Suffragism viewed in retrospect was shoddy embroidery for the _vie
interieure_ of Jenny. There was no physical exhilaration for her in
wrestling with policemen, and the intellectual excitement of controversy
would never be likely to appeal to a mind naturally unfitted for
argument. There was, too, about her view of the whole business something
of Myrrhine's contempt. She may have been in an abnormal condition of
acute hostility to the opposite sex; but as soon as she found herself in
a society whose antipathy towards men seemed to be founded on inability
to attract the hated male, all her common sense cried out against
committing herself to such a devil-driven attitude. She felt that
something must be wrong with so obviously an ineffective aggregation of
Plain Janes. She was not concerned with that unprovided-for surplus of
feminine population. She had no acquaintance with that asceticism
produced by devotion to the intellect. She perceived, though not
consciously, the inherent weakness of the whole movement in its failure
to supply an emotional substitute for more elemental passions.
Jenny was shrewd enough to understand that leaders like Miss Bailey and
Miss Ragstead were logically justified in demanding a vote. She could
understand that they would be able to use it to some purpose; but at the
same time she realized that to the majority of women a vote would be
merely an encumbrance. Jenny also saw through the folly of agitation
that must depend for success on equality of physique, and half divined
that the prime cause of such extravagance lay in the needs of feminine
self-expression. Nuns are wedded to Christ; suffragists, with the
notable exceptions of those capable of sustaining an intellectual
predominance, must remain spiritual old maids. As Jenny asked, "What do
they all want?" Very soon the inhabitants of Mecklenburg Square became
as unreal as unicorns, and the whole episode acquired the reputation of
an interlude of unaccountable madness from the memory of which the
figure of Miss Ragstead stood out cool and tranquil and profoundly sane.
Jenny would in a way have been glad to meet her again; but she was too
shy to suggest meeting outside the domain of the Women's Political,
Social and Economic League, and their auspices were now unimaginable. In
order to avoid the whole subject, Jenny began to avoid Lilli Vergoe; and
very soon, partly owing to the opportunities of propinquity, partly
owing to a renewed desire for it, her friendship with Irene Dale was
reconstituted on a firmer basis than before.
Six months had now elapsed since that desolate first of May. The ballet
of Cupid was taken off about the same time, and the occupation of
rehearsing for a new one had steered Jenny through the weeks immediately
following Maurice's defection. She was now dancing in a third ballet in
which she took so little interest that no account of it is necessary.
The pangs of outraged love were drugged to painlessness by time. From a
superficial standpoint the wounds were healed, that is, if a dull
insensibility to the original cause of the evil be a cure. Jenny no
longer missed Maurice on particular occasions, and, having grown used to
his absence, was not aware she missed him in a wider sense. Love so
impassioned as theirs, love lived through in moments of individual
ecstasy, was in the verdict of average comment a disease; but average
comment failed to realize that, like the scarlet fever of her youth, its
malignant influence would be extended in complications of abnormal
emotional states. Average comment did not perceive that the worst
tragedies of unhappy love are not those which end with death or
separation. Nor did Jenny herself foresee the train of ills that in the
wake of such a shock to her feelings would be liable to twist her whole
life awry.
With Maurice she had embarked on the restless ocean of an existence
lived at unusually high pressure. She had conjured for her soul dreams
of adventure, fiery-hearted dreams which would not be satisfied by the
awakening of common-place dawns. Time had certainly assuaged with his
heavy anodyne the intimate desire for her lover; but time would rather
aggravate than heal the universal need of her womanhood. These six
months of seared emotions and withered hopes were a trance from which
she would awake on the very flashing heels of the last mental and
physical excitement.
It was said in the last chapter that a less sincere heart would have
been caught on the rebound. Those hearts are dragged but a little way
down into the depths of misery; for such have not fallen from great
heights. Jenny on the first of May fell straight and deep as a plummet
to the bed of the ocean of despair, there to lie long submerged. But to
one who had rejected death, life would not hold out oblivion. Life with
all its cold insistence called her once more to the surface; thence to
make for whatever beach chance should offer. Jenny, scarcely conscious
of any responsibleness for her first struggles, clutched at
suffragism--a support for which life never intended her. However, it
served to help her ashore; and now, with some of the cynicism that
creeps into the adventurer's life, she looked around for new adventures.
