THERE was nothing to counterbalance the terrors of childhood in Hagworth Street. Outside the hope of one day being able to do as she liked, Jenny had no ideals. Worse, she had no fairyland. Soon she would be given at school a bald narrative of Cinderella or Red Riding Hood, where every word above a monosyllable would be divided in such a way that hyphens would always seem of greater importance than elves.
About this time Jenny's greatest joy was music, and in connection with this an incident occurred which, though she never remembered it herself, had yet such a tremendous importance in some of its side-issues as to deserve record.
It was a fine day in early summer. All the morning, Jenny, on account of household duties, had been kept indoors, and, some impulse of freedom stirring in her young heart, she slipped out alone into the sunlit street. Somewhere close at hand a piano-organ was playing the intermezzo from "Cavalleria," and the child tripped towards the sound. Soon she came upon the player, and stood, finger in mouth, abashed for a moment, but the Italian beamed at her—an honest smile of welcome, for she was obviously no bringer of pence. Wooed by his friendliness, Jenny began to dance in perfect time, marking with little feet the slow rhythm of the tune.
In scarlet serge dress and cap of scarlet stockinette, she danced to the tinsel melody. Unhampered by anything save the need for self-expression, she expressed the joyousness of a London morning as her feet took the paving-stones all dappled and flecked with shadows of the tall plane tree at theend of Hagworth Street. She was a dainty child, with silvery curls and almond eyes where laughter rippled in a blue so deep you would have vowed they were brown. The scarlet of her dress, through long use, had taken on the soft texture of a pastel.
Picture her, then, dancing alone in the quiet Islington street to this faded tune of Italy, as presently down the street that seemed stained with the warmth of alien suns shuffled an old man. He stopped to regard the dancing child over the crook of his ebony walking-stick.
"Aren't you Mrs. Raeburn's little girl?" he asked.
Jenny melted into shyness, lost nearly all her beauty, and became bunched and ordinary for a moment.
"Yes," she whispered.
"Humph!" grunted the old man, and solemnly presented the organ grinder with a halfpenny.
Ruby O'Connor's voice rang out down the street.
"Come back directly, you limb!" she called. Jenny looked irresolute, but presently decided to obey.
That same evening the old man tapped at the kitchen door.
"Come in," said Mrs. Raeburn. "Is that you, Mr. Vergoe? Something gone wrong with your gas again? I do wish Charlie would remember to mend it."
"No, there's nothing the matter with the gas," explained the lodger. (For Mr. Vergoe was the lodger of Number Seventeen.) "Only I think that child of yours'll make a dancer some day."
"Make a what?" said the mother.
"A dancer. I was watching her this morning. Wonderful notion of time. You ought to have her trained, so to speak."
"My good gracious, whatever for?"
"The stage, of course."
"No, thankyou. I don't want none of my children gadding round theaters."
"But you like a good play yourself?"
"That's quite another kettle of fish. Thank you all the same, Mr. Vergoe, Jenny'll not go on to the stage."
"You're making a great mistake," he insisted. "And I suppose I know something about dancing, or ought to, as it were."
"I have my own ideas what's good for Jenny."
"But ain't she going to have a say in the matter, so to speak?"
"My dear man, she isn't seven yet."
"None too early to start dancing."
"I'd rather not, thank you, and please don't start putting fancies in the child's head."
"Of course, I shouldn't. Of course not. That ain't to be thought of."
But the very next day Mr. Walter Vergoe invited Jenny to come and see some pretty picture-books, and Jenny, with much finger and pinafore sucking and buried cheeks, followed him through the door near which she had always been commanded not to loiter.
"Come in, my dear, and look at Mr. Vergoe's pretty pictures. Don't be shy. Here's a bag of lollipops," he said, holding up a pennyworth of bull's-eyes.
On the jolly June morning the room where the old clown had elected to spend his frequently postponed retirement was exceedingly pleasant. The sun streamed in through the big bay-window: the sparrows cheeped and twittered outside, and on the window-sill a box of round-faced pansies danced in the merry June breeze. The walls were hung with silhouettes of the great dead and tinsel pictures of bygone dramas and harlequinades and tragedies. There were daguerreotypes of beauties in crinolines, of ruddy-cheeked actors and apple-faced old actresses. There was a pinchbeck crown and scepter hung below a small sword with guard of cut steel. There were framed letters and testimonials on paper gradually rusting, written with ink that was every day losing more and more of its ancient blackness. There were steel engravings of thisor that pillared Theatre Royal, stuck round withmenusof long-digested suppers; and on the mantlepiece was a row of champagne corks whose glad explosions happened years ago. There was a rosewood piano, whose ivory keys were the color of coffee, whose fretwork displayed a pleated silk that once was crimson as wine. But the most remarkable thing in the room was a clown's dress hanging below a wreath of sausages from a hook on the door. It used, in the days of the clown's activity, to hang thus in his dressing-room, and when he came out of the stage door for the last time and went home to stewed tripe and cockles with two old friends, he took the dress with him in a brown-paper parcel and hung it up after supper. It confronted him now like a disembodied joy whose race was over. Rheumatic were the knees that once upon a time were bent in the wide laugh of welcome, while in the corner a red-hot poker's vermilion fire was harmless forevermore. Dreaming on winter eves near Christmas time, Mr. Vergoe would think of those ample pockets that once held inexhaustible supplies of crackers. Dreaming on winter eves by the fireside, he would hear out of the past the laughter of children and the flutter of the footlights, and would murmur to himself in whistling accents: "Here we are again."
There he was again, indeed, an old man by a dying fire, sitting among the ashes of burnt-out jollities.
But on the morning of Jenny's visit the clown was very much awake. For all Mrs. Raeburn's exhortations not to put fancies in the child's head, Mr. Vergoe was very sure in his own mind of Jenny's ultimate destiny. He was not concerned with the propriety of Clapton aunts, with the respectability of drapers' wives. He was not haunted by the severe ghost of Frederick Horner, the chemist. As he watched Jenny dancing to the sugared melodies of "Cavalleria," he beheld an artist in the making: that was enough for Mr. Vergoe. He owed no obligations to anything except Art, and no responsibleness to anybody except the public.
"Here's a lot of pretty things, ain't there, my dear?"
"Yes," Jenny agreed, with eyes buried deep in a scarlet sleeve.
"Come along now and sit on this chair, which belonged, so they say, so they told me in Red Lion Court where I bought it, to the great Joseph Grimaldi. But then, you never heard of Grimaldi. Ah, well, he must have been a very wonderful clown, by all accounts, though I never saw him myself. Perhaps you don't even know what a clown is? Do you? What's a clown, my dear?"
"I dunno."
"Well, he's a figure of fun, so to speak, a clown is. He's a cove dressed all in white with a white face."
"Was it a clown in Punch and Judy?"
"That's right. That's it. My stars and garters, if you ain't a knowing one. Well, I was a clown once."
"When you was a little boy?"
"No, when I was a man, as you might say."
"Are clowns good?" inquired Jenny.
"Good as gold—so to speak—good as gold, clowns are. A bit high-spirited when they come on in the harlequinade, but all in good part. I suppose, taking him all round, you wouldn't find a better fellow than a clown. Only a bit high-spirited, I'd have you understand. 'Oh, what a lark,' that's their motto, as it were."
