The silver dawn was softened to a mother-of-pearl morning that seemed
less primal than autumnal. When Danby came into the sitting-room, he
found Jenny, fully dressed for departure, crouched over the ashes of
last night's fire. He had a pinched, unwholesome look so early in the
day, and was peevish because Jenny's presence kept him from summoning
the housekeeper to bring up breakfast.
"We must get something to eat," he said.
"I don't want anything," said Jenny.
"Why not?"
"I've got a headache."
Danby tried to appear sympathetic; but his hands so early were cold as
fish, and his touch made Jenny shrink.
"What a nuisance packing is. I've got a fearful lot to do to get to
Charing Cross in time for the boat train."
Like many other people he tried to demonstrate his sympathy by enlarging
on his own trials.
"Well?" said Jenny, regarding him from eyes pinpointed with revulsion in
a critical survey that was not softened by the gray morning light, for
whatever silkiness clung to the outside air was lost in the stale room.
"I wish I hadn't got to go away," said Danby awkwardly.
"Why?" Jenny asked, screwing up her eyes as if she had perceived upon
the wall an unpleasant insect.
"Well, it seems a pity now that we've--we've got to know each other
better."
"You don't think," said Jenny, chiseling the words from the very
bedrock of her contempt, "you _don't_ think that because I've been in
your flat all a night, you know me? Why, I don't know myself even."
"Aren't you going to come and see me off?" he asked in a ludicrous
attempt at sentiment.
"See you off? See you off? Oh yes, that's a game of mine seeing off
clothes-props. If you can't move," she added, "I can. Let me pass,
please."
Jenny walked towards the door of the contaminated flat followed by Danby
in a state of weak bewilderment.
"You'll write to me, little girl?" he asked, making a motion to detain
her hand.
"You seem to think I'm struck on you," she rapped out. "But I'm not."
"Well, why did you----"
"Ah, Mr. Enquire Within," she interrupted, "you're right. Why?"
"Surely," he persisted, "the first person who----"
"The first! Hark at Mr. Early Bird. If you go out with your long soppy
self like that, you'll miss your train. Ching-a-ling."
So Jenny parted from Mr. Jack Danby as long ago she had parted from Mr.
Terence O'Meagh of the Royal Leinster Fusiliers. It was typical of her
pride that, in order to rob Danby of any satisfaction in his
achievement, she should prefer to let him assume he was merely one of a
crowd, a commonplace incident in her progress. Anything seemed more
suitable to the fancy of such a despicable creature than the
self-congratulation of the pioneer.
Yet, though she bore herself so bravely from the hated room which had
witnessed the destruction of her inaccessibility, when she was seated
alone in the taxi whirring back to Camden Town, Jenny was very near to
an emotional collapse. This was averted by an instinct to review the
several aspects of the experience. The actual event, happening in the
normal course of a temperament's advance to completeness, scarcely
distressed her. On the other hand, the circumstances and actors were
abhorrent. The very existence of the Danbys was an outrage, and as for
Irene, her behavior was treachery incarnate. What added bitterness to
her meditations was the reflection that, however contemptuous she might
show herself of the two brothers, they, with Irene to voice their
absence, would have the laugh on their side. From one point of view it
had been a skillful seduction effected with the deliberation of use.
Jenny was maddened by the thought that Irene would believe she had been
unable to avoid it, that she had been bewitched by Jack Danby's
dissolute accomplishments. She would never be able to impress Irene's
stolidity with the fact that she had used Danby for her own purpose.
Irene would be bound to consider the wretched business a justification
of her own dependence on the elder brother. She would triumph with
damaging retorts, pointing out the fallibility of other girls when
brought beneath the Danby sway, citing Jenny in a manner that would
infuriate her with the impotence of argument. All larger issues were
obscured by this petty annoyance, and at first her regrets were confined
to wishing she had played the inevitable drama of womanhood in some
secret place with only her own soul for audience. Why had she stayed at
Greycoat Gardens last night?
After the first vexation of her loss of prestige, deeper commentaries
upon the act wrote themselves across her mind. She had intended, while
her mother was still alive, to be rigidly unassailable. There was
weakness in her failure to sustain this resolution, and Jenny loathed
weakness. What had made her carry this experience through against the
finest influence upon her life? Well, it was done; but the knowledge of
it must be kept from her mother. Regrets were foolish; yet she would
make some reparation. She would go and live at home again and, before
anything, please her mother for a long time to come. She would be extra
nice to May. She would be--in parental terminology--a really good girl.
