"That"s absurd, my dear girl. I might as well say all women are the same."
"Well, they are. They"re all soppy."
"Isn"t it rather soppy to go as far as you have with me, and not go farther?" Maurice spoke tentatively.
"Oh, _I"ve_ properly joined the soppy brigade. I did think I was different, but I"m not. I"m well in the first line."
"Don"t you think," Maurice suggested--"of course, I"m not saying you haven"t had plenty of experience--but don"t you think there"s a difference between a gentleman and a man who isn"t a gentleman?"
"I think gentlemen are the biggest rotters of all."
"I don"t agree with you."
"I do. Listen. You asked me just now to come away with you. You didn"t ask me to marry you."
Maurice bubbled over with undelivered explanations.
"Wait. I wouldn"t marry you not if you asked me. I don"t want you to ask me. Only------"
"Only what?" Maurice inquired gloomily.
"Only if I did all you wanted, I"d be giving everything--more than you"d give, even if you married a ballet girl."
"Do let me explain," Maurice begged. "You absolutely misunderstand me.... Oh, Lord, we"re nearly at Hagworth Street.... I"ve only time to say quite baldly what I mean. Look here, if you married me you wouldn"t like it. You wouldn"t like meeting all my people and having to be conventional and pay calls and adapt yourself to a life that you hadn"t been brought up to. I"d marry you like a shot. I don"t believe in cla.s.s distinctions or any of that humbug. But you"d be happier not married.
Can"t you see that? You"d be happier the other way.... There"s your turning. There"s no time for more.... Only do think over what I"ve said and don"t misjudge me ... darling girl, good night."
"Good night."
"A long kiss."
Reasons, policies, plans and all the paraphernalia of expediency vanished when she from the steps of her home listened to the bells of the hansom dying away in the distance, and when he, huddled in a corner of the cab, was conscious but of the perfume of one who was lately beside him.
In her bedroom Jenny examined the brooch. Perhaps what showed more clearly than anything the reality of her love was the affection she felt for Maurice when he was away from her. She was never inclined to criticise the faults so easily forgotten in the charms which she remembered more vividly. Now, with the brooch before her, as she sat dangling her legs from the end of the bed, she recalled lovingly his eagerness to display the unfortunate opal. She remembered the brightness of his blue eyes and the vibrant attraction of his voice. He was a darling, and she had been unkind about opals. He was always a darling to her. He never jarred her nerves or probed roughly a tender mood.
Jenny scarcely sifted so finely her att.i.tude towards Maurice. She summed him up to herself in a generalization. In her mind"s eye he appeared in contrast to everybody else. All that the rest of mankind lacked he possessed. Whatever mild approval she had vouchsafed to any other man his existence obliterated. She had never created for herself an ideal whose tenuity would one day envelop a human being. Therefore, since there had never floated through her day-dreams a nebula with perfect profile, immense wealth and euphonious t.i.tles, Maurice had not to be fitted in with a preconception. Nor would it be reasonable to identify her with one of the world"s Psyches in love with the abstraction of a state of mind and destined to rue its incarnation. She had, it may be granted, been inclined to fall in love in response to the demand of her being; but it would be wrong to suppose her desire was gratified by the first person who came along. On the contrary, Maurice had risen suddenly to overthrow all that had gone before, and, as it seemed now, was likely to overthrow anything that might come after.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she was hypnotized into a meditative coma by the steady twin flames of the candle and its reflection in the toilet-gla.s.s. She was invested with the accessories favorable to crystal-gazing, and the brooch served to concentrate faculties that would under ordinary circ.u.mstances have lacked an object. Contrast as an absolute idea is often visualized during slightly abnormal mental phases. Fever often fatigues the brain with a reiteration of images in tremendous contrast, generally of mere size, when the mind is forced to contemplate again and again with increasing resentment the horrible disparity between a pin"s point and a pyramid. In Jenny"s mind Maurice was contrasted with the rest of the universe. He was so overpowering and tremendous that everything else became a mere speck. In fact, during this semi-trance, Jenny lost all sense of proportion, and Maurice became an obsession.
Then suddenly the flame of the candle began to jig and flicker; the spell was broken, and Jenny realized it would be advisable to undress.