Ensconced in the great Grimaldi's chair, Jenny regarded the ancient Mischief with wondering glances and, as she sucked one of his lollipops, thoroughly approved of him.
"Look at this pretty lady," he said, placing before her a colored print of some famous Columbine of the past.
"Why is she on her toes?" asked Jenny.
"Light as a fairy, she was," commented Mr. Vergoe, with a bouquet of admiration in his voice.
"Is she trying to reach on to the mantlepiece?" Jenny wanted to know.
"My stars and garters, not she! She's dancing—toe-dancing, as they call it."
"I don't dance like that," said Jenny.
"Of course you don't, but you could with practice. With practice, I wouldn't say as you mightn't be as light as a pancake, so to speak."
"I can stand on my toes," declared Jenny proudly.
"Can you now?" said Mr. Vergoe admiringly.
"To reach fings off of the table."
"Ah, but then you'd be holding on to it, eh? Tight as wax, you'd be holding on to it. That won't do, that won't. You must be able to dance all over the room on your toes."
"Can you?"
"Not now, my dear, not now. I could once, though. But I never cared for playing Harlequin."
"Eh?"
"That's a fellow you haven't met yet."
"Is he good?"
"Good—in a manner of speaking—but an awkward sort of a laddie with his saber and all. But no malice at bottom, I'm sure of that."
"Can I be a C'mbine?"
"Why not?" exclaimed the old man. "Why not?" And he thumped the table to mark the question's emphasis.
Jenny became very thoughtful and wished she had a petticoat all silver and pink, like the pretty lady on her toes.
"Would I be pretty?" she asked at length.
"Wonderfully pretty, I should say."
"Would all the people say—'pretty Jenny'?"
"No more wouldn't that surprise me," declared Mr. Vergoe.
"Would I be good?"
The old man looked puzzled.
"There's nothing against it," he affirmed. "Nothing, in a manner of speaking; but there, what some call good, others don't, and I can't say as I've troubled much which way it was, so to speak, as long as they was good pals and jolly companions everyone."
"What's pals?"
"Ah, there you've put your finger on it—as it were—what's a pal? Well, I should say he was a hearty fellow—in a manner of speaking—a fellow as would come down handsome on Treasury night when you hadn't paid your landlady the week before. A pal wouldn't ever crab your business, wouldn't stare too hard if you happened to use his grease. A pal wouldn't let you sleep over the train-call on a Sunday morning. A pal wouldn't make love to your girl on a wet, foggy afternoon in Blackburn or Warrington. What's pals? Pals are fellows who stand on the prompt side of life—so to speak—and stick there to the Ring Down."
All of which may or may not be an excellent definition of "paliness," but left Jenny, if possible, more completely ignorant of the meaning of a pal than she was when Mr. Vergoe set out to answer her inquiry.
"What's pals?" she reiterated therefore.
"Not quite clear in your little head yet—as it were—well, I should say, we're pals, me and you."
"Are pals good?"
"The best. The very, very best. Now you just listen to me for a minute. My granddaughter, Miss Lilli Vergoe, that is, she's wonderfully fond of the old man, that is your humble. Now next time she comes round to see him, I'll send up the call-boy—as it might be."
Hereupon Mr. Vergoe closed his left eye, put his forefinger very close to the other eye, and shook it knowingly several times.
"Now you'd better go on or there'll be a stage wait, and get back to ma as quick as you like."
Jenny prepared to obey.
"Wait a minute, though, wait a minute," and the old man fumbled in a drawer from which at last he extracted a cracker. "See that? That's a cracker, that is. Sometimes one or two used to get hidden in my pockets on last nights, and—well, I used to keep 'em as a recollection of good times,so to speak. This one was Exeter, not so very long ago neither. Now you hook on to that end and I'll hook on to this, and, when I say 'three,' pull as hard as you like." The antagonists faced each other. The cracker came in half with the larger portion in Jenny's hand, but the powder had long ago lost all power of report. Age and damp had subdued its ferocity.
"A wrong 'un," muttered the old man regretfully. "Too bad, too bad! Well, accidents will happen—as it were. Come along, open your half."
Jenny produced a compact cylinder of mauve paper.
"Is it a sweet?" she wondered.
"No, it's a cap. By gum, it's a cap. Don't tear it. Steady! Careful does it."
Mr. Vergoe was tremendously excited by the prospect. At last between them they unrolled a gilded paper crown, which he placed round Jenny's curls.
"There you are," he observed proudly. "Fairy Queen as large as life and twice as natural. Now all you want is a wand with a gold star on the end of it, and there's nothing you couldn't do, in a manner of speaking. Now pop off to ma and show her your crown." He held her for a moment up to the glass, in which Jenny regarded herself with a new interest, and when he set her down again she went out of the room with the careful step of one who has imagined greatness.
Downstairs she was greeted by her mother with exclamations of astonishment.
"Whatever have you got on your head?"
"A crown."
"Who gave it you, for Heaven's sake?"
"The lodger."
"Mr. Vergoe?"
Jenny nodded.
"I may wear it, mayn't I, mother?"
"Yes, I suppose so," said Mrs. Raeburn grudgingly. "But don't get putting it in your mouth."
"There's a Miss Vain," said Ruby.
"I'm not."
"Peacocks like looking-glasses," nagged Ruby.
"I isn't a peacock. I's a queen."
"There's a sauce! Whoever heard?" commented Ruby.
The clown's sentimental and pleasantly rhetorical descriptions had no direct influence on the child's mind. But when his granddaughter, Miss Lilli Vergoe, all chiffon and ostrich plumes, took her upon apeau de soielap, and clasped her rosy cheeks to a frangipani breast, Jenny thought she had never experienced any sensation half so delicious.
Amid the heavy glooms and fusty smells of the old house in Hagworth Street, Miss Lilli Vergoe blossomed like an exotic flower, or rather, in Jenny's own simile, like lather. Her china-blue eyes were amazingly attractive. Her honey-colored hair and Dresden cheeks fascinated the impressionable child with all the wonder of an expensive doll. There was no part of her that was not soft and beautiful to stroke. She woke in Jenny a cooing affection such as had never been by her bestowed upon a living soul.
Moreover, what Mr. Vergoe talked about, Lilli showed her how to achieve; so that, unknown to Mrs. Raeburn, Jenny slowly acquired that ambition for public appreciation which makes the actress. Terpischore herself, carrying credentials from Apollo, would not have been a more powerful mistress than Lilli Vergoe, a second line girl in theCorps de Balletof the Orient Palace of Varieties. Under her tuition Jenny learned a hundred airs and graces, which, when re-enacted in the kitchen of Number Seventeen, either caused a command to cease fidgeting or an invitation to look at the comical child.
She learned, too, more than mere airs and graces. She was grounded very thoroughly in primary technique, so that, as time went on, she could step passably well upon her toes and achieve the "splits" and "strides" and "handsprings" of a more acrobatic mode.
Therefore, though in the September just before her seventhbirthday Mrs. Raeburn decided it was time to begin Jenny's education, it is very obvious that Jenny's education was really begun on the sunlit morning when Mr. Vergoe saw her dancing to a sugared melody from "Cavalleria."