Her desire to revenge herself on men was superseded by anxiety to
rediscover the savor of living. Her instinct was now less to hurt others
than to indulge herself. A year's abstention from the episodic existence
spent by Irene and her before Maurice had created an illusion of
permanence, had given that earlier time a romantic charm; and a revival
of it seemed fraught with many possibilities of a more widely extended
wonder. One evening late in October she asked Irene casually, as if
there had been no interval of desuetude, whether she were coming out. To
this inquiry her friend, without any manifestation of surprise,
answered in the affirmative. It was characteristic of both girls, this
manner of resuming a friendship.
Now began a period not worth a detailed chronicle, since it was merely a
repetition of a period already discussed--a repetition, moreover, that
like most anachronisms seemed after other events jejune and somewhat
tawdry. The young men were just as young as those of earlier years; but
Irene and Jenny were older and, if before they had found it hard to
tolerate these ephemeral encounters, they found it harder still now. The
result of this was that, where once a single whisky and soda was enough,
now three or four scarcely availed to pass away the time. Neither of the
girls drank too much in more than a general sense, but it was an omen of
flying youth when whiskies were invoked to give an edge to existence.
One evening they sat in the Cafe d'Afrique, laughing to each other over
the physical and social oddities of two Norwegians who had constituted
themselves their hosts on the strength of a daring stage-door
introduction. As Jenny paused in her laughter to catch some phrase of
melody in the orchestra, she saw Castleton drawing near their table. He
stopped in doubt, and looked at her from wide, gray eyes very eager
under eyebrows arched in a question. She returned his gaze without a
flicker of recognition, and, bowing imperceptibly, he passed out into
the night. The doors swung together behind him, and Jenny, striking a
match from the stand on the table, set the whole box alight to distract
Irene's attention from what she feared in the blush of a memory.
"Come on; let's go," she said to her friend.
So the girls left the two Norwegians desolate and volubly
unintelligible.
One morning in November Irene came into Jenny's room at Stacpole
Terrace.
"My Danby's coming home this week," she announced. "And his brother,
too."
Jenny often thought to herself that Danby was a riddle. It was four
years now since he and Irene had been reputed in love; yet nothing
seemed to have happened since the day when for a fancy he dressed his
sweetheart in short frocks. Here he was coming back from France as he
had come back time after time in company with his brother, at the notion
of meeting whom Jenny had always scoffed.
"What of it?" she said.
"Now don't be nasty, young Jenny. I shall be glad to see him."
"I suppose this means every minute you can get together for a fortnight,
and then he'll be off again for six months. Why doesn't he marry you?"
"He's going to," Irene asserted, twisting the knob on the corner of the
bed round and round until it squeaked. "But I don't want to get married,
not yet."
"Oh, no, it's only a rumor. Why ever not? If I loved a fellow as you
think you love Danby, I'd get married quick enough."
"Well, you didn't----"
"That's enough of you," said Jenny, sitting up in bed. "No, I know I
didn't. But that was different."
"Why was it different? My Danby's a gentleman."
"Yes, when he's asleep. He _can't_ be much or he wouldn't have dressed
you up such a sight. I'd like to see a man make such a poppy-show of
me," cried Jenny, indignant at the recollection of the incident.
"Oh, well, he doesn't do it now," said Irene pacifically. "Aren't you
coming out with us?"
"You're very free all of a sudden with your Danby," Jenny continued
mockingly. "I remember when you was afraid for your life some girl would
carry him off under your nose. Yet you let him go all the time to
France. I think you're silly."
Jenny could not refrain from teasing Irene. The habit was firmly
established and, although she had not now the sense of outraged
independence which prompted her attitude in old days, she kept it up
because such rallying was easier than sympathetic attention.
"His brother Jack says he'd like to meet you."
Jenny laughed derisively.
"I thought you weren't giving your Danby away with a pound of nothing.
Do you remember when I used to call Jack Danby 'Tin Ribs the Second,'
and you used to get so ratty?"
