Carnival Part 15

"_And_ why not? _And_ why not? Will anybody here kindly tell me why not?"

"Because you can't," said Jenny decidedly.

"Of course not. The child's quite right," Mrs. Raeburn corroborated.

"Well, of course, you all know better than the old man. But I daresay she'd like to talk about Paris with your poor old dad."

However, notwithstanding the elision of all Mr. Raeburn's proposed guests from the list of invitations, the supper did happen, and the master of the house derived some consolation from being allowed to preside at the head of his own table, if not sufficiently far removed from his wife to enjoy himself absolutely. Mr. Vergoe, getting a very old man now, came with Miss Lilli Vergoe, still a second-line girl at the Orient Theater of Varieties, and Edie arrived from Brixton, where she was learning to make dresses. Eileen Vaughan came, at Mrs. Raeburn's instigation and much to Jenny's disgust, and Mr. Smithers, the new lodger, a curly-headed young draper's a.s.sistant, tripped down from his room upstairs. May, of course, was present, and Alfie sent a picture postcard from Northampton, showing the after-effects of a party. This was put upon the mantelpiece and greatly diverted the company. Mrs.

Purkiss was invited, and pasty-faced Percy and Claude and Mr. Purkiss were also invited, but Mrs. Purkiss signalized her disapproval by taking no notice of the invitation, thereby throwing Mrs. Raeburn into a regular flutter of uncertainty. Nevertheless, she turned up ten minutes late with both her offspring, to everybody's great disappointment and Mrs. Raeburn's great anxiety, when she saw with what a will her nephews settled down to the tinned tongue.

The supper pa.s.sed off splendidly, and nearly everything was eaten and praised. Mrs. Purkiss talked graciously to Mr. Smithers about the prospects of haberdashery and the principles of window-dressing and, somewhat tactlessly, about the advantage of cash registers. Charlie gave a wonderfully humorous description of his first crossing of the English Channel. Percy and Claude ate enormously, and Percy was sick, to his uncle's immense entertainment and profound satisfaction, as it gave him an excuse to tell the whole story of the Channel crossing over again, ending up with: "It's all right, Perce. Cheer up, sonny, Dover's in sight."

Eileen ate self-consciously and gazed with considerable respectfulness at Miss Lilli Vergoe, who related pleasantly her many triumphs over the snares and duplicity of the new stage manager at the Orient. Mr. Vergoe chatted amiably with everybody in turn and made a great feature of helping the stewed tripe. May went into fits of laughter at everything and everybody, and Jenny discussed with Edie what style of dress should be made from the roll of blue serge presented to her by Uncle James.

After supper everybody settled down to make the evening a complete success.

Mr. Vergoe sang "Champagne Charlie" and "In Her Hair She Wore a White Camelia," and Mr. Raeburn joined in the chorus of the former with a note of personal satisfaction, while Mrs. Raeburn always said:

"Champagne Charlie _is_ his name, Half a pint of porter _is_ his game."

Neither Miss Vergoe nor Miss Vaughan would oblige with a dance, to the great disappointment of Mr. Smithers, who had hoped for a solution of many sartorial puzzles from such close proximity to two actresses.

Jenny, however, was set on the table when the plates had been cleared away, and danced a breakdown to the great embarra.s.sment of Mrs. Purkiss, who feared for pasty-faced Percy and Claude's sense of the shocking.

Percy recited Casabianca, and Claude, though he did not recite himself, prompted his brother in so many of the lines that it became, to all purposes, a duet. Edie giggled in a corner with Mr. Smithers, and told the latter once or twice that he was a sauce-box and no mistake. Mr.

Smithers himself sang "Queen of My Heart," in a mildly pleasant tenor voice, and, being encored, sang "Maid of Athens," and told Miss Vergoe, in confidence, that several persons had pa.s.sed the remark that he was very like Lord Byron. To which Miss Vergoe, with great want of appreciation, replied, "Who cares?" and sent Mr. Smithers headlong back to the readier admiration of Edie.

It was a very delightful evening, indeed, whose most delightful moment, perhaps, was Mrs. Purkiss's retirement with Percy and Claude, leaving the rest of the party to settle themselves round the kitchen fire, roast chestnuts, eat oranges and apples, smoke, and drink the various drinks that became their ages and tastes.

"And what's Jenny going to call herself on the stage?" asked Mr. Vergoe.

"What _does_ the man mean?" said Mrs. Raeburn.

"Well, she must have a stage name. Raeburn is too long."

"It's no longer than Vergoe," argued Mrs. Raeburn, looking at Lilli.

"Oh, but she already had a stage name--so to speak," explained the old man proudly. "What's Jenny's second name?"

"Pearl," said Mrs. Raeburn.

"Oh, mother, you needn't go telling everybody."