School, however, meant for Jenny not so much the acquirement of elementary knowledge, the ability to distinguish a cow from a sheep, as an opportunity to exhibit more satisfactory attainments she had developed from the instigation of Miss Lilli Vergoe. Neither her mother nor Ruby nor Alfie nor Edie nor anyone in the household had been a perfect audience. Her schoolfellows, on the other hand, marveled with delighted respect at herpas seulsupon the asphalt playground of the board school and clapped and jumped their praise.
Jenny had no idea of the stage at present. She had never yet been inside a theater; and was still far from any conception of art as a profession. It merely happened that she could dance, that dancing pleased her, and, less important, that it made her popular with innumerable little girls of her own age, and even older.
By some instinct of advisable concealment, she kept this habit of publicity a secret from her family. Edie, to be sure, was aware of it, and warned her once or twice of the immorality of showing off; but Edie was too indolent to go into the matter more deeply and too conscious of her own comparative greatness through seniority to spend much time in the guardianship of a younger sister.
So for a year Jenny practiced and became daily more proficient, and danced every morning to school.
SHORTLY after her eighth birthday Jenny was puzzled by an incident which, with its uneasy suggestions, led her to postulate to herself for the first time that mere escape from childhood did not finally solve the problem of existence.
She had long been aware of the incomplete affection between her parents; that is to say, she always regarded her father as something that seemed like herself or a chair to be perpetually in her mother's way.
She had no feeling of awe towards Mr. Charles Raeburn, but rather looked upon him as a more extensive counterpart of Alfie, both prone to many deeds of mischief. She had no conception of her father as a bread-winner; her mother was so plainly the head of the house.
In the early morning her father vanished to work and only came back just before bedtime to eat a large tea, like Alfie, in the course of which he was reprimanded and pushed about and ordered, like Alfie, to behave himself. To be sure, he had liberty of egress at a later hour, for once, when in the midst of nightly fears she had rushed in the last breath of a dream along the landing to her mother's room, she saw him coming rosily up the stairs. He made no attempts to justify his late arrival with tales of goblin accidents as Alfie was wont to do. He did not ascribe the cracked egg appearance of his bowler hat to the onset of a baker's barrow. He seemed so far indifferent to the unfinished look of his clothes as not to bother to lay the blame on the butcher's boy. Her mother merely said:
"Oh, it's you?"
To which Mr. Raeburn replied: "Yes, Flo, it's me," and began to sing "Ta-ra-ra—boom—de—ay."
Even Ruby O'Connor, who, in earlier days at Hagworth Street, used to quell Alfie with terrible threats of a father's vengeance, gave them up as ineffective; for the bland and cheerful Charlie, losing the while not a morsel of blandness or cheerfulness, was fast becoming an object of contemptuous toleration in his own house. He was a weak and unsuccessful man, fond of half-pints and tales of his own prowess, with little to recommend him to his family except an undeniable gift of humorous description. Yet, even with this, he possessed no imagination. He was accustomed to treat the world as he would have treated a spaniel. "Poor old world," he would say in pitying intention; "poor old world." He would pat the universe on its august head as a pedagogue slaps a miniature globe in the schoolroom. He never expected anything from the world, which was just as well, for he certainly never received very much. To his wife's occasional inquiry of amazed indignation, "Why ever did I come to marry you?" he would answer:
"I don't know, Floss. Because you wanted to, I reckon."
"I never wanted to," she would protest.
"Well, you didn't," he would say. "Some people acts funny."
"That's quite right."
Hers was the last word: his, however, the pint of four ale that drowned it.
Jenny at this stage in her life was naturally incapable of grasping the fact of her mother throwing herself away in matrimony; but she was able to ponder the queer result that, however much her mother might be annoyed by Charlie, she did not seem able to get rid of him.
Alfie, with his noise and clumping boots, was an equally unpleasant appendage to her life, but for Alfie she was responsible. In whatever way children came about, it was notto be supposed they happened involuntarily like bedtime or showers of rain. Moreover, mystery hung heavy over their arrival. Edie and Alfie would giggle in corners, look at each other with oddly lighted eyes, and blush when certain subjects arose in conversation. Human agency was implied, and all that talk of strawberry-beds and cabbage leaves so much trickery. Alfie, bad habits and all, was due to her father and mother being married.
But why be married when Alfies were the result? Why not close the door against her father and be rid of him? And take somebody else in exchange? Who was there? Nobody.
One foggy afternoon early in January, Jenny came back from school to the smell of a good cigar. She did not know it was a good cigar, but the perfume hung about the dark hall of Number Seventeen with a strange richness never associated in her mind with the smell of her father's smoke. She was conscious, too, from the carefully closed doors both of the parlor and the kitchen, that company was present. The voice of a polite conscience warned her not to bang about, not to shout "Is tea ready, mother?" but rather to tread discreetly the little distance to the kitchen and there to await developments. If Alfie and Edie were already arrived by a punctual chance, she would learn from them the manner and kind of the company hid in the parlor.
The kitchen was empty. No tea was laid. Over her stole an extraordinary sensation of misgiving. She felt as if she were standing at the foot of a ladder watching Alfie about some mischievous business.
Presently Ruby returned from the scullery, like a sudden draught.
"However did you get in so quiet?" asked the newcomer. Then Jenny remembered the street door had been open.
"Who's in along of mother?"
"That's right. Be nosey."
"Tell us, Rube."
"I can't tell what I don't know."
"But you do know," persisted Jenny; "so tell us."
"D'you think we all wants to poke in where we isn't wanted, like you, Miss Meddlesome? How should I know?"
"Well, I told you yesterday what teacher called Edie, so tell us, Rube; you might tell us."
"There isn't nothing to tell, you great inquisitive monkey," Ruby declared.
Then there was a sound in the hall of a man's voice, a rich voice that suited somehow the odor of the cigar. Jenny longed to peep round the kitchen door at the visitor, but she was afraid that Ruby would carry on about it. A moment or two's conversation, and the street door slammed, and when her mother came back from the kitchen, Jenny was afraid to ask bluntly:
"Who was that?"
Instead she announced:
"We did sewing this afternoon. Teacher said I sewed well."
"You sew on with your tea," said Mrs. Raeburn. "And wherever can Edie and Alfie have got to?"
A week or two afterwards Jenny returned to the same smell of cigar, the same impression of a rich and unusual visitor, but this time the parlor door gaped to a dark and cold interior, and when Jenny followed Ruby into the kitchen, he was there, a large florid man, with a big cigar and heavy mustache and a fur coat open to a snowy collar and shining tie-pin.
"And this is Jenny, is it?" he said in the cigar voice.
Jenny kissed him much as she would have kissed the walrus he slightly resembled; then she retreated, finger in mouth, backwards until she bumped against the table by which she leaned to look at the stranger, much as she would have looked at a walrus.
Her father came in after a while, and his wife said:
"Mr. Timpany."
"Eh?" said Charlie.
"Mr. Timpany, a friend of father's."
"Oh," said Charlie. "Pleased to meet you," with which he retired to a chair in a dusky corner and was silent for a long time. At last he asked:
"Have you been to Paris, Mr.... Tippery? Thrippenny, I should say."