Action set her brain working normally, and the vast, absorbing generalization faded. She began to think again in detail. How she longed for to-morrow, when she would be much nicer to Maurice than she had ever been before. She thought with a glow of the delightful time in front of them. She pictured wet afternoons spent cosily in the studio. She imagined herself, tired and bored, coming down the court from the stage door, with Maurice suddenly appearing round the corner to drive weariness out of London. It was glorious to think of someone who could make the worst headache insignificant and turn the most unsatisfactory morning to a perfect afternoon. Quickened by such thoughts, she got into bed without waking May, so that in a flutter of soft kisses she could sink deliciously to sleep, enclosed in the arms of her lover as an orchard by sunlight.
About two o"clock Jenny woke up to another psychic experience not unusual with hypersensitive temperaments. The ardor of the farewell embrace had consumed all the difficulties of the situation discussed on the journey home. This ardor of merely sensuous love had lasted long enough to carry her off to sleep drowsed by a pa.s.sionate content.
Meanwhile her brain, working on what was originally the more vital emotion, brought her back to consciousness in the middle of the problem"s statement. Lying there in the darkness, Jenny blushed hotly, so instant was the mental att.i.tude produced by Maurice"s demand. In previous encounters over this subject, her protagonists had all been so manifestly contemptible, their expectations so evident from the beginning, that their impudence had been extinguished by the fire of merely social indignation. Jenny had defeated them as the representative of her s.e.x rather than herself. She had never comprehended the application of their desires to herself as a feasible proposition. They were a fact merely objectively unpleasant like monkeys in a cage, physically dangerous, however, with certain opportunities Jenny"s worldly wisdom would never afford. In the case of Maurice the encounter was actual, involving a clash of personalities: the course of her behavior would have to be settled. No longer fortified by the hostility of ma.s.sed opinion, she would be compelled to entrust her decision to personal resolution and individual judgment. For the first time she was confronted with the great paradox that simultaneously restricts and extends a woman"s life. She remembered the effect of Edie"s announcement of surrender. It had sickened her with virginal wrath and impressed her with a sense of man"s malignity, and now here was she at the cross-roads of experience with sign-posts unmistakable to dominate her mental vision.
It was not astonishing that Jenny should blush with the consciousness of herself as a vital ent.i.ty; for the situation was merely an elaboration of the commonplace self-consciousness incident to so small an action as entering alone a crowded room. Years ago, as a little girl, she had once woken up with an idea she no longer existed, an idea dispelled by the sight of her clothes lying as usual across the chair. Now she was frightened by the overwhelming realization of herself: she existed too actually. This a.n.a.lysis of her mental att.i.tude shows that Jenny did not possess the comfortable mind which owes volition to external forces. Her brain registered sensations too finely; her sense of contact was too fastidious. Acquiescence was never possible without the agony of experience. Her ambition to dance was in childhood a force which was killed by unimaginative treatment. Once killed, nothing could revive it.
So it would be with her love. In the first place, she was aware of the importance of surrender to a man. She did not regard the step as an incident of opportunity. All her impulses urged her to give way. Every pa.s.sionate fire and fever of love was burning her soul with reckless intentions. On the other hand, she felt that if she yielded herself and tasted the bitterness of disillusionment, she would be forevermore liable to acquiesce. She would demand of her lover attributes which he might not possess, and out of his failure by the completeness of her personality she would create for herself a tragedy.
Finally a third aspect presented itself in the finality of the proposed surrender. She was now for the first time enjoying life with a fullness of appreciation which formerly she had never imagined. She was happy in a sense of joy. When Cunningham was playing in the studio, she had felt how insecure such happiness was, how impatient of any design to imprison it in the walls of time. Indeed, perhaps she had seen it escaping on the echoes of a melody. Then suddenly over all this confusion of prudence, debate, hesitation, breathless abandonment and scorching blushes, sleep resumed its sway, subduing the unnatural activity of a normally indolent mind.
She lay there asleep in the darkness without a star to aid or cross her destiny. She and her brooch of opals were swept out into the surge of evolution; and she must be dependent on a fallible man to achieve her place in the infallible scheme of the universe.
Chapter XX: _Fete Galante_
For some weeks after the incident of the opal, there was no development of the problem of behavior. Maurice did not refer to the subject, and Jenny was very glad to put it out of her mind. As if by tacit agreement, they both took refuge from any solution in a gayety that might have been a.s.sumed, so sedulously was it cultivated. Everything else was set aside for a good time, and though there were interludes when in the seclusion of an afternoon spent together they would recapture the spirit of that golden and benign October, these lovers generally seemed anxious to share with their friends the responsibilities of enjoyment.