Whatever agony Maurice's love had caused her to bear, this sacrifice of
her youth upon a tawdry altar had finally and effectually deadened. She
could meet without a tremor now the cause of all the miserable business.
Things might have been different, were fidelity an imaginable virtue.
But it was all over now; she had consummated the aspirations of youth.
There should be an end of love henceforth. For what it was worth of
bitter and sweet, she had known it. No longer was the viceroy of human
destiny a riddle. He had lost his wings and lay like a foundling in the
gutter. No more of such a sorry draggled god for her. Jenny's ambition
now was in reconciliation with her mother to be reestablished in the
well-beloved house in Hagworth Street, and in affection for old familiar
things to forget the wild adventures of passion.
The taxi swept on down the Hampstead Road until it turned off on the
right to Camden Town, whose curious rococo squares mildewed and queerly
ornamented seemed the abode of a fantastic depression. For all the
sunlight of St. Valentine, the snowdrops looked like very foolish
virgins as they shivered in the wind about the blackened grass, good
sport for idle sparrows. The impression of faded wickedness made on
Jenny's mind by Stacpole Terrace that morning suited her disgust. Every
window in the row of houses was askew, cocking a sinister eye at her
reappearance. Every house looked impure with a smear of green damp over
the stucco. Stacpole Terrace wore an air of battered gayety fit only for
sly entrances at twilight and furtive escapes in the dawn; while in one
of the front gardens a stone Cupid with broken nose smirked perpetually
at whatever shady intrigue came under his patronage.
It was nearly eleven o'clock when Jenny, entering the sitting-room,
found Irene bunched sloppily over the fire. Mrs. Dale and her youngest
daughter were busy in the kitchen. Winnie was not yet out of bed, and
the head of the family was studying in the dust of his small apartment
the bargains advertised in yesterday's paper.
"Why didn't you call for me last night?" Jenny demanded straight and
swift.
"Oh, well, it was too wet," grumbled Irene, covering as well as she
could her shame with nonchalance.
"Ireen, I think you're a rotter. I think you're real mean, and nothing
won't ever make me believe you didn't do it for the purpose. Too wet!"
Irene declined to admit herself in the wrong.
"Well, it was too wet. You could easy have come home in a taxi if you'd
wanted to."
Jenny stamped with rage.
"What I could have done hasn't got nothing to do with it all, and you
know it hasn't. You said you were coming for me and you didn't, and I
say you're a sneak. Because you and your massive sister behave anyhow,
you'd like to make everyone else as bad."
Irene, contending even with unclasped stays, made an effort at dignity.
"You can just shut up, Jenny Pearl, because you know very well my mother
wouldn't allow me to _do_ anything. You know that."
Jenny fumed with indignation.
"Your mother? Why, when she's got half a bottle of gin to cry with over
her darling Ireen or darling Winnie, she's _very_ glad to pawn what her
darlings get given to them."
"You've got very good," said Irene, bitterly sarcastic, "since this
night out."
"Which you meant for me to spend out from the moment you introduced me
to him."
"What do you take me for?" inquired Irene rashly.
"I take you for what you are--a rotter. God! and think what you will be
one day--I know--a dirty old woman in a basement with a red petticoat
and a halfpenny dip and a quartern of gin."
Irene's imagination was not extensive enough to cap this prophecy, so
she poked the fire instead of making the attempt.
"Nobody wants you to stay here," she muttered.
"Don't you worry yourself. I'm going upstairs to pack my things up now."
Jenny was not able to make a completely effective departure with cab at
the door and heaped-up baggage, because her taxi back from Victoria and
the payment of a week's board at Stacpole Terrace had exhausted her
ready money. However, she had the satisfaction of seeing her
portmanteau, her hatbox and a small bag stacked in tapering stories upon
the bedroom floor, there to await the offices of Carter Paterson.
Mrs. Dale emerged from the kitchen at the rumor of change and, as
morning did not evoke sentiment, indulged in a criticism of Jenny's
personal appearance.
"I don't like that hat of yours and never did," she announced. "I can't
get used to these new-fangled fashions and never shall."
"What of it?" said Jenny, with marked indifference.
"Oh, nothing at all, if it pleases you. You've got to wear it and I
suppose there's nothing more to be said. But I think that hat is vulgar.
Vulgar it would have been called when I was a girl. And I can't think
what you want to go all of a sudden for like this. It isn't often I make
a beefsteak pudding."
Jenny was in a flutter to be away.
"Good-bye, Mrs. Dale," she said firmly.
