CHAPTER II THE TREAT

Gradually Emmy’s tearless sobs diminished; she began to murmur broken, meaningless ejaculations of self-contempt; and to strain away from Jenny. At last she pushed Jenny from her, feverishly freeing herself, so that they stood apart, while Emmy blew her nose and wiped her eyes. All this time they did not speak to each other, and when Emmy turned blindly away Jenny mechanically took hold of the kettle, filled it, and set it to boil upon the gas. Emmy watched her curiously, feeling that her nose was cold and her eyes were burning. Little dry tremors seemed to shake her throat; dreariness had settled upon her, pressing her down; making her feel ashamed of such a display of the long secret so carefully hoarded away from prying glances.

“What’s that for?” she miserably asked, indicating the kettle.

“Going to steam my hat,” Jenny said. “The brim’s all floppy.” There was now only a practical note in her voice. She, too, was ashamed. “You’d better go up and lie down for a bit. I’ll stay with Pa, in case he falls into the fire. Just the sort of thing he would do on a night like this. Just because you’re upset.”

“I shan’t go up. It’s too cold. I’ll sit by the fire a bit.”

They both went into the kitchen, where the old man was whistling under his breath.

“Was there any noos on the play-cards?” he inquired after a moment, becoming aware of their presence. “Emmy—Jenny.”

“No, Pa. I told you. Have to wait till Sunday. Funny thing there’s so much more news in the Sunday papers: I suppose people are all extra wicked on Saturdays. They get paid Friday night, I shouldn’t wonder; and it goes to their heads.”

“Silly!” Emmy said under her breath. “It’s the week’s news.”

“That’s all right, old girl,” admonished Jenny. “I was only giving him something to think about. Poor old soul. Now, about this hat: the girls all go on at me.... Say I dress like a broker’s-man. I’m going to smarten myself up. You never know what might happen. Why, I might get off with a Duke!”

Emmy was overtaken by an impulse of gratitude.

“You can have mine, if you like,” she said. “The one you gave me ... on my birthday.” Jenny solemnly shook her head. She did not thank her sister. Thanks were never given in that household, because they were a part of “peliteness,” and were supposed to have no place in the domestic arena.

“Not if I know it!” she humorously retorted. “I made it for you, and it suits you. Not my style at all. I’ll just get out my box of bits. You’ll see something that’ll surprise you, my girl.”

The box proved to contain a large number of “bits” of all sizes and kinds—fragments of silk (plain and ribbed), of plush, of ribbon both wide and narrow; small sprays of marguerites, a rose or two, some poppies, and a bunch of violets; a few made bows in velvet and silk; some elastic, some satin, some feathers, a wing here and there ... the miscellaneous assortment of odds-and-ends always appropriated (or, in the modern military slang, “won”) by assistants in the millinery. Some had been used, some were startlingly new. Jenny was more modest in such acquirements than were most of her associates; but she was affected, as all such must be, by the prevailing wind. Strangely enough, it was not her habit to wear very smart hats, for business or at any other time. She would have told you, in the event of any such remark, that when you had been fiddling about with hats all day you had other things to do in the evenings. Yet she had good taste and very nimble fingers when occasion arose. In bringing her box from the bedroom she brought also from the stand in the passage her drooping hat, against which she proceeded to lay various materials, trying them with her sure eye, seeking to compose a picture, with that instructive sense of cynosure which marks the crafty expert. Fascinated, with her lips parted in an expression of that stupidity which is so often the sequel to a fit of crying, Emmy watched Jenny’s proceedings, her eyes travelling from the hat to the ever-growing heap of discarded ornaments. She was dully impressed with the swift judgment of her sister in consulting the secrets of her inner taste. It was a judgment unlike anything in her own nature of which she was aware, excepting the measurement of ingredients for a pudding.

