lace
+and pink ribbons. Jenny lay buried in the deep feather bed, watching her
+shadow on the crooked ceiling, following with drowsy glances the shadowy
+combing of what, in reflection, seemed an absolute waterfall of hair.
+
+Then suddenly Valérie blew out the candlelight.
+
+"Oo-er!" cried Jenny. "We aren't going to sleep in the dark?"
+
+"Of course we are, kiddie," said Valérie; and somehow darkness did not
+matter when Jenny could sail off into sleep clasping Valérie's soft hot
+hand.
+
+Gray morning came with the stillness of Sunday in Glasgow, with
+raindrops pattering against the window in gusts of wind, with Mrs.
+McMeikan and breakfast on a tray.
+
+"This is grand, isn't it?" said Jenny, and "Oo-er!" she cried, as she
+upset the teapot all over the bed.
+
+Then the bell had to be rung.
+
+"Whoever heard of a bell-rope in such a place?" said Jenny, and pulled
+it so hard that it broke. Then, of course, there was loud laughter, and
+when Mrs. McMeikan came in again Jenny buried herself in the bedclothes
+and Valérie had to explain what had happened.
+
+"Eh, the wild wee lassie," said the landlady, and the high spirits of
+the child, hidden by the patchwork quilt in the deep alcove, won the old
+Scotswoman's heart, so that whatever mischief Jenny conceived and
+executed under her roof was forgiven because she was a "bonnie wean, and
+awfu' sma', she was thenkin', to be sent awa' oot tae airn her ain
+living."
+
+There was a rehearsal on Sunday because Madame Aldavini had to go back
+on Sunday night to London. The four girls walked along the gray Glasgow
+streets in the sound of the many footsteps of pious Presbyterian
+worshipers, until they arrived at the stage door of the Court Theater.
+Jenny asked, "Any letters for me?" in imitation of Valérie and Winnie.
+
+"Any letters for Raeburn--for Pearl, I should say?"
+
+Of course there was not so much as a postcard, but Jenny felt the
+prouder for asking.
+
+The rehearsal of "Jack and the Beanstalk" went off with the usual air of
+incompleteness that characterizes the rehearsal of a pantomime. Jenny
+found that the Aldavini Quartette were to be Jumping Beans; and Winnie
+and Jenny and Valérie and Eileen jumped with a will and danced until
+they shook the boards of the Court Theater's stage. Madame Aldavini went
+back to London, having left many strict injunctions with the three older
+girls never to let Jenny out of their keeping. But Jenny was not
+ambitious to avoid their vigilance. It was necessary, indeed,
+occasionally, to slap Eileen's face and teach her, but Winnie and
+Valérie were darlings. Jenny had no desire to talk to men, and if lanky
+youths with large tie-pins saluted her by the stage door, she passed on
+with her nose as high as a church tower. And when, lured on by Jenny's
+long brown legs and high-brown boots and trim blue sailor dress, they
+ventured to remove the paper from their cuffs and follow in long-nosed,
+fishy-eyed pursuit, Jenny would catch hold of Valérie's hand and swing
+along in front of them as serenely cold as the Huntress Moon sailing
+over the heads of Boeotian swineherds.
+
+Those were jolly days in Glasgow, sweet secluded days of virginal
+pastimes and young enjoyment. They danced at night in their green
+dresses and scarlet bean-blossom caps. They were encored by the shrewd
+Glasgow audience, who recognized the beauty and freshness and spirit of
+the four Jumping Beans. They walked through the gray Glasgow weather
+down Sauchiehall Street and stared at the gay shopwindows. They walked
+through wind-swept Kelvin Grove. They laughed at nothing, and gossiped
+about nothing, and ate large teas and smoked cigarettes and lolled in
+arm-chairs and read absurd stories and listened to Mrs. McMeikan's
+anecdotes with hardly concealed mirth. Nor did Mrs. McMeikan care a jot
+how much they laughed at her, "sae bonny was their laughter."
+
+Everybody in the pantomime was very kind and very pleasant to Jenny.
+Everybody gave her chocolates and ribbons and photographs signed "Yours
+sincerely Lottie, or Amy, or Madge, or Violet." Everybody wanted her to
+be as happy and jolly as possible. She was a great favorite with the
+gallery boys, who whistled very loudly whenever she came on. She was
+contented and merry. She did not feel that Winnie or Valérie or even
+Eileen was trying to keep her down. She knew they were loyal and was
+fond of them, but not so fond of them as they of her. Eileen, however,
+thought she should be snubbed now and then.
+
+Jenny was at a critical age when she went to Glasgow. It was the time of
+fluttering virgin dreams, of quickening pulses and heartbeats
+unaccountable. If Jenny had been at a high school, it would have been
+the age of girlish adorations for mistresses. She might have depended
+on the sanctifying touch of some older woman with sympathy. She might
+have adopted the cloistral view of human intercourse, that light-hearted
+world of little intimate jokes and sentimental readings and pretty
+jealousies for the small advantage of sitting next some reverend mother
+or calm and gentle sister.
+
+However, it is not to be supposed that the transition from childhood to
+womanhood was altogether unmarked. There were bound to be moments of
+indestructible languor when she was content to be adored herself. Had
+she met Abelard, Abelard could have made her an Heloise. They existed
+truly enough, the passionate fevers and deep ardors of adolescence. They
+flowed up in momentary caresses and died as soon in profound shynesses.
+Now was the time to feed the sensuous imagination with poetry and lull
+the frightened soul with music. She should have been taken to enchanted
+lands.
+
+But there was nothing.
+
+Here was a child worthy of a Naiad's maternity, if grace of limb counted
+immortally, and when for the first time she was given the world to look
+at, her finite vision and infinite aspirations were never set in
+relation to each other. She was given a telescope, and nobody had taken
+off the shutter. Her soul was a singing bird in a cage. Freedom was the
+only ideal. She might have been moved by Catholicism, but nobody gave it
+to her. It may be idle to speculate on the effect of incense-haunted
+chapels, of blazing windows and the dim accoutrements of Mass. Perhaps,
+after all, they would merely have struck her comically. Perhaps she was
+a true product of London generations, yet maybe her Cockney wit would
+have glittered more wonderfully in a richer setting--haply in Lacedæmon,
+with sea-green tunic blown to the outline of slim beauty by each wind
+coming southward from Thessaly.
+
+Anyway, it was impossible to think of her enticed by the ready-made
+gallantries of raw-boned Sawnies by the stage door of the Court Theater.
+Her temperament found greater satisfaction in Valérie's more beautifully
+expressed adoration. The latter may not have roused her to encounter
+life, may not have supplied a purpose, a hope or a determination, but at
+least it kept her contented in the shy season of maidenhood. It helped
+to steer her course between incidental viciousness and eventful passion.
+She went back to Hagworth Street with no red thorns of impure
+associations to fester and gather. The days went by very quickly without
+any great adventures except the dance on the occasion of the pantomime's
+last night. Jenny was not invited to this entertainment. She was
+supposed to be too young, and her mouth went dry with disappointment and
+a lump of unshed tears came into her throat, and it almost seemed as if
+her heart must stop.
+
+"I ought to go; oh, it is a shame; I ought to go."
+
+Jenny went up of her own accord to the stage-manager himself and said:
+
+"Please, Mr. Courtenay-Champion, why aren't I asked to the dance?"
+
+"Good Lord!" said Mr. Courtenay-Champion. "A kid like you? No, my dear,
+you're too young. It goes on too late. After the show, some hours."
+
+But Jenny sobbed and cried, and was so clearly heart-broken by the idea
+of being left out that Mr. Courtenay-Champion changed his mind and told
+her she could come. She was instantly transfigured as by dazzling
+sunlight after days of mist. It was to be a splendid dance, with jellies
+and claret-cup, and Jenny went with Valérie to buy the widest pink sash
+that ever was known, and tied it in the largest pink bow that ever was
+seen. She danced every single dance and even waltzed twice with the
+great comedian, Jimmy James, and, what is more, told him he couldn't
+dance, to his great delight, which seems to show that Mr. James had a
+sense of humor in addition to being a great comedian.
+
+It really was a splendid evening, and perhaps the most splendid part of
+it was lying in bed with Valérie and talking over with her all the
+partners and taking them off with such excited demonstration of their
+methods that the bed became all untucked and had to be made over again
+before they could finally settle themselves down to sleep.
+
+In February Jenny was back again in Hagworth Street, with memories of
+"Jack and the Beanstalk" fading slowly like the colors of a sunset. She
+had enjoyed her personal success in Glasgow, but already success was
+beginning to prove itself an empty prize--a rainbow bubble easily burst.
+The reason is obvious. Jenny had never been taught to concentrate her
+mind. She had no power of retrospective analysis. The applause endured a
+little while in her meditations, but gradually died away in the
+occupations of the present. She could not secure it as the basis of a
+wider success on the next occasion. She began to ask: "What's the good
+of anything?" Within a few weeks of the resumption of ordinary life, the
+Glasgow theater had become like a piece of cake that one eats
+unconsciously, then turns to find and discovers not. She was no farther
+forward on the road to independence. She became oppressed by the dead
+weight of futurity.
+
+At home, too, there was a very real repression, which she grew to hate
+more and more deeply on each occasion of its exercise. A breath of
+maternal interference and she would fly into a temper--a scowling,
+chair-tilting, door-slamming rage. She would fling herself out of the
+house with threats never to return. One day when she was reproached with
+staying out longer than she was allowed, she rushed out again and
+disappeared. Her mother, in despair, went off to invoke the aid of
+Madame Aldavini, who wisely guessed that Jenny would be found with
+Valérie Duval. There she was, indeed, in Valérie's rooms in Soho, not at
+all penitent for her misbehavior, but sufficiently frightened by
+Madame's threat of expulsion to come back home without argument.
+
+Freedom was still Jenny's religion. She was much about with boys, but
+still merely for the life and entertainment of their company, for no
+sentimental adventures. It would have been wiser to let her alone, but
+nobody with whom she was brought into contact could realize the
+sexlessness of the child. The truest safeguard of a girl's virtue is
+familiarity with the aggregated follies of masculine adolescence.
+
+Jenny fought her way desperately into her seventeenth year, winning
+freedom in jots. She liked most of anything to go to Collin's Music-hall
+with a noisy gang of attendant boys, not one of whom was as much a
+separate realized entity to her as even an individual sheep is to a
+shepherd. Alfie came home in the summer before her seventeenth birthday
+and abetted cordially her declarations of independence. May, too, was
+implicated in every plot for the subversion of parental authority.
+
+Mrs. Raeburn worried terribly about her daughter's future. She ascribed
+her hoyden behavior to the influence of the stage.
+
+"We don't want your theatrical manners here," she would say.
+
+"Well, who put me on the stage?" Jenny would retort.
+
+In the Christmastide after Alfie came home Jenny went to Dublin in a
+second Aldavini Quartette, and enjoyed herself more than ever. She had
+now none of the desire for seclusion that marked her Glasgow period, no
+contempt of man in the abstract, and was soon good friends with a
+certain number of young officers whom she regarded much as she regarded
+the boys of Islington.
+
+One of them, Terence O'Meagh, of the Royal Leinster Fusiliers, made her
+his own special property; he was a charming good-looking, conceited
+young Irishman, as susceptible to women as most of his nation, and
+endowing the practice of love with as little humor as most Celts. He
+used to wait at the stage door and drive her back to her lodgings in his
+own jaunting car. He used to give her small trinkets so innocently
+devoid of beauty as almost to attract by their artlessness. He was a
+very young officer who had borne the blushing honors of a scarlet tunic
+for a very short while, so that, in addition to the Irishman's naïve
+assumption of universal popularity, he suffered from the sentiment that
+a soldier's red coat appeals to every woman.
+
+Jenny, with her splendid Cockney irreverence, thought little of Mr.
+O'Meagh, less of his red coat, but a very great deal of the balmy
+February drives past the vivid green meadows of Liffey.
+
+"You know," Terence would say, leaning gracefully over the division of
+the car, "you know, Jenny, our regiment--the 127th of the Line, as we
+call ours--was absolutely cut to pieces at Drieufontein; and at
+Riviersdorp they held the position against two thousand Boers."
+
+"Who cares?" said Jenny.
+
+"You might take a little interest in it."
+
+"Well," said Jenny, "how can I?"
+
+"But you might be interested because, after all, it is my regiment, and
+I'm awfully fond of you, little girl."
+
+"Don't be soppy," Jenny advised him.
+
+"You're so cursedly matter-of-fact."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"So--oh, well, damn it, Jenny, you don't seem to care whether I'm with
+you or not."
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"Any other girl would be fond of me."
+
+"Ah--any other girl would."
+
+"Then why aren't you?"
+
+"Oh, you'll pass in a crowd."
+
+"Dash it, I'm frightfully in love with you," vowed Terence.
+
+"What's the good of spoiling a fine day by being silly?"
+
+"Damn it, nobody else but me would stick your rudeness."
+
+And Terence would sulk, and Jenny would hum, and the jaunting car would
+go jaunting on.
+
+On the last night of the pantomime Mr. O'Meagh called for her as usual,
+and, as they drove off, said:
+
+"Look here, Miss Jenny, you're coming back to my rooms with me
+to-night."
+
+"Am I?" said Jenny. "That's news."
+
+"By Jove, you are!"
+
+"No fear."
+
+"You shall!"
+
+Terence caught hold of her hand.
+
+"Let me go," Jenny said.
+
+"I'm damned if I will. Look here, you know, you can't make a fool of an
+Irishman."
+
+"That's quite right," Jenny agreed.
+
+"When an Irishman says he'll have a thing, he'll have it."
+
+"Well, you won't have Jenny Pearl."
+
+"Look here, I've been jolly good to you. I gave you----"
+
+"What?" interrupted Jenny in dangerous tones. "Look!"
+
+She unbuckled a wrist-watch and flung it into the road.
+
+"There's your watch, anyway. Going to get down and pick it up?"
+
+Terence whipped up the horse.
+
+"You little devil, you shall come with me."
+
+Jenny caught hold of the reins.
+
+"Shut up!" said O'Meagh. "Shut up! Don't you know better than that?"
+
+"Well, stop," said Jenny.
+
+The subaltern, in order to avoid a scene, stopped.
+
+"Look here," Jenny told him. "You think yourself a lad, I know, and you
+think girls can't say 'no' to you; but I can, see? You and your little
+cottages for two! Not much!" and Jenny slipped down from the car and
+vanished.
+
+"Men," she said to Winnie Ambrose, the only one left of the Glasgow
+Quartette. "Men! I think men are awful. I do. Really. Conceited! Oh, no;
+it's only a rumor."
+
+It had been arranged by Madame Aldavini that Jenny, on her return from
+Dublin, should join the ballet of the opera at Covent Garden.
+Unfortunately her first appearance in London had to be postponed for a
+year owing to the fact of there being no vacancy. Jenny was
+disheartened. It was useless for Madame Aldavini to assure her that the
+extra year's practice would greatly benefit her dancing. Jenny felt she
+had been practicing since the world was made. She continued to practice
+because there was nothing else to do, but time had quenched the fire of
+inspiration. She was tired of hearing that one day she might, with
+diligence and application, become a Prima Ballerina. She knew she was a
+natural dancer, but Terpischore having endowed her with grace and
+lightness and twinkling feet, left the spirit that could ripen these
+gifts to some other divinity. She had, it is true, escaped the doom of
+an infant prodigy, but it might have been better to blossom as a prodigy
+than to lie fallow when the warmth and glory of the footlights were
+burning without her.
+
+Meanwhile Hagworth Street had not changed much in seventeen years. The
+tall plane-tree at the end was taller. The London County Council, not
+considering it possessed any capacity for decoration, had neglected to
+lop off its head, and, as there was no other tree in sight, did not
+think it worth the trouble of clipping to an urban pattern. Year by year
+it shed its bark and, purged of London vileness, broke in May fresh and
+green and beautiful. In October more leaves pattered down, more leaves
+raced along the gutters than on the night of Jenny's birth. The gas-jets
+burned more steadily in a mantle of incandescent light. This method of
+illumination prevailed indoors as well as outside, shedding arid and
+sickly gleams over the front-parlor of Number Seventeen, shining, livid
+and garish, in the narrow hall. The knob was still missing from the
+bedstead, and for seventeen years Charlie had promised to get a new one.
+Charlie himself had changed very slightly. He still worked for the same
+firm in Kentish Town. He still frequented the "Masonic Arms." He cared
+less for red neckties and seemed smaller than of old. Yet he could drink
+more. If his hair was thinner, his eyebrows, on the other hand, were
+more bushy, because he blew off his old ones in the course of an
+illustrated lecture on the management of gas-stoves. For the constant
+fingering of his ragged moustache, he substituted a pensive manipulation
+of his exceptional eyebrows.
+
+Mr. Vergoe was dead, and most of his property adorned his
+granddaughter's room in Cranbourne Street. She was still a second-line
+girl in the _Corps de Ballet_ of the Orient Palace of Varieties. Jenny,
+however, possessed the picture of the famous dead Columbine. It hung
+above the bed she shared with May, beside a memorial card of the donor
+set in a shining black Oxford frame. The room itself grew smaller every
+year. Jenny could not imagine that once to Edie and herself it had been
+illimitable. Nowadays it seemed to be all mahogany wardrobe, and
+semicircular marble-topped washstand and toilet-table and iron bedstead.
+On the door were many skirts and petticoats. On the walls were
+shrivelled fans with pockets that held curl-papers mostly. There was
+also a clouded photograph of Alfie, Edie, Jenny and May, of which the
+most conspicuous feature was the starched frills of Jenny, those
+historic frills that once, free of petticoats, had seemed a talisman to
+masculinity. The toilet-table was inhabited by a collection of articles
+that presented the most sudden and amazing contrasts. Next to a comb
+that might easily have been rescued from a dustbin was a brush backed
+with silver repoussé. Beside seven broken pairs of nail-scissors was a
+scent-bottle with golden stopper. Jenny's nightgown was daintily
+ribboned and laced, and looked queerly out of place on the pock-marked
+quilt.
+
+Mrs. Purkiss still visited her sister, but Jenny was not allowed to
+associate with Percy or Claude, both more pasty-faced than ever, because
+Percy was going to be a missionary and Claude was suspected of premature
+dissipation, having been discovered kissing the servant in the bathroom.
+
+Mrs. Raeburn, in the jubilee of her age, was still a handsome woman, and
+was admired even by Jenny for her smartness. She still worried about the
+future of her children. She was more than ever conscious of her
+husband's inferiority and laughed over most of the facts of her life.
+May's back, however, and Jenny's perpetual riotousness caused her many
+misgivings. But Alfie was doing well, and Edie seemed happy, making
+dresses over at Brixton. There had been no recurrence of Mr. Timpany,
+and she now viewed that episode much as she would have regarded a
+trifling piece of domestic negligence. As for the Miss Horners, their
+visit had long faded absolutely from her mind. It would have taken a
+very great emotional crisis to inspire such another speech as she made
+to them seventeen years ago. Charlie still snored beside her, as he had
+snored in sequel to seven or eight thousand nightly undressings. She
+still saw to the washing, added up the accounts, bought a new dress in
+the spring and a new bonnet in the autumn. She still meant to read the
+paper this week, but never had time, and every night she hoped that all
+would go smooth. This habit of hope was to her what the candle-lit
+chapter of a Bible with flower-stained pages or counterpane prayers or
+dreams of greatness are to minds differently constituted. Her life was
+by no means drab, for she went often to the theater, and occasionally to
+the saloon bar of a discreet public-house, where, in an atmosphere of
+whisky and Morocco leather, she would sometimes listen to Mrs. Purkiss's
+doubts of Jenny's behavior, but more often tell diverting tales of
+Charlie.
+
+Such was Hagworth Street, when, on a cold Sunday in the front of May,
+Edie came over from Brixton. She looked pale and anxious as she sat for
+a while in the kitchen twisting black kid gloves round her fingers.
+
+"How's Brixton, Edie?" asked her mother.
+
+"Grand."
+
+"You've not been up to see us for a long time."
+
+"No-o-o," agreed the eldest daughter.
+
+"Busy?"
+
+"Not so very. Only you never know when you will be. I'll go upstairs and
+take my things off. Come with us Jenny," she said, turning to her
+sister.
+
+"There's a cheek. Whatever next?"
+
+"Oh, you are hateful! Come on up."
+
+Jenny, with every appearance of unwillingness, followed Edie upstairs,
+and flung herself down on the bed they had once shared.
+
+"Don't be all night," she protested, as she watched Edie staring
+aimlessly at herself in the glass.
+
+"Jenny," said the latter suddenly, "I done it."
+
+"Done what?"
+
+"Myself, I suppose."
+
+"What d'ye mean?"
+
+"You know," said Edie.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know, that's why I'm asking."
+
+"You remember that fellow I was going about with?"
+
+"Bert Harding?"
+
+"Yes, Bert."
+
+"You're never going to marry him, Edie?"
+
+"I got to--if I can."
+
+Jenny sat up on the bed.
+
+"You don't mean----"
+
+"That's right," said Edie.
+
+"Whatever made you?"
+
+"I am a fool," said Edie helplessly.
+
+"Whatever will Alfie say?" Jenny wondered.
+
+"What's it got to do with Alfie?"
+
+"I don't know, only he's very particular. But this Bert of yours, I
+suppose he will marry you?"
+
+"He says so. He says nothing wouldn't stop him."
+
+"Are you mad to marry him?"
+
+"I must."
+
+"But you don't want to?"
+
+"I wouldn't--not if I hadn't got to. I wouldn't marry anybody for a
+bit."
+
+"I wouldn't anyhow," said Jenny decidedly.
+
+"Don't talk silly. I've got to."
+
+"Oh, I do think it's a shame. A pretty girl like you, Edie. Men! Can he
+keep you?--comfortable and all that?"
+
+"He's got enough, and he expects to make a bit more soon, and then
+there's my dressmaking."
+
+"Men!" declared Jenny. "No men for me. I wouldn't trust any man."
+
+"Don't say nothing to mother about it."
+
+"As if I should."
+
+The two sisters went downstairs.
+
+"I'll bring him over soon," said Edie.
+
+"And I'll properly tell him off," said Jenny.
+
+A month went by, and Mr. Albert Harding had many important engagements.
+Another month went by and Edie began to fret.
+
+Jenny went over to Brixton to see her sister.
+
+"Looks as if this marriage was only a rumor," she said.
+
+"He hasn't got the time, not for a week or two."
+
+"What?" exclaimed Jenny.
+
+"He's going to take me to the Canterbury to-morrow. He's all right,
+Jenny. Only he's busy. He is, really."
+
+Jenny, jolting homewards in the omnibus that night, wondered what ought
+to be done. Although she felt to the full the pity of a nice girl like
+Edie being driven into a hasty marriage, no alternative presented itself
+clearly. She thought with quickening heart, so terrible was the fancy,
+how she would act in Edie's place. She would run away out of the world's
+eyes, out of London.
+
+Yet Edie did not seem to mind so much.
+
+The malignity of men enraged her. The selfishness and grossness sickened
+her. Boys were different; but men, with their conceit and lies, were
+beasts. They should never make a fool of her. Never. Never. Then she
+wondered if her mother had been compelled to marry. On no other basis
+could her father be explained. Men were all alike.
+
+Bert Harding, greasy, dark-eyed, like a dirty foreigner. He was
+nice-looking, after a fashion, yes, but even more conceited than most
+men. And Edie had _got_ to marry him.
+
+Alfie was on the doorstep when she reached home.
+
+"You?" she said.
+
+"Come over for the night. Got some business in Islington to-morrow
+morning."
+
+"Alfie, you know Bert Harding?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You've got to make him marry Edie."
+
+"I'll smash his face in if he don't."
+
+"They'll be at the Canterbury to-morrow night."
+
+It was a poor fight in the opinion of the Westminster Bridge Road. Bert
+was overmatched. He was perfectly willing to marry Edie at once, as it
+happened, but Jenny enjoyed seeing one of his dark eyes closed up by her
+brother. Alfie, having done his duty, never spoke to Bert or Edie again.
+
+"However could she have been so mad," said Mrs. Raeburn. "Soft! Soft!
+That's you," she went on, turning on her husband.
+
+"Oh, of course it's me. Everything's me," said Charlie.
+
+"Yes, it is you. You can't say no to a glass of beer and Edie can't say
+no to a man."
+
+"What would you have done, mother," asked Jenny, "if Edie's Bert had
+gone away and left her?"
+
+"She'd never have come inside my house again--not ever again."
+
+"You're funny."
+
+"Funny?" said Mrs. Raeburn. "You try and be funny, and see what
+happens."
+
+"Who cares?" said Jenny. "It wouldn't trouble me. I'm sick of this dog's
+island. But men. Whatever next? Don't you imagine I'll let any man----
+Not much."
+
+"Don't you be too sure, Mrs. Clever," said the mother.
+
+"But I am. I'm positive. Love! There's nothing in it."
+
+"Hark at her," jeered Charlie.
+
+Jenny lay awake in a fury that night. One after another, man in his
+various types passed across the screen of her mind. She saw them all.
+The crimson-jointed, fishy-eyed Glasgow youths winked at her once more.
+The complacent subalterns of Dublin dangled their presents and waited to
+be given her thanks and kisses. Old men, from the recess of childish
+memories, rose up again and leered at her. Her own father, small and
+weak and contemptible, pottered across the line of her mental vision.
+Bert Harding was there, his black boot-button eyes glittering. And to
+that her sister had surrendered herself, to be pawed and mauled about
+and boasted of. Ugh! Suddenly in the middle of her disgust Jenny thought
+she heard a sound under the bed.
+
+"Oo--er, May!" she called out. "May!"
+
+"Whatever is it, you noisy thing?"
+
+"Oo--er, there's a man under the bed! Oh, May, wake up, else we shall
+all be murdered!"
+
+"Who cares?" said May. "Go to sleep."
+
+And just then the Raeburns' big cat, tired of his mouse-hole, came out
+from underneath the bed and walked slowly across the room.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X: _Drury Lane and Covent Garden_
+
+
+To compensate Jenny for her disappointment over Covent Garden, Madame
+Aldavini secured a place for her in the Drury Lane pantomime. She was no
+longer to be the most attractive member of an attractive quartette, but
+one of innumerable girls who changed several times during the evening
+into amazingly complicated dresses, designed not to display individual
+figures, but to achieve broad effects of color and ingenuity.
+
+Straight lines were esteemed above dancing, straight lines of Frenchmen
+or Spaniards in the Procession of Nations, straight lines of Lowestoft
+or Dresden in the Procession of Porcelain, straight lines of
+Tortoise-shell Butterflies or Crimson-underwing Moths in the Procession
+of Insects. Jenny's gay deep eyes were obscured by tricolor flags or the
+spout of a teapot or the disproportionate antennæ of a butterfly. There
+was no individual grace of movement in swinging down the stage in the
+middle of a long line of undistinguished girls. If the audience
+applauded, they applauded a shaft of vivid color, no more
+enthusiastically than they would have clapped an elaborate arrangement
+of limelight. Everything was sacrificed to the cleverness of a merely
+inventive mind. More than ever Jenny felt the waste of academic
+instruction in her art. She had been learning to dance for so many
+years, and there she was beside girls who could neither dance nor move,
+girls who had large features and showy legs and so much cubic space for
+spangles.
+
+But if her personality did not carry over the footlights and reach the
+mighty audience of Drury Lane, behind the scenes it gradually detached
+itself from the huge crowd of girls. Great comedians with great salaries
+condescended to find out her name. Great principal boys with great
+expanses of chest nodded at her over furs. Dainty principal girls with
+dainty tiers of petticoats smiled and said good evening in their
+mincing, genteel, principal girl voices. Even the stage doorkeeper never
+asked her name more than once. Everybody knew Jenny Pearl, except the
+public. So many people told her she was sure to get on that she began to
+be ambitious again, and used to go, without being pressed, to Madame
+Aldavini's for practice. The latter was delighted and prophesied a
+career--a career that should date from her engagement (a real engagement
+this time) at Covent Garden in the spring.
+
+Jenny's popularity at the theater made her more impatient than ever of
+home. She bore less and less easily her mother's attempts to steer her
+course.
+
+"You'll come to grief," Mrs. Raeburn warned her.
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+"A nice mess Edie made of things."
+
+"I'm not Edie. I'm not so soft."
+
+"Why you can't meet some nice young chap, and settle down comfortable
+with a home of your own, I can't think."
+
+"Like Edie, I suppose, and have a pack of kids. One after another. One
+after another. And a husband like Bert, so shocking jealous he can't see
+her look at another man without going on like a mad thing. Not this
+little girl."
+
+Jenny never told her mother that half the attraction of boys' society
+nowadays lay in the delight of making fools of them. If she had told her
+Mrs. Raeburn might not have understood. Jenny was angry that her mother
+should suspect her of being fast. She was sure of her own remoteness
+from passionate temptation. She gloried in her security. She could not
+imagine herself in love, and laughed heartily at girls who did. She was
+engaged to sixteen boys in one year, to not one of whom was vouchsafed
+the light privilege of touching her cheeks. They presented her with
+cheap jewelry, which she never returned on the decease of affection, and
+scarcely wore during its short existence. It was put away in a cigar-box
+in a tangled heap of little petrified hearts.
+
+Mrs. Raeburn, however, who beheld in these despised youths a menace to
+her daughter's character, was never tired of dinning into her ears the
+tale of Edith's disaster. The more she scolded, the more she held a
+watch in her hand when Jenny came back from the theater, the more
+annoying was Jenny, the longer did she delay her evening home-comings.
+
+The fact that Bert and Edie had settled down into commonplace married
+life did not make her regard more kindly the circumstance-impelled
+conjunction. She reproduced in her mental view of the result something
+of her mother's emotion immediately before her own birth. Long ago Mrs.
+Raeburn had settled down into an unsatisfied contentment; long ago she
+had renounced extravagance of hope or thought, merely keeping a hold on
+laughter; but Jenny felt vaguely the waste of life, the waste of love,
+the waste of happiness which such a marriage as Edie's suggested. She
+could not have formulated her impressions. She had never been taught to
+co-ordinate ideas. Her mind was a garden planted with rare shrubs whose
+labels had been destroyed by a careless gardener, whose individual
+existence was lost in a maze of rank weeds. Could the Fates have given
+her a rich revenge for the waste of her intelligence, Jenny should have
+broken the heart of some prominent member of the London School Board,
+should have broken his heart and wrecked his soul, herself meanwhile
+blown on by fortunate gales to Elysium.
+
+May was often told of her sister's crusade, of the slain suitors too
+slow to race with Atalanta.
+
+"Men _are_ fools," Jenny proclaimed.
+
+"Did you see Fred to-night?"
+
+"Yes; he saw me home."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"Nothing much. I told him not to talk because he got on my nerves, and I
+wanted to think about my new costume for the spring."
+
+"Didn't he mind?"
+
+"I can't help his troubles. He asked if he might kiss me."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"I told him after the next turning, and every time we come to the next
+turning I told him the next, till we got to our gate. I said good night,
+and he said, 'What about my kiss?' I said, 'There's a cheek; you don't
+want much'; and he said, 'I give you a brooch last week, Jenny'; and I
+said, 'There's your brooch,' and I threw it down."
+
+"What did he do?"
+
+"He couldn't do much. I trod on it and ran in."
+
+"Somebody'll shoot you one day," prophesied May.
+
+"Who cares? Besides, they haven't got no pluck. Men are walking
+cigarettes, that's what men are."
+
+Drury Lane pantomime came to an end.
+
+"And a good job," said Jenny, "for it isn't a pantomime at all; it's
+more of a Lord Mayor's show."
+
+Jenny now had to rehearse hard for the ballet at Covent Garden, but
+there was still plenty of time in the lengthening spring dusks with
+their silver stars and luminous horizons, to fool plenty of men. There
+was a quarrelsome interlude with Alfie on this account. The latter had
+rashly presented one of his own friends for Jenny's sport. The friend
+had spent most of his income on chocolates and pit-stalls, and at one
+swoop a whole week's salary on a garnet bracelet.
+
+"Look here," said Alfie, "don't you get playing your tricks on any of my
+friends, because I won't have it."
+
+"Hark at him. Hark at Alfred Proud. As if your friends were better than
+anyone else's."
+
+"Well, I'm not going to have fellows say my sister's hot stuff."
+
+"Who did?"
+
+"Never mind who did. Somebody said it."
+
+"Arthur?"
+
+Arthur was the melancholy Romeo introduced by Alfie.
+
+"Somebody said you was to Arthur."
+
+"And what did he do?"
+
+"He was quite disgusted. He walked away."
+
+"Didn't he have a fight over it?"
+
+"No. He said he would have done, only you treated him so off-hand."
+
+"Well, he needn't come whistling outside for me no more."
+
+"You're not going to chuck him?"
+
+"Chuck him? I never had him. He worried me to go out with him. I didn't
+want to go."
+
+"You'll get a bullet in your chest one of these days. You'll get shot."
+
+"Not by one of your massive friends."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Why, there isn't hardly one of 'em as would have the pluck to hold a
+pistol, and not one as would have the money to buy one."
+
+"Well, don't say I never told you."
+
+"You and your friends' pistols!"
+
+With the pride and insolence of maiden youth, Jenny took the London
+streets. Through the transient April rains she came from Islington to
+Covent Garden every day. From King's Cross she rode on the green omnibus
+that jogged by the budding elms of Brunswick Square. Down Guilford
+Street she rode and watched its frail inhabitants coming home with their
+parcels of ribbons and laces. Through Great Queen Street into Long Acre
+she came, sitting along on the front seat of the green omnibus more like
+a rosy lily now than a La France rose--down Long Acre till she came to
+Bow Street, through which she would run to the theater past the groups
+of porters who nodded and smiled at her, for they soon recognized the
+swift one running through the April rains.
+
+Italian opera appealed to Jenny most. She did not care greatly for
+"Tannhäuser," thinking the Venusberg ballet very poor and Venus herself
+a sight. Teutonic extravagance affected her with a slight sense of
+discomfort as of being placed too near trombones. Her training as a
+dancer had begotten a feeling of meticulous form which the expansive
+harmonies of Wagner disconcerted. Jenny did not enjoy suffering a
+sea-change. Novelty and strangeness were to her merely peculiar. Strauss
+would have bored her, not as Brahms might have bored her to somnolence,
+but as an irritating personality bores one to rudeness or sudden flight.
+To speculate how far it might have been advisable to hang her
+intelligence with Gothic tapestries is not worth while. Probably the
+imposition of decorated barbarism on her lucid and sensitive enjoyment
+of Verdi would have obscured the small windows of her soul with gloomy
+arras. Notwithstanding her education at the board school, she had a
+view, and it was better she should preserve an instinct for a sanity
+that was sometimes pathos rather than, in the acquirement of an
+epileptic appreciation, she should lose what was, after all, a classical
+feeling in her sensuous love of obvious beauty.
+
+The sugar-plums of Italian opera melted innocently in her mouth, leaving
+behind them nothing but a memory of sweetness, as one steps from a
+garden of shaded bird-song with a thought of music. Wagner was more
+intoxicating, but bequeathed no limpid exultation to the heart of the
+wearied listener. Moreover, she had a very real sense of being a square
+peg in a round hole when she and the other minions of Venus tripped
+round the frequent rocks of Venusberg. It was as if a confectioner had
+stuck a shepherdess of pink icing on the top of a plum-pudding. Jenny
+felt, in her own words, that it was all unnatural. There was nothing of
+Walpurgis in their stereotyped allurement. It was Bobbing Joan in
+Canterbury Close. The violins might wail through the darkened opera
+house, but an obese Tannhäuser caught by the wiles of an adipose Venus
+during the inexpressive seductions of an Italian ballet was silly; the
+poses to be sustained were fatiguing and ineffective. More fatiguing
+still was Jenny's almost unendurable waiting as page while the
+competitors sang to Elizabeth. There were four pages in purple velvet
+tunics. Jenny looked her part, but the other three looked like Victoria
+plums. The one scene in German opera that she really enjoyed was the
+Valkyries' ride, when she and a few selected girls were strapped high up
+to the enchanted horses and rocked exhaustingly through the terrific
+clamor.
+
+But these excursions into Gothic steeps among the distraught populations
+of the north were not the main feature of the opera season. They were a
+_tour de force_ of rocks in a dulcet enclosure. Over Covent Garden hung
+the magic of an easy and opulent decoration. It sparkled from the tiaras
+in the grand circle. It flashed from the tie-pins of the basses, from
+the rings of the tenors. It breathed on the oceanic bosoms of the
+contraltos. It trembled round the pleated hips of the sopranos.
+Everything was fat--a pasha's comfortable dream.
+
+Jenny, being little and svelte, was distressed by the prevalent
+sumptuousness. A fine figure began to seem a fine ambition.
+
+"My dear child, you are thin," some gracious prima donna would murmur
+richly just before she tripped on to the stage to play consumptive Mimi.
+
+Jenny could not see that she was advancing to fame at Covent Garden. Nor
+was she, indeed, but Madame Aldavini tried to console her by insisting
+upon the valuable experience and pointing out the products of success
+that surrounded her. Covent Garden was only a stepping-stone, Madame
+reminded her.
+
+Here she was at seventeen without a chance to display her
+accomplishments. It was more acting than dancing at Covent Garden.
+Jenny, too, was always chosen for such voiceless parts as were
+important. Some of these she did not like. In Rigoletto, for instance,
+Previtale, the great singer, expressed a wish that she should play the
+girl in the sack whom he was to fondle. Jenny did not like being
+fondled. Other girls would have loved the conspicuous attractions of
+Previtale, but Jenny thought his breath was awful, as indeed it was.
+
+Her principal friend at Covent Garden was a girl called Irene, or rather
+spelled Irene, for she was always called Ireen. Irene Dale was a mixture
+of the odd and the ordinary in her appearance. At first glance she
+seemed the commonplace type produced in hundreds by English _coulisses_.
+Perhaps the expression of her face in repose first suggested a
+possibility of distinction. The intensely blue eyes in that circumstance
+had a strange, listless ardor, as if she were dreaming of fiery moments
+fled long ago. The blue eyes were enhanced by hair, richly brown as
+drifted leaves under the sunlight. Her mouth was prettiest when she was
+being pleasantly teased. Her nose came to an end, and then began again.
+Her chin was deeply cleft and her complexion full of real roses. In the
+company of Jenny, Irene gave an impression of slowness; not that Jenny,
+except when late for rehearsal, ever seemed in a hurry, but with her
+there was always the suggestion of a tremulous agility. Irene had been
+at Madame Aldavini's school, where she and Jenny in their childhood had
+wasted a considerable amount of time in romping, but, since they never
+happened to go on tour together, they never achieved a girlish
+friendship until at Covent Garden they found themselves dressing next to
+each other.
+
+Jenny tried to inspire Irene with the hostility to men felt by herself.
+But Irene, although she enjoyed the lark, had a respect for men at the
+bottom of it all, and would not always support Jenny in the latter's
+freely expressed contempt. While she was at Covent Garden, Irene met a
+young man, unhealthily tall, who made much of her and gave her expensive
+rings, and for a fancy of his own took her to a fashionable milliner's
+and dressed her in short skirts. Jenny had heard something of Irene's
+Danby and was greatly annoyed by the latter's unsympathetic influence.
+
+"Your Danby," she would protest. "Whatever can you see in him? Long
+idiot!"
+
+"My Danby's a gentleman," said Irene.
+
+"Well, I think he looks terrible. Why, he wears his teeth outside."
+
+Then Jenny, meeting Irene and her Danby in Leicester Square, beheld her
+friend in the childish costume.
+
+"Oh, sight!" she called out.
+
+"You are rude," said Irene.
+
+"You're a very rude little girl," said Danby; "but will you come and
+have a drink with us?"
+
+"No, thanks," said Jenny, and passed on coldly. That evening she
+attacked Irene in the dressing-room.
+
+"To let a man make such a shocking sight of you!"
+
+"He likes to see me in short skirts."
+
+"Whatever for? And those boots!"
+
+"He wants me to marry him," declared Irene.
+
+"Marry you? That's only a rumor, young Irene. I've properly rumbled your
+Danby. Marry you! I don't think."
+
+"He is when he comes back from Paris, and he said you were a very bad
+example for me."
+
+"Crushed!" said Jenny in mock humility. Then she went on, "Yes, you and
+your Parises. Any old way, you can tell Tin Ribs from me I should be
+ashamed to make a girl I was fond of look such a terrible sight."
+
+"His brother said he'd like to be introduced to you."
+
+"Yes; I daresay. Tin Ribs the Second, I suppose. No, thanks, not this
+little girl."
+
+London deepened into summer, and the golden people coming out of Covent
+Garden seemed scattered with star dust from the prodigal June stars,
+while the high moon made of Jenny a moonbeam as, in white piqué, she sat
+in the front of the green omnibus going home.
+
+These were happy days at Covent Garden, and when the season ended Jenny
+was sorry. She did not enjoy Yarmouth with its swarming sands and
+goat-carriages and dust and fleas and switchback flung down on the
+barren coast like a monstrous skeleton. She was glad to come back to
+London in the effulgence of a fine September; glad to rehearse again
+for the autumn opera season, and pleased, when that was over, to return
+to Drury Lane for the Christmas pantomime.
+
+After her second spring season of opera was over she and Irene discussed
+the future. Danby had retired to Paris on his business. His rings
+sparkled unseen in the safe of a Camden Town pawnbroker, although the
+whisky and soda which they served to buy had long ceased to sparkle for
+Mrs. Dale. Irene said she was tired of being in three months and out
+three months.
+
+"I think we ought to go to the Orient, Jenny."
+
+"I don't care where we go," said Jenny.
+
+"Well, let's."
+
+"All right. I'll meet you Camden Town station to-morrow. Don't you be
+late."
+
+"No fear."
+
+"Oh, no, Mrs. Punctual, you're never late!" scoffed Jenny.
+
+"Well, I won't be to-morrow."
+
+On the following morning Jenny dressed herself up to impress the
+ballet-master of the Orient, and arrived in good time at Camden Town
+station. Irene was nowhere in sight. Jenny waited half an hour. People
+began to stare at the sprays of lilac in her large round hat. Really,
+they were looking at the blue facets of her eyes and her delicate,
+frowning eyebrows. But Jenny, feeling herself a-blush, thought it was
+the lilac, thought her placket was undone, thought there was a hole in
+her stocking, became thoroughly hot and self-conscious.
+
+She waited another blushful quarter of an hour. Then, thinking that
+Irene must surely have mistaken the meeting-place, she called at the
+shop in Kentish Town where her father worked and asked him if he'd seen
+Irene.
+
+"Irene Dale?" said Charlie.
+
+"Yes, you know."
+
+"Haven't you seen her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why, she was in here asking for you. She's been waiting outside Kentish
+Town Station."
+
+"That's Mrs. Brains all over. Ta-ta!"
+
+Jenny dashed off to Kentish Town, where she caught Irene on the verge of
+departure. Most of the way to the Orient they argued which was right.
+
+When they reached the famous theater of varieties, Irene said she was
+afraid to go in.
+
+"Who cares?" said Jenny. "If they don't want us, they won't eat us, any
+way."
+
+Monsieur Corontin, the Maître de Ballet, interviewed them in his little
+room that was hidden away at the end of one of the innumerable passages.
+He looked at Jenny curiously.
+
+"Dance, please, miss."
+
+Jenny danced as well as she could in the diminutive room.
+
+"Now, please, miss," he said to Irene, who also danced.
+
+"You are engaged," said Mr. Corontin.
+
+"Both?" asked Jenny.
+
+"Both of you."
+
+They lost themselves several times in the course of their descent.
+
+"What an unnatural place," said Jenny. "Gee! How many more stairs? I
+suppose we're ballet girls now."
+
+At home that evening Charlie remonstrated with his daughter for
+intruding upon him at Kentish Town.
+
+"Don't come asking me for your flash friends," he said. "Why, the men
+wondered who you were."
+
+"Didn't they know I was your daughter?"
+
+"I tried to pretend you wasn't, but one of 'em heard you calling me
+dad."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"What did he say? He said, 'Charlie, is your daughter a---- princess?'"
+
+"Well, you ought to have been very proud," said Jenny.
+
+"Proud, with all the men in the shop laughing at me? Why, they'll think
+I've no business to be working."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"And don't you never recognize me in the street," went on Charlie.
+
+"Why ever not?"
+
+"Well, look at you; look at your hat. People, I know, wonders whatever
+on earth you are."
+
+"Oh, my own father's ashamed of me now; and what about you? Beer and
+bed's all you think about."
+
+Jenny thought she would go and see Lilli Vergoe, in Cranbourne Street,
+and tell her of the engagement.
+
+Lilli sat with her feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a cigarette.
+
+"I've joined the ballet," said Jenny.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"At the Orient."
+
+"You won't like it."
+
+"Who cares? I sha'n't stay if I don't."
+
+"Yes, you will. You'll stay. Everybody stays in the Orient. I've stayed
+there twelve years, and I'm still a second-line girl. You'll stay twelve
+years and, if you don't get fat, you'll still be a second-line boy."
+
+"What about if I get married?"
+
+"You'll still stay."
+
+"You'll give me a headache, you and your staying. I intend to enjoy
+myself. You're worse than a wet week, you are."
+
+Jenny was standing by the window looking down into Cranbourne Street
+baking in the July heat.
+
+"Isn't it shocking hot?" said Lilli.
+
+"I think summer's simply lovely," Jenny answered.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI: _The Orient Palace of Varieties_
+
+
+The Orient Palace of Varieties rose like a cliff from the drapery shops
+of Piccadilly. On fine summer dusks, in a mist of golden light, it
+possessed a certain magic of gayety; seemed to capture something of the
+torch-lit merriment of a country fair. As one loitered on the island,
+lonely and meditative, the Orient was alluring, blazed upon the vision
+like an enchanted cave, or offered to the London wanderer a fancy of the
+scents and glossy fruits and warblers of the garden where Camaralzaman
+lost Badoura; and in autumn, stained by rosy sunsets, the theater
+expressed the delicate melancholy of the season. But when the rain
+dripped monotonously, when fogs transformed the town, when London was
+London vast and gray, the Orient became unreal like the bedraggled
+palaces of an exhibition built to endure for a little while. After all,
+it was an exotic piece of architecture, and evoked an atmosphere of
+falseness, the falseness of an Indian gong in a Streatham hall. Yet
+fifty years it had stood without being rebuilt. In addition to having
+seen two generations pass away, something in the character of its
+entertainment, in the lavishness of its decoration, lent it the sacred
+permanence of a mausoleum, the mausoleum of mid-Victorian amusement.
+
+The Orient did not march with the times, rising from insignificance. It
+never owned a chairman who announced the willingness of each successive
+comedian to oblige with a song. Old men never said they remembered the
+Orient in the jolly old days, for they could not have forgotten it. In
+essentials it remained the same as ever. Dancers had gone; beauties had
+shrivelled; but their ghosts haunted the shadowy interior. The
+silver-footed _coryphées_ now kept lodging-houses; the swan-like
+Ballerinas wore elastic stockings; but their absence was filled by
+others: they were as little missed as the wave that has broken. The lean
+old vanities quizzed and ogled the frail ladies of the Promenade and
+sniffed the smoke-wreathed air with a thought of pleasures once worth
+enjoyment. They spent now an evening of merely sentimental dissipation,
+but because it was spent at the Orient, not entirely wasted; for the
+unchanged theater testified to the reality of their youth. It may not
+have been able to rejuvenate them, but, as by a handkerchief that
+survives the departure of its owner, their senses were faintly
+stimulated.
+
+The Orient was proud because it did not enter into competition with any
+other house of varieties; preened itself upon a cosmopolitan programme.
+With the snobbishness of an old city firm, it declined to advertise its
+ware with eye-arresting posters, and congratulated itself on the
+inability to secure new clients. Foreigners made up a large proportion
+of the audience, and were apparently contented by equestrian mistresses
+of the _haute école_, by bewildering assemblages of jugglers, even by
+continental mediocrities for the sake of hearing their native tongue.
+They did not object to interminable wire-acts, and put up with
+divination feats of the most exhausting dullness. After all, these
+incidental turns must occur; but the ballets were the feature of the
+evening. For many who visited the Orient, the stream of prostitutes
+ebbing and flowing upon the Promenade was enough. Yet the women of the
+Orient Promenade would strike a cynic with uneasiness.
+
+Under the stars, the Piccadilly courtesans affect the onlooker less
+atrociously. Night lends a magic of softness to their fretful beauty.
+The sequins lose their garishness; the painted faces preserve an
+illusion of reality. Moonlight falls gently on the hollow cheek;
+kindles a spark of youth in the leaden eye. The Piccadilly courtesans
+move like tigers in a tropic gloom with velvet blazonries and a stealthy
+splendor that masks the hunger driving them out to seek their prey. On
+the Orient Promenade, the finer animalism has vanished; it was never
+more than superficially æsthetic. The daughters of pleasure may still be
+tigers, but they are naphtha-lit, pacing backwards and forwards in a
+cage. They all appear alike. Their hats are all too large, their figures
+are too brutal, their cheeks too lifeless. They are automatic machines
+of lust waiting to be stirred into action by pennies.
+
+Under the stars they achieve a pictorial romance; but on the carpet of
+the Promenade, they are hard and heartless and vile. Their eyes are
+coins; their hands are purses. At their heels patter old men like
+unhealthy lap-dogs; beefy provincials stare at them, their foreheads
+glistening. Above all the frangipani and patchouli and opoponax and
+trèfle incarnat steals the rank odor of goats. The orchestra thunders
+and crashes down below; the comfortable audience lean back in the
+stalls; the foreigners jabber in the gallery; the Orient claque
+interrupts its euchre with hired applause. The corks pop; the soda
+splashes; money chinks; lechery murmurs; drunkards laugh; and down on
+the stage Jenny Pearl dances.
+
+The night wears on. The women come in continually from the wet streets.
+They surge in the cloak-room, quarrel over carrion game, blaspheme,
+fight and scratch. A door in the cloak-room (locked of course) leads
+into the passage outside the dressing-room, where Jenny changes five or
+six times each night. Every foul oath and every vile experience and
+every detestable adventure is plainly heard by twenty ladies of the
+ballet.
+
+Dressing-room number forty-five was a long, low room, with walls of
+whitewashed brick. There was one window, seldom opened. There was no
+electric light, and the gas-jets gave a very feeble illumination, so
+feeble that everybody always put on too much grease paint in their fear
+of losing an effect. The girls dressed on each side of the room at a
+wide deal board with forms to sit upon. There was a large wardrobe in
+one corner, and next to Jenny's place an open sink. The room was always
+dark and always hot. There were about eighty stone stairs leading up to
+it from the stage, and at least half a dozen ascents in the course of
+the evening. The dresser was a blowsy old Irish woman, more obviously
+dirty than the room, and there were two ventilators, which gave a
+perpetual draught of unpleasant air. The inspectors of the London County
+Council presumably never penetrated as far as Room 45, a fact which
+seems to show that the extent of municipal interference has been much
+exaggerated.
+
+The dressing-rooms were half on one side of the stage, half on the
+other. Those on the side nearer to the stage-door were less unpleasant.
+The architect evidently believed in the value of first impressions.
+Anybody venturing into either warren without previous acquaintanceship
+would have been bewildered by the innumerable rooms and passages, tucked
+away in every corner and branching off in every direction. Some of the
+former seemed to have been inhabited for years. One in particular
+contained an ancient piano, two daguerrotypes and a heap of mouldering
+stuffs. It might have been the cell where years ago a Ballerina was
+immured for a wrong step. It existed like a monument to the despair of
+ambition.
+
+The Orient stifled young life. The _Corps de Ballet_ had the engulfing
+character of conventual vows. When a girl joined it, she cut herself off
+from the world. She went there fresh, her face a mist of roses, hope
+burning in her heart, fame flickering before her eyes. In a few years
+she would inevitably be pale with the atmosphere, with grinding work and
+late hours. She would find it easy to buy spirits cheaply in the canteen
+underneath the stage. She would stay in one line, it seemed, forever.
+She would not dance for joy again.
+
+When Jenny went to the Orient first, she did not intend to stay long.
+She told the girls this, and they laughed at her. She did not know how
+soon the heavy theater would become a habit; she did not realize what
+comfort exists in the knowledge of being permanently employed. But not
+even the Orient could throttle Jenny. She was not the daughter and
+granddaughter of a ballet girl. She had inherited no traditions of
+obedience. She never became a marionette to be dressed and undressed and
+jigged, horribly and impersonally. She yielded up her ambition, but she
+never lost her personality. When, soon after her arrival, the Maître de
+Ballet took her in his dark little corner and pinched her arm, she
+struck him across the mouth, vowed she would tell the manager, and burnt
+up his conceit with her spitfire eyes. He tried again later on, and
+Jenny told his wife, a yellow-faced, fat Frenchwoman. Then he gave her
+up, and, being an artist, bore her no malice, but kept her in the first
+line of boys.
+
+It is not to be supposed that the eighty or ninety ladies of the ballet
+were unhappy. On the contrary, they were very happy, and, so far as it
+accorded with the selfishness of a limited company, they were well
+looked after. The managing director called them "Children," and was
+firmly convinced that he treated them as children. Actually, he treated
+them as dolls, and in the case of girls well into the thirties, with
+some of the sentimental indulgence lavished on old broken dolls. Perhaps
+it was the crowd of men who waited every night at the end of the long,
+narrow court that led from Jermyn Street down to the Orient stage door,
+which has helped to preserve the vulgar and baseless tradition of
+frailty still sedulously propagated. Every night, about half-past
+eleven, the strange mixture of men waited for the gradual exodus of the
+ladies of the ballet. A group of men, inherently the same, had stood
+thus on six nights of the week for more than fifty years.
+
+They had stood there with Dundreary whiskers, in rakish full capes and
+strapped overalls. They had waited there with the mutton-chop whiskers
+and ample trousers of the 'seventies. Down the court years ago had come
+the beauties, with their striped stockings and swaying crinolines and
+velvety chignons. Down the court they had tripped in close-fitting
+pleated skirts a little later, and later still with the protruding
+bustles and skin-tight sleeves of the 'eighties. They had taken the
+London starlight with the balloon sleeves of the mid-'nineties. They
+took the starlight now, as sweet and tender as the fairs of long ago.
+They came out in couples, in laughing companies, and sometimes singly
+with eager, searching glances. They came out throwing their wraps around
+them in the sudden coolness of the air. They lingered at the end of the
+court in groups delicate as porcelain, enjoying the freedom and reunion
+with life. Their talk was hushed and melodious as the conversation of
+people moving slowly across dusky lawns. They were dear to the
+imaginative observer. He watched them with pride and affection as he
+would have watched fishing-boats steal home to their haven about sunset.
+Every night they danced and smiled and decked themselves for the
+pleasure of the world. They rehearsed so hard that sometimes they would
+fall down after a dance, crying on the stage where they had fallen from
+sheer exhaustion. They were not rich. Most of them were married, with
+children and little houses in teeming suburbs. Many, of course, were
+free to accept the escort of loiterers by the stage-door. The latter
+often regarded the ladies of the ballet as easy prey, but the ladies
+were shy as antelopes aware of the hunter crawling through the grasses.
+They were independent of masculine patronage; laughed at the fools with
+their easy manners and genial condescension. They might desire applause
+over the footlights, but under the moon they were free from the
+necessity for favor. They had, with all its incidental humiliations, the
+self-respect which a great art confers. They were children of Apollo.
+
+The difference between the gorgeousness of the ballet and the dim air of
+the court was unimaginable to the blockheads outside. They had seen the
+girls in crimson and gold, in purple and emerald, in white and silver;
+they had seen them spangled and glittering with armor; they had heard
+the tinkle of jewelry. They had watched their limbs; gloated upon their
+poses. They had caught their burning glances; brooded on their lips and
+eyes and exquisite motion. Inflamed by the wanton atmosphere of the
+Orient, they had thought the ladies of the ballet slaves for the delight
+of fools, but round the stage-door all their self esteem was blown away
+like a fragment of paper by a London night wind. Their complacent selves
+by most of the girls were brushed aside like boughs in a wood. Some,
+Jenny and Irene amongst them, would ponder awhile the silly group and
+gravely choose a partner for half an hour's conversation in a café. But
+somewhere close to twelve o'clock Jenny would fly, leaving not so much
+as a glass slipper to console her sanguine admirer. Home she would fly
+on the top of a tram and watch in winter the scudding moon whipped by
+bare blown branches, in summer see it slung like a golden bowl between
+the chimney stacks. The jolly adventures of youth were many, and the
+partnership of Jenny and Irene caused great laughter in the
+dressing-room when the former related each diverting enterprise.
+
+The tale of their conquests would be a long one. Most of the victims
+were anonymous or veiled in the pseudonym of a personal idiosyncrasy.
+There was Tangerine Willy, who first met them carrying a bag of oranges.
+There was Bill Hair and Bill Shortcoat and Sop and Jack Spot and Willie
+Eyebrows and Bill Fur. They all of them served as episodes mirthful and
+fugitive. They were mulcted in chocolates and hansoms and cigarettes.
+They danced attendance, vainly dreaming all the time of conquest. Jenny
+held them in fee with her mocking eyes, bewitched them with musical
+derision, and fooled them as Hera fooled the passionate Titan.
+
+In winter-time the balls at Covent Garden gave Jenny some of the
+happiest hours of her life. Every Tuesday fortnight, tickets were sent
+round to the stage-door of the Orient, and it was very seldom indeed
+that she did not manage to secure one. On the first occasion she went
+dressed as a little girl in muslin, with a white baby hat and white
+shoes and socks, and, wherever they might attract a glance, bows of pink
+silk. When the janitors saw her first, they nearly refused to admit
+such youthfulness; could not believe she was really grown up; consulted
+anxiously together while Jenny's slanting eyes glittered up to their
+majesties. They were convinced at last, and she enjoyed herself very
+much indeed. She was chased up the stairs and round the lobby. She was
+chased down the stairs, through the supper-room, in and out of half a
+dozen boxes, laughing and chattering and shrieking all the while. She
+danced nearly every dance. She won the second prize. Three old men tried
+to persuade her to live with them. Seven young men vowed they had never
+met so sweet a girl.
+
+To the three former Jenny murmured demurely:
+
+"But I'm a good little girl; I don't do those things."
+
+And of course they pointed out that she was much too young to come to so
+wicked a place as Covent Garden. And of course, with every good
+intention, they offered to escort her home at once.
+
+With the seven young men's admiration Jenny agreed.
+
+"I am sweet, aren't I? Oh, I'm a young dream, if you only knew."
+
+And as a dream was she elusive. She gloried in her freedom. She was glad
+she was not in love. She had no wish to do anything but enjoy herself to
+the top of her bent. And she succeeded. Then at half-past six o'clock of
+a raw November morning, she rumbled home to Hagworth Street in a
+four-wheel cab with five other girls--a heap of tangled lace. She went
+upstairs on tiptoe. She undressed herself somehow, and in the morning
+she woke up to find on each wrist, as testimony of the night's
+masquerade, a little pink bow, soiled and crumpled.
+
+She went often after that first visit and had many adventures. On one
+occasion she fell in with the handsome wife of a Surrey publican, and
+drove back after breakfast beside her to whatever Surrey village Mrs.
+Argles astonished with her figure and finery. Irene came, too, and the
+girls went to bed in a dimity-hung bedroom and were taken for a drive in
+the afternoon and sat so long in the cosy bar-parlor watching the dusk
+stealing through the misted trees that they decided to send a telegram
+to the theater announcing their illness. Then they stayed another night
+and went for another drive, laughing and chatting down the deep Surrey
+lanes. After dinner Jenny went back to Hagworth Street, and had a
+flaming quarrel with her mother, who accused her of "going gay";
+demanded to know how she dared put in an appearance dressed in another
+woman's clothes; insisted that she was to come home immediately after
+the theater; forbade a hundred things, and had the door slammed in her
+face for the advice. There were mad days as well as spangled nights.
+There were days at the Zoo with Bill Fur, a schoolmaster always full of
+information until he found his hat in the middle of the giraffes'
+enclosure, or perceived his gloves viewed with dislike by a cassowary.
+Bill Fur, however, would gladly have lost more than gloves or hat to be
+free for a while from the Margate school where he taught delicate boys
+the elements of Latin. To himself he was Don Juan in bravery of black
+satin slashed with purple. To the girls he was, as Jenny put in, a
+scream. To the world, he was a rather foolish middle-aged schoolmaster.
+
+Perhaps it was Colonel Walpole who first suggested to Jenny that all men
+were not merely ridiculous. From his seat in the front row of stalls, he
+perceived her charm; sent round a note to the stage door; took her out
+to supper and champagne. When he found she was a good girl, he seemed to
+like her more than ever, and gave her tea in the flat whose windows
+looked over the sunlit tree-tops of Green Park. He also gave her some
+pretty dresses and hats. The other girls whispered and giggled when
+Jenny's back was turned. Her mother was sharply inquisitive and
+extremely suspicious.
+
+"Who cares?" said Jenny. "There's _nothing_ in it."
+
+Colonel Walpole took her for long motor drives, gave her salmon
+mayonnaise at Weybridge, chicken mayonnaise at Barnet, salmon mayonnaise
+at Henley, chicken mayonnaise at Cobham, and lobster _au gratin_ at
+Brighton. Colonel Walpole was very paternal, and Jenny liked him. He had
+a cool, clean appearance and a pleasant voice. Whatever may have been
+his ultimate intentions, he behaved very well, and she was sorry when he
+went away on a Tibetan shooting expedition.
+
+"My friend, the Prince, has gone away," she told the girls; and "don't
+laugh," she added, "because I _don't_ like it."
+
+Jenny was nineteen. The mark of the Orient was not yet visible. A few
+roses had withered, but eighteen months of the fusty old theater had
+been balanced by laughter outside. There seemed to be no end of her
+enjoyment of life. In essentials she was younger than ever. Mrs. Raeburn
+worried ceaselessly; but her daughter was perfectly well able to look
+after herself. Indeed, the mistakes she made were due to wisdom rather
+than folly. She knew too much about men. She had "properly rumbled" men.
+She was too much of a cynic to be taken in. Her only ambition was
+excitement; and love, in her opinion, did not provide it. She was always
+depressed by the sight of lovers. She hated the permanency of emotion
+that their perpetual association implied. She and Irene liked to choose
+a pair from the group of men who waited by the stage door, as one picks
+out two horses for a race. The next evening the pair of last night would
+be contemptuously ignored, and a fresh couple dangled at the end of a
+string as long as their antics were novel enough to divert.
+
+Jenny still vowed she had no intention of remaining at the Orient, and
+if people asked her about her dancing, she mocked.
+
+"What's the good of working? You don't get nothing for it. I _could_
+have danced. Yes, once. But now. Well, I can now, only I don't want to.
+See? Besides, what's the good?"
+
+If anyone had foretold a career, she would have mocked louder.
+
+"You don't know the Orient; I reckon they don't _want_ to see a girl get
+on at the Orient. If you make a success in one ballet, you're crushed in
+the next."
+
+One morning Jenny looked at herself in the glass.
+
+"May," she called out, "I think if I was to get old, I'd drown myself.
+I would really. Thirty! What a shocking idea!"
+
+"Why, you're only nineteen."
+
+"Yes, I know, but I _shall_ be thirty. Thirty! What an unnatural age!
