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 Valerie 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 Valerie. "Love's
silly."
Valerie 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 crepe 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 Valerie's breast, went to sleep; she was drowsily glad when
Valerie kissed her, murmuring in a whisper melodious as the splash of
the Saone 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
Valerie. 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 Valerie in her deep voice; and Jenny
felt a thrill at the idea of lying snug in the alcove with Valerie'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 Valerie,
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 Valerie 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 Valerie blew out the candlelight.
"Oo-er!" cried Jenny. "We aren't going to sleep in the dark?"
"Of course we are, kiddie," said Valerie; and somehow darkness did not
matter when Jenny could sail off into sleep clasping Valerie'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 Valerie 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 Valerie 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 Valerie 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
Valerie 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 Valerie'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 Valerie 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 Lacedaemon,
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 Valerie'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 Valerie 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 Valerie 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
Valerie Duval. There she was, indeed, in Valerie'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 naive
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 repousse. 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.