The Stars Look Down (11 page)

She was really very funny, screwing up her comic little
face, rolling her big black eyes, mimicking Jenny’s fastidious accent to perfection.

“Shall I stand you an ice, my deah? Or would you prefer tripe? Beautiful tripe. