SUFFRAGISM viewed in retrospect was shoddy embroidery for the vie intérieure of Jenny. There was no physical exhilaration for her in wrestling with policemen, and the intellectual excitement of controversy would never be likely to appeal to a mind naturally unfitted for argument. There was, too, about her view of the whole business something of Myrrhine's contempt. She may have been in an abnormal condition of acute hostility to the opposite sex; but as soon as she found herself in a society whose antipathy towards men seemed to be founded on inability to attract the hated male, all her common sense cried out against committing herself to such a devil-driven attitude. She felt that something must be wrong with so obviously an ineffective aggregation of Plain Janes. She was not concerned with that unprovided-for surplus of feminine population. She had no acquaintance with that asceticism produced by devotion to the intellect. She perceived, though not consciously, the inherent weakness of the whole movement in its failure to supply an emotional substitute for more elemental passions.
Jenny was shrewd enough to understand that leaders like Miss Bailey and Miss Ragstead were logically justified in demanding a vote. She could understand that they would be able to use it to some purpose; but at the same time she realized that to the majority of women a vote would be merely an encumbrance. Jenny also saw through the folly of agitation that must depend for success on equality of physique, and half divined that the prime cause of such extravagance lay in the needs of feminine self-expression. Nuns are wedded to Christ; suffragists, with the notable exceptions of those capable of sustaining an intellectual predominance, must remain spiritual old maids. As Jenny asked, "What do they all want?" Very soon the inhabitants of Mecklenburg Square became as unreal as unicorns, and the whole episode acquired the reputation of an interlude of unaccountable madness from the memory of which the figure of Miss Ragstead stood out cool and tranquil and profoundly sane. Jenny would in a way have been glad to meet her again; but she was too shy to suggest meeting outside the domain of the Women's Political, Social and Economic League, and their auspices were now unimaginable. In order to avoid the whole subject, Jenny began to avoid Lilli Vergoe; and very soon, partly owing to the opportunities of propinquity, partly owing to a renewed desire for it, her friendship with Irene Dale was reconstituted on a firmer basis than before.
Six months had now elapsed since that desolate first of May. The ballet of Cupid was taken off about the same time, and the occupation of rehearsing for a new one had steered Jenny through the weeks immediately following Maurice's defection. She was now dancing in a third ballet in which she took so little interest that no account of it is necessary. The pangs of outraged love were drugged to painlessness by time. From a superficial standpoint the wounds were healed, that is, if a dull insensibility to the original cause of the evil be a cure. Jenny no longer missed Maurice on particular occasions, and, having grown used to his absence, was not aware she missed him in a wider sense. Love so impassioned as theirs, love lived through in moments of individual ecstasy, was in the verdict of average comment a disease; but average comment failed to realize that, like the scarlet fever of her youth, its malignant influence would be extended in complications of abnormal emotional states. Average comment did not perceive that the worst tragedies of unhappy love are not those which end with death or separation. Nor did Jenny herself foresee the train of ills that in the wake of such a shock to her feelings would be liable to twist her whole life awry.
With Maurice she had embarked on the restless ocean of an existence lived at unusually high pressure. She had conjured for her soul dreams of adventure, fiery-hearted dreams which would not be satisfied by the awakening of common-place dawns. Time had certainly assuaged with his heavy anodyne the intimate desire for her lover; but time would rather aggravate than heal the universal need of her womanhood. These six months of seared emotions and withered hopes were a trance from which she would awake on the very flashing heels of the last mental and physical excitement.