"Well, good-bye, Jenny. You mustn't mind shaking hands with me all
covered in suet. As I say, it's very seldom I do make a beefsteak
pudding. I won't disturb my old man. He's busy this morning. Come and
tell us how you get on soon."
It was a relief to be seated inside the tram and free of Stacpole
Terrace. It was pleasant to change cars at the Nag's Head and behold
again the well-known landscape of Highbury. A pageant of childish
memories, roused by the sight of the broad pavements of Islington, was
marshalled in Jenny's brain. Somehow on the visits she had paid her home
during the last year these aspects were obscured by the consciousness
of no longer owning any right to them. Now, really going home, she
turned into Hagworth Street with a glow of pride at seeing again its
sobriety and dignity so evident after the extravagant stucco and Chinese
balconies of Camden Town's terraces and squares. There was Seventeen,
looking just the same, prophetic of refuge and solid comfort to the
exile. She wondered what freak of folly had ever made her fancy home was
dingy and unpleasant, home that held her bright-eyed mother's laugh, her
absurd father always amusing, and her little sister May. Home was an
enchanted palace with more romance in each dear room than was to be
found elsewhere in the world. Home was alive with the past and preserved
the links which bound together all the detached episodes of Jenny's
life. As she turned into the garden that once had seemed a district, as
she rattled the letter-box--in the days of her estrangement she always
rang the bell--remorse came welling up in tears. She remembered what
good times had been recurrent through the past, tea-parties and
pantomimes and learning to ride a bicycle in the warm sunsets of June.
And in the house opposite nothing was altered, not a fold of the lace
curtains, not a leaf of the dusty aspidistra that took all the light in
the ground-floor window.
What a long time they were opening the door. She rattled the letter-box
again and called out to May. It was like coming home after summer
holidays by the blue sparkling sea, coming home to dolls and toys and
the long, thin garden at the back which from absence had acquired an
exaggerated reputation for entertainment.
Suddenly May opened the door, peeping round over the latch, much scared
apparently.
"How quick you've been," she said.
"Quick?" repeated Jenny.
"Didn't you get my telegram?"
"No," said Jenny, and perceiving that May's eyes were red with weeping,
her delightful anticipation was clouded with dread. "What did you want
to telegraph for? Not--not about mother?"
May nodded.
"She isn't dead?" Jenny gasped.
"No, she isn't dead. But she's had to be took away. You know. To an
asylum."
"Go on," said Jenny. "Oh, what a dreadful thing."
"Well, don't stand there," May commanded. "There's been crowd enough
round here this morning as it is."
In the kitchen she unfolded the story. It seemed that for the last
fortnight their mother had been queer.
"Oh, she was funny," said May. "She used to sit moping over the
fire--never doing nothing and saying all the time how her head hurt."
"Didn't dad fetch in a doctor?" Jenny demanded.
"Not at first he wouldn't. You know what dad's like. I said she was
really ill and he kept on saying: 'Nonsense, why look at me. I'm as ill
as I can be, but I don't want no doctor. I've got a sort of a paralytic
stroke running up and down my arm fit to drive anybody barmy. And here
am I going off to work so cheerful, the chaps down at the shop say they
don't know how I does it.'"
"He ought to be bumped," Jenny asserted wrathfully. "I only wish I'd
been at home to tell him off. Go on about mother. And why wasn't I sent
for directly?" she asked.
"Well, I did think about fetching you back. But I didn't really think
myself it was anything much at first. She got worse all of a sudden
like. She took a most shocking dislike to me and said I was keeping her
indoors against her will, and then she carried on about you, said you
was--well, I don't know what she didn't say. And when the doctor come,
she said he was a detective and asked him to lock you and me both up,
said she had the most wicked daughters. I was quite upset, but the
doctor he said not to worry as it was often like that with mad people,
hating the ones they liked best. And I said, 'She's never gone mad? Not
my mother? Oh, whatever shall I do?' And he said, 'She has,' and then
she started off screaming enough to make anyone go potty to hear her,
and a lot of boys come and hung about the gate and people was looking
out of windows and the greengrocer was ringing all the time to know if
there was any orders this morning."
"When was all this?" asked Jenny, frozen by the terrible narrative.
"This morning, I keep telling you."
"Just now?"
"No, early. They come and took her away to an asylum somewhere in the
country and we can go and see her once a fortnight. But she's very ill,
the doctor says--some sort of abscess on her brain."
"Where's dad?"
"He went round to the 'Arms.' He said he felt quite shaky."
Jenny sat mute and hopeless. Would her mother never recognize her? Would
she die in the belief that she was neither loved nor appreciated?