CHAPTER IV THE WISH

Waiting until she had a little recovered her self-control, Jenny presently moved from the door to the fireplace, and proceeded methodically to put coals on the fire. She was still shaking slightly, and the corners of her mouth were uncontrollably twitching with alternate smiles and other raiding emotions; so that she did not yet feel in a fit state to meet Pa’s scrutiny. He might be the old fool he sometimes appeared to be, and, inconveniently, he might not. Just because she did not want him to be particularly bright it was quite probable that he would have a flourish of brilliance. That is as it occasionally happens, in the dullest of mortals. So Jenny was some time in attending to the fire, until she supposed that any undue redness of cheek might be imagined to have been occasioned by her strenuous activities. She then straightened herself and looked down at Pa with a curious mixture of protectiveness and anxiety.

“Pleased with yourself, aren’t you?” she inquired, more to make conversation which might engage the ancient mind in ruminant pastime than to begin any series of inquiries into Pa’s mental states.

“Eh, Jenny?” said Pa, staring back at her. “Ain’t you gone out? Is it Emmy that’s gone out? What did that fool Alf Rylett want? He was shouting.... I heard him.”

“Yes, Pa; but you shouldn’t have listened,” rebuked Jenny, with a fine colour.

Pa shook his shaggy head. He felt cunningly for his empty tankard, hoping that it had been refilled by his benevolent genius. It was not until the full measure of his disappointment had been revealed that he answered her.

“I wasn’t listening,” he quavered. “I didn’t hear what he said.... Did Emmy go out with him?”

“Yes, Pa. To the theatre. Alf brought tickets. Tickets! Tickets for seats.... Oh, dear! Why can’t you understand! Didn’t have to pay at the door....”

Pa suddenly understood.

“Oh ah!” he said. “Didn’t have to pay....” There was a pause. “That’s like Alf Rylett,” presently added Pa. Jenny sat looking at him in consternation at such an uncharitable remark.

“It’s not!” she cried. “I never knew you were such a wicked old man!”

Pa gave an antediluvian chuckle that sounded like a magical and appalling rattle from the inner recesses of his person. He was getting brighter and brighter, as the stars appear to do when the darkness deepens.

“See,” he proceeded. “Did Alf say there was any noos?” He admitted an uncertainty. Furtively he looked at her, suspecting all the time that memory had betrayed him; but in his ancient way continuing to trust to Magic.

“Well, you didn’t seem to think much of what he did bring. But I’ll tell you a bit of news, Pa. And that is, that you’ve got a pair of the rummiest daughters I ever struck!”

Pa looked out from beneath his bushy grey eyebrows, resembling a worn and dilapidated perversion of Whistler’s portrait of Carlyle. His eyelids seemed to work as he brooded upon her announcement. It was as though, together, these two explored the Blanchard archives for confirmation of Jenny’s sweeping statement. The Blanchards of several generations might have been imagined as flitting across a fantastic horizon, keening for their withered laurels, thrown into the shades by these more brighter eccentrics. It was, or it might have been, a fascinating speculation. But Pa did not indulge this antique vein for very long. The moment and its concrete images beguiled him back to the daughter before him and the daughter who was engaged in an unexpected emotional treat. He said:

“I know,” and gave a wide grin that showed the gaps in his teeth as nothing else could have done—not even the profoundest yawn. Jenny was stunned by this evidence of brightness in her parent.

“Well, you’re a caution!” she cried. “And to think of you sitting there saying it! And I reckon they’ve got a pretty rummy old Pa—if the truth was only known.”

Pa’s grin, if possible, stretched wider. Again that terrible chuckle, which suggested a derangement of his internal parts, or the running-down of an overwound clock, wheezed across the startled air.

“Maybe,” Pa said, with some unpardonable complacency. “Maybe.”