So they sat, all engrossed, while the kettle began to sing and the desired steam to pour from the spout, clouding the scullery. The only sound that arose was the gurgling of Pa Blanchard’s pipe (for he was what is called in Kennington Park a wet smoker). He sat remembering something or pondering the insufficiency of news. Nobody ever knew what he thought about in his silences. It was a mystery over which the girls did not puzzle, because they were themselves in the habit of sitting for long periods without speech. Pa’s broodings were as customary to them as the absorbed contemplativeness of a baby. “Give him his pipe,” as Jenny said; “and he’ll be quiet for hours—till it goes out. Then there’s a fuss! My word, what a racket! Talk about a fire alarm!” And on such occasions she would mimic him ridiculingly, to diminish his complaints, while Emmy roughly relighted the hubble-bubble and patted her father once more into a contented silence. Pa was to them, although they did not know it, their bond of union. Without him, they would have fallen apart, like the outer pieces of a wooden boot-tree. For his sake, with all the apparent lack of sympathy shown in their behaviour to him, they endured a life which neither desired nor would have tolerated upon her own account. So it was that Pa’s presence acted as a check and served them as company of a meagre kind, although he was less interesting or expansive than a little dog might have been.

When Jenny went out to the scullery carrying her hat, after sweeping the scraps she had declined back into the old draper’s cardboard box which amply contained such treasures and preserved them from dust, Emmy, now quite quiet again, continued to sit by the fire, staring at the small glowing strip that showed under the door of the kitchen grate. Every now and then she would sigh, wearily closing her eyes; and her breast would rise as if with a sob. And she would sometimes look slowly up at the clock, with her head upon one side in order to see the hands in their proper aspect, as if she were calculating.

ii

From the scullery came the sound of Jenny’s whistle as she cheerily held the hat over the steam. Pa heard it as something far away, like a distant salvationists’ band, and pricked up his ears; Emmy heard it, and her brow was contracted. Her expression darkened. Jenny began to hum:

“‘Oh Liza, sweet Liza, If you die an old maid you’ll have only yourself to blame ...’”

It was like a sudden noise in a forest at night, so poignant was the contrast of the radiating silences that succeeded. Jenny’s voice stopped sharply. Perhaps it had occurred to her that her song would be overheard. Perhaps she had herself become affected by the meaning of the words she was so carelessly singing. There was once more an air of oblivion over all things. The old man sank back in his chair, puffing slowly, blue smoke from the bowl of the pipe, grey smoke from between his lips. Emmy looked again at the clock. She had the listening air of one who awaits a bewildering event. Once she shivered, and bent to the fire, raking among the red tumbling small coal with the bent kitchen poker. Jenny began to whistle again, and Emmy impatiently wriggled her shoulders, jarred by the noise. Suddenly she could bear no longer the whistle that pierced her thoughts and distracted her attention, but went out to the scullery.

“How are you getting on?” she asked with an effort.

“Fine. This gas leaks. Can’t you whiff it? Don’t know which one it is. Pa all right?”

“Yes, he’s all right. Nearly finished?”

“Getting on. Tram nearly ran over a kid to-night. She was wheeling a pram full of washing on the line. There wasn’t half a row about it—shouting and swearing. Anybody would have thought the kid had laid down on the line. I expect she was frightened out of her wits—all those men shouting at her. There, now I’ll lay it on the plate rack over the gas for a bit.... Look smart, shan’t I! With a red rose in it and a red ribbon....”

“Not going to have those streamers, or any lace, are you?”

“Not likely. You see the kids round here wearing them; but the kids round here are always a season late. Same with their costumes. They don’t know any better. I do!”

Jenny was cheerfully contemptuous. She knew what was being worn along Regent Street and in Bond Street, because she saw it with her own eyes. Then she came home and saw the girls of her own district swanking about like last year’s patterns, as she said. She couldn’t help laughing at them. It made her think of the tales of savages wearing top hats with strings of beads and thinking they were all in the latest European fashion. That is the constant amusement of the expert as she regards the amateur. She has all the satisfaction of knowing better, without the turmoil of competition, a fact which distinguishes the superior spirit from the struggling helot. Jenny took full advantage of her situation and her knowledge.