"Timpany, Charlie. I wish you'd listen. Have you got cloth ears? Of course he's been to Paris, and, for gracious, don't you start your stories. One would think to hear you talk as you were the only man on earth as had ever been further than Islington."
"I was in Paris once some years back—on business," Charlie remarked. "I think Paris is a knockout, as towns go. Not but what I like London better. Only you see more life in Paris," and he relapsed into silence, until finally Mr. Timpany said he must be going.
"Who's he?" demanded Mr. Raeburn, when his wife came back from escorting her visitor to the door.
"I told you once—a friend of father's."
"Ikey sort of a bloke. He hasn't made a mistake coming here, has he? I thought it was the Duke of Devonshire when I see him sitting there."
"You are an ignorant man," declared Mrs. Raeburn. "Don't you know a gentleman when you see one? Even if you have lost your own shop and got to go to work every morning like a common navvy, you can tell a gentleman still."
"Are you bringing in any more dukes or markisses home to tea?" asked Charlie. "Because let me know next time and I'll put on a clean pair of socks."
Mrs. Raeburn did not bring any more dukes or marquises home to tea; but Mr. Timpany came very often, and Charlie took to returning from work very punctually, and, though he was always very polite to Mr. Timpany when he was there, he was very rude indeed about him when he was gone, and Jenny used to think how funny it was to wait for Mr. Timpany's departure before he began to make a fuss.
Vaguely she felt her father was afraid to say much. She could understand his fear, because Mr. Timpany was very large and strong, so large and strong that even her mother spoke gently and always seemed anxious to please him. And looking at the pair side by side, her father appeared quite small—her father whom she had long regarded as largeness personified.
One day Jenny came home late from school and found her parents in the middle of a furious argument.
"I ar'n't going to have him here," Charlie was saying, "not no more, not again, the dirty hound!"
"You dare say that, you vulgar beast."
"I shall say just whatever I please. You're struck on him, that's what you are, you soft idiot."
"I'm no such thing," declared Mrs. Raeburn. "Nice thing that a friend of father's can't come and have a cup of tea without your carrying on like a mad thing."
"Not so much 'cup of tea,' Mrs. Raeburn. It's not the tea I minds. It's while the kettle's boiling as I objects to."
"You're drunk," said the wife scornfully.
"And it's —— lucky I am drunk. You're enough to make a fellow drunk with your la-di-da behavior. Why, God help me, Florrie, you've been powdering your face. Let me get hold of the——. I'll learn him to come mucking round another man's wife."
On the very next day Mr. Timpany came to tea for the last time. Possibly Mrs. Raeburn had told her husband it was to be the last time, for he did not put in an appearance. Ruby had gone out by permission. May was secured by a fortified nursing-chair. Alfie was away on some twilight adventure of bells and string. Edie was immerged in a neighboring basement with two friends, a plate of jam, and the cordial teasing of the friends' brother, young Bert; and Jenny, urged on by a passionate inquisitiveness, crept along the passage and listened to the following conversation:
"You're wasted here, Flo, wasted—a fine woman like youis absolutely wasted. Why won't you come away with me? Come away to-night, I'll always be good to you."
"The children," said their mother.
"They'll get on all right by themselves. Bring the little one—what's her name, with fair hair and dark eyes?"
"Jenny."
"Yes, Jenny. Bring her with you. I don't mind."
"It wouldn't be fair to her. She'd never have a chance."
"Rubbish! She'd have more chance in a cosy little house of your own than stuck in this rat's hole. You'd have a slap-up time, Flo. A nice little Ralli cart, if you're fond of horses, and—oh, come along, come now. I want you."
"No; I've fixed myself up. I was done with life when I married Charlie, and I'm fixed up."
"You're in a cage here," he argued.
"Yes; but I've got my nest in it," she said.
"Then it's good-bye?"
"Good-bye."
"I'm damned if I can understand why you won't come. I'd be jolly good to you."
"Good-bye."
"You're a cold woman, aren't you?"
"Am I?"
"I think you are."
"It doesn't always do to show one's feelings."
"You're a regular icicle."
"Perhaps," whispered Mrs. Raeburn.
Jenny stole back to the kitchen greatly puzzled. Whether the florid Mr. Timpany kissed Mrs. Raeburn before he went out to look for the hansom cab that was to jingle him out of her life, I do not know; but she waved to him once as she saw him look round under a lamp post, for Jenny had crept back and was standing beside her when she did so.
"You come on in, you naughty girl," said Mrs. Raeburn, drowning love in a copper bubbling with clothes.
"Would you like that man better than father?" Jenny inquiredpresently, pausing in the erection of a tower of bricks for the benefit of May, who watched with somber eyes the quivering feat of architecture.
"What do you mean?" said Mrs. Raeburn sharply.
"Would you like father to go away and never, never come back here along of us ever again and always have that man?"
"Of course, I shouldn't, you silly child."
"I would."
"You would?"
"Yes," said Jenny; "he smelt nice."
"Ah, miss, when one's married, one's married."
"Could I be married?"
"When you grow up. Of course."
"Could I have little boys and girls?"
"Of course you could if you were married."
"Could I have lots and lots?"
"More than you bargain for, I daresay," declared her mother.
"Did you marry to have a little girl like me?"
"Perhaps."
Encouraged by her mother's unusual amenity to questions, Jenny went on:
"Did you really, though?"
"For that and other reasons."
"Were you glad when you saw me first?"
"Very glad."
"Did I come in by the door?"
"Yes."
"Who brought me?"
"The doctor."
"Did he ring the bell?"
"Yes."
"Did father know I was coming?"
"Yes."
"Was I a present from father?"
"Yes."
"Would you like that gentleman to give you a present?"
"What do you mean?"
"Would you like him to give you a li'l' girl like me?"
"Not at all; and you stop asking questions, Mrs. Chatter."
Her mother was suddenly aware of Jenny's cross-examinations, which she had been answering mechanically with thoughts far away with a florid man in a jingling hansom cab. Jenny was conscious of her dreaming and knew in her sly baby heart that her mother was in a weak mood. But it was too good to last long enough for Jenny to find out all she wanted to know.
"Why don't you send father away and have that gentleman as a lodger?"
"I told you once; don't keep on."
"But why don't you?"
"Because I don't want to."
In bed that night Jenny lay awake and tried to understand the conversation in the parlor. At present her intelligence could only grasp effect. Analysis had not yet entered her mind.
She saw, in pictures on the ceiling, her mother and the rich strange gentleman. She saw her father watching. She saw them all three as primitive folks see tragedies, dimly aware of great events, but powerless to extract any logical sequence. Lying awake, she planned pleasant surprises, planned to bring back Mr. Timpany and banish her father. It was like the dreams of Christmas time, when one lay awake and thought of presents. She remembered how pleased her mother had professed herself by the gift of a thimble achieved on Jenny's side by a great parsimony in sweets. The gentleman had offered a cosy house. At once she visualized it with lights in every window and the delicious smell that is wafted up from the gratings of bakers' shops. But what was a Ralli cart? Something to do with riding? And Jenny was to come, too, and share in all this. He had said so distinctly. If he gave mother a house, why should he not give her a doll's housesuch as Edie boasted of in the house of a friend, such as Edie had promised to show her some day. She began to feel a budding resentment against her mother for saying "No" to all these delights, a resentment comparable with her emotions not so long ago when her mother refused to let her go for a ride on an omnibus with Mr. Vergoe.