“Bless my soul!” exclaimed Jenny. She could not be sure, when his manner returned to one of vacancy, and when the kitchen was silent, whether Pa and she had really talked thus, or whether she had dreamed their talk. To her dying day she was never sure, for Pa certainly added nothing to the conversation thereafter. Was it real? Or had her too excited brain played her a trick? Jenny pinched herself. It was like a fairy tale, in which cats talk and little birds humanly sing, or the tiniest of fairies appear from behind clocks or from within flower-pots. She looked at Pa with fresh awe. There was no knowing where you had him! He had the interest, for her, of one returned by miracle from other regions, gifted with preposterous knowledges.... He became at this instant fabulous, like Rip Van Winkle, or the Sleeping Beauty ... or the White Cat....

In her perplexity Jenny fell once more into a kind of dream, an argumentative dream. She went back over the earlier rows, re-living them, exaggerating unconsciously the noble unselfishness of her own acts and the pointed effectiveness of her speeches, until the scenes were transformed. They now appeared in other hues, in other fashionings. This is what volatile minds are able to do with all recent happenings whatsoever, re-casting them in form altogether more exquisite than the crude realities. The chiaroscuro of their experiences is thus so constantly changing and recomposing that—whatever the apparent result of the scene in fact—the dreamer is in retrospect always victor, in the heroic limelight. With Jenny this was a mood, not a preoccupation; but when she had been moved or excited beyond the ordinary she often did tend to put matters in a fresh aspect, more palatable to her self-love, and more picturesque in detail than the actual happening. That is one of the advantages of the rapidly-working brain, that its power of improvisation is, in solitude, very constant and reassuring. It is as though such a grain, upon this more strictly personal side, were a commonwealth of little cell-building microbes. The chief microbe comes, like the engineer, to estimate the damage to one’s amour propre and to devise means of repair. He then summons all his necessary workmen, who are tiny self-loves and ancient praises and habitual complacencies and the staircase words of which one thinks too late for use in the scene itself; and with their help he restores that proportion without which the human being cannot maintain his self-respect. Jenny was like the British type as recorded in legend; being beaten, she never admitted it; but even, five minutes later, through the adroitness of her special engineer and his handymen, would be able quite seriously to demonstrate a victory to herself.

Defeat? Never! How Alf and Emmy shrank now before her increasing skill in argument. How were they shattered! How inept were their feebleness! How splendid Jenny had been, in act, in motive, in speech, in performance!

“Er, yes!” Jenny said, beginning to ridicule her own highly coloured picture. “Well, it was something like that!” She had too much sense of the ridiculous to maintain for long unquestioned the heroic vein as natural to her own actions. More justly, she resumed her consideration of the scenes, pondering over them in their nakedness and their meanings, trying to see how all these stupid little feelings had burst their way from overcharged hearts, and how each word counted as part of the mosaic of misunderstanding that had been composed.

“Oh, blow!” Jenny impatiently ejaculated, with a sinking heart at the thought of any sequel. A sequel there was bound to be—however muffled. It did not rest with her. There were Emmy and Alf, both alike burning with the wish to avenge themselves—upon her! If only she could disappear—just drop out altogether, like a man overboard at night in a storm; and leave Emmy and Alf to settle together their own trouble. She couldn’t drop out; nobody could, without dying, though they might often wish to do so; and even then their bodies were the only things that were gone, because for a long time they stubbornly survived in memory. No: she couldn’t drop out. There was no chance of it. She was caught in the web of life; not alone, but a single small thing caught in the general mix-up of actions and inter-actions. She had just to go on as she was doing, waking up each morning after the events and taking her old place in the world; and in this instance she would have, somehow, to smooth matters over when the excitements and agitations of the evening were past. It would be terribly difficult. She could not yet see a clear course. If only Emmy didn’t live in the same house! If only, by throwing Alf over as far as concerned herself, she could at the same time throw him into Emmy’s waiting arms. Why couldn’t everybody be sensible? If only they could all be sensible for half-an-hour everything could be arranged and happiness could be made real for each of them. No: misunderstandings were bound to come, angers and jealousies, conflicting desires, stupid suspicions.... Jenny fidgeted in her chair and eyed Pa with a sort of vicarious hostility. Why, even that old man was a complication! Nay, he was the worst thing of all! But for him, she could drop out! There was no getting away from him! He was as much permanently there as the chair upon which he was drowsing. She saw him as an incubus. And then Emmy being so fussy! Standing on her dignity when she’d give her soul for happiness! And then Alf being so ... What was Alf? Well, Alf was stupid. That was the word for Alf. He was stupid. As stupid as any stupid member of his immeasurably stupid sex could be!

