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.