Good things came along very seldom, and when they did come, grown-up people always spoiled them. Life, as Jenny lay awake, seemed made up of small repressions. Life was a series of hopes held out and baffled desires, of unjust disappointments and aspirations unreasonably neglected. She lay there, a mite in flowing time, sensible only of having no free will.
Why couldn't she grow up all of a sudden and do as she liked? But then grown-up people, whom she always regarded as entirely at liberty, did not seem to be able to do as they liked. Her mother had said, "No, thank you," to a cosy house, just as she was taught to say, "No, thank you," to old gentlemen who offered her pennies to turn somersaults over railings—surely a harmless way of getting money. But her mother had not wanted to say "No, thank you." That Jenny recognized as a fact, although, if she had been asked why, she would have had nothing approaching a reason.
"I will do as I like," Jenny vowed to herself. "I will, I will. I won't be told." Here she bit the sheet in rage at her powerlessness. Desire for action was stirring strongly in her now. "Why can't I grow up all at once? Why must I be a little girl? Why can't I be like a kitten?" Kittens had become cats within Jenny's experience.
"I will be disobedient. I will be disobedient. I won't be stopped." Suddenly a curious sensation seized her of not being there at all. She bit the bedclothes again. Then she sat up in bed and looked at her petticoats hanging over the chair. She was there, after all, and she fell asleep with wilful ambitions dancing lightly through the gay simplicities of her child's brain, and, as she lay there with tightly closed, determinedlips, her mother with shaded candle looked down at her and wondered whether, after all, she and Jenny would not have been better off under the rich-voiced, cigar-haunted protection of Mr. Timpany.
And then Mrs. Raeburn went to bed and fell asleep to the snoring of Charlie, just as truly unsatisfied as most of the women in this world.
Only Charlie was all right. He had spent a royal evening in bragging to a circle of pipe-armed friends of his firmness and virility at a moment of conjugal stress.
And outside the cold January stars were reflected in the puddles of Hagworth Street.
IT was unlikely that Jenny's dancing could always be kept a secret. The day came at last when her mother, in passing the playground of the school, looked over the railings and saw her daughter's legs above a semicircle of applauding children. Mrs. Raeburn was more than shocked: she was profoundly alarmed. The visit of the aunts rose up before her like a ghost from the heart of forgotten years. They had faded into a gradual and secure insignificance, only momentarily displaced by the death of Aunt Fanny. But the other two lived on in Carminia House like skeletons of an outraged morality.
Something must be done about this dancing craze. Something must be done to check the first signs of a prophecy fulfilled. She thought of Barnsbury; but Mrs. Purkiss had now two pasty-faced boys of her own, and was no longer willing to act as deputy-mother to the children of her sister. Something must certainly be done about Jenny's wilfulness.
"How dare you go making such an exhibition of yourself?" she demanded, when Jenny came home. "How dare you, you naughty girl?"
Jenny made no reply but an obstinate frown.
"You dare sulk and I'll give you a good whipping."
The teacher was written to; was warned of Jenny's wild inclinations. The teacher, a fish-like woman in a plaid skirt, remonstrated with her pupil.
"Nice little girls," she asserted "don't kick their legs up in the air."
The class was forbidden to encourage the dancer; a mountain was made of a molehill; Jenny was raised to the giddy pinnacle of heroism. She wore about her the blazing glories of a martyr; she began to be conscious of possessing an exceptional personality, for there had never been such a fuss over any other girl's misdemeanor. She began to feel more acutely the injustice of grown-up repression. She tried defiance and danced again in the playground, but learned that humanity's prime characteristic is cowardice; perceived, with Aristotle, that man is a political animal, a hunter in packs. She thought the school would support her justifiable rebellion, but, alas, the school deserted her. Heroine she might be in corner conferences. Heroine she might be in linked promenades; but when her feelings were crystallized in action, the other girls thought of themselves. They applauded her intentions, but shrank from the prominence of the visible result. Jenny abandoned society. The germ of cynicism was planted in her soul. She came to despise her fellows. In scarlet cloak she traveled solitary to school, and hated everybody.
The immediate and obvious result of this self-imposed isolation was her heightened importance in the eyes of boys. One by one they approached her with offers of escort, with tribute from sticky pockets. Little by little she became attached to their top-spinning, marble-flicking journeys to and from school; gradually she was admitted to the more intimate fellowship of outlawry. She found that, in association with boys, she could prosecute her quarrel with the world. With them she wandered far afield from Hagworth Street; with them she tripped along on many a marauding expedition. For them she acted as decoy, as scout against policemen. With them she rang the bells of half a street at a run. With them she broke the windows of empty houses; climbed ladders and explored roofs and manipulated halfpennies stuck with wax to the paving-stones. She was queen of the robbers' camp on a tin-sprinkled waste of building-land. She acquired a fine contempt of girls, and wished more than ever she had been fortunateenough to be born a boy. Even Alfie condescended not merely to take notice of her, but also sometimes to make use of her activity. She looked back with wonder to the time when she had regarded her brother with a shrinking distaste. He became her standard of behavior. She saw his point of view when nobody else could, as on the occasion when he asked Edie if she dared him to hit her on the head with the bar of iron he was swinging, and when Edie, having in duty bound dared, found herself with a large cut on the forehead. Alfie, finding other boys admired it, encouraged her dancing; and they used to flock round the organs while Jenny learned step-dancing from big, rough girls who were always to be found in the middle of the music.
One day, however, Mrs. Raeburn and Mrs. Purkiss, coming back together from a spring hat foray, walked right into one of Jenny's performances. Mrs. Raeburn might have endured the shame of it alone, but the company of her sister upset her power of dealing with an awkward situation. If in the past she had been inclined to compare Percy and Claude, her pasty-faced nephews, unfavorably with her own children, on the present occasion their mother drained the cup of revenge to the dregs.
With Jenny between them, the two sisters walked back to Hagworth Street.
"It isn't as if it was just showing her legs," said Mrs. Purkiss. "That's bad enough, but I happened to notice she had a hole in her stocking....
"And those great, common girls she was hollering with. Wherever on earth can she have picked up with them? Some of Charlie's friends, I suppose....
"It seems funny that Alfie shouldn't have more shame than go letting his sister make such a sight of herself, but there, I suppose Alfie takes after his father....
"All I'm thankful for is that Bill wasn't with us, he being a man as anything like that upsets for a week. He never did have what you might call a good liver, and anything unpleasantturns his bile all the wrong way. Only last week, when Miss Knibbs, our first assistant, sent an outsize in combinations to a customer who'sveryparticular about any remark being passed about her stoutness, Bill was sick half of the night....
"I can't think why you don't send her away to Carrie's. The country would do her good, and Carrie's got no children of her own. I'd like to have her myself, only I'm afraid she'd be such a bad example to Percy and Claude."
Mrs. Raeburn was silent. Vulnerable through Jenny's lapse from modesty, she had no sting for her nephews.
