Feeling that an explanation of her presence in the studio should come
from herself, Jennie faltered:
"I--I only looked in to say that if you hadn't found a model for--for
the picture you wanted to paint, I might--I might be able to pose."
Though she hadn't advanced and he hadn't moved, the extraordinary light
in his eyes made her heart thump more wildly.
"You'd do it"--he held up the sketch--"dressed like that?"
She remembered his own phrase, "If I'm to be that kind of a model I must
_be_ that kind of a model--and do what's expected."
The process of starving out being so far successful, Wray felt it well
to push it a little more. He rose with an air of distress.
"I wish you could have told me this last week, Jennie. As it is--"
"You've got some one else?"
"Not definitely. I've tried out three--two of them no good, though the
third might--"
"Might do as well as me?"
"Perhaps better in some ways. I mean," he added hastily, as she seemed
about to go, "that she's a real professional model, and for this kind of
job, of course, a professional would be--let us say, more at her ease."
So many good things had, during the past few days, swum into Jennie's
vision, only to swim out again, that she had grown almost used to this
fading of her hopes. Nevertheless, the bliss of loving Hubert and
getting twenty-five thousand dollars for it had seemed tolerably sure.
To lose it now would be hard; but harder still, for the moment, at
least, was this tone of detachment, of indifference. That another woman
should, in some ways, do better than herself was worse than the last
indignity. Her lip trembled. She was about to turn away with that
collapse of the figure which marks the woman who has lost all hope.
He hurried up to her, laying his hand on her arm in a way that made a
thrill run through her frame.
"Wait a minute, Jennie! I'd like to talk it over. If you want me to try
you out--"
"What does that mean--try me out?"
"Oh, simply that you'd take the pose, so that I could see how nearly
you'd come up to what I want."
"And then if I didn't--"
He smiled. "Oh, but you will--at least I think so."
"When would you do it?"
"Oh, right now. As soon as you like. I've got the time."
She looked at him inquiringly, but there was nothing in his eyes to
answer the question she was asking.
"Oh, very well," she said, dully, and once more turned toward the little
door.
She had taken a step or two when he said, suddenly,
"Jennie, what made you come back?"
She paused, turned again, and pulled herself together. It was necessary
to take the old bantering tone. After all, she could fence in her way as
well as anybody else.
"Oh, I don't know," she threw off carelessly. "I thought I might as
well."
"Might as well what?"
"Oh, go in for the whole thing. As you say yourself, if you're to be
that kind of a model--"
"And was that all?"
"'All?' It was a good deal, I should say."
"It was a good deal, yes--but I asked if it was all."
"Well, ask away, my boy. I don't have to answer you or go to jail, now
do I?"
Extraordinary the relief of falling back on studio badinage! It took her
off the Collingham stilts, away from the high-wrought Collingham
emotions. She began to see what the trouble was with Bob. His touch
wasn't light enough. He was too purposeful. He seemed to think you must
mean something all the time. Mrs. Collingham, too, seemed to think so.
It was not in Bob's language so much as in his cast of mind; but it was
in his mother's cast of mind, and in her language, too.
Jennie thought of this as she stood before the pier-glass in the little
dressing-room, first taking off her jacket, and then unpinning her hat.
She would have to do her hair on the top of her head like the girl in
Hubert's sketch. "And that's all the clothes I shall need to put on,"
she tried to say flippantly. She tried to say it flippantly, because
that, too, would be along the line that people took who weren't
Collinghams.
People who weren't Collinghams! That meant all the people in Indiana
Avenue, all the people in Pemberton Heights, the vast majority of the
people in the United States, not to speak of any other country. Jennie
had a good many acquaintances, and the family, taken as a whole, had
more; but she couldn't think of anyone in their class who took life as
more than a skimming on the surface. Outside the bounden duties which
they couldn't avoid they chiefly liked being silly.