It was said in the last chapter that a less sincere heart would have been caught on the rebound. Those hearts are dragged but a little way down into the depths of misery; for such have not fallen from great heights. Jenny on the first of May fell straight and deep as a plummet to the bed of the ocean of despair, there to lie long submerged. But to one who had rejected death, life would not hold out oblivion. Life with all its cold insistence called her once more to the surface; thence to make for whatever beach chance should offer. Jenny, scarcely conscious of any responsibleness for her first struggles, clutched at suffragism—a support for which life never intended her. However, it served to help her ashore; and now, with some of the cynicism that creeps into the adventurer's life, she looked around for new adventures. Her desire to revenge herself on men was superseded by anxiety to rediscover the savor of living. Her instinct was now less to hurt others than to indulge herself. A year's abstention from the episodic existence spent by Irene and her before Maurice had created an illusion of permanence, had given that earlier time a romantic charm; and a revival of it seemed fraught with many possibilities of a more widely extended wonder. One evening late in October she asked Irene casually, as if there had been no interval of desuetude, whether she were coming out. To this inquiry her friend, without any manifestation of surprise, answered in the affirmative. It was characteristic of both girls, this manner of resuming a friendship.
Now began a period not worth a detailed chronicle, since it was merely a repetition of a period already discussed—a repetition, moreover, that like most anachronisms seemed after other events jejune and somewhat tawdry. The young men were just as young as those of earlier years; but Irene and Jenny were older and, if before they had found it hard to tolerate these ephemeral encounters, they found it harder still now. The result of this was that, where once a single whisky and soda was enough, now three or four scarcely availed to pass away the time. Neither of the girls drank too much in more than a general sense, but it was an omen of flying youth when whiskies were invoked to give an edge to existence.
One evening they sat in the Café d'Afrique, laughing to each other over the physical and social oddities of two Norwegians who had constituted themselves their hosts on the strength of a daring stage-door introduction. As Jenny paused in her laughter to catch some phrase of melody in the orchestra, she saw Castleton drawing near their table. He stopped in doubt, and looked at her from wide, gray eyes very eager under eyebrows arched in a question. She returned his gaze without a flicker of recognition, and, bowing imperceptibly, he passed out into the night. The doors swung together behind him, and Jenny, striking a match from the stand on the table, set the whole box alight to distract Irene's attention from what she feared in the blush of a memory.
"Come on; let's go," she said to her friend.
So the girls left the two Norwegians desolate and volubly unintelligible.
One morning in November Irene came into Jenny's room at Stacpole Terrace.
"My Danby's coming home this week," she announced. "And his brother, too."
Jenny often thought to herself that Danby was a riddle. It was four years now since he and Irene had been reputed in love; yet nothing seemed to have happened since the day when for a fancy he dressed his sweetheart in short frocks. Here he was coming back from France as he had come back time after time in company with his brother, at the notion of meeting whom Jenny had always scoffed.
"What of it?" she said.
"Now don't be nasty, young Jenny. I shall be glad to see him."
"I suppose this means every minute you can get together for a fortnight, and then he'll be off again for six months. Why doesn't he marry you?"
"He's going to," Irene asserted, twisting the knob on the corner of the bed round and round until it squeaked. "But I don't want to get married, not yet."
"Oh, no, it's only a rumor. Why ever not? If I loved a fellow as you think you love Danby, I'd get married quick enough."
"Well, you didn't——"
"That's enough of you," said Jenny, sitting up in bed. "No, I know I didn't. But that was different."
"Why was it different? My Danby's a gentleman."
"Yes, when he's asleep. He can't be much or he wouldn't have dressed you up such a sight. I'd like to see a man make such a poppy-show of me," cried Jenny, indignant at the recollection of the incident.
"Oh, well, he doesn't do it now," said Irene pacifically. "Aren't you coming out with us?"
"You're very free all of a sudden with your Danby," Jenny continued mockingly. "I remember when you was afraid for your life some girl would carry him off under your nose. Yet you let him go all the time to France. I think you're silly."
Jenny could not refrain from teasing Irene. The habit was firmly established and, although she had not now the sense of outraged independence which prompted her attitude in old days, she kept it up because such rallying was easier than sympathetic attention.
"His brother Jack says he'd like to meet you."
Jenny laughed derisively.
"I thought you weren't giving your Danby away with a pound of nothing. Do you remember when I used to call Jack Danby 'Tin Ribs the Second,' and you used to get so ratty?"