Finally it was settled that Jenny should spend a year with Mrs. Threadgale at Galton. It was laid on the shoulders of Hampshire to curb her naughtiness. It remained to be seen how far country sights and sounds would civilize her rudeness.
Having made up her mind to banish the child, Mrs. Raeburn began at once to regret the decision. With all her disobedience, Jenny was still the favorite. "She was such a character," in her mother's words; and her gay, dark eyes and silvery curls would be missed from Hagworth Street. But the day of departure came along. A four-wheeler threw a shadow on the door. There were kisses and handkerchiefs and last injunctions and all the paraphernalia of separation. Jenny was bundled in. Mrs. Raeburn followed.
"Now mind, Ruby," cried the latter from the window, "don't you let May get putting nothing in her mouth, and see Mr. Raeburn has his tea comfortable, and, Alfie, you dare misbehave while I'm away. Good-bye, all."
At last the train drew up at Galton along a gray gravel platform that smelt fresh and flowery after the railway carriage. There was lilac in bloom and red hawthorn, and a pile of tin trunks, and when the train had puffed on, Jenny could hear birdsong everywhere.
While the two sisters embraced, the little girl surveyed hernew aunt. She was more like her mother than Aunt Mabel. Nicer altogether than Aunt Mabel, though she disliked the flavor of veil that was mingled with the kisses of welcome.
"They'll wheel the luggage along on a barrow," said Aunt Caroline. "It's not far where we live."
They turned into the wide country street with its amber sunlight and sound of footsteps, and very soon arrived before the shop of James Threadgale, Draper and Haberdasher. Jenny hoped they would go in through the shop itself, but Mrs. Threadgale opened a door at the side and took them upstairs to a big airy parlor that seemed to Jenny's first glance all sunbeams and lace. Having been afforded a glimpse of Paradise, they were taken downstairs again into the back parlor, which would have been very dull had it not looked out on to a green garden sloping down to a small stream.
Uncle James, with pale, square face and quiet voice, came in from the shop to greet them. Jenny thought he talked funny with his broad Hampshire vowels. Ethel, the maid, came in, too, with her peach-bloom cheeks and creamy neck and dewy crimson mouth. Jenny compared her with "our Rube," greatly to our Rube's disadvantage.
Mrs. Raeburn stayed a week, and Jenny said good-bye without any feeling of home-sickness. She liked her new uncle and aunt. There were no pasty-faced cousins, and Ethel was very nice. She was not sent to the National School. Such a course would have been derogatory to Mr. and Mrs. Threadgale's social position. So she went to a funny old school at the top of the town kept by an old lady called Miss Wilberforce—a dear old lady with white caps and pale blue ribbons and a big pair of tortoise-shell spectacles. The school was a little gray house with three gables and diamond lattices and a door studded with great nails over which was an inscription that said, "Mrs. Wilberforce's School, 1828."
In the class-room on one side was heard a perpetual humming of bees among the wallflowers in the front garden, andthrough the windows on the far side, which looked away over the open country, floated the distant tinkle of sheep-bells. All along one side hung rows of cloaks and hats, and all over the other walls hung pictures of sheep and cows and dogs and angels and turnips and wheat and barley and Negroes and Red Indians: there were also bunches of dried grasses and glass cases full of butterflies and birds' eggs and fossils, and along the window-sills were pots of geraniums. On her desk Miss Wilberforce had an enormous cane, which she never used, and a bowl of bluebells or wild flowers of the season and a big ink-horn and quill pens and books and papers which fluttered about the room on a windy day. There was a dunce's stool with a fool's-cap beside it, and a blackboard full of the simplest little addition sums. All the children's desks were chipped and carved and inked with the initials of bygone scholars, and all the forms were slippery with the fidgetings of innumerable little girls. About the air of the warm, murmurous schoolroom hung the traditions of a dead system of education.
Jenny learned to darn and sew; to recite Cowper's "Winter Walk" after Miss Wilberforce, who was never called "teacher," but always "ma'am"; to deliver trite observations upon the nature of common animals, such as "The dog is a sagacious beast," "The sheep is the friend of man," and to acquire a slight acquaintance with uncommon animals such as the quagga, the yak, and the ichneumon, because they won through their initials an undeserved prominence in the alphabet. She learned that Roman Catholics worshiped images and, incidentally, the toe of the Pope, and wondered vaguely if the latter were a dancer. She was told homely tales about Samuel and Elijah. She was given a glazed Bible which smelt of oil-cloth, and advised to read it every morning and every evening without any selection of suitable passages. She learned a hymn called "Now the day is over," which always produced an emotion of exquisite melancholy. She was awarded a diminutive plot of ground and given a penny packetof nasturtium seeds to sow, but, being told by another girl that they were good to eat, she ate them instead, and her garden was a failure.
There were delightful half-holiday rambles over the countryside, when she, still in her scarlet serge, and half a dozen girls and boys danced along the lanes picking flowers and playing games with chanted refrains like "Green Gravel" and "Queen of Barbary." She made friends with farmers' lads, and learned to climb trees and call poultry and find ducks' eggs. Hay-making time came on, when she was allowed to ride on the great swinging loads right into the setting sun, it seemed. She used to lie on her back, lulled by the sounds of eventide, and watch the midges glinting on the air of a golden world.
She slept in a funny little flowery room next to her uncle and aunt, and she used to lie awake in the slow summer twilights sniffing in the delicious odor of pinks in full bloom below her window. Sometimes she would lean out of the window and weave fancies round the bubbling stream beyond the grass till the moon came up from behind a hop-garden and threw tree-shadows all over the room. Below her sill she could pick great crimson roses that looked like bunches of black velvet in the moonlight, and in the morning she used to suck the honey from the sweet, starry flowers of the jasmine that flung its green fountains over the kitchen porch.
Summer went on; the hay was cut, and in the swimming July heat she used to play in the meadows till her face grew freckled as the inside of a cowslip. Now was the time when she could wear foxglove blooms on every finger. Now was the time to watch the rabbits scampering by the wood's edge in the warm dusk. The corn turned golden, and there were expeditions for wild raspberries. The corn was cut, and blackberry time arrived, bringing her mother, who was pleased to see how well Jenny looked and went back to Hagworth Street with a great bunch of fat purple dahlias.
In October there was nutting—best of all the new delights,perhaps—when she wandered through the hazel coppices and shook the smooth boughs until the ripe nuts pattered down on the damp, woodland earth. Nutting was no roadside adventure. She really penetrated into the heart of the woods and with her companions would peep out half-affrighted by the lips of the October leaves along the glades, half-afraid of the giant beeches with their bare gray branches twisted to the likeness of faces and figures. She and her playmates would peep out from the hazel coppice and dart across the mossy way out of the keeper's eye, and lose themselves in the dense covert and point with breathless whisper to a squirrel or scurrying dormouse. Home again in the silvery mists or moaning winds, home again with bags of nuts slung across shoulders, to await the long winter evenings and fireside pleasures.
Jenny was allowed to celebrate her ninth birthday by a glorious tea-party in the kitchen, when little girls in clean pinafores and little boys in clean collars stumped along the flagged passage and sat down to tea and munched buns and presented Jenny with dolls' tea-services and pop-guns and Michaelmas daisies with stalks warm from the tight clasp of warm hands.
