Carnival Part 16

And all the girls said, "Yes, Madame," and packed themselves into a cab with velvet cushions of faded peac.o.c.k-blue and a smell of damp straps.

There they sat with bundles heaped on their knees, and were jolted through the cold Glasgow streets. It was Sat.u.r.day night, and all the curbstones were occupied by rocking drunkards, except in one wide street very golden and beautiful, from which they turned off to climb laboriously up the cobbles of a steep hill and pull up at last before a tall house in a tall, dark, quiet road.

They walked up the stairs and rang the bell. The big door swung open, to Jenny's great surprise, apparently without human agency. They stood in the well of a great winding stone staircase, while a husky voice called from somewhere high above them to come up.

They had a large sitting-room, too full of hangings and overburdened with photographs of rigid groups; but the fire was blazing up the chimney and the lamp was throwing a warm and comfortable halo on the ceiling. Jenny peeped out of the window and could see the black roofs of Glasgow in the starlight. They had tea when they arrived, with porridge, which Jenny disliked extremely, and oatcakes which made her cough; and after tea they unpacked. It was settled that Jenny should sleep with Valerie. The bedroom was cosy with slanting bits of ceiling flung anywhere, like a box of toy bricks put carelessly away. The bed, to Jenny's enormous diversion, was buried in a deep alcove.

"Whoever heard?" she asked.

"We'll be all to ourselves," said Valerie in her deep voice; and Jenny felt a thrill at the idea of lying snug in the alcove with Valerie's warm arm about her.

The sitting-room looked a very different place when the four girls had scattered over it their various belongings, when they had flung all the antimaca.s.sars into the corner in a cold white heap, when they had stuck a fan-shaped line of photographs round the mirror over the mantelpiece--photographs of fluffy-haired girls in gay dancing att.i.tudes, usually inscribed "Yours sincerely Lottie, or Amy, or Madge, or Violet."

When she had pulled off most of the blobs on the valance of the mantelpiece and examined all the photographs, Jenny sat down on the white rabbit-skin rug with her back to the high iron fender and looked at her companions--at Winnie sprawling over a shining leather arm-chair, twisting one of the b.u.t.tons that starred its round back, while she read "Will He Remember?"; at Eileen, writing home to Camberwell; at Valerie, as deep in a horse-hair sofa as the shape of it allowed, smoking a cigarette. She thought, while she sat there in the warmth and quiet, how jolly it was to be quit of the eternal sameness of Hagworth Street. She almost felt that Islington no longer existed, as if up here in this Glasgow flat she were in a new world.

"This is nice," she said. "Give us a cigarette, Val, there's a duck."

Bedtime came not at any fixed boring moment, but suddenly, with all the rapture of an inspiration. Bedtime came with Valerie taking, it seemed, hours to undress as she wandered round the room in a maze of white lace and pink ribbons. Jenny lay buried in the deep feather bed, watching her shadow on the crooked ceiling, following with drowsy glances the shadowy combing of what, in reflection, seemed an absolute waterfall of hair.

Then suddenly Valerie blew out the candlelight.

"Oo-er!" cried Jenny. "We aren't going to sleep in the dark?"

"Of course we are, kiddie," said Valerie; and somehow darkness did not matter when Jenny could sail off into sleep clasping Valerie's soft hot hand.

Gray morning came with the stillness of Sunday in Glasgow, with raindrops pattering against the window in gusts of wind, with Mrs.

McMeikan and breakfast on a tray.

"This is grand, isn't it?" said Jenny, and "Oo-er!" she cried, as she upset the teapot all over the bed.

Then the bell had to be rung.

"Whoever heard of a bell-rope in such a place?" said Jenny, and pulled it so hard that it broke. Then, of course, there was loud laughter, and when Mrs. McMeikan came in again Jenny buried herself in the bedclothes and Valerie had to explain what had happened.

"Eh, the wild wee la.s.sie," said the landlady, and the high spirits of the child, hidden by the patchwork quilt in the deep alcove, won the old Scotswoman's heart, so that whatever mischief Jenny conceived and executed under her roof was forgiven because she was a "bonnie wean, and awfu' sma', she was thenkin', to be sent awa' oot tae airn her ain living."

There was a rehearsal on Sunday because Madame Aldavini had to go back on Sunday night to London. The four girls walked along the gray Glasgow streets in the sound of the many footsteps of pious Presbyterian worshipers, until they arrived at the stage door of the Court Theater.

Jenny asked, "Any letters for me?" in imitation of Valerie and Winnie.

"Any letters for Raeburn--for Pearl, I should say?"

Of course there was not so much as a postcard, but Jenny felt the prouder for asking.