+Who cares? Perhaps I sha'n't never be thirty."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII: _Growing Old_
+
+
+In her twentieth year, when the Covent Garden season of balls was over,
+the dread of growing old sometimes affected Jenny. It came upon her in
+gusts of premonition and, like a phantom, intruded upon the emptiness of
+her mind. The nervous strain of perpetual pleasure had made her restless
+and insecure. Day by day she was forced into a still greater dependence
+on trivial amusement, notwithstanding that every gratified whim added
+the lean ghost of another dread hour to haunt her memory. Headaches
+overtook her more easily now, and fits of depression were more frequent.
+She was vaguely aware that something could cure her discontent, and once
+or twice in moments of extreme weakness caught herself envying the girls
+who seemed so happy with their mild lovers. She began to contemplate the
+prospect of mating with one of the swains who inhabited, awkwardly
+enough, the desolation of Sunday evenings. She even went so far as to
+award the most persistent an afternoon at the Hackney Furnishing
+Company; but when, blushful and stammering, he discussed with the
+shopman the comparative merits of brass and iron bedsteads, Jenny,
+suddenly realizing the futility of the idea, fled from the jungle of
+furniture.
+
+These negotiations with domesticity drove her headlong into a more
+passionate pursuit of folly, so that, with the colorless shadow of mere
+matrimony filling her soul, her clutch upon the sweet present became
+more feverish. She watched the adventures of girlhood fall prettily
+about her; saw them like unsubstantial snowflakes that are effective
+only in accumulation. Yet the transitory lovers of the stage door were
+beginning also to become intolerable. She could not brook, so slim and
+proud was she, their immediate assumption of proprietorship. She hated
+the cheapening of her kisses and their imperviousness to her womanhood.
+
+Where among these eager-handed wooers was the prince of destiny? Not he
+with box-pleats underneath his eyes, nor he with the cold, slick
+fingers, nor he peppered with blackheads. Love was a myth, a snare, a
+delusion of women, who sacrificed their freedom in marriage. She
+remembered how in old days Santa Claus had turned into her mother on
+tiptoe. Love was another legend. The emotion that begot the fancy of
+armed boyhood mischievous to man was as incredible to her as the dimpled
+personification is to a Hyde Park materialist.
+
+Jenny asked Irene if the love of Danby had brought her satisfaction.
+When her friend said she rather liked him, she inquired what was the
+good of it all.
+
+"I think he's making a proper fool of you. Why don't _I_ fall in love?
+Because I'm not so soft. Besides, you're not in love. You're just
+walking round yourselves having a game with each other."
+
+"Oh, well, what of it?" said Irene sulkily.
+
+"Don't be silly. I never knew such a girl as you. You can't talk
+sensible for a minute. I want to know what this love is."
+
+"You'll find out one day."
+
+"Ah, one day. _One_ day I shall go and drown myself. Irene Dale, I think
+I'm funny. I do really. Sometimes I can dance all over the place and
+kick up a shocking row, laughing and that. And then I cry. Now what
+about? I ask you. What have I got to cry about? Nothing. I just sit and
+cry my eyes out over nothing."
+
+Jenny was beginning to take an interest in herself. Introspection was
+dawning on her mind. She did not practice the meditation of age,
+infirmity and death; when these spectres confronted her, she dismissed
+them as too impalpable to count. Nor did she examine her conscience
+arduously like a Catholic neophyte. Unreasonable fits of weeping and
+long headaches were, nevertheless, very disconcerting; and she was bound
+to search her mind for the cause.
+
+The first explanation that presented itself was age; but she was
+unwilling to admit the probability of growing old at twenty, and turned
+to health for the reason. She could not honestly assert that she was
+ill. Then she asked herself if disappointment was the cause, and
+wondered whether, if she were suddenly invited to head the Orient
+playbill, she would be exhilarated out of tears forever. Finally she
+decided, breathless in the solitude of a warm May dusk, that she wanted
+to fall in love. Desire, winged with the scent of lilac blossom, stole
+in through the sapphire window. Desire flooded her soul with ineffable
+aspirations. Desire wounded her heart as she whispered, timidly,
+faintly, "darling, my darling." From that moment she began to seek the
+unknown lover in the casual acquaintance. She began to imagine the
+electric light shining in the blue eyes of some newly-met fellow was not
+electric light at all. She would meet him on the next day, and,
+beholding him starkly dull, would declare again that men were "awful."
+The readiness with which they all capitulated puzzled her. Why was she
+attractive? Irene told her she made eyes; but this was false, or, if she
+did make eyes, they were made unconsciously. Men told her she led them
+on. There must be some lure in her personality fatal long before she
+attempted to exercise it; for, though latterly she had been deliberately
+charming to most men at first, she was so very ungracious the following
+day that anybody else but a man would have left her alone. The poor
+fools, however, seemed actually to rejoice in her hardness of heart.
+Moreover, why had this fascination never helped her to renown? She could
+dance better than many of the girls who were given _pas seuls_; but she
+had never escaped from the front line of boys. What was the good of
+working? Nothing came of it. She remained obscure and undefined to the
+public. It was not hers to trip from a rostrum into the affection of an
+audience. It was not hers to acknowledge the favor of applause by taking
+a call. There was no shower of carnations or rain of violets round her
+farewell curtseys. If she never danced again, it would not matter. Half
+bitterly she recalled the spangled dreams of childhood, and revived the
+splendor of a silver and pink ballet-skirt that now would seem such
+tawdry, trumpery apparel.
+
+"Fancy," she said to May; "I used to want to be a Columbine and dance
+about Islington. Think of it. What an unnatural child!"
+
+Columbine appeared fitfully in the Ballet-divertissements that opened
+the Orient's entertainment, but Jenny never portrayed that elusive
+personage. Certainly she played Harlequin once, when a girl was ill; and
+very gay and sweet she looked in the trim suit checkered with black and
+gold.
+
+Jenny wondered why she had longed to grow up.
+
+"I used to think that it was glorious to be grown up. But there's
+nothing in it. There might be, but there isn't. I wish I could be what I
+thought I would be as a kid."
+
+"Oh, Jenny, don't talk so much, and get dressed," said Irene. "Aren't
+you coming out to-night?"
+
+"I suppose so," Jenny answered. "I wish I couldn't. I wish I'd _got_ to
+meet somebody. There, now I've told you."
+
+"Hark at her. Hark at Jenny Pearl."
+
+"Oh, well, I'm sick of going out with _you_."
+
+Irene sulked awhile; then asked:
+
+"Have you seen the peroxide they've sent up for our arms?"
+
+"Oo-er! Why?"
+
+"Mr. Walters said all the girls was to use it."
+
+"Oh, aren't they shocking, Irene? I do think they're awful."
+
+"Somebody said the Hesperides didn't look nice from the front."
+
+Jenny examined the purple bottle which would idealize their forms to an
+Hellenic convention. After the first indignation had worn itself out,
+she began to be amused by the transformations of the drug. Lying in bed
+next morning, she began to play with the notion of dyeing her hair. The
+tradition of youthful fairness from the midst of which glowed her deep
+blue eyes, was still vital in Hagworth Street. Other girls dyed their
+hair, and already once or twice Jenny had considered the step; but the
+exertion of buying the peroxide had hitherto stifled the impulse. Here,
+however, was the opportunity, and surely the experiment was worth the
+trial. She jumped out of bed and examined herself critically in the
+toilet-glass; tried to picture the effect of fairness. It would be a
+change, anyhow it would be something to vary the monotony of existence.
+It would be interesting to learn if her new appearance provoked
+admiration greater than ever. It would be interesting to see if the
+change impressed the authorities of the Orient. Best of all, perhaps,
+would be the exclamations of surprise when the dressing-room first
+beheld the alteration.
+
+Having conceived the plan, she began to hate her present appearance, to
+ascribe to her present shade all the boredom that was clinging round her
+like a fog. Her own hair, paradoxically enough, came to be considered an
+unnatural color. After all, she was really fair, and had been cheated of
+her natural hue merely by the freak of time. It was not as if she were
+truly dark. She could herself remember the glories of her complexion
+before they paled in the gloomy airs of the Orient. For a moment,
+however, the birth of artifice dismayed her. She wondered if, in
+addition to going fair, she would also go magenta, like some of the
+girls who always made up. Again the phantom of age laughed over her
+shoulder; but the contemplation of futurity was fleeting, and she
+decided that if she was going fair, the sooner she went the better it
+would be; if she waited till thirty the world might laugh with reason.
+She would chance it. Jenny appropriated a bottle of the management's
+peroxide that very night, and excited by the prospect of entertainment,
+came home immediately after the performance, alarming Mrs. Raeburn so
+much by her arrival that the latter exclaimed:
+
+"You _are_ early. Is anything the matter?"
+
+"Anything the matter? Whatever should be the matter?"
+
+"Well, it's only a quarter to twelve."
+
+"Who cares?"
+
+"Don't say that to me."
+
+"I shall say _what_ I like, and I'm going to bed."
+
+May, however, was wide awake when Jenny reached their room; so the deed
+had to be postponed. May, elated by her sister's unaccustomed earliness,
+chattered profusely, and it was two o'clock in the morning before she
+fell asleep. Then Jenny crept out of bed and by the faintest glimmer of
+gaslight achieved the transformation.
+
+She woke up in the morning to May's cries of disgust.
+
+"Oh, you sight! Whatever have you done?"
+
+"_Don't_ make such a shocking noise. I've gone fair."
+
+"Gone fair!" exclaimed her sister. "Gone white, you mean. Get up and
+look at yourself. You look terrible."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Jenny. "Here, give me hold of the hand-glass."
+
+Her reflection upset her. She must have put on too much in the uncertain
+light.
+
+"It's like milk," cried May.
+
+"Don't annoy me."
+
+"Oh, Jenny, it's awful. It's like that canary of Alfie's who died so
+sudden. It's shocking. What _will_ all my friends say?"
+
+"Who cares about your friends? _They're_ nobody. Besides, it'll be quite
+all right soon. It's bound to sink in."
+
+"What will Alfie say?"
+
+"Oh, damn Alfie!"
+
+"There's a lady. Now swear."
+
+"Well, you annoy me. It's my own hair, isn't it?"
+
+"Oh, it's your own hair right enough. Nobody else wouldn't own it."
+
+"I don't think I'll come down to breakfast this morning. Say I've got a
+most shocking headache, and fetch me up a cup of tea, there's a little
+love."
+
+"Mother'll only come up and see what's the matter, so _don't_ be silly.
+You've got to go downstairs some time."
+
+"Oo-er, May, I wish I hadn't done it now. It's going whiter all the
+time. Look at it. Oh, what unnatural stuff. It can't go lighter than
+white, can it?"
+
+Mrs. Raeburn, in the act of pouring out tea, held the pot suspended,
+and, shaking with laughter, looked at her daughter. Charlie, too,
+happened to be at home.
+
+"Good gracious alive!" cried the mother.
+
+"I thought I'd see how it looked," Jenny explained, with apologetic
+notes in her voice.
+
+"You'll think your head right off next time," said Charlie profoundly.
+
+Jenny was seized with an idea.
+
+"I had to do it for the theater. At least, I thought--oh, well--_don't_
+all stare as if you'd never seen a girl with fair hair. You'll get used
+to it."
+
+"I sha'n't," said Charlie hopelessly. "I shouldn't never get used to
+that, not if I lived till I was a hundred. Not if I never died at all."
+
+"Depend upon it," said Mrs. Raeburn, "her Aunt Mabel will come and see
+us this very day and ask what I've been doing."
+
+"What about it?" said Jenny defiantly. "Who's she? Surely I can do what
+I like with my own hair without asking _her_."
+
+"Now, what 'ud you say if I went and dyed my hair?" asked Charlie, "and
+come down with it the color of an acid drop. That's what I'd like to
+know."
+
+A silence of pent-up laughter held the breakfast party, while, under the
+mirthful glances of her mother and sister, Jenny began to regret the
+change. At last she volunteered:
+
+"Oh, well, it's done now."
+
+"Done in, I should say," corrected Charlie.
+
+It was a gusty morning of clouds in early June, and the Hagworth Street
+kitchen was dark. The sun, however, streamed in for a moment in the
+wake of Charlie's correction, and Jenny's new hair was lighted up.
+
+"Why, it's worse than I thought," said Mrs. Raeburn.
+
+"You look like a funny turn."
+
+"It looks like that ginger-beer we had on Whit-Monday," said her father.
+
+"Oh, who cares?" cried Jenny, flouncing upstairs out of the room. When
+she came down again, she was dressed to go out.
+
+"You're never going out in broad daylight?" asked May.
+
+"Let her go," said Mrs. Raeburn. "Her hat covers it up a _bit_. I only
+hope if we have company, she'll have the goodness to keep her hat on all
+the time."
+
+"Oh, yes, that would be a game of mine. I don't think!" protested Jenny.
+
+The latter's belief in herself was restored by the attitude of the
+dressing-room. The girls all vowed the change improved her. There was an
+epidemic of peroxide, and Irene actually tarnished her own rich copper
+with the dye, so that for a while her hair seemed streaked with
+verdigris. Moreover, the unnatural fairness wore off as the weeks went
+by, and at last even the family was compelled to admit that she had not
+made a mistake. Only Alfie remained unconvinced, declaring she deserved
+a hiding for messing herself about. As for the suitors, they ran faster
+than before, but never swiftly enough to catch Jenny.
+
+"I'm bound to get off with a nice young chap, now," she told the girls.
+"I wish I could fall in love."
+
+"How would you like my Willie?" asked Elsie Crauford proudly.
+
+"Your Willie? I don't think he's anything to tear oilcloth over."
+
+"Didn't you think he looked nice in his evening dress?"
+
+"Your Willie's never bought himself an evening dress! _What!_ Girls,
+listen. The Great Millionaire's bought himself an evening dress."
+
+"You are rude, Jenny Pearl."
+
+"Well, I call it silly. Swanking round in evening dress with a bent
+halfpenny and his latchkey. And you needn't give me those perishing
+looks, young Elsie."
+
+"You are a hateful thing."
+
+"Your _Willie_ in evening dress. Oh, no, it can't be done."
+
+"Shut up, Jenny Pearl," cried Elsie, stamping her foot.
+
+"Now get in a paddy. I suppose it was you edged him on to go without his
+dinner for a week to buy it."
+
+"I hope you'll fall in love, and I hope he'll go away to New Zealand the
+same as Nelly Marlowe's Jack did."
+
+"Oh! There's an unnatural girl! _Don't_ you worry yourself. Not this
+little girl. Not Jenny Pearl. I wouldn't let any _man_ make a fool of
+me."
+
+That night a thunderstorm ruined Jenny's hat.
+
+Next day she bought another, pale green with rosy cherries bobbing at
+each side. "I think this hat's going to bring me luck," she announced.
+
+"The cherries is all right, but green isn't lucky," said Irene.
+
+"Oh, well," said Jenny, "I'll chance it, any old way."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII: _The Ballet of Cupid_
+
+
+The thunderstorm which ruined Jenny's hat destroyed summer. Blowy August
+twilights began to harass the leaves: darkness came earlier, and people,
+going home, hurried through the streets where lately they had lingered.
+Jenny's new green hat with bobbing cherries seemed to have strayed from
+the heart of a fresher season, and passers-by often turned to regard her
+as she strolled along Coventry Street toward the Orient. September
+brought louder winds and skies swollen with rain; but Jenny, rehearsing
+hard for a new ballet on the verge of production, had no leisure to
+grumble at chilly dusks and moonless journeys home to Hagworth Street.
+
+The Orient was in a condition of excitement, for the new ballet, like a
+hundred before it, was expected to eclipse entirely the reputation of
+its predecessors. Two Ballerinas had arrived from Rome, winter migrants
+who in their lightness and warmth, would bring to London a thought of
+Italy. A Premier Danseur, more agile than a Picador, had traveled over
+from Madrid, and a fiery Maître de Ballet had been persuaded to forsake
+Milan. Yet the first night of Cupid was hard upon the heels of a theater
+apparently utterly unprepared for any such date. The master carpenter
+was wrangling with the electrician. The electrician was insulting the
+wardrobe-mistress. The wig-maker was talking very rapidly in French to
+the costumier's draftsman, who was replying equally rapidly in Italian.
+From time to time the managing director shouted from the back of the
+Promenade to know the reason for some delay. The new Maître de Ballet,
+having reduced most of the girls to hysteria by his alarming rages,
+abused his interpreter for misrepresenting his meaning. The Ballerinas
+from Rome were quarreling over precedence, and the Spanish Danseur was
+weeping because the letters of his name were smaller by four inches than
+those which announced on the playbills the advent of his feminine
+rivals. The call-boy was losing his youth. Everybody was talking at
+once, and the musical director was always severely punctual.
+
+When the dress rehearsal lasted eleven hours, everybody connected with
+the Orient prophesied the doom of Cupid; and yet, on the twenty-first of
+September, the ballet was produced with truly conspicuous success. The
+theme was Love triumphant through the ages, from the saffron veils and
+hymeneal torches and flickering airs of Psyche's chamber, through
+Arthur's rose-wreathed court and the mimic passions of Versailles, down
+to modern London transformed by the boy god to a hanging garden of
+Babylon.
+
+The third scene was a Fête Champêtre after Watteau at sunset. Parterres
+of lavender and carnations bloomed at the base of statues that gradually
+disappeared in shadow as the sunset yielded to crimson lanterns. The
+scene was a harmony of gray and rose and tarnished silver. Love himself
+wore a vizard, and the dances were very slow and stately. The leisured
+progress of the scene gave Jenny her first opportunity to scan the
+audience. She saw a clear-cut face, dead white in the blue haze that
+hung over the stalls. She was conscious of an interest suddenly aroused,
+of an interest more profound than anything within her experience. For
+the first time the width of the orchestra seemed no barrier to
+intercourse. She felt she had only to lean gently forward from her place
+in the line to touch that unknown personality. She checked the impulse
+of greeting, but danced the rest of the movement as she had not danced
+for many months, with a joyful grace. When the _tempo di minuetto_ had
+quickened to the _pas seul_ of a Ballerina and the stage was still,
+Jenny stood far down in the corner nearest to the audience. Here, very
+close to the blaze of the footlights, the auditorium loomed almost
+impenetrable to eyes on the stage, but the man in the stalls, as if
+aware that she had lost him, struck a match. She saw his face flickering
+and, guided by the orange point of a cigar, whispered to Elsie Crauford,
+who was standing next to her:
+
+"See that fellow in evening dress in the stalls?"
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"The one with the cigar--now--next to the fat man fanning himself. See?
+I bet you I get off with him to-night."
+
+"You think everybody's gazing at you," murmured Elsie.
+
+"No, I don't. But he is."
+
+"Only because he can see you're making eyes at him."
+
+"Oh, I'm not."
+
+"Besides, how do you know? He isn't waving his programme nor nothing."
+
+"No; but he'll be waiting by the stage-door."
+
+"I thought you didn't care for fellows in evening dress," said Elsie.
+
+"Well, can't you see any difference between that fellow and your
+Willie?"
+
+"No, I can't."
+
+"Fancy," said Jenny mockingly.
+
+The Ballerina's final pose was being sustained amid loud applause. The
+ballet-master began to count the steps for the final movement. The stage
+manager's warning had sounded. The curtain fell, and eighty girls
+hurried helter-skelter to their rooms in order to change for the last
+scene.
+
+"All down, ladies," cried the call-boy, and downstairs they trooped.
+
+The curtain rose on Piccadilly Circus, gray and dripping. Somber figures
+danced in a saraband of shadows to a yearning melody of Tschaikovsky.
+The oboe gave its plaintive summons; like sea-birds calling, the rest of
+the wood-wind took up the appeal until it died away in a solitary flute,
+which sounded a joyful signal very sweet and low. A cymbal crashed: a
+golden ray of light came slanting on to the stone figure of Cupid,
+infusing him with life until, warm and radiant, he sprang from his
+pedestal to bewitch the sad scene. Roses tumbled from the clouds; lilies
+sprang up, quivering in the wind of dancing motion. A fountain gushed
+from the abandoned pedestal; the scene was a furnace of color. The
+Ballerinas led the _Corps de Ballet_ in a Bacchic procession round and
+round the twirling form of Cupid. With noise of bell and cymbal, they
+ran leaping through an enchanted Piccadilly seen in amber or cornelian.
+They might have stepped from a canvas of Titian dyed by the sun of a
+spent Venetian afternoon. Individual members of the audience began to
+applaud, and the isolated hand-claps sounded like castanets, until, as
+the dance became wilder, cheers floated on to the stage like the noise
+of waves heard suddenly over the brow of a hill.
+
+Jenny, in a tunic of ivory silk sprayed with tawny roses, her hair bound
+with a fillet of gold, turned from the intoxication of the dance to
+search the stalls. Across the _arpeggios_ of the misted violins, his
+eyes burned a path. Yet, although she knew that he asked for a signal to
+show her consciousness of him, she could not give one. Had his glances
+seemed less important, she would have smiled; but since for the first
+time in her life a man stirred her, bashfulness caught her icily and,
+while her heart flamed, her eyes were cold. The curtain fell, rising
+again at once to let the bouquets fall softly round the silver shoes of
+the Ballerinas. The odor of stephanotis, mingled with the sharper
+perfume of carnations, seemed almost visible. The emotion of the
+audience struck the emotion of the dancers and kindled a triumph. The
+man in the stalls leaned forward, and the intensity of his gaze was to
+Jenny as real an offering as a bouquet. The curtain fell for the last
+time and as it touched the stage, instead of hurrying to her
+dressing-room, she stood a moment staring at what, for the first time,
+seemed an agent of deprivation not relief. Suddenly, too, she realized
+that she was very lightly clothed, and, as she walked slowly up the
+stone stairs to the dressing-room, was not sure whether she was sorry or
+glad.
+
+In the crowd of chatting girls, Jenny began to call herself a fool, to
+rail at her weakness, and to ascribe the whole experience to the extra
+Guinness of a first night. Yet all the time she wondered if he would be
+waiting at the end of the court; there had been no wave of hand or
+flutter of a programme to confirm the hopes of imagination. Moreover,
+what was he really like? Outside he would be "awful," like the rest of
+them. Outside he would smirk and betray his sense of ownership. Outside
+he would destroy the magic that had waked her at last from the dull
+sleep of ordinary life. She began to hurry feverishly her undressing,
+and the more she hurried, the more she dreamed. At last, having, as it
+seemed, exhausted herself with speed, she sat down on the bench, and,
+looking round, perceived that the other girls were well in front of her.
+She lost confidence and wished for support in the adventure.
+
+"Coming out to-night?" she asked Irene.
+
+"If you like," said the latter.
+
+Jenny, although she longed to be out of the theater, could not be quick
+that night. As she watched the other girls leave the dressing-room, she
+asked herself why she had wanted Irene to wait for her. If he were
+outside, Irene would spoil it all; for, together, they would giggle, and
+he would think what a shocking couple of girls he had fallen in with.
+She wished now that Irene would become impatient and go, but the latter
+seemed perfectly willing to dawdle, though by now they were the only two
+inhabitants of the dressing-room.
+
+"Oh, do move yourself!"
+
+"Oh, I can't, Irene. Whoever made these unnatural stays?"
+
+"We shall get locked in," said Irene.
+
+But Jenny was dressed at last, and together they passed out into the
+cool September night. He was there. Instinctively Jenny recognized the
+careless figure in opera hat and full black coat. She drew back and
+clutched her friend's wrist, aware of hot blushes that surely must flame
+visibly in the darkness.
+
+"Who's he?" whispered Irene.
+
+"Who's who?"
+
+"The fellow by himself at the end of the court?"
+
+"How ever on earth should I know? Do you think I'm a walking _Answers_?"
+
+The two girls passed him by. He hesitated; then, as if by an effort,
+raised his hat.
+
+Irene giggled foolishly.
+
+"How d'ye do, Tootoose?" said Jenny, self-possessed through his
+embarrassment.
+
+"I liked your dancing," he said simply.
+
+"Did you? Who ca----?" She stopped. Somehow the formula was inadequate.
+
+"Can't we go and have supper somewhere?" he asked.
+
+"Just as _you_ like."
+
+"Where shall we go?"
+
+"It doesn't matter to me," said Jenny.
+
+"Gatti's?"
+
+"Um."
+
+"But do you like Gatti's?" persisted the stranger.
+
+"It's all right."
+
+"We can all squash into a hansom, can't we?"
+
+"Rather," said Jenny.
+
+They rattled off to Gatti's, and were soon sitting on red velvet, rulers
+of gayety.
+
+"What's your name, Claude?" inquired Jenny.
+
+"Raymond," he said.
+
+"Oo-er! What a soppy name!"
+
+The young man hesitated. He looked for a moment deep into Jenny's eyes:
+perceived, it may be, her honesty, and said:
+
+"Well, as a matter of fact, my real name is Maurice--Maurice Avery."
+
+"Oh, and he wasn't going to tell us," cried Jenny, clapping her hands.
+"We shall have to call him careful Willie."
+
+"No, I say, really, do forgive me for being a silly ass."
+
+"Now he's being rude to himself."
+
+Here a fat waiter interposed with a dish, and Avery had time to recover
+himself. Meanwhile, Jenny regarded him. She liked his fresh complexion
+and deep-blue eyes. She liked better still his weak, girlish mouth and
+white teeth. She liked best of all his manner, which was not too easy,
+although it carried some of the confidence of popularity.
+
+"Whatever made you come on the first night? I think the ballet's rotten
+on the first night," said Jenny.
+
+"I'm awfully glad I did. But, as a matter of fact, I had to. I'm a
+critic. I'm going to write a notice of the ballet for the _Point of
+View_."
+
+Something in the intonation of this announcement would have warned
+anybody of the world that Avery's judgment had not long ago been
+demanded for the first time.
+
+"A reporter?" asked Jenny.
+
+"Well, a sort of reporter."
+
+"You don't look much like a reporter. I knew a reporter once who was
+going to photograph me in a bathing-dress for _Fluffy Bits_. But his
+flat was too high up for this little girl."
+
+Maurice Avery wished that Jenny were alone. He would in that case have
+attempted to explain the difference between a reporter and a dramatic
+critic. Under the circumstances, however, he felt that the subject
+should be dropped, and turned politely to Irene.
+
+"You're not talking much."
+
+"Ah, but I think the more."
+
+The conversation became difficult, almost as difficult as the _macaroni
+au gratin_ which the three of them were eating. Maurice wished more than
+ever that Irene was out of the way. He possessed a great sense of
+justice which compelled him to be particularly polite to her, although
+his eyes were all for Jenny. The unsatisfactory meal evaporated in
+coffee, and presently they stood on the pavement.
+
+"I say, I ought to drive you girls home," said Maurice. "But to-night I
+absolutely must get back and finish this notice in time to catch the
+three o'clock post. Couldn't we all three meet to-morrow?"
+
+Inwardly he lamented the politeness which led him to include Irene in
+the suggested reunion.
+
+"All right, Willie Brains," said Jenny.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Outside the Palace. Good night."
+
+They shook hands discreetly, and though Maurice held Jenny's hand longer
+than was necessary, he held Irene's just as long in case she might have
+noticed and felt hurt by the greater attention paid to her friend.
+
+Jenny and Irene turned in the direction of the Tube station by Leicester
+Square.
+
+"He might have stood us a cab home," complained the latter.
+
+"Why should he?" said Jenny.
+
+Irene looked at her in perplexity.
+
+"You're usually the one to get all you can out of a fellow. And it was
+your turn to ask to-night."
+
+"I like Maurice," Jenny replied. "And what's more, I think I shall like
+him again to-morrow."
+
+The afternoon arrived. Jenny and Irene, walking down Shaftesbury Avenue,
+perceived Maurice gazing at the photographs outside the Palace.
+
+"There he is," cried Jenny.
+
+Avery turned round.
+
+"You _are_ punctual," he exclaimed.
+
+Tea, at whatever tea-shop they drank it, was dull. The acquaintance did
+not seem to advance.
+
+When it was time for the girls to go into the theater, Maurice said
+desperately:
+
+"Could I drive you--both home to-night?"
+
+At the last moment he was afraid to exclude Irene. "I'll wait outside,"
+he went on, "till you come out."
+
+Rain fell that night, and Maurice was glad when, along the court, he
+could see them strolling towards him.
+
+"A hansom, eh?" he said. "Or let's have a drink first."
+
+In the Monico, they sat round a table and nothing mattered to Maurice
+and Jenny, except eyes. The room seemed full of eyes, not the eyes of
+its chattering population, but their own. Never before had a London
+night seemed so gay. Never before had _crême de menthe_ been dyed so
+richly green. They began to discuss love and jealousy. As Romeo
+hesitated before he joined the fatal masquerade, Maurice was seized with
+an impulse to make himself as poor a thing as possible.
+
+"I couldn't be jealous," he vowed. "I think everybody can be in love
+with two or three people at once."
+
+"I don't," said Jenny.
+
+"Oh, yes, it's absurd to be jealous. Quite absurd. Different people suit
+different moods. The only trouble is when they meet."
+
+He had caught hold of Jenny's hand while they were speaking, and now she
+drew it away.
+
+"I think I know what he means," said Irene.
+
+"You think so," scoffed Jenny. "You! You're potty, then."
+
+Maurice felt sorry for Irene and weakly took her hand. She let it
+recline in his listlessly. It was cold and damp after Jenny's vitality.
+
+"If I loved a man," said Jenny, "I should be most shocking jealous."
+
+"What would you do if you met him with another girl?" asked Maurice.
+
+"I should never speak to him again."
+
+"Wouldn't that be rather foolish?"
+
+"Foolish or not, that's what I should do."
+
+"Well, I'm not jealous," vowed Maurice. "I never have been."
+
+"Then you're silly," asserted Jenny. "Jealous! I'm terribly jealous."
+
+"It's a mistake," said Maurice. "It spoils everything and turns a
+pleasure into a nuisance."
+
+"I don't think I'm jealous of you-know-who," put in Irene.
+
+"Oh, him and you, you're both mad!" exclaimed Jenny. "But if ever I love
+a man----"
+
+"Yes," said Maurice eagerly.
+
+Two Frenchmen at the next table were shuffling the dominoes. For Maurice
+the noise had a strange significance, while he waited for the
+hypothesis.
+
+Jenny stared away up to the chandeliers.
+
+"Well?" said he. Somebody knocked over a glass. Jenny shivered.
+
+"It's getting late," she said.
+
+"What about driving home?" asked Maurice.
+
+Outside it was pouring. They squeezed into a hansom cab. Again his
+politeness seemed bound to mar the evening.
+
+"Let's see. Irene lives at Camden Town. We'd better drive to Islington
+first and leave Jenny, eh?"
+
+Then Jenny said quite unaccountably to herself and Irene:
+
+"No, thanks. We'll drive Irene home first."
+
+Maurice looked at her quickly, but she gave no sign of any plan, nor did
+she betray a hint of the emotion he would have been glad to see.
+
+With the glass let down against the rain, they were forced very near to
+one another as the horse trotted along Tottenham Court Road shining with
+puddles in the lamplight.
+
+"This is jolly," said Maurice, bravely putting an arm round each waist
+and holding Irene a little closer for fear she should feel that she was
+the undesired third person. Having done this, he felt entitled to kiss
+Jenny first and turned towards her lips. She drew back, whispering:
+
+"Ah, so near and yet for far."
+
+Then, since he had offered to kiss Jenny, he felt bound to kiss Irene.
+The latter allowed the compliment as she would have let him pick up a
+handkerchief. Arrangements were made to meet again on the morrow at the
+same place, and at last the cab was pulled up some two hundred yards
+from Irene's house. Maurice jumped out and shook hands very politely and
+waved to her as she ran up a side-street. Then he sat back beside Jenny
+in the cab. The driver turned his horse and for a minute or two they
+traveled silently through the rain and lamplight.
+
+"Jenny," he whispered, "Jenny, won't you kiss me now?"
+
+She yielded herself to his arms, and while the wind rattled the glass
+shield, while the raindrops danced in the road before them, while lights
+faltered and went out in passing window-panes, Jenny nestled closer,
+ardent and soft and passionate.
+
+"Are you glad we're alone?" he whispered.
+
+"Rather."
+
+"I suppose you knew I've been burning all the time to sit with you like
+this?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, I have, Jenny. Jenny, I saw you when you first came on the stage,
+and afterwards I never saw anyone else. I wish you lived a thousand
+miles away."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because then we should travel together for a thousand hours."
+
+"You date."
+
+"You're so delightful."
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"I wish Irene weren't coming to-morrow. We shall have such a lot to talk
+about," he vowed.
+
+"Shall we?"
+
+"What on earth made me ask her?"
+
+"It's done now."
+
+Maurice sighed. Then he caught her close again and breathless they sat
+till Jenny suddenly cried:
+
+"Gee! Here's Hagworth Street. Goodnight!"
+
+At the end of the road, under the tall plane tree where once Jenny had
+danced, they sat in the old hansom cab, while the steam rose in clouds
+from the horse and the puddles sang with rain and the driver smoked
+meditatively. The world was fading away in sounds of traffic very
+remote. The wetness of the night severed them from humanity. They needed
+no blue Pacific haven to enrich their love. They perceived no omen in
+the desolation of the London night.
+
+"What times we shall have together," said Maurice.
+
+"Shall we?" the girl replied.
+
+"It's all happened so exactly right."
+
+"It does sometimes," said Jenny.
+
+The horse pawed the road, impatient of the loitering. The driver knocked
+out the ashes of his pipe on the roof.
+
+"I _must_ go now," she said.
+
+"Must you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"One more kiss."
+
+To Maurice each kiss of Jenny's seemed a first kiss.
+
+"Isn't it glorious?" he exclaimed.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Oh, everything--life and London and you and I."
+
+He stood in the road and lifted her on to the pavement.
+
+"Good night, my Jenny."
+
+"Good night."
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"Rather."
+
+"Good night. Bless you."
+
+"Bless _you_," she murmured. Then, surprised by herself, she ran through
+the rain as swift as the shadow of a cloud, while the horse trotted
+southward with a dreaming passenger.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV: _Rain on the Roof_
+
+
+Upstairs in the room she shared with May, Jenny sat before the glass
+combing her hair, while outside the rain poured down with volume
+increasing every moment. The wash of water through the black, soundless
+night, lent the little room, with its winking candle, a comfortable
+security. The gentle breathing of May and the swish of the hairbrush
+joined the stream of rain without in a monotone of whisperings that
+sighed endless round Jenny's vivid thoughts. Suddenly she sprang from
+her reverie, and, pulling up the blind with a rattle, flung open the
+window to dip her hands into the wet darkness. May sat up, wild-eyed
+from sleep. The candle gasped and fluttered.
+
+"Whatever is it?" cried May.
+
+"Oh, Maisie, Maisie," said her sister; "it's raining real kisses
+to-night. It is, really."
+
+"Have you gone mad?"
+
+"Oh, let me get into bed quick and dream. Oh, May, I'd go mad to dream
+to-night."
+
+And soon the rain washed down unheard, where Jenny, lying still as
+coral, dreamed elusive ardors, ghostly ecstasies.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV: _Cras Amet_
+
+
+The next morning sunlight shone in upon Jenny's rose-dyed awakening.
+Flushed with dreams, she blinked, murmuring in sleepy surprise:
+
+"Oo--er! if it isn't a fine day."
+
+"It's glorious," corroborated May emphatically.
+
+"Oh, it's lovely; let's all wave flags."
+
+"You were a mad thing last night," said May.
+
+"Don't take any notice, dee-ar. I was feeling funnified."
+
+"Opening the window like that and shouting out in your sleep and
+cuddling me all night long."
+
+"Did I?" inquired Jenny curiously.
+
+"Did you? I should think you did. Not half."
+
+"Well, if you're a little love and make me a cup of tea, I'll tell you
+all about it."
+
+"About what?"
+
+"About him. Oh, May, he's lovely. Oh, he's It."
+
+"Who is?"
+
+"A fellow I met this week."
+
+"What, another?"
+
+"Ah, but this one's the One and Only."
+
+"Go on, I know your One and Onlies."
+
+"Oh, but May, he's a young dream, is My Friend the Prince. I'm going to
+meet him this afternoon with young Irene."
+
+"And have a proper game with him, I suppose, and do the poor boy in and
+say good-by."
+
+"I hope I sha'n't never say good-by to him. Never, I do."
+
+"You have got it bad."
+
+"I know. Listen, May. He's rather tall and he's got a nice complexion,
+only his mother says he's rather pale, and he's got very white teeth and
+a mouth that's always moving, and simply glorious eyes."
+
+"What color?"
+
+"Blue. And he talks very nice, and his name's Maurice. But whatever you
+do, don't say nothing to mother about it."
+
+"As if I should."
+
+Mrs. Raeburn came into the room at that moment.
+
+"Are you lazy girls going to get up?"
+
+"Oh, ma, _don't_ be silly. Get up? Oh, what a liberty!"
+
+"Lying in bed on this lovely morning," protested Mrs. Raeburn.
+
+"That's it. Now you carry on about the lovely morning. Young May's
+already woke me up once to look at the sun. All I know is it makes the
+room look most shocking dusty."
+
+The day deepened from a morning of pale gold to an amber afternoon,
+whose melting splendor suffused the thin blue autumn sky with a
+glittering haze. Jenny stood pensive awhile upon the doorstep.
+
+"Hark, what a noise the birds are all making. Whatever's the matter?"
+
+"They're pleased it's fine," said May.
+
+"Oh, they're pleased, too, are they?" Jenny exclaimed, as, with a long
+shadow leading her slim form, she went through a world of russet leaves
+and cheeping sparrows to meet her lover.
+
+At the club there was a message from Irene to say she was ill and unable
+to keep the appointment.
+
+"That's funny," Jenny thought. "Seems as if it's bound to be."
+
+Through Leicester Square she went with eyes that twisted a hundred necks
+in retrospect. Down Charing Cross Road she hurried, past the old men
+peering into the windows of bookshops, past the _delicatessen_ shops
+full of gold and silver paper, past a tall, gloomy church haunted by
+beggars, hurrying faster and faster until she swung into the sunlight
+of Shaftesbury Avenue. There was Maurice studying very earnestly the
+photographs outside the Palace Theater.
+
+"Here I am, Claude," she laughed over his shoulder.
+
+"Oh, I am glad you've come," he said.
+
+"Irene couldn't come. She's ill. Shame, isn't it?"
+
+"Really," said Maurice, trying to seem concerned. "Let's go and have
+tea."
+
+"Oh, you unnatural man. Aren't you sorry she's ill?"
+
+"I can't be sorry you're alone. Where shall we have tea?"
+
+"Where _you_ like."
+
+"I know a funny little shop off Soho Square where there aren't many
+people."
+
+"Don't you like people, then?"
+
+"Not always."
+
+Soho Square held the heart of autumn that afternoon. London had
+surrendered this quiet corner to pastoral meditation. Here, among the
+noise of many sparrows and sibilance of dead leaves on the unfrequented
+pavement, one realized in the perishable hour's flight the immortality
+of experience.
+
+"More birds," said Jenny.
+
+"Don't they make a row and don't the leaves look ripping in this light?"
+
+"There's another one getting excited over the day."
+
+"Well, it is superb," said Maurice. "Only I wish there weren't such a
+smell of pickles. I say, would you mind going on ahead and then turning
+back and meeting me?"
+
+"Oo-er, whatever for?"
+
+"I want to see how jolly you'd look coming round the corner under the
+trees."
+
+"You are funny."
+
+"I suppose you think I'm absurd. But really, you know, you do look like
+a Dresden shepherdess with your heart-shaped face and slanting eyes."
+
+"Thanks for those few nuts."
+
+"No, really, do go on, won't you?"
+
+"I certainly sha'n't. People would think we was mad."
+
+"What do people matter?"
+
+"Hark at him. Now he's crushed the world."
+
+"One has to be fanciful on such an afternoon."
+
+"You're right."
+
+"I suppose I couldn't kiss you here?"
+
+"Oh, of course. Wouldn't you like to sit down on the curb and put your
+arm round my waist?"
+
+"As a matter of fact, I should."
+
+"Well, I shouldn't. See? Where's this unnatural tea-shop?"
+
+"Just here."
+
+"It looks like the Exhibition."
+
+It was a dim coffee-shop hung with rugs and gongs. The smoke of many
+cigarettes and joss-sticks had steeped the gloom with Arabian airs.
+
+"It is in a way a caravanserai," said Maurice.
+
+"A what?" said Jenny.
+
+"A caravanserai--a Turkish pub, if you like it better."
+
+"You and I _are_ seeing life to-day."
+
+"I like my coffee freshly ground," Maurice explained.
+
+"Well, I like tea."
+
+"The tea's very good here. It's China."
+
+"But I think China tea's terrible. More like burnt water than tea."
+
+"I'm afraid you don't appreciate the East," he said.
+
+"No, I don't if it means China tea."
+
+"I wish I could take you away with me to Japan. We'd sit under a
+magnolia and you should have a kiss for every petal that fell."
+
+"That sounds rather nice."
+
+"You know you yourself are a bit Japanesy."
+
+"Don't say that. I hate to be told that."
+
+"It's the slant in your eyes."
+
+"I don't like my eyes," said Jenny emphatically.
+
+"I do."
+
+"One pleased, any old way."
+
+"I love your eyes," said Maurice earnestly. "But I made a mistake when I
+said you were Japanese. You're Slav--Russian, you know."
+
+"I must be a procession of all nations, according to you."
+
+"But you are frightfully subtle."
+
+"Anything else? You're sure I'm not a bighead?"
+
+"A what?" said Maurice.
+
+"A pantomime bighead."
+
+Maurice laughed.
+
+"Men always talk about my eyes," Jenny went on. "They often call me the
+girl with the saucy eyes, or the squiny eyes, _which_ I don't like. And
+yet, for all my strange appearance, if I want a man to be struck on me,
+he always is."
+
+"Did you want me to be struck on you?"
+
+"I suppose I must have."
+
+"Is that why you made us see Irene home first--so that you could be
+alone with me?"
+
+"I suppose so. Any more questions? You're worse than my sister, and
+she'd ask the tail off a cat."
+
+"Hum!"
+
+"Cheer up, Puzzled Willy."
+
+"Have you ever--er--well, insisted on having the person you wanted
+before?"
+
+"No, I've not. Not like that. I can't make myself out sometimes. I don't
+understand myself. I do a thing all of a sudden and the next minute I
+couldn't tell anybody why I done it."
+
+"I might have thought you were running after me," said Maurice.
+
+"Who cares? If you did, it wouldn't matter to me. If I wanted you to
+make a fool of yourself, you'd make a fool of yourself."
+
+"But supposing I made a fool of you?" asked Maurice, slightly nettled.
+
+"I don't think you could."
+
+"But I might. After all, I may be as attractive to women as you are to
+men. Perhaps we've both met our match. I admit you fascinate me. From
+the first moment I saw you, I wanted you. I told you that. And you?"
+
+"I wanted you," said Jenny simply.
+
+"It is love at first sight. And yet, do you know, I had an instinct to
+make you not like me."
+
+"You couldn't."
+
+"Couldn't I?" said Maurice, breathless. The heavy air of the coffee-shop
+vibrated with unheard passionate melodies.
+
+"No," said Jenny, gazing full at the young lover opposite, while Eros
+shook his torch, and the gay deep eyes, catching the warm light, shone
+as they had never shone for any man before. "But why did you try to make
+me not like you?"
+
+"I felt afraid," said Maurice. "I'm not very old, but I've made two
+girls unhappy, and I had a presentiment that you would be the revenge
+for them."
+
+"I've made boys unhappy," said Jenny. "And I thought you were sent to
+pay me out."
+
+"But I shall always love you," said Maurice, putting his hand across the
+little table and clasping her fingers close.
+
+"So shall I you."
+
+"We're lucky, aren't we?"
+
+"Rather."
+
+"I feel sorry for people who aren't in love with you. But don't let's
+talk here any more. Let's go back to my rooms," he suggested.
+
+"I've got to be in the theater by half-past seven."
+
+"I know, but we've plenty of time. It's only just half-past five."
+
+"Where do you live?"
+
+"Westminster. Looking over the river. I've got a largish studio. Quite a
+jolly room. I share the floor below with a friend."
+
+"What's he like?"
+
+"Castleton? Funny chap. I don't expect you'd care for him much. Women
+don't usually. But don't let's talk about Castleton. Let's talk about
+Jenny and Maurice."
+
+Outside the fumes of the coffee-shop were blown away by soft autumnal
+breezes.
+
+"We'll dash it in a taxi. Look, there's a salmon-colored one. What luck!
+We must have that. They're rather rare. Taxi! Taxi!"
+
+The driver of the favored hue pulled up beside the pavement.
+
+"Four-twenty-two Grosvenor Road, Westminster."
+
+"I wonder," said Maurice, glancing round at Jenny and taking her slim
+gloved hand in his. "I wonder whether taxis will ever be as romantic as
+hansoms. They aren't yet somehow. All the same, there's a tremendous
+thrill in tearing through this glorious September weather. Oh, London,"
+he shouted, bouncing in excitement up and down on the springy cushions,
+"London, you're wonderful."
+
+Jenny shook his hand as a nurse reproves a child.
+
+"Keep still," she commanded. "The man'll think you're potty."
+
+"But I am potty. You're potty. The world's potty, and we're in love. My
+sweet and lovely Jenny, I'm in love with you.
+
+    "There was a young lady called Jenny,
+     Whose eyes, some men said, were quite squiny."
+
+"Oh, Maurice, you _are_ awful," she protested.
+
+But, Apollo urging him, Maurice would finish:
+
+    "When they said: 'You're our fate,'
+     She replied, 'It's too late.'
+     So they went away sad and grew skinny."
+
+"Lunatic!" she said. "And don't talk about getting thin. Look at me.
+Nothing but skin and grief."
+
+"Nonsense," said Maurice, and went on rhyming:
+
+    "There was a young lady said: 'What!
+     My figure is going to pot.'"
+
+And then two more lines that will have to be filled in like your figure,
+and then:
+
+"They all of them said: 'No it's not.'"
+
+"Well, you're not much more than a rasher of wind yourself," commented
+Jenny.
+
+"Ha! ha!" shouted Maurice. "That's good. Hullo, here's Trafalgar Square.
+Aren't we going a pace down Whitehall? Jenny, there aren't any words for
+what I feel."
+
+He hugged her close.
+
+"Oh, mind!" she protested, withdrawing from the embrace. "People can see
+us."
+
+"My dear, they don't matter. They don't matter a damn. Not one of them
+matters the tiniest dash."
+
+Nor did they indeed to lovers in the warm apricot of a fine September
+sunset. What to them were dusty clerks with green shining elbows, and
+government officials and policemen, and old women with baskets of tawny
+chrysanthemums? Fairies only were fit to be their companions. The taxi
+hummed on over the road shadowed by the stilted Gothic of the Houses of
+Parliament, hummed out of the shadow and into Grosvenor Road, where the
+sun was splashing the river with pools of coppery light. The stream was
+losing its burnished ripples and a gray mist was veiling the
+fire-crowned chimneys of Nine Elms when the taxi drew up by 422
+Grosvenor Road.
+
+"Right to the very top," called Maurice. "I do hope you don't mind."
+
+As he spoke he caught her round the waist and gathered her to his side
+to climb the stairs.
+
+"It's an old house. I've got an attic for my studio. Castleton's out. An
+old woman buried somewhere near the center of the earth cooks for me.
+When you see her, you'll think she's arrived via Etna. Jenny, I'm
+frightfully excited at showing you my studio."
+
+At last they reached the topmost landing, which was lit by a skylight
+opaque with spiders' webs and dust. The landing itself was full of
+rubbish, old clothes, and tattered volumes and, as if Maurice sought to
+emulate Phaethon, a bicycle.
+
+"Not in these!" said Jenny. "You _don't_ carry that up and down all
+these stairs every day?"
+
+"Never," said Maurice gayly. "Not once since I carried it up for the
+first time a year ago."
+
+"You silly old thing."
+
+"I am. I am. But isn't it splendid to be able to be silly?"
+
+He opened the door of the studio and Jenny walked into what seemed an
+astonishingly large room. There were windows at either end and a long
+skylight overhead. The ceiling was raftered and on the transverse beams
+were heaped all sorts of things that young men bring to London but never
+use, such as cricket-bats and tennis-racquets and skates.
+
+The windows on one side looked out over the river, over barges going up
+on the full flood, and chimneys flying streamers of pearl-gray smoke.
+The windows on the other side opened on to a sea of roofs that rolled
+away down to a low line of purple cloud above whose bronzed and jagged
+edge the Byzantine tower of Westminster Cathedral rose in silhouette
+against a sky of primrose very lucent and serene.
+
+There was a wide fireplace with a scarred rug before it and on either
+side a deal seat with high straight back. There were divans by the same
+craftsman along the whitewashed walls, and shelves of tumbled books.
+Here and there were broken statues and isolated lead-bound panes of
+colored glass, with an easel and a model's throne and the trunk of a lay
+figure. There was a large table littered with papers and tins of
+pineapple and a broken bag of oranges very richly hued in the sunset.
+The floor was covered with matting, over which were scattered Persian
+rugs whose arabesques of mauve and puce were merged in a depth of warm
+color by the fleeting daylight. On the walls were autotypes of Mona Lisa
+and Botticelli's Venus, of the Prince of Orange and little Philip the
+Fourth, on his great horse. There was also an alleged Rubens, the
+purchase of Maurice's first year at Oxford, from the responsibility of
+whose possession he had never recovered. There were drawings on the
+wall itself of arms and legs and breasts and necks, and a row of casts
+in plaster of Paris. Here and there on shelves were blue ginger-jars,
+Burmese masks and rolls of Florentine end-papers. There was a
+grandfather-clock, lacquered and silent, which leaned slightly forward
+to ponder its appearance in a Venetian mirror whose frame was blown in a
+design of pink and blue roses and shepherds. The window-curtains were
+chintz in a pattern of faded crimson birds and brown vine-leaves stained
+with mildew. In one corner was a pile of brocaded green satin that was
+intended to cover the undulating horsehair sofa before the fire.
+
+Maurice's room was a new experience to Jenny.
+
+"What a shocking untidy place!" she exclaimed. "What! It's like Madge
+Wilson's mother's second-hand shop in the New Kent Road. You don't
+_live_ here?"
+
+"Yes, I do," said Maurice.
+
+"Sleep here?"
+
+"No; I sleep underneath. I've a bedroom with Castleton."
+
+"Untidy, like this is?"
+
+"No, rather tidy. Bath-tub, Sandow exerciser, and photographs of my
+sisters by Ellis and Walery. Quite English and respectable."
+
+Jenny went on:
+
+"Doesn't all this mess ever get on your nerves? Don't you ever go mad to
+clear it up?"
+
+"You shall be mistress here and clear up when you like."
+
+"All right, Artist Bill. I suppose you are an artist?"
+
+"I don't know what I am. I'd like best to be a sculptor. You must sit
+for me."
+
+"The only artist I ever sat for I took off my belt to in the finish."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He annoyed me. Go on. What else are you?"
+
+"I'd like to be a musician."
+
+"You've got a jolly fine piano, any way," said Jenny, sitting down to a
+Bechstein grand to pick out some of Miss Victoria Monk's songs with the
+right hand while she held a cigarette in the left.
+
+"Then I write a bit," said Maurice. "Criticisms, you know. I told you I
+wrote a notice of your ballet. I'm twenty-four and I shall come into a
+certain amount of money, and my people live in a large house in Surrey
+and oh, I--well--I'm a _dilettante_. Now you know my history."
+
+"Whatever on earth's a dilly--you do use the most unnatural words. I
+shall call you Dictionary Dick."
+
+"Look here, let's chuck explanations," said Maurice. "I simply must kiss
+you. Let's go and look out at the river."
+
+He pulled her towards the window and flung it wide open. Together they
+leaned out, smoking. The sparrows were silent now. They could hear the
+splash and gurgle of the water against the piers, and the wind shaking
+the plane tree bare along the embankment. They watched the lamp-lighter
+go past on his twinkling pilgrimage. They listened to the thunder of
+London streets a long way off. Their cigarettes were finished. Together
+they dropped to extinction in a shower of orange sparks below.
+
+Maurice drew Jenny back into the darkening room.
+
+"Look! The windows are like big sapphires," he said, and caught her to
+his arms. They stood enraptured in the dusk and shadows of the old
+house. Round them Attic shapes glimmered: the gods of Greece regarded
+them: Aphrodite laughed.
+
+"Don't all these statues frighten you?" said Jenny.
+
+"No, they're too beautiful."
+
+"Oh!" screamed Jenny. "Oh! She moved. She moved."
+
+"Don't be foolish, child. You're excited."
+
+"I must go to the theater. It's late. I do feel silly."
+
+"I'll drive you down."
+
+"But I'll come again," she said. "Only next time we'll light the gas
+when it gets dark. I hate these statues. They're like skelingtons."
+
+"I'm going to make a statue of you. May I? Dancing?"
+
+"If you like."
+
+"I adore you."
+
+"So do I you," said Jenny.
+
+"Not so much as I do."
+
+"Just as much, Mr. Knowall," she said, shaking her head.
+
+They kissed once more.
+
+"Jenny, Jenny!" It was almost a poignant cry. "Jenny, I wish this moment
+were a thousand years. But never mind, we shall always be lovers."
+
+"I hope we shall."
+
+"Why only hope? We shall. We must."
+
+"You never know," she whispered. "Men are funny; you never know."
+
+"Don't you trust me?"
+
+"I trust nobody. Yes, I do. I trust you."
+
+"My darling, darling!"
+
+Then downstairs they went, closer locked on every step, close together
+with hearts beating, the world before them, and the stars winking
+overhead.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI: _Loves Halcyon_
+
+
+The next fortnight passed quickly enough in the rapture of daily
+meetings and kisses still fresh and surprising as those first primroses
+of spring which few can keep from plucking. There was nobody to
+interrupt the intimacy; for Irene remained ill, and the rest of the
+world was as yet unconscious of the affair. Nevertheless, with all these
+opportunities for a complete understanding, the relation of Maurice and
+Jenny to one another was still essentially undefined. Their manner of
+life in that first fortnight of mutual adoration had the exquisite and
+ephemeral beauty of a daylong flower. It possessed the elusive joy that
+mayflies have in dancing for a few sunny days above a glittering stream.
+It had the character of a pleasant dream, where thought is instantly
+translated into action. It was the opening of a poem by Herrick or
+Horace before the prescience of transitoriness has marred the exultation
+with melancholy.
+
+Everything favored a halcyon love. October had come in, windless and
+very golden. Such universal serenity was bound to preserve for lovers
+the illusion of permanence that exists so poignantly in fine autumn
+weather, when the leaves, falling one by one at rare intervals, scarcely
+express the year's decay. The sly hours stole onward in furtive
+disguises. Milk-white dawns evaporated in skies of thinnest azure and
+noons of beaten gold, until in pearl-gray dusks each day met its night
+delicately. For Maurice and Jenny even the night conjured no wintry
+thoughts, and when the moon came up round and tawny, floating
+unsubstantially above the black house-tops, an aged moon lacquered with
+rust, full of calamities, these lovers were not dismayed; although they
+were not influenced to quick and fervid enterprises.
+
+No doubt, if they had wandered, treading violets under foot, beneath the
+silver moons of Spring, there would have been a more rapid encounter of
+emotions. But the tranquillity of nature affected Maurice particularly.
+He was like a man who, having endured the grief of long separation,
+meets his love in joyful security. It was as if with a sigh he folded
+her to his arms, conscious only of acquiring her presence. He had from
+the fret of London gained the quiet of high green cliffs and was no
+longer ambitious of anything save meditation on the beauty spread before
+his eyes. He had bought the much-desired book, and now was idly turning
+its leaves, safe in the triumph of possession.
+
+Jenny, too, after her long experience of casual attraction, was glad to
+surrender herself to the luxury of absent effort; but in her case the
+feverishness of a child, who dreads any discussion that may rob the
+perfect hour of a single honeyed moment, made her fling white arms
+around his neck and hold him for her own against invisible thieves.
+
+There exist in the heart of a London dawn a few minutes when the street
+lamps have just been extinguished, but before the sun has risen, when
+the city cannot fail to be beautiful even in its meanest aspects. At
+such an hour the Bayswater Road has the mystery of a dew-steeped glade;
+the Strand wears the frail hues of a sea-shell; Regent Street is
+crystalline. Even Piccadilly Circus stands on the very summit of the
+world, wind-washed and noble.
+
+To Maurice and Jenny London was always a city seen at dawn; so many dull
+streets had been enchanted by their meetings, so many corners had been
+invested with the delight of the loved one's new appearance. But, though
+they were still imparadised, a certain wistfulness in looks and
+handclasps showed that they both instinctively felt they would never
+again tread the pavement so lightly, never again make time a lyric, life
+a measure.
+
+On the afternoon before Jenny's birthday, she and Maurice had gone to
+Hampstead, there to discuss the details of a wonderful party that was to
+celebrate in the studio the lucky occasion. They had wandered arm in arm
+through the green alleys and orderly byways of the mellow suburb,
+dreaming away all sense of time and space. It was the very culmination
+of St. Luke's summer, and nowhere had the glories been more richly
+displayed. Robins sang in Well Walk, and Michaelmas daisies splashed
+every garden with constellations of vivid mauve. After tea they walked
+up Heath Street and on a wooden seat stayed to watch the sunset. Below
+them the Heath rolled away in grassland to houses whose smoke was heavy
+on the dull crimson of a stormy dusk. The sun sank with an absence of
+effect which chilled them both. Night, with a cold wind that heralded
+rain, came hard on the heels of twilight. The mist rose thickly from the
+lower parts of the Heath, and the night's jewelry was blurred.
+
+Maurice spoke suddenly as if to a signal.
+
+"Jenny, we seem to have spent a very long time together now in finding
+out nothing."
+
+"What _do_ you mean?" she asked.
+
+"I mean--we've been together a frightful lot, but I don't know anything
+about you and you don't know anything about me."
+
+"I know you're a darling."
+
+"Yes, I know that, but----"
+
+"What!" she broke in, "well, if you don't properly go out with
+yourself."
+
+"No, I mean--bother about me being a darling--what I mean is--what are
+we going to do?"
+
+"What do you want us to do?"
+
+"You don't help me out," he complained. "Look here, are you really in
+love with me?"
+
+"Of course I am," she said softly.
+
+"Yes, but really violently, madly in love to the exclusion of everything
+else in the world?"
+
+"Kiss me," said Jenny, answering him from her heart.
+
+"Kissing's too easy," said Maurice. "Kissing proves nothing. You've
+probably kissed dozens of men."
+
+"Well, why not?"
+
+"Why not? Good Heavens, if I give up my whole being to you, do you mean
+to say you're not going to think anything of kissing dozens of men?"
+
+"Don't be silly. To begin with, they did all the kissing."
+
+"That makes no difference."
+
+"I think it makes all the difference."
+
+"I don't," he maintained.
+
+"I do."
+
+"Look here, don't let's quarrel," he said.
+
+"I'm not quarrelling. You began."
+
+"All right. I know I did. Only do think things out."
+
+"What's the matter with your brain to-night?" Jenny asked.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You've taken a sudden craze for thinking."
+
+"Oh, do be serious," he said petulantly. "Here are we. We meet. We fall
+in love at once. We roam about London in a sort of mist of love and we
+haven't settled anything."
+
+"Why can't we go on roaming about, as you call it?"
+
+"We can--up to a point. Only--" he hesitated.
+
+"Only what?"
+
+"Look here. Are you sure I'm the right person, not a possible, but the
+person you've dreamed of, thought of?"
+
+"I'm sure you're a darling."
+
+Jenny had no use for subtleties, no anxiety to establish the derivation
+of an affection which existed as a simple fact. She was not a girl to
+whose lips endearing epithets came easily. She had many words ready to
+describe everything except her deepest emotions. In love she became shy
+of herself. Maurice had a stock of sweet vocatives which she would have
+been too proud to imitate. "Darling" said what she wished to say, and it
+was difficult even to say that.
+
+"Well, do you want anybody else?" he asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"You won't get tired of me in another month?"
+
+"Don't be silly."
+
+"You said the other day you didn't trust anybody. Do you mean to say
+seriously that you don't trust me?"
+
+"I suppose I do. You're different."
+
+"Only suppose?" asked Maurice.
+
+"Well, I do."
+
+"You're not certain. Great heavens, child, can't you see what a terrible
+thing that is to say?"
+
+"I don't see that it's so very terrible."
+
+"But it kills me dead. I feel all the time you think I'm masquerading. I
+feel like a figure with a mask in a carnival. I meet you in another
+mask. I say, 'Take it off,' and you won't. You shrivel up."
+
+"I don't know who you're getting angry with," said Jenny. "I haven't
+said nothing."
+
+"Nothing!" cried Maurice. "It's nothing to tell somebody who adores
+you--good heavens, it's raining now! Of course it _would_ rain in the
+middle of grappling with a situation. What a damnable climate this is!"
+
+"I'm glad you're going to quarrel with the weather a bit for a change,"
+said Jenny. "I think you're in a very nasty mood."
+
+"You don't understand me," said Maurice.
+
+"I don't want to." She spoke coldly.
+
+"Jenny, I'm sorry I said that. Darling girl, do forgive me."
+
+The wind had risen to half a gale. Heath Street was full of people
+hurrying to shelter, and the entrance to the Tube station was crowded.
+
+"Don't be angry with me," Maurice whispered as the lift stopped. "I was
+tired and foolish. Jenny, I'm sorry."
+
+"If any other man had spoken like you spoke," said Jenny, "I'd have got
+up and gone away and never seen him again, not ever, not however much I
+might want to, I wouldn't let myself. I couldn't."
+
+Further discussion was killed by the noise of the train, and Jenny and
+Maurice could only sit speechless, gazing at a long line of damp people,
+most of them carrying rain-dabbled bunches of Michaelmas daisies. By the
+time Piccadilly was reached Maurice was himself again, full of plans for
+to-morrow's birthday party.
+
+"Seeing those people in the Tube with those bluish flowers, what d'ye
+call them, made me think of a party I had for my birthday when I lived
+with an aunt in the country," said Jenny.
+
+As it was not yet time for her to go into the theater, they turned aside
+into the Monico and drank Quinquina Dubonnet while the final
+arrangements were being made for the party.
+
+"Now, who exactly is coming?" asked Maurice.
+
+"Irene, if she's well enough, and Elsie Crauford, who isn't bad, but
+who's got to be told off sometimes, and Madge Wilson, who you haven't
+met, but she's a pretty girl, and Maud Chapman and perhaps Gladys West.
+Oh, and can't I bring Lilli Vergoe? She's a bit old--you know--but she's
+a nice girl and I used to know her when I was little."
+
+"Right," said Maurice. "That makes seven. Then there'll be me and
+Castleton and Cunningham and Ronnie Walker and probably one or two odd
+ones'll drop in. You'll turn up about four--eh? It's lucky your birthday
+comes on a Sunday. Must you go now? All right, my sweet. Till to-morrow.
+By Jove, we'll have a great time, won't we?"
+
+"Rather," said Jenny.
+
+Then just as she prepared to cross to the other side of Piccadilly, from
+the island on which they were standing, Maurice called her back.
+
+"Jenny, darling, I am forgiven, aren't I?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+She looked back before she turned the corner into Regent Street and
+waved to him. He sighed and went off very happy to meet Castleton for
+dinner.
+
+It was characteristic of Jenny that she issued her invitations very
+coldly. Most girls grew enthusiastic over such events, but Jenny did not
+believe in "showing herself up" by demonstrations of delight.
+
+"Coming to tea with that friend of mine to-morrow?" she asked Madge
+Wilson.
+
+"Of course I am, duck, I'd love it," said Madge, a round-faced,
+fluffy-haired girl, pretty, but always apt to be mistaken for somebody
+else.