“Great booby!” muttered Jenny. Why, look at the way he had behaved when Emmy had come into the room. It wasn’t honesty, mind you; because he could tell any old lie when he wanted to. It was just funk. He hadn’t known where to look, or what to say. Too slow, he was, to think of anything. What could you do with a man like that? Oh, what stupids men were! She expected that Alf would feel very fine and noble as he walked old Em along to the theatre—and afterwards, when the evening was over and he had gone off in a cloud of glory. He would think it all over and come solemnly to the conclusion that the reason for his mumbling stupidity, his toeing and heeling, and all that idiotic speechlessness that set Emmy on her hind legs, was sheer love of the truth. He couldn’t tell a lie—to a woman. That would be it. He would pretend that Jenny had chivvied him into taking Em, that he was too noble to refuse to take Em, or to let Em really see point-blank that he didn’t want to take her; but when it came to the pinch he hadn’t been able to screw himself into the truly noble attitude needed for such an act of self-sacrifice. He had been speechless when a prompt lie, added to the promptitude and exactitude of Jenny’s lie, would have saved the situation. Not Alf!

“I cannot tell a lie,” sneered Jenny. “To a woman. George Washington. I don’t think!”

Yes; but then, said her secret complacency, preening itself, and suggesting that possibly a moment or two of satisfied pity might be at this point in place, he’d really wanted to take Jenny. He had taken the tickets because he had wanted to be in Jenny’s company for the evening. Not Emmy’s. There was all the difference. If you wanted a cream bun and got fobbed off with a scone! There was something in that. Jenny was rather flattered by her happy figure. She even excitedly giggled at the comparison of Emmy with a scone. Jenny did not like scones. She thought them stodgy. She had also that astounding feminine love of cream buns which no true man could ever acknowledge or understand. So Emmy became a scone, with not too many currents in it. Jenny’s fluent fancy was inclined to dwell upon this notion. She a little lost sight of Alf’s grievance in her pleasure at the figures she had drawn. Her mind was recalled with a jerk. Now: what was it? Alf had wanted to take her—Jenny. Right! He had taken Emmy. Because he had taken Emmy, he had a grievance. Right! But against whom? Against Emmy? Certainly not. Against himself? By no means. Against Jenny? A horribly exulting and yet nervously penitent little giggle shook Jenny at her inability to answer this point as she had answered the others. For Alf had a grievance against Jenny, and she knew it. No amount of ingenious thought could hoodwink her sense of honesty for more than a debater’s five minutes. No Alf had a grievance. Jenny could not, in strict privacy, deny the fact. She took refuge in a shameless piece of bluster.

“Well, after all!” she cried, “he had the tickets given to him. It’s not as though they cost him anything! So what’s all the row about?”