Thus it came about that a polity of pleasure was established whose citizens were linked together by ties of laughter. This city state of Bohemia, fortified against intrusion by experiences which the casual visitor was not privileged to share, stood for Jenny as the solidest influence upon her life so far. It gave her a background for Maurice, which made him somehow more real. Without this little society, acknowledging herself and him as supreme and accepting their love as the pivot on which its own existence revolved, she would have seen her lover as an actuality only when they were making love. Out of her sight, he would have faded into the uncertain mists of another social grade, floated incorporeal among photographs of Ellis and Walery in a legend of wealth and dignity beyond her conception. To Fuz and Ronnie and Cunningham she could talk of Maurice, thereby gleaning external impressions which confirmed her own att.i.tude. In this atmosphere her love a.s.sumed a sanity and normality that might otherwise easily have been lost.
It must not be supposed that this little republic was content with the territory of 422 Grosvenor Road. On the contrary, throughout October, November and December, there were frequent sallies against convention and raids upon Philistia. There were noisy tea-parties in hostile strongholds like the Corner House, where ladies were not permitted to smoke and customers were kindly requested to pay at the desk. Perhaps their most successful foray was upon a fashionable tea-shop in St.
James"s Street, where a florin was the minimum charge for tea to include everything; on this occasion, prepared for by rigorous fasting, it included a very great deal. There were attempts by Ronnie Walker to make the girls enjoy picture-galleries, by Cunningham to convert them to Symphony Concerts. And once they all went to see a play by Mr. Bernard Shaw. But painting, music and the drama could not compete with skating rinks, where elegant and accomplished instructors complained of their rowdiness. But, as Jenny said, "What of it? _We"re_ enjoying ourselves, any old way."
The pinnacle of their gay ambition was a Covent Garden Ball. This entertainment had continually to be postponed for lack of funds; for, though a Covent Garden Ball has usually a sober, even a chilling effect upon the company, it has dare-devil pretensions which Maurice and his retinue would not exploit unless they were a.s.sured of a conspicuous success.
So the Second Empire Masquerade was planned and debated a long time before it actually happened. That it happened at all was due to the death of Maurice"s great-aunt, who left him one hundred pounds. This legacy being unexpected, was obviously bound to be spent at once. As the legatee pointed out to Jenny one dripping afternoon in early January, as they sat together in the studio:
"It"s practically like finding money in the road. I know that one day my stockbroker uncle will leave me two thousand pounds. He"s told me so often to raise my spirits on wet week-ends at his house. I"ve planned what to do with that. Every farthing is booked. But this hundred I never thought of. I was beginning to despair of ever raising the cash for Covent Garden, and here it is all of a sudden."
"You"re not going to spend a hundred pounds in one evening?" Jenny exclaimed.
"Not all of it, because you"ve got to buy yourself some furs and three hats and those silk stockings with peach-colored clocks--oh, yes, and I"ve got to buy you that necklace of fire opals which we saw in Wardour Street and also that marquise ring, and I"ve got to buy myself a safety razor and a box of pastels, and I simply must get Thackeray"s _Lectures on the English Humorists_ for Fuz."
"There won"t be much left of your hundred pounds," said Jenny.
"Well, let"s draw up an estimate. I"ll write down the possibles and then we"ll delete nearly all of them."
Maurice got up from his chair and wandered round the room in search of note-paper. Not being able to find any, he pinned a large sheet of drawing-paper to a board and produced a pencil.
"Look at him," laughed Jenny. "Look at the Great Millionaire. Just because he"s come into money, he can"t write on anything smaller than a blanket."
"It"s not ostentation," Maurice declared. "It"s laziness--a privilege of the very poor, as you ought to know by this time. I can"t find any note-paper."
"I should think you couldn"t. I wonder you can find yourself in this room."
"Come along," urged the owner of it. "We must begin. Maurice and Jenny.
Then Fuz and Maudie, Ronnie and Irene, Cunningham and Madge. Any more you can think of?"
"You don"t mean to say you"ve taken that unnatural piece of paper just to write those few names which we could have thought of in our heads.
What would you do with him?"
"We want another eight," Maurice declared.
"Oh, no, eight"s plenty."
"Perhaps it is," he agreed. "Well, now, Maurice will be Theophile Gautier--no, he won"t--the red waistcoat knocks him out--Edmond de Goncourt? No, he had a mustache. Chopin? Long hair. Look here, I don"t think we"ll be anybody in particular. We"ll just be ladies and gentlemen of the period. You know you girls have got to wear crinolines and fichus and corkscrew curls."