"Well, what a liberty," said Irene, laughing at the now almost forgotten insult.
Towards the dripping fog-stained close of November Arthur and Jack Danby arrived from Paris and, tall as lamp-posts, waited for the two girls at the top of the court in Jermyn Street. It did not strike Jenny at the time that the appointment seemed girt with intrigue, as if whispers had gone to the making of it, whispers that voiced a deceitful purpose in her friend. Jenny had often arraigned the methods of Mrs. Dale and denounced the encouragement of Winnie and Irene in any association whose profit transcended its morality. But she never really understood Irene, and her teasing was a sign of this. Under the circumstances of lovers reunited, she accepted her place at Jack Danby's side without suspicion; and was only dimly aware of the atmosphere of satisfaction which clung to the two brothers and her friend.
In the bronzed glow of the Trocadero grill-room she had an opportunity of studying the two men, and because the result of this was a decided preference for Jack, she lost any suspicion of a plot, and appeared almost to enjoy his company.
All Arthur Danby's features, even his ears, seemed excessively pointed, while his thinness and length of limb accentuated this peaked effect of countenance. His complexion had preserved the clearness of youth, but had become waxy from dissipation, and in certain lights was feathered with fine lines that looked like scratches on a smooth surface. His eyelids were puffy and tinged slightly round the rims with a redness which was the more obvious from the vivid light blue eyes it surrounded. A certain diabolic strangeness redeemed the whole effect from mere unpleasantness. Jack Danby was not so tall as his brother, and his features were less sharply pointed, although they were as clearly defined. He had similar eyes of almost cobalt blue when contrasted with the dead whiteness of a skin that gave the impression of being powdered. The younger brother's eyes preserved more fire and seemed under the influence of a suggestive conversation to be lighted up from behind in a way that sent a sudden breathlessness through many women. Jenny, when she looked at him full, was aware less of his eyes than of her own, which seemed to her to be kindling in the dry sparks that were radiated by his; and even as she felt scorched by the brain which was thus expressed, her own eyes would melt, as it were, to meet appropriately the liquid softness that succeeded. His lips were never remarkably red, and as the evening advanced they adopted the exact shade of his complexion, which from paleness took on the lifeless monotone of color that is seen in the rain-soaked petal of a pink rose. Danby's mouth curved upwards, and when he smiled, he only smiled on one side of his face. The immediate expression he conveyed was that of profound lassitude changed by any topic of sly licentiousness to a startling concentration.
A pictorial representation of the party would have some decorative value. The two brothers had ordered red mullet, which lay scattered about their plates in mingled hues of cornelian, rose and tarnished copper. Their wine was Lacrima Christi of the precise tint to carry on the scheme of color. Jenny and Irene were drinking champagne whose pale amber sparkled against the prevailing luster, contrasting and lightening the arrangement of metallic tints, just as Jenny's fair hair set off and was at the same time enhanced by Irene's copper-brown. As a group of revellers the four of them composed into a rich enough study in genre, and the fanciful observer would extract from the position of the two men a certain potentiality for romantic events as, somewhat hunched and looking up from down-turned heads, they both sat with legs outstretched to the extent of their length. The more imaginative observer would perceive in the group something unhealthy, something faisandé, an air of too deliberate enjoyment that seemed to imply a perfect knowledge of the limitations of human pleasure. These men and girls aimed no arrow of fleeting gayety to pierce in a straight, sharp course the heart of the present. Sophistication clung to them, and weariness. That senescent October moon which a year ago marked the end of love's halcyon would have been a suitable light for such a party. Jenny herself had gone back to that condition of cynicism which before the days of Maurice was due to ignorance, but was now a profounder cynicism based on experience. Irene had always been skeptical of emotional heights, had always accepted life sensually without much enthusiasm either for the gratification or the denial of her ambitions. As for the two men, they had grown thin on self-indulgence.
"Fill up your glasses, girls," said Arthur.
"Fill up," echoed Jack. "Is there time for another bottle?" he added anxiously.
"This cheese is very good," commented Arthur.
