Carnival Part 6

"There's nothing against it," he affirmed. "Nothing, in a manner of speaking; but there, what some call good, others don't, and I can't say as I've troubled much which way it was, so to speak, as long as they was good pals and jolly companions everyone."

"What's pals?"

"Ah, there you've put your finger on it--as it were--what's a pal? Well, I should say he was a hearty fellow--in a manner of speaking--a fellow as would come down handsome on Treasury night when you hadn't paid your landlady the week before. A pal wouldn't ever crab your business, wouldn't stare too hard if you happened to use his grease. A pal wouldn't let you sleep over the train-call on a Sunday morning. A pal wouldn't make love to your girl on a wet, foggy afternoon in Blackburn or Warrington. What's pals? Pals are fellows who stand on the prompt side of life--so to speak--and stick there to the Ring Down."

All of which may or may not be an excellent definition of "paliness,"

but left Jenny, if possible, more completely ignorant of the meaning of a pal than she was when Mr. Vergoe set out to answer her inquiry.

"What's pals?" she reiterated therefore.

"Not quite clear in your little head yet--as it were--well, I should say, we're pals, me and you."

"Are pals good?"

"The best. The very, very best. Now you just listen to me for a minute.

My granddaughter, Miss Lilli Vergoe, that is, she's wonderfully fond of the old man, that is your humble. Now next time she comes round to see him, I'll send up the call-boy--as it might be."

Hereupon Mr. Vergoe closed his left eye, put his forefinger very close to the other eye, and shook it knowingly several times.

"Now you'd better go on or there'll be a stage wait, and get back to ma as quick as you like."

Jenny prepared to obey.

"Wait a minute, though, wait a minute," and the old man fumbled in a drawer from which at last he extracted a cracker. "See that? That's a cracker, that is. Sometimes one or two used to get hidden in my pockets on last nights, and--well, I used to keep 'em as a recollection of good times, so to speak. This one was Exeter, not so very long ago neither.

Now you hook on to that end and I'll hook on to this, and, when I say 'three,' pull as hard as you like." The antagonists faced each other.

The cracker came in half with the larger portion in Jenny's hand, but the powder had long ago lost all power of report. Age and damp had subdued its ferocity.

"A wrong 'un," muttered the old man regretfully. "Too bad, too bad!

Well, accidents will happen--as it were. Come along, open your half."

Jenny produced a compact cylinder of mauve paper.

"Is it a sweet?" she wondered.

"No, it's a cap. By gum, it's a cap. Don't tear it. Steady! Careful does it."

Mr. Vergoe was tremendously excited by the prospect. At last between them they unrolled a gilded paper crown, which he placed round Jenny's curls.

"There you are," he observed proudly. "Fairy Queen as large as life and twice as natural. Now all you want is a wand with a gold star on the end of it, and there's nothing you couldn't do, in a manner of speaking. Now pop off to ma and show her your crown." He held her for a moment up to the gla.s.s, in which Jenny regarded herself with a new interest, and when he set her down again she went out of the room with the careful step of one who has imagined greatness.

Downstairs she was greeted by her mother with exclamations of astonishment.

"Whatever have you got on your head?"

"A crown."

"Who gave it you, for Heaven's sake?"

"The lodger."

"Mr. Vergoe?"

Jenny nodded.

"I may wear it, mayn't I, mother?"

"Yes, I suppose so," said Mrs. Raeburn grudgingly. "But don't get putting it in your mouth."

"There's a Miss Vain," said Ruby.

"I'm not."

"Peac.o.c.ks like looking-gla.s.ses," nagged Ruby.

"I isn't a peac.o.c.k. I's a queen."

"There's a sauce! Whoever heard?" commented Ruby.

The clown's sentimental and pleasantly rhetorical descriptions had no direct influence on the child's mind. But when his granddaughter, Miss Lilli Vergoe, all chiffon and ostrich plumes, took her upon a _peau de soie_ lap, and clasped her rosy cheeks to a frangipani breast, Jenny thought she had never experienced any sensation half so delicious.

Amid the heavy glooms and fusty smells of the old house in Hagworth Street, Miss Lilli Vergoe blossomed like an exotic flower, or rather, in Jenny's own simile, like lather. Her china-blue eyes were amazingly attractive. Her honey-colored hair and Dresden cheeks fascinated the impressionable child with all the wonder of an expensive doll. There was no part of her that was not soft and beautiful to stroke. She woke in Jenny a cooing affection such as had never been by her bestowed upon a living soul.

Moreover, what Mr. Vergoe talked about, Lilli showed her how to achieve; so that, unknown to Mrs. Raeburn, Jenny slowly acquired that ambition for public appreciation which makes the actress. Terpisch.o.r.e herself, carrying credentials from Apollo, would not have been a more powerful mistress than Lilli Vergoe, a second line girl in the _Corps de Ballet_ of the Orient Palace of Varieties. Under her tuition Jenny learned a hundred airs and graces, which, when re-enacted in the kitchen of Number Seventeen, either caused a command to cease fidgeting or an invitation to look at the comical child.

She learned, too, more than mere airs and graces. She was grounded very thoroughly in primary technique, so that, as time went on, she could step pa.s.sably well upon her toes and achieve the "splits" and "strides"

and "handsprings" of a more acrobatic mode.

Therefore, though in the September just before her seventh birthday Mrs. Raeburn decided it was time to begin Jenny's education, it is very obvious that Jenny's education was really begun on the sunlit morning when Mr. Vergoe saw her dancing to a sugared melody from "Cavalleria."

School, however, meant for Jenny not so much the acquirement of elementary knowledge, the ability to distinguish a cow from a sheep, as an opportunity to exhibit more satisfactory attainments she had developed from the instigation of Miss Lilli Vergoe. Neither her mother nor Ruby nor Alfie nor Edie nor anyone in the household had been a perfect audience. Her schoolfellows, on the other hand, marveled with delighted respect at her _pas seuls_ upon the asphalt playground of the board school and clapped and jumped their praise.

Jenny had no idea of the stage at present. She had never yet been inside a theater; and was still far from any conception of art as a profession.

It merely happened that she could dance, that dancing pleased her, and, less important, that it made her popular with innumerable little girls of her own age, and even older.

By some instinct of advisable concealment, she kept this habit of publicity a secret from her family. Edie, to be sure, was aware of it, and warned her once or twice of the immorality of showing off; but Edie was too indolent to go into the matter more deeply and too conscious of her own comparative greatness through seniority to spend much time in the guardians.h.i.+p of a younger sister.

So for a year Jenny practiced and became daily more proficient, and danced every morning to school.

Chapter V: _Pretty Apples in Eden_

Shortly after her eighth birthday Jenny was puzzled by an incident which, with its uneasy suggestions, led her to postulate to herself for the first time that mere escape from childhood did not finally solve the problem of existence.

She had long been aware of the incomplete affection between her parents; that is to say, she always regarded her father as something that seemed like herself or a chair to be perpetually in her mother's way.