ii

Thereafter she began to think of Alf. He had taken her out several times—not as many times as Emmy imagined, because Emmy had thought about these excursions a great deal and not only magnified but multiplied them. Nevertheless, Alf had taken Jenny out several times. To a music hall once or twice; to the pictures, where they had sat and thrilled in cushioned darkness while acrobatic humans and grey-faced tragic creatures jerked and darted at top speed in and out of the most amazingly telescoped accidents and difficulties. And Alf had paid more than once, for all Pa said. It is true that Jenny had paid on her birthday for both of them; and that she had occasionally paid for herself upon an impulse of sheer independence. But there had been other times when Alf had really paid for both of them. He had been very decent about it. He had not tried any nonsense, because he was not a flirtatious fellow. Well, it had been very nice; and now it was all spoilt. It was spoilt because of Emmy. Emmy had spoilt it by wanting Alf for herself. Ugh! thought Jenny. Em had always been a jealous cat: if she had just seen Alf somewhere she wouldn’t have wanted him. That was it! Em saw that Alf preferred Jenny; she saw that Jenny went out with him. And because she always wanted to do what Jenny did, and always wanted what Jenny had got, Em wanted to be taken out by Alf. Jenny, with the cruel unerringness of an exasperated woman, was piercing to Emmy’s heart with fierce lambent flashes of insight. And if Alf had taken Em once or twice, and Jenny once or twice, not wanting either one or the other, or not wanting one of them more than the other, Em would have been satisfied. It would have gone no further. It would still have been sensible, without nonsense. But it wouldn’t do for Em. So long as Jenny was going out Emmy stayed at home. She had said to herself: “Why should Jenny go, and not me ... having all this pleasure?” That had been the first stage—Jenny worked it all out. First of all, it had been envy of Jenny’s going out. Then had come stage number two: “Why should Alf Rylett always take Jenny, and not me?” That had been the first stage of jealousy of Alf. And the next time Alf took Jenny, Em had stayed at home, and thought herself sick about it, supposing that Alf and Jenny were happy and that she was unhappy, supposing they had all the fun, envying them the fun, hating them for having what she had not got, hating Jenny for monopolising Alf, hating Alf had monopolising Jenny; then, as she was a woman, hating Jenny for being a more pleasing woman than herself, and having her wounded jealousy moved into a strong craving for Alf, driven deeper and deeper into her heart by long-continued thought and frustrated desire. And so she had come to look upon herself as one defrauded by Jenny of pleasure—of happiness—of love—of Alf Rylett.

“And she calls it love!” thought Jenny bitterly. “If that’s love, I’ve got no use for it. Love’s giving, not getting. I know that much. Love’s giving yourself; wanting to give all you’ve got. It’s got nothing at all to do with envy, or hating people, or being jealous....” Then a swift feeling of pity darted through her, changing her thoughts, changing every shade of the portrait of Emmy which she had been etching with her quick corrosive strokes of insight. “Poor old Em!” she murmured. “She’s had a rotten time. I know she has. Let her have Alf if she wants. I don’t want him. I don’t want anybody ... except ...” She closed her eyes in the most fleeting vision. “Nobody except just Keith....”

Slowly Jenny raised her hand and pressed the back of her wrist to her lips, not kissing the wrist, but holding it against her lips so that they were forced hard back upon her teeth. She drew, presently, a deep breath, releasing her arm again and clasping her hands over her knees as she bent lower, staring at the glowing heart of the fire. Her lips were closely, seriously, set now; her eyes sorrowful. Alf and Emmy had receded from her attention as if they had been fantastic shadows. Pa, sitting holding his exhausted hubble-bubble, was as though he had no existence at all. Jenny was lost in memory and the painful aspirations of her own heart.

iii

How the moments passed during her reverie she did not know. For her it seemed that time stood still while she recalled days that were beautified by distance, and imagined days that should be still to come, made to compensate for that long interval of dullness that pressed her each morning into acquiescence. She bent nearer to the fire, smiling to herself. The fire showing under the little door of the kitchener was a bright red glowing ash, the redness that came into her imagination when the words “fire” or “heat” were used—the red heart, burning and consuming itself in its passionate immolation. She loved the fire. It was to her the symbol of rapturous surrender, that feminine ideal that lay still deeper than her pride, locked in the most secret chamber of her nature.