The rehearsal of "Jack and the Beanstalk" went off with the usual air of incompleteness that characterizes the rehearsal of a pantomime. Jenny found that the Aldavini Quartette were to be Jumping Beans; and Winnie and Jenny and Valerie and Eileen jumped with a will and danced until they shook the boards of the Court Theater's stage. Madame Aldavini went back to London, having left many strict injunctions with the three older girls never to let Jenny out of their keeping. But Jenny was not ambitious to avoid their vigilance. It was necessary, indeed, occasionally, to slap Eileen's face and teach her, but Winnie and Valerie were darlings. Jenny had no desire to talk to men, and if lanky youths with large tie-pins saluted her by the stage door, she pa.s.sed on with her nose as high as a church tower. And when, lured on by Jenny's long brown legs and high-brown boots and trim blue sailor dress, they ventured to remove the paper from their cuffs and follow in long-nosed, fishy-eyed pursuit, Jenny would catch hold of Valerie's hand and swing along in front of them as serenely cold as the Huntress Moon sailing over the heads of Boeotian swineherds.

Those were jolly days in Glasgow, sweet secluded days of virginal pastimes and young enjoyment. They danced at night in their green dresses and scarlet bean-blossom caps. They were encored by the shrewd Glasgow audience, who recognized the beauty and freshness and spirit of the four Jumping Beans. They walked through the gray Glasgow weather down Sauchiehall Street and stared at the gay shopwindows. They walked through wind-swept Kelvin Grove. They laughed at nothing, and gossiped about nothing, and ate large teas and smoked cigarettes and lolled in arm-chairs and read absurd stories and listened to Mrs. McMeikan's anecdotes with hardly concealed mirth. Nor did Mrs. McMeikan care a jot how much they laughed at her, "sae bonny was their laughter."

Everybody in the pantomime was very kind and very pleasant to Jenny.

Everybody gave her chocolates and ribbons and photographs signed "Yours sincerely Lottie, or Amy, or Madge, or Violet." Everybody wanted her to be as happy and jolly as possible. She was a great favorite with the gallery boys, who whistled very loudly whenever she came on. She was contented and merry. She did not feel that Winnie or Valerie or even Eileen was trying to keep her down. She knew they were loyal and was fond of them, but not so fond of them as they of her. Eileen, however, thought she should be snubbed now and then.

Jenny was at a critical age when she went to Glasgow. It was the time of fluttering virgin dreams, of quickening pulses and heartbeats unaccountable. If Jenny had been at a high school, it would have been the age of girlish adorations for mistresses. She might have depended on the sanctifying touch of some older woman with sympathy. She might have adopted the cloistral view of human intercourse, that light-hearted world of little intimate jokes and sentimental readings and pretty jealousies for the small advantage of sitting next some reverend mother or calm and gentle sister.

However, it is not to be supposed that the transition from childhood to womanhood was altogether unmarked. There were bound to be moments of indestructible languor when she was content to be adored herself. Had she met Abelard, Abelard could have made her an Heloise. They existed truly enough, the pa.s.sionate fevers and deep ardors of adolescence. They flowed up in momentary caresses and died as soon in profound shynesses.

Now was the time to feed the sensuous imagination with poetry and lull the frightened soul with music. She should have been taken to enchanted lands.

But there was nothing.

Here was a child worthy of a Naiad's maternity, if grace of limb counted immortally, and when for the first time she was given the world to look at, her finite vision and infinite aspirations were never set in relation to each other. She was given a telescope, and n.o.body had taken off the shutter. Her soul was a singing bird in a cage. Freedom was the only ideal. She might have been moved by Catholicism, but n.o.body gave it to her. It may be idle to speculate on the effect of incense-haunted chapels, of blazing windows and the dim accoutrements of Ma.s.s. Perhaps, after all, they would merely have struck her comically. Perhaps she was a true product of London generations, yet maybe her c.o.c.kney wit would have glittered more wonderfully in a richer setting--haply in Lacedaemon, with sea-green tunic blown to the outline of slim beauty by each wind coming southward from Thessaly.

Anyway, it was impossible to think of her enticed by the ready-made gallantries of raw-boned Sawnies by the stage door of the Court Theater.

Her temperament found greater satisfaction in Valerie's more beautifully expressed adoration. The latter may not have roused her to encounter life, may not have supplied a purpose, a hope or a determination, but at least it kept her contented in the shy season of maidenhood. It helped to steer her course between incidental viciousness and eventful pa.s.sion.

She went back to Hagworth Street with no red thorns of impure a.s.sociations to fester and gather. The days went by very quickly without any great adventures except the dance on the occasion of the pantomime's last night. Jenny was not invited to this entertainment. She was supposed to be too young, and her mouth went dry with disappointment and a lump of unshed tears came into her throat, and it almost seemed as if her heart must stop.

"I ought to go; oh, it is a shame; I ought to go."