+
+"It's nothing to rave over," said Jenny. "It's in a studio something
+like your mother's shop. But there's a jolly fine piano and I daresay it
+won't be bad."
+
+"I shall love it," said Madge.
+
+"Well, don't wave too many flags."
+
+To the other girls Jenny offered the entertainment casually, like a
+chocolate-cream.
+
+Then she went to look for Lilli Vergoe in the dressing-room of the
+second line of girls. Lilli seemed much surprised by the invitation.
+
+"You don't want me," she said.
+
+"Don't be silly. Why ever not?"
+
+"Look at me."
+
+"I can't see nothing the matter."
+
+"I ask you, do I look like a birthday party? Never mind, kiddie, I'll
+come."
+
+"Don't make a favor of it old girl. Only I thought you'd like it."
+
+"Why don't you ever come up to Cranbourne Street and see me?" asked
+Lilli.
+
+"You're always miserable. It gets on my nerves."
+
+"I wish you would come sometimes. You've never been since that day you
+told me you'd joined the ballet."
+
+"Well, you was Melancholy Sarah that day, wasn't you, Lilli?"
+
+The call-boy's summons closed the conversation, and Jenny ran off to her
+own dressing-room for the last touch of powder.
+
+When she came out of the theater that night, it was blowing a full
+October gale. There was nobody by the stage door in whom she felt the
+slightest interest, so without loitering and with pleasant anticipation
+of to-morrow's fun, she went straight home.
+
+Mrs. Raeburn was sitting by the kitchen fire when Jenny got back.
+
+"You're early," she said.
+
+"I know. There wasn't anything to stay out for. It's a terrible night,
+pelting in rain. Shame after the glorious weather we've been having.
+It's my birthday to-morrow, too."
+
+"Good gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Raeburn. "And I'd forgotten all about
+it."
+
+"You always do," said Jenny.
+
+"I ought to have remembered this time. It was weather just like we've
+been having before you were born, and it come on to blow and rain just
+like this the very night. Twenty years! Tut-tut!"
+
+"I don't feel a day older than fourteen," asserted Jenny.
+
+"Tell me, do you enjoy being alive?" asked Mrs. Raeburn.
+
+"Oh, what a question! Of course I do."
+
+"You don't ever feel it was a pity you ever come into the world?"
+
+"Of course I don't. Why should I? I think I'm a very lucky girl."
+
+"You don't ever tell me anything about yourself," said Mrs. Raeburn. "So
+I don't know."
+
+"There's nothing to tell."
+
+"I wish you'd get married."
+
+"Whatever for?"
+
+"Aren't you a bit gay?"
+
+"Gay! Of course not."
+
+"I wish you'd settle down," urged the mother. "There's a lot of nice
+young chaps as would be glad to marry you."
+
+"But I don't want to be married. I sha'n't ever get married. Ugh!
+Besides, what's going on as I am done? I'm enjoying myself."
+
+"Too much, I'm afraid," said her mother.
+
+"I don't want to get married," Jenny repeated. "I don't see that you did
+much good to yourself by getting married. I think you threw yourself
+away. Everybody must have liked you when you was a girl, and you go and
+marry Dad. I think you were potty. And yet you want me to do the same. I
+can't understand people."
+
+"Why couldn't you have been nicer to that young baker chap?"
+
+"Young baker chap? Yes, then I woke up. Him! Why, he used to hang his
+shoulders up when he took off his coat. Besides, he's common."
+
+"You're getting very dainty."
+
+"Well, look at the men you want me to marry. Why--they're awful--like
+navvies half of them. Oh, don't carry on, mother. I know what I want."
+
+"Jenny," said her mother sharply, "you haven't done anything wrong, have
+you?"
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"Don't do anything wrong, there's a good girl. I was very upset about
+Edie, but nothing to what I should be about you."
+
+"This little girl's all right. What's the matter with going to bed?"
+
+"You go on up. I'll wait for your father."
+
+"You're in a funny mood to-night, Mrs. Raeburn," said her daughter.
+"Good night."
+
+When she reached the bedroom Jenny woke up her sister.
+
+"Look here, young May, you haven't said nothing to mother, have you,
+about My Friend the Prince?"
+
+"Of course not, you great stupid."
+
+"Well, don't you, that's all, because I'll go straight off and live with
+one of the girls if you ever dared say a word about him. Mother wouldn't
+understand there's nothing in it."
+
+"You know your own business best," said May sleepily.
+
+"That's quite right," Jenny agreed, and began to undress herself to a
+sentimental tune and the faint tinkle of hairpins falling on the
+toilet-table.
+
+In bed, she thought affectionately of Maurice, of his gayety and
+pleasant manner of speech, of his being a gentleman. He must be a
+gentleman because he never said so. Other girls had love affairs with
+gentlemen, but, with one or two exceptions, she believed they were all
+swankers. At any rate Maurice and Colonel Walpole were different from
+Irene's Danby (long idiot) and Madge Wilson's Berthold (dirty little
+"five to two!") and Elsie Crauford's Willie (him!), all examples of
+swank. Still in some ways it was a pity that Maurice was a gentleman. It
+would never mean a wedding. Those photographs of his mother and sisters
+had crushed that idea. Even if he asked her to marry him, she wouldn't.
+Other girls might brag about their education, their schools in Paris,
+their better days and dead gentlemen fathers, but they were all ballet
+girls, not one of the Mrs. Bigmouths could get away from that fact.
+Ballet girls! They got a laugh in comic songs. Ballet girls and
+mothers-in-law! They might gabble in a corner to each other and simper
+and giggle and pretend, but they were ballet-hoppers. And what of it?
+Why not? Wasn't a ballet girl as good as anybody else? Surely as good as
+a stuck-up chorus girl, who couldn't dance and couldn't act and couldn't
+even sing sometimes. They might be fine women with massive figures or
+they might have sweetly pretty Chevy Chases and not mind what they did
+after supper, but they weren't any better than ballet girls.
+
+After all, Maurice did not look down on her. He did not patronize her.
+He loved her. She loved him. With that thought flooding her imagination,
+Jenny fell asleep and lay buried in her deep white pillow like a rosebud
+in a snowdrift.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII: _Columbine Asleep_
+
+
+Columbine lay sleeping on her heart. The long white hands were clasped
+beneath those cheeks round which tumbled the golden curls. The coverlet,
+thrown back in a restless dream, revealed her bent arms bare to the
+elbow. The nightgown allowed a dim outline of her shoulder to appear
+faintly, and where a pale blue bow had come untied, the dimple in her
+throat was visible. The gay, deep eyes were closed beneath azure lids,
+but the pencilled eyebrows still slanted mockingly, and round her red
+lips was the curve of laughter. Awake, her complexion had the fragility
+of rosy porcelain: in sleep the color fled, leaving it dead white as new
+ivory.
+
+Columbine lay sleeping, a miniature stolen from the world's collection.
+The night wore on. The wind shook the old house. Dawn broke
+tempestuously.
+
+Now should Harlequin have hurried down the unreal street and, creeping
+in magically, have kissed her a welcome to the sweet and careless
+"twenties" that would contain the best of his Columbine's life.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII: _Sweet and Twenty_
+
+
+The studio, looking very cheerful for Jenny's birthday, had achieved a
+Sabbath tidiness. It was, to be sure, a tidiness more apparent than
+real, inasmuch as it consisted of pushing every disorderly object into a
+corner and covering the accumulation with an old Spanish cope. Beneath
+this semicircle of faded velvet lay onions and sealing-wax, palette,
+brushes, bits of cardboard, a mixture of knives and forks, a tin of
+pineapple still undefeated, many unanswered letters, a tweed overcoat,
+and other things that gave more to utility than beauty.
+
+The fire blazed in the big fireplace and rippled in reflection about the
+sloping ceiling. Chairs were set in a comfortable crescent round the
+tea-table, and looked as invitingly empty as the Venetian mirror. The
+teacups, where each one held the fire's image, showed an opal in the
+smooth porcelain. Anticipation brooded upon the apartment, accentuated
+by the bell of a neighboring church that rang in a quick monotone. In
+the high deal ingle sat three young men smoking long clay pipes; and by
+the window facing the river Maurice stood breathing upon the glass in
+order to record his love's name in evanescent charactery upon the misted
+surface.
+
+At last the monotonous bell ceased its jangling. Big Ben thundered the
+hour of four, and the host, throwing up the window, leaned out to a
+gray, foggy afternoon.
+
+"Here's Jenny," he cried, drawing back so quickly into the studio that
+he banged his head against the frame of the window. The three young men
+in the ingle rose and, knocking out their pipes, stood with their backs
+to the fire in an attitude of easy expectation. Maurice by this time was
+dashing out into the street to welcome Jenny, who was accompanied by
+Irene.
+
+"Hurrah!" he said. "I was afraid you might get lost. How are you now?"
+he went on, turning to Irene.
+
+"I'm quite all right now," replied the latter.
+
+"She's in the best of pink," said Jenny.
+
+"Pink enough to climb all these stairs?" asked Maurice, laughing.
+
+"I expect so," said Irene.
+
+"Any of the others come yet?" Jenny inquired on the way up.
+
+"Only Castleton and Cunningham and Ronnie Walker."
+
+"I mean any of the girls?"
+
+"No, you're the first--and fairest."
+
+Irene, for all her optimism, was beginning to feel exhausted.
+
+"I say, young Jenny, does your friend here--Maurice--I suppose I can
+call him Maurice?"
+
+"Idiot! Of course."
+
+"Does Maurice live much higher?"
+
+"Yes, you may well ask," said Jenny. "What! He's Sky-scraping Bill, if
+you only knew."
+
+"We're nearly there," said Maurice apologetically. Outside the door of
+the studio they paused.
+
+"What are their unnatural names?" asked Jenny, digging Maurice as she
+spoke.
+
+"Cunningham, Castleton and Walker."
+
+"They sound like the American Comedy Trio that got the bird. You
+remember, Ireen. Who cares? I shall call them Swan and Edgar for short."
+
+"That's only two."
+
+"Oh, well, I can remember Walker."
+
+Maurice opened the door, and Cunningham, Castleton and Walker advanced
+to make their bows.
+
+"This is Miss Pearl, and this is Miss Dale."
+
+"Pleased to meet you," said Irene.
+
+Jenny said nothing, but shook hands silently, taking the measure of the
+trio with shrewd and vivid glances.
+
+"Sit down, won't you?" said Cunningham.
+
+"Have a chair?" Walker suggested.
+
+Castleton looked at Jenny.
+
+"Isn't he tall?" she commented. "Doesn't he remind you of somebody?"
+
+"No," said Irene vaguely.
+
+"He does me. That Russian juggler--you know--who was struck on Queenie
+Danvers. _You_ know--the one we used to call Fuzzy Bill."
+
+"Oh, him?" said Irene.
+
+"Call me Fuzzy Bill, won't you?" put in Castleton. "It's a pleasantly
+descriptive name. I shall answer to that." Indeed, he did, for from that
+moment he became "Fuz" and never heeded a summons expressed differently.
+
+Just then there was a ring at the front door, and downstairs Maurice
+rushed to admit the visitors. Presently he came up again.
+
+"Damned kids," he grumbled.
+
+"You don't mean to say they fetched you all that way for nothing?"
+exclaimed Jenny.
+
+"It's good for him," Ronnie Walker asserted.
+
+"Yes, but what a dreadful thing," said Jenny. "Fancy tearing all that
+way for nothing. I should go mad."
+
+Another ring punctuated Jenny's indignation. Everybody to be forewarned
+ran to the window.
+
+"It is them this time. Gladys! Elsie!" she called. Then in critical
+commentary: "What a dreadful hat Elsie's got on."
+
+"She bought it yesterday.
+
+"I don't think," said Jenny. "Or if she did, it must have lain in the
+window and got forgotten since the year before last. Besides, what a
+shocking color. It's like anchovy paste."
+
+Madge Wilson and Maudie Chapman now appeared from round a corner, and,
+since Maurice was already on his way downstairs, Jenny ran after him to
+prevent a double journey.
+
+"Wait, wait," she called after him. "Madge and Maudie are coming, too."
+
+He stopped and waved to her.
+
+"Jenny--quick, one kiss--over the banisters. Do."
+
+"Do, do, do, I want you to," she mocked in quotation. But all the same
+she kissed him.
+
+"I absolutely adore you," he whispered. "Do you love me as much to-day
+as you did yesterday?"
+
+"Oh, I couldn't answer all that in my head. I should have to put it down
+on paper."
+
+"No, don't tease. Do you? Do you?"
+
+"Of course, baby," she assured him.
+
+"Angel!" he shouted, and rushed downstairs two steps at a time to admit
+the bunch of guests on his doorstep.
+
+In a minute or two the studio was full of introductions, in the middle
+of which Maudie Chapman, a jolly girl with a big nose and a loud voice,
+explained the adventures of Madge and herself in arriving at 422
+Grosvenor Road.
+
+"Where we got to, my dear, well, that wants knowing. I was saying, when
+we got off the tram at Vauxhall Bridge, 'Wherever is this man's house?'
+and Madge she was giggling and then I asked the time, and it was only
+half-past three, and I said, 'Whatever shall we do, we're most shocking
+early.' So we got inside a big building near here--full of pictures and
+a pond with gold-fish. I thought at first it was an aquarium, and then
+we saw some statues and I thought it was a Catholic church."
+
+"Isn't she a lad?" said Jenny, admiring the spirited piece of narrative.
+
+"Well, we had a good look at the pictures, _which_ we didn't think much
+of, and I slipped on the floor and burnt my hand on a sort of grating,
+and then we couldn't find the way out. We _couldn't_ find the way out.
+We got upstairs somewhere, and I called out, 'Management,' and a fellow
+with his hair nailed down and spectacles, said: 'Are you looking for
+the Watts?' and I said, 'No, we're looking for the What Ho's!' and he
+said, 'You've made a mistake, miss; they're in the National Gallery,'
+and Madge, you know what a shocking giggler she is, she burst out
+laughing and I didn't know where to look. So I said, 'Can you tell me
+where Grosvenor Road is?' and he looked very annoyed and walked off."
+
+"Oh, but it really was difficult to find the way out," Madge
+corroborated.
+
+"And what did you think of the pictures?" asked Ronnie Walker, who was a
+painter himself and still young enough to be interested in a question's
+answer.
+
+"Oh, don't ask _me_," said Maudie.
+
+"Nor me," said Madge.
+
+"They never looked at no pictures," said Jenny. "I bet you they was all
+the time trying to get off with the keeper. I know Madge and Maudie."
+
+Castleton suddenly laughed very loudly.
+
+"What's Fuz laughing at?" asked Jenny.
+
+"I was thinking of Madge and Maudie getting off with the Curator of the
+Tate Gallery. It struck me as funny. I apologize."
+
+Jenny looked at him suspiciously. Castleton, however, large, wide-faced
+and honest, could not be malicious.
+
+"Well, they do. They did at the Zoo once. Only he got annoyed when they
+asked him if he slept in a cage."
+
+At this point the bell interrupted reminiscence.
+
+"That must be Lilli Vergoe," said Jenny. "I'll go down and let her in.
+She'll feel uncomfortable walking into a crowd by herself."
+
+"I'll come as well," Maurice volunteered.
+
+The two of them took almost longer to descend than to come up, so much
+discussion was there of the immortality of affection, so much weighing
+up of comparative emotion. When they reached the studio with Lilli, the
+party had settled down into various groups of conversation.
+
+"What about tea?" said the host. "Jenny shall pour out."
+
+"But what a terrible teapot," cried the latter when she had accepted the
+task. "It's like my sister's watering-can. What's the matter with it?"
+
+"Age," said Castleton solemnly. "It's old Lowestoft. If you look inside,
+you'll see 'A Present from Lowestoft.'"
+
+"Shut up," said Maurice, "and pass the Chelsea buns."
+
+"A bit of old Chelsea," murmured Castleton.
+
+"Shut up making rotten jokes," said Cunningham.
+
+"You must excuse him," said Maurice. "He isn't funny, but he's very
+nice. Good Lord!" he went on. "I've never wished Jenny 'many happy
+returns of the day.'"
+
+"Yes, it's a pity you waited till after she's seen those buns," said
+Castleton. "However!"
+
+"And the cake," said Maurice, diving into the cupboard.
+
+"Don't look so sad," Castleton whispered to the guest of honor. "It
+isn't really a tombstone."
+
+"Isn't he awful?" said Jenny, laughing.
+
+"I say," cried Maurice. "Look here!"
+
+Across the white cake was written in pink icing: "Sacred to the Memory
+of a Good Appetite."
+
+"Rotten!" said Cunningham. "Castleton, of course."
+
+"Of course," said Maurice. "And now we haven't got any candles."
+
+"Let's light the gas instead," Castleton suggested.
+
+"You are mad," said Jenny.
+
+Tea went on with wild laughter, with clinking of saucers and spoons,
+with desperate carving of the birthday cake, with solemn jokes from
+Castleton, with lightning caricatures from Ronnie Walker.
+
+Once Jenny whispered to Maurice:
+
+"Why did you say I shouldn't like Fuz? I think he's nice. You know,
+funny; but very nice."
+
+"I'm glad," Maurice whispered back. "I like you to like my friends."
+
+After tea they all wandered round the studio in commentary of its
+contents.
+
+"Maurice!" said Castleton, stopping before the wax model of Aphrodite.
+"You don't feed your pets regularly enough. This lady's outrageously
+thin."
+
+"Isn't he shocking?" said Maudie. "What would you do with him?"
+
+"He's a nut," said Madge.
+
+"Isn't he?" said Elsie and Gladys in chorus. These two very seldom
+penetrated beyond the exclamatory interrogative.
+
+"A nut, you think?" said Castleton. "A Brasilero of the old breed with
+waxed pistachios and cocoanut-matted locks?"
+
+"Oh, dry up," said Maurice. "I want the girls to look at this dancing
+girl."
+
+"No one couldn't stand in that p[)]s[=i]sh," said Jenny. "Could they,
+Lilli?"
+
+"Not very easily," the latter agreed.
+
+"Really?" asked Maurice, somewhat piqued.
+
+"Of course they could," Maudie contradicted.
+
+"Certainly," said Irene, highly contemptuous.
+
+"I say they couldn't then," Jenny persisted.
+
+"She'd be a rotten dancer if she couldn't."
+
+"I don't think so," Jenny said frigidly.
+
+The girls unanimously attempted to get into the position conceived by
+Maurice; but in the end they all had to agree that Jenny and Lilli were
+right. The pose was impossible.
+
+"Is that your mother?" asked Madge, pointing to Mona Lisa.
+
+"Don't be silly, Madge Wilson," Jenny corrected. "It's a picture, and I
+_don't_ think much of her," she continued. "What a terrible mouth! Her
+hands is nice, though--very nice. And what's all those rocks at the
+back--low tide at Clacton, I should think."
+
+"But don't you like her marvelous smile?" asked Maurice.
+
+"I don't call that a smile."
+
+"I knew those flute-players annoyed her," said Castleton. "Down with
+creative criticism. She's nothing but a lady with a bad temper."
+
+"Of course she is," said Jenny.
+
+"Would you smile, Jenny, if Ronnie here painted you with a gramophone
+behind a curtain?"
+
+"No, I shouldn't."
+
+"Catch the fleeting petulance, and you become as famous as Leonardo, my
+Ronnie."
+
+Philip IV was voted a little love with rather too big a head, and the
+Prince of Orange was a dear. Botticelli's Venus was not alluded to. The
+acquaintanceship was not considered ripe enough to justify any comment
+in that direction; although later on Jenny, her eyes pectinated with
+mirth and flashing wickedly, sang, pointing to the embarrassed goddess:
+"She sells seashells on the seashore." Primavera concluded the tour of
+inspection, and by some Primavera herself was thought to be not unlike
+Jenny.
+
+"She's more like one of those angels with candles at Berlin," said
+Ronnie Walker.
+
+"Anyway," said Maurice, with a note of satisfaction, "she's a
+Botticelli."
+
+"Well, now you've all settled my position in life," said Jenny, "what's
+Irene?"
+
+But somehow it was not so interesting to discover Irene's prototype, and
+her similarity to the ideal of any single old master was left undecided.
+
+Now came the singing of coon songs with ridiculous words and haunting
+refrains, while dusk descended upon London. Maudie was at the piano,
+where a candle flickered on each side of the music and lit up the size
+of her nose. When all the favorites of the moment had been sung, older
+and now almost forgotten successes were rescued from the dust of
+obscurity.
+
+"We _are_ among the 'has beens,'" said Jenny. "Why, I remember that at
+the Islington panto when I went to see you, Lilli, and that's donkey's
+years ago. We've properly gone back to the year dot."
+
+Gradually, however, the jolly dead tunes produced a sentimental effect
+upon the party, commemorating as they did many bygone enjoyments. The
+sense of fleeting time, evoked by the revival of discarded melodies,
+began to temper their spirits. They sang the choruses more softly, as if
+the undated tunes had become fragile with age and demanded a gentler
+treatment. Perhaps in the gathering gloom each girl saw herself once
+more in short frocks. Perhaps Lilli Vergoe distinguished the smiling
+ghost of old ambition. Certainly Jenny thought of Mr. Vergoe and Madame
+Aldavini and the Four Jumping Beans.
+
+Maudie Chapman suddenly jumped up:
+
+"Somebody else's turn."
+
+Maurice looked at Cunningham.
+
+"Won't you play some Chopin, old chap?"
+
+"All right," said Cunningham, a dark, very thin young man with a high,
+narrow face, seating himself at the piano. The girls composed themselves
+to listen idly. Maurice drew Jenny over to an arm-chair by the window.
+The studio grew darker. The notes of the piano with the rapid execution
+of the player seemed phosphorescent in the candle-light. The fire glowed
+crimson and dull. The atmosphere was wreathed with the smoke of many
+cigarettes. The emotions of the audience were swayed by dreams that,
+sustained by music, floated about the heavy air in a pervading
+melancholy, inexpressibly sensuous. It was such an hour as only music
+can attempt to portray. Here was youth in meditation untrammeled by the
+energy of action. Age, wrought upon by music, may know regret, but only
+youth can see aspiration almost incarnate. Jenny, buried in the
+arm-chair, with Maurice's caressing hand upon her cheeks, thought it was
+all glorious, thought that Cunningham played gloriously, that the river
+with a blurred light was glorious, that love was glorious. She had a
+novel wish to bring May to such a party, and wondered if May would enjoy
+the experience. Time as an abstraction did not mean much to Jenny; but
+as the plangent harmonies wrung the heart of the very night with
+unattainable desires, she felt again the vague fear of age that used to
+distress her before she met her lover. She caught his hand, clasping it
+tightly, twisting his fingers in a passionate clutch as if he were
+fading from her life into the shadows all around. She began to feel, so
+sharply the music rent her imagination, a pleasure in the idea of
+instant death, not because she disliked the living world, but because
+she feared something that might spoil the perfection of love: they were
+too happy. She knew the primitive emotion of joy in absolute quiescence,
+the relief of Daphne avoiding responsibility. Why could not she and
+Maurice stop still in an ecstasy and live like the statues opposite
+glimmering faintly? Then, with a sudden ardor, life overpowered the
+enchantment of repose; and she, leaping to meet the impulse of action,
+conscious only of darkness and melody, spurred, perhaps, by one loud and
+solitary chord, pulled Maurice down to her arms and kissed him wildly,
+almost despairingly. The music went on from ballad to waltz, from waltz
+to polonaise. Sometimes matches were lit for cigarettes, matches that
+were typical of all the life in that room, a little flame in the sound
+of music.
+
+At last, on the delicate tinkle of a dying mazurka, Cunningham stopped
+quite suddenly, and silence succeeded for a while. Outside in the street
+was the sound of people walking with Sabbath footsteps. Out over the
+river there was a hail from some distant loud-voiced waterman. The
+church bell resumed its hurried monotone. Castleton got up and lit the
+gas. The windows now looked gray and very dreary; it was pleasant to
+veil them with crimson birds and vine-leaves. The fire was roused to a
+roaring blaze; the girls began to arrange their hair; it was time to
+think of supper. Such was Jenny's birthday--intolerably fugitive.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX: _The Gift of Opals_
+
+
+Jenny did not see Maurice after the party until the following night,
+when he waited in the court to take her out.
+
+"Come quick," he said. "Quick. I've got something to show you."
+
+"Well, don't run," she commanded, moderating the pace by tugging at his
+coat. "You're like a young race-horse."
+
+"First of all," asked Maurice eagerly, "do you like opals?"
+
+"They're all right."
+
+"Only all right?"
+
+"Well, I think they're a bit like soapsuds."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Maurice, "I've bought you opals for a birthday
+present."
+
+"I do like them," she explained, "only they're unlucky."
+
+"Not if you're an October girl. They're very lucky then."
+
+They were walking through jostling crowds down Coventry Street towards
+the Café de l'Afrique where Castleton would meet them to discuss a
+project of gayety. Jenny's soft hand on his arm was not successful in
+banishing the aggrieved notes from Maurice's petulant defense of opals.
+
+"Oh, you miserable old thing!" she said. "Don't look so cross."
+
+"It's a little disappointing to choose a present and then be told by the
+person it's intended for that she dislikes it."
+
+"Oh, don't be silly. I never said I didn't like it. How could I? I
+haven't seen it yet."
+
+"It's hardly worth while showing it to you. You won't like it. I'd
+throw it in the gutter, if it wasn't for this beastly crowd of fools
+that will bump into us all the time."
+
+"You are stupid. Give it to me. Please, Maurice."
+
+"No, I'll get you something else," he retorted, determined to be
+injured. "I'm sorry I can't afford diamonds. I took a good deal of
+trouble to find you something old and charming. I ransacked every
+curiosity shop in London. That's why I couldn't meet you till to-night.
+Damned lot of use it's been. I'd much better have bought you a turquoise
+beetle with pink topaz eyes or a lizard in garnets or a dragon-fly that
+gave you quite a turn, it was so like a real one, or a----"
+
+"Oh, shut up," said Jenny, withdrawing her arm.
+
+"It's so frightfully disheartening."
+
+"But what are you making yourself miserable over? I haven't said I don't
+like your present. I haven't seen it."
+
+"No, and you never will. Rotten thing!"
+
+"You are unkind."
+
+"So are you."
+
+"Oh, good job."
+
+"You're absolutely heartless. I don't believe you care a bit about me. I
+wish to God I'd never met you. I can't think about anything but you. I
+can't work. What's the good of being in love? It's a fool's game. It's
+unsettling. It's hopeless. I think I won't see you any more after
+to-night. I can't stand it."
+
+Jenny had listened to his tirade without interruption; but now as they
+were passing the Empire, she stopped suddenly, and said in a voice cold
+and remote:
+
+"Good night. I'm off."
+
+"But we're going to meet Castleton."
+
+"You may be. I'm not."
+
+"What excuse shall I make to him?"
+
+"I don't care what you tell him. He's nothing to me. Nor you either."
+
+"You don't mean that?" he gasped.
+
+"Don't I?"
+
+"But Jenny! Oh, I say, do come into the Afrique. We can't argue here.
+People will begin to stare."
+
+"People! I thought you didn't mind about people?"
+
+"Look here, I'm sorry. I am really. Do stay."
+
+"No, I don't want to."
+
+Jenny's lips were set; her eyes dull with anger.
+
+"I know I'm a bad-tempered ass," Maurice admitted. "But do stay. I meant
+it to be such a jolly evening. Only I was hurt about the opals. Do stay,
+Jenny. I really am frightfully sorry. Won't you have the brooch? I'm
+absolutely to blame. I deserve anything you say or do. Only won't you
+stay? Just this once. Do."
+
+Jenny was not proof against such pleading. There was in Maurice's effect
+upon her character something so indescribably disarming that, although
+in this case she felt in the right, she, it seemed, must always give
+way; and for her to give way, right or wrong, was out of order.
+
+"Soppy me again," was all she said.
+
+"No, darling you," Maurice whispered. "Such a darling, too. I hope
+Castleton hasn't arrived yet. I want to tell you all over again how
+frightfully sorry I am."
+
+But when they had walked past the Buddha-like manager who, massive and
+enigmatical, broods over the entrance to the cafe, they could see
+Castleton in the corner. It was a pity; for the constraint of a lovers'
+quarrel, not absolutely adjusted, hung over them still in the presence
+of a third person before whom they had to simulate ease. Maurice,
+indeed, was so boisterously cordial that Jenny resented his dramatic
+ability, and, being incapable of simulation herself, showed plainly all
+was not perfectly smooth.
+
+"What is the matter with our Jenny to-night?" Castleton inquired.
+
+"Nothing," she answered moodily.
+
+"She feels rather seedy," Maurice explained.
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"Do you like the opal brooch?" Castleton asked.
+
+"I haven't seen it," Jenny replied.
+
+"I was waiting to give it to her in here," Maurice suggested.
+
+Jenny, who was examining herself in a pocket mirror, looked over at him
+from narrowing eyes. He turned to her, defending himself against the
+imputation of a lie.
+
+"Castleton helped me to choose it. Look," he said, "it's an old brooch."
+
+He produced from his pocket a worn leather case on the faded mauve
+velvet of whose lining lay the brooch. It was an opal of some size set
+unusually in silver filigree with seed pearls and brilliants.
+
+"It's rather pretty," Jenny commented without enthusiasm. In her heart
+she loved the old-fashioned trinket, and wanted to show her delight to
+Maurice; but the presence of Castleton was a barrier, and she was
+strangely afraid of tears that seemed not far away. Maurice, who was by
+now thoroughly miserable, offered to pin the brooch where it would look
+most charming; but Jenny said she would put it in her bag, and he sat
+back in the chair biting his lips and hating Castleton for not
+immediately getting up and going home. The latter, realizing something
+was the matter, tried to change the subject.
+
+"What about this Second Empire masquerade at Covent Garden?"
+
+"I don't think we shall be able to bring it off. Ronnie Walker would be
+ridiculous as Balzac."
+
+"There are others."
+
+"Besides, I don't think I want to be Théophile Gautier."
+
+"Don't be, then," advised Castleton.
+
+"Anyway, it's a rotten idea," declared Maurice.
+
+"What extraordinary tacks your opinions do take!" retorted his friend.
+"Only this afternoon you were full of the most glittering plans and had
+found a prototype in 1850 for half your friends."
+
+"I've been thinking it over," said Maurice. "And I'm sure we can't work
+it."
+
+"Good-by, Gustave Flaubert," said Castleton. "I confess I regret
+Flaubert; especially if I could have persuaded Mrs. Wadman to be George
+Sand and smoke a cigar. However, perhaps it's just as well."
+
+"Who's Mrs. Wadman?" asked Jenny.
+
+"The aged female iniquity who 'does' for Maurice and me at Grosvenor
+Road. I'm sure on second thoughts it would be unwise to let her acquire
+the cigar habit. I might be rich next year, and I should hate to see her
+dusting with a Corona stuck jauntily between toothless gums."
+
+"Oh, don't be funny," said Maurice. "You've no idea how annoying you are
+sometimes. Confound you, waiter," he cried, turning to vent his temper
+in another direction. "I ordered Munich and you've brought Pilsener."
+
+"Very sorry, sir," apologized the waiter.
+
+"It was I who demanded the blond beer," Castleton explained. Then, as
+the waiter retired, he said:
+
+"Why not get him to come as Balzac?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The waiter."
+
+"Don't be funny any more," Maurice begged wearily.
+
+"Poor Fuz," said Jenny. "You're crushed."
+
+"I now know the meaning of Blake's worm that flies in the heart of the
+storm."
+
+Even Castleton was ultimately affected by the general depression; and
+Jenny at last broke the silence by saying she must go home.
+
+"I'll drive you back," said Maurice.
+
+"Hearse or hansom, sir?" Castleton asked.
+
+"Good night, Fuz," said Jenny on the pavement. "I'll bring Madge and
+Maudie to see you some time soon."
+
+"Do," he answered. "They would invigorate even a sleepy pear. Good
+night, dear Jenny, and pray send Maurice back in a pleasanter mood."
+
+For a few minutes the lovers drove along in silence.
+
+It was Maurice who spoke first:
+
+"Jenny, I've been an idiot, and spoilt the evening. Do forgive me,
+Jenny," he cried, burying his face in her shoulder. "My vile temper
+wouldn't have lasted a moment if I could just have been kissed once; but
+Castleton got on my nerves and the waiter would hover about all the time
+and everybody enraged me. Forgive me, sweet thing, will you?"
+
+Jenny abandoning at once every tradition of obstinacy, caught him to
+her.
+
+"You silly old thing."
+
+"I know I am, and you're a little darling."
+
+"And he wasn't ever going to see me again. What a liberty! Not ever."
+
+"I am an insufferable ass."
+
+"And he wished he'd never met me. Oh, Maurice, you do say unkind
+things."
+
+"Were you nearly crying once?" he asked. "When I gave you the brooch?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Jenny, precious one, are you nearly crying now?" he whispered.
+
+"No, of course not."
+
+Yet when he kissed her eyelids they were wet.
+
+"Shall I pin the brooch now?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Jenny, you don't know how I hate myself for being unkind to you. I hate
+myself. I shall fret about this all night."
+
+"Not still a miserable old thing?" she asked, fingering the smooth face
+of the opal that had caused such a waste of emotion.
+
+"Happy now. So happy." He sighed on her breast.
+
+"So am I."
+
+"You're more to me every moment."
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"You're so sweet and patient. Such a pearl, such a treasure."
+
+"You think so."
+
+"My little Queen of Hearts, you've a genius for love."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I mean, you're just right. You never make a mistake. You're patient
+with my wretched artistic temperament. Like a perfect work of art,
+you're a perfect work of love."
+
+"Maurice, you _are_ a darling," she sighed on the authentic note of
+passionate youth in love.
+
+"When you whisper like that, it takes my breath away.... Jenny are you
+ever going to be more to me even than you are now?"
+
+"What do you mean, more?" she asked.
+
+"Well, everything that a woman can be to a man. You see I'm an artist,
+and an artist longs for the completion of a great work. My love for you
+is the biggest thing in my life so far, and I long to complete it. Don't
+you understand what I mean?"
+
+"I suppose I do," she said very quietly.
+
+"Are you going to let me?"
+
+"Some day I suppose I shall."
+
+"Not at once?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not? Don't you trust me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Kiss me," she said. "I can't explain. Don't let's talk about it any
+more."
+
+"I can't understand women," Maurice declared.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+She smiled; but in the smile there was more of sadness than mirth.
+
+"Why waste time?" he demanded passionately. "God knows we have little
+enough time. Jenny, I warn you, I beg you not to waste time. You're
+making a mistake. Like all girls, you're keeping one foot in a sort of
+washy respectability."
+
+"Don't go on," Jenny said. "I've told you I will one day."
+
+"Why not come abroad with me if you're afraid of what your people will
+say?"
+
+"I couldn't. Not while my mother was alive."
+
+"Well, don't do that; but still it's easy enough not--to waste time.
+Your mother need never find out. I'm not a fool."
+
+"Ah, but I should feel a sneak."
+
+Maurice sighed at such scruples.
+
+"Besides," she added, "I don't want to--not yet. Can't we be happy like
+we have been? I will one day."
+
+"You can't play with love," Maurice warned her.
+
+"I'm not. I'm more in earnest than what you are."
+
+"I don't think you are."
+
+"But I am. Supposing if you got tired of me?"
+
+"I couldn't."
+
+"Ah, but that's where men are funny. All of a sudden you might take a
+sudden fancy to another girl. And then what about me? What should I do?"
+
+"It comes to this," he argued. "You don't trust me yet. You don't
+believe in me. Good heavens, what can I do to show you I'm sincere?"
+
+"Can't you wait a little while?" she gently asked.
+
+"I must."
+
+"And you won't ask me again?"
+
+"I won't promise that."
+
+"Well, not for a long time?" Jenny pleaded.
+
+"I won't even promise that. You see I honestly think you're making a
+mistake--a mistake for which you'll be very sorry one day. I wish you
+understood my character better."
+
+"All men are the same." She sighed out the generalization.
+
+"That's absurd, my dear girl. I might as well say all women are the
+same."
+
+"Well, they are. They're all soppy."
+
+"Isn't it rather soppy to go as far as you have with me, and not go
+farther?" Maurice spoke tentatively.
+
+"Oh, _I've_ properly joined the soppy brigade. I did think I was
+different, but I'm not. I'm well in the first line."
+
+"Don't you think," Maurice suggested--"of course, I'm not saying you
+haven't had plenty of experience--but don't you think there's a
+difference between a gentleman and a man who isn't a gentleman?"
+
+"I think gentlemen are the biggest rotters of all."
+
+"I don't agree with you."
+
+"I do. Listen. You asked me just now to come away with you. You didn't
+ask me to marry you."
+
+Maurice bubbled over with undelivered explanations.
+
+"Wait. I wouldn't marry you not if you asked me. I don't want you to ask
+me. Only------"
+
+"Only what?" Maurice inquired gloomily.
+
+"Only if I did all you wanted, I'd be giving everything--more than you'd
+give, even if you married a ballet girl."
+
+"Do let me explain," Maurice begged. "You absolutely misunderstand
+me.... Oh, Lord, we're nearly at Hagworth Street.... I've only time to
+say quite baldly what I mean. Look here, if you married me you wouldn't
+like it. You wouldn't like meeting all my people and having to be
+conventional and pay calls and adapt yourself to a life that you hadn't
+been brought up to. I'd marry you like a shot. I don't believe in class
+distinctions or any of that humbug. But you'd be happier not married.
+Can't you see that? You'd be happier the other way.... There's your
+turning. There's no time for more.... Only do think over what I've said
+and don't misjudge me ... darling girl, good night."
+
+"Good night."
+
+"A long kiss."
+
+Reasons, policies, plans and all the paraphernalia of expediency
+vanished when she from the steps of her home listened to the bells of
+the hansom dying away in the distance, and when he, huddled in a corner
+of the cab, was conscious but of the perfume of one who was lately
+beside him.
+
+In her bedroom Jenny examined the brooch. Perhaps what showed more
+clearly than anything the reality of her love was the affection she felt
+for Maurice when he was away from her. She was never inclined to
+criticise the faults so easily forgotten in the charms which she
+remembered more vividly. Now, with the brooch before her, as she sat
+dangling her legs from the end of the bed, she recalled lovingly his
+eagerness to display the unfortunate opal. She remembered the brightness
+of his blue eyes and the vibrant attraction of his voice. He was a
+darling, and she had been unkind about opals. He was always a darling to
+her. He never jarred her nerves or probed roughly a tender mood.
+
+Jenny scarcely sifted so finely her attitude towards Maurice. She summed
+him up to herself in a generalization. In her mind's eye he appeared in
+contrast to everybody else. All that the rest of mankind lacked he
+possessed. Whatever mild approval she had vouchsafed to any other man
+his existence obliterated. She had never created for herself an ideal
+whose tenuity would one day envelop a human being. Therefore, since
+there had never floated through her day-dreams a nebula with perfect
+profile, immense wealth and euphonious titles, Maurice had not to be
+fitted in with a preconception. Nor would it be reasonable to identify
+her with one of the world's Psyches in love with the abstraction of a
+state of mind and destined to rue its incarnation. She had, it may be
+granted, been inclined to fall in love in response to the demand of her
+being; but it would be wrong to suppose her desire was gratified by the
+first person who came along. On the contrary, Maurice had risen suddenly
+to overthrow all that had gone before, and, as it seemed now, was likely
+to overthrow anything that might come after.
+
+Sitting on the edge of the bed, she was hypnotized into a meditative
+coma by the steady twin flames of the candle and its reflection in the
+toilet-glass. She was invested with the accessories favorable to
+crystal-gazing, and the brooch served to concentrate faculties that
+would under ordinary circumstances have lacked an object. Contrast as an
+absolute idea is often visualized during slightly abnormal mental
+phases. Fever often fatigues the brain with a reiteration of images in
+tremendous contrast, generally of mere size, when the mind is forced to
+contemplate again and again with increasing resentment the horrible
+disparity between a pin's point and a pyramid. In Jenny's mind Maurice
+was contrasted with the rest of the universe. He was so overpowering and
+tremendous that everything else became a mere speck. In fact, during
+this semi-trance, Jenny lost all sense of proportion, and Maurice became
+an obsession.
+
+Then suddenly the flame of the candle began to jig and flicker; the
+spell was broken, and Jenny realized it would be advisable to undress.
+
+Action set her brain working normally, and the vast, absorbing
+generalization faded. She began to think again in detail. How she longed
+for to-morrow, when she would be much nicer to Maurice than she had ever
+been before. She thought with a glow of the delightful time in front of
+them. She pictured wet afternoons spent cosily in the studio. She
+imagined herself, tired and bored, coming down the court from the stage
+door, with Maurice suddenly appearing round the corner to drive
+weariness out of London. It was glorious to think of someone who could
+make the worst headache insignificant and turn the most unsatisfactory
+morning to a perfect afternoon. Quickened by such thoughts, she got into
+bed without waking May, so that in a flutter of soft kisses she could
+sink deliciously to sleep, enclosed in the arms of her lover as an
+orchard by sunlight.
+
+About two o'clock Jenny woke up to another psychic experience not
+unusual with hypersensitive temperaments. The ardor of the farewell
+embrace had consumed all the difficulties of the situation discussed on
+the journey home. This ardor of merely sensuous love had lasted long
+enough to carry her off to sleep drowsed by a passionate content.
+Meanwhile her brain, working on what was originally the more vital
+emotion, brought her back to consciousness in the middle of the
+problem's statement. Lying there in the darkness, Jenny blushed hotly,
+so instant was the mental attitude produced by Maurice's demand. In
+previous encounters over this subject, her protagonists had all been so
+manifestly contemptible, their expectations so evident from the
+beginning, that their impudence had been extinguished by the fire of
+merely social indignation. Jenny had defeated them as the representative
+of her sex rather than herself. She had never comprehended the
+application of their desires to herself as a feasible proposition. They
+were a fact merely objectively unpleasant like monkeys in a cage,
+physically dangerous, however, with certain opportunities Jenny's
+worldly wisdom would never afford. In the case of Maurice the encounter
+was actual, involving a clash of personalities: the course of her
+behavior would have to be settled. No longer fortified by the hostility
+of massed opinion, she would be compelled to entrust her decision to
+personal resolution and individual judgment. For the first time she was
+confronted with the great paradox that simultaneously restricts and
+extends a woman's life. She remembered the effect of Edie's announcement
+of surrender. It had sickened her with virginal wrath and impressed her
+with a sense of man's malignity, and now here was she at the cross-roads
+of experience with sign-posts unmistakable to dominate her mental
+vision.
+
+It was not astonishing that Jenny should blush with the consciousness of
+herself as a vital entity; for the situation was merely an elaboration
+of the commonplace self-consciousness incident to so small an action as
+entering alone a crowded room. Years ago, as a little girl, she had once
+woken up with an idea she no longer existed, an idea dispelled by the
+sight of her clothes lying as usual across the chair. Now she was
+frightened by the overwhelming realization of herself: she existed too
+actually. This analysis of her mental attitude shows that Jenny did not
+possess the comfortable mind which owes volition to external forces. Her
+brain registered sensations too finely; her sense of contact was too
+fastidious. Acquiescence was never possible without the agony of
+experience. Her ambition to dance was in childhood a force which was
+killed by unimaginative treatment. Once killed, nothing could revive it.
+So it would be with her love. In the first place, she was aware of the
+importance of surrender to a man. She did not regard the step as an
+incident of opportunity. All her impulses urged her to give way. Every
+passionate fire and fever of love was burning her soul with reckless
+intentions. On the other hand, she felt that if she yielded herself and
+tasted the bitterness of disillusionment, she would be forevermore
+liable to acquiesce. She would demand of her lover attributes which he
+might not possess, and out of his failure by the completeness of her
+personality she would create for herself a tragedy.
+
+Finally a third aspect presented itself in the finality of the proposed
+surrender. She was now for the first time enjoying life with a fullness
+of appreciation which formerly she had never imagined. She was happy in
+a sense of joy. When Cunningham was playing in the studio, she had felt
+how insecure such happiness was, how impatient of any design to imprison
+it in the walls of time. Indeed, perhaps she had seen it escaping on the
+echoes of a melody. Then suddenly over all this confusion of prudence,
+debate, hesitation, breathless abandonment and scorching blushes, sleep
+resumed its sway, subduing the unnatural activity of a normally indolent
+mind.
+
+She lay there asleep in the darkness without a star to aid or cross her
+destiny. She and her brooch of opals were swept out into the surge of
+evolution; and she must be dependent on a fallible man to achieve her
+place in the infallible scheme of the universe.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX: _Fête Galante_
+
+
+For some weeks after the incident of the opal, there was no development
+of the problem of behavior. Maurice did not refer to the subject, and
+Jenny was very glad to put it out of her mind. As if by tacit agreement,
+they both took refuge from any solution in a gayety that might have been
+assumed, so sedulously was it cultivated. Everything else was set aside
+for a good time, and though there were interludes when in the seclusion
+of an afternoon spent together they would recapture the spirit of that
+golden and benign October, these lovers generally seemed anxious to
+share with their friends the responsibilities of enjoyment.
+
+Thus it came about that a polity of pleasure was established whose
+citizens were linked together by ties of laughter. This city state of
+Bohemia, fortified against intrusion by experiences which the casual
+visitor was not privileged to share, stood for Jenny as the solidest
+influence upon her life so far. It gave her a background for Maurice,
+which made him somehow more real. Without this little society,
+acknowledging herself and him as supreme and accepting their love as the
+pivot on which its own existence revolved, she would have seen her lover
+as an actuality only when they were making love. Out of her sight, he
+would have faded into the uncertain mists of another social grade,
+floated incorporeal among photographs of Ellis and Walery in a legend of
+wealth and dignity beyond her conception. To Fuz and Ronnie and
+Cunningham she could talk of Maurice, thereby gleaning external
+impressions which confirmed her own attitude. In this atmosphere her
+love assumed a sanity and normality that might otherwise easily have
+been lost.
+
+It must not be supposed that this little republic was content with the
+territory of 422 Grosvenor Road. On the contrary, throughout October,
+November and December, there were frequent sallies against convention
+and raids upon Philistia. There were noisy tea-parties in hostile
+strongholds like the Corner House, where ladies were not permitted to
+smoke and customers were kindly requested to pay at the desk. Perhaps
+their most successful foray was upon a fashionable tea-shop in St.
+James's Street, where a florin was the minimum charge for tea to include
+everything; on this occasion, prepared for by rigorous fasting, it
+included a very great deal. There were attempts by Ronnie Walker to make
+the girls enjoy picture-galleries, by Cunningham to convert them to
+Symphony Concerts. And once they all went to see a play by Mr. Bernard
+Shaw. But painting, music and the drama could not compete with skating
+rinks, where elegant and accomplished instructors complained of their
+rowdiness. But, as Jenny said, "What of it? _We're_ enjoying ourselves,
+any old way."
+
+The pinnacle of their gay ambition was a Covent Garden Ball. This
+entertainment had continually to be postponed for lack of funds; for,
+though a Covent Garden Ball has usually a sober, even a chilling effect
+upon the company, it has dare-devil pretensions which Maurice and his
+retinue would not exploit unless they were assured of a conspicuous
+success.
+
+So the Second Empire Masquerade was planned and debated a long time
+before it actually happened. That it happened at all was due to the
+death of Maurice's great-aunt, who left him one hundred pounds. This
+legacy being unexpected, was obviously bound to be spent at once. As the
+legatee pointed out to Jenny one dripping afternoon in early January, as
+they sat together in the studio:
+
+"It's practically like finding money in the road. I know that one day my
+stockbroker uncle will leave me two thousand pounds. He's told me so
+often to raise my spirits on wet week-ends at his house. I've planned
+what to do with that. Every farthing is booked. But this hundred I
+never thought of. I was beginning to despair of ever raising the cash
+for Covent Garden, and here it is all of a sudden."
+
+"You're not going to spend a hundred pounds in one evening?" Jenny
+exclaimed.
+
+"Not all of it, because you've got to buy yourself some furs and three
+hats and those silk stockings with peach-colored clocks--oh, yes, and
+I've got to buy you that necklace of fire opals which we saw in Wardour
+Street and also that marquise ring, and I've got to buy myself a safety
+razor and a box of pastels, and I simply must get Thackeray's _Lectures
+on the English Humorists_ for Fuz."
+
+"There won't be much left of your hundred pounds," said Jenny.
+
+"Well, let's draw up an estimate. I'll write down the possibles and then
+we'll delete nearly all of them."
+
+Maurice got up from his chair and wandered round the room in search of
+note-paper. Not being able to find any, he pinned a large sheet of
+drawing-paper to a board and produced a pencil.
+
+"Look at him," laughed Jenny. "Look at the Great Millionaire. Just
+because he's come into money, he can't write on anything smaller than a
+blanket."
+
+"It's not ostentation," Maurice declared. "It's laziness--a privilege of
+the very poor, as you ought to know by this time. I can't find any
+note-paper."
+
+"I should think you couldn't. I wonder you can find yourself in this
+room."
+
+"Come along," urged the owner of it. "We must begin. Maurice and Jenny.
+Then Fuz and Maudie, Ronnie and Irene, Cunningham and Madge. Any more
+you can think of?"
+
+"You don't mean to say you've taken that unnatural piece of paper just
+to write those few names which we could have thought of in our heads.
+What would you do with him?"
+
+"We want another eight," Maurice declared.
+
+"Oh, no, eight's plenty."
+
+"Perhaps it is," he agreed. "Well, now, Maurice will be Théophile
+Gautier--no, he won't--the red waistcoat knocks him out--Edmond de
+Goncourt? No, he had a mustache. Chopin? Long hair. Look here, I don't
+think we'll be anybody in particular. We'll just be ladies and gentlemen
+of the period. You know you girls have got to wear crinolines and fichus
+and corkscrew curls."
+
+"Like we used to wear in Bohême in the Opera?"
+
+"That's it. You must see about your dresses at once. Good ones will cost
+about ten pounds to hire, and that ought to include some decent paste."
+
+"We sha'n't have to pay for _our_ tickets."
+
+"Good. Four guineas saved. Dresses? Say twenty pounds for the eight of
+us. Supper with fizz another ten quid. Four salmon-colored taxis with
+tips, ten pounds."
+
+"How much?" Jenny exclaimed. "Ten pounds just to take us to Covent
+Garden Ball and back?"
+
+"Ah, but I've a plan. These salmon-colored taxis are going to be the
+_chef d'oeuvre_ as well as the _hors d'oeuvre_ of the entertainment.
+Hush, it's a secret. Let me see, our tickets--four guineas--forty-four
+pounds four shillings. Well, say fifty quid to include all tips and
+breakfast."
+
+"Well, I think it's too much," Jenny declared.
+
+"Not too much for an evening that shall be famous over all evenings--an
+evening that you, my Jenny, will remember when you're an ancient old
+woman--an evening that we'll talk over for the rest of our lives."
+
+While Maurice was speaking, the shadow of a gigantic doubt passed over
+Jenny's mind. She endured one of those moments when only the profound
+uselessness of everything has any power to impress the reason. She
+suffered a complete loss of faith and hope. The moment was one of those
+black abysses before which the mind is aghast at effort and conceives
+annihilation. In the Middle Ages such an experience would have been
+ascribed to the direct and personal influence of Satan.
+
+"What's the matter?" Maurice asked. "You look as if you didn't believe
+me."
+
+But, while the question was still on his lips, the shadow passed, and
+Jenny laughed.
+
+The famous evening was finally assigned to the twenty-seventh of
+January. The four girls took their places in the ballet as usual and,
+meeting from time to time in evolutions, would murmur as they danced by,
+"To-night, what, what?" or "Don't you wish it was eleven?" They would
+look at each other, too, from opposite sides of the stage, smiling in
+the sympathy of anticipated pleasure. When the curtains fell they
+hurried to their dressing-rooms to exchange tights and spangles for
+mid-Victorian frocks, whose dainty lace made all the other girls very
+envious indeed. Some were so envious as to suggest to Jenny that another
+color would have suited her better than pink or that her hair would be
+more becoming _en chignon_ than curled. But Jenny was not deceived by
+such professions of amiable advice.
+
+"Yes, some of you would like to see me with my hair done different. Some
+of you wouldn't be half pleased if I went out looking a sight. Oh, no,
+it's only a rumor. Thanks, I'm not taking any. I know what suits me
+better than _any_one, _which_ pink does."
+
+"Don't take any notice of them," Maudie whispered to her friend.
+
+"Take notice of them. What! Why, I should be all the time looking. My
+eyes would get as big as moons. They've been opened wide enough since I
+came to the Orient, as it is."
+
+At last, having survived every criticism, the four girls were ready. The
+hall-porter's boy carried their luggage out to the salmon-colored taxis,
+whose drivers looked embarrassed by the salmon-colored carnations which
+Maurice insisted they should wear. The latter, with Fuz, Ronnie and
+Cunningham, stood in the entrance of the court, wrapped in full cloaks
+and wearing tall hats of a bygone fashion. They were leaning gracefully
+on their tasseled canes as the girls came along the court towards them.
+It was romantic to think that other girls in similar frocks had trod the
+same path and met men dressed like them fifty years ago. This sweet
+fancy was very vividly brought home to them when an old cleaner, grimed
+with half a century of Orient dust, passed by the laughing, chattering
+group, and, as she shuffled off towards Seven Dials, looked back over
+her shoulder with an expression of fear.
+
+"Marie thinks we're ghosts," laughed Madge.
+
+"Isn't it dreadful to think she was once in the ballet?" said Jenny.
+"Poor old crow, I do think it's dreadful."
+
+The eight of them shivered at the thought.
+
+"Really?" said Maurice. "How horrible."
+
+The episode was a gaunt intrusion upon gayety; but it was soon forgotten
+in the noise and sheen of Piccadilly.
+
+The taxis with much hooting hummed through the dazzling thoroughfares
+into the gloom and comparative stillness of Long Acre. As usual they
+tried to cut through Floral Street, only to be turned back by a
+policeman; but without much delay they swept at last under the great
+portico of the Opera House. Here many girls, blown into Covent Garden by
+the raw January winds, gave the effect of thistledown, so filmy were
+their dresses; and the rigid young men, stopping behind to pay their
+fares, looked stiff and awkward as groups of Pre-Raphaelite courtiers.
+Commissionaires decorated the steps without utility. In the vestibule
+merry people were greeting each other and nodding as they passed up and
+down the wide staircase. Here and there an isolated individual,
+buttoning and unbuttoning his gloves with unconscionable industry, gazed
+anxiously at every swing of the door. Presently Jenny and Madge and
+Maudie and Irene were ready and, as on the arms of their escort they
+took the floor of the ballroom, might have stepped from a notebook of
+Gavarni.
+
+Covent Garden balls are distinguished by the atmosphere of a spectacle
+which pervades them. The floor itself has the character of an arena
+encircled by tiers of red boxes, many of which display marionettes, an
+unobtrusive audience, given over to fans and the tinkle of distant
+laughter; while the curtained glooms of others are haunted by invisible
+eyes. Here are no chaperons struggling with palms and hair-nets through
+a wearisome evening, creaking in wicker chairs and discussing draughts
+with neighbors. The old men, searching for bridge-players, are absent.
+There is neither host nor hostess; and not one anæmic young débutante is
+distressed by the bleakness of her unembarrassed programme.
+
+Maurice announced that he had taken a box for the evening, so that his
+guests would be able, when tired of dancing, to cheat fatigue. Then he
+caught Jenny round the waist, and, regardless of their companions, the
+two of them were lost in the tide of dancers. They were only vaguely
+conscious of the swirl of petticoats and lisp of feet around their
+course. In the irresistible sweep of melodious violins all that really
+existed for Maurice and Jenny was nearness to each other, and eyes
+ablaze with rapture; and for him there was the silken coolness of her
+curls, for her the fever of his hand upon her waist.
+
+During the interval between the sixth and seventh waltzes, Maurice,
+breathless at the memory of their perfect accord, said:
+
+"I wonder if Paolo and Francesca enjoy swooning together on the winds of
+hell. Great Scott! as if one wouldn't prefer the seventh circle to
+bathing in pools of light with a blessed damosel. I'm surprised at
+Rosetti."
+
+"Who's she?"
+
+"The blessed damosel?"
+
+"No--Rose Etty."
+
+"Oh, Jenny, don't make me laugh."
+
+"Well, I don't know what you're talking about."
+
+"I was speculating. Hark! They're playing the Eton Boating Song. Come
+along. We mustn't miss a bar of it."
+
+In the scent of frangipani and jicky and phulnana the familiar tune
+became queerly exotic. The melody, charged with regret for summer elms
+and the sounds of playing-fields, full of the vanished laughter of
+boyhood, held now the heart of romantic passion. It spoke of regret for
+the present rather than the past and, as it reveled in the lapse of
+moments, gave expression to the dazzling swiftness of such a night in a
+complaint for flying glances, sighs and happy words lost in their very
+utterance.
+
+"Heart of hearts," whispered Maurice in the swirl of the dance.
+
+"Oh, Maurice, I do love you," she sighed.
+
+Now the moments fled faster as the beat quickened for the climax of the
+dance. Maurice held Jenny closer than before, sweeping her on through a
+mist of blurred lights in which her eyes stood out clear as jewels from
+the pallor of her face. Round the room they went, round and round,
+faster and faster. Jenny was now dead white. Her lips were parted
+slightly, her fingers strained at Maurice's sleeve. He, with flushed
+cheeks, wore elation all about him. No dream could have held the
+multitude of imaginations that thronged their minds; and when it seemed
+that life must end in the sharpness of an ecstasy that could never be
+recorded in mortality, the music stopped. There was a sound of many
+footsteps leaving the ballroom. Jenny leaned on Maurice's arm.
+
+"You're tired," he said. "Jolly good dance that?"
+
+"Wasn't it glorious? Oh, Maurice, it was lovely."
+
+"Come and sit in the box when you've had some champagne, and I'll dance
+with the girls while you're resting. Shall I?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+Presently Maurice was tearing round the room with Maudie, both of them
+laughing very loudly, while Jenny sat back in a faded arm-chair thinking
+of the old Covent Garden days and nights, and wondering how she could
+ever have fancied she was happy before she met Maurice. In a few minutes
+Fuz came into the box to ask if she wanted to dance.
+
+"No, I'm tired," she told him.
+
+"It's just as well, perhaps," he said gravely. "For I am what you would
+describe as a very unnatural dancer."
+
+"Oh, Fuz," she laughed; "are you? Oh, you must dance once round the
+room with me before it's over. Oh, you must. It tickles my fancy, the
+idea of Fuz dancing."
+
+"At last I've earned a genuine laugh."
+
+"Oh, Fuz, doesn't anyone else ever laugh at you, only me?"
+
+"Very rarely."
+
+"Shame!"
+
+"So it is."
+
+"Aren't Maurice and Maudie making a terrible noise?"
+
+"They're certainly laughing loud enough," Fuz agreed. "But Maurice is
+always in spirits. I don't think he knows the meaning of depression."
+
+"Doesn't he then!" Jenny exclaimed. "I think he gets _very_ depressed
+sometimes!"
+
+"Not deeply. It's never more than a passing mood."
+
+"That's quite right. It is a mood. But he works himself up into a state
+over his moods."
+
+"Tell me, dear Jane," said Castleton suddenly. "No, on second thoughts,
+I won't ask."
+
+"Oh, do tell me."
+
+"No, it's not my business. Besides, you'd be annoyed, and I've no wish
+to make our Jenny angry."
+
+"I won't be angry. Do tell me, Fuz, what you was going to ask."
+
+"Well, I will," he said, after a pause. "Jenny, are you very fond of
+Maurice?"
+
+"Oh, I love him."
+
+"Really love him?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"But you'd soon get over it if----"
+
+"If what?"
+
+"If Maurice was--was a disappointment--for instance, if he married
+somebody else quite suddenly? Don't look so frightened; he's not going
+to, as far as I know; or likely to, but if ... would it upset your
+life?"
+
+Jenny burst into tears.
+
+"My dearest Jane," Castleton cried, "I was only chaffing. Please don't
+cry. Jenny, Jenny, I'm only an inquisitive, speculative jackanapes.
+Maurice isn't going to do anything of the kind. Really. Besides, I
+thought--oh, Jane--I'm terribly ashamed of myself."
+
+"Maurice said I shouldn't like you," Jenny sobbed. "And I don't. I hate
+you. Don't stay with me. Go out of the box. I'm going home. Where's
+Maurice? I want Maurice to come to me."
+
+"He's dancing," said Castleton helplessly. "Jane, I'm an absolute beast.
+Jane, will you marry me and show your forgiving nature?"
+
+"Don't go on teasing me," sobbed Jenny, louder than ever. "You're
+hateful. I hate you."
+
+"No, but I mean it. Will you, Jenny? Really, I'm not joking. I'd marry
+you to-morrow."
+
+Jenny's tears gradually turned to laughter, and at last she had to say:
+
+"Oh, Fuz, you're hateful, but you are funny."
+
+"It's a most extraordinary thing," he replied, "that the only person I
+don't want to laugh at me must do it. Jane!" He held out his hand.
+"Jane, are we pals again?"
+
+"I suppose we've got to be," Jenny pouted.
+
+"Good pals and jolly companions?"
+
+"Oh, whoever was it said that to me once?" cried Jenny. "Years and years
+ago. Oh, whoever was it?"
+
+"Years and years?" echoed Castleton, quizzing. "Who are you, ancient
+woman?"
+
+"_Don't_ be silly. It was. Someone said it when I was a little girl. Oh,
+Fuz, I'd go raving mad to remember who it was."
+
+"Well, anyway, I've said it now. And is it a bargain?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"You and I being pals?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Which means that when I'm in trouble, I go to Jane for advice, and
+when Jane's in trouble, she comes to Fuz. Shake hands on that."
+
+Jenny, feeling very shy of him for the first time during their
+acquaintanceship, let him take her hand.
+
+"And the tears are a secret?" he asked.
+
+"Not if Maurice asks me. I'd have to tell him."
+
+"Would you? All right, if he asks, tell him."
+
+Maurice, however, did not ask, being full of arrangements for supper and
+in a quandary of taste between Pol Roger and Perrier Jouet.
+
+"What about Perrier without Jouet?" Castleton suggested. "It would save
+money."
+
+Supper (and in the end Maurice chose Pommery) was very jolly; but
+nothing for the lovers during the rest of the evening reached the height
+of those first waltzes together. After supper Fuz and Jenny danced a
+cake-walk, and Ronnie tried to hum a favorite tune to Cunningham in
+order that he could explain to the conductor what Ronnie wanted. Nothing
+came of it, however, as the latter never succeeded in disentangling it
+from two other tunes. So, with laughter and dancing, they kept the night
+merry to the last echo of music, and when at about half-past six they
+all stood in the vestibule waiting for the salmon-colored taxis to drive
+them home, all agreed that Maurice had done well.
+
+"And I've not done yet," he said. "I suppose you all think you're going
+home to tumble sleepily into bed. Oh, no, we're going to have breakfast
+first at the old Sloop, Greenwich."
+
+"Greenwich?" they repeated in chorus.
+
+"I've ordered a thumping breakfast. The drive will do us good. We can
+see the dawn break over the river."
+
+"And put our watches right," added Castleton.
+
+"Then you girls can be driven home (your bags are all inside the taxis)
+and sleep all the rest of the morning and afternoon."
+
+Maurice was so eager to carry this addendum that none of them had the
+heart to vote firmly for bed.
+
+"I don't mind where we go," said Ronnie. "But why Greenwich in
+particular? We can see the dawn break over the river just as well at
+Westminster."
