Carnival Part 48

"Jenny never speaks only what's the truth," May a.s.serted.

"Yes, and a lot of good it does me," said Jenny indignantly. "I'd better by half tell a pack of lies, the same as other girls do."

"What she wants," said Alfie sententiously, "is a jolly good hiding.

Look at her. There's a fine sister for a chap to have--nothing but paint and powder and hair-dye."

Jenny stood silent under this; but the upper lip was no longer visible.

Her cheeks were pale, her eyes mere points of light. May was the first to speak in defense of the silent one.

"Brothers!" she scoffed. "Some girls would be a sight better without brothers. Hateful things!"

Jenny's feelings had been so overwrought by the fatigue of the dance followed by this domestic scene that May's gallant sally should have turned contempt to tears. But Alfie had enraged her too profoundly for weeping, and though tear-drops stood in her eyes, they were hard as diamonds.

"You oughtn't to talk to her like that, my boy," Charlie protested.

"You're talking like a clergyman I once did some work for. He said, 'I'm not satisfied with this here box, Mr. Raeburn'--well, he said more than that--and I said, 'I'm not satisfied with your tone of voice,' and----"

"For goodness' sake, Charlie, keep your tongue quiet," his wife begged.

"Look here, Jenny," she went on, "I won't have these hours kept, and that's all about it. Wherever you were last night, you weren't at home where you ought to be, and where you shall be as long as you live with me. Now that's all about it, and don't give me any back answers, because I know what's right and I'm your mother."

"I think you're a bit hard on the girl, Florrie, I do really," said the father. "She takes after her dad. I was always one for seeing a bit of life. What I says is, 'Let the young enjoy themselves.'"

"What you say is neither here nor there," replied Mrs. Raeburn. "You never did have any sense, you haven't got any sense now, and you never will have any sense."

"When you've done nagging at one another, all of _you_, I'm off," said Jenny deliberately.

"Off?" Mrs. Raeburn echoed.

"I'm going to live at Ireen Dale's for the future. This!" She looked round the kitchen. "Pooh!"

"You're not going to leave home?" Mrs. Raeburn asked.

"Aren't I? Who says so? I'm going now. You!" she said bitterly to her brother. "You've done a lot, Mr. Interfering Idiot. It's time you looked about for some girl to marry you, so as you can poke your nose into her business. Good-bye, all. I'll come over to tea soon, that is if you aren't all ashamed to have tea with me."

As she turned abruptly to go, Alfie asked his mother why she didn't lock her in a bedroom.

"It wouldn't be any good," said the latter.

"No, it wouldn't," Jenny vowed. "I'd kill myself sooner than sleep here another night."

"You're a dreadful worry to me," said Mrs. Raeburn slowly and earnestly.

"Send on my things to 43 Stacpole Terrace, Camden Town," replied the daughter. "You needn't think you'll get me back by keeping them, because you won't."

"You'll come and see us?" asked Mrs. Raeburn, who seemed now to accept defeat meekly.

"Yes, as long as you keep Mr. Nosy Parker Puppy dog outside. Brother!

Why if you only knew, he wears that jam-pot round his neck to hide where his head's come off."

Presently the front door slammed.

Chapter XXII: _The Unfinished Statue_

Maurice, on being informed of the decisive step which Jenny had taken, asked her why she had not taken the more decisive step of avowing his protection.

"Because I don't want to. Not yet. I can't explain why. But I don't. Oh, Maurice, don't go on asking me any more."

"It's nothing to do with your people. Because you evidently don't mind hurting their feelings in another way."

"Going to live at Ireen's isn't the same as living with you."

"You needn't live with me openly. n.o.body wants you to do that. Only----"

"It's not a bit of good your going on," she interrupted. "I've told you I will one day."

"One day," he sighed.

It was a fine February that year, coming in with a stir of spring.

Maurice felt in accord with the season's impulse, and became possessed with the ambition to create a work of art. He suggested that Jenny should come daily to the studio and sit for his statue of The Tired Dancer.

"I'm sure my real vocation is plastic," he declared. "I can write and I can play, but neither better than a lot of other people. With sculpture it's different. To begin with, there isn't such compet.i.tion. It's the least general of the arts, although in another sense it's the most universal. Again, it's an art that we seem to have lost. Yet by every rule of social history, it is the art with which the present stage of evolution should be most occupied. In this era of noise and tear the splendid quiescence of great sculpture should provoke every creative mind. I have the plastic impulse, but so far I've been content to fritter it away in bits and pieces of heads and arms and hands. I must finish something; make something."

Jenny was content to sit watching him through blue wreaths of cigarette smoke. She found a sensuous delight in seeing him happy and hearing the flow of his excited talk.

"Now I must mold you, Jenny," he went on, pacing up and down in the midst of the retinue of resolutions and intentions. "By gad! I'm thrilled by the thought of it. To possess you in virgin wax, to mold your delicious shape with my own hands, to see you taking form at my compelling touch. By gad! I'm thrilled by it. What's a lyric after that?

I could pour my heart out in every meter imaginable, but I should never give anything more than myself to the world. But if I make a glorious statue of you, I give you--you forever and ever for men to gaze at and love and desire. By gad! I'm thrilled by the thought of it. There's objective art. Ha! Poor old poets with their words. Where are they? You can't dig your nails into a word. By Jove, the Nereids in the British Museum. You remember those Nereids, darling?"

Jenny looked blank.

"Yes, you do. You said how much you liked them. You must remember them, so light and airy that they seem more like clouds or blowb.a.l.l.s than solid marble."

"I think _all_ the statues we saw was very light and airy, if it comes to that," said Jenny.

Maurice gave up pacing round the room and flung himself into a chair to discuss details of the conception.

"Of course, I'd like you to be dressed as a Columbine: and yet, I don't know, it's rather obvious."

"I could wear my practice dress."

"What's that like?"

"I've got two or three. Only the nicest is my gray tarlington."

"Eh?"

"You know, very frilly musling. Just like a ballet skirt, only you needn't wear tights."