Carnival Part 50

"Jolly fine," she declared. "Only it isn't very like me. Never mind, position in life's everything," she added, as she contemplated her sleeping form.

"Not like you," said Maurice slowly. "You're right. It's not. Not a bit!

d.a.m.n art!" he cried, and, picking up the wax model, flung it with a crash into the fire-place.

Jenny looked at Maurice, perplexity and compa.s.sion striving in her countenance with disapproval; then she knelt to rescue a curved arm, letting it fall back listlessly among other fragments.

"You _are_ mad. Whatever did you want to do that for?"

"You're right. It's not you. Oh, why did I ever try? Ronnie could do it with a box of d.a.m.ned paints. Why couldn't I? I know you better than Ronnie does. I love you. I adore every muscle and vein in your body. I dream day and night of the line of your nose. Why couldn't I have given that in stone, when Ronnie could show the world your mouth with two dabs of carmine? What a box of trickery life is. Here am I burning with ambition to create a masterpiece. I fall in love with a masterpiece. I have every opportunity, a flaming inspiration, and nothing comes of it.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But, by Jove, something must. Do you hear, Jenny? I won't be put off any longer. If I can't possess your counterpart, I must possess you."

During this speech a storm of hail was drumming on the windows; but while Maurice strained her to his heart in a long silence, the storm pa.s.sed, and the sun streamed into the warm, quiet room. On the window-sill a solitary sparrow cheeped at regular intervals, and down in the street children were bowling iron hoops that fell very often.

"Jenny, Jenny," pleaded Maurice, relaxing the closeness of his embrace.

"Don't play at love any more. Think what a mistake, what a wicked mistake it is to let so much of our time go by. Don't drive me mad with impatience. You foolish little girl, can't you understand what a muddle you're making of life?"

"I want to wait till I'm twenty-one," she said.

It meant nothing to her, this date; but Maurice, accepting it as an actual pledge of surrender, could only rail against her unreasonableness.

"Good heavens! What for? You are without exception the most amazing creature. Twenty-one! Why twenty-one? Why not fifty-one? Most of all, why not now?"

"I can't. Not now. Not when I've just left home. I should feel a sneak.

Don't ask me to, Maurice. If you love me, as you say you do, you'll wait a little while quite happy."

"But don't you want to give yourself to me?"

"I do, and then again I don't. Sometimes I think I will, and then sometimes I think I don't want to give myself to any man."

"You don't love me."

"Yes, I do. I do. Only I hate men. I always have. I can't explain more than what I've told you. If you can't understand, you can't. It's because you don't know girls."

"Don't know girls," he repeated, staggered by the a.s.sertion. "Of course I understand your point of view, but I think it's stupid and irrational and dangerous--yes--dangerous.... Don't know girls? I wish I didn't."

"You don't," Jenny persisted.

"My dear child, I know girls too well. I know their wretched stammering temperaments, their inability to face facts, their l.u.s.t for sentiment, their fondness for going half-way and turning back."

"I wish you wouldn't keep on walking up and down. It makes me want to giggle. And when I laugh, you get angry."

"Laugh! It is a laughing matter to you. To me it's something so serious, so sacred, that laughter no longer exists."

Jenny thought for a moment.

"I believe," she began, "I should laugh whatever happened. I don't believe anything would stop my laughing."

Just then, away downstairs, the double knock of a telegraph boy was heard, too far away to shake the nerves of Jenny and Maurice, but still sufficiently a reminder of another life outside their own to interrupt the argument.

"I wonder if that's for me," said Maurice.

"You'd better go down and see, if you think it is."

"Wait a minute. Old Mother Wadman may answer the door."

Again, far below, they heard the summons of humanity.

"d.a.m.n Mrs. Wadman! I wish she wouldn't go fooling out in the afternoon."

"Why don't you go down, Maurice? He'll go away in a minute."

Once more, very sharply, the herald demanded an entrance for events and emotions independent of their love, and Maurice unwillingly departed to admit them.

Left alone in a tumult of desires and repressions, Jenny felt she would like to fling herself down upon the rugs and cry. Sentiment, for an instant, helped the cause of tears, when she thought of the many hours spent on that pile, drowsily happy. Then backwards and forwards went the image of her lover in ludicrous movement, and the whole situation seemed such a fuss about nothing. There was a merciless clarity about Jenny's comprehension when, urged by scenes of pa.s.sion, she called upon her mind for a judgment. Perhaps it was the fatalism of an untrained reason which taught her to grasp the futility of emotional strife. Or it may have been what is called a sense of humor, which always from one point of view must imply a lack of imagination.

Maurice came back and handed her the telegram.

Uncle Stephen died suddenly in Seville come home at once please dear you must go out and look after aunt Ella

Mother

"She's fond of you, isn't she?"

Maurice looked puzzled.

"Your mother, I mean."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I think she's written very nice, that's all. I wish you hadn't got to go away though."

"Yes, and to Spain of all places. This is the uncle I was telling you about. I come into two thousand pounds. I must go."

"I wish you hadn't got to go away," she repeated sorrowfully. "Just when the weather's getting fine, too. But you must go, of course," she added.

Jenny wrung this bidding out of herself very hardly, but Maurice accepted it casually enough. Suddenly he was seized with an idea:

"Jenny, this two thousand pounds is the key to the situation."

"What?"

"Of course I can," he a.s.sured the air. "I can settle this on you. I can provide for you, whatever happens to me. Now there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't give way."

"I don't see that two thousand pounds makes _any_ difference. What do you think I am?"

"I'm not buying you, my dear girl. I'm not such a fool as to suppose I could do that."

"No, you couldn't. No man could buy me."