Jenny's first thought was an impulse of revenge upon the opposite sex
comparable with, but more drastic than, the resolution she had made on
hearing of Edie's disaster. She would devote her youth to "doing men
down." It was as if from the desert of the soul seared by Maurice, the
powers of the body were to sweep like a wild tribe maiming the creators
of her solitude. Maurice had stood for her as the epitome of man, and it
was to be expected that when he fell, he would involve all men in the
ruin. This hostility extended so widely that even her father was
included, and Jenny found herself brooding upon the humiliation of his
share in her origin.
This violent enmity finding its expression in physical repulsion
defeated itself, and Jenny could no longer attract victims. Moreover,
the primal instincts of sex perished in the drought of emotion; and soon
she wished for oblivion, dreading any activity of disturbance. The
desert was made, and was vast enough to circumscribe the range of her
vision with its expanse of monotony. Educated in Catholic ideals, she
would have fled to a nunnery, there coldly to languish until the fires
of divine adorations should burst from the ashes of earthly love.
Nunneries, however, were outside Jenny's set of conceptions. Death alone
would endow her with painless indifference in a perpetual serenity; but
the fear of death in one who lacked ability to regard herself from
outside was not mitigated by pictorial consolations. She could never
separate herself into audience and actor. Extinction appalled one
profoundly conscious of herself as an entity. By such a stroke she would
obliterate not merely herself, but her world as well. Suicides generally
possess the power of mental dichotomy. They kill themselves,
paradoxically, to see the effect. They are sorry for themselves, or
angry, or contemptuous: madness disintegrates their sense of personality
so that the various components run together. In a madman's huggermugger
of motives, impulses and reasons, one predominant butchers the rest for
its own gratification. Whatever abnormal conditions the shock of sorrow
had produced in Jenny's mental life, through them all she remained fully
conscious of her completeness and preserved unbroken the importance of
her personality. She could not kill herself.
The days were very long now, nor would she try to quicken them by
returning to the old life before she met Maurice. She would not with two
or three girls pass in review of the shops of Oxford Street or gossip by
the open windows of her club. In the dressing-room she would sit silent,
impatient of intrusion upon the waste with which she had surrounded
herself. The ballets used to drag intolerably. She found no refuge from
her heart in dancing, no consolation in the music and color. She danced
listlessly, glad when the task was over, glad when she came out of the
theater, and equally glad to leave Stacpole Terrace on the next day. In
bed she would lie awake meditating upon nothing; and when she slept, her
sleep was parched.
"Buck up, old girl, whatever's the matter?" Irene would ask, and Jenny,
resentful, would scowl at the _gaucherie_. She longed to be with her
mother again, and would visit Hagworth Street more often, hoping some
word would be uttered that would make it easy for her to subdue that
pride which, however deeply wounded by Maurice, still battled
invincibly, frightening every other instinct and emotion. But when the
words of welcome came, Jenny, shy of softness, would carry off existence
with an air, tears and reconciliation set aside. It was not long before
the rumor of her love's disaster was carried in whispers round the many
dressing-rooms of the Orient. Soon enough Jenny found the girls staring
at her when they thought her attention was occupied. She had always
seemed to them so invulnerable that her jilting excited a more than
usually diffused curiosity; but for a long time, though many rejoiced,
no girl was brave enough to ask malicious questions, intruding upon her
solitude.
June came in with the best that June can give of cloudless weather,
weather that is born in skies of peach-blossom, whose richness is never
lost in wine-dark nights pressed from the day's sweetness. What weather
it would have been for the country! Jenny used to sit for hours together
in St. James's Park, scratching aimlessly upon the gravel with the
ferule of her parasol. Men would stop and sit beside her, looking round
the corners of their eyes like actors taking a call. But she was
scarcely aware of their presence, and, when they spoke, would look up
vaguely perplexed so that they muttered apologies and moved along. Her
thoughts were always traveling through the desert of her soul. Unblessed
by mirage, they traveled steadily through a monotone towards an horizon
of brass. Her heart beat dryly and regularly like the tick of a clock,
and her memory merely recorded time. No relic of the past could bring a
tear; even the opal brooch was worn every day because it happened to be
useful. Once a letter from Maurice fell from her bag into the lake, and
she cared no more for it than the swan's feather beside which it
floated.
July came in hot and metallic. Every sunset was a foundry, and the
nights were like smoke. One day towards the end of the month Jenny,
walking down Cranbourn Street, thought she would pay a visit to Lilli
Vergoe. The room had not changed much since the day Jenny joined the
ballet. Lilli, in a soiled muslin dress, was smoking the same brand of
cigarettes in the same wicker-chair. The same photographs clung to the
mirror, or were stacked on the mantelshelf in palisades. The walls were
covered with Mr. Vergoe's relics.