And then, as the seconds ticked away, Jenny awoke from her dream and saw that the clock upon the mantelpiece said half-past eight. Half-past eight was what, in the Blanchard home, was called “time.” When Pa was recalcitrant Jenny occasionally shouted very loud, with what might have appeared to some people an undesirable knowledge of customs, “Act of Parliament, gentlemen, please”—which is a phrase sometimes used in clearing a public-house. To-night there was no need for her to do that. She had only to look at Pa, to take from his hand the almost empty pipe, to knock out the ashes, and to say:

“Time, Pa!” Obediently Pa held out his right hand and clutched in the other his sturdy walking-stick. Together they tottered into the bedroom, stood a moment while Jenny lighted the peep of gas which was Pa’s guardian angel during the night, and then made their way to the bed. Pa sat upon the bed, like a child. Jenny took off Pa’s collar and tie, and his coat and waistcoat; she took off his boots and his socks; she laid beside him the extraordinary faded scarlet nightgown in which Pa slept away the darkness. Then she left him to struggle out of his clothes as well as he could, which Pa did with a skill worthy of his best days. The cunning which replaces competence had shown him how the braces may be made to do their own work, how the shirt may with one hand be so manipulated as to be drawn swiftly over the head... Pa was adept at undressing. He was in bed within five minutes, after a panting, exhausted interval during which he sat in a kind of trance, and was then proudly as usual knocking upon the floor with his walking-stick for Jenny to come and tuck him in for the night.

Jenny came, gave him a big kiss, and went back to the kitchen, where she resumed work upon her hat. It had lost its interest for her. She stitched quickly and roughly, not as one interested in needlework or careful for its own sake of the regularity of the stitch. Ordinarily she was accurate: to-night her attention was elsewhere. It had come back to the rows, because there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it ever so much more important than it really is. Loneliness with happy thoughts is perhaps an ideal state; but no torment could be greater than loneliness with thoughts that wound. Jenny’s thoughts wounded her. The mood of complacency was gone: that of shame and discontent was upon her. Distress was uppermost in her mind—not the petulant wriggling of a spoilt child, but the sober consciousness of pain in herself and in others. In vain did Jenny give little gasps of annoyance, intended by her humour to disperse the clouds. The gasps and exclamations were unavailing. She was angry, chagrined, miserable. ...At last she could bear the tension no longer, but threw down her work, rose, and walked impatiently about the kitchen.

“Oh, do shut up!” she cried to her insistent thoughts. “Enough to drive anybody off their nut. And they’re not worth it, either of them. Em’s as stupid as she can be, thinking about herself.... And as for Alf—anybody’d think I’d tricked him. I haven’t. I’ve gone out with him; but what’s that? Lots of girls go out with fellows for months, and nobody expects them to marry. The girls may want it; but the fellows don’t. They don’t want to get settled down. And I don’t blame them. Why is Alf different? I suppose it’s me that’s different. I’m not like other girls....” That notion cheered her. “No: I’m not like other girls. I want my bit of fun. I’ve never had any. And just because I don’t want to settle down and have a lot of kids that mess the place to bits, of course I get hold of Alf! It’s too bad! Why can’t he choose the right sort of girl? Why can’t he choose old Em? She’s the sort that does want to get settled. She knows she’ll have to buck up about it, too. She said I should get left. That’s what she’s afraid of, herself; only she’s afraid of getting left on the shelf.... I wonder why it is the marrying men don’t get hold of the marrying girls! They do, sometimes, I suppose....” Jenny shrugged restlessly and stood looking at nothing. “Oh, it’s sickening! You can’t do anything you like in this world. Nothing at all! You’ve always got to do what you don’t like. They say it’s good for you. It’s your ‘duty.’ Who to? And who are ‘they,’ to say such a thing? What are they after? Just to keep people like me in their place—do as you’re told. Well, I’m not going to do as I’m told. They can lump it! That’s what they can do. What does it matter—what happens to me? I’m me, aren’t I? Got a right to live, haven’t I? Why should I be somebody’s servant all my life? I won’t! If Alf doesn’t want to marry Emmy, he can go and whistle somewhere else. There’s plenty of girls who’d jump at him. But just because I don’t, he’ll worry me to death. If I was to be all over him—see Alf sheer off! He’d think there was something funny about me. Well, there is! I’m Jenny Blanchard; and I’m going to keep Jenny Blanchard. If I’ve got no right to live, then nobody’s got any right to keep me from living. If there’s no rights, other people haven’t got any more than I have. They can’t make me do anything—by any right they’ve got. People—managing people—think that because there isn’t a corner of the earth they haven’t collared they can tell you what you’ve got to do. Give you a ticket and a number, get up at six, eat so much a day, have six children, do what you’re told. That may do for some people; but it’s slavery. And I’m not going to do it. See!” She began to shout in her excited indignation. “See!” she cried again. “Just because I’m poor, I’m to do what I’m told. They seem to think that because they like to do what they’re told, everybody ought to be the same. They’re afraid. They’re afraid of themselves—afraid of being left alone in the dark. They think everybody ought to be afraid—in case anybody should find out that they’re cowards! But I’m not afraid, and I’m not going to do what I’m told.... I won’t!”