“Yes, you know a lot,” Emmy said dryly.

“Ah, you’ve noticed it?” Jenny was not to be gibed at without retort. “I’m glad.”

“So you think,” Emmy added, as though she had not heard the reply.

There came at this moment a knock at the front door. Emmy swayed, grew pale, and then slowly reddened until the colour spread to the very edges of her bodice. The two girls looked at one another, a deliberate interchange of glances that was at the same time, upon both sides, an intense scrutiny. Emmy was breathing heavily; Jenny’s nostrils were pinched.

“Well,” at last said Jenny, drawlingly. “Didn’t you hear the knock? Aren’t you going to answer it?” She reached as she spoke to the hat lying upon the plate rack above the gas stove, looking fixedly away from her sister. Her air of gravity was unchanged. Emmy, hesitating, made as if to speak, to implore something; but, being repelled, she turned, and went thoughtfully across the kitchen to the front door. Jenny carried her hat into the kitchen and sat down at the table as before. The half-contemptuous smile had reappeared in her eyes; but her mouth was quite serious.

iii

Pa Blanchard had worked as a boy and man in a large iron foundry. He had been a very capable workman, and had received as the years went on the maximum amount (with overtime) to be earned by men doing his class of work. He had not been abstemious, and so he had spent a good deal of his earnings in what is in Kennington Park called “pleasure”; but he had also possessed that common kind of sense which leads men to pay money into sick and benefit clubs. Accordingly, his wife’s illness and burial had, as he had been in the habit of saying, “cost him nothing.” They were paid by his societies. Similarly, when he had himself been attacked by the paralytic seizure which had wrecked his life, the societies had paid; and now, in addition to the pension allowed by his old employers, he received a weekly dole from the societies which brought his income up to fifty shillings a week. The pension, of course, would cease upon his death; but so long as life was kept burning within him nothing could affect the amounts paid weekly into the Blanchard exchequer. Pa was fifty-seven, and normally would have had a respectable number of years before him; his wants were now few, and his days were carefully watched over by his daughters. He would continue to draw his pensions for several years yet, unless something unexpected happened to him. Meanwhile, therefore, his pipe was regularly filled and his old pewter tankard appeared at regular intervals, in order that Pa should feel as little as possible the change in his condition.

Mrs. Blanchard had been dead ten years. She had been very much as Emmy now was, but a great deal more cheerful. She had been plump and fresh-coloured, and in spite of Pa Blanchard’s ways she had led a happy life. In the old days there had been friends and neighbours, now all lost in course of removals from one part of London to another, so that the girls were without friends and knew intimately no women older than themselves. Mrs. Blanchard, perhaps in accord with her cheerfulness, had been a complacent, selfish little woman, very neat and clean, and disposed to keep her daughters in their place. Jenny had been her favourite; and even so early had the rivalry between them been established. Besides this, Emmy had received all the rebuffs needed to check in her the same complacent selfishness that distinguished her mother. She had been frustrated all along, first by her mother, then by her mother’s preference for Jenny, finally (after a period during which she dominated the household after her mother’s death) by Jenny herself. It was thus not upon a pleasant record of personal success that Emmy could look back, but rather upon a series of chagrins of which each was the harder to bear because of the history of its precursors. Emmy, between eighteen and nineteen at the time of her mother’s death, had grasped her opportunity, and had made the care of the household her lot. She still bore, what was a very different reading of her ambition, the cares of the household. Jenny, as she grew up, had proved unruly; Pa Blanchard’s illness had made home service compulsory; and so matters were like to remain indefinitely. Is it any wonder that Emmy was restive and unhappy as she saw her youth going and her horizons closing upon her with the passing of each year? If she had been wholly selfish that fact would have been enough to sour her temper. But another, emotionally more potent, fact produced in Emmy feelings of still greater stress. To that fact she had this evening given involuntary expression. Now, how would she, how could she, handle her destiny? Jenny, shrewdly thinking as she sat with her father in the kitchen and heard Emmy open the front door, pondered deeply as to her sister’s ability to turn to account her own sacrifice.