+
+"Greenwich is in the manner," Maurice answered.
+
+"What manner?"
+
+"The crinoline manner. The Sloop is absolutely typically mid-Victorian
+and already twice as romantic as your crumbling Gothic or overworked
+Georgian."
+
+So the taxis hummed off to Greenwich through the murk of a wet and windy
+January morning. Wagons were being unloaded in Covent Garden as they
+started; and along the Strand workers were already hurrying through the
+rain. It was still too dark to see the river as they spun over Waterloo
+Bridge, but the air blew in through the open windows very freshly. In
+the New Kent Road factory girls, shuffling to work, turned to shout
+after the four taxis; and Madge Wilson leaned out to wave to her
+mother's shop as they passed.
+
+All the way Jenny slept in Maurice's arms, and he from time to time
+would bend over and kiss very lightly the sculptured mouth. In Deptford
+High Street the gray dawn was beginning to define the houses, and in a
+rift of the heavy clouds stars were paling.
+
+Jenny woke up with a start.
+
+"Where am I? Where am I?" Then, aware of Maurice, she nestled closer.
+
+"You've been asleep, dearest. We're almost at Greenwich. It's
+practically morning now."
+
+"I'm cold."
+
+"Are you, my sweet? I thought this fur coat would keep you warm. It's
+yours, you know. I bought it for you to-day--yesterday, I mean."
+
+"It's lovely and warm," she said, "but I'm so sleepy."
+
+"You are so perfect when you're lying asleep," he said; "I must make a
+statue of you. I shall call it The Tired Dancer. I'll begin as soon as
+possible and finish it this spring."
+
+"I wish spring would come quick," she murmured. "I'm sick of winter."
+
+"So am I," he agreed. "And we shall have the most exquisite adventures
+in the spring. We'll go out often into the country. Long country walks
+will do you good."
+
+"Rather."
+
+"Hullo!" cried Maurice. "Here we are at the Sloop. I hope breakfast is
+ready."
+
+There was, however, no sign of life in the hotel by the water's side. It
+stared at them without any welcome.
+
+"What an extraordinary thing," said Maurice. "I'll ring the bell. Great
+Scott! I never posted the letter telling them about breakfast."
+
+"What would you do with him?" said Madge.
+
+"Never mind. It's absurd to keep us waiting like this. We can surely get
+breakfast." He pealed the bell loudly as he spoke.
+
+"Can't you get in, sir?" asked one of the drivers.
+
+"And it's coming on to rain," said Jenny.
+
+Maurice pealed the bell louder than ever; and finally a sad-eyed porter
+in shirt-sleeves opened the door and surveyed the party over a broom.
+
+"We want breakfast," said Maurice; "breakfast for eight."
+
+"Breakfast always is at eight," the man informed them.
+
+"Breakfast for eight people and as quickly as possible."
+
+The man looked doubtful.
+
+"Good heavens!" Maurice cried irritably. "Surely in any decent hotel you
+can get breakfast for eight."
+
+"What are you?" the man asked. "Theatricals?"
+
+"No, no, no, we've been to a fancy dress ball--and we want breakfast."
+
+In the end they were admitted, and, a chamber-maid having been
+discovered on a remote landing, the girls were shown into a bedroom.
+
+"I thought this hotel professed to cater for excursions of pleasure,"
+said Maurice frigidly.
+
+"We don't get many of 'em here in winter."
+
+"I'm not surprised. Good Lord, isn't the fire lighted in the
+coffee-room?"
+
+"We don't use the coffee-room much--except for political meetings.
+Greenwich has gone out from what it used to be."
+
+The girls came in, pale and tired, and the party foregathered round the
+coffee-room grate, from which a wisp of smoke ascended in steady
+promise.
+
+"Well, Maurice," said Castleton, "I think very little of this ravished
+conservatory into which your historic sense has led us. How do you like
+Greenwich, girls?"
+
+The girls all sighed.
+
+"They don't."
+
+"Hullo, here's a waiter," said Cunningham, turning round. "Good morning,
+waiter."
+
+"Good morning, sir."
+
+"Is breakfast going to be long?"
+
+"It's on order sir. Eggs and bacon, I think you said."
+
+"I should think somebody probably did. In fact, I'd almost bet on it,"
+said Castleton. "What's the time, waiter?"
+
+"I don't know, sir, but I'll find out for you."
+
+"I always thought Greenwich was famous for its time."
+
+"Whitebait, sir, more than anything."
+
+Castleton sighed; and Maurice, who had gone downstairs to reassure the
+household, came back trying to look as if waiting for breakfast on a
+January morning after dancing all night was one of the jolliest
+experiences attainable by humanity.
+
+"Maurice," said Ronnie Walker, "we think your night was splendid. But we
+think your morning is rotten."
+
+"Oh, Maurice, why didn't you let us go to bed?" Jenny grumbled.
+
+"You can't really blame the hotel people," Maurice began.
+
+"We don't," interrupted Cunningham severely. "We blame you."
+
+"I also blame myself," said Ronnie, "for giving way to your mad
+schemes."
+
+"You're right," Jenny put in. "I think we was all mad. What must they
+have thought of us--a party of loonies, I should say."
+
+"I meant it to be very charming," Maurice urged in apology.
+
+"Oh, well, it'll all come out in the wash, but I wish they'd bring in
+this unnatural breakfast."
+
+The company sighed in unison, and, as if encouraged by such an utterance
+of breath, the wisp of smoke broke into a thin blue flame.
+
+"Come, that's better," said Maurice, unduly encouraged. "The fire's
+burning up quite cheerfully."
+
+This and the entrance of breakfast revived everybody, and when a genuine
+blaze crackled in the grate they thought Greenwich was not so bad after
+all; though Maurice could not persuade anybody to stand by the bleak
+windows flecked with raindrops and watch the big ships going out on the
+ebb.
+
+"But what shall we do?" Jenny demanded. "I can't go home after the milk.
+I shall get into a most shocking row."
+
+"You can explain matters," Cunningham suggested.
+
+"Yes, I should say. Who'd believe we should be so mad as to rush off to
+Greenwich on a pouring morning for breakfast? No, I must say I slept
+with Ireen."
+
+"Well, why don't you come back and go to bed at my place?" Irene
+suggested. "You can go home tea-time."
+
+"All right. I will."
+
+Maudie and Madge decided to copy the example of the other two, by going
+back together to Mrs. Wilson's house near the Elephant and Castle.
+
+"Only we ought to change our clothes first," Jenny said. "What of it
+though? We've got cloaks."
+
+"I shouldn't mind changing," said Castleton. "These claret-colored
+overalls of mine will inevitably attract the public vision."
+
+"Rot!" said Maurice. "We can all drive down to the Elephant--although,
+by the way, we ought to stop at the Marquis of Granby and look at the
+Museum."
+
+"To the deuce with all museums," cried Ronnie. "I want my bed."
+
+"You are an unsporting lot," Maurice protested. "Then we'll stop at the
+'Elephant,' and the girls can go home in two taxis and we'll go back in
+the others."
+
+So it was arranged; and, having paid the bill and politely assented to
+the waiter's suggestion that they should come over in the summer-time to
+a whitebait dinner, they left behind them the Sloop Hotel, Greenwich.
+
+On the way back to London, Maurice attempted to point out to Jenny the
+foolishness of her present style of living.
+
+"All this fuss about whether you go home before or after the milk. I
+can't understand why you let yourself be a slave to a family. I really
+can't."
+
+"But I'm not," said Jenny indignantly. "Only that doesn't say I'm going
+to live with you, if that's what you mean."
+
+Somehow the wet and dreary morning gave a certain crudity of outline to
+the situation, destroying romantic enchantments and accentuating the
+plain and ugly facts.
+
+"You'd be ever so much happier if you did."
+
+"Oh, well, who cares?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't say that."
+
+"Well, what an unnatural time to talk about where I'm going to live and
+what I'm going to do."
+
+"It's extraordinary," said Maurice, "how much you're influenced by the
+unimportant little things of life. I'm as much in love with you now as I
+was last night when we were waltzing. You're not."
+
+"I don't love anything now except bed."
+
+"Yet I'm just as tired as you are."
+
+"Who cares?"
+
+"Damn it. Don't go on saying that. I can't think where you got hold of
+that infernal expression."
+
+"You are in a nasty mood," said Jenny sullenly.
+
+"So are you."
+
+"Well, why did you drag me out all this way in the early morning?"
+
+"I wanted you to enjoy yourself. I wanted to round off a glorious
+evening."
+
+"I think a jolly good sleep rounds off a glorious evening, or anything
+else, best of all."
+
+"I think you sleep too much," argued Maurice, who was so tired himself
+that he felt bound to contest futilely every point of the discussion.
+
+"Well, I don't. That's where you and me don't agree."
+
+"You're always sleeping."
+
+"Well, if I like it, it needn't trouble you."
+
+"Nothing troubles me," Maurice answered with much austerity. "Only I
+wish to goodness you'd behave reasonably. Look here, you're an artistic
+person. You earn your living by dancing. You don't want to take up with
+a lot of old women's notions of morality. If you reject an experience,
+you'll suffer for it. Chance only offers you Life--I mean Life only
+offers you Chance----" But it did not matter much what he meant, for by
+now Jenny was fast asleep.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI: _Epilogue_
+
+
+Jenny went to bed at Irene's house in Camden Town and slept soundly till
+four o'clock in the afternoon. Then she got up, dressed herself, and
+prepared to face the storms of 17 Hagworth Street.
+
+When she walked into the kitchen, the family was assembled in conclave
+round the tea-table. The addition of her brother to the usual party of
+three made her exclaim in surprise from the doorway:
+
+"Oo--er, there's Alfie."
+
+"So you've come back?" said Mrs. Raeburn.
+
+"Yes, I went to Covent Garden Ball."
+
+"I wonder you dare show your face."
+
+"Why not?" asked Jenny, advancing towards the table.
+
+"Oh, leave her alone, mother," said May. "She's tired."
+
+"You dare tell me what I'm to do," Mrs. Raeburn threatened, turning
+sharply to her youngest daughter.
+
+Jenny began to unbutton her gloves, loftily unconscious of her mother's
+gaze, which was now again directed upon her.
+
+"How's yourself, young Alf?" she lightly inquired.
+
+"Better than you, I hope," came the morose reply muffled by a teacup.
+
+"Perhaps you'd like us to help you off with your things?" Mrs. Raeburn
+suggested sarcastically.
+
+"Eh?" Jenny retorted, pointing a cold insolence of manner with arched
+contemptuous eyebrows.
+
+"Don't you try and defy me, miss," Mrs. Raeburn warned her. "Because you
+know I won't have it."
+
+"Who cares? I haven't done nothing."
+
+Alfie guffawed ironically.
+
+"I wonder you aren't afraid to make a noise like that with such long
+ears as you've got," said Jenny. "I should be."
+
+Alfie muttered something about sauce under his breath, but ventured no
+audible retort.
+
+"Well, what's the matter?" Jenny asked. "Get it over and done with."
+
+"Where were you last night?"
+
+"I told you. At Covent Garden Ball."
+
+"And afterwards?"
+
+"I went home with Ireen."
+
+"And that's a ---- lie," shouted Alfie. "Because I saw you go off with a
+fellah."
+
+"What of it, Mr. Nosy Parker? And don't use your navvy's language to me,
+because I don't like it."
+
+"That's quite right," May agreed. "He ought to be ashamed of himself."
+
+"You shut up, you silly kid," Alfie commanded.
+
+Here Charlie entered the dispute.
+
+"There's no call to swear, Alf. I can argue without swearing and so can
+you."
+
+"It was you that learned him to swear. He's heard you often enough,"
+Mrs. Raeburn pointed out. "But that's no reason why Alfie should."
+
+Jenny, more insolently contemptuous than ever, interrupted the
+side-issue.
+
+"When you've finished arguing which is the biggest lady and gentleman in
+this room, perhaps you'll let me finish what I was going to say."
+
+"I'd hold my tongue if I was you," her brother advised. "You're as bad
+as Edie."
+
+"Don't you talk to me. You!" said Jenny, stamping with rage. Then, with
+head thrown back and defiant underlip, she continued:
+
+"That's quite right about my driving off with a gentleman." In the tail
+of the "g" was whipcord for Alfie's self-esteem.
+
+"Gentleman," he sneered.
+
+"_Which_ is more than _you_ could ever be, any old way."
+
+"Or want to," Alfie growled. "Thanks, I'm quite content with what I am."
+
+"You can't have many looking-glasses down at your workshop then. Look at
+Mr. Quite Content. How much do they pay you a week to be all the time
+spying after your sister?"
+
+"Well, anyway, I caught you out, my girl."
+
+"No, you didn't. I say I _did_ drive off with a gentleman, but there was
+a crowd of us. We went to have breakfast at Greenwich."
+
+"Now that's a place I've often meant to go to and never did," said
+Charlie. "What's it like?"
+
+"You keep quiet, you silly old man," his wife commanded. "As if she went
+near Greenwich. What a tale!"
+
+"It isn't a tale," Jenny declared. "I did. Ask Maudie Chapman and Madge
+Wilson and Ireen. They was all there."
+
+"Oh, I don't doubt they're just as quick with their tongues as what you
+are," said Mrs. Raeburn. "A nice lot you meet at that theater."
+
+"Jest leave the theater alone," her daughter answered. "It's better than
+this dog's island where no one can't let you alone for a minute because
+they're so ignorant that they don't know nothing. I say I did go to
+Greenwich."
+
+"I don't see why the girl shouldn't have gone to Greenwich," Charlie
+interposed. "I keep telling you I've often thought of going there
+myself."
+
+"Jenny never speaks only what's the truth," May asserted.
+
+"Yes, and a lot of good it does me," said Jenny indignantly. "I'd better
+by half tell a pack of lies, the same as other girls do."
+
+"What she wants," said Alfie sententiously, "is a jolly good hiding.
+Look at her. There's a fine sister for a chap to have--nothing but paint
+and powder and hair-dye."
+
+Jenny stood silent under this; but the upper lip was no longer visible.
+Her cheeks were pale, her eyes mere points of light. May was the first
+to speak in defense of the silent one.
+
+"Brothers!" she scoffed. "Some girls would be a sight better without
+brothers. Hateful things!"
+
+Jenny's feelings had been so overwrought by the fatigue of the dance
+followed by this domestic scene that May's gallant sally should have
+turned contempt to tears. But Alfie had enraged her too profoundly for
+weeping, and though tear-drops stood in her eyes, they were hard as
+diamonds.
+
+"You oughtn't to talk to her like that, my boy," Charlie protested.
+"You're talking like a clergyman I once did some work for. He said, 'I'm
+not satisfied with this here box, Mr. Raeburn'--well, he said more than
+that--and I said, 'I'm not satisfied with your tone of voice,' and----"
+
+"For goodness' sake, Charlie, keep your tongue quiet," his wife begged.
+"Look here, Jenny," she went on, "I won't have these hours kept, and
+that's all about it. Wherever you were last night, you weren't at home
+where you ought to be, and where you shall be as long as you live with
+me. Now that's all about it, and don't give me any back answers, because
+I know what's right and I'm your mother."
+
+"I think you're a bit hard on the girl, Florrie, I do really," said the
+father. "She takes after her dad. I was always one for seeing a bit of
+life. What I says is, 'Let the young enjoy themselves.'"
+
+"What you say is neither here nor there," replied Mrs. Raeburn. "You
+never did have any sense, you haven't got any sense now, and you never
+will have any sense."
+
+"When you've done nagging at one another, all of _you_, I'm off," said
+Jenny deliberately.
+
+"Off?" Mrs. Raeburn echoed.
+
+"I'm going to live at Ireen Dale's for the future. This!" She looked
+round the kitchen. "Pooh!"
+
+"You're not going to leave home?" Mrs. Raeburn asked.
+
+"Aren't I? Who says so? I'm going now. You!" she said bitterly to her
+brother. "You've done a lot, Mr. Interfering Idiot. It's time you looked
+about for some girl to marry you, so as you can poke your nose into her
+business. Good-bye, all. I'll come over to tea soon, that is if you
+aren't all ashamed to have tea with me."
+
+As she turned abruptly to go, Alfie asked his mother why she didn't lock
+her in a bedroom.
+
+"It wouldn't be any good," said the latter.
+
+"No, it wouldn't," Jenny vowed. "I'd kill myself sooner than sleep here
+another night."
+
+"You're a dreadful worry to me," said Mrs. Raeburn slowly and earnestly.
+
+"Send on my things to 43 Stacpole Terrace, Camden Town," replied the
+daughter. "You needn't think you'll get me back by keeping them, because
+you won't."
+
+"You'll come and see us?" asked Mrs. Raeburn, who seemed now to accept
+defeat meekly.
+
+"Yes, as long as you keep Mr. Nosy Parker Puppy dog outside. Brother!
+Why if you only knew, he wears that jam-pot round his neck to hide where
+his head's come off."
+
+Presently the front door slammed.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII: _The Unfinished Statue_
+
+
+Maurice, on being informed of the decisive step which Jenny had taken,
+asked her why she had not taken the more decisive step of avowing his
+protection.
+
+"Because I don't want to. Not yet. I can't explain why. But I don't. Oh,
+Maurice, don't go on asking me any more."
+
+"It's nothing to do with your people. Because you evidently don't mind
+hurting their feelings in another way."
+
+"Going to live at Ireen's isn't the same as living with you."
+
+"You needn't live with me openly. Nobody wants you to do that. Only----"
+
+"It's not a bit of good your going on," she interrupted. "I've told you
+I will one day."
+
+"One day," he sighed.
+
+It was a fine February that year, coming in with a stir of spring.
+Maurice felt in accord with the season's impulse, and became possessed
+with the ambition to create a work of art. He suggested that Jenny
+should come daily to the studio and sit for his statue of The Tired
+Dancer.
+
+"I'm sure my real vocation is plastic," he declared. "I can write and I
+can play, but neither better than a lot of other people. With sculpture
+it's different. To begin with, there isn't such competition. It's the
+least general of the arts, although in another sense it's the most
+universal. Again, it's an art that we seem to have lost. Yet by every
+rule of social history, it is the art with which the present stage of
+evolution should be most occupied. In this era of noise and tear the
+splendid quiescence of great sculpture should provoke every creative
+mind. I have the plastic impulse, but so far I've been content to
+fritter it away in bits and pieces of heads and arms and hands. I must
+finish something; make something."
+
+Jenny was content to sit watching him through blue wreaths of cigarette
+smoke. She found a sensuous delight in seeing him happy and hearing the
+flow of his excited talk.
+
+"Now I must mold you, Jenny," he went on, pacing up and down in the
+midst of the retinue of resolutions and intentions. "By gad! I'm
+thrilled by the thought of it. To possess you in virgin wax, to mold
+your delicious shape with my own hands, to see you taking form at my
+compelling touch. By gad! I'm thrilled by it. What's a lyric after that?
+I could pour my heart out in every meter imaginable, but I should never
+give anything more than myself to the world. But if I make a glorious
+statue of you, I give you--you forever and ever for men to gaze at and
+love and desire. By gad! I'm thrilled by the thought of it. There's
+objective art. Ha! Poor old poets with their words. Where are they? You
+can't dig your nails into a word. By Jove, the Nereids in the British
+Museum. You remember those Nereids, darling?"
+
+Jenny looked blank.
+
+"Yes, you do. You said how much you liked them. You must remember them,
+so light and airy that they seem more like clouds or blowballs than
+solid marble."
+
+"I think _all_ the statues we saw was very light and airy, if it comes
+to that," said Jenny.
+
+Maurice gave up pacing round the room and flung himself into a chair to
+discuss details of the conception.
+
+"Of course, I'd like you to be dressed as a Columbine: and yet, I don't
+know, it's rather obvious."
+
+"I could wear my practice dress."
+
+"What's that like?"
+
+"I've got two or three. Only the nicest is my gray tarlington."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"You know, very frilly musling. Just like a ballet skirt, only you
+needn't wear tights."
+
+"I didn't hear what you said. I know, tarlatan. Nice frizzy stuff. That
+sounds good. And it won't matter crumpling it?"
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"Because you see I want you to be lying on a pile of rugs and cushions
+just as if you'd been dancing hard and had fallen asleep where you sank
+down."
+
+So, in the time of celandines and snowdrops, Jenny would come to the
+studio every day; and when they had lunched together intimately and
+delightfully, she would go downstairs to change her frock, while Maurice
+arranged her resting-place.
+
+The dove-gray tarlatan skirt, resilient like the hair-spring of a watch,
+suited the poise of Jenny's figure. She wore gray silk stockings clocked
+with vivid pink, a _crêpe de Chine_ blouse the color of mist, and round
+her head a fillet of rosy velvet. Altogether, she looked an Ariel woven
+magically from the smoke of London. Once or twice she actually fell fast
+asleep among the rugs; but generally she lay in a dream, just conscious
+of the flow of Maurice's comments and rhapsodies.
+
+"It's an extraordinary thing," he began on one occasion. "But as I sit
+here fashioning your body out of wax, you yourself become every moment
+more and more of a spirit. I've a queer fancy working in my brain all
+the time that this is really you, here under my hands. I suppose it's
+the perpetual concentration on one object that puts everything else out
+of proportion. One thing, however, I do realize: you're making yourself
+every day more necessary to my life. Honestly, when you're not here,
+this studio is infernal. You seem to endow it with your presence, to
+infuse it with your personality. It's so romantic, you and I all alone
+on the tops of the houses, more alone than if we were on a beach in
+winter. I wish I could tell you the glorious satisfaction I feel all the
+time."
+
+"Darling," she murmured drowsily.
+
+"Sleepy girl, are you?"
+
+"A bit."
+
+Just then came a knock at the door, and Ronnie Walker looked in.
+
+"Hullo, Ronnie," said Maurice, with a hint of ungraciousness in his
+tone.
+
+"I say, old chap, would you think me an intrusive scoundrel if I made
+some drawings of Jenny?"
+
+Maurice's annoyance at interruption was mollified by the pride of
+ownership.
+
+"Rather not. Any time. Why not now?"
+
+So Ronnie sat there, making little _croquis_ of Jenny with soft outlines
+elusive as herself. After a while, with his sketch-book under his arm,
+he stole quietly from the room. The next day he came back with two
+water-colors, of which the first showed a room shadowy with dawn and
+Jenny fast asleep before a silver mirror, wrapped in a cloak of clouded
+blue satin. The second represented a bedroom darkened by jalousies
+faintly luminous with the morning light, when through one chink,
+glittering with motes, a narrow sunbeam made vivid her crimson lips.
+
+The painter showed his pictures to Maurice.
+
+"Oh, Ronnie," said the latter. "You put me out of temper with my own
+work."
+
+"My dear chap, I'm awfully sorry," apologized Ronnie, and, without
+waiting, hurried from the studio.
+
+"Whatever's the matter?" asked Jenny, awakened by this brief interview.
+
+"I wish people wouldn't come in and interrupt me when I'm at work,"
+Maurice grumbled. "It's frightfully inconsiderate. You don't want to
+look at damned paintings when you're working in another medium."
+
+"Who were they of?"
+
+"You, of course."
+
+"Why didn't he show them to me?"
+
+"Because I jumped down his throat, I suppose."
+
+"Whatever for?"
+
+"Can't you understand how annoying it must be to have to look at another
+person's treatment of your subject?"
+
+"I think it was very nasty of you not to let him show me the pictures."
+
+"You seem more interested in Ronnie's work than in mine."
+
+"Well, you never let me look at what you've done."
+
+"It isn't finished yet."
+
+"You can be horrid."
+
+"Look here, Jenny, for goodness' sake don't start criticising me. I
+can't stand it. I never could. I've noticed lately you've taken to it."
+
+"Oh, I've not."
+
+"Well, you give me that impression."
+
+Jenny rose from the cushions and, running her hands down the tarlatan
+till it regained its buoyancy, she moved slowly across to Maurice's
+side.
+
+"Kiss me, you silly old thing, and don't say any more unkind things,
+because they make me unhappy."
+
+Maurice could not be disdainful of her as, leaning over him, she clasped
+cool hands beneath his chin and with tender kisses uprooted from his
+forehead a maze of petulant lines.
+
+"You little enchanting thing," he murmured. "You disarm me with your
+witcheries."
+
+"And he's not going to be cross any more?"
+
+"He can't be. Alas, my sweet one is too sweet."
+
+"If you only knew what it meant for Jenny Pearl to be the soppy one."
+
+"That's love," Maurice explained.
+
+"Is it? I suppose it is."
+
+The sunshine of February was extinguished by a drench of rain. March
+came in with storms of sleet followed by a long stretch of dry easterly
+gales, when the studio, full of firelight and daffodils, was a pleasant
+refuge from the gray winds. After Ronnie's visit the statue had been put
+aside for a while; the lovers spent most of their time in hearth-rug
+conversations, when Jenny would prattle inconsequently of youthful days
+and Maurice would build up a wonderful future. Vexatious riddles of
+conduct were ignored like the acrostics of old newspapers, and Jenny
+was happier than she had ever been. Her nature had always demanded a
+great deal from the present. Occurrences the most trivial impressed
+themselves deeply upon her mind, and it was this zest for the ephemeral
+which made her recollections of the past so lively. As a natural
+corollary to this habit of mind, she was profoundly deficient in
+speculation or foresight. The future exhausted her imagination at once:
+her intellect gasped long before she reached the prospect of eternity. A
+month made her brain reel.
+
+Having succeeded in postponing all discussion of their natural attitude,
+Jenny set out to enjoy the present which endowed her with Maurice's
+company, with fragrant intimacies, and long, contented hours. He himself
+was most charming when responsibilities, whether of art or life, were
+laid aside. Jenny, a butterfly herself, wanted nothing better than to
+play in the air with another butterfly.
+
+Then Maurice suddenly woke up to the fact that, summer being imminent,
+no more time must be wasted. Work on the statue was resumed in a fever
+of industry. April came in more like a beldame than a maid. In the
+studio, now full of rose-pink tulips, the statue rapidly progressed. One
+morning April threw off her disguises and danced like a fairy.
+
+"I shall finish the model to-day," Maurice announced.
+
+The sun went in and out all the afternoon. Now the windows were a-wash
+with showers; in a moment they were sparkling in a radiancy.
+
+"Finished," the artist cried, and dragged Jenny to look and admire.
+
+"Jolly fine," she declared. "Only it isn't very like me. Never mind,
+position in life's everything," she added, as she contemplated her
+sleeping form.
+
+"Not like you," said Maurice slowly. "You're right. It's not. Not a bit!
+Damn art!" he cried, and, picking up the wax model, flung it with a
+crash into the fire-place.
+
+Jenny looked at Maurice, perplexity and compassion striving in her
+countenance with disapproval; then she knelt to rescue a curved arm,
+letting it fall back listlessly among other fragments.
+
+"You _are_ mad. Whatever did you want to do that for?"
+
+"You're right. It's not you. Oh, why did I ever try? Ronnie could do it
+with a box of damned paints. Why couldn't I? I know you better than
+Ronnie does. I love you. I adore every muscle and vein in your body. I
+dream day and night of the line of your nose. Why couldn't I have given
+that in stone, when Ronnie could show the world your mouth with two dabs
+of carmine? What a box of trickery life is. Here am I burning with
+ambition to create a masterpiece. I fall in love with a masterpiece. I
+have every opportunity, a flaming inspiration, and nothing comes of it.
+Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But, by Jove, something must. Do you hear,
+Jenny? I won't be put off any longer. If I can't possess your
+counterpart, I must possess you."
+
+During this speech a storm of hail was drumming on the windows; but
+while Maurice strained her to his heart in a long silence, the storm
+passed, and the sun streamed into the warm, quiet room. On the
+window-sill a solitary sparrow cheeped at regular intervals, and down in
+the street children were bowling iron hoops that fell very often.
+
+"Jenny, Jenny," pleaded Maurice, relaxing the closeness of his embrace.
+"Don't play at love any more. Think what a mistake, what a wicked
+mistake it is to let so much of our time go by. Don't drive me mad with
+impatience. You foolish little girl, can't you understand what a muddle
+you're making of life?"
+
+"I want to wait till I'm twenty-one," she said.
+
+It meant nothing to her, this date; but Maurice, accepting it as an
+actual pledge of surrender, could only rail against her
+unreasonableness.
+
+"Good heavens! What for? You are without exception the most amazing
+creature. Twenty-one! Why twenty-one? Why not fifty-one? Most of all,
+why not now?"
+
+"I can't. Not now. Not when I've just left home. I should feel a sneak.
+Don't ask me to, Maurice. If you love me, as you say you do, you'll
+wait a little while quite happy."
+
+"But don't you want to give yourself to me?"
+
+"I do, and then again I don't. Sometimes I think I will, and then
+sometimes I think I don't want to give myself to any man."
+
+"You don't love me."
+
+"Yes, I do. I do. Only I hate men. I always have. I can't explain more
+than what I've told you. If you can't understand, you can't. It's
+because you don't know girls."
+
+"Don't know girls," he repeated, staggered by the assertion. "Of course
+I understand your point of view, but I think it's stupid and irrational
+and dangerous--yes--dangerous.... Don't know girls? I wish I didn't."
+
+"You don't," Jenny persisted.
+
+"My dear child, I know girls too well. I know their wretched stammering
+temperaments, their inability to face facts, their lust for sentiment,
+their fondness for going half-way and turning back."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't keep on walking up and down. It makes me want to
+giggle. And when I laugh, you get angry."
+
+"Laugh! It is a laughing matter to you. To me it's something so serious,
+so sacred, that laughter no longer exists."
+
+Jenny thought for a moment.
+
+"I believe," she began, "I should laugh whatever happened. I don't
+believe anything would stop my laughing."
+
+Just then, away downstairs, the double knock of a telegraph boy was
+heard, too far away to shake the nerves of Jenny and Maurice, but still
+sufficiently a reminder of another life outside their own to interrupt
+the argument.
+
+"I wonder if that's for me," said Maurice.
+
+"You'd better go down and see, if you think it is."
+
+"Wait a minute. Old Mother Wadman may answer the door."
+
+Again, far below, they heard the summons of humanity.
+
+"Damn Mrs. Wadman! I wish she wouldn't go fooling out in the
+afternoon."
+
+"Why don't you go down, Maurice? He'll go away in a minute."
+
+Once more, very sharply, the herald demanded an entrance for events and
+emotions independent of their love, and Maurice unwillingly departed to
+admit them.
+
+Left alone in a tumult of desires and repressions, Jenny felt she would
+like to fling herself down upon the rugs and cry. Sentiment, for an
+instant, helped the cause of tears, when she thought of the many hours
+spent on that pile, drowsily happy. Then backwards and forwards went the
+image of her lover in ludicrous movement, and the whole situation seemed
+such a fuss about nothing. There was a merciless clarity about Jenny's
+comprehension when, urged by scenes of passion, she called upon her mind
+for a judgment. Perhaps it was the fatalism of an untrained reason which
+taught her to grasp the futility of emotional strife. Or it may have
+been what is called a sense of humor, which always from one point of
+view must imply a lack of imagination.
+
+Maurice came back and handed her the telegram.
+
+     Uncle Stephen died suddenly in Seville come home at once please
+     dear you must go out and look after aunt Ella
+
+     Mother
+
+"She's fond of you, isn't she?"
+
+Maurice looked puzzled.
+
+"Your mother, I mean."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I don't know. I think she's written very nice, that's all. I wish you
+hadn't got to go away though."
+
+"Yes, and to Spain of all places. This is the uncle I was telling you
+about. I come into two thousand pounds. I must go."
+
+"I wish you hadn't got to go away," she repeated sorrowfully. "Just when
+the weather's getting fine, too. But you must go, of course," she
+added.
+
+Jenny wrung this bidding out of herself very hardly, but Maurice
+accepted it casually enough. Suddenly he was seized with an idea:
+
+"Jenny, this two thousand pounds is the key to the situation."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Of course I can," he assured the air. "I can settle this on you. I can
+provide for you, whatever happens to me. Now there's absolutely no
+reason why you shouldn't give way."
+
+"I don't see that two thousand pounds makes _any_ difference. What do
+you think I am?"
+
+"I'm not buying you, my dear girl. I'm not such a fool as to suppose I
+could do that."
+
+"No, you couldn't. No man could buy me."
+
+"I'm very glad of it," he said. "What I mean is that now I've no
+scruples of my own to get over. This is certain. I know that if anything
+happens to me, you would be all right. Jenny, you must say 'yes.'"
+
+"I've told you I will one day. Don't keep on asking. Besides, you're
+going away. You'll have other things to think about besides your little
+Jenny. Only come back soon, Maurice, because I do love you so."
+
+"Love me!" he scoffed. "Love me! Rot! A woman without the pluck to trust
+herself to the lover talks of love. It means nothing, this love of
+yours. It's just a silly fancy. Love hasn't widened your horizon. Love
+hasn't given your life any great impetus. Look at me--absolutely
+possessed by my love for you. That's passion."
+
+"I don't think it's much else, I don't," said Jenny.
+
+"How like a girl! How exactly like every other girl! Good Lord, and I
+thought you were different. I thought you wouldn't be so blind as to
+separate love from passion."
+
+"I don't. I do love you. I do want you," she whispered. "Just as much as
+you want me, but not now. Oh, Maurice, I wish you could understand."
+
+"Well, I can't," he said coldly. "Look here, you've quarreled with your
+mother. That's one obstacle out of the way."
+
+"But it isn't. She's still alive."
+
+"You've known me long enough to be sure I'm not likely to turn out a
+rotter. You needn't worry about money, and--you love me or pretend to.
+Now why in the name of fortune can't you be sensible?"
+
+"But there'll come a moment, Maurice darling, and I think it will come
+soon, when I shall say 'yes' of my own accord. And whatever you said or
+done before that moment couldn't make me say 'yes' now."
+
+"And meanwhile I'm to go on wearing myself out with asking?"
+
+"No," she murmured, afire with blushes at such revelation of himself.
+"No, I'll say 'Maurice' and then you'll know."
+
+"And I'm to go off to Spain with nothing to hope for but 'one day, one
+day'?"
+
+"You'll have other things to think about there."
+
+"You're rather amusing with your proposed diversions for my imagination.
+But, seriously, will it be 'yes' when I come back, say, in a fortnight?"
+
+"No, not yet. Not for a little while. Oh, don't ask me any more; you are
+unkind."
+
+Maurice seemed to give up the pursuit suddenly.
+
+"I sha'n't see you for some time," he said.
+
+"Never mind," Jenny consoled him. "Think how lovely it will be when we
+do see each other."
+
+"Good-bye," said Maurice bluntly.
+
+"Oh, what an unnatural way to say good-bye."
+
+"Well, I've got to pack up and catch the 6.30 down to Claybridge. I'll
+write to you."
+
+"You needn't trouble," she told him, chilled by his manner.
+
+"Don't be foolish, I must write. Good-bye, Jenny."
+
+He seemed to offer his embrace more from habit than desire.
+
+"I've got to change first," she said, making no movement towards the
+enclosure of his arms. It struck them both that they had passed through
+a thousand emotions, he in the sculptor's blouse of his affectation, she
+in her tarlatan skirt.
+
+"It's like a short story by de Maupassant," said Maurice.
+
+"Is it? You and your likes! I'm like a soppy girl."
+
+"You are," said Maurice with intention. To Jenny, for the first time, he
+seemed to be criticising her.
+
+"Thanks," she said, as, with a shrug of the shoulder and curl of the
+lip, she walked out of the studio, coldly hostile.
+
+The rage was too deep to prevent her from arranging her hair with
+deliberation. Nor did she fumble over a single hook in securing the
+skirt of ordinary life. Soon Maurice was tapping at the door, but she
+could not answer him.
+
+"Jenny," he called, "I've come to say I'm a pig."
+
+Still she did not answer; but, when she was perfectly ready, flung open
+the door and said tonelessly:
+
+"Please let me pass."
+
+Her eyes, resentful, their luster fled, were dull as lapis lazuli. Her
+lips were no longer visible.
+
+"You mustn't go away like this. Jenny, we sha'n't see one another for a
+fortnight or more. Don't let's part bad friends."
+
+"Please let me pass."
+
+He stood aside, outfaced by such determination, and Jenny, with downcast
+eyes intent upon the buttoning of her glove, passed him carelessly.
+
+"Jenny!" he called desperately over the banisters. "Jenny! Don't go like
+that. Darling, don't; I can't bear it." Then he ran to catch her by the
+arm.
+
+"Kiss me good-bye and be friends. Do, Jenny. Jenny. Do! Please! I can't
+bear to see your practice dress lying there on the floor."
+
+Sentiment had its way this time, and Jenny began to cry.
+
+"Oh, Maurice," she wept, "why are you so unkind to me? I hate myself
+for spoiling you so, but I must. I don't care about anything excepting
+you. I do love you, Maurice."
+
+In the dusty passage they were friends again.
+
+"And now my eyes is all red," she lamented.
+
+"Never mind, darling girl. Come back while I get some things together,
+and see me off at Waterloo, will you?"
+
+She assented, as enlaced they went up again to the studio.
+
+"It's all the fault of that rotten statue," he explained. "I was furious
+with myself and vented it on you. Never mind. I'll begin again when I
+come back. Look, we'll put the tarlatan away in the drawer I take my
+things out of. Shall we?"
+
+Soon they were driving in a hansom cab towards the railway station.
+
+"We always seem to wind up our quarrels in cabs," Maurice observed.
+
+"I don't know why we quarrel. I hate quarreling."
+
+"We won't any more."
+
+As the horse strained up through the echoing cavern of Waterloo, they
+kissed each other good-bye, a long, long kiss.
+
+There were still ten minutes before the train left, and among the sweep
+of hurrying passengers and noise of shouting porters to an accompaniment
+of whistling, rumbling trains, Maurice tried to voice the immortality of
+his love.
+
+"Great Scott, I've only a minute," he said suddenly. "Look, meet me on
+Monday week, the twenty-third, here, at three-thirty. Three-thirty from
+Claybridge. Don't forget."
+
+"Take your seats, please," a ticket inspector shouted in their ears.
+Maurice jumped into his compartment and wrote quickly on an envelope:
+"3.30. Waterloo. Ap. 23. Claybridge."
+
+"Good-bye, darling, darling girl. I'll bring you back some castanets and
+a Spanish frock."
+
+"Good-bye. See you soon."
+
+"Very, very soon. Think of me."
+
+"Rather."
+
+The train went curling out of the station.
+
+"I shall be early in the theater to-night," Jenny thought.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII: _Two Letters_
+
+
+     HÔTEL DE PARIS, SEVILLA, SPAIN.
+
+     April 17.
+
+     My dear and lovely one,
+
+     I've not had time to write before. I meant to send you a letter
+     from the train, but I left all my notepaper and pencils in the
+     station restaurant at a place called Miranda, and went to sleep
+     instead.
+
+     I find that my uncle has left me more than I expected--five
+     thousand pounds, in fact. So I want to buy you a delightful little
+     house somewhere quite close to London. You could have a maid and
+     you could go on dancing if you liked. Only I do want you to say
+     "yes" at once. I want you to write by return and tell me you're
+     going to give up all doubts and worries and scruples. Will you, my
+     precious?
+
+     I've got another splendid plan. I want you to come and join me in
+     Spain in about a week. I shall be able to meet you in Paris,
+     because I am going to escort my aunt so far on the way home. Fuz
+     will look out your trains. You must come. He can arrange to give
+     you any money you want. We need not stay away very long--about a
+     month. Sevilla is perfect. The weather is divine. Get yourself some
+     cool frocks. We'll sit in the Alcazar garden all day. It's full of
+     lemon trees and fountains. In the evening we'll sit on a balcony
+     and smoke and listen to guitars.
+
+     My darling, I do so adore you. Please, please, come out to Spain
+     and give up not knowing your own mind. I miss you tremendously. I
+     feel this beautiful city is wasted without you. I'm sure if you
+     determined not to bother about anything but love, you'd never
+     regret it. You wouldn't really. Dearest, sweetest Jenny, do come.
+     I'm longing for my treasure. It's wonderfully romantic sitting here
+     in the patio of the hotel--a sort of indoor garden--and thinking so
+     hard of my gay and sweet one away in London. Darling, I'm sending
+     you kisses thick as stars, all the way from Spain. All my heart,
+
+     Your lover,
+
+     Maurice.
+
+Jenny was lying in bed when she received this letter. The unfamiliar
+stamp and crackling paper suited somehow the bedroom at Stacpole Terrace
+to which she was not yet accustomed. Such a letter containing such a
+request would have seemed very much out of place in the little room she
+shared at home with May. But here, so dismal was the prospect of life,
+she felt inclined to abandon everything and join her lover.
+
+The Dales were a slovenly family. Mr. Dale himself was a nebulous
+creature whom rumor had endowed with a pension. It never specified for
+what services nor even stated the amount in plain figures; and a more
+widely extended belief that the household was maintained by the Orient
+management through Winnie and Irene Dale's dancing, supplanted the more
+dignified tradition. Mr. Dale was generally comatose on a flock-exuding
+chair-bed in what was known as "dad's room." There in the dust,
+surrounded by a fortification of dented hatboxes, he perused old Sunday
+newspapers whose mildewed leaves were destroyed biennially like
+Canterbury Bells. Mrs. Dale was a beady-eyed, round woman with a passion
+for bonnets, capes, soliloquies and gin. Her appearance and her manners
+were equally unpleasant. She possessed a batch of grievances of which
+the one most often aired was her missing of the _Clacton Belle_ one
+Sunday morning four years ago. Jenny disliked her more completely than
+anybody in the world, regarding her merely as something too large and
+too approximately human to extirpate. Winnie Dale, the smoothed-out
+replica of her mother, was equally obnoxious. She had long lost all the
+comeliness which still distinguished Irene, and possessed an irritating
+habit of apostrophizing her affection for a fishmonger--some prosperous
+libertine who occasionally cast an eye, glazed like one of his own cods,
+at Jenny herself. Ethel, the third sister, was still in short frocks
+because her intelligence had not kept pace with her age.
+
+"The poor little thing talks like a child," Mrs. Dale would explain. "So
+I dresses her like a child. It's less noticeable."
+
+"_Which_ is silly," Jenny used to comment. "Because she's as tall as a
+house and _everybody_ turns round to look after her."
+
+Jenny would scarcely have tolerated this family for a week, if she had
+been brought at all closely or frequently in contact with them; but so
+much of the day was spent with Maurice and all the evening at the
+theater that Stacpole Terrace implied little beyond breakfast in bed and
+bed itself. Sometimes, indeed, when she went home to tea at Hagworth
+Street and saw the brightness of the glass and shimmer of clean
+crockery, she was on the verge of sinking her pride in a practical
+reconciliation. Nine weeks passed, however, making it more difficult
+every day to admit herself in the wrong; although, during the absence of
+Maurice, it became a great temptation. Therefore, when this letter
+arrived from Spain, inviting her to widen the breach with her family,
+she was half inclined to play with the idea of absolute severance.
+Flight, swift and sudden, appealed to her until the difficulty of making
+arrangements began to obscure other considerations. The thought of
+packing, of catching trains and steamers, of not knowing exactly what
+frocks to buy, oppressed her; then a fear took hold of her fancy lest,
+something happening to Maurice, she might find herself alone in a
+foreign city; and at the end of it all there was her childhood in a
+vista of time, her childhood with the presence of her mother brooding
+over it, her mother dearly loved whatever old-fashioned notions she
+preserved of obedience and strictness of behavior. It would be mean to
+outrage, as she knew she would, her mother's pride, and to hand her over
+to the criticisms of a mob of relatives. It would be mean to desert May,
+who even now might be crying on a solitary pillow. But when she went
+downstairs dressed and saw the Dale family in morning deshabille,
+uncorseted, flabby and heavy-eyed, crouching over the parlor fire, and
+when she thought of Maurice and the empty studio, Jenny's resolution was
+shaken and she was inclined to renounce every duty, face every
+difficulty and leave her world behind.
+
+"You do look a sulky thing," said Irene. "Coming to sit round the fire?"
+
+"No, thanks," said Jenny. "I haven't got the time."
+
+"Your young chap's away, isn't he?" asked Winnie.
+
+"What's it got to do with you where he is?"
+
+Jenny was in a turmoil of nervous indecision, and felt that whatever
+else she did, she must be quit of Stacpole Terrace for that day at
+least. She debated the notion of going home, of telling her mother
+everything; but the imagination of such an exposure of her most intimate
+thoughts dried her up. It would be like taking off her clothes in front
+of a crowd of people. Then she thought of going home without reference
+to the past; but she was prevented by the expectation of her mother's
+readiness to believe the worst, and the inevitably stricter supervision
+to which her submission would render her liable. In the end, she
+compromised with her inclination by deciding to visit Edie and find out
+what sort of sturdy rogue her nephew was by now.
+
+Edie lived at Camberwell in a small house covered with Virginia creeper
+not yet in leaf, still a brownish red mat which depressed Jenny as she
+rattled the flap of the letterbox and called her sister's name through
+the aperture. Presently Edie opened the door.
+
+"Why, if it isn't Jenny. Well I never, you are a stranger."
+
+Edie was shorter than Jenny and more round. Yet for all her plumpness
+she looked worn, and her slanting eyes, never so bright as Jenny's, were
+ringed with purple cavities.
+
+"How are you, Edie, all this long time?"
+
+"Oh, I'm grand; how's yourself?"
+
+"I'm all right."
+
+The two sisters were sitting in the parlor, which smelt unused, although
+it was covered with lengths of material and brown-paper patterns. By the
+window was a dressmaker's bust, mournfully buxom. Jenny compared it with
+the lay figure in the studio and smiled, thinking how funny they would
+look together.
+
+"I wish Bert was in," said Edie. "But he's away on business."
+
+Just then a sound of tears was audible, and the mother had to run out of
+the room.
+
+"The children gets a nuisance," she said, as she came back comforting
+Eunice, a little girl of two.
+
+"Isn't she growing up a little love?" said Jenny. "Oh, I do think she's
+pretty. What glorious eyes she's got."
+
+"They're like her father's, people say; but young Norman, he's the
+walking life-like of you, Jenny."
+
+"Where is the rogue?" his aunt inquired.
+
+"Where's Norman, Eunice?"
+
+"Out in the garding, digging gwaves," said Eunice in a fat voice.
+
+Jenny had a sudden longing to have a child of her own and live in a
+little house quite close to London.
+
+"Why, I don't believe you've ever seen Baby," said Edie.
+
+"Of course I have, but not for some months."
+
+They went upstairs to look at Baby, who was lying asleep in his cot.
+Jenny felt oppressed by the smallness of the bedroom and the many
+enlargements of Bert's likeness in youth which dwarfed every other
+ornament. They recurred everywhere in extravagantly gilt frames; and the
+original photograph was on the chest of drawers opposite one of Edie
+wearing a fringe and balloon sleeves.
+
+"There's another coming in five months," said Edie.
+
+"Go on. How many more?"
+
+"I don't know--plenty yet, I expect."
+
+The magic of home that for a few moments had enchanted the little house
+was dispelled. Moreover, at tea Norman smeared his face with jam, and
+snatched, and kicked his mother because she slapped his wrist.
+
+"Why do you let him behave so bad?" asked Jenny, unconscious that she
+was already emulating her own hated Aunt Mabel.
+
+"I don't, only he's such a handful; and his dad spoils him. Besides,
+anything for a bit of peace and quiet. Bert never thinks what a worry
+children is, and as if I hadn't got enough to look after, he brought
+back a dog last week."
+
+"Why don't you tell him off?"
+
+"Oh, it's easier to humor him. You'll find that out quick enough when
+you're married yourself."
+
+"Me married? I don't think."
+
+On the way to the theater that evening Jenny almost made up her mind to
+join Maurice, and would probably have been constant to her resolve, had
+it not been for one of those trivial incidents which more often than
+great events change the whole course of a life.
+
+Because she did not like the idea of sitting in meditation opposite a
+row of inquisitive faces, she took a seat outside the tramcar that came
+swaying and clanging down the Camberwell New Road. It was twilight by
+now, and, as the tramcar swung round into Kennington Gate, there was a
+wide view of the sky full of purple cloudbanks, islands in a pale blue
+luminous sea where the lights of ships could easily be conjured from the
+uncertain stars contending with the afterglow of an April sunset. Jenny
+sat on the back seat and watched along the Kennington Road the
+incandescent gas suffuse room after room with a sickly phosphorescence
+in which the inhabitants seemed to swim like fish in an aquarium. All
+the rooms thus illuminated looked alike. All the windows had a fretwork
+of lace curtains; all the tables were covered with black and red
+checkered cloths on which was superimposed half a white cloth covered
+with the remains of tea; all the flower vases wore crimped paper
+petticoats; all the people inside the cheerless rooms looked tired.
+
+Jenny pulled out the foreign letter and read of sunlight and love. She
+began to dream of kisses amid surroundings something like the principal
+scene of an Orient ballet, and, as London became more and more
+intolerably dreary, over her senses stole the odor of a cigar that
+carried her mind racing back to the past. Somewhere long ago her mother,
+wanting to go away with someone, had stayed behind; and for the first
+time Jenny comprehended mistily that now forgotten renunciation. She
+fell to thinking of her mother tenderly, began to be oblivious of
+interference, to remember only her merry tales and laughter and
+kindness. The strength which long ago enabled Mrs. Raeburn to refuse the
+nice little house and the Ralli car seemed to find a renewed power of
+expression in her daughter. At present, Jenny thought, kisses in Spain
+must still be dreams. That night, in the cheerless parlor of the Dales,
+she wrote in watery ink to Maurice that she could not meet him in Paris.
+
+     43 STACPOLE TERRACE, CAMDEN TOWN.
+
+     Friday.
+
+     My darling Maurice,
+
+     I can't come to Spain--I can't leave my mother like that--I should
+     feel a sneak--hurry up and come home because I miss you very much
+     all the time--It's no use to wish I could come--But I will tell you
+     about it when you come home--I wish you was here now. With heaps of
+     love from your darling Jenny.
+
+     Irene sends her love and hopes you're having a good time.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV: _Journey's End_
+
+
+Jenny received a post card from Maurice in answer to her letter. She was
+glad he made no attempt to argue a point of view which his absence had
+already modified more persuasively than any pleading. During the summer,
+perhaps on one of those expeditions long talked of, she would make him
+her own with one word; having sacrificed much on account of her mother,
+she was not prepared to sacrifice all; and when Maurice came back, when
+she saw his blue eyes quick with love's fires, and knew again the
+sorcery of hands and breathless enfolding of arms, it would be easy upon
+his heart to swoon out of everything except compliance. Aglow with
+tenderness, she wrote a second letter hinting that no chain was wanting
+but the sight of him to bind her finally and completely. Yet, with
+whatever periphrasis she wrapped it round, the resolve was not to be
+expressed with a pen. Recorded so, it seemed to lose something vital to
+its beauty of purpose. However thoughtfully she wrote and obliterated
+and wrote again, at the end it always gave the impression of a bargain.
+She tore the letter up. No sentence she knew how to write would be heavy
+with the velvet glooms of summer nights, prophetic of that supreme
+moment now at hand when girlhood should go in a rapture.
+
+A week went by, and Jenny received another post card, postponing the
+date of his return to May 1. She was much disappointed, but took the
+envelope he had given her at Waterloo, and altered, half in fun, half
+seriously, April 23 to May 1.
+
+The night before she was to meet Maurice, there was a heavy fall of
+rain reminding her of the night they first drove home together. She lay
+awake listening to the pervading sound of the water and thinking how
+happy she was. There was no little sister to cuddle now; but with the
+thought of Maurice on his way home to her kisses, her imagination was
+full of company. It was a morning of gold and silver when she was first
+conscious of the spent night. The room was steeped in rich
+illuminations. Sparrows twittered very noisily, and their shadows would
+sometimes slip across the dingy walls and ceiling. "To-day," thought
+Jenny, as, turning over in a radiancy of dreams and blushes and
+murmurous awakenings, she fell asleep for two more slow hours of a
+lover's absence. The later morning was passed in unpicking and
+re-shaping the lucky green hat which had lain hidden since the autumn.
+There was no time, however, to perfect its restoration; and Jenny had to
+be content with a new saxe-blue dress in which she looked very trim and
+eager under a black mushroom hat a-blow with rosebuds.
+
+It was about two o'clock when she went down the steps of 43 Stacpole
+Terrace in weather fit for a lovers' meeting. Great swan-white clouds
+breasted the deepening azure of May skies. The streets were dazzlingly
+wet with the night's rain, and every puddle was as blue as a river. In
+front gardens tulips burned with their fiery jets of color and the lime
+tree buds were breaking into vivid green fans through every paling,
+while in the baskets of flower-women cowslips fresh from chalky pastures
+lay close as woven wool. Every blade of grass in the dingy squares of
+Camden Town was of emerald, and gardeners were strewing the paths with
+bright orange gravel. Children were running against the wind, pink
+balloons floating in their wake. Children solemnly holding paper
+windmills to catch the breeze were wheeled along in mail-carts and
+perambulators. Surely of all the lovers that went to keep a May-day
+tryst, none ever went more sweet and gay than Jenny.
+
+She left the Tube at Charing Cross and, being early, walked along the
+Embankment to Westminster Bridge. As she crossed the river, she looked
+over the splash and glitter of the stream towards Grosvenor Road and up
+at Big Ben, thinking, with a sigh of content, how she and Maurice would
+be sitting in the studio by four o'clock. At Waterloo there was half an
+hour to wait for the train; but it was not worth while to buy a stupid
+paper when she could actually count the minutes that were ticking on
+with Maurice behind them. It was 3.25. Her heart began to beat as the
+enormous clock hand jerked its way to the time of reunion. Not because
+she wanted to know, but because she felt she must do something during
+that last five minutes, Jenny asked a porter whether this were the right
+platform for the 3.30 from Claybridge.
+
+"Just signaled, miss," he said.
+
+Would Maurice be looking out of the window? Would he be brown with three
+weeks of Spanish weather? Would he be waving, or would he be....
+
+The train was curling into the station. How much happier it looked than
+the one which curled out of it three weeks ago. Almost before she was
+aware of its noise, it had pulled up, blackening the platforms with
+passengers that tumbled like chessmen from a box. Maurice was not
+immediately apparent, and Jenny in search of him worked her way against
+the stream of people to the farther end of the train. She felt an
+increasing chill upon her as the contrary movement grew weaker and the
+knots of people became more sparse; so that when beyond the farthest
+coach she stood desolate under the station roof and looked back upon the
+now almost empty line of platform, she was frozen by disappointment.
+
+"Luggage, miss?" a porter asked.
+
+Jenny shook her head and retraced her steps regretfully, watching the
+satisfied hansoms drive off one by one. It was impossible that Maurice
+could have failed her: she must have made a mistake over the time. She
+took the envelope from her bag and read the directions again. Could he
+have come on the 23rd after all? No, the post card was plain enough.
+The platform was absolutely empty now, and already the train was backing
+out of the station.
+
+With an effort she turned from the prospect and walked slowly towards
+the exit. Then she had an idea. Maurice must have missed the 3.30 and
+was coming by the next. There was another in half an hour, she found out
+from a porter, but it came in to a platform on the opposite side of the
+station. So she walked across and sat down to wait, less happily than
+before, but, as the great hand climbed up towards the hour, with
+increasing hopefulness.
+
+Again the platform was blackened by emerging crowds. This time she took
+up a position by the engine. A cold wave of unfamiliar faces swept past
+her. Maurice had not arrived. It was useless to wait any longer.
+Reluctantly she began to walk away, stopping sometimes to look back.
+Maurice had not arrived. With throbbing nerves and sick heart Jenny
+reached York Road and stood in a gray dream by the edge of the pavement.
+A taxi drew up alongside, and she got in, telling the man to drive to
+422 Grosvenor Road.
+
+The river still sparkled, but Big Ben had struck four o'clock without
+them sitting together in the studio. The taxi had a narrow escape from a
+bad accident. Ordinarily Jenny would have been terrified; but now,
+bitterly and profoundly careless, she accepted the jar of the brakes,
+the volley of recriminations and the gaping of foot passengers with
+remote equanimity. Notwithstanding her presentiment of the worst, as the
+taxi reached the familiar line of houses by which she had so often
+driven passionate, sleepy, mirthful, sometimes one of a jolly party,
+sometimes alone with Maurice in ecstasies unparagoned, Jenny began to
+tell herself that nothing was the matter, that when she arrived at the
+studio he would be there. Perhaps, after all, he thought he had
+mentioned another train: his post card in alteration of the date had not
+confirmed the time. Already she was beginning to rail at herself for
+being upset so easily, when the taxi stopped and Jenny alighted. She
+let the man drive off before she rang. When he was out of sight she
+pressed the studio bell three times so that Maurice should not think it
+was "kids"; and ran down the steps and across the road looking up to the
+top floor for the heartening wave. The windows were closed: they seemed
+steely and ominous. She rang again, knowing it was useless; yet the bell
+was often out of order. She peered over at the basement for a glimpse of
+Mrs. Wadman. Hysterical by now, she rang the bells of other floors.
+Nobody answered; not even Fuz was in. Wings of fire, alternating with
+icy fans, beat against her brain. The damnable stolidity of the door
+enraged her, and, when she knocked its impassiveness made her numb and
+sick. Her heart was wilting in a frost, and, as the last cold ache died
+away in oblivion, arrows of flame would horribly restore it to life and
+agony. She rang the bells again, one after another; she rang them slowly
+in studied permutations; quickly and savagely she pressed them all
+together with the length of her forearm. The cherubs on the carved porch
+turned to demons, and from demons vanished into nothing. The palings on
+either side of the steps became invalid, unsubstantial, deliquescent
+like material objects in a nightmare. A catastrophe of all emotion
+collapsed about her mind, and when gladly she seemed to be fainting,
+Jenny heard the voice of Castleton a long way off.
+
+"Oh, Fuz, where is he? Where's Maurice?"
+
+"Why, I thought you were meeting him. I've been out all day."
+
+Then Jenny realized the door was still shut.
+
+"He wasn't there. Not at Waterloo."
+
+She was walking slowly upstairs now beside Castleton. The fever of
+disappointment had left her, and outwardly tranquil, she was able to
+explain her reeling agitation. The studio looked cavernously empty;
+already on the well-remembered objects lay a web of dust. The jars still
+held faded pink tulips. The fragments of The Tired Dancer still littered
+the grate.
+
+"Wait a minute," Castleton said; "I'll see if there's a letter for me
+downstairs."
+
+Presently he came back with a sheet of crackling paper.
+
+"Shall I read you what he says?"
+
+Jenny nodded, and, while he read, wrote with her finger, "3.30
+Claybridge," many times in the dust that lay thick on the closed lid of
+the piano.
+
+This was the letter:
+
+     Dear Castleton,
+
+     I've settled not to come back to England for a while. One makes
+     plans and the plans don't come off. I can't work in England and am
+     better out of it. Let me hear that Jenny is all right. I think she
+     will be. I didn't write to her. I just sent a post card saying I
+     should not be at Waterloo on the first of May. I expect you'll
+     think I'm heartless, but something has gone snap inside me and I
+     don't honestly care what you think. I'm going to Morocco in two or
+     three days. I want adventures. I'll send you a check for my share
+     of the rent in June. If you write, write to me at the English Post
+     Office, Tangiers.
+
+     Yours,
+
+     Maurice Avery.
+
+"Is that what he says?" Jenny asked.
+
+"That's all."
+
+"And he wants to hear I'm all right?"
+
+"He says so."
+
+"Tell him from me this little girl's all right," said Jenny. "There's
+plenty more mothers got sons. Plenty. Tell him that when you write."
+
+Her sentences rattled like musketry.
+
+Castleton stared vaguely in the direction of the river as if a
+friendship were going out on the tide.
+
+"But I don't want to write," he said. "I couldn't. Still, there's one
+thing. I don't believe it's another woman."
+
+"Who cares if it is?" There was a wistfulness about her brave
+indifference. "Men are funny. It might be."
+
+"I don't somehow think it is. I'd rather not. I was very fond of him."
+
+"So was I," said Jenny simply. "Only he's a rotter like all men."
+
+It was strange how neither of them seemed able to mention his name.
+Already he had lost his individuality and was merged in a type.
+
+"What will you do?" Castleton asked.
+
+"There's a question. How should I know?"
+
+Before her mind life like a prairie rolled away into distance infinitely
+dull.
+
+"It was a foolish question. I'm sorry. I wish you'd marry me."
+
+Jenny looked at him with sad eyes screwed up in perplexity.
+
+"I believe you would, Fuz."
+
+"I would. I would."
+
+"But I couldn't. I don't want to see any of you ever again."
+
+Castleton seemed to shrink.
+
+"I'm not being rude, Fuz, really. Only I don't want to."
+
+"I perfectly understand."
+
+"You mustn't be cross with me."
+
+"Cross! Oh, Jane, do I sound cross?"
+
+"Because," Jenny went on, "if I saw you or any of his friends, I should
+only hate you. Good-bye, I must run."
+
+"You're all right for money?" Castleton stammered awkwardly. "I
+mean--there's--oh, damn it, Jenny!"
+
+He pounded over to the window, huge and disconsolate.
+
+"Why ever on earth should I want money? What's the matter with next
+Friday's Treasury?"
+
+"Perhaps, Jenny, you would come out with me once, if I waited for you
+one night?"
+
+"Please don't. I should only stare you out. I _wouldn't_ know you. I
+don't ever ever want to see any of you again."
+
+She ran from the studio, vanishing like a flame into smoke.
+
+That night when Jenny went back alone to Stacpole Terrace, she saw on
+the table in the cheerless parlor the post card from Maurice, and close
+beside it the green hat bought in September still waiting to be
+re-shaped for the spring. She threw it into a corner of the room.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV: _Monotone_
+
+
+Jenny's first thought was an impulse of revenge upon the opposite sex
+comparable with, but more drastic than, the resolution she had made on
+hearing of Edie's disaster. She would devote her youth to "doing men
+down." It was as if from the desert of the soul seared by Maurice, the
+powers of the body were to sweep like a wild tribe maiming the creators
+of her solitude. Maurice had stood for her as the epitome of man, and it
+was to be expected that when he fell, he would involve all men in the
+ruin. This hostility extended so widely that even her father was
+included, and Jenny found herself brooding upon the humiliation of his
+share in her origin.
+
+This violent enmity finding its expression in physical repulsion
+defeated itself, and Jenny could no longer attract victims. Moreover,
+the primal instincts of sex perished in the drought of emotion; and soon
+she wished for oblivion, dreading any activity of disturbance. The
+desert was made, and was vast enough to circumscribe the range of her
+vision with its expanse of monotony. Educated in Catholic ideals, she
+would have fled to a nunnery, there coldly to languish until the fires
+of divine adorations should burst from the ashes of earthly love.
+Nunneries, however, were outside Jenny's set of conceptions. Death alone
+would endow her with painless indifference in a perpetual serenity; but
+the fear of death in one who lacked ability to regard herself from
+outside was not mitigated by pictorial consolations. She could never
+separate herself into audience and actor. Extinction appalled one
+profoundly conscious of herself as an entity. By such a stroke she would
+obliterate not merely herself, but her world as well. Suicides generally
+possess the power of mental dichotomy. They kill themselves,
+paradoxically, to see the effect. They are sorry for themselves, or
+angry, or contemptuous: madness disintegrates their sense of personality
+so that the various components run together. In a madman's huggermugger
+of motives, impulses and reasons, one predominant butchers the rest for
+its own gratification. Whatever abnormal conditions the shock of sorrow
+had produced in Jenny's mental life, through them all she remained fully
+conscious of her completeness and preserved unbroken the importance of
+her personality. She could not kill herself.
