"Because she wouldn"t keep her hands off of the wheel. I told her not to, but she would go on."
"I shall report you all," announced the old lady.
This irritated Mrs. Raeburn, who replied that she would report the old lady as a wandering lunatic. Jenny"s right to act as she wished was in the balance. The old lady, like many another before, ruined freedom"s cause by untimely propaganda. Mrs. Raeburn plucked her daughter from the perambulator, shook her severely, and said: "You bad, naughty girl,"
several times in succession. Jenny paused for a moment in surprise, then burst into yells louder by far than she had ever achieved before, and was carried into the house out of reach of sympathy.
From that moment she was alert to combat authority. From that moment to the end of her days, life could offer her nothing more hateful than attempted repression. That this struggle over the wheel of a perambulator endowed her with a consciousness of her own personality, it would be hard to a.s.sert positively, but it is significant that about this age (two years and eight months) she no longer always spoke of herself as Jenny, but sometimes took the first personal p.r.o.noun. Also, about this age, she began to imagine that people were laughing at her, and, being taken by her mother into a shop on one occasion, set up a commotion of tears, because, she insisted, the ladies behind the counter were laughing at her, when really the poor ladies were trying to be particularly pleasant. When Jenny was three, another baby came to Hagworth Street--dark-eyed, puny, and wan-looking. Jenny was put on the bed beside her.
"This is May," said her mother.
"I love May," said Jenny.
"Very much, do you love her?"
"Jenny loves May. I love May. May is Jenny"s dolly."
And from that moment, notwithstanding the temporary interruptions of many pa.s.sionate quarrels, Jenny made that dark-eyed little sister one of the great facts in her life. This was well for May, because, as she grew older, she grew into a hunchback.
Two more years went by of daily walks and insignificant adventures.
Jenny was five. Alfie and Edie were now stalwart scholars, who rushed off in the mornings, the former armed, according to the season, with chestnuts, pegtops or bags of marbles, the latter full of whispers and giggles, always one of a bunch of other little girls distinguishable only by dress. About this time Jenny came to the conclusion she did not want to be a girl any longer. But the bedrock of s.e.xual differences puzzled her: obviously one vital quality of boyishness was the right to wear breeches. Jenny took off her petticoats and stalked about the kitchen.
"You rude thing!" said Ruby, shocked by the exhibition.
"I"m not a rude thing," Jenny declared; "I"m being a boy."
"And wherever is your petticoats?"
"I frowed "em away," said Jenny. "I"m a boy."
"You"re rude little girl."
"I"m not a girl. I won"t be a girl. I want to be a boy." Jenny darted for the street, encountering by the gate the outraged blushes of Edie and her bunch of secretive companions.
"Did you ever?" said the ripest. "Look at Edie"s sister."
Boys opposite began to "holler." Alfie appeared bent double in an effort to secure a blood ally. He lost at once the marble and the respect of his schoolfellows. His confusion was terrible. His sister skirtless before the public eye! Young Jenny making him look like a fool!
"Go on in, you little devil," he shouted. He ground his teeth.
"Go on in!"
Ruby was by this time in pursuit of the rebel. Mrs. Raeburn had been warned and was already at the gate. Alfie, haunted by a thousand mocking eyes, fled to his room and wept tears of shame. Edie broke away from her friends, and stood, breathing very fast, in petrified antic.i.p.ation.
Jenny was led indoors and up to bed.
"Why can"t I be a boy?" she moaned.
"Well, there"s a sauce!" said Ruby. "However on earth can you be a boy when you"ve been made a girl?"
"But I don"t want to be a girl."
"Well, you"ve got to be, and that"s all about it. You"ll be fidgeting for the moon next. Besides, if you go trapesing round half-dressed, the policeman"ll have you."
Jenny had heard of the powers of the policeman for a long time. Those guardians of order stood for her as sinister, inhuman figures, always ready to spring on little girls and carry them off to unknown places.
She was never taught to regard them as kindly defenders on whom one could rely in emergencies, but looked upon them with all the suspicion of a dog for a uniform. Their large quiescence and their habit of looming unexpectedly round corners shed a cloud upon the sunniest moment. They were images of vengeance at whose approach even boys huddled together, shamefaced.
Mrs. Raeburn came upstairs to interview her discontented daughter.
"Don"t you ever do any such thing again. Behaving like a tomboy!"
"Why mayn"t I be a boy?"
"Because you"re a girl."
"Who said so?"
"G.o.d."
"Who"s G.o.d?"
"That"s neither here nor there."
G.o.d was another shadow upon enjoyment. He was not to be found by pillar boxes. He did not lurk in archways, it is true. He was apparently not a policeman, but something bigger, even, than a policeman. She had seen His picture--old and irritable, among the clouds.
"Why did G.o.d say so?"
"Because He knows best."
"But I want to be a boy."
"Would you like me to cut off all your curls?"
"No--o--o."
"Well, if you want to be a boy, off they"ll have to come. Don"t make any mistake about that--every one, and I"ll give them to May. Then you"ll be a sight."
"Am I a girl because I"m pretty?"
"Yes."
"Is that what girls are for?"
"Yes."
This adventure made Jenny much older because it set her imagination working, or rather it made her imagination concentrate. Reasons and causes began to float nebulously before her mind. She began to ask questions. Gone was the placid acceptance of facts. Gone was the stolid life of babyhood. Darkness no longer terrified her because it was not light, but because it was populated with inhabitants both dismal and ill-minded. At first these shapes were undefined, mere cloudy visualizations of Ruby"s vague threats. Bogymen existed in cupboards and other places of secluded darkness, but without any appearance capable of making a pictorial impression. It was a Punch and Judy show that first endowed the night with visible and malicious shadows.
The sound of the drum boomed from the far end of Hagworth Street. The continual reiteration of the pipes" short phrase of melody summoned boys and girls from every area. The miniature theater stood up tall in a mystery of curtains. Row after row of children was formed, row upon row waited patiently till the showman left off his two instruments and gave the word to begin. Down below, ineffably magical, sounded the squeaking voice of Punch. Up he came, swinging his little legs across the sill; up he came in a glory of red and yellow, and a jingle of bells. Jenny gazed spell-bound from her place in the very front row. She laughed gayly at this world of long noses and squeaking merriment, of awkward, yet incredibly agile movement. She turned round to see how the bigger children behind enjoyed it all, and fidgeted from one foot to the other in an ecstasy of appreciation. She laughed when Punch hit Judy; she laughed louder still when he threw the baby into the street. She gloried in his discomfiture of the melancholy showman with squeaky wit.
He was a wonderful fellow, this Punch; always victorious with stick and tongue. His defeat of the beadle was magnificent; his treatment of Jim Crow a triumph of strategy. To be sure, he was no match for Joey, the clown. But lived there the mortal who could have contended successfully with such a jovial and active and indefatigable a.s.sailant?
Jenny was beginning to see the world with new eyes. The kitchen of Number Seventeen became a dull place; the street meant more to her than ever now, with the possibility of meeting in reality this enchanted company, to whom obedience, repression, good-behavior were just so many jokes to be laughed out of existence. How much superior to Jenny"s house was Punch"s house. How delicious it would be to bury dogs in coffins.