"Well, what a liberty," said Irene, laughing at the now almost forgotten
insult.
Towards the dripping fog-stained close of November Arthur and Jack Danby
arrived from Paris and, tall as lamp-posts, waited for the two girls at
the top of the court in Jermyn Street. It did not strike Jenny at the
time that the appointment seemed girt with intrigue, as if whispers had
gone to the making of it, whispers that voiced a deceitful purpose in
her friend. Jenny had often arraigned the methods of Mrs. Dale and
denounced the encouragement of Winnie and Irene in any association whose
profit transcended its morality. But she never really understood Irene,
and her teasing was a sign of this. Under the circumstances of lovers
reunited, she accepted her place at Jack Danby's side without suspicion;
and was only dimly aware of the atmosphere of satisfaction which clung
to the two brothers and her friend.
In the bronzed glow of the Trocadero grill-room she had an opportunity
of studying the two men, and because the result of this was a decided
preference for Jack, she lost any suspicion of a plot, and appeared
almost to enjoy his company.
All Arthur Danby's features, even his ears, seemed excessively pointed,
while his thinness and length of limb accentuated this peaked effect of
countenance. His complexion had preserved the clearness of youth, but
had become waxy from dissipation, and in certain lights was feathered
with fine lines that looked like scratches on a smooth surface. His
eyelids were puffy and tinged slightly round the rims with a redness
which was the more obvious from the vivid light blue eyes it surrounded.
A certain diabolic strangeness redeemed the whole effect from mere
unpleasantness. Jack Danby was not so tall as his brother, and his
features were less sharply pointed, although they were as clearly
defined. He had similar eyes of almost cobalt blue when contrasted with
the dead whiteness of a skin that gave the impression of being powdered.
The younger brother's eyes preserved more fire and seemed under the
influence of a suggestive conversation to be lighted up from behind in a
way that sent a sudden breathlessness through many women. Jenny, when
she looked at him full, was aware less of his eyes than of her own,
which seemed to her to be kindling in the dry sparks that were radiated
by his; and even as she felt scorched by the brain which was thus
expressed, her own eyes would melt, as it were, to meet appropriately
the liquid softness that succeeded. His lips were never remarkably red,
and as the evening advanced they adopted the exact shade of his
complexion, which from paleness took on the lifeless monotone of color
that is seen in the rain-soaked petal of a pink rose. Danby's mouth
curved upwards, and when he smiled, he only smiled on one side of his
face. The immediate expression he conveyed was that of profound
lassitude changed by any topic of sly licentiousness to a startling
concentration.
A pictorial representation of the party would have some decorative
value. The two brothers had ordered red mullet, which lay scattered
about their plates in mingled hues of cornelian, rose and tarnished
copper. Their wine was Lacrima Christi of the precise tint to carry on
the scheme of color. Jenny and Irene were drinking champagne whose pale
amber sparkled against the prevailing luster, contrasting and lightening
the arrangement of metallic tints, just as Jenny's fair hair set off and
was at the same time enhanced by Irene's copper-brown. As a group of
revellers the four of them composed into a rich enough study in _genre_,
and the fanciful observer would extract from the position of the two men
a certain potentiality for romantic events as, somewhat hunched and
looking up from down-turned heads, they both sat with legs outstretched
to the extent of their length. The more imaginative observer would
perceive in the group something unhealthy, something _faisande_, an air
of too deliberate enjoyment that seemed to imply a perfect knowledge of
the limitations of human pleasure. These men and girls aimed no arrow of
fleeting gayety to pierce in a straight, sharp course the heart of the
present. Sophistication clung to them, and weariness. That senescent
October moon which a year ago marked the end of love's halcyon would
have been a suitable light for such a party. Jenny herself had gone back
to that condition of cynicism which before the days of Maurice was due
to ignorance, but was now a profounder cynicism based on experience.
Irene had always been skeptical of emotional heights, had always
accepted life sensually without much enthusiasm either for the
gratification or the denial of her ambitions. As for the two men, they
had grown thin on self-indulgence.
"Fill up your glasses, girls," said Arthur.
"Fill up," echoed Jack. "Is there time for another bottle?" he added
anxiously.