"Hullo, Jenny! So you've found your way here at last. What's been wrong
with you lately? You're looking thin."
"It's this shocking hot weather."
"Why, when you came here before and I said it was hot, you said it was
lovely."
"Did I?" asked Jenny indifferently.
"How's your mother? And dad? And young May?"
"All right. I'm living along with Ireen Dale now."
"I know. Whatever made you do that?"
"Why shouldn't I?"
"I shouldn't call them your style," said Lilli positively.
"Ireen's nice."
"Yes, she's all right. But Winnie Dale's dreadful. And look at her
mother. She's like an old charwoman. And that youngest sister."
"Oh, them, I never see _them_."
"You've heard about me, I suppose?"
"No, what?" asked Jenny, politely inquisitive.
"I've turned suffragette."
"You never haven't? Oh, Lil, what a dreadful thing!"
"It's not. It's great. I used to think so myself, but I've changed my
mind."
"Oh, Lilli, I think it's terrible. A suffragette? But what an unnatural
lot of women you must go around with."
"They're not," said Lilli, loud in defense of her associates.
"A lot of Plain Janes and No Nonsense with their hair all screwed back.
I know. And all walking on one another's petticoats. Suffragette
Sallies! What are they for? Tell me that."
"Hasn't it never struck you there's a whole heap of girls in this world
that's got nothing to do?"
Lilli spoke sadly. There was a life's disillusionment in the question.
"Yes; but that doesn't say they should go making sights of themselves,
shouting and hollering. Get out! Besides, what's the Salvation Army
done?"
"You don't understand."
"No, and I don't want to understand."
"Why don't you come round to our club? I'll introduce you to Miss
Bailey."
"Who's she?"
"She's the president."
Jenny considered the offer a moment. Soon she decided that, dreary as
the world was, it would not be brightened by an introduction to Miss
Bailey. In the dressing-room that night, during the wait between the two
ballets, Elsie Crauford, who had long been waiting for an opportunity to
avenge Jenny's slighting references to Willie's evening dress, thought
she would risk an encounter.
"I didn't know your Maurice had gone quite sudden," she said. "Aren't
you going to do anything about it?"
"You've blacked your nose, Elsie Crauford."
"Have I? Where?" Elsie had seized a hand-glass.
"Yes, you have, poking it into other people's business. You curious
thing! What am I going to do about it? Punch into you, if you're not
sharp."
"He seemed so fond of you, too."
"You never saw him but once, when you blew in with the draught in that
flash hat of yours."
"No, but Madge Wilson told me you was absolutely mad about one another.
It seems so funny he should leave you. But Madge said it wouldn't last.
She said you weren't getting a jolly fine time for nothing. Funny thing,
you always knew such a lot before you got struck on a fellow yourself.
What you weren't going to do! You aren't so much cleverer than us after
all."
"_Who_ told you?" demanded Jenny.
"Madge Wilson did."
"Don't take any notice of _her,"_ Maudie Chapman advised at this point.
"You jest shut up, Elsie Crauford. Always making mischief."
"I'm tired of Jenny Pearl's always knowing better than anyone without
being told off."
"Told off! Who by? _You_?" gasped Jenny.
Then Madge Wilson herself came into the dressing-room.
"Hullo, duck," she said, surprised by Jenny's apparent reentry into
society.
"Are you speaking to me, Madge Wilson? Because I don't want to talk to
you. A nice friend. Hark at your fine friends, girls. They're the
rotters that take you off behind your back."
"Whatever's the matter?" Madge asked.
"Yes, you don't know, do you? But I wouldn't be a sneak like you! I'd
say out what I thought and not care for anyone. I wasn't getting a jolly
fine time for nothing? And what about you, Mrs. Straightcut? But that's
the way. Girls you think are your friends, girls _you_ take out and give
a good time, they're the first to turn round on you. I wonder you
haven't all gone hoarse with the way you've talked me to pieces these
last weeks. I can hear you mumbling and whispering in corners. 'Have you
heard about Jenny Pearl? Isn't it shocking? Oh, I do think it's a
dreadful thing. What a terrible girl.' God, and look at _you_. Married
women! Yes, and what have you married? Why, there isn't a girl in this
dressing-room whose husband can afford to keep her. Husbands! Why,
they're no better than--"
"She's been going out with Lilli Vergoe," interrupted Elsie sneeringly.
"Jenny Pearl's turned into a suffragette."
"What of it? You and your six pairs of gloves that your Willie bought
you. Well, if he did, _which_ I don't think, he must have broke open the
till to do it."
Madge Wilson's disloyalty effected for Jenny what nothing else had done.
It made the blood course fast, the heart beat: it kindled her eyes
again. That night in bed, she thought of falseness and treachery and
cried herself to sleep.