She grew to love her Aunt Carrie and Uncle James with the quiet voice and thin, damp hair.
Winter went by to the ticking of clocks and patter of rain. But there was snow after Christmas and uproarious snow-balling and slides in Galton High Street. There was always a fine crackling fire in the kitchen, and a sleek tabby cat, and copper kettles singing on the hob. There was Ethel's love affair with the grocer's assistant to talk and giggle over amid the tinkle and clatter of washing up the tea-things.
And then in March Mrs. Threadgale caught cold and died quite suddenly; and Jenny put some white violets on her grave and wore a black dress and went home to Islington.
The effect of this wonderful visit was not much more permanent than the surprise of a new picture-book. Galtonhad meant not so much a succession of revelations as a volley of sensations. She was sad at leaving the country; she missed the affection of her uncle and aunt. She missed the easy sway she had wielded over everybody at Galton. But she had very little experience to carry back to Hagworth Street. One would like to say she carried the memory of that childish wondertime right through her restless life, but, actually, she never remembered much about it. It very soon became merely a vague interval between two long similarities of existence, like a break in a row of houses that does not admit one to anything more than an added space of sky. She never communed with elves, or, like young Blake, saw God's forehead pressed against the window-pane. Jenny was no mystic of nature, and the roar of humanity would always move her more than the singing of waves and forest leaves.
Her great hold upon life was the desire of dancing. This she had fostered on many a level stretch of sward, with daisy chains hung all about her. She had danced with damson-stained mouth like a young Bacchante. She had danced while her companions made arches and hoops of slender willow-stems. She had danced the moon up and the sun down; and once, when the summer dusk was like wine cooled by woodland airs, when a nightingale throbbed in every roadside tree and glow-worms spangled the grass, she had taken a spray of eglantine and led an inspired band of childish revelers down into the twinkling lamplight of Galton.
Yet this wonderful year became a date in her chronicle chiefly because age or sunlight or wind tarnished her silver curls to that uncertain tint which is, unjustly to mice, always called mouse-colored; so that her arrival at Number Seventeen was greeted by a chorus of disapproval.
"Good gracious!" cried Mrs. Raeburn, when she saw her. "Will you only look at her hair?"
"What's gone with it?" asked Jenny.
"Why, what a terrible color. No color at all, you might say. I feel quite disgusted."
"Perhaps she won't be quite such a Miss Vain now," Ruby put in.
Jenny was discouraged. The London spring was trying after Galton, and one day, a month or two after she came back, she felt horribly ill, and her face was flushed.
"The child's ill," said Mrs. Raeburn.
"Ill? Nonsense!" argued Charlie. "Why, look at her color. Ill? Whoever heard? Never saw no one look better in my life. Look how bright her eyes is."
"You ignorant man!" said his wife, and sent for the doctor.
The doctor said it was scarlet fever, and Jenny was taken away in blankets to the hospital. She felt afraid at first in the long, quiet ward with all the rows of nurses and palms and thin beds from which heads suddenly popped up.
"Do you think you'll go to heaven when you die?" the charge-nurse whispered to Jenny as she tucked her in.
"I don't care where I go," said Jenny; "as long as there isn't no castor-oil."
As she lay waiting to get better and watched the lilac buds breaking into flower outside the big windows, she could not help wishing she were in Galton again, although in a way she liked the peace and regularity of hospital life. It amused her to have breakfast at half-past five and lunch at nine. The latter she laughed at all the time she was in the hospital. Her convalescence was an exceptionally long one, but she had two jolly weeks before she left, when she could run about and help to carry the meals to the other patients. She danced once or twice then for the benefit of the ward and was glad that everybody clapped her so loudly. She cried when she left in August to go home to her family.
THE great event came about because Mrs. Raeburn, in return for similar favors in the past, went to superintend the behavior of pasty-faced Claude and Percy so that her sister could spend a fortnight with a brother-in-law lately elected to the Urban Council of an unimportant town in Suffolk. So, with some misgivings on the side of his wife, Charlie was left in charge of 17 Hagworth Street.
One day Mr. Vergoe came downstairs to ask his landlord if he would let Jenny and Alfie and Edie accompany him to the pantomime of "Aladdin" at the Grand Theater. Charlie saw no harm in it, and the party was arranged. It appeared that Miss Lilli Vergoe had been temporarily released from the second line of girls at the Orient Theater of Varieties in order to make one of a quartette of acrobatic dancers in the pantomime. Under the circumstances, her grandfather considered himself bound to attend at least one performance, although he felt rather like a mute at his own obsequies.
It was a clear winter's evening when they set out, a rosy-cheeked, chattering, skipping party. Mr. Vergoe, wrapped in a muffler almost as wide as a curtain, walked in the middle. Jenny held his hand. Edie jigged on the inside, and Alfie, to whom had been intrusted the great responsibility of the tickets, walked along the extreme edge of the curb, occasionally jolting down with excitement into the frozen gutter. They hurried along the wide raised pavement that led up to the theater. They hurried past the golden windows of shops still gay with the aftermath of Christmas. They hurried faster and faster tillpresently the great front of the theater appeared in sight, when they all huddled together for a wild dash across the crowded thoroughfare. Ragged boys accosted them, trying to sell old programmes. Knowing men inquired if they wanted the shortest way to the pit.
"No, thank you," said Mr. Vergoe proudly. "We have seats in the dress circle."
The knowing men looked very respectful and moved aside from the welded plutocracy of Edie, Alfie, Jenny and Mr. Vergoe. Fat women with baskets of fat oranges tried to tempt them by offering three at once, but Mr. Vergoe declined. Oranges would not be polite in the dress circle.
In the vestibule Alfie was commanded to produce the tickets. There was a terrible moment of suspense while Alfie, nearly as crimson as the plush all around him, dug down into one pocket after another. Were the tickets lost? Edie and Jenny looked daggers. No; there they were: Row A, numbers 7, 8, 9, and 10. "Upstairs, please," said a magnificent gentleman in black and gold. "This way, please," said a fuzzy-haired attendant. The children walked over the thick carpet in awed silence. A glass door swung open. They were in the auditorium of the Grand Theater, Islington, in the very front row, by all that was fortunate; and, having bestowed their hats and coats beneath the elegant and comfortable tip-up chairs, they hung over the red-plush ledge of the circle and gazed down into what seemed the whole of the population of London. The orchestra had not yet come in. Down in the pit the people were laughing and talking. Up in the gallery they were laughing and talking. Babies were crying; mothers were comforting them. Everybody down below seemed to be eating oranges or buns or chocolate. Alfie let his programme flutter down, and Jenny nearly burst into tears because she thought they would all be turned out of the theater.
The whole of the vast audience was there for enjoyment. Enjoyment was in the air like a great thrill of electricity. What could be more magnificent than the huge drop curtain,with its rich landscape and lightly clothed inhabitants? What could be more exciting than the entrance, one by one, of the amazingly self-possessed musicians?
The orchestra was tuning up. The conductor appeared to the welcoming taps of fiddle-bows. One breathless moment he held aloft his baton and looked round at his attentive company, then altogether the fiddles and the drums and the flutes and the cornets, the groaning double-bass and the 'cello and the clarinets and the funny little piccolo and the big bassoon and the complicated French horns and the trombones and the triangle (perhaps the best-enjoyed instrument of all) and the stupendous cymbals started off with the overture of the Christmas pantomime of the Grand Theater, Islington.