She thought of that, too, loosening her hair and letting it fall in
amber wavelets over her shoulders and down her back. Mrs. Collingham had
said that it was lovely hair, but she hadn't really seen it. There was
so much of it that, when she piled it up like the girl in the sketch, it
almost overweighted her delicate little face.
No; whatever you could say about people like the Collinghams, you
couldn't say they were silly. They had motives, opinions, points of
view. They had minds, and they used them. They might not use them well,
but to use them at all was better than to let them grow atrophied.
Jennie, as has been said, had no words to express these thoughts, but,
like Pansy, she could do without a vocabulary. She felt; she vibrated.
She, too, had a mind, though she was afraid of putting it to work.
Lingering over the piling of her hair, she wondered if the use or nonuse
of the mind marked the real line between people like the Collinghams and
people like the Folletts. Was that why the country was divided into
highbrows and lowbrows--those who made the best of what they had, and
those who disqualified themselves for all the stronger purposes? Since
her peep at Marillo Park, she saw that something admitted one to such a
haven, and something kept one out. There was money, of course, and
position; but back of both position and money wasn't it the case that
there was mind?
She threw off her blouse and lingered again to examine her arms and
bust. She lingered on purpose, putting off the extraordinary thing she
had to do to the latest possible minute.
At Collingham Lodge, she had caught glimpses of books, papers, and
magazines. Even in the bird cage they were lying on the table and
chairs. The Folletts hardly ever read a book. The only work of the kind
she could remember the family ever to have bought was one called
_Ancient Rome Restored_, which her mother had subscribed for in monthly
parts when an agent brought a sample to the house. It was at a time when
Lizzie was afraid that her children--they were children still--would
grow up without cultivation. _Ancient Rome Restored_, being abundantly
illustrated, called out in the young Folletts the almost extinct
Scarborough tradition. Having no other important picture book to look
at, they pored over the glories of the Forum, of Hadrian's Villa, of the
Baths of Caracalla, till an odd, incipient love of classic beauty began
to stir in them. But there their cultivation ended. In the papers they
studied only the murders, burglaries, and comic cuts. In the way of
general entertainment, the movies formed their sole relaxation, but
unless the play was silly they complained. Anything that asked for
thought they kicked against, and Pemberton Heights kicked with them. Was
that why there was a Pemberton Heights and a Marillo Park? Did the power
of thought control the difference between them? Was it that where there
was little or no power of thought, there was little or nothing of
anything else?
She unhooked her skirt and let it slip down to a circular heap about her
feet. She wondered if the girl who would, in some ways, do better than
herself were as lithely built as she. Mrs. Collingham had likened her
to--oh, what was it? It was a spire. It sounded like a chapel. She had
tossed it off as something that everybody knew about. So she had tossed
off other names, taking it for granted that Jennie would have them at
her fingers' ends.
The more she pondered the more sure of it she became--that she and her
kind were poor and helpless chiefly because they wouldn't take the
trouble to be otherwise. Not to stray from the childish, the
sentimental, and the obvious gave them the relief she found in returning
to the lingo she had always used with Wray.
She had used it with Bob, too--only, with Bob she had used it
differently. Perhaps it was he who had used it differently. Between her
and Wray, it had never been more than the medium of chaff, except on
those occasions when it had become the vehicle of a half-acknowledged
passion. Bob had tried to say something with it, even when slangy or
colloquial. He had treated her as if she was worth talking to. He had
tried to make her feel that she could talk on better themes than any
they ever broached.
Poor Bob--sailing away to the south, thinking that where he left her
there he would find her! Little he knew! If he could only see her now!
If he could only dream of what she would be doing in ten minutes' time!
If he only....
Something made her shudder. She felt cold. Perhaps the wind had changed
outside, as it often did in May. She stooped, picked up her skirt, and
mechanically hooked it round her. Still feeling chilled, she crossed her
arms and hugged herself. A minute or two later she had put on her blouse
and her jacket. She meant to take them off again as soon as she stopped
shivering. Already Hubert would be cursing her delay.