+
+The days were very long now, nor would she try to quicken them by
+returning to the old life before she met Maurice. She would not with two
+or three girls pass in review of the shops of Oxford Street or gossip by
+the open windows of her club. In the dressing-room she would sit silent,
+impatient of intrusion upon the waste with which she had surrounded
+herself. The ballets used to drag intolerably. She found no refuge from
+her heart in dancing, no consolation in the music and color. She danced
+listlessly, glad when the task was over, glad when she came out of the
+theater, and equally glad to leave Stacpole Terrace on the next day. In
+bed she would lie awake meditating upon nothing; and when she slept, her
+sleep was parched.
+
+"Buck up, old girl, whatever's the matter?" Irene would ask, and Jenny,
+resentful, would scowl at the _gaucherie_. She longed to be with her
+mother again, and would visit Hagworth Street more often, hoping some
+word would be uttered that would make it easy for her to subdue that
+pride which, however deeply wounded by Maurice, still battled
+invincibly, frightening every other instinct and emotion. But when the
+words of welcome came, Jenny, shy of softness, would carry off existence
+with an air, tears and reconciliation set aside. It was not long before
+the rumor of her love's disaster was carried in whispers round the many
+dressing-rooms of the Orient. Soon enough Jenny found the girls staring
+at her when they thought her attention was occupied. She had always
+seemed to them so invulnerable that her jilting excited a more than
+usually diffused curiosity; but for a long time, though many rejoiced,
+no girl was brave enough to ask malicious questions, intruding upon her
+solitude.
+
+June came in with the best that June can give of cloudless weather,
+weather that is born in skies of peach-blossom, whose richness is never
+lost in wine-dark nights pressed from the day's sweetness. What weather
+it would have been for the country! Jenny used to sit for hours together
+in St. James's Park, scratching aimlessly upon the gravel with the
+ferule of her parasol. Men would stop and sit beside her, looking round
+the corners of their eyes like actors taking a call. But she was
+scarcely aware of their presence, and, when they spoke, would look up
+vaguely perplexed so that they muttered apologies and moved along. Her
+thoughts were always traveling through the desert of her soul. Unblessed
+by mirage, they traveled steadily through a monotone towards an horizon
+of brass. Her heart beat dryly and regularly like the tick of a clock,
+and her memory merely recorded time. No relic of the past could bring a
+tear; even the opal brooch was worn every day because it happened to be
+useful. Once a letter from Maurice fell from her bag into the lake, and
+she cared no more for it than the swan's feather beside which it
+floated.
+
+July came in hot and metallic. Every sunset was a foundry, and the
+nights were like smoke. One day towards the end of the month Jenny,
+walking down Cranbourn Street, thought she would pay a visit to Lilli
+Vergoe. The room had not changed much since the day Jenny joined the
+ballet. Lilli, in a soiled muslin dress, was smoking the same brand of
+cigarettes in the same wicker-chair. The same photographs clung to the
+mirror, or were stacked on the mantelshelf in palisades. The walls were
+covered with Mr. Vergoe's relics.
+
+"Hullo, Jenny! So you've found your way here at last. What's been wrong
+with you lately? You're looking thin."
+
+"It's this shocking hot weather."
+
+"Why, when you came here before and I said it was hot, you said it was
+lovely."
+
+"Did I?" asked Jenny indifferently.
+
+"How's your mother? And dad? And young May?"
+
+"All right. I'm living along with Ireen Dale now."
+
+"I know. Whatever made you do that?"
+
+"Why shouldn't I?"
+
+"I shouldn't call them your style," said Lilli positively.
+
+"Ireen's nice."
+
+"Yes, she's all right. But Winnie Dale's dreadful. And look at her
+mother. She's like an old charwoman. And that youngest sister."
+
+"Oh, them, I never see _them_."
+
+"You've heard about me, I suppose?"
+
+"No, what?" asked Jenny, politely inquisitive.
+
+"I've turned suffragette."
+
+"You never haven't? Oh, Lil, what a dreadful thing!"
+
+"It's not. It's great. I used to think so myself, but I've changed my
+mind."
+
+"Oh, Lilli, I think it's terrible. A suffragette? But what an unnatural
+lot of women you must go around with."
+
+"They're not," said Lilli, loud in defense of her associates.
+
+"A lot of Plain Janes and No Nonsense with their hair all screwed back.
+I know. And all walking on one another's petticoats. Suffragette
+Sallies! What are they for? Tell me that."
+
+"Hasn't it never struck you there's a whole heap of girls in this world
+that's got nothing to do?"
+
+Lilli spoke sadly. There was a life's disillusionment in the question.
+
+"Yes; but that doesn't say they should go making sights of themselves,
+shouting and hollering. Get out! Besides, what's the Salvation Army
+done?"
+
+"You don't understand."
+
+"No, and I don't want to understand."
+
+"Why don't you come round to our club? I'll introduce you to Miss
+Bailey."
+
+"Who's she?"
+
+"She's the president."
+
+Jenny considered the offer a moment. Soon she decided that, dreary as
+the world was, it would not be brightened by an introduction to Miss
+Bailey. In the dressing-room that night, during the wait between the two
+ballets, Elsie Crauford, who had long been waiting for an opportunity to
+avenge Jenny's slighting references to Willie's evening dress, thought
+she would risk an encounter.
+
+"I didn't know your Maurice had gone quite sudden," she said. "Aren't
+you going to do anything about it?"
+
+"You've blacked your nose, Elsie Crauford."
+
+"Have I? Where?" Elsie had seized a hand-glass.
+
+"Yes, you have, poking it into other people's business. You curious
+thing! What am I going to do about it? Punch into you, if you're not
+sharp."
+
+"He seemed so fond of you, too."
+
+"You never saw him but once, when you blew in with the draught in that
+flash hat of yours."
+
+"No, but Madge Wilson told me you was absolutely mad about one another.
+It seems so funny he should leave you. But Madge said it wouldn't last.
+She said you weren't getting a jolly fine time for nothing. Funny thing,
+you always knew such a lot before you got struck on a fellow yourself.
+What you weren't going to do! You aren't so much cleverer than us after
+all."
+
+"_Who_ told you?" demanded Jenny.
+
+"Madge Wilson did."
+
+"Don't take any notice of _her,"_ Maudie Chapman advised at this point.
+"You jest shut up, Elsie Crauford. Always making mischief."
+
+"I'm tired of Jenny Pearl's always knowing better than anyone without
+being told off."
+
+"Told off! Who by? _You_?" gasped Jenny.
+
+Then Madge Wilson herself came into the dressing-room.
+
+"Hullo, duck," she said, surprised by Jenny's apparent reëntry into
+society.
+
+"Are you speaking to me, Madge Wilson? Because I don't want to talk to
+you. A nice friend. Hark at your fine friends, girls. They're the
+rotters that take you off behind your back."
+
+"Whatever's the matter?" Madge asked.
+
+"Yes, you don't know, do you? But I wouldn't be a sneak like you! I'd
+say out what I thought and not care for anyone. I wasn't getting a jolly
+fine time for nothing? And what about you, Mrs. Straightcut? But that's
+the way. Girls you think are your friends, girls _you_ take out and give
+a good time, they're the first to turn round on you. I wonder you
+haven't all gone hoarse with the way you've talked me to pieces these
+last weeks. I can hear you mumbling and whispering in corners. 'Have you
+heard about Jenny Pearl? Isn't it shocking? Oh, I do think it's a
+dreadful thing. What a terrible girl.' God, and look at _you_. Married
+women! Yes, and what have you married? Why, there isn't a girl in this
+dressing-room whose husband can afford to keep her. Husbands! Why,
+they're no better than--"
+
+"She's been going out with Lilli Vergoe," interrupted Elsie sneeringly.
+"Jenny Pearl's turned into a suffragette."
+
+"What of it? You and your six pairs of gloves that your Willie bought
+you. Well, if he did, _which_ I don't think, he must have broke open the
+till to do it."
+
+Madge Wilson's disloyalty effected for Jenny what nothing else had done.
+It made the blood course fast, the heart beat: it kindled her eyes
+again. That night in bed, she thought of falseness and treachery and
+cried herself to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI: _In Scyros_
+
+
+The outburst against feminine treachery had an effect upon Jenny's state
+of mind beyond the mere evoking of tears. These were followed by a
+general agitation of her point of view necessitating an outlet for her
+revived susceptibleness to emotion. A less sincere heart would have been
+caught on the rebound; but she and men were still mutually unattractive.
+The consequence of this renewed activity of spirit, in the aspect of its
+immediate cause, was paradoxical enough; for when Jenny thought she
+would try the pretensions of suffragism, no clear process of reasoning
+helped her to such a resolve, no formulated hostility to man. Whatever
+logic existed in the decision was fortuitous; nor did she at all
+perceive any absence of logic in throwing in her lot with treacherous
+woman.
+
+Lilli Vergoe was proud of such a catechumen, and made haste to introduce
+her to the tall house in Mecklenburg Square, whose elm-shadowed rooms
+displayed the sober glories of the Women's Political, Social and
+Economic League. Something about the house reminded Jenny of her first
+visit to Madame Aldavini's School; but she found Miss Bailey less
+alarming than the dancing mistress as, rising from masses of letters and
+scarlet gladioli, she welcomed the candidate. Miss Bailey, the president
+of the League, was a tall, handsome woman, very unlike Jenny's
+conception of a suffragette. She had a regular profile, a thin,
+high-bridged nose, and clearly cut, determined lips. Her complexion was
+pale, her hair very brown and rich. Best of all Jenny liked her slim
+hands and the voice which, though marred by a slight huskiness due to
+public speaking, was full of quality and resonance. She was one of those
+women who, carrying in their presence a fine tranquillity at once kindly
+and ascetic, imbue the onlooker with their long and perceptive
+experience of humanity. She was in no sense homely or motherly; indeed,
+she wore about her the remoteness of the great. Yet whatever in her
+general appearance seemed of marble was vivified by clear hazel eyes
+into the reality of womanhood.
+
+"And so you're going to join our club?" inquired Miss Bailey.
+
+Jenny, although she had intended this first visit to be merely
+empirical, felt bound to commit herself to the affirmative.
+
+"You'll soon know all about our objects."
+
+"Oh, I've told her a lot already, Miss Bailey," declared Lilli with the
+eagerness of the trusted school-girl.
+
+"That's right," said Miss Bailey, smiling. "Come along then, and I will
+enroll you, Miss----"
+
+"Pearl," murmured Jenny, feeling as if her name had somehow slipped down
+and escaped sideways through her neck. Then with an effort clearing her
+throat, she added, "Jenny Pearl," blushing furiously at the confession
+of identity.
+
+"Your address?"
+
+"Better say 17 Hagworth Street, Islington. Only I'm not living there
+just now. Now I'm living 43 Stacpole Terrace, Camden Town."
+
+"Have you a profession?"
+
+"I'm on the stage."
+
+"What a splendid profession, too--for a woman. Don't you think so?"
+
+Jenny stared at this commendation of a state of life she had always
+imagined was distasteful to people like Miss Bailey.
+
+"I don't know much about splendid, but I suppose it's all right," she
+agreed at last.
+
+"Indeed it is. Are you at the Orient also?"
+
+"Yes, you know, in the ballet," said Jenny very quickly, so that the
+president might not think she was trying to push herself unduly.
+
+"I don't believe there's anything that gives more pleasure than good
+dancing. Dancing ought to be the expression of life's joy," said the
+older woman, gazing at the pigeon-holes full of docketed files, at the
+bookshelves stuffed with dry volumes of Ethics and Politics and
+Economics, as if half regretting she, too, was not in the Orient Ballet.
+"Dancing is the oldest art," she continued. "I like to think they danced
+the spring in long before calendars were made. Your subscription is half
+a crown a year."
+
+Jenny produced the coin from her bag; and it said much for Miss Bailey's
+personality that the new member to adorn the action did not wink over
+her shoulder at Lilli.
+
+"Thank you. Here's the badge. It's copied from an old Athenian medal.
+This is Pallas Athene, the Goddess of Wisdom."
+
+"She isn't much to look at, is she?" commented Jenny.
+
+"My dear child, that's the owl."
+
+Jenny turned the medal over and contemplated the armed head. Then she
+put it carefully away in her purse, wondering if the badge would bring
+her luck.
+
+"Now, I shall let Lilli show you round the club rooms, for I'm very busy
+this afternoon," said Miss Bailey in gentle dismissal.
+
+The two girls left the study and set out to explore the rest of the
+house. Over the mantlepiece of the principal room Jenny saw Mona Lisa
+and drew back so quickly that she trod on Lilli's foot.
+
+"I'm not going in there," she said.
+
+"Why not? It's a nice room."
+
+"I'm not going in. I don't want to," she repeated, without any
+explanation of her whim.
+
+"All right. Let's go downstairs. We can have tea."
+
+It was a fine afternoon towards the end of July, so the tea-room was
+empty. Jenny looked cautiously at all the pictures but none of them
+conjured up the past. There was a large photograph of the beautiful sad
+head of Jeanne d'Arc, but Jenny did not bother to read that it came
+originally from the church of St. Maurice in Orleans. There was a number
+of somewhat dreary engravings of famous pioneers of feminism like Mary
+Wolstonecraft, whose faces, she thought, would look better turned round
+to the wall. Below these hung several statistical maps showing the
+density of population in various London slums, with black splodges for
+criminal districts. Most of the furniture was of green fumed oak fretted
+with hearts, and the crockery that lived dustily on a shelf following
+the line of the frieze came from Hanley disguised in Flemish or Breton
+patterns, whose studied irregularity of design and roughness of
+workmanship was symbolic of much. In order, apparently, to accentuate
+the flimsiness of the green fumed oak, there were several mid-Victorian
+settees that, having faded in back rooms of Wimpole Street and Portman
+Square, were now exposed round the sides of their new abode in a
+succession of hillocks. On the wall by the door hung a framed tariff, on
+which poached eggs in every permutation of number and combination of
+additional delicacies figured most prominently. Here and there on tables
+not occupied with green teacups were scattered pamphlets, journals, and
+the literary propaganda of the feminine movement. The general atmosphere
+of the room was permeated by an odor of damp toast and the stale fumes
+of asthma cigarettes.
+
+"What an unnatural smell," murmured Jenny.
+
+"It's those asthma cigarettes," Lilli explained. "One of the members has
+got it very bad."
+
+Jenny was glad to escape very soon after tea, and told her friend a
+second visit to Mecklenburg Square was not to be done.
+
+"I used to think they was nice houses when I passed by the other side in
+that green 'bus going to Covent Garden, but I think they're _very_ stuffy,
+and what wall-paper! More like blotting-paper."
+
+However, one Saturday evening in August, as Jenny was leaving the
+theater, Lilli begged her to come and hear Miss Ragstead speak on the
+general aims of the movement, with particular attention to a proposed
+demonstration on the occasion of the re-opening of Parliament.
+
+"When's the old crow going to speak?" Jenny inquired.
+
+"To-morrow evening."
+
+"On a Sunday?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+So, because there was nothing else to do and because nowadays Sunday was
+a long grim moping, a procession of pretty hours irrevocable, Jenny
+promised to accompany her friend.
+
+It was a wet evening, and Bloomsbury seemed the wettest place in London
+as the two girls turned into the sparse lamplight of Mecklenburg Square
+and hurried along under the dank, fast-fading planes and elms. Inside
+the house, however, there was an air of energetic jollity owing to the
+arrival of several girl students from Oxford and Cambridge, who stumped
+in and out of the rooms, greeting each other with tales of Swiss
+mountains and comparisons of industry. In their strong, low-heeled boots
+they stumped about consumed by holiday sunshine and the acquisition of
+facts. With friendly smiles and fresh complexions, they talked
+enthusiastically to several young men, whose Adam's apples raced up and
+down their long necks, giving them the appearance of chickens swallowing
+maize very quickly.
+
+"Talk about funny turns," whispered Jenny.
+
+"They're all very clever," Miss Vergoe apologized, as she steered her
+intolerant friend past the group.
+
+"Yes, I should say they ought to be clever, too. They _look_ as though
+they were pecking each other's brains out."
+
+Miss Bailey encountered them here.
+
+"Why, this is capital," she said. "Miss Ragstead won't be long now. Let
+me introduce a dear young friend of mine, Miss Worrill."
+
+"How are you?" Miss Worrill asked heartily.
+
+She was a pleasant girl dressed in Harris tweed strongly odorous from
+the rain. Her hair might have been arranged to set off her features to
+greater advantage, and it was a pity her complexion was spoilt by a
+network of tiny purple veins which always attracted the concentration of
+those who talked to her. Jenny began to count them at once.
+
+"Come to hear Connie Ragstead?" asked Miss Worrill. "Jolly good crowd
+for August," she went on, throwing a satisfied glance round the room.
+"Have you ever heard her?"
+
+"No," Jenny replied, wondering why something in this girl's way of
+speaking reminded her of Maurice.
+
+"You'll like her most awfully. I met her once at the Lady Maggie
+'Gaudy.'"
+
+"At the what?"
+
+"Our Gaude at Lady Margaret's. Festive occasion and all that. I say, do
+you play hockey? I'm getting up a team to play at Wembley this winter."
+
+"My friend and I are too busy," Miss Vergoe explained, looking nervously
+round at Jenny to see how she took the suggestion.
+
+"But one can always find time for 'ecker.'"
+
+"I _could_ find time to fly kites. Only I don't want to," said Jenny
+dangerously. "You see, I'm on the stage."
+
+"I'm frightfully keen on the stage," Miss Worrill volunteered. "I
+believe it could be such a force. I thought of acting myself once--you
+know, in real plays, not musical comedy, of course. A friend of mine was
+in the 'Ecclesiasuzæ' at the Afternoon Theater. She wore a _rather_
+jolly vermilion tunic and had bare legs. Absolutely realistic."
+
+Jenny now began to giggle, and whispered "Cocoanut knees" to Lilli, who,
+notwithstanding the importance of the occasion, also began to giggle. So
+Miss Worrill, presumably shy of their want of sensibility, retired.
+
+Soon, when the rumor of the speaker's arrival ran round the assemblage,
+a general move was made in the direction of the large room on the first
+floor. Jenny, as she entered with the stream, saw Leonardo's sinister
+portrait and tried to retreat; but there were too many eager listeners
+in the way, and she had to sit down and prepare to endure the damnable
+smile of La Gioconda that seemed directed to the very corner where she
+was sitting.
+
+During the earlier part of Miss Ragstead's address, Jenny's attention
+was chiefly occupied by her neighbors. She thought that never before was
+such a collection of freaks gathered together. Close beside her, dressed
+in a green djibbeh embroidered with daisies of terra-cotta silk, was a
+tallowy woman who from time to time let several books slide from her lap
+on to the floor--a piece of carelessness which always provoked the
+audience to a lullaby of protest. In front of this lady were two Hindu
+students with flowing orange ties; and just beyond her, in black velvet,
+was a tall woman with a flat, pallid face, who gnawed alternately her
+nails and the extinguished end of a cigarette. Then came a group of girl
+students, all very much alike, all full of cocoa and the binomial
+theorem; while the rest of the audience was made up of typists, clerks,
+civil servants, copper-workers, palmists, nurses, Americans and poets,
+all lending their ears to the speaker's words as in the Zoological
+Gardens elephants, swaying gently, offer their trunks for buns.
+Gradually, however, from this hotchpotch of types, the personality of
+the speaker detached itself and was able to impress Jenny's attention.
+Gradually, as she grew tired of watching the audience, she began to
+watch Miss Ragstead and, after a critical appreciation of her
+countenance, to make an attempt to comprehend the intention of the
+discourse.
+
+Miss Constance Ragstead was a woman of about forty, possessing much of
+the remote and chastened beauty that was evident in Miss Bailey. She,
+too, was pale, not unhealthily, but with the impression of having lived
+long in a rarefied atmosphere. Virginity has its fires, and Miss
+Ragstead was an inheritor of the spirit which animated Saint Theresa and
+Mary Magdalene of Pazzi. Her social schemes were crowned with aureoles,
+her plans were lapped by tenuous gold flames. She was a mystic of
+humanity, one who from the contemplation of mortality in its individual
+aspirations, had arrived at the acknowledgment of man as a perfect idea
+and was able from his virtues to create her theogony. This woman's
+presence implied the purification of ceaseless effort. Activity as
+expressed by her was a sacrament. It conveyed the isolated solemnity of
+a force that does not depend for its reality on human conceptions or
+practical altruism. Her activity was a moral radium never consumed by
+the expenditure of its energy; it was dynamic whether it effected little
+or much. When she recalled the factory in which for a year she had
+worked as a hand, the enterprise was hallowed with the romance of a
+saint's pilgrimage. When she spoke of her green garden, where June had
+healed the hearts of many young women, she seemed like an eremite in
+whose consolation was absolute peace. Her voice was modulated with those
+half-tones that thrushes ring upon the evening air; and since they were
+produced suddenly with no hint of premeditation, the feeblest listener
+was at some time inevitably waylaid.
+
+It was not astonishing Jenny should find herself caught in the melodious
+twilight of the oration, should find that the craning audience was less
+important than the speaker. She came to believe that Mona Lisa's smile
+was kindlier. She began to take in some of the rhetoric of the
+peroration:
+
+"I wish I could persuade you that, if our cause is a worthy cause, it
+must exist and endure through the sanity of its adherents. It must never
+depend upon the trivial eccentricities of a few. I want to see the
+average woman fired with zeal to make the best of herself. I do not want
+us to be contemptuously put aside as exceptions. Nor am I anxious to
+recruit our strength from the discontented, the disappointed and the
+disillusioned. Let us do away with the reproach that we voice a
+minority's opinion. Let us preserve the grace and magic of womanhood, so
+that with the spiritual power of virginity, the physical grandeur of
+motherhood, in a devoted phalanx huge as the army of Darius, we may
+achieve our purpose."
+
+Here the speaker paused and, as if afraid she might be deemed to offer
+counsels of pusillanimity, broke forth more passionately:
+
+"But because I wish to see our ambition succeed through the aggregate of
+dignified opinion, I do not want to discredit or seek to dishearten the
+advance-guard. Let us who represent the van of an army so mighty as to
+be mute and inexpressive, let us, not thinking ourselves martyrs nor
+displaying like Amazons our severed breasts, let us resolve to endure
+ignominy and contempt, slander, disgrace and imprisonment. Some day men
+will speak well of us; some day the shrieking sisterhood will be
+forgotten, and those leaders of women whom to-day we alone venerate,
+will be venerated by all. Pay no heed to that subtle propaganda of
+passivity. Reject the lily-white counsels of moderation. Remember that
+without visible audible agitation this phlegmatic people cannot be
+roused. Therefore I call on you who murmur your agreement to join the
+great march on Westminster. I implore you to be brave, to despise
+calumny, to be careless of abuse and, because you believe you are in the
+right, to alarm once more this blind and stolid mass of public opinion
+with the contingency of your ultimate triumph."
+
+The speaker sat down, lost in the haze which shrouds a room full of
+people deeply wrought by eloquence and emotion. There was a moment's
+silence and then, after prolonged applause, the audience began to
+babble.
+
+Jenny sat still. She had not listened to the reasoned arguments and
+statistical illustrations of the main portion of the speech, nor had she
+properly comprehended the peroration. Yet she was charged with resolves,
+primed with determination and surgingly impelled to some sort of action.
+She was the microcosm of a mob's awakening to the clarion of an orator.
+A cataract of formless actions was thundering through her mind; the dam
+of indifference had been burst by mere weight of rhetoric, that
+powerful dam proof against the tampering of logic. Perhaps she was
+passing through the psychical crisis of conversion. Perhaps, in her dead
+emotional state, anything that aroused her slightly would have aroused
+her violently. No doubt a deep-voiced bishop could have secured a
+similar result, had she been leaning against the cold stone of a
+cathedral rather than the gray flock wall-paper of Mecklenburg Square.
+
+"I'd like to talk to her," she told Lilli.
+
+"She doesn't half stir you up, eh?"
+
+"I don't know so much about stirring up, Mrs. Pudding," said Jenny,
+unwilling to admit any renascence of sensibility. "But I think she's
+nice. I'd like to see what sort she'd be to talk to quiet."
+
+No opportunity for a conversation with Miss Ragstead presented itself
+that evening; but Lilli, somewhat elated by the capture of Jenny, told
+Miss Bailey of her admiration; and the president, who had been attracted
+to the neophyte, promised to arrange a meeting. Lilli knew better than
+to breathe a word to Jenny of any plan, and merely threw out a casual
+suggestion to take tea at the club.
+
+So without any premonitory shyness Jenny found herself talking quite
+easily in a corner of the tea-room to Miss Ragstead, who was not merely
+persuasive with assemblages, but also acutely sympathetic with
+individuals.
+
+"But I don't want a vote," Jenny was saying. "I shouldn't know what to
+do with it. I don't see any use in it. My father's got one and it's a
+regular nuisance. It keeps him out late every night."
+
+"My dear, you may not want a vote," said Miss Ragstead, "but I do, and I
+want the help of girls like you to get it. I want to represent you. As
+things are now, you have no say in the government of yourself. Tell me,
+now, Jenny--I'm going to call you Jenny straight away--you wouldn't like
+to be at the mercy of one man, would you?"
+
+"But I wouldn't. Not me," said Jenny. Yet somehow she spoke not quite so
+bravely as once, and even as the assertion was made, her heart throbbed
+to a memory of Maurice. After all, she had been at the mercy of one man.
+
+"Of course you wouldn't," Miss Ragstead went on. "Well, we women who
+want the vote have the same feeling. We don't like to be at the mercy of
+men. I suppose you'd be horrified if I asked you to join our
+demonstration in October?"
+
+"What, walk in procession?" Jenny gasped.
+
+"Yes, it's not so very dreadful. Who would object? Your mother?"
+
+"She'd make fun of it, but that wouldn't matter. She'd make everyone
+laugh to hear her telling about me in a procession."
+
+Jenny remembered how her mother had teased her father when she saw him
+supporting a banner of the Order of Foresters on the occasion of a
+beanfeast at Clacton.
+
+"Well, your lover?"
+
+Jenny looked sharply at Miss Ragstead to ascertain if she were laughing.
+The word sent such a pang through her. It was a favorite word of
+Maurice.
+
+"I haven't got one," she coldly answered.
+
+"No?" said Miss Ragstead, gently skeptical. "I can hardly believe that,
+you know, for you surely must be a most attractive girl."
+
+"I did have one," said Jenny, surprised out of her reserve. "Only we
+just ended it all of a sudden."
+
+"My dear," said Miss Ragstead softly, "I don't think you're a very happy
+little girl. I'm sure you're not. Won't you tell me about it?"
+
+"There's nothing to tell. Men are rotters, that's all. If I thought I
+could pay them out by being a suffragette, I'd be a suffragette."
+
+Jenny spoke with decision, pointing the avowal by flinging her cigarette
+into the grate.
+
+"Yes, I know that's a reason with some. But I don't think that revenge
+is the best of reasons, somehow. I would rather you were convinced that
+the movement is right."
+
+"If it annoys men, it must be right," Jenny argued. "Only I don't think
+it does. I think they just laugh."
+
+"I see you're in a turbulent state of mind," Miss Ragstead observed.
+"And I'm glad in a way, because it proves that you have temperament and
+character. You ought to resent a wrong. Of course, I know you'll
+disagree with me when I tell you that you're too young to be permanently
+injured by any man--and, I think I might add, too proud."
+
+"Yes, I am most shocking proud," Jenny admitted, looking down on the
+floor and, as it were, regarding her character incarnate before her.
+
+"But it's just these problems of behavior under difficulties that our
+club wants to solve. I'd like to put you on the road to express yourself
+and your ambitions without the necessity of--say marriage for
+convenience. You're a dancer, aren't you?"
+
+"Um, a ballet girl," said Jenny as usual, careful not to presume the
+false grandeur of an isolated stellar existence.
+
+"Are you keen on your dancing?"
+
+"I was once. When I began. Only they crush you at the Orient. Girls
+there hate to see you get on. I'm sick of it."
+
+"I wonder," said Miss Ragstead half to herself; "I wonder if active work
+for the cause would give you a new zest for life. It might. You feel all
+upside down just now, don't you?"
+
+"I feel as if nothing didn't matter. Not _any_thing," replied Jenny
+decidedly.
+
+"That's terrible for a girl of your age. You can't be more than eighteen
+or nineteen."
+
+"Twenty-one in October."
+
+"So much as that? Yes"--the older woman continued after a reflective
+pause--"yes, I believe you want some spur, some excitement quite outside
+your ordinary experience. You know I am a doctor, so without
+impertinence I can fairly prescribe for you."
+
+"Well, what have I got to do?" Jenny asked. She was almost fascinated
+by this lady with her cool hands and deep-set, passionate eyes.
+
+"I wish I could invite you to spend some time with me in Somerset, but
+I'm too busy now for a holiday. I feel rather uncertain whether, after
+all, to advise you to plunge into the excitement of this demonstration.
+And yet I'm sure it would be good for you. Dear child, I hope I'm not
+giving bad advice," said Miss Ragstead earnestly as she leaned forward
+and took hold of Jenny's hand.
+
+So it came about that Jenny was enrolled in the ranks of the great
+demonstration that was to impress the autumnal session of Parliament.
+She kept very quiet about her intention and no one, except Lilli, knew
+anything about it. The worst preliminary was the purple, green and white
+sash which contained her unlucky color. Indeed, at first she could
+hardly be persuaded to put it across her shoulders. But when the booming
+of the big drum marked the beat, she felt aflame with nervous
+expectation and never bothered about the sash or the chance of casual
+recognition.
+
+The rhythm of the march, the crashing of the band, the lilting motion,
+the unreality of the crowds gaping on the pavements intoxicated her, and
+she went swinging on to the tune in a dream of excitement. In the
+narrower streets the music blazed with sound and fury of determination,
+urging them on, inspiring them with indomitable energy, inexorable
+progress. The tops of the houses here seemed to converge, blotting out
+the sky; and Jenny felt that she was stationary, while they moved on
+like the landscape of a cinematograph. As the procession swept into
+Trafalgar Square with its great open space of London sky, the music
+unconfined achieved a more poignant appeal and infected the mass of
+arduous women with sentiment, making their temper the more dangerous.
+The procession became a pilgrimage to some abstract nobility, to no set
+place. Jenny was now bewitched by the steady motion into an almost
+complete unconsciousness of the gaping sightseers, thought of them, if
+she thought of them at all, as figures in a fair-booth to be knocked
+carelessly backwards as she passed, more vital than they were with their
+painted grins.
+
+In Whitehall the air was again charged with anger. The tall banners far
+ahead floated on airs of victory. The mounted women rode like
+conquerors. Then for an instant as Jenny heard from one of the
+pavement-watchers a coarse and mocking comment on the demonstration, she
+thought the whole business mere matter for ridicule and recalled the
+circus processions that flaunted through towns on sunny seaside holiday
+mornings long ago. Soon, however, the tune reëstablished itself in her
+brain, and once more she swept on to the noble achievement. The houses
+grew taller than ever; faded into remote mists; quaked and shimmered as
+if to a fall. Far down the line above the brass and drums was a sound of
+screaming, a dull mutter of revolution, a wave of execration and
+encouragement. The procession stopped dead: the music ceased in
+discords. Two or three of the women fainted. The crowd on either side
+suddenly came to life and pressed forward with hot, inquisitive breath.
+Somewhere, a long way off, a leader shrieked, "Forward." Policemen were
+conjured from the quivering throng. Somebody tore off Jenny's sash.
+Somebody trod on her foot. The confusion increased. Nothing was left of
+any procession: everyone was pushing, yelling, groaning, scratching,
+struggling in a wreck of passions. Jenny was cut off from the
+disorganized main body, was helpless in a mob of men. The police were
+behaving with that magnificent want of discrimination which
+characterizes their behavior in a crisis of disorder. Their tactics were
+justified by success, and as they would rely on mutual support in the
+official account of the riot, individual idiocy would escape censure.
+
+In so far as Jenny was pushing her way out of the mob, was seeking
+desperately to gain the sanctuary of a side street and forever escape
+from feminine demonstrations, she was acting in a way likely to cause a
+breach of the peace. So it was not surprising that a young plough-boy
+lately invested with an uniform should feel impelled to arrest her.
+
+"Now then, you come along of me," commanded the yokel as a blush ebbed
+and flowed upon his cheeks glistening with down and perspiration.
+
+"Who are you pushing, you?" cried Jenny, enraged to find her arm in the
+tight grasp of a podgy, freckled hand.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," he declared.
+
+"Don't you speak to me, you. Why, what _are_ you? Invisible blue when
+you're wanted. Let go of me. I won't be held. I wasn't doing anything. I
+was going home. Let go."
+
+The young policeman, disinclined to risk the adventure single-handed,
+looked around for a fellow-constable to assist at the conveyance of
+Jenny to the station. All his companions, however, seemed busily engaged
+tugging at recalcitrant women; and instead of being congratulated on his
+first arrest, a well-groomed man, white with rage, shouted: "Look here,
+you blackguard, I've got your number and I'll have your coat off for
+this. This lady was doing absolutely nothing but trying to escape from
+the crowd."
+
+The young policeman looked about him once more with watery,
+unintelligent eyes. He was hoping that someone would arrest the
+well-groomed man; but as nobody did, and as the latter was not unlike
+the Captain of the Volunteer Company from whose ranks he had climbed
+into the force, the novice released his grip of Jenny and said:
+
+"Now, you be off. You won't get another chance."
+
+"No, you turnip-headed bumpkin," shouted the well-groomed man, "nor will
+you, when I've had five minutes at Scotland Yard. I'm going to watch
+you, my friend. You're not fit for a position of responsibility."
+
+Jenny, free of the crowd, walked through the peace of Whitehall Court
+and promised herself that never again would she have anything to do with
+suffragettes.
+
+"Soppy fools," she thought, "they can't do nothing. They can only
+jabber, jabber." She reproached herself for imagining it was possible to
+consummate a revenge on man by such means. She had effected nothing but
+the exposure of her person to the freckled paws of a policeman.
+
+"Not again," said Jenny to herself, "not ever again will I be such a
+silly, soppy idiot."
+
+In the distance she could still hear the shouting of the riot; but as
+she drew nearer to Charing Cross railway station, the noise of trains
+took its place.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII: _Quartette_
+
+
+Suffragism viewed in retrospect was shoddy embroidery for the _vie
+intérieure_ of Jenny. There was no physical exhilaration for her in
+wrestling with policemen, and the intellectual excitement of controversy
+would never be likely to appeal to a mind naturally unfitted for
+argument. There was, too, about her view of the whole business something
+of Myrrhine's contempt. She may have been in an abnormal condition of
+acute hostility to the opposite sex; but as soon as she found herself in
+a society whose antipathy towards men seemed to be founded on inability
+to attract the hated male, all her common sense cried out against
+committing herself to such a devil-driven attitude. She felt that
+something must be wrong with so obviously an ineffective aggregation of
+Plain Janes. She was not concerned with that unprovided-for surplus of
+feminine population. She had no acquaintance with that asceticism
+produced by devotion to the intellect. She perceived, though not
+consciously, the inherent weakness of the whole movement in its failure
+to supply an emotional substitute for more elemental passions.
+
+Jenny was shrewd enough to understand that leaders like Miss Bailey and
+Miss Ragstead were logically justified in demanding a vote. She could
+understand that they would be able to use it to some purpose; but at the
+same time she realized that to the majority of women a vote would be
+merely an encumbrance. Jenny also saw through the folly of agitation
+that must depend for success on equality of physique, and half divined
+that the prime cause of such extravagance lay in the needs of feminine
+self-expression. Nuns are wedded to Christ; suffragists, with the
+notable exceptions of those capable of sustaining an intellectual
+predominance, must remain spiritual old maids. As Jenny asked, "What do
+they all want?" Very soon the inhabitants of Mecklenburg Square became
+as unreal as unicorns, and the whole episode acquired the reputation of
+an interlude of unaccountable madness from the memory of which the
+figure of Miss Ragstead stood out cool and tranquil and profoundly sane.
+Jenny would in a way have been glad to meet her again; but she was too
+shy to suggest meeting outside the domain of the Women's Political,
+Social and Economic League, and their auspices were now unimaginable. In
+order to avoid the whole subject, Jenny began to avoid Lilli Vergoe; and
+very soon, partly owing to the opportunities of propinquity, partly
+owing to a renewed desire for it, her friendship with Irene Dale was
+reconstituted on a firmer basis than before.
+
+Six months had now elapsed since that desolate first of May. The ballet
+of Cupid was taken off about the same time, and the occupation of
+rehearsing for a new one had steered Jenny through the weeks immediately
+following Maurice's defection. She was now dancing in a third ballet in
+which she took so little interest that no account of it is necessary.
+The pangs of outraged love were drugged to painlessness by time. From a
+superficial standpoint the wounds were healed, that is, if a dull
+insensibility to the original cause of the evil be a cure. Jenny no
+longer missed Maurice on particular occasions, and, having grown used to
+his absence, was not aware she missed him in a wider sense. Love so
+impassioned as theirs, love lived through in moments of individual
+ecstasy, was in the verdict of average comment a disease; but average
+comment failed to realize that, like the scarlet fever of her youth, its
+malignant influence would be extended in complications of abnormal
+emotional states. Average comment did not perceive that the worst
+tragedies of unhappy love are not those which end with death or
+separation. Nor did Jenny herself foresee the train of ills that in the
+wake of such a shock to her feelings would be liable to twist her whole
+life awry.
+
+With Maurice she had embarked on the restless ocean of an existence
+lived at unusually high pressure. She had conjured for her soul dreams
+of adventure, fiery-hearted dreams which would not be satisfied by the
+awakening of common-place dawns. Time had certainly assuaged with his
+heavy anodyne the intimate desire for her lover; but time would rather
+aggravate than heal the universal need of her womanhood. These six
+months of seared emotions and withered hopes were a trance from which
+she would awake on the very flashing heels of the last mental and
+physical excitement.
+
+It was said in the last chapter that a less sincere heart would have
+been caught on the rebound. Those hearts are dragged but a little way
+down into the depths of misery; for such have not fallen from great
+heights. Jenny on the first of May fell straight and deep as a plummet
+to the bed of the ocean of despair, there to lie long submerged. But to
+one who had rejected death, life would not hold out oblivion. Life with
+all its cold insistence called her once more to the surface; thence to
+make for whatever beach chance should offer. Jenny, scarcely conscious
+of any responsibleness for her first struggles, clutched at
+suffragism--a support for which life never intended her. However, it
+served to help her ashore; and now, with some of the cynicism that
+creeps into the adventurer's life, she looked around for new adventures.
+Her desire to revenge herself on men was superseded by anxiety to
+rediscover the savor of living. Her instinct was now less to hurt others
+than to indulge herself. A year's abstention from the episodic existence
+spent by Irene and her before Maurice had created an illusion of
+permanence, had given that earlier time a romantic charm; and a revival
+of it seemed fraught with many possibilities of a more widely extended
+wonder. One evening late in October she asked Irene casually, as if
+there had been no interval of desuetude, whether she were coming out. To
+this inquiry her friend, without any manifestation of surprise,
+answered in the affirmative. It was characteristic of both girls, this
+manner of resuming a friendship.
+
+Now began a period not worth a detailed chronicle, since it was merely a
+repetition of a period already discussed--a repetition, moreover, that
+like most anachronisms seemed after other events jejune and somewhat
+tawdry. The young men were just as young as those of earlier years; but
+Irene and Jenny were older and, if before they had found it hard to
+tolerate these ephemeral encounters, they found it harder still now. The
+result of this was that, where once a single whisky and soda was enough,
+now three or four scarcely availed to pass away the time. Neither of the
+girls drank too much in more than a general sense, but it was an omen of
+flying youth when whiskies were invoked to give an edge to existence.
+
+One evening they sat in the Café d'Afrique, laughing to each other over
+the physical and social oddities of two Norwegians who had constituted
+themselves their hosts on the strength of a daring stage-door
+introduction. As Jenny paused in her laughter to catch some phrase of
+melody in the orchestra, she saw Castleton drawing near their table. He
+stopped in doubt, and looked at her from wide, gray eyes very eager
+under eyebrows arched in a question. She returned his gaze without a
+flicker of recognition, and, bowing imperceptibly, he passed out into
+the night. The doors swung together behind him, and Jenny, striking a
+match from the stand on the table, set the whole box alight to distract
+Irene's attention from what she feared in the blush of a memory.
+
+"Come on; let's go," she said to her friend.
+
+So the girls left the two Norwegians desolate and volubly
+unintelligible.
+
+One morning in November Irene came into Jenny's room at Stacpole
+Terrace.
+
+"My Danby's coming home this week," she announced. "And his brother,
+too."
+
+Jenny often thought to herself that Danby was a riddle. It was four
+years now since he and Irene had been reputed in love; yet nothing
+seemed to have happened since the day when for a fancy he dressed his
+sweetheart in short frocks. Here he was coming back from France as he
+had come back time after time in company with his brother, at the notion
+of meeting whom Jenny had always scoffed.
+
+"What of it?" she said.
+
+"Now don't be nasty, young Jenny. I shall be glad to see him."
+
+"I suppose this means every minute you can get together for a fortnight,
+and then he'll be off again for six months. Why doesn't he marry you?"
+
+"He's going to," Irene asserted, twisting the knob on the corner of the
+bed round and round until it squeaked. "But I don't want to get married,
+not yet."
+
+"Oh, no, it's only a rumor. Why ever not? If I loved a fellow as you
+think you love Danby, I'd get married quick enough."
+
+"Well, you didn't----"
+
+"That's enough of you," said Jenny, sitting up in bed. "No, I know I
+didn't. But that was different."
+
+"Why was it different? My Danby's a gentleman."
+
+"Yes, when he's asleep. He _can't_ be much or he wouldn't have dressed
+you up such a sight. I'd like to see a man make such a poppy-show of
+me," cried Jenny, indignant at the recollection of the incident.
+
+"Oh, well, he doesn't do it now," said Irene pacifically. "Aren't you
+coming out with us?"
+
+"You're very free all of a sudden with your Danby," Jenny continued
+mockingly. "I remember when you was afraid for your life some girl would
+carry him off under your nose. Yet you let him go all the time to
+France. I think you're silly."
+
+Jenny could not refrain from teasing Irene. The habit was firmly
+established and, although she had not now the sense of outraged
+independence which prompted her attitude in old days, she kept it up
+because such rallying was easier than sympathetic attention.
+
+"His brother Jack says he'd like to meet you."
+
+Jenny laughed derisively.
+
+"I thought you weren't giving your Danby away with a pound of nothing.
+Do you remember when I used to call Jack Danby 'Tin Ribs the Second,'
+and you used to get so ratty?"
+
+"Well, what a liberty," said Irene, laughing at the now almost forgotten
+insult.
+
+Towards the dripping fog-stained close of November Arthur and Jack Danby
+arrived from Paris and, tall as lamp-posts, waited for the two girls at
+the top of the court in Jermyn Street. It did not strike Jenny at the
+time that the appointment seemed girt with intrigue, as if whispers had
+gone to the making of it, whispers that voiced a deceitful purpose in
+her friend. Jenny had often arraigned the methods of Mrs. Dale and
+denounced the encouragement of Winnie and Irene in any association whose
+profit transcended its morality. But she never really understood Irene,
+and her teasing was a sign of this. Under the circumstances of lovers
+reunited, she accepted her place at Jack Danby's side without suspicion;
+and was only dimly aware of the atmosphere of satisfaction which clung
+to the two brothers and her friend.
+
+In the bronzed glow of the Trocadero grill-room she had an opportunity
+of studying the two men, and because the result of this was a decided
+preference for Jack, she lost any suspicion of a plot, and appeared
+almost to enjoy his company.
+
+All Arthur Danby's features, even his ears, seemed excessively pointed,
+while his thinness and length of limb accentuated this peaked effect of
+countenance. His complexion had preserved the clearness of youth, but
+had become waxy from dissipation, and in certain lights was feathered
+with fine lines that looked like scratches on a smooth surface. His
+eyelids were puffy and tinged slightly round the rims with a redness
+which was the more obvious from the vivid light blue eyes it surrounded.
+A certain diabolic strangeness redeemed the whole effect from mere
+unpleasantness. Jack Danby was not so tall as his brother, and his
+features were less sharply pointed, although they were as clearly
+defined. He had similar eyes of almost cobalt blue when contrasted with
+the dead whiteness of a skin that gave the impression of being powdered.
+The younger brother's eyes preserved more fire and seemed under the
+influence of a suggestive conversation to be lighted up from behind in a
+way that sent a sudden breathlessness through many women. Jenny, when
+she looked at him full, was aware less of his eyes than of her own,
+which seemed to her to be kindling in the dry sparks that were radiated
+by his; and even as she felt scorched by the brain which was thus
+expressed, her own eyes would melt, as it were, to meet appropriately
+the liquid softness that succeeded. His lips were never remarkably red,
+and as the evening advanced they adopted the exact shade of his
+complexion, which from paleness took on the lifeless monotone of color
+that is seen in the rain-soaked petal of a pink rose. Danby's mouth
+curved upwards, and when he smiled, he only smiled on one side of his
+face. The immediate expression he conveyed was that of profound
+lassitude changed by any topic of sly licentiousness to a startling
+concentration.
+
+A pictorial representation of the party would have some decorative
+value. The two brothers had ordered red mullet, which lay scattered
+about their plates in mingled hues of cornelian, rose and tarnished
+copper. Their wine was Lacrima Christi of the precise tint to carry on
+the scheme of color. Jenny and Irene were drinking champagne whose pale
+amber sparkled against the prevailing luster, contrasting and lightening
+the arrangement of metallic tints, just as Jenny's fair hair set off and
+was at the same time enhanced by Irene's copper-brown. As a group of
+revellers the four of them composed into a rich enough study in _genre_,
+and the fanciful observer would extract from the position of the two men
+a certain potentiality for romantic events as, somewhat hunched and
+looking up from down-turned heads, they both sat with legs outstretched
+to the extent of their length. The more imaginative observer would
+perceive in the group something unhealthy, something _faisandé_, an air
+of too deliberate enjoyment that seemed to imply a perfect knowledge of
+the limitations of human pleasure. These men and girls aimed no arrow of
+fleeting gayety to pierce in a straight, sharp course the heart of the
+present. Sophistication clung to them, and weariness. That senescent
+October moon which a year ago marked the end of love's halcyon would
+have been a suitable light for such a party. Jenny herself had gone back
+to that condition of cynicism which before the days of Maurice was due
+to ignorance, but was now a profounder cynicism based on experience.
+Irene had always been skeptical of emotional heights, had always
+accepted life sensually without much enthusiasm either for the
+gratification or the denial of her ambitions. As for the two men, they
+had grown thin on self-indulgence.
+
+"Fill up your glasses, girls," said Arthur.
+
+"Fill up," echoed Jack. "Is there time for another bottle?" he added
+anxiously.
+
+"This cheese is very good," commented Arthur.
+
+"Delicious," the other agreed.
+
+"You two seem to think of nothing but eating and drinking," said Jenny
+distastefully.
+
+"Oh, no, we think of other things, don't we, Jack?" contradicted the
+older brother, with a sort of frigid relish.
+
+"Rather," the younger one corroborated, looking sideways at Jenny.
+
+"We must have a good time this winter," Arthur announced. "We needn't go
+back to Paris for a month or two. We must have a good time at our flat
+in Victoria."
+
+"London's a much wickeder city than Paris," said Jack, addressing the
+air like some pontiff of vice. "I like these November nights with shapes
+of women looming up through the fog. A friend of mine----" As Jack Danby
+descended to personal reminiscence, he lost his sinister power and
+became mean and common. "When I say friend--I should say business
+friend, eh, Arthur?" he asked, smiling on the side of his face nearer
+to his brother. "Well, he's a lord as a matter of fact," he continued in
+accents of studied indifference.
+
+"Tell the girls about him," urged his brother, and "Fill up your
+glasses," he murmured as, leaning back in his chair, he seemed to fade
+away into clouds of smoke blown from a very long, thin and black cigar.
+
+"This lord--I won't tell you his name----" said Jack, "he wanders about
+in fogs until he meets a shape that attracts him. Then he hands her a
+velvet mask, and takes her home. What an imagination," chuckled the
+narrator.
+
+"Well, I call him a dirty rotter," said Jenny.
+
+"Do you?" asked Jack, as if struck by the novelty of such a point of
+view.
+
+The lights were being extinguished now. The quenching of the orange
+illumination, and the barren waste of empty tables gave the grill-room a
+raffish look which consorted well with the personalities of the two
+brothers. The party broke up in the abrupt fashion of England, and
+within a few minutes of sitting comfortably round a richly lighted
+supper-table, the two girls were seated in a dark taxi on the way to
+Camden Town.
+
+"How do you like Jack Danby?" Irene inquired.
+
+"He's all right. Only I don't know--I think if I'd met him last year I'd
+have thought him a swine. I think I must be turning funny. What are
+they--these long friends of yours?" she added, after a pause. "What do
+they do in Paris?"
+
+"They bring out books," Irene informed her.
+
+"Books?" echoed Jenny. "What sort of books?"
+
+"Ordinary books, I suppose," said Irene, slightly huffed by Jenny's
+contemptuous incredulity.
+
+"Well, what do they want to live in Paris for, if they're ordinary
+books?"
+
+"That's where their business is."
+
+"Funny place to do a business in ordinary books."
+
+"I don't see why."
+
+"Oh, well, it doesn't matter. But _I_ think it's funny, that's all. You
+_are_ deep, Irene."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Irene, looking out of the window at the waves of light
+that broke against the window with each passing street lamp. "You always
+say that, but I'm not near so deep as what you are."
+
+"Yes, you are, because I'm always catching you out in a lie _which_ you
+don't me."
+
+"No, because I'm not so nosy."
+
+"Now don't be silly and get in a paddy about nothing," Jenny advised.
+"You can't help having funny friends. Only what I can't understand is
+myself. I think they're both beasts, and yet I'd like to see them again.
+That's where I'm funny, I think."
+
+Irene assumed an attitude of lofty indifference.
+
+"There's no need for you to see them again, if you don't like them. Only
+they give you a good time, and Arthur gave me some glorious rings."
+
+"_Which_ your mother pawned," interrupted Jenny.
+
+"And he's going to marry me," Irene persisted.
+
+"Yes, if you get married after dinner when he's drunk."
+
+"Oh, well, what of it? You're not so clever as what you make out to be."
+
+"That's quite right," said Jenny, lapsing into a gloom of introspection.
+
+Lying awake that night in the bewilderment of a new experience, the
+image of Jack Danby recurred to her like the pale image of a sick dream
+at once repulsive and perilously attractive. Time after time she would
+drive him from her mind, but as fast as he was banished, his slim face
+would obtrude itself from another quarter. He would peep from behind the
+musty curtains, he would take form in the wavering gray shadow thrown
+upon the ceiling by the gas. He would slide round pictures and
+materialize from the heap of clothes on the wicker arm-chair by the
+bed.
+
+One other image could have contended with him; but that image had been
+finally exorcised by six months of mental discipline. All that was left
+of Maurice was the fire he had kindled, the fire of passion that, lying
+dormant since his desertion, was now burning luridly in Jenny's heart.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII: _St. Valentine's Eve_
+
+
+The supper at the Trocadero only marked the first of many such evenings
+spent in the company of Irene and the two brothers. However much one
+side of Jenny's character might despise Jack Danby, to another side he
+was strangely soothing. When she was beside Maurice, every moment used
+to be haunted by its own ghost, bitter-sweet with the dread of finality.
+Danby's effect was that of a sedative drug whose action, however
+grateful at the time, is loathed in retrospect, until deprivation renews
+desire. Jenny found herself longing to sit near him and was fretful in
+his absence because, not being in love with him, he did not occupy her
+meditations pleasantly. He was worth nothing to her without the sense of
+contact. He was a bad habit: under certain conditions of opportunity in
+association he might become a vice.
+
+Evolution, in providence for the perpetuation of the species, has kept
+woman some thousands of years nearer to animals than man. Hence their
+inexplicableness to the majority of the opposite sex. Men have built up
+a convention of fastidious woman to flatter their own sexual rivalry.
+Woman is relinquished as a riddle when she fails to conform to masculine
+standards of behavior. Man is accustomed to protest that certain
+debased--or rather highly specialized--types of his own sex are
+unreasonably attractive. He generally fails to perceive that when a
+woman cannot find a man who is able to stimulate her imagination, she
+often looks for another who will gratify her senses.
+
+Maurice was never the lover corresponding most nearly with an ideal of
+greensick maiden dreams. Jenny's sensibility had not been stultified by
+these emotional ills, so that when he crossed her horizon, she loved him
+sanely without prejudice. She made him sovereign of her destiny because
+he seemed to her fit for power. He completely satisfied her imagination;
+and, having made a woman of her, he left a libertine to reap what he had
+sown.
+
+Jack Danby possessed the sly patience of an accomplished rake. He never
+alarmed Jenny with suggestions of escort, with importunity of embraces.
+His was the stealthy wooing of inactivity and smoldering eyes. He would
+let slip no occasion for interpreting life to the disadvantage of
+virtue; he was always sensually insistent. He and his brother, offspring
+of a lady's maid and an old demirep, owed to their inheritance of a
+scabrous library the foundations of material prosperity. They owed also
+their corrupt breed which, through some paradox of healing, might be
+valuable to women in the mood for oblivion whom the ordinary anæsthetics
+of memory had failed.
+
+One Saturday night early in January, Arthur suggested that the two girls
+should come to tea and spend the evening at the flat in Victoria. Irene
+looked at Jenny, and Jenny nodded her approval of the plan.
+
+Greycoat Gardens lay between the Army and Navy Stores and Vincent
+Square. The windows at the back looked out over the playground of an
+old-fashioned charity school, and the roof made a wave in that sea of
+roofs visible from the studio window in Grosvenor Road. But that was ten
+months ago.
+
+When Jenny and Irene reached the Gardens, the mud-splashed January
+darkness had already fallen; but for some reason the entrance-hall of
+the block containing the Danbys' flat was not yet lighted up. It seemed
+cavernous and chill; the stone stairs were repellent and the whole air
+full of hollow warnings. Half-way up, a watery exhalation filtered
+through the frosted glass of a flat's front door in a cold effulgence
+which added eerily to the lifelessness of all the other doors. The
+Danbys lived at the very top, and it took all Irene's powers of
+persuasion to induce Jenny to complete the ascent. At last, however,
+they gained their destination and immediately on the shrilling of an
+electric bell walked through a narrow hall misty with the fumes of
+Egyptian cigarettes. The sitting-room looked cosy with its deep crimson
+paper and fireglow and big arm-chairs heaped with downy cushions. Yet
+the atmosphere had the sickly oppression of an opiate, and it did not
+take Jenny long to pull back the purple velvet curtains and throw open
+the window to the raw winter night.
+
+"It's like being in a bottle of port in this room. Phew! I shall have a
+most shocking headache soon," she prophesied.
+
+"Won't you leave your coats and things in my room?" said Jack Danby.
+
+"That's not such a dusty idea. Come on, young Ireen."
+
+The two girls followed their host to his room which was hung with rose
+du Barri draperies prodigally braided with gold.
+
+"What a glorious room," cried Jenny.
+
+"You think so?" asked its owner.
+
+"Rather."
+
+The evening passed away without any development of the situation. The
+girls looked at books and pictures according to the custom of first
+visits, and drank Green Chartreuse after the supper which they had
+helped to lay. They also smoked many fat Egyptian cigarettes during an
+evening of heavy silences, broken by the crunch of subsiding coal and
+occasional cries that floated in from neighboring slums across the
+stillness of a wet Sunday night.
+
+As Jenny paused on the step of the taxi that was to drive them home,
+Jack Danby held her hand very tightly.
+
+"You'll come again?" he asked.
+
+"Of course."
+
+After this first visit Jenny and Irene spent almost every afternoon at
+the flat in Greycoat Gardens. Jenny liked the sensation of Jack Danby
+brushing against her, of the sudden twitches he would give her hands,
+nor did she resent an unexpected kiss with which he once burnt her neck
+as she leaned over the table looking at a portfolio of Lancret's
+engravings.
+
+Arthur Danby went back to Paris in advance of his brother, and Jenny
+fell into the habit of visiting the flat alone. Jack still never
+startled her with sudden importunities, never suggested the existence of
+another point of view beside her own. He seemed perfectly content to
+watch her enjoyment of his luxury and heavy comfort.
+
+One Sunday afternoon in the middle of February--St. Valentine's Eve, to
+be precise--when the snowdrops drift in myriads across the London parks,
+Jenny went to pay her farewell visit. Jack Danby was leaving England on
+the next day to rejoin his brother in Paris. Before she came away from
+Stacpole Terrace, Jenny had arranged for Irene to pick her up in the
+course of the evening, so that they could go back together. For some
+reason she was very particular in exacting a strict promise from Irene
+not to fail her.
+
+"What a fuss about nothing," grumbled her friend.
+
+"Oh, well, Ireen, I don't like coming back alone on a Sunday
+night. I hate Sunday, and you know it."
+
+Jenny, buried in a big arm-chair, dozed away the afternoon as usual and
+after tea sat staring into the fire, while Danby from the hearthrug
+assiduously stroked the slim white hand that drooped listlessly over an
+arm of the chair. A steady drench of rain had set in with the dusk, and,
+being close under the roof, they could hear the gurgle and hiss of the
+flooded gutters. Neither of them made a move to turn on the electric
+light or stir the lowering fire to flame. Danby even denied himself
+three or four cigarettes so that the magnetic current of sensuousness
+should not be interrupted. Inch by inch he drew closer to Jenny, sliding
+noiselessly over the thick fur of the rug. He was now near enough to
+kiss slowly her bare forearm and separately each supple finger. Jenny
+leaned back unconscious of him, though remotely pleased by his kisses,
+in her dull hell of memory where repressed inclinations smoldered like
+the fire on which her eyes were fixed. What a fool she had been for the
+sake of a silly powerlessness to take the plunge. It was bound to be
+taken in the end--with someone. But Maurice was a rotter, and would he
+after all have been worthy of the ultimate sacrifice? Would he not have
+tired and put her under an even more severe humiliation? Toys were good
+enough for Maurice. It was ridiculous to make life a burden for the sake
+of one man. Twenty-two next October. How quickly the years were flying.
+So, in a maze of speculation, regret and resolution, Jenny lay back in
+the deep arm-chair while Jack Danby drugged her with kisses. She drew
+her arm away at last, feeling hungry in a vague way.
+
+"What's the time?" she asked, yawning.
+
+"It must be after nine."
+
+"Good lord, and we haven't had supper yet."
+
+"Are we going to wait for Irene?" he inquired.
+
+"Not for supper. She is late. I won't half tell her off."
+
+Danby had risen from the hearth-rug and turned on the light. Jenny was
+poking the fire vigorously.
+
+"I've got _pâté de foie gras"_ he informed her.
+
+"Ugh, what horrible-looking stuff," she said.
+
+"Don't you like it?"
+
+"I never tried it."
+
+"Try now," Danby urged.
+
+"No, thanks, it looks like bad butter."
+
+The rain increased in volume as the evening wore on. Still Irene did not
+come. It struck eleven o'clock, and Jenny said she could wait no longer.
+
+"I'll get a cab," said Danby.
+
+"No; don't leave me here all alone," cried Jenny.
+
+"Why should you go home at all to-night?" Danby breathed in a parched
+whisper.
+
+Jenny pressed her face against the jet-black window-pane and suddenly
+away beyond Westminster there was a low bourdon of thunder.
+
+"Stay with me," pleaded Danby; "it's such a night for love."
+
+"Who cares?" murmured Jenny. "I've only myself to think about."
+
+"What did you say?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"But you will stay?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX: _Columbine at Dawn_
+
+
+Columbine, leaden-eyed, sat up in the strange room, where over an
+unfamiliar chair lay huddled all her clothes. Through the luminous white
+fog of dawn a silver sun, breasting the house-tops, gleamed very large.
+Wan with a thousand meditations, seeming frail as the mist of St.
+Valentine's morning, suddenly she flung herself deep into the pillow
+and, buried thus, lay motionless like a marionette whose wire has
+snapped.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX: _Lugete, O Veneres_
+
+
+The silver dawn was softened to a mother-of-pearl morning that seemed
+less primal than autumnal. When Danby came into the sitting-room, he
+found Jenny, fully dressed for departure, crouched over the ashes of
+last night's fire. He had a pinched, unwholesome look so early in the
+day, and was peevish because Jenny's presence kept him from summoning
+the housekeeper to bring up breakfast.
+
+"We must get something to eat," he said.
+
+"I don't want anything," said Jenny.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I've got a headache."
+
+Danby tried to appear sympathetic; but his hands so early were cold as
+fish, and his touch made Jenny shrink.
+
+"What a nuisance packing is. I've got a fearful lot to do to get to
+Charing Cross in time for the boat train."
+
+Like many other people he tried to demonstrate his sympathy by enlarging
+on his own trials.
+
+"Well?" said Jenny, regarding him from eyes pinpointed with revulsion in
+a critical survey that was not softened by the gray morning light, for
+whatever silkiness clung to the outside air was lost in the stale room.
+
+"I wish I hadn't got to go away," said Danby awkwardly.
+
+"Why?" Jenny asked, screwing up her eyes as if she had perceived upon
+the wall an unpleasant insect.
+
+"Well, it seems a pity now that we've--we've got to know each other
+better."
+
+"You don't think," said Jenny, chiseling the words from the very
+bedrock of her contempt, "you _don't_ think that because I've been in
+your flat all a night, you know me? Why, I don't know myself even."
+
+"Aren't you going to come and see me off?" he asked in a ludicrous
+attempt at sentiment.
+
+"See you off? See you off? Oh yes, that's a game of mine seeing off
+clothes-props. If you can't move," she added, "I can. Let me pass,
+please."
+
+Jenny walked towards the door of the contaminated flat followed by Danby
+in a state of weak bewilderment.
+
+"You'll write to me, little girl?" he asked, making a motion to detain
+her hand.
+
+"You seem to think I'm struck on you," she rapped out. "But I'm not."
+
+"Well, why did you----"
+
+"Ah, Mr. Enquire Within," she interrupted, "you're right. Why?"
+
+"Surely," he persisted, "the first person who----"
+
+"The first! Hark at Mr. Early Bird. If you go out with your long soppy
+self like that, you'll miss your train. Ching-a-ling."
+
+So Jenny parted from Mr. Jack Danby as long ago she had parted from Mr.
+Terence O'Meagh of the Royal Leinster Fusiliers. It was typical of her
+pride that, in order to rob Danby of any satisfaction in his
+achievement, she should prefer to let him assume he was merely one of a
+crowd, a commonplace incident in her progress. Anything seemed more
+suitable to the fancy of such a despicable creature than the
+self-congratulation of the pioneer.
+
+Yet, though she bore herself so bravely from the hated room which had
+witnessed the destruction of her inaccessibility, when she was seated
+alone in the taxi whirring back to Camden Town, Jenny was very near to
+an emotional collapse. This was averted by an instinct to review the
+several aspects of the experience. The actual event, happening in the
+normal course of a temperament's advance to completeness, scarcely
+distressed her. On the other hand, the circumstances and actors were
+abhorrent. The very existence of the Danbys was an outrage, and as for
+Irene, her behavior was treachery incarnate. What added bitterness to
+her meditations was the reflection that, however contemptuous she might
+show herself of the two brothers, they, with Irene to voice their
+absence, would have the laugh on their side. From one point of view it
+had been a skillful seduction effected with the deliberation of use.