"This cheese is very good," commented Arthur.
"Delicious," the other agreed.
"You two seem to think of nothing but eating and drinking," said Jenny
distastefully.
"Oh, no, we think of other things, don't we, Jack?" contradicted the
older brother, with a sort of frigid relish.
"Rather," the younger one corroborated, looking sideways at Jenny.
"We must have a good time this winter," Arthur announced. "We needn't go
back to Paris for a month or two. We must have a good time at our flat
in Victoria."
"London's a much wickeder city than Paris," said Jack, addressing the
air like some pontiff of vice. "I like these November nights with shapes
of women looming up through the fog. A friend of mine----" As Jack Danby
descended to personal reminiscence, he lost his sinister power and
became mean and common. "When I say friend--I should say business
friend, eh, Arthur?" he asked, smiling on the side of his face nearer
to his brother. "Well, he's a lord as a matter of fact," he continued in
accents of studied indifference.
"Tell the girls about him," urged his brother, and "Fill up your
glasses," he murmured as, leaning back in his chair, he seemed to fade
away into clouds of smoke blown from a very long, thin and black cigar.
"This lord--I won't tell you his name----" said Jack, "he wanders about
in fogs until he meets a shape that attracts him. Then he hands her a
velvet mask, and takes her home. What an imagination," chuckled the
narrator.
"Well, I call him a dirty rotter," said Jenny.
"Do you?" asked Jack, as if struck by the novelty of such a point of
view.
The lights were being extinguished now. The quenching of the orange
illumination, and the barren waste of empty tables gave the grill-room a
raffish look which consorted well with the personalities of the two
brothers. The party broke up in the abrupt fashion of England, and
within a few minutes of sitting comfortably round a richly lighted
supper-table, the two girls were seated in a dark taxi on the way to
Camden Town.
"How do you like Jack Danby?" Irene inquired.
"He's all right. Only I don't know--I think if I'd met him last year I'd
have thought him a swine. I think I must be turning funny. What are
they--these long friends of yours?" she added, after a pause. "What do
they do in Paris?"
"They bring out books," Irene informed her.
"Books?" echoed Jenny. "What sort of books?"
"Ordinary books, I suppose," said Irene, slightly huffed by Jenny's
contemptuous incredulity.
"Well, what do they want to live in Paris for, if they're ordinary
books?"
"That's where their business is."
"Funny place to do a business in ordinary books."
"I don't see why."
"Oh, well, it doesn't matter. But _I_ think it's funny, that's all. You
_are_ deep, Irene."
"Oh, yes," said Irene, looking out of the window at the waves of light
that broke against the window with each passing street lamp. "You always
say that, but I'm not near so deep as what you are."
"Yes, you are, because I'm always catching you out in a lie _which_ you
don't me."
"No, because I'm not so nosy."
"Now don't be silly and get in a paddy about nothing," Jenny advised.
"You can't help having funny friends. Only what I can't understand is
myself. I think they're both beasts, and yet I'd like to see them again.
That's where I'm funny, I think."
Irene assumed an attitude of lofty indifference.
"There's no need for you to see them again, if you don't like them. Only
they give you a good time, and Arthur gave me some glorious rings."
"_Which_ your mother pawned," interrupted Jenny.
"And he's going to marry me," Irene persisted.
"Yes, if you get married after dinner when he's drunk."
"Oh, well, what of it? You're not so clever as what you make out to be."
"That's quite right," said Jenny, lapsing into a gloom of introspection.
Lying awake that night in the bewilderment of a new experience, the
image of Jack Danby recurred to her like the pale image of a sick dream
at once repulsive and perilously attractive. Time after time she would
drive him from her mind, but as fast as he was banished, his slim face
would obtrude itself from another quarter. He would peep from behind the
musty curtains, he would take form in the wavering gray shadow thrown
upon the ceiling by the gas. He would slide round pictures and
materialize from the heap of clothes on the wicker arm-chair by the
bed.
One other image could have contended with him; but that image had been
finally exorcised by six months of mental discipline. All that was left
of Maurice was the fire he had kindled, the fire of passion that, lying
dormant since his desertion, was now burning luridly in Jenny's heart.