Could it be borne, this enthusiastic overture? Was it not almost too much for children, this lilting announcement of mirth and beauty? Would not Jenny presently fall head-foremost into the pit? Would not Alfie be bound to break the seat by his perpetual leaps into the air? Would not Edie explode in her anxiety to correct Jenny, devour bull's-eyes and see more of a mysterious figure that kept peering through a little square hole in the corner of the proscenium?
The orchestra stopped for a moment. A bell had rung, shrill and pregnant with great events. Green lights appeared, and red lights: there was hardly a sound in the house. Was anything the matter?
"They're just ringing up," said Mr. Vergoe.
Slowly the rich landscape and lightly clothed inhabitants vanished into the roof.
"Oh!" exclaimed Jenny.
"Hush!" whispered Edie.
"My Gosh!" said Alfie.
A weird melody began. Demons leaped maliciously round a caldron. Green demons and red demons danced with pitchforks. The caldron bubbled and steamed. There was a crash from the cymbals. A figure sprang from the caldron, alightingon the board with a loud "ha-ha." Evil deeds were afoot, and desperate dialogue of good and ill.
The scene changed to a Chinese market-place. There were comic policemen, comic laundrywomen. There was the Princess Balroubadour in a palanquin more beautiful than the very best lampshade of the Hagworth Street parlor. There was the splendidly debonair Aladdin. There was the excruciatingly funny Widow Twankey. There was the Emperor with bass voice and mustaches trailing to the ground to be continually trodden on by humorists of every size and sort.
It would be impossible to relate every scene. It was like existence in a precious stone, so much sparkle and color was everywhere. The cave was wonderful. The journey to the Enchanted Palace through Cloudland was amazing. Then there were gilded tables, heaped with gigantic fruits, that rose from the very ground itself. There was the devilishly cunning Abanazar. There were songs and dances and tinsel and movement and jingles and processions and laughter and gongs and lanterns and painted umbrellas and magic doors and an exhaustingly funny bathing scene with real water. There was the active and slippery Genius of the Lamp, the lithe and agile Genius of the Ring, who ran right round the ledge of the circle and slid down a golden pillar back on to the stage amid thunders of applause.
To Jenny, perhaps the most real excitement of all was the appearance of her darling Lilli, first in gold and blue, and then in white, and then in black, and finally in a dress that must have been stolen from the very heart of a rainbow, such scintillating streams of color flickered and gleamed and radiated from its silken folds.
How gloriously golden looked her hair, how splendidly crimson her lips, how nobly brilliant were her eyes. And how she danced, first on one leg, then on the other; then upside down and inside out, and over one girl and under another. How the people clapped her and how pleased she looked, and how Jenny waved to her till Alfie and Edie simultaneouslysuppressed such an uncontrolled and conspicuous display of feelings. Then there was the transformation scene, which actually surpassed all that had gone before, with its bouquets of giant roses turning into fairies, with its clouds and lace and golden rocks and jewels and silver trees and view of magic oceans and snowy mountains and gaudy birds.
Suddenly crimson lights flared. There was a jovial shout from somewhere, and "Here we are again!" cried Joey, as round and round to "Ring a ring o' roses" galloped Clown and Pantaloon and Harlequin and Columbine. Jenny looked shyly up into Mr. Vergoe's face and could just see tears glittering in his eyes.
Down came the front cloth of the harlequinade with shops and mischievous boys and everlastingly mocked policemen and absent-minded nursemaids and swaggering soldiers. Inspiring were the feats achieved by the Clown, wild were the transformations and substitutions effected by the trim and ubiquitous Harlequin. But what Jenny loved most were the fairy entrances of Columbine, as, like a pink feather, she danced before the footlights and in and out of the shops. Oh, to be a Columbine, she thought, to dance in silver and pink down Hagworth Street with a thousand eyes to admire her, a thousand hands to acclaim the beautiful vision.
It came to an end, the pantomime of Aladdin. It came to an end with the Clown's shower of crackers. Triumph of triumphs, Jenny actually caught one.
"You and me will pull it," she whispered to Mr. Vergoe, clasping his hand in childish love.
But it came to an end, the pantomime of Aladdin; and home they went again to Hagworth Street. Home they went, all three children's hearts afire with the potential magic of every street corner. Home they went, talking and laughing and interrupting and imitating and recalling, while Mr. Vergoe thought of old days. How quiet and dark Hagworth Street seemed when they reached it.
But it was very delightful to rush in past Ruby and turnsomersaults all the way to the kitchen. It was very delightful to stand in a knot round their father and tell him the whole story and recount each separate splendor, while he and Mr. Vergoe sipped a glass of Mr. Vergoe's warm whisky with a slice of lemon added. It was good fun to disconcert Ruby by tripping her up. It was fine to seize the poker and chase her all round the kitchen.
The bedtime of this never-to-be-forgotten evening came at last. Jenny and Edie lay awake and traced in the ceiling shadows startling similarities to the action of the harlequinade. Edie fell asleep, but Jenny still lay awake, her heart going pitter-pat with a big resolve, her breath coming in little gasps with the birth of a new ambition. She must go on the stage. She must dance for all the world to gaze at her. She would. She would. She must. What a world it was, this wonderful world of the stage—an existence of color and scent and movement and admiration.
The oilcloth of Hagworth Street seemed more than usually cold and dreary on the following day. Alfie, too, was in a very despondent mood, having fallen deeply in love with Miss Letty Lightbody, who had played the part of Pekoe, Aladdin's friend and confidant. An air of staleness permeated everything for a week. Then Mrs. Raeburn came back from Barnsbury, and Jenny raised the question of going on the stage.
The former was very angry with her husband for allowing the visit to the pantomime. Mr. Vergoe tried to take the blame, but Mrs. Raeburn was determined the brunt of the storm should fall on Charlie. Jenny was ordered to give up all ideas of the stage. Schooltime came round again, and the would-be dancer behaved more atrociously than ever. She was the despair of her mistresses, and at home she would sit by the fire sulking. She began to grow thin, and her mother began to wonder whether, after all, it would not be wiser to let her have her own way. She went upstairs to consult Mr. Vergoe.
"You'll make a big mistake," he assured her, "if you keep her from what she's set her heart on, so to speak. She has it in her, too. A proper little dancer she'll make."
Mrs. Raeburn was still loath to give in. She had a dread of putting temptation in the child's path. She did not know how to decide, while Jenny continued to sulk, to be more and more unmanageable, to fret and pine and grow thinner and thinner.
"Where could she go and learn this dancing?" the bewildered mother asked.
"Madame Aldavini's," said the old clown. "That's where my granddaughter learned."
It was a profession, after all, thought Mrs. Raeburn. What else would Jenny do? Go into service? Somehow she could not picture her in a parlormaid's cap and apron. Well, why not the stage, if it had got to be? She discussed the project with her sister Mabel, who was horrified.
"A ballet-girl? Are you mad, Florence? Why, what a disgrace. Whatever would Bill say? An actress? Better put her on the streets at once."