+Jenny was maddened by the thought that Irene would believe she had been
+unable to avoid it, that she had been bewitched by Jack Danby's
+dissolute accomplishments. She would never be able to impress Irene's
+stolidity with the fact that she had used Danby for her own purpose.
+Irene would be bound to consider the wretched business a justification
+of her own dependence on the elder brother. She would triumph with
+damaging retorts, pointing out the fallibility of other girls when
+brought beneath the Danby sway, citing Jenny in a manner that would
+infuriate her with the impotence of argument. All larger issues were
+obscured by this petty annoyance, and at first her regrets were confined
+to wishing she had played the inevitable drama of womanhood in some
+secret place with only her own soul for audience. Why had she stayed at
+Greycoat Gardens last night?
+
+After the first vexation of her loss of prestige, deeper commentaries
+upon the act wrote themselves across her mind. She had intended, while
+her mother was still alive, to be rigidly unassailable. There was
+weakness in her failure to sustain this resolution, and Jenny loathed
+weakness. What had made her carry this experience through against the
+finest influence upon her life? Well, it was done; but the knowledge of
+it must be kept from her mother. Regrets were foolish; yet she would
+make some reparation. She would go and live at home again and, before
+anything, please her mother for a long time to come. She would be extra
+nice to May. She would be--in parental terminology--a really good girl.
+
+Whatever agony Maurice's love had caused her to bear, this sacrifice of
+her youth upon a tawdry altar had finally and effectually deadened. She
+could meet without a tremor now the cause of all the miserable business.
+Things might have been different, were fidelity an imaginable virtue.
+But it was all over now; she had consummated the aspirations of youth.
+There should be an end of love henceforth. For what it was worth of
+bitter and sweet, she had known it. No longer was the viceroy of human
+destiny a riddle. He had lost his wings and lay like a foundling in the
+gutter. No more of such a sorry draggled god for her. Jenny's ambition
+now was in reconciliation with her mother to be reëstablished in the
+well-beloved house in Hagworth Street, and in affection for old familiar
+things to forget the wild adventures of passion.
+
+The taxi swept on down the Hampstead Road until it turned off on the
+right to Camden Town, whose curious rococo squares mildewed and queerly
+ornamented seemed the abode of a fantastic depression. For all the
+sunlight of St. Valentine, the snowdrops looked like very foolish
+virgins as they shivered in the wind about the blackened grass, good
+sport for idle sparrows. The impression of faded wickedness made on
+Jenny's mind by Stacpole Terrace that morning suited her disgust. Every
+window in the row of houses was askew, cocking a sinister eye at her
+reappearance. Every house looked impure with a smear of green damp over
+the stucco. Stacpole Terrace wore an air of battered gayety fit only for
+sly entrances at twilight and furtive escapes in the dawn; while in one
+of the front gardens a stone Cupid with broken nose smirked perpetually
+at whatever shady intrigue came under his patronage.
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock when Jenny, entering the sitting-room,
+found Irene bunched sloppily over the fire. Mrs. Dale and her youngest
+daughter were busy in the kitchen. Winnie was not yet out of bed, and
+the head of the family was studying in the dust of his small apartment
+the bargains advertised in yesterday's paper.
+
+"Why didn't you call for me last night?" Jenny demanded straight and
+swift.
+
+"Oh, well, it was too wet," grumbled Irene, covering as well as she
+could her shame with nonchalance.
+
+"Ireen, I think you're a rotter. I think you're real mean, and nothing
+won't ever make me believe you didn't do it for the purpose. Too wet!"
+
+Irene declined to admit herself in the wrong.
+
+"Well, it was too wet. You could easy have come home in a taxi if you'd
+wanted to."
+
+Jenny stamped with rage.
+
+"What I could have done hasn't got nothing to do with it all, and you
+know it hasn't. You said you were coming for me and you didn't, and I
+say you're a sneak. Because you and your massive sister behave anyhow,
+you'd like to make everyone else as bad."
+
+Irene, contending even with unclasped stays, made an effort at dignity.
+
+"You can just shut up, Jenny Pearl, because you know very well my mother
+wouldn't allow me to _do_ anything. You know that."
+
+Jenny fumed with indignation.
+
+"Your mother? Why, when she's got half a bottle of gin to cry with over
+her darling Ireen or darling Winnie, she's _very_ glad to pawn what her
+darlings get given to them."
+
+"You've got very good," said Irene, bitterly sarcastic, "since this
+night out."
+
+"Which you meant for me to spend out from the moment you introduced me
+to him."
+
+"What do you take me for?" inquired Irene rashly.
+
+"I take you for what you are--a rotter. God! and think what you will be
+one day--I know--a dirty old woman in a basement with a red petticoat
+and a halfpenny dip and a quartern of gin."
+
+Irene's imagination was not extensive enough to cap this prophecy, so
+she poked the fire instead of making the attempt.
+
+"Nobody wants you to stay here," she muttered.
+
+"Don't you worry yourself. I'm going upstairs to pack my things up now."
+
+Jenny was not able to make a completely effective departure with cab at
+the door and heaped-up baggage, because her taxi back from Victoria and
+the payment of a week's board at Stacpole Terrace had exhausted her
+ready money. However, she had the satisfaction of seeing her
+portmanteau, her hatbox and a small bag stacked in tapering stories upon
+the bedroom floor, there to await the offices of Carter Paterson.
+
+Mrs. Dale emerged from the kitchen at the rumor of change and, as
+morning did not evoke sentiment, indulged in a criticism of Jenny's
+personal appearance.
+
+"I don't like that hat of yours and never did," she announced. "I can't
+get used to these new-fangled fashions and never shall."
+
+"What of it?" said Jenny, with marked indifference.
+
+"Oh, nothing at all, if it pleases you. You've got to wear it and I
+suppose there's nothing more to be said. But I think that hat is vulgar.
+Vulgar it would have been called when I was a girl. And I can't think
+what you want to go all of a sudden for like this. It isn't often I make
+a beefsteak pudding."
+
+Jenny was in a flutter to be away.
+
+"Good-bye, Mrs. Dale," she said firmly.
+
+"Well, good-bye, Jenny. You mustn't mind shaking hands with me all
+covered in suet. As I say, it's very seldom I do make a beefsteak
+pudding. I won't disturb my old man. He's busy this morning. Come and
+tell us how you get on soon."
+
+It was a relief to be seated inside the tram and free of Stacpole
+Terrace. It was pleasant to change cars at the Nag's Head and behold
+again the well-known landscape of Highbury. A pageant of childish
+memories, roused by the sight of the broad pavements of Islington, was
+marshalled in Jenny's brain. Somehow on the visits she had paid her home
+during the last year these aspects were obscured by the consciousness
+of no longer owning any right to them. Now, really going home, she
+turned into Hagworth Street with a glow of pride at seeing again its
+sobriety and dignity so evident after the extravagant stucco and Chinese
+balconies of Camden Town's terraces and squares. There was Seventeen,
+looking just the same, prophetic of refuge and solid comfort to the
+exile. She wondered what freak of folly had ever made her fancy home was
+dingy and unpleasant, home that held her bright-eyed mother's laugh, her
+absurd father always amusing, and her little sister May. Home was an
+enchanted palace with more romance in each dear room than was to be
+found elsewhere in the world. Home was alive with the past and preserved
+the links which bound together all the detached episodes of Jenny's
+life. As she turned into the garden that once had seemed a district, as
+she rattled the letter-box--in the days of her estrangement she always
+rang the bell--remorse came welling up in tears. She remembered what
+good times had been recurrent through the past, tea-parties and
+pantomimes and learning to ride a bicycle in the warm sunsets of June.
+And in the house opposite nothing was altered, not a fold of the lace
+curtains, not a leaf of the dusty aspidistra that took all the light in
+the ground-floor window.
+
+What a long time they were opening the door. She rattled the letter-box
+again and called out to May. It was like coming home after summer
+holidays by the blue sparkling sea, coming home to dolls and toys and
+the long, thin garden at the back which from absence had acquired an
+exaggerated reputation for entertainment.
+
+Suddenly May opened the door, peeping round over the latch, much scared
+apparently.
+
+"How quick you've been," she said.
+
+"Quick?" repeated Jenny.
+
+"Didn't you get my telegram?"
+
+"No," said Jenny, and perceiving that May's eyes were red with weeping,
+her delightful anticipation was clouded with dread. "What did you want
+to telegraph for? Not--not about mother?"
+
+May nodded.
+
+"She isn't dead?" Jenny gasped.
+
+"No, she isn't dead. But she's had to be took away. You know. To an
+asylum."
+
+"Go on," said Jenny. "Oh, what a dreadful thing."
+
+"Well, don't stand there," May commanded. "There's been crowd enough
+round here this morning as it is."
+
+In the kitchen she unfolded the story. It seemed that for the last
+fortnight their mother had been queer.
+
+"Oh, she was funny," said May. "She used to sit moping over the
+fire--never doing nothing and saying all the time how her head hurt."
+
+"Didn't dad fetch in a doctor?" Jenny demanded.
+
+"Not at first he wouldn't. You know what dad's like. I said she was
+really ill and he kept on saying: 'Nonsense, why look at me. I'm as ill
+as I can be, but I don't want no doctor. I've got a sort of a paralytic
+stroke running up and down my arm fit to drive anybody barmy. And here
+am I going off to work so cheerful, the chaps down at the shop say they
+don't know how I does it.'"
+
+"He ought to be bumped," Jenny asserted wrathfully. "I only wish I'd
+been at home to tell him off. Go on about mother. And why wasn't I sent
+for directly?" she asked.
+
+"Well, I did think about fetching you back. But I didn't really think
+myself it was anything much at first. She got worse all of a sudden
+like. She took a most shocking dislike to me and said I was keeping her
+indoors against her will, and then she carried on about you, said you
+was--well, I don't know what she didn't say. And when the doctor come,
+she said he was a detective and asked him to lock you and me both up,
+said she had the most wicked daughters. I was quite upset, but the
+doctor he said not to worry as it was often like that with mad people,
+hating the ones they liked best. And I said, 'She's never gone mad? Not
+my mother? Oh, whatever shall I do?' And he said, 'She has,' and then
+she started off screaming enough to make anyone go potty to hear her,
+and a lot of boys come and hung about the gate and people was looking
+out of windows and the greengrocer was ringing all the time to know if
+there was any orders this morning."
+
+"When was all this?" asked Jenny, frozen by the terrible narrative.
+
+"This morning, I keep telling you."
+
+"Just now?"
+
+"No, early. They come and took her away to an asylum somewhere in the
+country and we can go and see her once a fortnight. But she's very ill,
+the doctor says--some sort of abscess on her brain."
+
+"Where's dad?"
+
+"He went round to the 'Arms.' He said he felt quite shaky."
+
+Jenny sat mute and hopeless. Would her mother never recognize her? Would
+she die in the belief that she was neither loved nor appreciated?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXI: _A Document in Madness_
+
+
+Ashgate Asylum was a great gray accumulation of stone, standing at the
+head of a wide avenue of beech trees on a chalky ridge of the Chiltern
+Hills. Here in a long ward lay Mrs. Raeburn, fantasies riding day and
+night through the darkness of her mind.
+
+Jenny and May used to go once a fortnight to visit her sad seclusion. In
+a way it was a fruitless errand of piety, for she never recognized her
+daughters, staring at them from viewless eyes. Nobody else in the family
+made the slow, dreary journey through the raw spring weather. To be sure
+every fortnight Charlie intended to go; but something always cropped up
+to prevent him, and as he was unable to realize the need for instancy,
+he finally made up his mind to postpone any visit to the early summer,
+when, as he optimistically announced, it would no doubt be time to fetch
+his wife home completely cured.
+
+Jenny and May used to be met at the railway station by the Asylum
+brougham, which would bear them at a jogging pace up the straight
+melancholy avenue and set them down by the main entrance beside which
+hung the huge bell-chain whose clangor seemed to wake a multitude of
+unclean spirits. Often, as they walked nervously over the parquet of the
+lobby ample as a cloister, and past a succession of cheerful
+fire-places, Jenny would fancy she heard distant screams, horrid cries,
+traveling down the echoing corridors that branched off at every few
+paces. The nurse who was directing them would talk away pleasantly
+without apparent concern, without seeming to notice those patients
+allowed a measure of liberty. Jenny and May, however, could hardly
+refrain from shrieking out in terror as they shivered by these furtive,
+crouching shapes whose gaze was concentrated on things not seen by them.
+In the long ward at whose extreme end their mother's bed was situated,
+these alternations of embarrassment and fear became even more acute.
+Nearly all the occupants of the beds had shaved heads which gave them,
+especially the gray-haired women, a very ghastly appearance. Many of
+them would mutter audible comments on the two girls as they passed
+along, comparing them extravagantly to angels or to long-lost friends
+and relatives. Some would whimper in the terrible imagination that Jenny
+and May had arrived to hurt them. The girls were glad when the battery
+of mad eyes was passed and they could stand beside their mother's bed.
+
+"Here are your daughters come all this long way to see you, Mrs.
+Raeburn," the nurse would announce, and "Well, mother," or "How are you
+now, mother?" they would shyly inquire.
+
+Mrs. Raeburn could not recognize them, but would regard them from
+wide-open eyes that betrayed neither friendliness nor dislike.
+
+"Won't you say you're glad to see them?" the nurse would ask.
+
+Then sometimes Mrs. Raeburn would bury herself in the bedclothes to lie
+motionless until they had gone, or sometimes she would count on her
+fingers mysterious sums and ghostly numerals comprehended in the dim
+mid-region where her soul sojourned. If Jenny or May looked up in
+embarrassment, they would see all around them reasonless heads, some
+smiling and bobbing and beckoning, some grimacing horribly, and every
+one, save the listless head they loved best, occupied with mad
+speculations upon the identity of the two girls. After every visit, as
+hopelessly they were leaving the ward, the nurse would say:
+
+"I expect your mother will be better next time you come and able to talk
+a bit."
+
+They would be shown into a stuffy little parlor while the brougham was
+being brought round, a stuffy little room smelling of plum-cake and
+sherry. In the window hung a cage containing an old green paroquet that
+all the time swore softly to itself and seemed in the company of the mad
+to have lost its own clear bird's intelligence. Then back they would
+drive along the straight, wet avenue in a sound of twilight gales, back
+to the rain-soaked, dreary little station in whose silent waiting-room
+they would sit, crying softly to themselves, until the Marylebone train
+came in.
+
+These visits continued for six weeks, and then, on the fourth visit,
+just as April had starred the Chilterns with primroses, the nurse
+whispered while they were walking through the ward's distraught glances:
+
+"I think your mother will know you to-day."
+
+"Why?" Jenny whispered back.
+
+"I think she will, somehow."
+
+Up the ward they went with hearts beating expectantly, while the voices
+of the mad folk chattered on either side. "Look at her golden hair."
+"That's St. Michael. Holy Michael, pray for us." One young woman with
+pallid, tear-washed face was moaning: "Why can't I be dead, oh, why
+can't I be dead?" And an old woman, gray as an ash tree, was muttering
+very quickly to herself: "Oh, God help me; O, dear Lord help me!" on and
+on without a pause in the gibbering reiteration. Some of the patients
+waved and bobbed as usual, mopping and mowing and imparting wild secrets
+from the wild land in which they lived, and others scowled and shook
+their twisted fists. This time, indeed, their mother did look different,
+as if from the unknown haunted valleys in which her soul was imprisoned
+she had gained some mountain peak with a view of home.
+
+"How are you, mother?" Jenny asked.
+
+Mrs. Raeburn stared at her perplexed but not indifferent. Nor did she
+try to hide herself as usual. Suddenly she spoke in a voice that to her
+daughters seemed like the voice of a ghost.
+
+"Is that little May?"
+
+May's ivory cheeks were flushed with nervous excitement as, by an effort
+of brave will, she drew near to the mad mother's couch.
+
+"Yes, it is little May," said Mrs. Raeburn, fondling her affectionately.
+"Poor little back. Poor little thing. What a dreadful misfortune. My
+fault, all my fault. I shouldn't have bothered about cleaning up so
+much, not being so far gone as I was. Poor little May. I'm very ill--my
+head is hurting dreadfully."
+
+Suddenly over the face of the tortured woman came a wonderful change, a
+relief not mortal by its radiance. She sank back on her pillow in a
+vision of consolation. Jenny leaned over her. "Mother," she whispered,
+"don't you know me? It's Jenny! Jenny!" she cried in agony of longing to
+be recognized.
+
+"Jenny," repeated her mother, as if trying to make the name fit in with
+some existing fact of knowledge. "Jenny?" she murmured more faintly.
+"No, not Jenny, Cupid."
+
+"What's she mean?" whispered May.
+
+"She's thinking of the ballet. It was last time she saw me on the
+stage."
+
+"Cupid," Mrs. Raeburn went on. "Yes, it's Cupid. And Cupid means love.
+Love! God bless all good people. It's a fine day. Yes, it is a fine day.
+I'm very fond of this window, Carrie; I think it's such a cheerful view.
+Look at those lovely clouds. What a way you can see--right beyond the
+'Angel' to the country. Those aunts are coming again. Tut, tut. What do
+_they_ want to come here for? They sha'n't have her, they sha'n't have
+my Jenny. Jenny!" cried Mrs. Raeburn, recognizing at last her best-loved
+daughter. "I meant you to be so sweet and handsome, my Jenny! Oh, be
+good, my pretty one, my dainty one. I wish you'd see about that knob,
+Charlie. You _never_ remember to get a new one."
+
+Then, though her eyes were rapturous and gay again, her mind wandered
+further afield in broken sentences.
+
+"I think you'd better kiss her good-bye," the nurse said.
+
+Softly each daughter kissed that mother who would always remain the
+truest, dearest figure in their lives.
+
+Downstairs in the stuffy little parlor, Dr. Weever interviewed them.
+
+"Whoever allowed you two girls to come here?" he asked sharply. "You've
+no business to visit such a place. You're too young."
+
+"Will our mother get better?" Jenny asked.
+
+"Your poor mother is dying and you should be glad, because she suffers
+great pain all the time." His voice was harsh, but, nevertheless, full
+of tenderness.
+
+"Will she die soon?" Jenny whispered. May was sobbing to herself.
+
+"Very soon."
+
+"Then I'd better tell my father to come at once?"
+
+"Certainly, if he wants to see his wife alive."
+
+Jenny did not go to the Orient that night, and when her father came in,
+she told him how near it was to the end.
+
+"What, dying?" said Charlie, staggered by a thought which had never
+entered his mind. "Dying? Go on, don't make a game of serious things
+like death."
+
+"She is dying. And the doctor said if you wanted to see her alive, you
+must go at once."
+
+"I'll go to-night," said Charlie, feeling helplessly for his best hat.
+
+Just then came a double-knock at the door.
+
+"That means she's dead already," said Jenny in a dull monotone.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXII: _Pageantry of Death_
+
+
+Mr. Raeburn determined that, if there had sometimes been a flaw in his
+behavior towards his wife when alive, there should be no doubt about his
+treatment of her in death. Her funeral should be famous for its
+brass-adorned oaken coffin, splendidly new in the gigantic hearse. There
+should be long-tailed sable horses with nodding plumes, and a line of
+mourning coaches. Mutes should be everywhere and as many relatives as
+could be routed out within the time. Black silks and satins, jet and
+crape and somber stuffs should oppress the air, and Death with darkling
+wings should overshadow Islington. Many mourners were gathered together
+whose personalities had never played any part in Jenny's life; but
+others arrived who had in the past helped her development.
+
+Mrs. Purkiss came, escorted by Claude Purkiss representing with pale
+face and yellow silky mustache the smugness of himself and Percy the
+missionary. Claude's majority would occur in May, when he would be
+admitted to a partnership in the business. Already a bravery of gold
+paint, symbolizing his gilt-edged existence, was at work adding "And
+Son" to "William Purkiss." Uncle James Threadgale made the journey from
+Galton, bringing with him Mrs. Threadgale the second--a cheerful country
+body who pressed an invitation upon Jenny and May to visit them. Uncle
+James did not seem to have altered much, and brought up with him a roll
+of fine black cloth for Jenny, but was so much upset on realizing he
+had omitted May from his thoughtfulness that immediately upon his
+arrival he slipped out to buy a similar roll for her. The two lodgers
+were present as a mark of respect to the dead woman who had been so
+admirable a landlady; and both of them, with kindly tact, announced they
+were going away for a few days. Alfie, of course, was there with his
+fiancée, whom Jenny somewhat grudgingly admitted to be very smart. Edie
+came with the children and her husband. His arrival caused a slight
+unpleasantness, because Alfie said he would rather not go at all to the
+funeral than ride with Edie and Bert. But in the end a compromise was
+effected by which he and his Amy occupied a coach alone. After these
+mourners came a cortège of friends and cousins, all conspicuously black,
+all intent to pay their homage of gloom.
+
+Jenny, when she had made herself ready, sat on the end of the bed and
+laughed.
+
+"I can't help it, May. I know it's wicked of me. But I can't keep from
+laughing, I can't really."
+
+"Well, don't let any of them downstairs hear you," begged May, "because
+_they_ wouldn't understand."
+
+"It doesn't mean I'm not sorry about mother because I laugh. And I
+believe she'd be the first to understand. Oh, May, what a tale she'd
+have made of it, if she'd only been alive to see her own funeral. She'd
+have kept anyone in fits of laughter for a week."
+
+Even during the slow progress of the pomp, Jenny, in the first coach
+with her father and May, was continually on the verge of laughter
+because, just as by a great effort she had managed to bring her emotions
+under control, Aunt Mabel had tripped over her skirt and dived head
+foremost into the carriage that was to hold Claude, Uncle James and his
+wife, and herself. Moreover, to make matters worse, her father's black
+kid gloves kept splitting in different places until, by the time the
+cemetery was reached, his hands merely looked as if they were
+plentifully patched with court-plaster. It was blue and white April
+weather, fit for cowslips and young lambs, when the somber people
+darkened the vivid, wet grass round the grave. During the solemnity and
+mournfulness of the burial service Jenny stood very rigid and pale, more
+conscious of the wind sighing through the yew trees than of finality and
+irremediable death. She was neither irritated nor moved by the sniffling
+of those around her. The fluttering of the priest's surplice and the
+tear-dabbled handkerchiefs occupied her attention less than the figure
+of a widow looking with sorrowful admiration at a tombstone two hundred
+yards away. She did not advance with the rest to stare uselessly down on
+the lowered coffin. The last words had been said: the ceremony was done.
+In the sudden silver wash of an April shower they all hurried to the
+shelter of the mourning coaches. Jenny looked back once, and under the
+arc of a rainbow saw men with gleaming spades: then she, too, lost in
+the dust and hangings of the heavy equipage, was jogged slowly back to
+Islington.
+
+Funerals, like weddings, are commonly employed by families to weld
+broken links in the chain of association with comparisons of progress
+and the condolences or congratulations of a decade's chance and change.
+Jenny could not bear to see these relations cawing like rooks in a
+domestic parliament. She felt their presence outraged the humor of the
+dead woman and pictured to herself how, if her father had died, her
+mother would have sent them all flapping away. She did not want to hear
+her mother extolled by unappreciative people. She loathed the sight of
+her sleek cousin Claude, of Alfie glowering at Edie, of her future
+sister-in-law picking pieces of white cotton off her skirt, of Edie
+brushing currants from the side of Norman's mouth. Finally, when she was
+compelled to listen to her father's statement of his susceptibility to
+the knocks of a feather on receiving the news of his wife's death, she
+could bear it no longer, but went upstairs to her bedroom, whither Aunt
+Mabel presently followed in search.
+
+"Ah, Jenny, this is a sad set out and no mistake," Mrs. Purkiss began.
+
+Jenny did not deign to pay any attention, but looked coldly out of the
+window.
+
+"You must feel quite lost without her," continued the aunt, "though to
+be sure you didn't trouble her much with your company this last year.
+Poor Florrie, she used to fret about it a lot. And your father wasn't
+much use--such an undependable sort of a man as he is. Let's all hope,
+now he's got two motherless girls to look after, he'll be a bit more
+strict."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't keep on at me, Auntie," Jenny protested, "because I
+shall be most shocking rude to you in a minute, which I shouldn't like
+to be at such a time."
+
+"Tut--tut, I wish you could control that temper of yours; but there, I
+make allowances for I know you must be feeling it all very much,
+especially as you must blame yourself a bit."
+
+Jenny turned sharply round and faced her aunt.
+
+"What for?" she demanded.
+
+"Why, for everything. Nothing'll ever convince me it wasn't worry drove
+your poor mother into the grave. Your Uncle William said the same when
+he heard of it. He was _very_ disappointed to think he couldn't come to
+the funeral; but, as he said, 'what with, Easter almost on us and one
+thing and another, I really haven't got the time.'"
+
+Mrs. Purkiss had seated herself in the arm-chair and was creaking away
+in comfortable loquacity.
+
+"I think it's nothing more than wicked to talk like that," Jenny
+declared indignantly. "And, besides, it's silly, because the doctor said
+it was an abscess, nothing else."
+
+"Ah, well, doctors know best, I daresay; but we all have a right to our
+opinions."
+
+"And you think my leaving home for a year killed my mother?"
+
+"I don't go so far as that. What I said was you were a worry to her. You
+were a worry when you were born, for I was there. You were a worry when
+you would go on the stage against whatever I said. You were a worry
+when you dyed your hair and when you kept such disgraceful late hours
+and when you went gallivanting about with that young fellow. However, I
+don't want to be the one to rub in uncomfortable facts at such a time.
+What I came up to ask was if you wouldn't like to come and stay with us
+for a little while, you and May. You'll have to get an extra servant to
+look after the lodgers if your father intends keeping things on as they
+were, and you'll be more at home with us."
+
+Mrs. Purkiss spoke in accents almost ghoulish, with a premonitory relish
+of macabre conversations.
+
+"Stay with you?" repeated Jenny. "Stay with _you_? What, and hear
+nothing but what I ought to have done? No, thanks; May and I'll stay on
+here."
+
+"You wouldn't disturb your Uncle William," Mrs. Purkiss continued
+placidly, "if that's what you're thinking of. You'd be gone to the
+theater when he reads his paper of an evening."
+
+"If I went to stay anywhere," said Jenny emphatically, "I should go and
+stay with Uncle James at Galton. But I'm not, so please don't keep on,
+because I don't want to talk to _any_body."
+
+Mrs. Purkiss sighed compassionately and vowed she would forgive her
+nieces under the circumstances, would even spend the evening in an
+attempt to console the sad household of Hagworth Street.
+
+"But I want to be alone, and so does May."
+
+"Well, I always used to say you was funny girls, and this proves my
+words true. Anyone would think you'd be glad to talk about your poor
+mother to her only sister. But, no, girls nowadays seem to have no
+civilized feelings. Slap-dashing around. In and out. Nothing but amuse
+themselves, the uncultivated things, all the time. No wonder the papers
+carry on about it. But I'm not going to stay where I'm not wanted and
+don't need any innuendives to go."
+
+Here Mrs. Purkiss rose from the chair and, having in a majestic sweep
+of watered silk attained the door, paused to deliver one severe
+speculation.
+
+"If you treated your poor mother as you behave to your aunt, I'm not
+surprised she got ill. If my Percy or my Claude behaved like you--well,
+there, but they don't, thank goodness."
+
+Jenny listened quite unmoved to the swishing descent of her aunt. She
+was merely glad to think her rudeness had been effectual in driving her
+away, and followed her downstairs very soon in order to guarantee her
+departure.
+
+One by one the funereal visitors went their ways. One by one they faded
+into the sapphire dusk of April. Some went in sable parties like
+dilatory homing cattle, browsing as they went on anecdotes of the dead.
+On the tail of the last exit, their father, somewhat anxiously, as if
+afraid of filial criticism, went also. He sat for a long time, as he
+told them afterwards, without drinking anything, the while he stared at
+his silk hat enmeshed in crape, and when he did drink he called for
+stout.
+
+The two girls stayed alone in the parlor with little heart to light the
+gas, with little desire to talk over the mournful buzz which had filled
+the house all day. The lodgers being gone, no responsibility of general
+illumination rested with Jenny or May. Soon, however, they moved in
+accord to the kitchen, where on each side of the glowing fire they
+listened to the singing of a kettle and the tick of the American clock.
+An insistent loneliness penetrated their souls. In that hour of sorrow
+and twilight, they drew nearer to one another than ever before. Outside
+a cat was wailing, and far down the road a dog, true to superstition,
+howled at intervals. The kitchen was intolerably changed by Mrs.
+Raeburn's absence. Jenny suddenly realized how lonely May must have been
+during those weeks of illness and suspense. She herself had had the
+distractions of the theater, but May must have moped away each heavy
+moment.
+
+"I wonder where Ruby is now?" said Jenny suddenly.
+
+"Fancy! I wonder."
+
+They sighed. The old house in Hagworth Street seemed, with the death of
+its laughing mistress, to have lost its history, to have become merely
+one of a dreary row.
+
+"Oh, May, look," said Jenny. "There's her apron never even gone to the
+wash."
+
+After that the sisters wept quietly; while Venus dogged the young moon
+down into the green West, and darkness shrouded the gray Islington
+street.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIII: _Loose Ends_
+
+
+For all that Jenny was so contemptuous of her aunt's opinion at the time
+of its expression, when she came to weigh its truth she found it
+somewhat disturbing. Was an abscess, indeed, the sole cause of her
+mother's madness and death? And could Aunt Mabel have any justification
+for so cruelly hinting at a less obvious cause? Jenny herself possessed
+a disconcerting clarity of intuition which she inherited from her
+mother, who might have divined the progress of the Danby incident and
+brooded over it too profoundly in the absence of her daughter. Indeed,
+she might have been actually goaded into sheer madness by a terrible
+consciousness of that rainy St. Valentine's night; for it was strange
+that her sanity should fly forever on the very next morning. It was
+horrid to think that all night long her mother, kept awake by pain,
+might have been conscious of her actions. Yet the doctor had so
+confidently blamed the abscess for everything. Moreover, in the asylum
+her mother had seemed just as much distressed by the thought of May's
+back as anything else. Sensitiveness to her mother's feelings had led
+Jenny into wrecking her own happiness with Maurice, and even Fortune
+could scarcely be so fierce as to drive her mother mad on account of the
+pitiful corollary to that ruined love. Yet it might be so, and if it
+were, what remorse would burden her mind everlastingly. And now it was
+too late for explanations. Jenny, having felt all through her mother's
+life an inability to confide in her completely, now when she was dead
+developed an intense desire to pour out her soul, to acquaint her with
+every detail of experience and even to ascertain if her own passionate
+adventures had been foreshadowed in her mother's life.
+
+Meanwhile, with all these potential horrors of culpable actions, there
+was the practical side of the future to consider. In a week the lodgers
+would return, and a servant must be found at once to help May. She
+herself would do as much as possible, but most of her energy was sapped
+by the theater. She wished her father had the smallest conception of
+management. The death of his wife, however, seemed to have destroyed
+what small equipment of resolution he possessed, and the "Masonic Arms"
+received him more openly, more frequently than ever.
+
+Jenny debated the notion of leaving the Orient and applying all her mind
+to keeping house; but it was too late for her temperament to inure
+itself to domesticity without the spur of something sharper than mere
+pecuniary advantage. Perhaps it would be better to give up the house in
+Hagworth Street and take a smaller one, where, on the joint earnings of
+herself and her father, he and the two sisters could live in tolerable
+comfort. Perhaps she might even accept the risk of setting up house with
+May alone. But thirty shillings a week was not a large sum for two
+girls, one of whom must be well dressed and able to hold her own in
+company where dress counted for a good deal. The more she thought of it,
+the more impossible did it seem to give up the theater. Those few days
+of absence proved how intimately her existence was wrapped up in the
+certainty of an evening's employment. As the time had drawn on for going
+down to the Orient, she had become very restless in the quiet of home.
+However much she might scoff at it, there was wonderful comfort in the
+assurance of a cheerful evening of dressing-room gossip. Besides, there
+was always the chance of an interesting stranger in front or of suddenly
+being called upon to play a noticeable part, though that pleasure grew
+more and more insipid all the time. There was, however, still a certain
+agreeable reflection in the consciousness of looking pretty and knowing
+that a few eyes every night remarked her face and figure. And even if
+all these consolations of theatrical existence failed, there was a very
+great satisfaction in making up and leaving, as it were, one's own
+discontented body behind.
+
+For a time everything went on as usual and nobody put forward any
+definite proposal involving a change either of residence or mode of
+life. Jenny began to think she was doomed to settle down into perpetual
+dullness and never again to be launched desperately on a passionate
+adventure. She was beginning to be aware how easy it was for a woman to
+belie the temperament of her youth with a common-place maturity. By the
+end of the summer their father had already advanced so far on the road
+to moral and financial disintegration as to make it evident to Jenny and
+May that they must fend for themselves. One lodger, an old clerk in a
+Moorgate firm of solicitors, had already left, and the other, a
+Cornishman working in a dairy, would soon be carrying the result of his
+commercial experience back to his native land. Neither of the girls
+liked the prospect of new lodgers and were nervous of affording shelter
+to possible thieves or murderers. Nor did May in particular enjoy the
+supervision of the servant or wrestling with the slabs of unbaked dough
+which heralded her culinary essays. So at last she and Jenny decided the
+house was altogether too large and that they must give notice to quit.
+
+"And aren't I to give no opinion on the subject of my own house?" asked
+their father indignantly.
+
+"You?" cried Jenny; "why should you? You don't do nothing but drink
+everything away. Why should we slave ourselves to the death keeping
+you?"
+
+"There's daughters!" Charlie apostrophized. "Yes, daughters is all very
+nice when they're small, but when they grow up, they're worse than
+wives. It comes of being women, I suppose." And Charlie, as if
+sympathizing with his earliest ancestor, sighed for Eden. "Look here, I
+don't want to take my hook from this house."
+
+"All right, stay on, then, stupid," May advised; "only Jenny and I are
+going to clear off."
+
+"Stay on by yourself," Jenny continued in support of her sister, "and a
+fine house it'll be in a year's time. No one able to get in for empty
+bottles and people all around thinking you've opened a shooting-gallery,
+I should say."
+
+"Now don't go on," said Charlie, "because I want to have a lay down, so
+you can just settle as you like."
+
+It was Sunday afternoon and no problems of future arrangements were
+serious enough to interrupt a lifelong habit.
+
+"It's no good talking to him," said Jenny scornfully; "what we've got to
+do is give notice sharp. I hate this house now," she added, savagely
+appraising the walls.
+
+So it was settled that after so many years the Raeburns should leave
+Hagworth Street. Charlie made no more attempts to contest the decision,
+and acquiesced almost cheerfully when he suddenly reflected that
+public-houses were always handy wherever anyone went. "Though, for all
+that," he added, "I shall miss the old 'Arms.'"
+
+"Fancy," said Jenny, "who'd have thought it?"
+
+On the following Sunday afternoon Mr. Corin, the remaining lodger, came
+down to interview his hostesses.
+
+"I hear you're leaving then, Miss Raeburn," he said. "How's that?"
+
+"It's too hard work for my sister," Jenny answered very politely. "And
+besides, she don't care for it, and nor don't I."
+
+"Well, I'm going home along myself in November month, I believe, or I
+should have been sorry to leave you. What I come down to ask about was
+whether you'd let a bedroom to a friend of mine who's coming up from
+Cornwall on some law business in connection with some evidence over a
+right of way or something. A proper old mix up, I believe it is. But I
+don't suppose they'll keep him more than a week, and he could use my
+sitting-room."
+
+Jenny looked at May.
+
+"Yes, of course, let him come," said the housewife. "But when will it
+be?"
+
+"October month, I believe," said Mr. Corin. "That's when the witnesses
+are called for."
+
+Everything seemed to happen in October, Jenny thought. In October she
+would be twenty-two. How time was flying, flying with age creeping on
+fast. In the dreariness of life's prospect, even the arrival of Mr.
+Corin's friend acquired the importance of an expected event, and, though
+neither of the sisters broke through custom so far as to discuss him
+beforehand, the coming of Mr. Corin's friend served as a landmark in the
+calendar like Whitsuntide or Easter. Meanwhile, Mr. Raeburn, as if aware
+of the little time left in which the "Masonic Arms" could be enjoyed,
+drank more and more as the weeks jogged by.
+
+Summer gales marked the approach of autumn, and in the gusty twilights
+that were perceptibly earlier every day, Jenny began to realize how
+everything of the past was falling to pieces. There was an epidemic of
+matrimony at the theater, which included in the number of its victims
+Maudie Chapman and Elsie Crauford. Of her other companions Lilli Vergoe
+had left the ballet and taken up paid secretarial work for some
+misanthropic society, while the relations between Irene and herself had
+been as grimly frigid ever since the quarrel. New girls seemed to occupy
+old places very conspicuously, and all the stability of existence was
+shaken by change. Only the Orient itself remained immutably vast and
+austere, voracious of young life, sternly intolerant of fading beauty,
+antique and unscrupulous.
+
+Jenny was becoming conscious of the wire from which she was suspended
+for the world's gaze, jigged hither and thither and sometimes allowed to
+fall with a flop when fate desired a new toy. The ennui of life was
+overwhelming. A gigantic futility clouded her point of view, making
+effort, enjoyment, sorrow, disappointment, success equally unimportant.
+She was not induced by that single experience of St. Valentine's night
+to prosecute her curiosity. This may have been because passion full-fed
+was a disillusionment, or it may have been that the shock of her
+mother's madness appeared to her as a tangible retribution. Everything
+was dead. Her dancing, like her life, had become automatic, and even her
+clothes lasted twice as long as in the old days.
+
+"I can't make out what's happened to everybody," she said to May. "No
+fellows ever seem to come round the stage door now. All the girls have
+either got married or booked up that way. Nobody ever wants to have
+larks like we used to have. You never hardly hear anybody laugh in the
+dressing-room now. I met someone the other day who knew me two years ago
+and they said I'd gone as thin as a threepenny-bit."
+
+Jenny meditated upon the achievement of her life up to date and wrote it
+down a failure. Where was that Prima Ballerina Assoluta who with
+pitter-pat of silver shoes had danced like a will-o'-the-wisp before her
+imagination long ago? Where was that Prima Ballerina with double-fronted
+house at Ealing or Wimbledon, and meek, adoring husband? Where, indeed,
+were all elfin promises of fame and fairy hopes of youth? They had fled,
+those rainbow-winged deceivers, together with short frocks
+accordion-pleated and childhood's tumbled hair. Where was that love so
+violent and invincible that even time would flee in dismay before its
+progress? Where, too, was the laughter that once had seemed illimitable
+and immortal? Now there was nothing so gay as to keep even laughter
+constant to Jenny's world. For her there was no joy in lovely
+transcience. She knew by heart no Horatian ode which, declaiming against
+time, could shatter the cruelty of impermanence. Without an edifice of
+love or religion or art or philosophy, there seemed no refuge from
+decay.
+
+When the body finds existence a mock, the mind falls back upon its
+intellectual defences. But Jenny had neither equipment, commissariat or
+strategic position. She was a dim figure on the arras of civilization,
+faintly mobile in the stressful winds of life. She was a complex
+decorative achievement and should have been cherished as such. Therefore
+at school she was told that William the Conqueror came to the throne in
+1066, that a bay is a large gulf, a promontory a small cape. She had
+been a plaything for the turgid experiments by parrots in education on
+simple facts, facts so sublimely simple that her mind recorded them no
+more than would the Venus of Milo sit down on a bench before a pupil
+teacher. When she was still a child, plastic and wonderful, she gave her
+dancing and beauty to a country whose inhabitants are just as content to
+watch two dogs fight or a horse die in the street. When ambition
+withered before indifference, she set out to express herself in love.
+Her early failures should not have been fatal, would not have been if
+she had possessed any power of mental recuperation. But even if William
+the Conqueror had won his battle at Clacton, the bare knowledge of it
+would not have been very useful to Jenny. Yet she might have been useful
+in her beauty, could some educationalist have perceived in her youth
+that God as well as Velasquez can create a thing of beauty. She lived,
+however, in a period of enthusiastic waste, and now brooded over the
+realization that nothing in life seemed to recompense one for living,
+however merrily, however splendidly, the adventure began.
+
+Such was Jenny's mood when, just after her twenty-second birthday, Mr.
+Corin announced that his friend, Mr. Z. Trewhella, would arrive in three
+days' time.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIV: _Mr. Z. Trewhella_
+
+
+Mr. Corin was anxious to make his friend's visit to London as pleasant
+as possible, and in zeal for the enjoyment of Zachary Trewhella to
+impress him with the importance and knowingness of William John Corin.
+By way of extirpating at once any feeling of solitude, he was careful to
+invite Jenny and May to take tea with them on the afternoon following
+Trewhella's arrival. The first-floor sitting-room, once in the
+occupation of Mr. Vergoe, looked very different nowadays; and indeed no
+longer possessed much character. Corin's decorative extravagance had
+never carried beyond the purchase of those glassy photographs of City
+scenes in which from a confusion of traffic rise landmarks like St.
+Paul's or the Royal Exchange. These, destined ultimately to adorn the
+best parlor of his Cornish home, were now propped dismally against the
+overmantel, individually obscured according to the vagaries of the
+servant's dusting by a plush-bound photograph of Mr. Lloyd George. The
+walls of the room were handed over to wall-paper save where two prints,
+billowy with damp, showed Mr. Gladstone looking at the back of Mr.
+Spurgeon's neck over some tabulated observations on tuberculosis among
+cows.
+
+Zachary Trewhella did more than share his friend's sitting-room: he
+occupied it, not so much actively, as by sheer inanimate force. To see
+him sitting in the arm-chair was to see a bowlder flung down in a flimsy
+drawing-room. He was a much older man than Corin, probably about
+thirty-eight, though Jenny fancied he could not be less than fifty. His
+eyes, very deep brown and closely set, had a twinkle of money, and the
+ragged mustache probably concealed a cruel and avaricious mouth. His
+hands were rough and swollen with work and weather: his neck was lean
+and his pointed ears were set so far back as to give his high
+cheek-bones over which the skin was drawn very taut a prominence of
+feature they would not otherwise have possessed. He belonged to a common
+type of Cornish farmer, a little more than fox, a little less than wolf,
+and judged by mere outward appearance, particularly on this occasion of
+ill-fitting broadcloth and celluloid collar, he would strike the casual
+glance as mean of form and feature. Yet he radiated force continually
+and though actually a small man produced an effect of size and power. It
+was impossible definitely to predicate the direction of this energy, to
+divine whether it would find concrete expression in agriculture or lust
+or avarice or religion. Yet so vitally did it exist that from the moment
+Trewhella entered Corin's insignificant apartment, the room was haunted
+by him, and not merely the room, but Hagworth Street itself and even
+Islington.
+
+"Well, Zack," said Mr. Corin, winking at the two girls, and for effect
+lapsing into broadest dialect. "What du'ee thenk o' Lonnon, buoy, grand
+auld plaäce 'tis, I b'liv."
+
+"I don't know as I've thought a brae lot about it," said Zack.
+
+"He's all the time brooding about this right of way," Mr. Corin
+explained.
+
+Jenny and May were frankly puzzled by Trewhella. He represented to them
+a new element. Jenny felt she had received an impression incommunicable
+by description, as if, having been flung suddenly into a room, one were
+to try to record the experience in terms of the underground railway.
+
+The farmer himself did not pay any attention to either of the girls, so
+that Jenny was compelled to gain her impression of him as if he were an
+animal in a cage, funny or dull or interesting, but always remote. She
+was content to watch him eat with a detached curiosity that prevented
+her from being irritated by his deliberation, or, after noisy drinking,
+by the colossal fist that smudged his lips dry.
+
+"Ess," Trewhella announced after swallowing a large mouthful of
+plum-cake. "Ess, I shall be brim glad when I'm back to Trewinnard. 'Tis
+my belief the devil's the only one to show a Cornishman round London
+fittee."
+
+Mr. Corin laughed at this sardonic witticism, but said he was going to
+have a jolly good try at showing Zack the sights of the town that very
+night.
+
+"You ought to take him to the Orient," May advised.
+
+"By gosh, and that's a proper notion," said Corin, slapping his thigh.
+"That's you and me to-night, Zack."
+
+"What's the Orient?" inquired Trewhella.
+
+"Haven't you never heard of the Orient?" Jenny gasped, her sense of
+fitness disturbed by such an abyss of ignorance.
+
+"No, my dear, I never have," replied Trewhella, and for the first time
+looked Jenny full in the face.
+
+"I dance there," she told him, "in the ballet."
+
+The Cornishman looked round to his friend for an explanation.
+
+"That's all right, boy," said Corin jovially. "You'll know soon enough
+what dancing is. You and me's going there to-night."
+
+Trewhella grunted, looked at Jenny again and said after a pause: "Well,
+being in the city, I suppose we must follow city manners, but darn'ee, I
+never thought to go gazing at dancing like maidens at St. Peter's Tide."
+
+Corin chuckled at the easy defeat of the farmer's prejudice, and said he
+meant to open old Zack's eyes before he went back to Cornwall, and no
+mistake.
+
+Soon after this the two girls left the tea-party, and while Jenny
+dressed herself to go down to the theater, they discussed Mr. Z.
+Trewhella.
+
+"Did you ever hear anyone talk so funny. Oh, May, I nearly split myself
+for laughing. Oh, he talks like a coon."
+
+"I thought he talked like a gramaphone that wants winding up," said May.
+
+"But what a dreadful thing to talk like that. Poor man, it's a shame to
+laugh at him, though, because he can't help it." Jenny was twisting
+round to see that no dust lay on the back of her coat.
+
+"I wonder what he'll think of you dancing," May speculated. "But I don't
+expect he'll recognize you."
+
+"I think he will, then," contradicted Jenny as she dabbed her nose with
+the powder-puff. "Perhaps you never noticed, but he looked at me very
+funny once or twice."
+
+"Did he?" said May. "Well, I'm jolly glad it wasn't me or I should have
+had a fit of the giggles."
+
+Presently, under the scud of shifting clouds, Jenny hurried through the
+windy shadows of twilight down to the warm theater. When she was back in
+the bedroom that night, May said:
+
+"Mr. Trewhella's struck on you."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"He is--honest. He raved about you."
+
+"Shut up."
+
+"He went to see you dance and he's going again to-morrow night and all
+the time he's in London, and he wants you and me to go to tea again
+to-morrow."
+
+"I've properly got off," laughed Jenny, as down tumbled her fair hair,
+and with a single movement she shook it free of a day's confinement.
+
+"Do you like him?" May inquired.
+
+"Yes, all right. Only his clothes smell funny. Lavingder or something. I
+suppose they've been put away for donkey's years. Well, get on with it,
+young May, and tell us some more about this young dream."
+
+"You date," laughed her sister. "But don't make fun of the poor man."
+
+"Oh, well, he is an early turn, now isn't he, Maisie? What did dad say
+to him?"
+
+"Oh, dad. If beer came from cows, dad would have had plenty to say."
+
+"You're right," agreed Jenny, standing rosy-footed in her nightgown. She
+gave one critical look at her image in the glass, as if in dreams she
+meant to meet a lover, then put out all lights and with one leap buried
+herself in the bedclothes.
+
+On the following afternoon during tea Mr. Trewhella scarcely took his
+eyes off Jenny.
+
+"Well, how did you enjoy the ballet?" she inquired.
+
+"I don't know so much about the ballet. I was all the time looking for
+one maid in that great old magic lantern of a place, and when I found
+her I couldn't see her so well as I wanted. But, darn'ee, I will
+to-night. William John!"
+
+"Zack!"
+
+"William John, if it do cost a golden guinea to sit down along to-night,
+we'm going to sit in they handsome chairs close up to the harmony."
+
+"That's all right, boy," chuckled Corin. "We'll sit in the front row."
+
+"That's better," sighed Trewhella, much relieved by this announcement.
+
+When Jenny said she must go and get ready for the theater, the farmer
+asked if he might put her along a bit of the way.
+
+"If you like," she told him. "Only I hope you walk quicker than what you
+eat, because I shall be most shocking late if you don't."
+
+Trewhella said he would walk just as quick as she'd a mind to; but Jenny
+insured herself against lateness by getting ready half an hour earlier
+than usual.
+
+They presented a curious contrast, the two of them walking down Hagworth
+Street. There was a certain wildness in the autumnal evening that made
+Trewhella look less out of keeping with the city. All the chimneys were
+flying streamers of smoke. Heavy clouds, streaked with dull red veins,
+were moving down the sky, and the street corners looked very bare in the
+wind. Trewhella stalked on with his long, powerful body bent forward
+from crooked legs. His twisted stick struck the pavement at regular
+intervals: his Ascot tie of red satin gleamed in the last rays of the
+sunset. Beside him was Jenny, not much shorter actually, but seeming
+close to him very tiny indeed.
+
+"Look, you maid," said Trewhella when, after a silent hundred yards,
+they were clear of the house, "I never seed no such a thing as your
+dancing before. I believe the devil has gotten hold of me at last. I sat
+up there almost falling down atop of 'ee? Yet I'm the man who's sat
+thinking of Heaven ever since I heard tell of it. Look, you maid, will
+you be marrying me this week and coming home along back to Cornwall?"
+
+"What?" cried Jenny. "Marry you?"
+
+"Now don't be in a frizz to say no all at once. But hark what I do tell
+'ee. I've got a handsome lill farm set proper and lew-- Bochyn we do call
+it. And I've got a pretty lill house all a-shining wi' brass and all
+a-nodding wi' roses and geraniums where a maid could sit looking out of
+the window like a dove if she'd a mind to, smelling the stocks and
+lilies in the garden and harking to the sea calling from the sands."
+
+"Well, don't keep on so fast," Jenny interrupted. "You _don't_ think I'd
+marry anyone I'd only just seen? And besides you don't hardly know me."
+
+"But I do know you're the only maid for me, and I can't go back without
+you. That's where it's to. When I've been preaching and sweating away
+down to the chapel, when I've been shouting and roaring about the
+glories of Heaven, I've all the time been thinking of maids' lips and
+wondering how I didn't care to go courting. I'm going to have 'ee."
+
+"Thanks," said Jenny loftily. "I seem to come on with the crowd in this
+scene. I don't want to marry you."
+
+"I don't know how you can be so crool-hearted as to think of leaving me
+go back home along and whenever I see the corn in summer-time keep
+thinking of your hair."
+
+"But I'm not struck on you," said Jenny. "You're too old. Besides, it's
+soppy to talk like that about my hair when you've never hardly seen it
+at all."
+
+Trewhella seemed oblivious to everything but the prosecution of his
+suit.
+
+"There's hundreds of maids have said a man was too old. And what is
+love? Why, 'tis nothing but a great fire burning and burning in a man's
+heart, and if 'tis hot enough, it will light a fire in the woman's
+heart."
+
+"Ah, but supposing, like me, she's got a fireproof curtain?" said Jenny
+flippantly.
+
+Trewhella looked at her, puzzled by this counter. He perceived, however,
+it was hostile to his argument and went on more earnestly than before:
+
+"Yes, but you wouldn't have me lusting after the flesh. I that found the
+Lord years ago and kept Him ever since. I that showed fruits of the
+Spirit before any of the chaps in the village. I that scat up two apple
+orchards so as they shouldn't go to make cider and drunkenness. You
+wouldn't have me live all my life in whorage of thoughts."
+
+"Who cares what you do?" said Jenny, getting bored under this weight of
+verbiage. "I don't want to marry."
+
+"I've been too quick," said Trewhella. "I've been led away by my
+preacher's tongue. But you'll see me there in front of 'ee to-night," he
+almost shouted. "You'll see me there gazing at 'ee, and I don't belong
+to be bested by nothing. Maid nor bullock. Good night, Miss Raeburn,
+I'll be looking after William John."
+
+"Good night," said Jenny pleasantly, relieved by his departure. "I'll
+see you in front, then."
+
+She thought as she said this how utterly inappropriate Trewhella and
+Corin would look in the stalls of the Orient. She fancied how the girls
+would laugh and ask in the wings what those strange figures could be. It
+was lucky none of them were aware they lodged in Hagworth Street. What a
+terrible thing it would be if it leaked out that such unnatural-looking
+men, with such a funny way of talking, lodged at Jenny Pearl's. The
+thought of the revelation made her blush. Yet Corin had not seemed
+extraordinary before the arrival of his friend. It was Trewhella who had
+infected them both with strangeness. He had an intensity, a dignity that
+made him difficult to subdue with flippancy. He never seemed to laugh at
+her retorts, and yet underneath that ragged mustache he seemed to be
+smiling to himself all the time. And what terrible hands he had. More
+like animals than hands. When Jenny caught his eye glinting down in the
+stalls, she wished she were playing anything but an Ephesian flute-girl,
+for Ephesian flute-girls, owning a happier climate, dressed very
+lightly.
+
+"He sat there looking me through and through," she told May, "till I
+nearly run off to the side. He stared at me just like our cat stares at
+the canary in the window next door."
+
+"It's not a canary," May corrected. "It's a goldfinch."
+
+"Now don't be silly, and shut up, you and your goldfinches. Who cares if
+it's a parrot? You know what I mean. Tell me what I'm to do about Borneo
+Bill."
+
+May began to laugh.
+
+"Well, he is. He's like the song."
+
+On the next day Mr. Corin interviewed Jenny about the prospects of his
+friend's suit.
+
+"You know, Miss Raeburn, he's very serious about it, is Zack. He's
+accounted quite a rich man down west. 'Tis his own farm freehold--and
+he's asked Mr. Raeburn's permission."
+
+"Well, that wins it!" Jenny proclaimed. "Asked my father's permission?
+What for? What's it got to do with him who I marry? Thanks, I marry who
+I please. What a liberty!"
+
+Mr. Corin looked apologetic.
+
+"I only told you that so as you shouldn't think there was anything funny
+about it. I never saw a man so dead in earnest, and he's a religious
+man, too."
+
+"Well, I'm not," Jenny retorted. "I don't see what religion's got to do
+with marrying."
+
+"You come to think of it, Miss Raeburn, it's not such a bad offer. I
+don't believe you could meet with a safer man than Zack. I suppose if
+he's worth a dollar, he's worth three hundred pounds a year, and that's
+comfortable living in Cornwall."
+
+"But he's old enough to be my father," Jenny contended.
+
+"He looks older than what he is," continued Mr. Corin plausibly.
+"Actually he isn't much more than thirty-five."
+
+"Yes, then he woke up," scoffed Jenny.
+
+"No, really he isn't," Corin persisted. "But he's been a big worker all
+his life. Thunder and sleet never troubled him. And, looking at it this
+way, you know the saying, ''Tis better to be an old man's darling than a
+young man's slave.'"
+
+"But I don't like him--not in the way that I could marry him." Jenny had
+a terrible feeling of battered down defenses, of some inexorable force
+advancing against her.
+
+"Yes; but you might grow to like him. It's happened before now with
+maids. And look, he's willing for 'ee to have your sister to live with
+you, and that means providing for her. What 'ud become of her if
+anything happened to you or your father?"
+
+"She could go and live with my sister Edie or my brother."
+
+"Yes; but we all know what that may mean, whereas if she comes to live
+with you, Zack will be so proud of her as if she were his very own
+sister."
+
+Jenny was staggered by the pertinacity of this wooing and made a slip.
+
+"Yes; but when does he want to marry me?"
+
+The pleader was not slow to take hold of this.
+
+"Then you'll consider it, eh?"
+
+"I never said so," Jenny replied in a quick attempt to retrieve her
+blunder.
+
+"Well, he wants to marry you now at once."
+
+"But I couldn't. For one thing I couldn't leave the theater all in a
+hurry. It would look so funny. Besides----"
+
+"Well," Zack said, "Don't worry the maid, William John, but leave her to
+find out her own mind and I'll bide here along till she do know it."
+
+Mr. Corin dwelt on the magnanimity of his friend and having, as he
+thought, made a skillful attack on Jenny's prejudice, retired to let his
+arguments sink in. He had effected even more than he imagined by his
+cool statement of the proposal. Put forward by him, devoid of all
+passion and eccentricity of language, it seemed a very business-like
+affair. Jenny began to think how such a step would solve the problem of
+taking a new house, of moving the furniture, of providing for May, of
+getting rid of her father, now daily more irritating on account of his
+besotted manner of life. All the girls at the theater were marrying. It
+was in the air. She was growing old. The time of romantic adventure was
+gone. The carnival was petering out in a gloomy banality. Change was
+imminent in every direction. Why not make a clean sweep of the old life
+and, escaping to some strange new existence, create a fresh illusion of
+pleasure? What would her mother have said to this offer? Jenny could not
+help feeling she would have regarded it with very friendly eyes, would
+have urged strongly its acceptance. Why, she had even been anxious for
+Jenny to make a match with a baker; and here was a prosperous man, a
+religious man, a steady man, inviting her to be mistress almost of a
+country estate. She wished that Mr. Z. Trewhella were not so willing to
+wait. It made him appear so sure, so inevitable. And the time for moving
+was getting very near. Change was in the air. Jenny thought she would
+sound May's views on the future in case of sudden accident or any
+deliberate alteration of the present mode of life.
+
+"Where would you live if I went away?" she asked.
+
+"What do you mean?" said May, looking very much alarmed by the prospect,
+and turning sharply on her pillow.
+
+"I mean who would you live with? Alfie or Edie?"
+
+"Neither," May affirmed emphatically.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I wouldn't."
+
+This reply, however unsatisfactory it might have been to a logician, was
+to Jenny the powerfullest imaginable.
+
+"But supposing I got married?" she went on.
+
+"Well, couldn't I live with you? No, I suppose I couldn't," said May
+dejectedly. "I'm a lot of good, ain't I? Yes, you grumble sometimes, but
+what about if you was like me?"
+
+Jenny had always accepted May's cheerfulness under physical disability
+so much as a matter of fact that a complaint from her came with a shock.
+More than ever did the best course for May seem the right course for
+Jenny. She recalled how years ago her mother had intrusted May to her
+when a child. How much more sacred and binding was that trust now that
+she who imposed it was dead.
+
+"Don't get excited," said Jenny, petting her little sister. "Whatever I
+done or wherever I went, you should come along of me."
+
+May, not to display emotion, said:
+
+"Well, you needn't go sticking your great knee in my back." But Jenny
+knew by the quickness with which she fell asleep that May was happy and
+secure.
+
+"I'm going to have a rare old rout out this morning," Jenny announced
+when she woke up to the sight of an apparently infinitely wet day, a
+drench in a gray monotone of sky from dawn to nightfall.
+
+About eleven o'clock the rout out began and gradually the accumulated
+minor rubbish of a quarter of a century was stacked in various heaps all
+over the house.
+
+"What about mother's things?" May inquired.
+
+"I'm going to put them all away in a box. I'm going through them this
+afternoon," said Jenny.
+
+"I've promised to go out and see some friends of mine this afternoon,"
+said May. "So I'll leave them to you because they aren't tiring."
+
+"All right, dear."
+
+After dinner when her sister had gone out and Jenny, except for the
+servant, was alone in the old house, she began to sort her mother's
+relics. One after another they were put away in a big trunk still
+plentifully plastered with railway labels of Clacton G.E.R. and
+Liverpool Street, varied occasionally by records of Great Yarmouth.
+Steadily the contents of the box neared the top with ordered layers of
+silk dresses and mantles. Hidden carefully in their folds were old
+prayer books and thimbles, ostrich plumes and lace. Jenny debated for a
+moment whether to bury an old wax doll with colorless face and fragile
+baby-robes of lawn--a valuable old doll, the plaything in childhood of
+the wife of Frederick Horner, the chemist.
+
+"I suppose by rights Alfie or Edie ought to have that," Jenny thought.
+"But it's too old for kids to knock about. If they remember about it,
+they can have it."
+
+So the old doll was relegated to a lavendered tomb. "After all," thought
+Jenny, "we wasn't even allowed to play with it. Only just hold it gently
+for a Sunday treat."
+
+Next a pile of old housekeeping books figured all over in her mother's
+neat thin handwriting were tied round with a bit of blue ribbon and put
+away. Then came the problem of certain pieces of china which Mrs.
+Raeburn when alive had cherished. Now that she was dead Jenny felt they
+should be put away with other treasures. These ornaments were vital with
+the pride of possession in which her mother had enshrined them and
+should not be liable to the humiliation of careless treatment.
+
+At last only the contents of the desk remained, and Jenny thought it
+would be right to look carefully through these that nothing which her
+mother would have wished to be destroyed should be preserved for
+impertinent curiosity. The desk smelt strongly of the cedar-wood with
+which it was lined, and the perfume was powerfully evocative of the
+emotions of childish inquisitiveness and awe which it had once always
+provoked. Here were the crackling letters of the old Miss Horners, and
+for the first time Jenny read the full history of her proposed adoption.
+"Good job that idea got crushed," she thought, appalled by the profusion
+of religious sentiment and half annoyed by their austere prophecies and
+savage commentaries upon the baby Jenny. In addition to these letters
+there was a faded photograph of her parents in earliest matrimony and
+another photograph of someone she did not recognize--a man with a heavy
+mustache and by the look of his clothes prosperous.
+
+"Wonder who he was," Jenny speculated. "Perhaps that man who was struck
+on her and who she wouldn't go away with." This photograph she burned.
+Suddenly, at the bottom of the packet of letters, Jenny caught sight of
+a familiar handwriting which made her heart beat with the shock of
+unexpected discovery.
+
+"However on earth did that come there?" she murmured as she read the
+following old letter from Maurice.
+
+     422 G. R.
+
+     Friday.
+
+     My little darling thing,
+
+     I've got to go away this week-end, but never mind, I shall see you
+     on Tuesday, or anyway Wednesday for certain. I'll let you know at
+     the theater. Good night, my sweet one. You know I'm horribly
+     disappointed after all our jolly plans. But never mind, my dearest,
+     next week it will be just as delightful. 422 kisses from Maurice.
+
+The passion which had once made such sentences seem written with fire
+had long been dead. So far as the author was concerned, this old letter
+had no power to move with elation or dejection. No vestige even of
+fondness or sentiment clung to this memorial of anticipated joy. But why
+was it hidden so carefully in her mother's desk, and why was it crumpled
+by frequent reading? And how could it have arrived there in the
+beginning? It was written in February after Jenny had left home. She
+must have dropped it on one of her visits, and her mother finding it
+must have thought there was something behind those few gay words. Jenny
+tried to remember if she had roused the suspicion of an intrigue by
+staying for a week-end with some girl friend. But, of course, she was
+away all the time, and often her mother must have thought she was
+staying with Maurice. All her scruples, all her care had gone for
+nothing. She had wrecked her love to no purpose, for her mother must
+have been weighed down by the imagination of her daughter's frailty. She
+must have brooded over it, fed her heart with the bitterness of
+disappointment and, ever since that final protest which made Jenny leave
+home, in gnawing silence. Jenny flung the letter into the fire and sat
+down to contemplate the dreadful fact that she had driven her mother
+slowly mad. These doctors with their abscess were all wrong. It was
+despair of her daughter's behavior which had caused it all. She went
+into the kitchen and watched the servant wrestle inadequately with her
+work, then wandered back to the parlor and slammed the lid of the trunk
+down to shut out the reproach of her mother's possessions. It was
+growing late. Soon she must get ready to start for the theater. What a
+failure she was! The front door bell rang and Jenny, glad of relief from
+her thoughts, went to open it. Trewhella, wringing wet, stepped into the
+passage.
+
+"Why, Miss Raeburn," he said, "here's a grand surprise."
+
+"Have you had your tea?" the hostess inquired.