Jenny went up of her own accord to the stage-manager himself and said:

"Please, Mr. Courtenay-Champion, why aren't I asked to the dance?"

"Good Lord!" said Mr. Courtenay-Champion. "A kid like you? No, my dear, you're too young. It goes on too late. After the show, some hours."

But Jenny sobbed and cried, and was so clearly heart-broken by the idea of being left out that Mr. Courtenay-Champion changed his mind and told her she could come. She was instantly transfigured as by dazzling sunlight after days of mist. It was to be a splendid dance, with jellies and claret-cup, and Jenny went with Valerie to buy the widest pink sash that ever was known, and tied it in the largest pink bow that ever was seen. She danced every single dance and even waltzed twice with the great comedian, Jimmy James, and, what is more, told him he couldn't dance, to his great delight, which seems to show that Mr. James had a sense of humor in addition to being a great comedian.

It really was a splendid evening, and perhaps the most splendid part of it was lying in bed with Valerie and talking over with her all the partners and taking them off with such excited demonstration of their methods that the bed became all untucked and had to be made over again before they could finally settle themselves down to sleep.

In February Jenny was back again in Hagworth Street, with memories of "Jack and the Beanstalk" fading slowly like the colors of a sunset. She had enjoyed her personal success in Glasgow, but already success was beginning to prove itself an empty prize--a rainbow bubble easily burst.

The reason is obvious. Jenny had never been taught to concentrate her mind. She had no power of retrospective a.n.a.lysis. The applause endured a little while in her meditations, but gradually died away in the occupations of the present. She could not secure it as the basis of a wider success on the next occasion. She began to ask: "What's the good of anything?" Within a few weeks of the resumption of ordinary life, the Glasgow theater had become like a piece of cake that one eats unconsciously, then turns to find and discovers not. She was no farther forward on the road to independence. She became oppressed by the dead weight of futurity.

At home, too, there was a very real repression, which she grew to hate more and more deeply on each occasion of its exercise. A breath of maternal interference and she would fly into a temper--a scowling, chair-tilting, door-slamming rage. She would fling herself out of the house with threats never to return. One day when she was reproached with staying out longer than she was allowed, she rushed out again and disappeared. Her mother, in despair, went off to invoke the aid of Madame Aldavini, who wisely guessed that Jenny would be found with Valerie Duval. There she was, indeed, in Valerie's rooms in Soho, not at all penitent for her misbehavior, but sufficiently frightened by Madame's threat of expulsion to come back home without argument.

Freedom was still Jenny's religion. She was much about with boys, but still merely for the life and entertainment of their company, for no sentimental adventures. It would have been wiser to let her alone, but n.o.body with whom she was brought into contact could realize the s.e.xlessness of the child. The truest safeguard of a girl's virtue is familiarity with the aggregated follies of masculine adolescence.

Jenny fought her way desperately into her seventeenth year, winning freedom in jots. She liked most of anything to go to Collin's Music-hall with a noisy gang of attendant boys, not one of whom was as much a separate realized ent.i.ty to her as even an individual sheep is to a shepherd. Alfie came home in the summer before her seventeenth birthday and abetted cordially her declarations of independence. May, too, was implicated in every plot for the subversion of parental authority.

Mrs. Raeburn worried terribly about her daughter's future. She ascribed her hoyden behavior to the influence of the stage.

"We don't want your theatrical manners here," she would say.

"Well, who put me on the stage?" Jenny would retort.

In the Christmastide after Alfie came home Jenny went to Dublin in a second Aldavini Quartette, and enjoyed herself more than ever. She had now none of the desire for seclusion that marked her Glasgow period, no contempt of man in the abstract, and was soon good friends with a certain number of young officers whom she regarded much as she regarded the boys of Islington.

One of them, Terence O'Meagh, of the Royal Leinster Fusiliers, made her his own special property; he was a charming good-looking, conceited young Irishman, as susceptible to women as most of his nation, and endowing the practice of love with as little humor as most Celts. He used to wait at the stage door and drive her back to her lodgings in his own jaunting car. He used to give her small trinkets so innocently devoid of beauty as almost to attract by their artlessness. He was a very young officer who had borne the blushing honors of a scarlet tunic for a very short while, so that, in addition to the Irishman's nave a.s.sumption of universal popularity, he suffered from the sentiment that a soldier's red coat appeals to every woman.

Jenny, with her splendid c.o.c.kney irreverence, thought little of Mr.

O'Meagh, less of his red coat, but a very great deal of the balmy February drives past the vivid green meadows of Liffey.

"You know," Terence would say, leaning gracefully over the division of the car, "you know, Jenny, our regiment--the 127th of the Line, as we call ours--was absolutely cut to pieces at Drieufontein; and at Riviersdorp they held the position against two thousand Boers."

"Who cares?" said Jenny.