iv

Within a moment Alf Rylett appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, Emmy standing behind him until he moved forward, and then closing the door and leaning back against it. His first glance was in the direction of Jenny, who, however, did not rise as she would ordinarily have done. He glanced quickly at her face and from her face to her hands, so busily engaged in manipulating the materials from which she was to re-trim her hat. Then he looked at Pa Blanchard, whom he touched lightly and familiarly upon the shoulder. Alf was a rather squarely built young man of thirty, well under six feet, but not ungainly. He had a florid, reddish complexion, and his hair was of a common but unnamed colour, between brown and grey, curly and crisp. He was clean-shaven. Alf was obviously one who worked with his hands: in the little kitchen he appeared to stand upon the tips of his toes, in order that his walk might not be too noisy. That fact might have suggested either mere nervousness or a greater liking for life out of doors. When he walked it was as though he did it all of a piece, so that his shoulders moved as well as his legs. The habit was shown as he lunged forward to grip Jenny’s hand. When he spoke he shouted, and he addressed Pa as a boy might have done who was not quite completely at his ease, but who thought it necessary to pretend that he was so.

“Good evening, Mr. Blanchard!” he cried boisterously. “Sitting by the fire, I see!”

Pa looked at him rather vacantly, apparently straining his memory in order to recognise the new-comer. It was plain that as a personal matter he had no immediate use for Alf Rylett; but he presently nodded his head.

“Sitting by the fire,” he confirmed. “Getting a bit warm. It’s cold to-night. Is there any noos, Alf Rylett?”

“Lots of it!” roared Alf, speaking as if it had been to a deaf man or a foreigner. “They say this fire at Southwark means ten thousand pounds damage. Big factory there—gutted. Of course, no outside fire escapes. As usual. Fully insured, though. It’ll cost them nothing. You can’t help wondering what causes these fires when they’re heavily insured. Eh? Blazing all night, it was. Twenty-five engines. Twenty-five, mind you! That shows it was pretty big, eh? I saw the red in the sky, myself. Well,’ I thought to myself, ‘there’s somebody stands to lose something,’ I thought. But the insurance companies are too wide to stand all the risk themselves. They share it out, you know. It’s a mere flea-bite to them. And ... a ... well then there’s a ... See, then there’s a bigamy case.”

“Hey?” cried Pa sharply, brightening. “What’s that about?”

“Nothing much. Only a couple of skivvies. About ten pound three and fourpence between the pair of them. That was all he got.” Pa’s interest visibly faded. He gurgled at his pipe and turned his face towards the mantelpiece. “And ... a ... let’s see, what else is there?” Alf racked his brains, puffing a little and arching his brows at the two girls, who seemed both to be listening, Emmy intently, as though she were repeating his words to herself. He went on: “Tram smash in Newcastle. Car went off the points. Eleven injured. Nobody killed....”

“I don’t call that much,” said Jenny, critically, with a pin in her mouth. “Not much more than I told him an hour ago. He wants a murder, or a divorce. All these little tin-pot accidents aren’t worth printing at all. What he wants is the cross-examination of the man who found the bones.”

It was comical to notice the change on Alf at Jenny’s interruption. From the painful concentration upon memory which had brought his eyebrows together there appeared in his expression the most delighted ease, a sort of archness that made his face look healthy and honest.

“What’s that you’re doing?” he eagerly inquired, forsaking Pa, and obviously thankful at having an opportunity to address Jenny directly. He came over and stood by the table, in spite of the physical effort which Emmy involuntarily made to will that he should not do so. Emmy’s eyes grew tragic at his intimate, possessive manner in speaking to Jenny. “I say!” continued Alf, admiringly. “A new hat, is it? Smart! Looks absolutely A1. Real West End style, isn’t it? Going to have some chiffong?”