+
+"Ess, had tea an hour ago or more. Dirty weather, 'tis, sure enough."
+
+He had followed her into the parlor as he spoke, and in the gray gloom
+he seemed to her gigantic and like rock immovable.
+
+"Finished your business?" she asked, oppressed by the silence which
+succeeded his entrance.
+
+"Ess, this right of way is settled for good or bad, according to which
+one's happy. And now I've got nothing to do but wait for your answer."
+
+The lamplighter's click and dying footfall left the room in a ghostly
+radiance, and the pallid illumination streaming through the lace
+curtains threw their reflection on the walls and table in a filigree of
+shadows.
+
+"I'll light the gas," said Jenny.
+
+"No, don't; but hark to what I do say. I'm regular burnt up for love of
+'ee. My heart is like lead so heavy for the long waiting. Why won't 'ee
+marry me, my lovely? 'Tis a proper madness of love and no mistake. Maid
+Jenny, what's your answer?"
+
+"All right. I will marry you," she said coldly. "And now let me turn on
+the gas."
+
+She struck a match, and in the wavering glow she saw his form loom over
+her.
+
+"No," she half screamed; "don't kiss me. Not yet. Not yet. People can
+see through the window."
+
+"Leave 'em stare so hard as they've a mind to. What do it matter to we?"
+
+"No, don't be silly. I don't want to start kissing. Besides, I must run.
+I'm late for the theater."
+
+"Darn the theater. You don't want to go there no more."
+
+"I must give a fortnight's notice."
+
+Mr. Z. Trewhella, a little more than fox, perceived it would not take
+much to make her repudiate her promise and wisely did not press the
+point.
+
+"Will I putt 'ee down along a little bit of the road?" he asked.
+
+"No, no. I'm in a hurry. Not to-night."
+
+Presently, in the amber fog that on wet nights suffuses the inside of a
+tram, Jenny rode down towards the Tube station, picturing to herself her
+little sister in a garden of flowers.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXV: _The Marriage of Columbine_
+
+
+Trewhella spent in Cornwall the fortnight during which Jenny insisted on
+dancing out her contract with the Orient. The withdrawal, ostensibly to
+prepare his mother for the wife's arrival, was a wise move on his part,
+for Jenny was left merely with the contemplation of marriage as an
+abstract condition of existence undismayed by the presence of a future
+husband whom she did not regard with any affection. She did not announce
+her decision to the girls in the theater until the night before her
+departure. At once ensued a chorus of surprise, encouragement,
+speculation and good wishes.
+
+"If I don't like Cornwall," Jenny declared, "I shall jolly soon come
+back to dear old London. Don't you worry yourselves."
+
+"Write to us, Jenny," the girls begged.
+
+"Rather."
+
+"And mind you come and see us first time you get to London."
+
+"Of course I shall," she promised and, perhaps to avoid tears, ran
+quickly down the court, with her box of grease paints underneath her
+arm.
+
+"Good luck," cried all the girls, waving farewell in silhouette against
+the dull orange opening of the stage door.
+
+"See you soon," she called back over her shoulder. "Good-bye, all."
+
+Another chorus of good-byes traveled in pursuit along the darkness as,
+leaving behind her a legend of mirth, an echo of laughter, she vanished
+round the corner.
+
+Jenny and Trewhella were married next morning in a shadowy old church
+from whose gloom the priest emerged like a spectre. She was seized with
+a desire to laugh when she found herself kneeling beside Trewhella. She
+fell to wondering how May was looking behind her, and wished, when the
+moment came for her father to give her away, that he would not clip his
+tongue between his teeth, as if he were engaged on a delicate piece of
+joinery. Mr. Corin, too, kept up a continuous grunting and, when through
+the pervading silence of the dark edifice any noise echoed, she dreaded
+the rustle of Aunt Mabel's uninvited approach. It did not take so long
+to be married as to be buried, and the ceremony was concluded sooner
+than she expected. In the registry she blushed over the inscription of
+her name, and let fall a large blot like a halo above her spinsterhood.
+Luckily there was no time for jests and banqueting as, in order to
+arrive in Cornwall that night, it was necessary to catch the midday
+train from Paddington. Jenny looked very small beneath the station's
+great arch of dingy glass, and was impressed by the slow solemnity of
+Paddington, so different from the hysteria of Waterloo and frosty fog of
+Euston. Trewhella, leaning on his blackthorn, talked to their father and
+Mr. Corin, while the two girls ensconced themselves in the compartment.
+
+"Take your seats," an official cried, and when Trewhella had got in, Mr.
+Raeburn occupied the window with his last words.
+
+"Well, I sha'n't go down to the shop to-day, not now. Let's have a line
+to say you've arrived all safe. You know my address after I clear out of
+Hagworth Street."
+
+"So long, dad," said Jenny awkwardly. Neither she nor May had ever
+within memory kissed their father, but on this last opportunity for
+demonstrative piety they compromised with sentiment so far as each to
+blow him a kiss when the train began to move, and in token of goodwill
+to let for a little while a handkerchief flutter from the window.
+
+There was no one else in the carriage besides themselves, and in the
+stronger light that suddenly succeeds a train's freedom from stationary
+dimness, Jenny thought how lonely they must look. To be sure, May's
+company was a slight solace, but that could neither ease the constraint
+of her attitude towards Trewhella nor remove the sense of imprisonment
+created by his proximity. It was a new experience for her to be
+compelled to meet a man at a disadvantage, although as yet the nearness
+of freedom prevented the complete realization of oppression. Trewhella
+himself seemed content to sit watching her, proud in the consciousness
+of a legalized property.
+
+So the green miles rolled by until the naked downs of Wiltshire first
+hinted of a strange country, and in a view of them through the window
+Trewhella seemed to gather from their rounded solitudes strength,
+tasting already, as it were, the tang of the Cornish air.
+
+"Well, my lovely, what do 'ee think of it all?"
+
+"It's nice, I like it," replied Jenny.
+
+Conversation faltered in the impossibility of discussing anything with
+Trewhella, or even in his presence. Jenny turned her mind to the moment
+of first addressing him as Zachary or Zack. She could not bring herself
+to mouth this absurd name without an inward blush. She began to worry
+over this problem of outward behavior, while the unusual initial twisted
+itself into an arabesque at once laughable and alarming. And she was
+Mrs. Z. Trewhella. Jenny began to scrabble on the pane filmed with smoke
+the fantastic initial. As for Jenny Trewhella, madness would have to
+help the signature of such an inapposite conjunction. Then, in a
+pretense of reading, she began to study her husband's countenance, and
+with the progress of contemplation to persuade herself of his unreality.
+Sometimes he would make a movement or hazard a remark, and she, waking
+with a start to his existence, would ponder distastefully the rusted
+neck, the hands like lizard skin, and the lack luster nails frayed by
+agriculture.
+
+The train was rocking through the flooded meads of Somerset in a
+desolation of silver, and the length of the journey was already heavy
+on Jenny's mind. She had not traveled so far since she was swept on to
+the freedom of Glasgow and Dublin. Now, with every mile nearer to the
+west, her bondage became more imminent. Trewhella loomed large in the
+narrow compartment as Teignmouth was left behind. They seemed to be
+traveling even beyond the sea itself, and Jenny was frightened when she
+saw it lapping the permanent way as they plunged in and out of the
+hot-colored Devonshire cliffs. Exeter with its many small gardens and
+populated back windows cheered her, and Plymouth, gray though it was,
+held a thought of London. Soon, however, they swung round the curve of
+the Albert Bridge over the Tamar and out of Devon. Sadly she watched the
+Hamoaze vanish.
+
+"Cornwall at last," said Trewhella, with a sigh of satisfaction. "'Tis a
+handsome place, Plymouth, but I do dearly love to leave it behind me."
+
+The heavy November twilight caught them as the train roared through the
+Bobmin valley past hillsides stained with dead bracken--like iron mold,
+Jenny thought. St. Austell shone white in the aquamarine dusk, and
+darkness wrapped the dreary country beyond Truro. Every station now
+seemed crowded with figures, whose unfamiliar speech had a melancholy
+effect upon the girls in inverse ratio to the exhilaration it produced
+in Trewhella. Jenny thought how little she knew of her destination: in
+fact without May's company she might as well be dead--into such an abyss
+of strange gloom was she being more deeply plunged with every mile.
+Trewhella, as if in reply to her thoughts, began to talk of Trewinnard.
+
+"Next station's ours," he said. "And then there's a seven-mile drive; so
+we sha'n't get home along much before half-past eight."
+
+"Fancy, seven miles," said Jenny.
+
+"Long seven mile, 'tis, too," he added. "And a nasty old road on a dark
+night. Come, we'll set out our passels."
+
+It was like action in a dream to reach down from the rack various
+parcels and boxes, to fold up cloaks and collect umbrellas. Jenny
+watched from the window for the twinkle of town lights heralding their
+stopping-place, but without any preliminary illumination the train
+pulled up at Nantivet Road.
+
+"Here we are," shouted Trewhella, and as the girls stood with frightened
+eyes in the dull and tremulous light of the platform, he seemed fresh
+from a triumphant abduction. The luggage lay stacked in a gray pile with
+ghostly uncertain outlines. The train, wearing no longer any familiar
+look of London, puffed slowly on to some farther exile, its sombre bulk
+checkered with golden squares, the engine flying a pennant of sparks as
+it swung round into a cutting whence the sound of its emerging died away
+on the darkness in a hollow moan. The stillness of the deep November
+night was now profound, merely broken by the rasp of a trunk across the
+platform and the punctuated stamping of a horse's hoof on the wet road.
+
+"That's Carver," said Trewhella, as the three of them, their tickets
+delivered to a shadowy figure, walked in the direction of the sound.
+
+"Carver?" repeated Jenny.
+
+"My old mare."
+
+The lamps of the farm cart dazzled the vision as they stood watching the
+luggage piled up behind. To the girls the cart seemed enormous; the mare
+of mammoth size. The small boy who had driven to meet them looked like a
+gnome perched upon the towering vehicle, and by his smallness confirmed
+the impression of hugeness.
+
+"Well, boy Thomas," said his master in greeting.
+
+"Mr. Trewhella!"
+
+"Here's missus come down."
+
+"Mrs. Trewhella!" said the boy in shy welcome.
+
+"And her sister, Miss Raeburn," added the farmer.
+
+Jenny looked wistfully at May as if she envied her the introduction with
+its commemoration of Islington.
+
+"Now, come," said Zachary, "leave me give 'ee a hand up."
+
+He lifted May and set her down on the seat. Then he turned to his wife.
+
+"Come, my dear, leave me put 'ee up."
+
+"I'd rather get in by myself," she answered.
+
+But Trewhella caught her in his arms and, with a kiss, deposited her
+beside May. Thomas was stowed away among the luggage at the back; the
+farmer himself got in, shook up Carver, and with a good night to the
+porter set out with his bride to Bochyn.
+
+The darkness was immense: the loneliness supreme. At first the road lay
+through an open stretch of flat boggy grassland, where stagnant pools of
+water glimmered with the light of the cart lamps as the vehicle shambled
+by. After a mile or so they dipped down between high hedges and
+overarching trees that gave more response to their lights than the open
+country, whose incommensurable blackness swallowed up their jigging,
+feeble illumination.
+
+"It smells like the inside of a flower-shop, doesn't it?" said May. "You
+know, sort of bathroom smell. It must be glorious in the daytime."
+
+"Yes, 'tis grand in summer time, sure enough," Trewhella agreed.
+
+The declivity became more precipitous, and the farmer pulled up.
+
+"Get down, you, boy Thomas, and lead Carver."
+
+Thomas scrambled out, and with a loud "whoa" caught hold of the reins.
+
+"It's like the first scene of a panto. You know, demons and all," said
+Jenny.
+
+Indeed, Thomas, with his orange-like head and disproportionately small
+body, leading the great mare, whose breath hung in fumes upon the murky
+air, had a scarcely human look. At the walking pace May was able to
+distinguish ferns in the grass banks and pointed them out to Jenny, who,
+however, was feeling anxious as in the steep descent the horse from time
+to time slipped on a loose stone. Down they went, down and down through
+the moisture and lush fernery. Presently they came to level ground and
+the gurgle of running water. Trewhella pulled up for Thomas to clamber
+in again. Beyond the rays of their lamps, appeared the outline of a
+house.
+
+"Is this a place?" Jenny asked.
+
+"'Tis Tiddlywits," Trewhella answered. "Or belonged to be rather, for
+there's nothing left of it now but a few mud walls. A wisht old place,
+'tis."
+
+On restarting, they splashed through a stream that flowed across the
+road.
+
+"Oo-er," cried Jenny, "take care, we're in the water."
+
+Trewhella laughed loudly, and a moorhen waking in sudden panic rose with
+a shrill cry from a belt of rushes.
+
+"Oo-er, I'm getting frightened," said Jenny. "Put me down. Oh, May, I
+wish we hadn't come."
+
+Trewhella laughed louder than before. The wish appealed in its futility
+to his humor.
+
+Now came a slow pull up an equally deep lane, followed at the summit by
+another stretch of open country very wild. Suddenly the mare swerved
+violently. Jenny screamed. A long shape leaned over them in menace.
+
+"Ah, look! Oh, no! I want to go back," she cried.
+
+"Steady, you devil," growled Trewhella to the horse. "'Tis nothing, my
+dear, nothing only an old stone cross."
+
+"It gave me a shocking turn," said Jenny.
+
+"It made _me_ feel rather funny," said May. "You know, all over like."
+
+The girls shivered, and the cart jogged on across the waste. They passed
+a skewbald sign-post crowded with unfamiliar goblin names, and a dry
+tree from which once depended, Trewhella assured them, the bodies of
+three notorious smugglers. One of the carriage candles proved too short
+to sustain the double journey and presently flickered out gradually, so
+that the darkness on one side seemed actually to advance upon them.
+After a long interval of silence Trewhella pulled up with a jerk.
+
+"Listen," he commanded.
+
+"Oh, what is it?" asked Jenny, with visions of a murderer's approach. On
+a remote road sounded the trot of horses' hoofs miles away.
+
+"Somebody coming after us," she gasped, clutching May's sleeve.
+
+"No, that's a cart; but listen, can't you hear the sea?"
+
+Ahead of them in the thick night like the singing of a kettle sounded
+the interminable ocean.
+
+"Wind's getting up, I believe," said Trewhella. "There's an ugly smell
+in the air. Dirty weather, I suppose, dirty weather," he half chanted to
+himself, whipping up the mare.
+
+Soon, indeed, with a wide sigh that filled the waste of darkness, the
+wind began to blow, setting all the withered rushes and stunted gorse
+bushes hissing and lisping. The effort, however, was momentary; and
+presently the gust died away in a calm almost profounder than before.
+After another two miles of puddles and darkness, the heavy air was
+tempered with an unwonted freshness. The farmer again pulled up.
+
+"Now you can hark to it clear enough," he said.
+
+Down below boomed a slow monotone of breakers on a long flat beach.
+
+"That's Trewinnard Sands, and when the sea do call there so plain, it
+means dirty weather, sure enough. And here's Trewinnard Churchtown, and
+down along a bit of the way is Bochyn."
+
+A splash of light from a dozen cottages showed a squat church surrounded
+by clumps of shorn pine trees. The road did not improve as they drew
+clear of the village, and it was a relief after the jolting in and out
+of ruts to turn aside through a white gate, and even to crunch along
+over a quarter of a mile of rough stones through two more gates until
+they reached the softness of farmyard mud. As they pulled up for the
+last time, between trimmed hedges of escallonia a low garden gate was
+visible; and against the golden stream suffused by a slanting door, the
+black silhouette of a woman's figure, with hand held up to shade her
+eyes.
+
+"Here we are, mother," Trewhella called out. Then he lifted down the two
+girls, and together they walked up a flagged path towards the light.
+Jenny blinked in the dazzle of the room's interior. Old Mrs. Trewhella
+stared critically at the sisters.
+
+"Yon's a wisht-looking maid," she said sharply to her son, with a glance
+at May.
+
+"Oh, they're both tired," he answered gruffly.
+
+"And what do 'ee think of Cornwall, my dear?" asked the old woman,
+turning to the bride.
+
+"I think it's very dark," said Jenny.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVI: _The Tragic Loading_
+
+
+The bridal feast was strewn about the table; the teapot was steaming;
+the cream melted to ivory richness, and, among many more familiar
+eatables, the saffron cake looked gaudy and exotic. After the first
+bashful make-weights of conversation, Jenny and May put their cloaks
+down, took off wraps, and made the travelers' quick preparation for a
+meal which has expected their arrival for some time. Then down they all
+sat, and with the distraction of common hunger the painful air of
+embarrassment was temporarily driven off. Old Mrs. Trewhella was
+inclined with much assertion of humility to yield to Jenny her position
+at the head of the table; but she, overawed by the prodigal display of
+new dishes, of saffron cake and pasties and bowls of cream, prevailed
+upon the older woman to withhold her resignation.
+
+The living-room of Bochyn was long, low, and raftered, extending
+apparently to the whole length of the farmhouse, except where a parlor
+on the left of the front door usurped a corner. Very conspicuous was the
+hearth, with its large double range extravagantly embossed with brass
+ornaments and handles. On closer inspection the ironwork itself was
+hammered out into a florid landscape of pagodas, mandarins and dragons.
+Jenny could not take her eyes off this ostentatious piece of utility.
+
+"Handsome slab, isn't it?" said Trewhella proudly.
+
+"Slab?"
+
+"Stove--we do call them slabs in Cornwall."
+
+"It's nice. Only what a dreadful thing to clean, I should say."
+
+"Maid Emily does that," explained Mrs. Trewhella.
+
+Jenny turned her glances to the rest of the room. By the side of the
+slab hung a copper warming-pan holding in ruddy miniature the room's
+reflection. Here were also brass ladles and straining spoons and a pair
+of bellows, whose perfectly circular box was painted with love-knots and
+quivers. On the high mantlepiece stood several large and astonished
+china dogs with groups of roughly cast, crudely tinted pottery including
+Lord Nelson and Elijah, all set in a thicket of brass candle-sticks.
+Indeed, brass was the predominant note in the general decoration. The
+walls were shining with tobacco boxes, snuffers, sconces and trays. Very
+little space on the low walls could be found for pictures; but one or
+two chromolithographs, including "Cherry Ripe" and "Bubbles," had
+succeeded in establishing a right to be hung. All down the middle of the
+room ran a long oak trestle-table, set with Chippendale chairs at the
+end which Jenny and the family occupied, but where the rest of the
+household sat, with benches. The five windows were veiled in curtains of
+some dim red stuff, and between the two on the farther side from the
+front door stood an exceptionally tall grandfather's clock, above whose
+face, in a marine upheaval that involved the sun, moon and stars, united
+rising, a ship rocked violently with every swing of the pendulum. A door
+at the back opened to an echoing vault of laundries, sculleries, larders
+and pantries, while in the corner beyond the outhouse door was a dark
+and boxed staircase very straight and steep, a cavernous staircase
+gaping to unknown corridors and rooms far away.
+
+Old Mrs. Trewhella suited somehow that sinister gangway, for, being so
+lame as to depend on a crutch, the measured thump of her progress was
+carried down the gloom with an eternal sameness of sound that produced
+in the listener a sensation of uneasiness. She had a hen-like face, the
+brightness of whose eyes was continually shuttered by rapid blinks. Her
+hair, very thin but scarcely gray, was smoothed down so close as to give
+her head the appearance of a Dutch doll's. She had a slight mustache
+and several tufted moles. There was much of the witch about her and more
+of the old maid than the mother.
+
+When the new arrivals had been seated at the table for some minutes, the
+rest of the household trooped in through the outhouse door. Thomas
+Hosken led the procession. His face under the glaze of soap looked more
+like an orange than ever, and he had in his walk the indeterminate roll
+of that fruit. Emily Day came next, a dark slip of a maid with
+long-lashed stag's eyes, too large for the rest of her. She was followed
+by Dicky Rosewarne, a full-blooded, handsome, awkward boy of about
+twenty-three, loose-jointed like a yearling colt and bringing in with
+him a smell of deep-turned earth, of bonfires and autumn leaves. Bessie
+Trevorrow, the dairymaid, ripe as a pippin, came in, turning down the
+sleeves of a bird's-eye print dress over forearms that made Jenny gasp.
+She could not reconcile the inconsistencies of feature in Bessie, could
+not match the burning almond eyes with the coarse lips, nor see how such
+weather-stained cheeks could belong to so white a neck. Last of all came
+Old Man Veal, whose duties and status no one rightly knew. The household
+individually slid into their separate places along the benches with
+sidelong shy greetings to Jenny and May, who for their part would have
+sat down with more ease to supper with a flock of sheep. One chair still
+remained empty.
+
+"Where's Granfa Champion?" asked Trewhella.
+
+"Oh, my dear life, that old man is always last," grumbled Mrs.
+Trewhella. "What a thing 'tis to have ancient old relations as do never
+know to come in to a meal. Go find him, boy Thomas," she added with a
+sigh.
+
+Thomas was much embarrassed by this order, and a subdued titter ran
+round the lower part of the table as Thomas made one of his fruit-like
+exits to find Granfa Champion.
+
+"He's my uncle," explained Mrs. Trewhella to Jenny. "A decent old man as
+anyone could wish to meet, but most terrible unknowing of the time. I
+believe he's so old that time do mean nothing to him. I believe he's
+grown to despise it."
+
+"Is he very old?" asked Jenny, for want of anything better to say.
+
+"Well, nobody do know how old he is. There's a difference of twenty
+years in the opinions you'll hear put about. Poor old soul, he do give
+very little trouble at all. For when the sun do shine, he's all the time
+walking up and down the garden, and when 'tis dropping, he do sit in his
+room so quiet as a great old lamb."
+
+Here Thomas came back with positive news.
+
+"Mr. Champion can't get his boot off and he's in some frizz about it."
+
+"How can't he get his boot off? How didn't 'ee help him?"
+
+"So I did," said Thomas. "But he wouldn't hear nothing of what I do know
+about boots, and kept on all the time telling what a fool I was. I done
+my best with 'en."
+
+At this moment Granfa Champion himself appeared, his countenance flushed
+with conquest, his eyes shining in a limpid blue, his snow-white hair
+like spindrift round his face.
+
+"Come in, you Granfa," his nephew invited.
+
+"Is the maids come?" he asked.
+
+"Ess, ess, here they are sitting down waiting for 'ee."
+
+Mr. Champion advanced with a fine stateliness and nobility of welcome.
+Indeed, shy as she was, his entrance tempted Jenny to rise from her
+chair.
+
+"Come, leave me look at 'ee," said Granfa, placing his hands on her
+shoulders.
+
+"Keep quiet, uncle," said Mrs. Trewhella. "You'll make her fire up."
+
+"Ah, nonsense," contradicted the old man. "That's nothing. I do dearly
+love to see maids' cheeks in a blush. Wish you well, my lovely," he
+added, clasping Jenny's hands. "I'm terrible hurried I wasn't here to
+give 'ee a welcome by the door."
+
+Jenny liked this old man, who for the exile from a distant country by
+his age and dignity and sweetness conjured a few tears of home. The
+supper, a late meal for such a household, went its course at a fair
+speed; for they were all anxious to be off to bed with the prospect of
+work in the windy November dawn. Very soon they all vanished through the
+out-house door, and Granfa, with lighted candle, a hot brick wrapped in
+flannel under his arm, twinkled slowly up to bed through the hollow
+staircase. The rest of them were left alone in a silence. It was ten
+o'clock, and the fire was already paling behind the fluted bars of the
+slab.
+
+"Well, I suppose you're thinking of bed?" suggested Mrs. Trewhella.
+
+May looked anxiously at her sister.
+
+"Yes, I suppose we are," Jenny agreed.
+
+Zachary began to whistle a Sankey hymn tune.
+
+"You'll be wishing to unpack your things first," continued Mrs.
+Trewhella.
+
+"Yes, I ought to unpack," Jenny said in a frozen voice.
+
+"I've put May in the bedroom next to you. Come, I'll show 'ee."
+
+Zachary still sat whistling his hymn tune. A bird shielded from view by
+the window-curtain stirred in his cage. Mrs. Trewhella lighted three
+candles. Cloaks were picked up and flung over arms, and in single file
+the three figures, each with her winking guide, vanished up the
+staircase.
+
+"What a long passage," whispered Jenny when they stood in a bunch at the
+top.
+
+Mrs. Trewhella led the way to the bride's chamber.
+
+"You're here, where the wives of the Trewhellas have slept some long
+time."
+
+After the low room downstairs the bedroom seemed enormous. The ceiling
+in Gothic irregularities of outline slanted up and up to cobwebs and
+shadows. It was a great barn of a room. A tall four-post bed, hung with
+faded tapestries of Love and War, was set off by oak chests-of-drawers
+and Court cupboards. The floor was uneven, strangely out of keeping with
+the rose-infested Brussels carpet so vividly new. Most of the windows,
+latticed and small, were set flush with the floor; but high up in a
+dormer was a large window with diamonded panes, uncurtained, black and
+ominous. A couple of tall cheval-glasses added to the mystery of the
+room with their reduplication of shadowy corners.
+
+"And May's in here," Mrs. Trewhella informed them, leading the way. "The
+loft begins again after your bedroom, so the ceiling isn't so tall."
+
+Certainly, May's room was ordinary enough, even dainty, with the dimity
+curtains and wall-paper of bows and forget-me-nots. Round the
+toilet-table crackled a pink chintz valance, draped in stiffest muslin.
+
+Mrs. Trewhella looked closely at Jenny for a moment before she left
+them.
+
+"You're thin, my dear," she commented. "Ah, well, so was I; and I can
+mind the time when they wondered what a man could see in such a maid.
+The men was all for plumpness then. Wish you good night."
+
+The old woman thumped off down the corridor, her candle a-bob with every
+limping step.
+
+"What a dreadful place," said Jenny.
+
+"Don't let's stay," said May eagerly. "Don't let's stay. Let's go
+back--now--now."
+
+"_Don't_ be silly. How can we? But we never oughtn't to have come. Oh,
+May, I only wish I could sleep in here with you."
+
+"Well, why don't you?" suggested May, who was shocked to see how the
+usually so indomitable sister was shaking with apprehension. "There's
+plenty of room and I'd chance what _he_ says."
+
+Jenny pulled herself together by a visible effort.
+
+"No, I can't go on sleeping with you. I've _got_ to be married, now I've
+done it."
+
+The two sisters, as if drawn by some horrid enchantment, went back to
+the bride's room.
+
+"How big that candle looks, doesn't it, but small in one way. May, I'm
+frightened," whispered the bride.
+
+There was a rattle of falling plaster, a squeak, a dying scamper.
+
+"Oo-er, what was that?" cried May.
+
+"Rats, I suppose. Oh, this is a shocking place," said Jenny, trembling.
+"Never mind, it's got to be done. It's got to be finished some day.
+It'll be all the same in a hundred years, and anyway, perhaps it won't
+be so bad in the morning. May!" she added sharply.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why, when you come to think of it, the second ballet's well on now and
+here am I starting off to undress in this dog's island. Let's go back to
+your room for a minute."
+
+Again the sisters sought May's kindlier room and Jenny had an idea.
+
+"May, if we pushed your bed back close to the wall, you could tap
+sometimes, and if I was awake in the night I'd hear you. May, don't go
+to sleep. Promise you won't go to sleep."
+
+They pushed the bedstead back against the ribbons and forget-me-nots.
+Then Jenny, summoning every tradition of pride, every throb of
+determination, kissed May and ran to the lonely Gothic room, where the
+flame of the solitary candle burned so still and shapely in the
+breathless night. She undressed herself in a frenzy. It was like falling
+into a river to enter those cold linen sheets and, worse, to lie there
+with pulses thudding and breast heaving under a bravery of new pink bows
+and ribbons. It could not be long now. She sat up in bed thinking to tap
+on the wall; but the tapestried headpiece muffled the sound. May,
+however, heard and rapped her answer.
+
+"To-morrow," vowed Jenny, "I'll slit those unnatural curtains with my
+scissors so as I can tap easily."
+
+Then down the passage she heard her husband's tread. He was still
+whistling that tune, more softly, indeed, but with a continuous
+reiteration that was maddening. Round the door his shadow slipped
+before him. Jenny hid beneath the bed-clothes, breathing faster than a
+trapped bird. She heard his movements slow and dull and heavy,
+accompanied by the whistling, the endless damnable whistling. Then the
+lights went out and, as if he walked on black velvet, Trewhella stole
+nearer to the bed.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVII: _Columbine in the Dark_
+
+
+Jenny lay awake in a darkness so intense, so thick, so material that her
+effort to repulse it produced an illusion of a suffocating fabric
+desperately torn. What ivory cheeks were hidden by the monstrous gloom,
+what sparkling eyes were quenched in the dry mouth of night!
+
+"Oh, morning, morning," she moaned. "Come quickly, oh, do come quick."
+
+Far away in the blackness a cock crowed. She from London did not
+understand his consolation. Trewhella, sleeping soundly as he was wont
+to sleep on market nights, did not stir to the appeal. Jenny lay
+sobbing.
+
+"What's it all for?" she asked. Then sleep, tired of love's cruelty,
+sent rosy dreams to comfort her, and in the morning, when she woke, her
+husband was gone from her side. It was a morning of moist winds and rich
+November sunlight, of pattering leaves and topaz lights, full of
+sea-gulls' wings and the cawing of rooks.
+
+A little sister stood by the end of the bed.
+
+"Oh, get in beside me," Jenny cried.
+
+And whatever else was mad and bad, there would always be that little
+sister.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVIII: _The Alien Corn_
+
+
+Bochyn was built to escape as easily as possible the many storms of the
+desolate country that surrounded it. The windows in the front of the
+house looked out between two groves of straight Cornish elms over a
+moist valley to a range of low hills, whose checkered green and brown
+surface in the perpetual changes of light and atmosphere took on the
+variety and translucence of water or precious stones; and not merely
+their peripheral tints, but even their very contours seemed during the
+courses of the sun and moon hourly to shift. Behind the house was the
+town-place, a squelchy courtyard hemmed in by stables and full of casual
+domestic animals. From here a muddy lane led up to the fields on the
+slopes above, slopes considerably more lofty than those visible from the
+front windows and ending in a bleak plateau of heather and gorse that
+formed the immediate approach to the high black cliffs of many miles of
+coast. The house itself was a long two-storied building, flanked by low
+gray stone hedges feathered with tamarisks and fuchsias. The garden,
+owing principally to the care of Granfa Champion, had an unusual number
+of flowers. Even now in November the dahlias were not over, and against
+the walls of the house pink, ivy-leaved geraniums and China roses were
+in full bloom. The garden itself ended indeterminately, with no
+perceptible line of severance, in the moors or watery meads always
+vividly colored, and in summer creaming with meadow-sweet. At the bottom
+of the garden was a rustic gazebo, from which it was possible to follow
+the course of the stream up the valley between cultivated slopes that
+gave way to stretches of gorse and bracken, until the valley swept round
+out of sight in thick coverts of dwarfed oaks. Westward in the other
+direction the stream, flowing straighter and straighter as it neared the
+sea, lost itself in a brown waste of sand, while the range whose
+undulations it had followed sank abruptly to a marsh. This flatness made
+the contrary slope, which jutted forward so as to hide the actual
+breaking of the waves, appear portentously high. Indeed, the cliffs on
+that side soon reached three hundred feet and on account of their sudden
+elevation looked much higher. The stream spread out in wide shallows to
+its outlet, trickling somewhat ineffectively in watery furrows through
+the sand.
+
+On the farther side of the brown waste, where not even rushes would
+grow, so complete and perpetual was the devastation of the gales, a line
+of towans followed the curve of the coast, a desolate tract, gray-green
+from the rushes planted to bind the shifting surface, and preserving in
+its endless peaks and ridges the last fantastic glissades and diversely
+elevated cones into which the wind had carved and gathered and swept the
+sand. Mostly, these towans presented to the beach a low line of serrated
+cliffs perhaps forty feet high; but from time to time they would break
+away to gullies full of fine drifted sand, whose small cavities hoarded
+snail-shells wind-dried to an ethereal lightness, and rabbit-bones
+bleached and honeycombed by weather. After a storm the gullies gave an
+impression of virgin territory, because the sand lay in drifts like
+newly fallen snow on which footprints were desecration. The beach itself
+was at low water a very wide and flat and completely desolate expanse,
+shining near the sea's edge with whatever gold or silver was in the air,
+shot with crimson bars at sunset, crinkled by the wind to a vast replica
+of one of its own shells, ribbed and ploughed by tempests. The daily
+advance or retreat of extreme high water was marked by devious lines of
+purple muvices, by claws of seaweed and the stain of dry spume. Beyond
+the limit of the spring tides the sand swept up in drifts against the
+low cliffs that crumbled like biscuit before an attempted ascent.
+
+This sea solitude reduced all living things to a strange equality of
+importance. Twittering sea-swallows whose feet printed the sand with
+desultory and fugitive intagliation, sea-parrots flying in profile
+against the sky up and down over the water, porpoises rolling out in the
+bay, sand-hoppers dancing to any disturbance, human beings--all became
+equally minute and immaterial. Inland the towans tumbled in endless
+irregularities of outline about a solitude equally complete. The
+vegetation scarcely marked the changing seasons, save where in winter
+the moss was a livelier golden-green, or where, beside spurges and
+sea-holly and yellow horned poppies, stone-crops were reddened by August
+suns. At wide intervals, where soil had formed over the sand, there was
+a close fine grass starred in spring with infinitesmal squills and
+forget-me-nots. But mostly the glaucous rushes, neither definitely blue
+nor green nor gray, occupied the landscape. Close at hand they were
+vitreous in color and texture, but at a distance and in the mass they
+seemed to have the velvety bloom of a green almond or grape. Life of a
+kind was always present in the scud of rabbits, in the song of larks and
+click of stonechats, in the dipping steel-blue flight of the wheatear
+and ruffled chestnut feathers of the whinchat. Yet as the explorer
+stumbled in and out of the burrows, forcing a prickly advance through
+the sharp rushes and often plunging ankle deep in drifts of sand, life
+was more apparent in the towans themselves than in the presence of the
+birds and beasts haunting their solitude. The sand was veritably alive
+in its power to extract from the atmosphere every color and quality.
+Sometimes it was golden, sometimes almost snow-white. Near sunset mauve
+and rose and salmon-pink trembled in waves upon its surface, and as it
+caught fire to welcome day, so it was eager to absorb night. Moonlight
+there was dazzling when, in a cold world, it was possible to count the
+snail-shells like pearls and watch the sand trickle from rabbit-skulls
+like powdered silver.
+
+Perhaps Jenny had never looked so well placed as when, with May beside
+her in a drift of sand, she rested against the flat fawns and creams and
+distant blues and grays of the background. Years ago when she danced
+beneath the plane tree, her scarlet dress by long use had taken on the
+soft texture of a pastel. Now she herself was a pastel, indescribably
+appropriate to the setting, with her rose-leaf cheeks buried in the high
+collar of a lavender-colored frieze coat, with her yellow curls and deep
+blue eyes, deeper with the loss of their merriment. Her hands, too, were
+very white in the clear sea air. May sitting beside her looked dark as a
+pine tree against an April larch. If Jenny was coral, May was ivory.
+Here they sat while the sea wind lisped over the sand. Jenny marked the
+beauty of the country the more carefully because she disliked so
+intensely the country people. Every day the sisters went for long walks,
+and when May was tired she would sit on the beach, while Jenny wandered
+on by the waves' edge.
+
+November went by with silver skies and silver sunsets, with clouds of
+deepest indigo and pallid effulgences of sun streaming through traveling
+squalls. Days of swirling rain came in with December, when Jenny would
+have to sit in the long room, listening to the hiss of the wind-whipped
+elms, watching the geranium petals lie sodden all about the paths, and
+the gulls, blown inland, scattered on the hillsides like paper. The
+nights were terrible with their hollow moanings and flappings, with the
+whistle and pipe of the chimneys, with crashing of unclosed doors, with
+rattled lattices and scud and scream and shriek and hum and roar of the
+wild December storms. Every morning would break to huge shapes of rain
+swept up the valley, one after another until the gales of dawn died away
+to a steady drench of water. Then Jenny would sit in the hot room, where
+the slab glowed quietly into the mustiness, and idly turn the
+damp-stained pages of year-old periodicals, of mildewed calendars, even
+of hymn-books. At last she would sally forth desperately, and after a
+long battle with wind or gurgling walk through mud and wet, she would
+return to a smell of pasties and saffron cake and sometimes the cleaner
+pungency of marinated pilchards.
+
+Some time before Christmas the gales dropped; the wind veered releasing
+the sun, and for a fortnight there was fleckless winter weather. These
+were glorious mornings to wander down through the west garden past the
+escallonias aromatic in the sunlight, past the mauve and blue and purple
+veronicas, out over the watery meadows and up the hill-sides, where the
+gorse was almond-scented about midday in the best of the sun. Here for a
+week she and May roamed delightfully, until they found themselves in a
+field of bullocks and, greatly terrified, went back to the seashore.
+"Handsome weather," old Mrs. Trewhella would say, watching them set out
+for their long walks, and, after blinking once or twice at the sun,
+thumping back to the kitchen, back to household superintendence and the
+preparation of heavy meals for the farm workers. Jenny was not inclined
+to talk much with them. They lived a life so remote from hers that not
+even the bridge of common laughter could span the gulf. Dicky Rosewarne,
+for all his good looks, was detestably cruel with his gins and snares
+and cunning pursuit of goldfinches and, worse, his fish-hooks baited for
+wild duck. Yet he was kind enough to the great cart-horses, conversing
+with them all work-time in a guttural language they seemed perfectly to
+comprehend. Bessie Trevorrow, the dairymaid, was even less approachable
+than Dicky. She had the shyness of a wild thing, and would fly past
+Jenny, gazing in the opposite direction. Once or twice, under the
+pressure of proximity, they embarked upon a conversation; but Jenny
+found it difficult to talk well with a woman who answered her in
+ambiguous phrases of agreement or vague queries. Old Man Veal Jenny
+disliked since on one occasion she observed him bobbing up and down
+behind a hedge to watch her. Thomas was her favorite among the hands. He
+had grown used to bringing her curiosities newly found, and others
+chosen from a collection that extended back to his earliest youth. These
+he would present for her inspection, as a dog lays a stick at his
+mistress's feet. Jenny, although she was profoundly uninterested by the
+cannon-ball he had found wedged between two rocks, by the George III
+halfpenny turned up by the plough, by his strings of corks and bundles
+of torn nets, was nevertheless touched by his offer to strike a "lemon"
+for her under a jam-jar in the spring. Nor did she listen distastefully
+to the long sing-song tales with which he entertained May.
+
+The fine weather lasted right up to Christmas Day. Violets bloomed
+against the white stones that edged the garden paths. Wallflowers wore
+their brown velvet in sheltered corners and, best of all, bushes of
+Brompton stocks in a sweetness of pink and gray scented the rich Cornish
+winter. Jenny and May would wander up and down the garden with Granfa,
+while the old man would tell in his high chant tales as long as Thomas's
+of by-gone Australian adventures, tales ripened in the warmth of spent
+sunshine, and sometimes stories of his own youth in Trewinnard with
+memories of maids' eyes and lads' laughter. Then in January came storm
+on storm, dark storms that thundered up the valley, dragging night in
+their wake. Lambing went on out in the blackness, a dreadful experience,
+Jenny thought, when Zachary came in at all hours, sometimes stained with
+blood in the lantern light. Jenny was scarcely aware of her husband in
+the daytime. The volubility which had distinguished his conversation in
+London was not apparent here. Indeed, he scarcely spoke except in
+monosyllables, and spent all his time working grimly on the farm. He did
+not seem to notice Jenny, and never inquired into her manner of passing
+the day. She was his, safe and sound in Cornwall, a handsome property
+like a head of fine stock. He had desired her deeply and had gained his
+desire. Now, slim and rosy, she was still desirable; but, as Jenny
+herself half recognized, too securely fastened, too easily attainable
+for any misgiving. She certainly had no wish for a closer intimacy, and
+was very thankful for the apparent indifference which he felt towards
+her. She would have been horrified, had he suggested sharing her walks
+with May, had he wanted to escort them over Trewinnard Sands, or worst
+of all, had he invited her to sit beside him on his Sunday drives to
+preach at distant chapels. He did not even bother her to come and hear
+him preach in Trewinnard Free Church. Yet as the weeks went by, Jenny
+came to think that he regarded her more than she thought at first. He
+often seemed to know where she had been without being informed. When she
+complained about Old Man Veal's spying on her, Zachary laughed oddly,
+not much annoyed presumably by his servant's indiscretion. Jenny tried
+sometimes to imagine what Trewinnard would have been like without her
+sister. The fancy made her shudder. With May, however, it was like a
+rather long, pleasantly dull holiday.
+
+February brought fair days, scattered shining celandines like pieces of
+gold over the garden beds, set the stiff upright daffodil buds drooping
+and was all too soon driven out by the bleakest March that was ever
+known, a fierce, detestable month of withering east winds, of starved
+primroses, and dauntless thrushes singing to their nests in the shaken
+laurustinus. Jenny began to hate the country itself now, when all she
+could see of it was savage and forbidding as the people it bred.
+
+In the middle of this gray and blasted month, Jenny became aware that
+she was going to have a baby. This discovery moved her principally by a
+sudden revival of self-consciousness so acute that she could scarcely
+compel herself to break the news even to May. It seemed such an absurd
+fact when she looked across the table at Zachary somberly munching his
+pasty. She could hardly bear to sit at meals, dreading every whisper and
+muffled giggle from the lower end of the table. Although the baby would
+not arrive till September, and although she tried to persuade herself
+that it was impossible for anyone to discern her condition, her own
+knowledge of it dismayed her.
+
+"But it'll be nice to have a baby," said May.
+
+"What, in this unnatural house? I _don't_ think. Oh, May, whatever shall
+I do? Can't I go away to have it?"
+
+"Why don't you ask him?" suggested May.
+
+"Don't be silly, how can I tell _him_ anything about it?"
+
+"He's got to know some time," May pointed out.
+
+"Yes, but not yet. And then you can tell the old woman and she can tell
+him, and I'll hide myself up in the bedroom for a week. Fancy all the
+servants knowing. What a dreadful thing! Besides, it hurts."
+
+"Well, it's no use for you to worry about that part of it now," said
+May. "I call it silly."
+
+"I hope it'll be a boy," said Jenny. "I love boys. I think they're such
+rogues."
+
+"I'd rather it was a girl," said May.
+
+"Perhaps it don't matter which after all," Jenny decided. "A boy would
+be nicest, though, if you loved the man. Because you'd see him all over
+again. Perhaps I'd rather have a girl. I expect she'd be more like me.
+Poor kid!" she added to herself, meditating.
+
+During April the subject was put on one side by mutual consent. There
+was no immediate necessity for bother; but Jenny's self-consciousness
+made her unwilling to wander any more over the towans, for all that the
+weather was very blue and white, and the sheltered sand-drifts
+pleasantly warm in the spring sun. Jenny, however, felt that every
+rush-crowned ridge concealed an inquisitive head. She knew already how
+curious the country people were, and that Old Man Veal was no exception.
+Once she had walked through Trewinnard Churchtown near dusk, and had
+been horribly aware of bobbing faces behind every curtained window,
+faces that bobbed and peered and followed every movement and gesture of
+her person.
+
+Therefore May and Jenny determined to withdraw all opportunity from
+inquisitiveness by exploring the high cliffs behind Bochyn. They climbed
+up a steep road washed very bare by the sea wind, but pleasant enough
+with its turfed hedges fluttering with the cowslips that flourished in a
+narrow streak of limestone. At the top the road ran near the cliff's
+edge through gorse and heather and moorland scrub. They found a spot
+where the cliff sloped less precipitous in a green declivity right down
+to the sea. This slope was gay with sea-pinks and fragrant with white
+sea-campion. Primroses patterned the turf, and already ferns were
+uncrumpling their fronds. Below them the sea was spread like a peacock's
+tail in every lustrous shade of blue and green. Half-way down they threw
+themselves full length on the resilient cushions of grass and, bathed in
+sunshine, listened to the perpetual screaming of the gulls and boom of
+the waves in caverns round the coast.
+
+"Not so dusty after all," said Jenny contentedly. "It's nice. I like it
+here."
+
+"Isn't it lovely and warm?" said May.
+
+So they buzzed idly on with their sunlit gossip and drowsy commentaries,
+until a bank of clouds overtook the sun and the water became leaden.
+Jenny shivered.
+
+"Somebody sitting on my grave," she said. "But it's nice here. Nicer
+than anywhere we've walked, I think."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIX: _Intermezzo_
+
+
+Circumstances made it necessary that before the end of the month May
+should inform old Mrs. Trewhella of Jenny's expected baby.
+
+"What did she say?" Jenny inquired when the interview was over.
+
+"She said she thought as much."
+
+"What a liberty. Why? Nobody could tell to look at me. Or I hope not."
+
+"Yes, but her!" commented May. "She's done nothing all her life only
+make it her business to know. They're all like that down here. I noticed
+that very soon about country people."
+
+"What else did she say?" Jenny went on with for her unusual persistence.
+She was not yet able to get rid of the idea that there was something
+remarkable in Jenny Pearl going to have a baby. Not even the universal
+atmosphere of fecundity which pervaded the farm could make this fact a
+whit more ordinary.
+
+"She didn't say much else," related May, not rising to the solemnity of
+the announcement, the revolutionary and shattering reality of it.
+
+"But she's going to tell him?" Jenny asked.
+
+"That made her laugh."
+
+"What did?"
+
+"Her having to tell him."
+
+"Why?" demanded Jenny indignantly.
+
+"Well, you know they're funny down here. I tell you they don't think
+nothing about having a baby. No more than picking a bunch of roses, you
+might say."
+
+This humdrum view of childbirth, although it might have relieved her
+self-consciousness, was not at all welcome to Jenny. She could not bring
+herself to believe that, when after so many years of speculation on this
+very subject, she herself was going to have a baby, the world at large
+would remain profoundly indifferent. She remembered how as a child she
+had played with dolls, and how in the foggy weeks before Christmas she
+had been wont to identify her anticipation with the emotional expectancy
+of young motherhood. And now it was actually in the slow process of
+happening, this event, happening, too, as far as could be judged,
+without any violent or even mildly perceptible transfiguration, mental
+or physical. Still it must not be forgotten that Mrs. Trewhella had
+divined her condition. By what? Certainly not at present by her form or
+complexion.
+
+"I think it's your eyes," said May.
+
+"What's the matter with them now?"
+
+"They look different somehow. Sort of far-away look which you didn't use
+to have."
+
+"Shut up," scoffed Jenny, greatly embarrassed.
+
+That evening when, after tea, Jenny leaned against the stone hedge under
+a sunset of rosy cumulus, Trewhella came through the garden and faced
+her.
+
+"So you and me's going to have a child, missus?"
+
+Jenny resented the assumption of his partnership and gave a cold
+affirmative.
+
+"That's a good job," he sighed, staring out into the air stained with
+crimson from twilight's approach. "I feel brim pleased about that.
+There'll be some fine Harvest Home to Bochyn come September month."
+
+Then from the vagueness of such expressed aspirations Zachary turned to
+a practical view of the matter on hand, regarding his wife earnestly as
+he might from the support of a gate have looked discriminatingly at a
+field of young wheat.
+
+"Is there anything you do want?" he presently inquired.
+
+Perhaps the cool straightness of the question contained a hint of expert
+advice, as if for his field he would prescribe phosphates or nitrate or
+sulphate of ammonia. There was no suggestion of spiritual needs that
+might call out for nourishment under the stress of a new experience.
+Jenny felt that she was being sized up with a view to the best practical
+conduct of the agitating business.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't talk about me," she protested, "like you talked
+about that cow the other day at dinner."
+
+Trewhella looked perplexed. He never seemed able to grasp whether this
+sharp-voiced Londoner whom he had married were laughing at him or not.
+
+"I've always heard it spoken," he began slowly. He always proceeded
+slowly with a conversation that held a warning of barbed wire, as if by
+disregarding the obstacle and by cautious advance any defense could be
+broken down.
+
+"I've always heard it spoken that the women do dearly love something or
+other at such times. Mother used to tell how before I were born, she
+were in a terrible hurry to eat a Cornish Gillyflower. But there wasn't
+one tree as bore an apple that year. Irish Peaches? Ess, bushels. No,
+that wouldn't do for her. Tom Putts? Sweet Larks? Ess, bushels. No more
+wouldn't they serve. Boxers? Sops and Wines? Ess, bushels, and, darn
+'ee, they made her retch to look at 'em."
+
+"She'd properly got the pip, hadn't she?" observed Jenny mockingly.
+
+Trewhella saw the wire and made a circuit.
+
+"So I was thinking you might be wanting something as I could get for 'ee
+on market-day to Camston."
+
+"No, thanks, there's nothing I want. Not even a penny pomegranate," said
+Jenny, who was anxious for Zachary to go. She did not like this attempt
+at intimacy. She had not foreseen the alliance of sympathy he presumably
+wished to form on account of her child. The more she considered his
+claim, the more irrational and impertinent did it seem that he should
+dare assume any share in the unborn miracle worked by Jenny Pearl.
+
+Trewhella pulled himself together, still progressing slowly, even
+painfully, but braced to snap if necessary every strand of barbed wire
+still between him and his object.
+
+"What I were going to say to 'ee was, now that there's this lill baby,
+I'd like for 'ee both to go chapel. I've said nothing so far about your
+not going; but I daren't run up against the dear Lord's wrath in the
+matter of my baby."
+
+"Don't be silly," said Jenny. "How can anything happen to _my_ baby
+without its happening to me?"
+
+"Well, I'd like for 'ee to come," Trewhella persisted.
+
+Here was Jenny in a quandary. If she refused, according to her fiery
+first impulse, what religious pesterings would follow her round the
+garden. How he would drawl in that unnatural manner of speech a lot of
+rubbish which had nothing to do with her. He might even take to
+preaching in bed. He had once frightened her by demanding in a
+sepulchral speculation whether she had ever reflected that the flames of
+hell were so hot that there a white-hot poker would be cool as
+ice-cream. If on the other hand she submitted to a few hours' boredom,
+what an amount of treasured liberty would be sacrificed and what more
+intrusive attempts might not be made upon the inviolable egoism.
+
+"But I don't like church and chapel," said Jenny. "It doesn't interest
+me."
+
+Then she saw her husband gathering his eloquence for wearisome argument
+and decided to compromise--and for Jenny to compromise meant character
+in the melting-pot.
+
+"I might come once and again," she said.
+
+Trewhella seemed relieved and, after a moment's awkwardness in which he
+gave her the idea that he was on the verge of thanks, departed to his
+business.
+
+So, not on the following Sunday, for that would have looked like too
+easy a surrender, but on the Sunday after that, Jenny and May went in
+the wake of the household to the Free Church--a gaunt square of
+whitewashed stone, whose interior smelt of varnish and stale hymn-books
+and harmonium dust. The minister, a compound of suspicion, petty
+authority and deep-rooted servility, had bicycled from Camston and had
+in consequence a rash of mud on his coat. Without much fire, gnawing his
+mustache when in need of a word, he gave a dreary political address in
+which several modern statesmen were allotted prototypes in Israel. The
+mean Staffordshire accent destroyed whatever beauty was left to his
+maimed excerpts from Holy Scripture.
+
+"What a terrible man!" whispered Jenny to May.
+
+Presently during the extempore prayers, when the congregation took up
+the more comfortable attitude of prayer by bending towards their laps,
+Jenny perceived that the eyes of each person were surreptitiously fixed
+on her. She could see the prying sparkle through coarse fingers--a
+sparkle that was instantly quenched when she faced it. Jenny prodded
+May.
+
+"Come on," she whispered fiercely. "I'm going out of this dog's island."
+
+May looked alarmed by the prospect of so conspicuous an exit, but
+loyally followed Jenny as they picked their way over what seemed from
+their upright position a jumble of corpses. An official, either more
+indomitably curious or less anxiously self-repressive than the majority,
+hurried after them.
+
+"Feeling slight, are 'ee, missus?" inquired this red-headed farmer.
+
+"No, thanks," said Jenny.
+
+"It do get very hot with that stove come May month. I believe it ought
+to be put out. And you're not feeling slight?"
+
+"No, thanks."
+
+The man seemed unwilling to go back inside the chapel; but the two girls
+walked quickly away from him down through the deserted village.
+
+After dinner the incident was discussed with some bitterness.
+
+"How did 'ee go out of chapel like that?" asked Trewhella.
+
+"Because I don't go to a chapel or a church neither to be stared at.
+It's a game of mine played slow, being stared at by a lot of old crows
+like them in there."
+
+Jenny defiantly surveyed Zachary, his mother and old Mr. Champion, while
+May murmured encouragement behind her.
+
+"'Tisn't paying any great respect to the dear Lord," said Trewhella.
+"Trooping out like a lot of great bullocks! I went so hot as lead."
+
+"'Tisn't paying any great respect to the dear Lord, staring at two women
+when you belong praying," said Granfa severely.
+
+"Darn 'ee," said Trewhella savagely. "'Tis nothing to do with you, a
+heathen old man as was once seen picking wrinkles off the rocks on a
+Sunday morning."
+
+"I believe it is then," said Granfa stoutly. "I believe that it's got a
+brae lot to do with me and, darn 'ee, if it hasn't----"
+
+He thumped the table so that all the crockery rattled. This roused Mrs.
+Trewhella, who had been blinking in silence.
+
+"Look, see what you're doing, Granfa. You'll scat all the cloam," she
+cried shrilly.
+
+Trewhella, having surveyed Jenny's defenses, began his usual slow
+advance.
+
+"What nobody here seems to understand is my feelings when I seed my
+missus making a mock of holy things."
+
+"Oh, rats!" cried Jenny, flouncing angrily from the room.
+
+Nothing could persuade her to humor Zachary so far as to go to chapel a
+second time. It pleased her to contemplate his anxiety for the spiritual
+welfare of the unborn child. "I wish you'd wrastle with the devil a bit
+more," he said. But she would only set her lips obstinately, and perhaps
+under his mother's advice, Zachary gradually allowed the subject to
+drop.
+
+Jenny and May went often to the cliffs in the fine weather, mostly to
+Crickabella (such was Granfa's name for their favorite slope), where
+summer marched by almost visibly. The sea-pinks turned brown, the
+sea-campion decayed to an untidy mat of faded leaves and flowers.
+Bluebells came up in asparagus-like heads that very soon broke into a
+blue mist of perfume. The ferns grew taller every day, and foxgloves
+waved right down to the water's edge. On the moorland behind the cliffs,
+heather and burnet roses bloomed with azure scabious and white
+mothmulleins, ladies' tresses and sweet purple orchids. Here and there
+grew solitary columbines, which Jenny thought were lovely and carried
+home to Granfa, who called them Blue Men's Caps. Remote from curious
+eyes, remote from life itself save in the progress of inanimate things
+towards the accomplishment of their destiny, she dreamed unceasingly day
+after day amid the hollow sounding of the ocean, watching idly the
+metallic green flight of the shags, the timorous adventures of rock
+pipits, and sometimes the graces of a seal.
+
+With the advance of summer Jenny began to dread extremely the various
+insects and reptiles of the country. It was vain for Thomas to assure
+her that apple-bees did not sting without provocation, that eeriwigs
+were not prone to attack, that piskies were harmless flutterers and
+neither Johnny Jakes nor gram'ma sows actively malicious. These rural
+incidents of a wasp on a hat or a woodlouse in a sponge were to her
+horrible events which made her tremble in the recollection of them long
+afterwards. The state of her health did not tend to allay these terrors,
+and because Crickabella was comparatively free from insects, that lonely
+green escarpment, flung against the black ramparts of the towering
+coast, was more than ever dear to Jenny.
+
+In July, however, she was not able to walk so far as Crickabella, and
+was forced to pass all her days in the garden, gazing at the shimmering
+line of the hills opposite. Granfa Champion used to spend much time in
+her company, and was continually having to be restrained from violent
+digging in the heat. During August picture post-cards often arrived
+from girls spending their holidays at Margate or Brighton, postcards
+that gave no news beyond, "Having a fine old time. Hope you're alright,"
+but, inasmuch as they showed that there was still a thought of Jenny in
+the great world outside, very welcome.
+
+August dragged on with parched days, and cold twilights murmurous with
+the first rustle of autumn. Jenny began to work herself up into a state
+of nervous apprehension, brooding over childbirth, its pain and secrecy
+of purpose and ultimate responsibilities. She could no longer tolerate
+the comments passed upon her by Mrs. Trewhella nor the furtive
+inquisitiveness of Zachary. She gave up sitting at dinner with the rest
+of the household, and was humored in this fad more perhaps from policy
+than any consideration of affection. The only pleasure of these hot
+insufferable days of waiting was the knowledge that Zachary was banished
+from her room, that once more, as of old, May would sleep beside her.
+There was a new experience from the revival of the partnership because
+now, unlike the old theater days, Jenny would often be the first in bed
+and able to lie there watching in the candlelight May's shadow glance
+hugely about the irregular ceiling, like Valérie's shadow long since in
+the Glasgow bedroom. Where was Valérie now? But where was anybody in her
+history? Ghosts, every one of them, where she was concerned.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XL: _Harvest Home_
+
+
+All day long the whirr of the reaper and binder had rattled from distant
+fields in a monotone of sound broken at regular intervals by guttural
+cries when the horses at a corner turned on their tracks, and later in
+the afternoon by desultory gunshots, when from the golden triangle of
+wheat rabbits darted over the fresh stubble. All day long Jenny, obeying
+some deep instinct, prepared for the ordeal. The sun blazed over the
+spread harvest; the fields crackled with heat; the blue sky seemed to
+close upon the earth, and not even from the whole length of Trewinnard
+Sands was heard a solitary ripple of the tide. In the garden the
+claret-colored dahlias hung down their tight, uncomfortable flowers;
+geraniums, portulacas, nasturtiums, sunflowers and red-hot pokers burned
+in one furnace of bloom. Red admiral butterflies soared lazily up and
+down against the gray walls crumbling with heat, and from flower to
+flower of the scarlet salvias zigzagged the hummingbird hawkmoths.
+Granfa Champion, wiping with gaudy bandana his forehead, came out to
+plant daffodil bulbs stored in the green shadows of a cool potting shed.
+
+"Now, you know you mustn't go digging in this sun, Mr. Champion," said
+reproving May.
+
+"My cheeks are so hot as pies," declared Granfa.
+
+"Do come and sit down with us," said Jenny.
+
+"I believe I mustn't start tealing yet awhile," said the old man,
+regretfully plunging his long Cornish spade into the baked earth, from
+which insufficient stability the instrument fell with a thump on to the
+path.
+
+"Well, how are 'ee feeling, my dear?" asked Granfa, standing before
+Jenny and mopping his splendid forehead. "None so frail, I hope?"
+
+"She isn't feeling at all well. Not to-day," said May.
+
+"That's bad," said Granfa. "That's poor news, that is."
+
+"I feel frightened, Mr. Champion," said Jenny suddenly. Somehow this old
+man recalled Mr. Vergoe, rousing old impulses of childish confidence and
+revelation.
+
+"Feeling frightened, are 'ee? That's bad."
+
+"Supposing it wasn't a person at all?" said Jenny desperately. "You
+know, like us?"
+
+The old man considered for a moment this morbid fancy.
+
+"That's a wisht old thought," he said at last, "and I don't see no call
+for it at all. When I do teal a lily root, I don't expect to see a
+broccolo come bursting up and annoying me."
+
+"But it might," argued Jenny, determined not to be convinced out of all
+misgiving.
+
+"Don't encourage her, Mr. Champion," said May severely. "Tell her you
+think she's silly."
+
+Jenny buried her face in her hands and began to cry. Granfa looked at
+her for a moment; then, advocating silence with his right forefinger,
+with his left thumb he indicated to May by jabbing it rapidly backwards
+over his shoulder that inside and upstairs to her bedroom was the best
+place for Jenny.
+
+So presently she was lying on the tapestried bed in the tempered
+sunlight of her room, while through the house in whispers ran the news
+that it might be any time now. Up from downstairs sounded the
+restlessness of making ready. The sinking sun glowed in the heart of
+every vivid Brussels rose and bathed the dusty floor with orange lights.
+Jenny's great thought was that never again would she endure this agony,
+if but this once she were able to survive it. She vowed, tearing in
+savage emphasis the patchwork counterpane, that nothing should induce
+her to suffer like this a second time.
+
+The afternoon faded tranquilly into dusk. No wind agitated a single
+dewy petal, and only the blackbirds with intermittent alarums broke the
+silence. The ripe round moon of harvest, floating mild and yellow and
+faintly luminous along the sky, was not yet above the hills. Mrs.
+Trewhella was not yet willing to despatch a summons to the doctor. Two
+more hours sank away. Out in the fields, marching full in the moon's
+face, the reapers went slowly homewards. Out in the fields they sang old
+songs of the earth and the grain; out in the waste the fox pricked his
+ears and the badger turned to listen. Down in the reeds the
+sedge-warbler lisped through the low ground vapors his little melody.
+The voices of the harvesters died away in purple glooms, and now, as if
+in a shell, the sea was heard lapping the sand. Through the open lattice
+rose the scent of the tobacco plants. There was a murmur of voices in
+consultation. Jenny heard a shout for Thomas, and presently horses'
+hoofs trotting down the farm road.
+
+High and small and silver was the moon before she heard them coming
+back. The dewdrops were all diamonds, the wreathed vapors were
+damascened by moonlight, before she heard the grate of wheels and the
+click of the gate and another murmur of voices. Then the room was filled
+with black figures; entering lamplight seemed to magnify her pain, and
+Jenny knew little more until, recovering from chloroform, she perceived
+a candle, large as a column, burning with giant spearhead of flame and,
+beyond the blue and silver lattice, apprehended a fuss of movement.
+
+"What is it?" she asked in momentary perplexity.
+
+"'Tis a boy," said Mrs. Trewhella. "A grand lill chap."
+
+"What's all that noise?" she murmured petulantly.
+
+"'Tis me, my dear soul," said Mrs. Trewhella, "putting all straight as
+we belong."
+
+May leaned over her sister, squeezing her hand.
+
+"I think I shall like having a baby," said Jenny, "when we can take him
+out for walks. You know, just you and me, young May."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLI: _Columbine Happy_
+
+
+Jenny was ivory now: the baby had stolen all the coral from her cheeks.
+Outside, the treetops shook tremulous black lace across the silver deeps
+of the sky and jigged with ebony boughs upon the circle of the moon.
+Clear as bells sounded the slow breakers on Trewinnard beach, and in the
+tall room a white moth circled round the candle-flame interminably. A
+rat squeaked in the wall.
+
+"Fancy," said Jenny to May, who sat in the shadow by the foot of the
+bed. "I thought I shouldn't like nursing a baby, but I think it's
+glorious."
+
+A curlew cried through the October night and was answered far down the
+valley.
+
+"I wish mother could have seen my baby," sighed Jenny. "It's my birthday
+next week. Funny if we'd both been born the same day."
+
+The candle spat with the moth's death, then burned with renewed
+brightness.
+
+"Time the rogue went to sleep," said May authoritatively.
+
+"Feel his hands," said Jenny. "They're like velvet bows."
+
+"They are lovely and soft, aren't they?" May agreed.
+
+"Won't the girls talk when they hear about my baby?"
+
+"Rather," said May reassuringly.
+
+"I expect they'll wonder if he's like me."