"Delicious," the other agreed.
"You two seem to think of nothing but eating and drinking," said Jenny distastefully.
"Oh, no, we think of other things, don't we, Jack?" contradicted the older brother, with a sort of frigid relish.
"Rather," the younger one corroborated, looking sideways at Jenny.
"We must have a good time this winter," Arthur announced. "We needn't go back to Paris for a month or two. We must have a good time at our flat in Victoria."
"London's a much wickeder city than Paris," said Jack, addressing the air like some pontiff of vice. "I like these November nights with shapes of women looming up through the fog. A friend of mine——" As Jack Danby descended to personal reminiscence, he lost his sinister power and became mean and common. "When I say friend—I should say business friend, eh, Arthur?" he asked, smiling on the side of his face nearer to his brother. "Well, he's a lord as a matter of fact," he continued in accents of studied indifference.
"Tell the girls about him," urged his brother, and "Fill up your glasses," he murmured as, leaning back in his chair, he seemed to fade away into clouds of smoke blown from a very long, thin and black cigar.
"This lord—I won't tell you his name——" said Jack, "he wanders about in fogs until he meets a shape that attracts him. Then he hands her a velvet mask, and takes her home. What an imagination," chuckled the narrator.
"Well, I call him a dirty rotter," said Jenny.
"Do you?" asked Jack, as if struck by the novelty of such a point of view.
The lights were being extinguished now. The quenching of the orange illumination, and the barren waste of empty tables gave the grill-room a raffish look which consorted well with the personalities of the two brothers. The party broke up in the abrupt fashion of England, and within a few minutes of sitting comfortably round a richly lighted supper-table, the two girls were seated in a dark taxi on the way to Camden Town.
"How do you like Jack Danby?" Irene inquired.
"He's all right. Only I don't know—I think if I'd met him last year I'd have thought him a swine. I think I must be turning funny. What are they—these long friends of yours?" she added, after a pause. "What do they do in Paris?"
"They bring out books," Irene informed her.
"Books?" echoed Jenny. "What sort of books?"
"Ordinary books, I suppose," said Irene, slightly huffed by Jenny's contemptuous incredulity.
"Well, what do they want to live in Paris for, if they're ordinary books?"
"That's where their business is."
"Funny place to do a business in ordinary books."
"I don't see why."
"Oh, well, it doesn't matter. But I think it's funny, that's all. You are deep, Irene."
"Oh, yes," said Irene, looking out of the window at the waves of light that broke against the window with each passing street lamp. "You always say that, but I'm not near so deep as what you are."
"Yes, you are, because I'm always catching you out in a lie which you don't me."
"No, because I'm not so nosy."
"Now don't be silly and get in a paddy about nothing," Jenny advised. "You can't help having funny friends. Only what I can't understand is myself. I think they're both beasts, and yet I'd like to see them again. That's where I'm funny, I think."
Irene assumed an attitude of lofty indifference.
"There's no need for you to see them again, if you don't like them. Only they give you a good time, and Arthur gave me some glorious rings."
"Which your mother pawned," interrupted Jenny.
"And he's going to marry me," Irene persisted.
"Yes, if you get married after dinner when he's drunk."
"Oh, well, what of it? You're not so clever as what you make out to be."
"That's quite right," said Jenny, lapsing into a gloom of introspection.
Lying awake that night in the bewilderment of a new experience, the image of Jack Danby recurred to her like the pale image of a sick dream at once repulsive and perilously attractive. Time after time she would drive him from her mind, but as fast as he was banished, his slim face would obtrude itself from another quarter. He would peep from behind the musty curtains, he would take form in the wavering gray shadow thrown upon the ceiling by the gas. He would slide round pictures and materialize from the heap of clothes on the wicker arm-chair by the bed.
One other image could have contended with him; but that image had been finally exorcised by six months of mental discipline. All that was left of Maurice was the fire he had kindled, the fire of passion that, lying dormant since his desertion, was now burning luridly in Jenny's heart.