"There you are," said Charlie, who had waited for this moment fourteen years. "There you are; I told you she wouldn't thank you for it when you would give it her. Pearl! Whoever heard? Tut-tut!"

"Why shouldn't she call herself Jenny Pearl--Miss Jenny Pearl?" said Mr.

Vergoe. "If it isn't a good Christian name, it's a very showy stage name, as it were--or wait a bit--what about Jenny Vere? There was a queen or something called Jennivere--no now, I come to think of it, that was Guinevere."

"I can't think whatever on earth she wants to call herself anything different from what she is," persisted the mother.

"Well, I don't know either, but it's done. Even Lilli here, she spells her first name differently--L-i-double l-i, and Miss Vaughan here, I'll bet Vaughan ain't her own name--in a manner of speaking."

"Yes it is," said Miss Vaughan, pursing up her mouth so that it looked like a red flannel b.u.t.ton.

But Mr. Vergoe was right--Miss Eileen Vaughan in Camberwell was Nellie Jaggs. Jenny soon found that out when they lived together, and wrote a postcard to Mr. Vergoe to tell him so.

"But why must she be Jenny Pearl?" asked Mrs. Raeburn. "Although, mind, I don't say it isn't a very good name," she added, remembering it was her own conjunction.

"It's done," Mr. Vergoe insisted. "More flowery--I suppose--so to speak."

So Jenny Raeburn became Jenny Pearl, and her health was drunk and her success wished.

A few weeks afterward she stood on Euston platform, with a queer feeling, half-way between sickness and breathlessness, and was met by Madame Aldavini with Eileen and two older girls, and bundled into a reserved compartment. Very soon she was waving a handkerchief to her mother and May, already scarcely visible in the murk of a London fog.

Life had begun.

Chapter IX: _Life, Art and Love_

Eileen Vaughan was, of course, perfectly familiar to Jenny, but the two other girls who were to be her companions for several weeks had to be much observed during the first half-hour of the journey north.

Madame Aldavini was in a first-cla.s.s compartment, as she wanted to be alone in order to work out on innumerable sheets of paper the arrangement of a new ballet. So the Aldavini Quartette shared between them the four corners of a third-cla.s.s compartment. Jenny felt important to the world, when she read on the slip pasted to the window: "Reserved for Aldavini's Quartette, Euston to Glasgow." It was written in looking-gla.s.s writing, to be sure, but that only made the slow deciphering of it the more delightful.

However, it was read clearly at last, and Jenny turned round once more to look at her companions. Immediately opposite was Valerie Duval--a French girl with black fountains of hair, with full red lips and a complexion that darkened from ivory to warm Southern roses when the blood coursed to her cheeks. Her eyes glowed under heavy brown lids as she talked very sweetly in a contralto French accent. Soon she took Jenny on her knees and said:

"You will tell me all your secrets--yes?"

To which Jenny scoffingly answered:

"Secrets? I'm not one for secrets."

"But you will confide to me all your _pa.s.sions_, your loves,--yes?"

"Love?" said Jenny, looking round over her shoulder at Valerie. "Love's silly."

Valerie smiled.

The other new friend was Winnie Ambrose--raspberries and cream and flaxen hair and dimpled chin and upper lip curling and a snub nose. She was one of those girls who never suggest the presence of stays, who always wear white blouses of crepe de chine, cut low round a plump neck.

They have bangles strung on their arms, and each one possesses a locket containing the inadequate portrait of an inadequate young man. But Winnie was _very_ nice, always ready for a joke.

The train swept them on northwards. Once, as it slowed to make a sharp curve, Jenny looked out of the window and saw the great express, like a line of dominoes with its black and white carriages. There was not much to look at, however, as they cleft the gray December airs, as they roared through echoing stations into tunnels and out again into the dreary light. They ate lunch, and Jenny drank Ba.s.s out of a bottle and spluttered and made queer faces and wrinkled up her gay, deep eyes in laughter unquenchable. They swept on through Lancas.h.i.+re with its chimneys and furnaces and barren heaps of refuse. They swung clear of these huddled populations and, through the gathering twilight, cut a way across the rolling dales of c.u.mberland. Jenny thought what horrible places they were, these sweeping moorland wastes with gray cottages no bigger than sheep, with switchback stone walls whence the crows flew as the train surged by. She was glad to be in the powdered, scented, untidy compartment in warmth and light. The child grew tired and, leaning her head on Valerie's breast, went to sleep; she was drowsily glad when Valerie kissed her, murmuring in a whisper melodious as the splash of the Saone against the warm piers of her native Lyons:

"Comme elle est gentille, la gosse."

Pillowed thus, Jenny spent the last hours of the journey with the dark crossing of the border, waking in the raw station air, waking to bundles being pulled down and papers gathered together and porters peering in through the door. Madame Aldavini said before she left them:

"To-morrow, girls, eleven o'clock at the theater."