+
+Remote winds muttered over the hill-side, and the curlews set up a
+chorus of chattering.
+
+"Night's lovely with a baby," said Jenny, and very soon fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLII: _Shaded Sunlight_
+
+
+The naming of the boy caused considerable discussion in Bochyn. Indeed,
+at one stage of the argument a battle seemed imminent. Jenny herself
+went outright for Eric.
+
+"Never heard no such a name in all my life," affirmed Trewhella.
+
+"You must have been about a lot," said Jenny sarcastically.
+
+"I think Eric's nice," urged May, in support of her sister's choice.
+
+"I never heard the name spoken so far as I do remember," Mr. Champion
+put in, "but that's nothing against it as a name. As a name I do like it
+very well. To be sure 'tis a bit after Hayrick, but again that's nothing
+against a farmer's son."
+
+"I don't like the name at all," said old Mrs. Trewhella. "To me it do
+sound a loose sort of a name."
+
+"Oh, 'tis no name at all," Zachary decided. "How do 'ee like it, my
+dear?" he asked, turning to Jenny.
+
+"I don't know why I like it," she answered, "but I do."
+
+"There's a grand old name down Church," said Granfa meditatively. "A
+grand, old, rolling, cut-a-piece-off-and-come-again sort of a name, but
+darn 'ee if I can remember it. Ess I can now. Athanacious! Now that's a
+name as will make your Jack or your Tom look very hungry. That's a name,
+that is!"
+
+Impressive as sounded Granfa's trumpeting of it, everybody felt that
+nowadays such a mouthful would hamper rather than benefit the owner. As
+for Jenny, she declared frankly against it.
+
+"Oh, no, Granfa, not in these! Why, it would drive anyone silly to say
+it, let alone write it. I wish it was a girl and then she could have
+been called Eileen, which is nice."
+
+Trewhella looked anxiously at the subject of the discussion as if he
+feared his wife could by some alchemy transmute the sex of the baby.
+
+"I should dearly love to call the lill chap Matthew or Mark or Luke," he
+said. "John I don't take no account of. I do call that a poor ornary
+unreligious sort of a name for an Evangelist."
+
+"I don't like John at all," said Jenny emphatically.
+
+"Then there's Abraham and Jacob," Zachary continued. "And Abel and
+Adam."
+
+"And Ikey and Moses," Jenny scoffingly contributed.
+
+"How not Philip?" suggested old Mrs. Trewhella.
+
+"Or Nicholas?" said May.
+
+"Call him Satan straight away at once!" commented the father bitterly.
+
+"I like a surname sometimes," said Jenny thoughtfully. "I once knew a
+boy called Presland. Only we used to call him Bill Hair. Still Eric's
+the nicest of all, _I_ think," she added, returning to her first choice.
+
+The argument went on for a long while. At times it would verge
+perilously on a dispute, and in the end, in accordance with Jenny's new
+development of character, a compromise was affected between Eric and
+Adam by the substitution of Frank for both and, lest the advantage
+should seem to incline to Jenny's side too far, with Abel as a second
+name, where its extravagance would pass unnoticed.
+
+Winter passed away uneventfully except as regards the daily growth of
+young Frank. There was no particularly violent storm, nor any wreck
+within ten miles of the lonely farmhouse. When the warm days of spring
+recurred frequently, it became necessary to find a pleasant place for
+idle hours in the sun. Crickabella was too far away for a baby to be
+taken there, and Jenny did not like the publicity of the front garden,
+exposed equally to Zachary's periodical inspections and Mrs. Trewhella's
+grandmotherly limps away from housekeeping. Mr. Champion, when informed
+of all this, cordially agreed with Jenny that the front garden was no
+place at all under the circumstances and promised to go into the matter
+of a secure retreat.
+
+So presently, on one of those lazy mornings when April pauses to survey
+her handiwork, assuming in the contemplation of the proud pied earth the
+warmth and maturity of midsummer, Granfa beckoned to Jenny and May and
+young Frank to follow his lead. He took them out at the back, past the
+plashy town-place, past a commotion of chickens, and up a rocky lane,
+whose high, mossy banks were blue with dog-violets and twinkling white
+with adders' eyes. The perambulator bumped over the loose stones, but
+young Frank, sleeping admirably, never stirred; while his rosy cheeks
+danced with ripples of light shaken down through the young-leafed elms.
+Not too far up they came to a rickety gate, which Granfa dragged open to
+admit his guests; and almost before they knew where they were, they
+stood buried in the apple-blossoms of a small secluded orchard cut off
+from the fields around by thick hedges of hawthorn.
+
+"What a glorious place!" Jenny cried enthusiastically. "Oh, I do think
+this is nice."
+
+Mr. Champion, his hair looking snowy white in the rosy flush of blossom,
+explained the fairylike existence of the close.
+
+"This old orchard was never scat up with the others. They burnt they up
+in a frizz of repenitence. The Band of Hope come and scat them all
+abroad with great axes, shouting Hallelujah and screaming and roaring so
+as anyone was ashamed to be a human creature. Darn 'ee, I was so mad
+when I heard tell of it, I lived on nothing but cider almost for weeks,
+though 'tis a drink as do turn me sour all over."
+
+"Idiots," said Jenny. "But why didn't they pull this to pieces? There
+must be lots of apples here."
+
+"It got avoided somehow, and Zachary he just left it go; but 'tis a
+handsome place, sure enough. You'll dearly love sitting here come
+summertime."
+
+"Rather!" Jenny and May agreed.
+
+Already in isolated petals the blossom was beginning to flutter down;
+but still the deserted orchard was in the perfection of its beauty. Down
+in the cool grass, fortified against insects and dampness by many rugs,
+Jenny and May and young Frank used to lie outstretched. They could see
+through the pink and white lace of blossom deep, distant skies, where
+for unknown landscapes the cuckoos struck their notes on space like
+dulcimers; they could hear the goldfinch whistle to his nest in the
+lichened fork above and wind-blown in treetops the copperfinch's burst
+of song. They could listen to the greenfinch calling sweetly from the
+hawthorn hedge, while tree-creepers ran like mice up the gray bark and
+woodpeckers flirted in the grass. The narcissus bloomed here very
+fragrant, contending wild-eyed with daisies and buttercups. There was
+mistletoe--marvelous in the reality of its growth, but at the same time
+to Jenny rather unnatural. And later, when the apple-blossom had fallen,
+eglantine and honeysuckle and travelers' joy flung themselves prodigally
+over the trees, and when the birds no longer sang, it did not matter,
+such an enchanted silence of infinitely minute country sounds took their
+place.
+
+As for young Frank, he was to his mother and aunt a wonder. He opened
+his eyes very often, and very often he shut them. He kicked his legs and
+uncurled his fingers like a kitten and twitched ecstatically to baby
+visions. He cried very seldom and laughed very often, and crooned and
+dribbled like many other babies; but whether or not the intoxication of
+the sweet close urged him to unparagoned agilities and precocities,
+there was no doubt at all that, in the companionship of elves, he
+enjoyed life very much indeed.
+
+"He looks like an apple lying there," said Jenny. "A great round, fat,
+rosy apple. Bless his heart."
+
+"He is a rogue," said May.
+
+"Oh, May, he is a darling! Oh, I do think he's lovely. Look at his
+feet, just like raspberries. He isn't much like _him_, is he?"
+
+"No, he's not," said May emphatically. "Not at all like."
+
+"I don't think he's much like anybody, I don't," said Jenny,
+contemplating her son.
+
+It might have seemed to the casual onlooker that Arcadia had recompensed
+Jenny for all that had gone before; and, indeed, could the whole of
+existence have been set in that inclosure of dappled hours, she might
+have attained sheer contentment. Even Jenny, with all she had longed
+for, all she had possessed and all she had lost, might have been
+permanently happy. But she was no sundial marking only the bright hours;
+life had to go on when twilight came and night fell. Young Frank, asleep
+in golden candlelight, could not mitigate the injury of her husband's
+presence. Even young Frank, best and most satisfying of babies, was the
+son of Zachary; would, when he grew out of babyhood, contain alien
+blood. There might then be riddles of character which his mother would
+never solve. Strange features would show themselves, foreign eyes,
+perhaps, or a mouth which knew no curve of her own. Now he was adorably
+complete, Jenny's own against the world; and yet he was a symbol of her
+subjugation. Already Zachary was beginning to use their boy to
+consolidate his possession of herself. Already he was talking about the
+child's education and obviously making ready for an opportunity to
+thrust him into religious avarice and gloom. The arrival of young Frank
+had apparently increased the father's tendency to brood over the darker
+problems of his barbarous creed. He talked of young Frank, who would
+surely inherit some of the Raeburn joy of life, as if he would grow up
+in suspicion, demon-haunted, oppressed with the fear of God's wrath, a
+sour and melancholy dreamer of damnable dreams.
+
+Zachary took to groaning aloud over the sins of his fellow-men, would
+groan and sweat horribly in the imagination of the unappeasable cruelty
+of God. These outbreaks of despair for mankind were the more obnoxious
+to Jenny because they were always followed by a monstrous excess of his
+privileges, by an utterly abhorred affectionateness. Mr. Champion, the
+outspoken, clear-headed old man, would often remonstrate with his
+nephew. Once, while Trewhella was in a spasm of misery groaning for his
+own sins and the sins of the world, a sick cow died in audible agony on
+account of his neglect.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed, you foolish man," said Granfa. "You ought to
+be ashamed to leave the poor animal die. Darn 'ee, I believe the devil
+_will_ have 'ee!"
+
+"What's a cow," said Trewhella somberly, "beside my own scarlet sins?"
+
+"'Tis one of the worst of 'em," said Granfa positively. "'Tis so scarlet
+as wool. Get up, and leave be all your praying and sweating, you foolish
+man. You do drive me plum mad with your foolishness. How don't 'ee do
+your own work fittee and leave the dear Lord mind his own business? He
+don't want to be told at his time of life what to do. Oh, you do drive
+me mad."
+
+"Another lost lamb," groaned Trewhella. "Another soul in the pit. Oh, I
+do pray wi' all my heart that my poor lill son may find favor in the
+Lord's eyes and become a child of grace to preach the Word and confound
+the Gentiles."
+
+"Did ever a man hark to such nonsense in his life?" exclaimed Granfa.
+
+"I shouldn't argue with him in one of his moods," advised Jenny, looking
+at her husband coldly and distastefully.
+
+"Oh, dear Lord, give me strength to heal the blindness of my family and
+make my poor lill son a sword in the side of unbelievers."
+
+Then presently the gloom would pass; he would go out silently to the
+fields, and after a day's work come back in a fever of earthly desires
+to his wife.
+
+There were shadows in Bochyn, for all the sunlight and birdsong and
+sweetpeas blossom.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIII: _Bow Bells_
+
+
+Summer went by very quickly in the deserted orchard, and in fine
+September weather young Frank's first birthday was celebrated with much
+goodwill by everybody. Zachary, with the successful carrying of a rich
+harvest, ceased to brood so much on the failure of humanity. He became
+his own diligent self, amassing grain and gold and zealously expurgating
+for reproduction in bleak chapels that winter a volume of sermons by an
+Anglican bishop. Young Frank began to show distinct similarities of
+feature to Jenny, similarities that not even the most critical observer
+could demolish. He showed, too, some of her individuality, had a temper
+and will of his own, and seemed like his mother born to inherit life's
+intenser emotions. Jenny was not yet inclined to sink herself in him, to
+transfer to the boy her own activity of sensation. Mrs. Raeburn was
+thirty-three when Jenny was born: young Frank arrived when his mother
+was ten years younger than that. It was not expected that she should
+feel the gates of youth were closed against her. Moreover, Jenny, with
+all the fullness of her experience, was strangely young on the eve of
+her twenty-fourth birthday, still seeming, indeed, no more than eighteen
+or nineteen. There was a divine youthfulness about her which was proof
+against the Furies, and, since the diverting absurdities of young Frank,
+laughter had come back. Those deep eyes danced again for one who from
+altitudes of baby ecstasies would gloriously respond. May was another
+triumph for affection. There was joy in regarding that little sister,
+once wan with Islington airs, now happy and healthy and almost as
+rose-pink as Jenny herself. How pleased her mother would have been, and,
+in retrospect, how skeptical must she have felt of Jenny's ability to
+keep that promise always to look after May.
+
+Life was not so bad on her birthday morning, as, with one eye kept
+continuously on young Frank, Jenny dressed herself to defy the
+blusterous jolly October weather. She thought how red the apples were in
+the orchard and with what a plump they fell and how she and May had
+laughed when one fell on young Frank, who had also laughed, deeming
+against the evidence of his surprise that it must be matter for
+merriment.
+
+The postman came that morning, and Granfa, waving his arms, brought the
+letters up to the orchard--two letters, both for Jenny. He watched for a
+minute her excitement before he departed to a pleasant job of digging in
+the champagne of October sunlight.
+
+"Hullo," cried Jenny, "here's a letter from Maudie Chapman."
+
+     26 ALVERTON STREET,
+
+     PIMLICO.
+
+     Dear old Jenny,
+
+     Suddenly remembered it was your birthday, old girl. Many Happy
+     Returns of The Day, and hope you're in the best of pink and going
+     on fine the same as I am. We have got a new stage manager who you
+     would laugh to see all the girls think. We have been rehearsing for
+     months and I'm sick of it--You're well out of the Orient I give you
+     my word. Its a dogs' Island now and no mistake. Walter sends his
+     love. I have got a little girl called Ivy. She is a love. Have you?
+
+     With heaps of love
+
+     from your old chum, Maudie.
+
+     Irene's gone off with that fellow Danbie and Elsie had twins. Her
+     Artie was very annoyed about it. Madge Wilson has got a most
+     glorious set of furs. No more from Maudie--Write us a letter old
+     girl.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Fancy," said Jenny. "Elsie Crauford's had twins."
+
+This letter, read in the open air, with a sea wind traveling through the
+apple trees, with three hundred miles of country between the sender and
+the receiver, was charged with London sorcery. It must have been posted
+on the way to the theater. Incredible thought! Jenny visualized the red
+pillar-box into which it might have slipped, a pillar-box station by a
+crowded corner, splashed by traffic and jostled by the town. On the flap
+was a round spot of London rain, and pervading all the paper was a faint
+theater scent. The very ink was like eye-black, and Maudie must have
+written every word laboriously between two glittering ballets.
+
+"I wonder if I could do a single beat now?" said Jenny. "I wish I hadn't
+given my new ballet shoes to Gladys West."
+
+Then as once she danced under the tall plane tree of Hagworth Street to
+a sugared melody of "Cavalleria," so now she danced in an apple orchard,
+keeping time to the wind and the waving boughs. Young Frank quivered and
+kicked with joy to see the twirling of his mother's skirts. May cried,
+"You great tomboy!" but with robin's eyes and slanting head watched her
+sister.
+
+Had she been a poet, Jenny would have sung of London, of the thunder and
+grayness, of the lamps and rain, of long irresistible rides on the top
+of swaying tramcars, of wild roars through the depth of the earth past
+the green lamps flashing to red. She danced instead about the sea-girt
+orchard-close all that once her heart had found in London. She danced
+the hopes of many children of Apollo, who work so long for so little.
+She danced their disillusions, their dreams of immortality, their lives,
+their marriages, their little houses. She danced their fears of poverty
+and starvation, their work and effort and strife, their hurrying home in
+the darkness. She danced their middle age of growing families and all
+their renewed hopes and disappointments and contentments. She danced a
+little of the sorrow and all the joy of life. She danced old age and the
+breathing night of London and the sparrow-haunted dawn. She danced the
+silly little shillings which the children of Apollo earn. Fifteen
+pirouettes for fifteen shillings, fifteen pirouettes for long rehearsals
+and long performances, fifteen pirouettes for a week, fifteen pirouettes
+for no fame, fifteen pirouettes for fifteen shillings, and one high beat
+for the funeral of a marionette.
+
+And all the time the gay October leaves danced with her in the grass.
+
+"Well, I hope you've enjoyed yourself," said May. Jenny threw herself
+breathless on the outspread rug and kissed young Frank.
+
+"I don't suppose I shall ever dance again."
+
+"What about the other letter?" asked May.
+
+"There, if I didn't forget all about it," cried Jenny. "But who's it
+from? What unnatural writing! Like music."
+
+She broke the seal.
+
+     PUMP COURT, TEMPLE.
+
+     My dear Jenny,
+
+     I think I've been very good not to worry you long before this; but
+     I do want to write and wish you many happy returns. Will you accept
+     my thoughts? I got your address and history from Maudie Chapman
+     whom I met last week. I wonder if I came down to Cornwall for a few
+     days, if you would let me call on you. If you're annoyed by this
+     letter, just don't answer. I shall perfectly understand.
+
+     Yours ever,
+
+     Frank Castleton.
+
+"Fancy," said Jenny. "I never knew his name was Frank. How funny!"
+
+"Who is this Frank?" May inquired.
+
+"A friend of mine I knew once--getting on for nearly four years ago now.
+Where could anyone stay here?"
+
+"There's an hotel in Trewinnard," said May.
+
+Jenny looked at young Frank.
+
+"I don't see why I shouldn't," she said.
+
+"Shouldn't what?"
+
+"Have a friend come and see me," Jenny answered.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIV: _Picking Up Threads_
+
+
+Castleton arrived at Bochyn under a November sunset, whose lemon glow,
+barred with indigo banks of cloud, was reflected with added brightness
+in the flooded meadows and widening stream. Jenny in the firelight was
+singing and rocking her baby to sleep. She jumped up to open the door to
+his knock.
+
+"Why, Fuz," she said simply.
+
+He stood enormous against the last gleams of day, and Jenny realized
+with what small people she had been living so long.
+
+"Jane," he said, "this is a big moment."
+
+He followed her into the room and waited while she lit the lamp and
+pointed with warning finger to the child asleep in a silence of ticking
+clocks.
+
+"There's a surprise, or isn't it?"
+
+"Rather," said Castleton. "It looks very well."
+
+"Oh, Fuz. It! You are dreadful. He's called Frank, and fancy, I never
+knew you were called Frank till you wrote to me last month."
+
+"Another disappointment," sighed Castleton.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why, of course I thought you altered his name to celebrate my visit."
+
+"You never didn't?" said Jenny, already under slow rustic influences not
+perfectly sure of a remark's intention. Then suddenly getting back to
+older and lighter forms of conversation, she laughed.
+
+"Well, how are you, Jenny?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, I'm feeling grand. Where are you staying?"
+
+"The One and All Inn."
+
+"Comfortable?"
+
+"I fancy very, from a quick glance."
+
+"You'll stay and have tea with us and meet my husband," Jenny invited.
+
+"I shall be proud."
+
+A silence fell on these two friends.
+
+"Well, what about dear old London?" said Jenny at last.
+
+"It's extraordinarily the same. Let me see, had tubes and taxis been
+invented before you went away?" Castleton asked.
+
+"Don't be silly. Of course," she exclaimed, outraged by such an
+implication of antediluvian exile.
+
+"Then flatly there is nothing to tell you about London. I was at the
+Orient the other night. I need not say the ballet was precisely the same
+as a dozen others I have seen, and you have helped at."
+
+"Any pretty new girls?" Jenny asked.
+
+"I believe there are one or two."
+
+"How's Ronnie Walker?"
+
+"He still lives more for painting than by painting, and has grown a
+cream-colored beard."
+
+"Oh, he never hasn't. Then he ought to get the bird."
+
+"So that he could say: 'Four owls and a hen, two larks and a wren, have
+all built their nests in my beard'? It isn't big enough, Jane."
+
+"And Cunningham, how's he?"
+
+"Cunningham is married. I don't know his wife, but I'm told she plays
+the piano a great deal better than he does. As for myself," said
+Castleton quickly, "I have chambers in the Temple, but live at home with
+my people, who have moved to Kensington. There, you see what alarming
+cataclysms have shaken the society you deserted. Now tell me about
+yourself."
+
+"Oh, I jog along," said Jenny.
+
+Further reminiscence was interrupted by the entrance of Trewhella, who
+saluted Castleton suspiciously and from shyness somewhat brusquely.
+
+"How do you do sir?" said the guest, conspicuously agreeable.
+
+"I'm very well, thank 'ee. Come far, have 'ee?"
+
+"London."
+
+"That's a poor sort of place. I was there once. But I didn't take much
+account of it," said Trewhella.
+
+"You found it disappointing?"
+
+"Ess, ess, too many Cockneys for a Cornishman. But I wasn't robbed
+over-much. I believe I was too sharp for them."
+
+"I'm glad of that," said the representative of cities.
+
+"You do talk a lot of rot about London," said Jenny contemptuously. "As
+if you could know _any_thing about it!"
+
+"I found all I wanted, my dear," said Trewhella winking. He seemed in a
+mind to impress the foreigner.
+
+"By carrying off Je--Mrs. Trewhella, eh?" said Castleton. "Come, after
+that, I don't think you ought to grumble at London."
+
+Trewhella darted a suspicious glance as if to demand by what right this
+intruder dared to comment on his behavior.
+
+The presence of a stranger at tea threw a munching silence over all the
+lower end of the table; but Castleton made a great impression on Granfa,
+who asked him a number of questions and sighed admiration for each new
+and surprising answer.
+
+"But there's one thing I believe you can't tell me," said Granfa. "Or if
+you can, you're a marvel."
+
+"And what is that?" inquired Castleton.
+
+"I've asked scores of men this question," said Granfa proudly.
+"Hundreds, I suppose, and there wasn't one of them could give me an
+answer."
+
+"You really alarm me this time," said Castleton.
+
+Granfa braced himself by swallowing a large mouthful of pasty and
+delivered his poser almost reverently.
+
+"Can you tell me, mister, in what county o' Scotland is John o' Groats?"
+
+"Caithness, I think," said Castleton.
+
+Granfa coughed violent appreciation and thumped on the table in
+amazement.
+
+"Hark, all you men and maidens down to the end of the table! I've asked
+that question in Cornwall, and I've asked that question in Australia.
+I've asked Scotchmen even, and I'm a brae old man now. But there wasn't
+one who could speak the answer till--till----" he paused, before the
+Cornish title of affection and respect--"Cap'n Castleton here spoke it
+straight away at once. Wish you well, my dear son," he added in a voice
+rich with emotion, as he thrust an open hand over a bowl of cream for
+Castleton's grip.
+
+Then Granfa told his old intimate tales of wrecks and famous seines of
+fish, and even went so far as to offer to show Castleton on the very
+next morning the corner of a field where with two legs and a stick he
+could stand in the three parishes of Trenoweth, Nancepean and
+Trewinnard. In fact he monopolized the guest throughout the meal, and
+expressed very great regret when Castleton had to return to the One and
+All Inn.
+
+Trewhella questioned Jenny sharply that night about the stranger, tried
+with all the fox in his nature to find out what part he had played in
+her life.
+
+"He's a friend of mine," she said.
+
+"Did he ever come courting 'ee?"
+
+"No, of course not. You don't think all men's like you?"
+
+"What's he want to come down here along, if he's just a friend? Look,
+missus, don't you go giving the village tongues a start by kicking up a
+rig with yon great Cockney."
+
+"Shut up," said Jenny. "Who cares about the village?"
+
+"I do," said Trewhella. "I care a brae lot about it. Me and my folk have
+lived here some long time and we've always been looked up to for clean,
+decent souls."
+
+"Get out!" scoffed Jenny. "And don't put ideas in your own head.
+Village! Talking shop, I should say."
+
+The next morning was fine, and when Castleton called at Bochyn, Jenny
+intrusted May with young Frank and suggested a walk. Granfa, who was
+present during the discussion of the itinerary, declared the towans must
+be visited first of all. Jenny was rather averse from such a direction,
+thinking of the watchers who lay all day in the rushes. However, when
+she thought how deeply it would infuriate her husband to know that she
+was walking over that solitude in the company of Castleton, she accepted
+Granfa's suggestion with a deliberate audacity.
+
+It was pleasant to walk with Fuz, to laugh at his excitement over
+various birds and flowers unnoticed by her. It was pleasant to watch him
+trip in a rabbit's hole and roll right down to the bottom of a
+sand-drift. But best of all were the rests in deep dry hollows above
+whose edges the rushes met the sky in wind-waved, sharply cut lines.
+Down there, making idle patterns with snail-shells, she could listen to
+gossip of dear old London. She could smell in the sea air wood pavement
+and hear in the scurry of rabbits passengers by the Piccadilly Tube.
+
+And yet there was a gulf not to be spanned so readily as in the
+tentative conversations of a single walk. Often in the middle of
+Castleton's chronicles, she would wish desperately to talk of events
+long buried, to set out before him her life, to argue openly the rights
+and wrongs of deeds that so far she had only disputed with herself. In a
+way it was unsatisfactory to pick up a few broken threads of a
+friendship, leaving the reel untouched. Perhaps it was better to let the
+past and the present alone. Gradually London dropped out of the
+conversation. She wondered if, seeing London again, she would be as much
+disappointed as by the tale and rumor of it borne down here by an old
+friend. Gradually the conversation veered to the main occupations of
+Jenny's mind--May and young Frank. May's future was easy to forecast.
+She must in these fresh airs grow stronger and healthier, and supply
+with the passing of every day a more complete justification of the
+marriage. But what of young Frank's future? Jenny could not bear the
+notion of him tied to the soil. She wanted his life to hold experience
+before he retreated here to store up the grain and the gold. There must
+be a great deal of her in young Frank. He could not, should not be
+contented with bullocks and pigs and straight furrows.
+
+Castleton listened sympathetically to her ambitions for the baby, and
+promised faithfully that when the time came, he would do his best to
+help Jenny achieve for her son at least one prospect of humanity, one
+flashing opportunity to examine life.
+
+"You see, I knew what I wanted when I was quite tiny. Of course nothing
+was what I thought it would be. Nothing. Only I wanted to go on the
+stage and I went. I shouldn't like for young Frank to want to do
+something and have to stick here."
+
+"You've a fine notion of things, Jane," said Castleton. "By gad, if
+every mother were like you, what a race we should have."
+
+"I'm not in a hurry for him to do anything."
+
+"I meant what a race of Englishmen, not bicycles," Castleton explained.
+
+"Oh, I see," said Jenny vaguely. He was taking her aspirations out of
+their depth.
+
+"No, but I do think it's dreadful," she went on, "to see kids moping
+just because their mothers and fathers want them to stick at home. My
+mother wasn't like that. Yes, she used to go on at me, but she always
+wanted me to enjoy myself so long as she knew there was no harm in it."
+
+"Your mother, Jane, must have been a great woman."
+
+"I don't know about that, but she was a darling, and always very
+smart--you know, dressed very nice and had a good figure. But look at my
+father. He sends us a postcard sometimes with a picture of a bed or a
+bottle of Bass on it which is all he thinks about. And yet he's alive,
+and she's dead."
+
+Finally Castleton promised that should young Frank display a spark of
+ambition, he would do his best to help him achieve it.
+
+"Whatever it is," said Jenny. "Of course not if he wants to be a
+dustman, but anything that's all right."
+
+Then, the morning being nearly spent, they turned back towards Bochyn.
+Castleton mounted on a slope at a run to pull Jenny up from above.
+
+"Hullo," he cried, "somebody's been watching us."
+
+"They always do on these towans," said Jenny.
+
+"I'll soon haul the scoundrel into daylight," and with a shout he
+charged down through the rushes, almost falling over the prostrate body
+of Old Man Veal. Castleton set him on his feet with a jerk and demanded
+his business, while Jenny with curling lips stood by. The old man would
+not say a word, and his captor, balked of chastisement by his evident
+senility, let him shamble off into the waste.
+
+"That's one of the men on the farm," said Jenny.
+
+"I suppose he'll get the sack."
+
+"I don't think so, then. I think he's edged on by someone else to follow
+me round."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLV: _London Pride_
+
+
+Jenny and Castleton followed the course of the stream along the valley
+towards Bochyn. The bracken was a vivid brown upon the hillsides; the
+gorse was splashed with unusual gold even for Cornwall; lapwings cried,
+wheeling over the head of the ploughman ploughing the moist rich earth;
+a flight of wild duck came unerringly down the valley, settling with a
+great splash in the blue and green marsh.
+
+Trewhella met them, stepping suddenly out from a grove of arbutus trees,
+a thunderous figure.
+
+"What do 'ee mean?" he roared. "What do 'ee mean by carrying my missus
+off for wagging tongues? Damn ye, you great overgrown Cockney, damn ye,
+what do 'ee mean to come sparking here along?"
+
+By Trewhella's side stood his dog, a coarse-coated, wall-eyed brute,
+half bobtail, half collie. Much alike seemed the pair of them, snarling
+together in the path.
+
+Jenny whitened. She had not yet seen so much of the wolf in her husband.
+Castleton looked at her, asking mutely whether he should knock Trewhella
+backwards or whether, as the world must be truckled to, he should keep
+quiet.
+
+"Shut up," said Jenny to her husband. "You ought to be ashamed of
+yourself. What do you think I am? Your servant? Mind, or I shall tell
+you off as you've never been told off yet. Let me pass, please, and
+what's more let my friend pass. Come on, Fuz. Take no notice of him.
+He's potty. He's soft. Him! Pooh!"
+
+She gathered her skirts round her as if to negotiate mud and swept past
+Zachary, who, all wolf now, recoiled for his spring. Castleton, however,
+seized his wrist, saying tranquilly:
+
+"I'm afraid, Mr. Trewhella, you're not very well. Good-bye, Mrs.
+Trewhella. I'll come round this afternoon, then."
+
+Jenny passed on towards Bochyn and Trewhella turned to follow her at
+once; but Castleton still held him, and whenever Jenny looked round he
+was still holding him. She waited, however, at the bottom of the garden
+for Zachary's return, strewing the ground by her feet with spikes of
+veronica blooms. Presently he appeared, his dog running before him, and
+at the sight of Jenny shook wildly his fists.
+
+"You witch," he cried. "How have 'ee the heart to make me so mad? But I
+deserve it. Oh, God Almighty, I deserve it. I that went a-whoring away
+from my own country."
+
+"Shut up," Jenny commanded. "And talk decently in front of me, even if I
+am your wife."
+
+"I took a bride from the Moabites," he moaned. "I forsook Thy paths, O
+Lord, and went lusting after the heathen."
+
+He fell on his knees in the shining November mud; Jenny regarded him as
+people regard a man in a fit.
+
+"Forgive me, O God, for I am a sinful man. I have gone fornicketing
+after lilywhite doves that turned to serpents. I have coveted the love
+of woman and I have forsaken Thy paths, O Lord. I ran to gaze at loose
+women dancing in their nakedness, and----"
+
+"Kindly shut up," Jenny interrupted. "And don't kneel there like a
+lunatic talking about me as if I hadn't got nothing on when you saw me.
+Don't do it, I say, because I don't like it."
+
+Trewhella rose and faced his wife. The drops of sweat stood on his
+forehead big as pebbles. His eyes were mad. She had seen eyes like them
+in Ashgate Asylum.
+
+"Why were 'ee sent to tempt me? Don't 'ee know I do love 'ee more than I
+do love the Kingdom of Heaven?"
+
+"Well, I wish you wouldn't. It doesn't interest me, this love of yours
+as you call it. And you needn't carry on about Mr. Castleton, because
+he's only a friend, _which_ you can't understand."
+
+Trewhella began to weep.
+
+"I thought you were safe down here," he said. "I thought I held 'ee safe
+as carried corn, and when I brought 'ee to Bochyn, I was so happy as a
+piece of gold. All the time I've been preaching, I've wished to be home
+along, thinking of 'ee and wishing I held 'ee in my arms right through
+the black old night, as I belong."
+
+Jenny shuddered.
+
+"And 'tis a lawful thought," he cried defiantly. "You're my wife, you're
+mine by the power of the Lord; you're mine by the right of the flesh."
+
+"I'm going indoors," said Jenny coldly, and she left him raging at
+temptation. Then she sat down and wrote to Castleton.
+
+     Dear Fuz,
+
+     Perhaps you hadn't better come and see me again--I expect you'll
+     think I'm mad, but it isn't any good to have rows because I've got
+     to live here any old way.
+
+     I liked seeing you, dear Fuz, and I'm sorry he made a fool of
+     himself and I'll write some day about young Frank. No more now from
+     your little friend,
+
+     Jenny.
+
+     Who cares?
+
+She gave the letter to Thomas, who took it down to the One and All. It
+was Jenny's inherent breeding that made her send it. All her pride bade
+her insist on Castleton's company, begged her to defy Trewhella, and,
+notwithstanding scenes the most outrageous, to establish her own will.
+But there was Fuz to be considered. It would not be fair to implicate
+him in the miserable muddle which she had created for herself. He
+belonged to another life where farmers did not grovel in the mud before
+Heaven's wrath, where husbands did not swear foully at wives, asking
+forgiveness from above before the filthy echo had died away. Fuz was
+better out of it. Yet she wished she could see him again. There were
+many questions not yet asked.
+
+Trewhella was foxy when next he discussed Castleton with Jenny.
+
+"He wasn't too careful about calling of 'ee Mrs. Trewhella," he began.
+
+"Don't be silly. He always knew me as Jenny in the old days."
+
+"Oh, I do hate to hear 'ee tell of they old days. I do hate every day
+before I took 'ee for my own."
+
+"I can't help your troubles that way," said Jenny. "Perhaps you'd like
+to have married me in the cradle?"
+
+"I'd like to have kept 'ee locked up from the time you were a frothy
+maiden," he admitted. "I do sweat when I think of men's eyes staring at
+your lovely lill body."
+
+Jenny stamped her rage at the allusion.
+
+"Yes, you ought to have known my mother's aunts," she said. "They'd have
+suited you, I think. They wanted to shut me up and make me religious."
+
+The emphasis with which she armed her reminiscence gave the verbs an
+undue value, as if the aunts had intended actually to lock her in a
+larder of hymn-books.
+
+"I wish with all my heart they had done so," said Trewhella. "Better
+that than the devil's palace of light where you belonged to dance. Oh, I
+wish that Cockney were in Hell."
+
+"I can't do more than ask him to go away, so don't keep on being rude
+about my friends," said Jenny.
+
+"Ess, and I wish now I'd never kicked up such a rig and frightened the
+pair of 'ee. He was too quick. That's where it's to."
+
+"What are you talking about?"
+
+"Why, if I hadn't been so straight out, I might have trapped you both
+fitty. If I'd waited and watched awhile."
+
+Trewhella sighed regretfully.
+
+"You are a sneak," said Jenny.
+
+"Oh, I wish I could see your heart, missus. Look, I've never asked 'ee
+this before. How many men have loved 'ee before I did?"
+
+"Hundreds," said Jenny mockingly.
+
+"Kissed 'ee?" shrieked Trewhella.
+
+"Of course. Why not?"
+
+Veins wrote themselves across his forehead, veins livid as the vipers of
+Medusa.
+
+"Witch," he groaned. "'Tis well I'm a saved man or I might murder 'ee.
+Hark! hark! Murder 'ee, you Jezebel! I do know now what Jehu did feel
+when he cried, 'Throw her down and call up they dogs and tear the whore
+to pieces.'"
+
+He ran from the room, raving.
+
+After this new fit when the wolf drove out the fox, Trewhella settled
+down to steady cunning. Jenny became conscious of being watched more
+closely. Not even the orchard was safe. There was no tree trunk that
+might not conceal a wormlike form, no white mound of sand that was not
+alive with curiosity, no wind even that was not fraught with whispered
+commentaries upon her simplest actions.
+
+Bochyn could no longer have been endured without young Frank and May and
+Granfa. These three could strip the most secretive landscape of terrors,
+could heal the wildest imaginations. All the winter through, Trewhella
+never relaxed his efforts to trip her up over her relations with
+Castleton, and compel an admission of the bygone love-affair that would
+not necessarily, as he pointed out, involve her in a present intrigue.
+
+"How did 'ee send him away, if there was nothing at all?"
+
+"Because I'm ashamed for any of my friends to see what sort of a man
+I've married. That's why."
+
+"I'll catch 'ee out one day," vowed Trewhella. "You do think I'm just a
+fool, but I'm more, missus; I'm brae cunning. I can snare a wild thing
+wi' any man in Cornwall."
+
+"Fancy," Jenny mocked.
+
+And round the dark farmhouse the winter storms howled and roared,
+beating against the windows and ravening by the latches.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVI: _May Morning_
+
+
+Young Frank had always been from his birth an excitement; but as he
+neared, reached and passed his eighteenth month, the geometrical
+progression of his personality far exceeded the mere arithmetical
+progression of his age. He could now salute with smiles those whom he
+loved, was empurpled by rage at any repression, and was able to crawl
+about with a blusterous energy that seemed inspired by the equinoctial
+gales of March. Jenny's fingers would dive into his mouth to discover
+teeth that were indeed pearls in their whiteness and rarity. Exquisite
+adumbrations of herself were traceable in his countenance, and so far,
+at any rate, his hair was curled and silvery as hers was once famed to
+be. His cheeks were rose-fired; his eyes were deep and gay. Only his
+ears seemed, whatever way they were judged, to follow his father's
+shape; but even they at present merely gave him a pleasant elfin look.
+Jenny was very proud of young Frank.
+
+Trewhella, with the lapse of time, and after another violent outbreak on
+account of the arrival of a letter from Castleton, ceased to importune
+his wife with jealous denunciations of the old glittering days before
+they met. The farm prospered: he took to counting his money more than
+ever since an heir had given him a pledge for the commemoration of his
+thrift. During the winter Jenny drove once or twice in the high cart to
+Camston, and, with May to help her, scornfully turned out the contents
+of the drapery shops. On these occasions Granfa was made responsible for
+young Frank, and when they came back he had to give a very full account
+of his regency. Other winter events included a visit from Mr. Corin, who
+had opened a dairy away up in the east of the Duchy. He annoyed Jenny
+by his exaggerated congratulations, embracing as they did himself as
+much as Zachary and her. Mrs. Trewhella would from time to time announce
+her surrender of the household keys; but Jenny was not anxious to
+control anything except her son, and the old woman, manifestly pleased,
+continued to superintend with blink and cackle maid Emily. Jenny lost
+her fear of bullocks, dreaded insects no longer, and might have been a
+Cornish maid all her life, save for her clear-cut Cockney, to which not
+a single western burr adhered. She no longer pined for London; was never
+sentimental towards eight o'clock; and certainly could not be supposed
+to exist in an atmosphere of regret. At the same time, she could not be
+said to have settled down, because her husband was perpetually an
+intrusion on any final serenity. She could not bear the way he ate, the
+grit and soil and raggedness of his face; she loathed the grimy scars
+upon his hands, his smell of corduroy. She hated his mental outlook, his
+pre-occupation with hell, his narrow pride, and lack of humor, his
+pricking avarice and mean vanity, his moral cowardice and religious
+bravery, his grossness and cunning and boastfulness and cruelty to
+animals. She feared the storms that would one day arise between him and
+his son. She felt even now the clashing of the two hostile temperaments:
+already there were signs of future struggles, and it was not just a
+fancy that young Frank was always peevish at his father's approach.
+
+The equinox sank asleep to an April lullaby. Lambs bleated on the
+storm-washed air. The ocean plumed itself like a mating bird. Then
+followed three weeks of gray weather and much restlessness on the part
+of young Frank, who cried and fumed and was very naughty indeed. What
+with Frank and the southeast wind and the cold rain, Jenny's nerves
+suffered, and when May morning broke in a dazzle, she thought it would
+be a good plan to leave young Frank with Granfa, and in May's company to
+go for a long walk. May was delighted and together they set out.
+
+They followed the path of the valley past the groves of arbutus, past
+the emerald meadows down into the sandy waste over which the stream
+carried little pebbles to the sea, flowing over the wide shallows like a
+diamonded lattice. They plunged in the towans that never seemed to
+change with the seasons. They rested in the warm hollows under larksong.
+They climbed precipices and ran along ridges, until at last they raced
+gloriously down a virgin drift out on to the virgin sands on which, a
+long way off, the waves were breaking in slow curves, above them a film
+of spray tossed backwards by the breeze blowing from the shore.
+
+Jenny sat in the solitude, making a necklace of wine-stained shells. She
+was dressed in some shade of fawn that seemed to be absorbed by these
+wide flat sands, so that she became smaller and slighter. She wore a
+silver-gray bonnet set closely round her cheeks in a ruching of ivory.
+May was in scarlet and looked, as she lay there in the castness, not
+much bigger than Jenny's cap of scarlet stockinette, left long ago on
+the beach at Clacton.
+
+"Hullo, there's somebody coming along the sands. Can you see them?"
+asked Jenny.
+
+"A long way off?" inquired May, peering.
+
+"Yes, just a speck--now--where those rocks are. No, you're looking in
+the wrong place. Much further along," directed Jenny.
+
+"You _can_ see a way," said May.
+
+The figure drew nearer, but was still too far off for them to determine
+the quality or sex, as they watched the sea-swallows keep ever their
+distance ahead, swift-circling companies.
+
+"I wonder who it is?" said Jenny.
+
+"I can't ever remember seeing anyone on the beach before," said May.
+
+"Nor can I. It's a man."
+
+"Is it?"
+
+"Or I think so," Jenny added.
+
+"What a line of footmarks there'll be when he's gone past," said May.
+
+"It is a man," Jenny asserted.
+
+Suddenly she went dead white, flushed crimson, whitened again and
+dropped the half-strung necklace of shells.
+
+"I believe I know him, too," she murmured.
+
+"Shut up," scoffed May. "Unless it's Fuz?"
+
+"No, it's not him. May, I'd like to be alone when he comes along. Or I
+don't think I'll stay. Yes, I will. And no, don't go. You stay, too. It
+_is_ him. It is."
+
+Maurice approached them. He gave much the same impression as on the
+first night of the ballet of Cupid, when at the end of the court he
+raised his hat to Jenny and Irene.
+
+"I--I wondered if I should meet you," he said.
+
+His presence was less disturbing to Jenny than his slow advance. She
+greeted him casually as if she were saluting an acquaintance passed
+every morning:
+
+"Hullo."
+
+Maurice was silent.
+
+"Isn't it a lovely morning?" said Jenny. "This is my sister May."
+
+Maurice raised his cap a second time.
+
+"I wonder," he said, looking intently at Jenny, "I wonder if--if----" he
+plunged into the rest of the sentence. "Can I speak to you alone a
+minute?"
+
+"Whatever for?" asked Jenny.
+
+"Oh, I wanted to ask you something."
+
+Jenny debated with herself a moment. Why not? He had no power to move
+her now. She was able coldly to regard him standing there on the
+seashore, a stranger, no more to her than a piece of driftwood left by
+the tide.
+
+"I'll catch you up in a minute," she said to May.
+
+"All right, I'll go on. Pleased to have met you," said May, shaking
+hands shyly with Maurice.
+
+He and Jenny watched her going towards the towans. When she was out of
+earshot, Maurice burst forth:
+
+"Jenny, Jenny, I've longed for this moment."
+
+"You must have treated yourself very badly then," she answered.
+
+"I did. I----"
+
+"Look," said Jenny sharply. "It's no good for you to start off, because
+I don't want to listen to _any_thing you say. I don't _want_ to."
+
+"I don't deserve you should," Maurice humbly agreed. "All the same I
+wish you would."
+
+It may have been that in his voice some vibrant echo of past pleading
+touched her, so that across a gulf of four years the old Jenny asked:
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+He seemed on fire to seize the chance of explanation and would no doubt
+have forthwith plunged into a wilderness of emotions, had not Jenny seen
+May signaling from the towans.
+
+"She wants me to go over to her."
+
+"But you'll come out here again?"
+
+"I might--I might come out on the cliffs over there." She pointed
+towards Crickabella. "I don't know. I don't think I shall. But don't try
+and see me at home, because I wouldn't know you there."
+
+She ran from him suddenly across the sands back to May.
+
+"Why did you wave like that?" she asked.
+
+"I think there's been somebody watching you," said May, looking pale and
+anxious.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVII: _Nightlight Time_
+
+
+Trewhella gave no sign that he knew anything of the event on the sands;
+yet Jenny's instinct was to avoid a meeting with Maurice. Once or twice,
+indeed, she was on the point of starting out; but she never brought
+herself to the actual effort, and the May days went by without her
+leaving the precincts of Bochyn. Maurice had made but a small impression
+upon her emotion; had raised not a single heartbeat after the first
+shock of his approach over the long sands. She had no curiosity to
+discover why he had come down here, with what end in view, with what
+impulse. She cared not to know what his life had been in those four
+years, what seas or shores he had adventured, what women he had known.
+Yet somehow she felt, through a kind of belated sympathy, that every
+morning he was out on the cliffs by Crickabella watching for a sight of
+her coming up the hill. Should she go? Should she finally dismiss him,
+speaking coldly, contemptuously, lashing him with her scorn and wounded
+pride and dead love? June was in view, and still she paused. June came
+in, royally azure. Yet she hesitated; while young Frank waved to the
+butterflies and grew daily in the sun like a peach.
+
+"He do look so happy as the King of Spain," said old Mr. Champion.
+"Grand lill chap, he is sure enough. Do 'ee hear what I'm speaking, my
+young handsome?"
+
+Granfa bent down and tickled the boy.
+
+"Bless his heart," said Jenny.
+
+"I were down to Trewinnard yesterday," said Granfa, "and I were talking
+about him to a gentleman, or I should say an artist, who belongs
+painting down along. Says he's in a mind to bide here all the
+summertime. He do like it very well, I believe."
+
+"What's he like?" Jenny asked.
+
+"This artist? Oh, he's a decent-looking young chap. Nothing anyone could
+dislike about him. Very quiet, they're telling, and a bit melan-choly.
+But I believe that's a common case with artists. And I'm not surprised,
+for it must be a brim melancholy job painting an old cliff that any
+ornary man wouldn't want to look at twice, leave alone days at a
+stretch. But he told me he didn't properly belong to paint at all. He
+said his own trade was writing."
+
+Unquestionably this was Maurice. All day Jenny thought of him out on the
+cliffs. The idea began to oppress her, and she felt haunted by his
+presence; it would be better to meet him and forbid his longer stay.
+To-morrow would offer a fine opportunity, because Zachary was going to
+Plymouth to arrange about the purchase of some farm implements and would
+not only be away to-night, but was unlikely to be back till late the
+next day. Not that it mattered whether he went away or not; yet somehow
+she would like to lie awake thinking of what she would say to Maurice,
+and to lie awake beside her husband was inconceivable to Jenny. How much
+better to be alone with young Frank. She would certainly go to-morrow.
+Maurice might not be there: if he were not, she would be glad, and there
+would be an end of the dismay caused by his presence, for she would not
+move a step from Bochyn till she heard of his departure.
+
+Trewhella now came out into the garden where they were sitting. He was
+equipped for Plymouth, and looked just the same as on the afternoon
+Jenny met him at Hagworth Street. He was wearing the same ill-fitting
+suit of broadcloth and the same gleaming tie of red satin.
+
+"Well, I'm going Plymouth," he announced.
+
+"You're staying the night?" she asked.
+
+"Ess, I think."
+
+"Well, are you?"
+
+"Ess, I believe."
+
+He never would commit himself to a definite statement.
+
+"What time are you coming back to-morrow?"
+
+"In the afternoon, I suppose."
+
+"In the afternoon?" she repeated.
+
+Trewhella looked at her quickly.
+
+"Kiss me good-bye, my dear."
+
+"No, I don't want to," said Jenny, freezing.
+
+He looked harder at her and pulled his mustache; then he leaned down to
+prod a farewell into his son's ribs. Young Frank immediately began to
+yell. The father chuckled sardonically and strode off to the cart,
+calling loudly as he went for Old Man Veal. He paused, with his foot on
+the step, to impress something on the stealthy old man. Then he told
+Thomas to get down and Veal to take his place. There was a sound of
+wheels, and everybody sighed with relief.
+
+The long drowsy June day buzzed on. They all lay about in the shade,
+wishing they could splash through the stream like the cattle.
+
+"I can't think why we don't all go paddling, I can't," said May.
+
+"Oh, why ever not--not with young Frank?" cried Jenny, clapping her
+hands.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And Granfa must come," Jenny insisted.
+
+"Oh, no, no, no," declared Granfa, smiling very proudly at the
+suggestion. "No, no, no! But I might go along with 'ee and pick a few
+wrinkles off the rocks."
+
+Jenny thought how imperative it was for Maurice to be out of these
+planned allurements of summer. She would never enjoy herself, if all the
+time she felt he were close by, liable to appear suddenly. Certainly she
+would see him to-morrow.
+
+"We might even bathe," said May dauntlessly.
+
+"Well, don't 'ee tell Zack, then," Granfa advised. "For I suppose he can
+see the devil in the deep sea so clear as anywhere else. That man's got
+a nose for evil, I believe."
+
+The sun was now hanging over the marsh in a dazzling haze of gold in
+which the midges danced innumerable. Long shadows threw themselves
+across the hills. The stream of light dried up as the sun went down into
+the sea. Cool scented airs, heralds of night, traveled up the valley;
+traveled swiftly like the spray of fountains.
+
+Jenny went to bed soon after half-past nine. It was scarcely dark. Along
+her sill were great crimson roses like cups of cool wine, and from every
+ghostly white border of the garden came up the delicious odor of pinks
+in full June bloom. Moths were dancing, fluttering, hovering: a large
+white owl swept past in a soundless curve. And while she brooded upon
+this perfumed silence, away in London the girls were trooping down for
+the second ballet, were giving the last touch with a haresfoot to their
+carmine beauty, were dabbing the last powder on their cheeks or rubbing
+the liquid white upon their wrists and hands. How hot it must be in the
+theater. She heard quite plainly the tinkle of the sequins and spangles
+as the girls came trooping down the stone stairs into the wings to wait
+there for the curtain's rise. Then she perceived in the dim light Old
+Man Veal diligently cleaning his master's gun. Wishing he would not sit
+there underneath her window, she turned back into the tall, shadowy room
+and lit the candle. Soon she heard his retreating footsteps, and watched
+him go down the garden path with the slim and wicked gun beneath his
+arm. Young Frank, rose-misted with dreams of butterflies and painted
+rubber balls, lay in his hooded cot. Shading him with her hand, which
+the candlelight made lucent as a shell, she watched him lying there, his
+fingers clasped tightly round a coral hung with silver bells, his woolly
+lamb beside his cheek. Jenny wondered, if she had been a boy, whether
+she would have looked exactly like young Frank. Then she fell to
+speculating whether, had he belonged to her and Maurice, he would have
+been the same dear rogue as now. Oh, he was hers, hers only, and
+whatever man were his father, he would be nothing more than hers!
+
+She went to see how May was getting on, and in company they undressed,
+as they used to undress before Jenny went on the stage. Soon both of
+them in long white nightgowns, each with a golden candle, pattered in
+once more to marvel at young Frank.
+
+"Oh, I must have him in bed with me, May."
+
+"Well, why don't you?"
+
+Carefully they lifted him, and, warm with sun-dyed sleep, laid him in
+Jenny's cool bed.
+
+"Light the nightlight, there's a love," said Jenny. "Good night."
+
+"Good night," whispered May, fading like a ghost through the black
+doorway, leaving the tall room to Jenny and Frank. Tree shadows,
+conjured by the moon, waved on the walls, but very faintly, for the
+nightlight burned with steady flame in the opalescent saucer. Jenny
+settled herself to think what she should say to Maurice next morning.
+But soon she forgot all about Maurice, and "I'd rather like to have a
+little girl," was her last thought before she went dreaming.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVIII: _Carni Vale_
+
+
+Jenny woke up the next morning in a gray land of mist. A sea-fog had
+come in to obliterate Trewinnard and even the sparkling month of June,
+creating a new and impalpable world, a strange undated season. Above the
+elm trees and the hill-tops the fog floated and swayed in vaporous
+eddies. Jenny's first impulse was to postpone the meeting on the cliffs,
+and yet the day somehow suited the enterprise. Shrouded fittingly, she
+would face whatever ghosts Maurice had power to raise.
+
+"I'm going for a walk," she told May, "by myself. I want to tell Maurice
+not to hang about here any more because it gets on my nerves."
+
+"I'll look after Frank when you're gone," said May.
+
+"Don't let him eat any more wool off that lamb of his, will you?"
+
+"All right."
+
+"I sha'n't be long. Or I don't expect so."
+
+"If he comes back from Plymouth before you come in, where shall I say
+you've gone?" May asked.
+
+"Oh, tell him 'Rats!' I can't help his troubles. So long," said Jenny
+emphatically.
+
+"Say 'ta--ta' nicely to your mother, young Frank," commanded Aunt May.
+
+As Jenny faded into the mist, the boy hammered his farewells upon the
+window-pane; and for awhile in the colorless air she saw his rosy cheeks
+burning like lamps, or like the love for him in her own heart. Before
+she turned up the drive, she waited to listen for the click and tinkle
+of Granfa's horticulture, but there was no sound of his spade. Farther
+along she met Thomas.
+
+"Morning! Mrs. Trewhella!"
+
+"Morning, young Thomas."
+
+"Going for a walk, are 'ee?"
+
+"On the cliffs," Jenny nodded.
+
+"You be careful how you do walk there. I wouldn't like for 'ee to fall
+over."
+
+"Don't you worry. I'll take jolly good care I don't do that."
+
+"Well, anybody ought to be careful on they cliffs. Nasty old place that
+is on a foggy morning." Then as she became in a few steps a wraith, he
+chanted in farewell courtesy, "Mrs. Trewhella!"
+
+Along the farm road Jenny found herself continually turning round to
+detect in her wake an unseen follower. She had a feeling of pursuit
+through the shifting vagueness all around, and stopped to listen. There
+was no footstep: only the drip-drip, drip-drip of the fog from the elm
+boughs. Before she knew that she had gone so far, the noise of the sea
+sounded from the grayness ahead, and beyond there was the groan of a
+siren from some uncertain ship. Again she paused for footsteps, and
+there was nothing but the drip-drip, drip-drip of the fog in the
+quickset hedge. On the steep road that ran up towards Crickabella, the
+fog lifted from her immediate neighborhood, and she could see the
+washed-out sky and silver sun with vapors curling across the strange
+luminousness. On either side, thicker by contrast, the mist hung in
+curtains dreary and impenetrable. Very soon the transparency in which
+she walked was veiled again, and through an annihilation of shape and
+color and scent and sound, she pressed forward to the summit.
+
+On the plateau, although the fog was dense enough to mask the edge of
+the cliff at a distance of fifty yards and to merge in a gray confusion
+sky and sea beyond, the fresher atmosphere lightened the general
+effect. She could watch the fog sweeping up and down in diaphanous forms
+and winged nonentities. The silence in the hedgeless, treeless country
+was profound. The sea, oily calm in such weather, gave very seldom a low
+sob in some cavern beneath the cliff. Far out a solitary gull cried
+occasionally.
+
+How absurd, thought Jenny suddenly, to expect Maurice on such a day.
+What painting was possible in so elusive a landscape, so immaterial a
+scene? He was not at all likely to be there. She stood for a moment
+listening, and was violently startled by the sight of some animal richly
+hued even in such a negation of color. The fox slipped by her with
+lowered brush and ears laid back, vanishing presently over the side of
+the cliff. She had thought for a second that it was Trewhella's dog, and
+her heart beat very quickly in the eerie imagination of herself and his
+master alone in this grayness. She walked on over the cushions of
+heather, pricking her ankles in the low bushes of gorse. Burnet roses
+were in bloom, lying like shells on the ground. Ahead of her she saw a
+lonely flower tremulous in the damp mist. It was a blue columbine, a
+solitary plant full blown. She thought how beautiful it looked and
+stooped to pluck it. On second thoughts she decided that it would be a
+shame not to let it live, this lovely deep-blue flower, nodding faintly.
+
+Jenny stood once more fronting the vapors on each side in turn, and was
+on the point of going home, when she perceived a shadow upon the mist
+that with approach acquired the outlines of a man and very soon proved
+to be Maurice. She noticed how pale he was and anxious, very unlike the
+old Maurice, even unlike himself of five or six weeks ago.
+
+"You've come at last," he said.
+
+"Yes, I've come to say you mustn't stay here no more. It worries me."
+
+"Jenny," he said, "I knew I'd been a fool before I saw you again last
+first of May. I've known for four years what a fool and knave I'd been;
+but, oh, God, I never knew so clearly till the other day, till I'd hung
+about these cliffs waiting for you to come."
+
+"Where was the good?" she asked. "It's years too late now."
+
+"When I heard from Castleton where you were, I tried not to come. He
+told me I should make things worse. He said it would be a crime. And I
+tried not to all this winter. But you haunted me. I could not rest, and
+in April the desire to see you became a madness. I had to come."
+
+"I think you acted very silly. It isn't as if you could do anything by
+coming. I never used to think about you."
+
+"You didn't?" he repeated, agonized.
+
+"Never. Never once," she stabbed. "I'd forgotten you."
+
+"I deserve it."
+
+"Of course you do. You can't mess up a girl's life and then come and say
+you're sorry the same as if you'd trod on her toe."
+
+They were walking along involuntarily, and through the mist Jenny's
+words of sense, hardened to adamantine sharpness by suffering, cut clear
+and cruel and true. She did not like, however, to prosecute the close
+encounter in such a profusion of space. She fancied her words were lost
+in the great fog, and sought for some familiar outline that should point
+the way to Crickabella. Presently a narrow serpentine path gave her the
+direction.
+
+"Along here," she said. "I can't talk up here. I feel as if there must
+be listeners in this fog. I wish it would get bright."
+
+"It's like my life has been without you," said Maurice.
+
+"Shut up," she stabbed again, "and don't talk silly. Your life's been
+quite all right till you took a sudden fancy to see me again."
+
+"Walk carefully," said Maurice humbly. "We're very near the cliff's
+edge."
+
+Land and air met in a wreathed obscurity.
+
+"Down here," said Jenny.
+
+They scrambled down into Crickabella, slipping on the pulpy leaves of
+withered bluebells, stumbling over clumps of fern and drenching
+themselves in the foxgloves, whose woolly leaves held the dripping fog.
+
+"This is where I often used to sit," said Jenny. "Only it's too wet in
+the grass now. There's a rock here that's fairly dry, though it does
+look rather like a gravestone sticking up out of the ground."
+
+They were now about half-way down the escarpment from the top of which
+the rampart of black cliff, sheer on either side of the path, ran up for
+twenty feet, so far as could be judged in the deceptive atmosphere.
+Jenny leaned against the stone outcrop and faced Maurice.
+
+"Jenny," he began, "when I didn't turn up at Waterloo that first of May,
+I must have been mad. I don't want to make excuses, but I must have been
+mad."
+
+"Yes, we can all say that, when we've done something we shouldn't have."
+
+"I know it's not an excuse. But I went away in a jangle of nerves. I set
+my heart on you coming out to Spain, and when you wouldn't and I was
+there and thought of the strain of a passionate love that seemed never
+likely to come to anything vital, I gave up all of a sudden. I can't
+explain. It was like that statue. I had to break it, and I broke my
+heart in the same way."
+
+"If you'd come back," said Jenny, determined he should know all his
+folly, "I'd have done anything, anything you asked. I'd have come to
+live with you forever."
+
+"Oh, don't torture me with the irony of it all. Why were you so
+uncertain, then?"
+
+"That's my business," she said coolly.
+
+"But I never really was out of love with you. I was always madly in
+love," Maurice cried. "I traveled all over Europe, thinking I'd finished
+with love. I tried to be happy without you and couldn't because I hadn't
+got you. I adored you the first moment I saw you. I adore you now and
+forever. Oh, believe me, my heart of hearts, my life, my soul, I love
+you now more, more than ever."
+
+"Only because I'm someone else's," said Jenny.
+
+"No," he cried. "No! no! The passion and impetuousness and unrestraint
+is all gone. I love you now--it sounds like cant--for yourself, for your
+character, your invincible joyousness, your glory in life, your
+perfection of form. Words! What are they? See how this fog destroys the
+world, making it ghostly. My mere passion for you is gone like the
+world. It's there, it must be there always, but your spirit, your
+personality can destroy it in a moment. Oh, what a tangle of nonsense.
+Forgive me. I want forgiveness, and once you said 'Bless you.' I want
+that."
+
+"I don't hate you now," Jenny said. "I did for a time. But not now. Now
+you're nothing. You just aren't at all. I've got a boy who I love--such
+a rogue, bless him--and what are you any more?"
+
+"I deserve all this. But once you were sorry when I--when I----"
+
+"Ah, once," she said. "Once _I_ was mad, too. I nearly died. I didn't
+care for nothing, not for _any_thing. You was the first man that made me
+feel things like love. You! And I gave you more than I'd ever given
+anyone, even my mother. And you threw it all back in my face--because
+you are a man, I suppose, and can't understand. And when I was mad to do
+something that would change me from ever, ever being soppy again, from
+ever loving anyone again, ever, ever, I went and gave myself to a
+rotter--a real, dirty rotter. Just nothing but that--if you know what I
+mean. And that was your fault. You started me off by teaching me love. I
+wanted to be loved. Yes. But I gave too much of myself to you as it was,
+and I gave nothing to him really. Only anyone would say I did. And then
+my mother went mad, because she thought I was gone gay; and she died;
+and I got married to what's nothing more than an animal. But they're all
+animals. All men. Some are nicer sorts of animals than others, but
+they're all the same. And that's me since you left me. Only now I've
+got a boy, and he's like _me_. He's got my eyes, and I'm going to teach
+him, so as he isn't an animal, see? And I've got my little sister May,
+who I promised I'd look after, and I have.... Go away, Maurice, leave
+me. I don't want you. I can't forgive you. I can only just not care
+whether you're there or not. But go away, because I don't want to be
+worried by other people."
+
+Maurice bowed his head.
+
+"I see, I see that I have suffered nothing," he said. "Superficial fool
+that I am. Shallow, shallow ass, incompetent, dull and unimaginative
+block! I'm glad I've seen you. I'm glad I've heard you say all that.
+You've taught me something--perhaps in time. I'm only twenty-eight
+now--and fancy, you're only twenty-four--so I can go and think what
+might have been and, better, what I may be through you, what I will be.
+I won't say I'm sorry. That would be an impertinence ... as you said, I
+simply am not at all."
+
+The mist closed round them thicker for a moment; then seemed to lighten
+very slowly. Jenny was staring at the cliff's top.
+
+"Is that a bush blowing up and down or a man's head bobbing?"
+
+"I don't see any man," he answered.
+
+"Good-bye," Jenny said.
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+She turned to the upward path, pulling herself up the quicker by
+grasping handfuls of fern fronds. Suddenly there was a shout through the
+fog.
+
+"Snared, my lill wild thing!"
+
+There came a report. Jenny fell backwards into the ferns and foxgloves
+and withered bluebells.
+
+"Good God!" cried Maurice. "You're hurt."
+
+"Something funny's happened. Oh! Oh! It's burning," she shrieked. "Oh,
+my throat! my throat!... my throat!"
+
+The sea-birds wheeled about the mist, screaming dismay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
+
+techinque=>technique
+
+assimiliated form=>assimilated form
+
+later's opinion=latter's opinion
+
+nose is high=>nose as high
+
+baseles=>baseless
+
+afternon=>afternoon
+
+biabolic strangeness=>diabolic strangeness
+
+yet you know=>let you know
+
+as got a most=>has got a most
+
+than oy=>than by
+
+unseeen follower=>unseen follower
+
+Bochym=>Bochyn
+
+Terpsichore=>Terpischore
+
+faintiest=>faintest
+
+shooked her head=>shook her head
+
+beanfast at Clacton=>beanfeast at Clacton
+
+you'm a marvel=>you're a marvel
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Carnival, by Compton Mackenzie
+
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