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 _crepe 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.