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.