She thought of the light in his eyes when she told him that, after all,
she had come to pose. The memory of it made her heart jump again, with a
great, single throb. It was the cave man's light. She never saw it in
Bob's, and never would. Bob's eyes were twinkling and kind. She didn't
suppose she would ever see such kind eyes in anyone else. If kindness
were what she wanted....
Beginning to feel warmer, she noticed how grotesque her hair was with
her spring sport suit. She had stuck through it a great skewer, with a
handle of artificial jade, which she had used with some other costume.
But the high crown of hair was so little in keeping with the rest of her
that she pulled out the skewer and the other pins, again letting the
glinting cataract tumble down.
Why had Bob never asked her if she loved him? Hubert had done it a
hundred, perhaps a thousand times. Bob had seemed to think that his
loving her covered all possible conditions. What he had to give her was
always the theme of his enthusiasm, as if she were a beggar who could
give nothing in return. With Hubert, it was what he was to get from her.
She was the richly dowered one who could offer or withhold. He would
take all--and give nothing.
Well, let him! It was what she wanted--to be drained dry. If she was to
give herself up, she would give herself up. When Hubert had done with
her, he would chuck her on the scrap heap like her father. That was the
way she loved him. That was the way to be loved. Cave men didn't watch
lest you should get damp feet, or have their lives insured for you.
Their love was passion, a fire that burned you up and left you a white
bit of ash.
And yet to be burned up and left a white bit of ash was something for
which she was not yet prepared. She didn't say this to herself. All of a
sudden she was terrified. Whatever instinct governed her went into the
nimbleness of her fingers as she began flattening her hair so as to put
on her hat. She didn't know why she was doing this. She didn't even know
that she wanted to get away. It was just a wild impulse to be back as
the everyday Jennie Follett. The girl in the Byzantine chair was out of
the question--for to-day. To-morrow, perhaps!--probably--quite surely!
But for to-day she must still belong for a few more hours to herself.
Hubert might come thumping any minute on the door, and if he found her
dressed for the street....
And just then he did come thumping on the door.
"Jennie, for God's sake, what's the matter? Are you dead?"
She gasped. It would have been a relief if she could have fainted. All
she could do was to thrust the last pin into her hat and go to the door
and open it.
Hubert stood aghast.
"Well, by all the holy cats--!"
"I'm not well, Mr. Wray," she pleaded, with sudden inspiration.
"Ah, go on, Jennie! You were well enough twenty minutes ago."
"Yes; but since then I've been feeling chilled."
He strode into the dressing-room, which he was not supposed to do.
"Chilled--hell! Why, this hole's as hot as blazes."
"It isn't that. I think it's a germ-cold I'm taking."
"See here, Jennie," he said, sternly. "You're going to funk it. All
right! It doesn't make much difference to me. The other girl--it's Emma
Brasshead--you know!--she was the middle one in Sims's three
nudes--perfectly stunning hips--"
"I'll be here to-morrow--right on the dot."
He wheeled away as far as the space of the dressing-room would permit.
"Oh, well, Jennie, I don't know that it would be of much use, after all.
Emma's the type, you see. You'd be too--"
"You can't tell that till--till you've tried me out."
"I can try you out right through your clothes. What's a man a painter
for?"
"If you can do that, why did you want me to--"
He turned sharply.
"Jennie, you're not straight with me."
"Oh, but I am! I'm as straight with you as--as you are with me. But I
can't help being sick."
"You can't help being Jennie," he muttered, brokenly, "the girl I
worship and who worships me. Jennie! Jennie! Jennie!"
"Oh, don't, Hubert; don't!" she begged. "To-morrow! I'll come to-morrow,
and then--"
But he smothered these protests.
"You wildcat! You adorable tigress!"
"Yes, Hubert--but to-morrow--"
"No, no!"
His kisses, his brutalities, were agony to her, and yet they were bliss.