“Sit down, Alf.” It was Emmy who spoke, motioning him to a chair opposite to Pa. He took it, his shoulder to Jenny, while Emmy sat by the table, looking at him, her hands in her lap.

“How is he?” Alf asked, jerking his head at Pa. “Perked up when I said bigamy,’ didn’t he!”

“He’s been very good, I will say,” answered Emmy. “Been quiet all day. And he ate his supper as good as gold.” Jenny’s smile and little amused crouching of the shoulders caught her eye. “Well, so he did!” she insisted. Jenny took no notice. “He’s had his—mustn’t say it, because he always hears that word, and it’s not time for his evening ... Eight o’clock he has it.”

“What’s that?” said Alf, incautiously. “Beer?”

“Beer!” cried Pa. “Beer!” It was the cry of one who had been malignantly defrauded, a piteous wail.

“There!” said both the girls, simultaneously. Jenny added: “Now you’ve done it!”

“All right, Pa! Not time yet!” But Emmy went to the kitchen cupboard as Pa continued to express the yearning that filled his aged heart.

“Sorry!” whispered Alf. “Hold me hand out, naughty boy!”

“He’s like a baby with his titty bottle,” explained Emmy. “Now he’ll be quiet again.”

Alf fidgeted a little. This contretemps had unnerved him. He was less sure of himself.

“Well,” he said at last, darkly. “What I came in about ... Quarter to eight, is it? By Jove, I’m late. That’s telling Mr. Blanchard all the news. The fact is, I’ve got a couple of tickets for the theatre down the road—for this evening, I thought ... erum ...”

“Oh, extravagance!” cried Jenny, gaily, dropping the pin from between her lips and looking in an amused flurry at Emmy’s anguished face opposite. It was as though a chill had struck across the room, as though both Emmy’s heart and her own had given a sharp twist at the shock.

“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong. That’s what cleverness does for you.” Alf nodded his head deeply and reprovingly. “Given to me, they were, by a pal o’ mine who works at the theatre. They’re for to-night. I thought—”

Jenny, with her heart beating, was stricken for an instant with panic. She bent her head lower, holding the rose against the side of her hat, watching it with a zealous eye, once again to test the effect. He thought she was coquetting, and leaned a little towards her. He would have been ready to touch her face teasingly with his forefinger.

“Oh,” Jenny exclaimed, with a hurried assumption of matter of fact ease suddenly ousting her panic. “That’s very good. So you thought you’d take Emmy! That was a very good boy!”

“I thought ...” heavily stammered Alf, his eyes opening in a surprised way as he found himself thus headed off from his true intention. He stared blankly at Jenny, until she thought he looked like the bull on the hoardings who has “heard that they want more.” Emmy stared at her also, quite unguardedly, a concentrated stare of agonised doubt and impatience. Emmy’s face grew pinched and sallow at the unexpected strain upon her nerves.

“That was what you thought, wasn’t it?” Jenny went on impudently, shooting a sideways glance at him that made Alf tame with helplessness. “Poor old Em hasn’t had a treat for ever so long. Do her good to go. You did mean that, didn’t you?”

“I ...” said Alf. “I ...” He was inclined for a moment to bluster. He looked curiously at Jenny’s profile, judicial in its severity. Then some kind of tact got the better of his first impulse. “Well, I thought one of you girls ...” he said. “Will you come, Em? Have to look sharp.”

“Really?” Emmy jumped up, her face scarlet and tears of joy in her eyes. She did not care how it had been arranged. Her pride was unaroused; the other thought, the triumph of the delicious moment, was overwhelming. Afterwards—ah, no no! She would not think. She was going. She was actually going. In a blur she saw their faces, their kind eyes....

“Good boy!” cried Jenny. “Buck up, Em, if you’re going to change your dress. Seats! My word! How splendid!” She clapped her hands quickly, immediately again taking up her work so as to continue it. Into her eyes had come once more that strange expression of pitying contempt. Her white hands flashed in the wan light as she quickly threaded her needle and knotted the silk.