In a frenzy she walked about the room, her eyes glittering, her face flushed with tumultuous anger. This was her defiance to life. She had been made into a rebel through long years in which she had unconsciously measured herself with others. Because she was a human being, Jenny thought she had a right to govern her own actions. With a whole priesthood against her, Jenny was a rebel against the world as it appeared to her—a crushing, numerically overwhelming pressure that would rob her of her one spiritual reality—the sense of personal freedom.

“Oh, I can’t stand it!” she said bitterly. “I shall go mad! And Em taking it all in, and ready to have Alf’s foot on her neck for life. And Alf ready to have Em chained to his foot for life. The fools! Why, I wouldn’t ... not even to Keith.... No, I wouldn’t.... Fancy being boxed up and pretending I liked it—just because other people say they like it. Do as you’re told. Do like other people. All be the same—a sticky mass of silly fools doing as they’re told! All for a bit of bread, because somebody’s bagged the flour for ever! And what’s the good of it? If it was any good—but it’s no good at all! And they go on doing it because they’re cowards! Cowards, that’s what they all are. Well, I’m not like that!”

Exhausted, Jenny sat down again; but she could not keep still. Her feet would not remain quietly in the place she, as the governing intelligence, commanded. They too were rebels, nervous rebels, controlled by forces still stronger than the governing intelligence. She felt trapped, impotent, as though her hands were tied; as though only her whirling thoughts were unfettered. Again she took up the hat, but her hands so trembled that she could not hold the needle steady. It made fierce jabs into the hat. Stormily unhappy, she once more threw the work down. Her lips trembled. She burst into bitter tears, sobbing as though her heart were breaking. Her whole body was shaken with the deep and passionate sobs that echoed her despair.

iv

Presently, when she grew calmer, Jenny wiped her eyes, her face quite pale and her hands still convulsively trembling. She was worn out by the stress of the evening, by the vehemence of her rebellious feelings. When she again spoke to herself it was in a shamed, giggling way that nobody but Emmy had heard from her since the days of childhood. She gave a long sigh, looking through the blur at that clear glow from beneath the iron door of the kitchen grate. Miserably she refused to think again. She was half sick of thoughts that tore at her nerves and lacerated her heart. To herself Jenny felt that it was no good—crying was no good, thinking was no good, loving and sympathising and giving kindness—all these things were in this mood as useless as one another. There was nothing in life but the endless sacrifice of human spirit.

“Oh!” she groaned passionately. “If only something would happen. I don’t care what! But something ... something new ... exciting. Something with a bite in it!”

She stared at the kicking clock, which every now and again seemed to have a spasm of distaste for its steady record of the fleeting seconds. “Wound up to go all day!” she thought, comparing the clock with herself in an angry impatience.

And then, as if it came in answer to her poignant wish for some untoward happening, there was a quick double knock at the front door of the Blanchard’s dwelling, and a sharp whirring ring at the push-bell below the knocker. The sounds seemed to go violently through and through the little house in rapid waves of vibrant noise.