She didn't know why she fought them off, or what instinct led her to
defend herself, or how she found herself out on the stairs.
She went down slowly. She was not angry; she was only excited and a
little amused. Sex fury was less romantic than she had supposed; but as
an exhibition of the human being at his most animal, it was "some
curtain raiser." If she had to go through it again....
But as she jogged toward the ferry in the street car, this mood passed
off. She grew sick with a sense of failure. Love and twenty-five
thousand dollars were at stake, and she had funked the game. She was not
a sport; she wondered if she were a woman. If she couldn't play up
better than this, she would have Bob back on her hands again and be
shamed forever before Mrs. Collingham, who had been so good to her.
Moreover, if she continued to play fast and loose with Wray he would
certainly return to Miss Brasshead.
She dreaded reaching the ferry and having to go on the boat. The river
was now haunted by Bob, like the sea by a phantom ship. While crossing,
she sat with her eyes closed so as to shut out this memory by not
looking at the water.
Arrived on the New Jersey side, she was so much earlier than she usually
returned, and so dispirited, that she decided to walk home, threading
the way through sordid streets till she climbed the more cleanly ascent
to the Heights. The Heights has a common as well as a square, and
Jennie's way took her through the great shady grassplot, where men were
lounging on benches, nurses wheeling their babies, and boys playing
baseball. Round the common are the civic monuments of Pemberton Heights,
the bank, the post-office, the hospital, the engine house, and the
public library. Jennie looked at this last as if she had never seen it
before.
As a matter of fact, she never had seen it before. She had looked at it
more times than she could count, but with the eyes only. She knew what
it was. She had actually watched the coquettish red-brick building, with
its glass dome and white Grecian portico rising at the command of the
great philanthropist whose name the building bore; but she had never
been conscious of its purpose as related to herself. Now, for the first
time, it occurred to her that here was a place where a reader could find
books.
With no very clear idea in mind, she stepped within. The interior was
hushed, rather awesome, yet sunny and sweetly solemn like the temple of
some cheerful god. Finding herself confronted by a kindly, bookish
little lady seated at a table behind a wooden barrier, it was obviously
Jennie's duty to address her.
"I wonder if--if I could borrow a book."
She was informed that she could borrow three books at a time, as soon as
certain inquiries as to her identity and residence were carried out, and
this would take a few days. But in a few days, Jennie knew that her
desire to read might be dead, and said so. The object of the library
being to encourage young people to read rather than to be too particular
about their addresses, the kindly little lady, after some consultation
with a kindly little gentleman, filled out Jennie's card.
"What sort of book were you thinking of? A novel?"
Jennie said, "Yes," if it was a good one.
"This is one of the best," the little lady went on, pushing forward a
volume that happened to be lying at her hand, "if you'd care to take
it."
It was _The Egoist_, by George Meredith, and Jennie accepted it as
something foreordained.
"You could have two more books if you wanted them--now that you're
here."
Jennie made a plunge.
"Have you anything about--about spires?"
The lady smiled gently.
"About church spires?"
The girl thought it was--chapel spires--especially French ones.
The kindly little gentleman, being accustomed to this kind of search,
was called into counsel.
In the end she selected a work on the old churches of Paris, which she
thought might give her the information she desired.
"And now a third book?"
Here she was on safer ground. The English name had caught her ear with
more precision than the foreign ones.
"Have you got anything about a Lady Hamilton?"
"You mean Romney's Lady Hamilton?"
Again there was an echo from Jennie's memory. Romney was the man who
couldn't paint _her_ because he was too Georgian. She began to see how
Mrs. Collingham could play with names as she might with tennis balls.
Since there was everything else at Marillo Park, there must also be a
public library.
Arrived at home, she secreted her volumes under her bed. She could read
at night, and by scraps in the daytime. If Ted or Gussie were to learn
that she was trying to inform her mind, they would guy her with as
little mercy as if they caught her in that still more offensive crime,
the improvement of her speech.