Carnival Part 62

"Oh, well, it was too wet," grumbled Irene, covering as well as she could her shame with nonchalance.

"Ireen, I think you're a rotter. I think you're real mean, and nothing won't ever make me believe you didn't do it for the purpose. Too wet!"

Irene declined to admit herself in the wrong.

"Well, it was too wet. You could easy have come home in a taxi if you'd wanted to."

Jenny stamped with rage.

"What I could have done hasn't got nothing to do with it all, and you know it hasn't. You said you were coming for me and you didn't, and I say you're a sneak. Because you and your ma.s.sive sister behave anyhow, you'd like to make everyone else as bad."

Irene, contending even with unclasped stays, made an effort at dignity.

"You can just shut up, Jenny Pearl, because you know very well my mother wouldn't allow me to _do_ anything. You know that."

Jenny fumed with indignation.

"Your mother? Why, when she's got half a bottle of gin to cry with over her darling Ireen or darling Winnie, she's _very_ glad to p.a.w.n what her darlings get given to them."

"You've got very good," said Irene, bitterly sarcastic, "since this night out."

"Which you meant for me to spend out from the moment you introduced me to him."

"What do you take me for?" inquired Irene rashly.

"I take you for what you are--a rotter. G.o.d! and think what you will be one day--I know--a dirty old woman in a bas.e.m.e.nt with a red petticoat and a halfpenny dip and a quartern of gin."

Irene's imagination was not extensive enough to cap this prophecy, so she poked the fire instead of making the attempt.

"n.o.body wants you to stay here," she muttered.

"Don't you worry yourself. I'm going upstairs to pack my things up now."

Jenny was not able to make a completely effective departure with cab at the door and heaped-up baggage, because her taxi back from Victoria and the payment of a week's board at Stacpole Terrace had exhausted her ready money. However, she had the satisfaction of seeing her portmanteau, her hatbox and a small bag stacked in tapering stories upon the bedroom floor, there to await the offices of Carter Paterson.

Mrs. Dale emerged from the kitchen at the rumor of change and, as morning did not evoke sentiment, indulged in a criticism of Jenny's personal appearance.

"I don't like that hat of yours and never did," she announced. "I can't get used to these new-fangled fashions and never shall."

"What of it?" said Jenny, with marked indifference.

"Oh, nothing at all, if it pleases you. You've got to wear it and I suppose there's nothing more to be said. But I think that hat is vulgar.

Vulgar it would have been called when I was a girl. And I can't think what you want to go all of a sudden for like this. It isn't often I make a beefsteak pudding."

Jenny was in a flutter to be away.

"Good-bye, Mrs. Dale," she said firmly.

"Well, good-bye, Jenny. You mustn't mind shaking hands with me all covered in suet. As I say, it's very seldom I do make a beefsteak pudding. I won't disturb my old man. He's busy this morning. Come and tell us how you get on soon."

It was a relief to be seated inside the tram and free of Stacpole Terrace. It was pleasant to change cars at the Nag's Head and behold again the well-known landscape of Highbury. A pageant of childish memories, roused by the sight of the broad pavements of Islington, was marshalled in Jenny's brain. Somehow on the visits she had paid her home during the last year these aspects were obscured by the consciousness of no longer owning any right to them. Now, really going home, she turned into Hagworth Street with a glow of pride at seeing again its sobriety and dignity so evident after the extravagant stucco and Chinese balconies of Camden Town's terraces and squares. There was Seventeen, looking just the same, prophetic of refuge and solid comfort to the exile. She wondered what freak of folly had ever made her fancy home was dingy and unpleasant, home that held her bright-eyed mother's laugh, her absurd father always amusing, and her little sister May. Home was an enchanted palace with more romance in each dear room than was to be found elsewhere in the world. Home was alive with the past and preserved the links which bound together all the detached episodes of Jenny's life. As she turned into the garden that once had seemed a district, as she rattled the letter-box--in the days of her estrangement she always rang the bell--remorse came welling up in tears. She remembered what good times had been recurrent through the past, tea-parties and pantomimes and learning to ride a bicycle in the warm sunsets of June.

And in the house opposite nothing was altered, not a fold of the lace curtains, not a leaf of the dusty aspidistra that took all the light in the ground-floor window.

What a long time they were opening the door. She rattled the letter-box again and called out to May. It was like coming home after summer holidays by the blue sparkling sea, coming home to dolls and toys and the long, thin garden at the back which from absence had acquired an exaggerated reputation for entertainment.

Suddenly May opened the door, peeping round over the latch, much scared apparently.

"How quick you've been," she said.

"Quick?" repeated Jenny.

"Didn't you get my telegram?"

"No," said Jenny, and perceiving that May's eyes were red with weeping, her delightful antic.i.p.ation was clouded with dread. "What did you want to telegraph for? Not--not about mother?"

May nodded.

"She isn't dead?" Jenny gasped.

"No, she isn't dead. But she's had to be took away. You know. To an asylum."

"Go on," said Jenny. "Oh, what a dreadful thing."

"Well, don't stand there," May commanded. "There's been crowd enough round here this morning as it is."

In the kitchen she unfolded the story. It seemed that for the last fortnight their mother had been queer.

"Oh, she was funny," said May. "She used to sit moping over the fire--never doing nothing and saying all the time how her head hurt."

"Didn't dad fetch in a doctor?" Jenny demanded.

"Not at first he wouldn't. You know what dad's like. I said she was really ill and he kept on saying: 'Nonsense, why look at me. I'm as ill as I can be, but I don't want no doctor. I've got a sort of a paralytic stroke running up and down my arm fit to drive anybody barmy. And here am I going off to work so cheerful, the chaps down at the shop say they don't know how I does it.'"

"He ought to be b.u.mped," Jenny a.s.serted wrathfully. "I only wish I'd been at home to tell him off. Go on about mother. And why wasn't I sent for directly?" she asked.

"Well, I did think about fetching you back. But I didn't really think myself it was anything much at first. She got worse all of a sudden like. She took a most shocking dislike to me and said I was keeping her indoors against her will, and then she carried on about you, said you was--well, I don't know what she didn't say. And when the doctor come, she said he was a detective and asked him to lock you and me both up, said she had the most wicked daughters. I was quite upset, but the doctor he said not to worry as it was often like that with mad people, hating the ones they liked best. And I said, 'She's never gone mad? Not my mother? Oh, whatever shall I do?' And he said, 'She has,' and then she started off screaming enough to make anyone go potty to hear her, and a lot of boys come and hung about the gate and people was looking out of windows and the greengrocer was ringing all the time to know if there was any orders this morning."

"When was all this?" asked Jenny, frozen by the terrible narrative.

"This morning, I keep telling you."

"Just now?"

"No, early. They come and took her away to an asylum somewhere in the country and we can go and see her once a fortnight. But she's very ill, the doctor says--some sort of abscess on her brain."

"Where's dad?"

"He went round to the 'Arms.' He said he felt quite shaky."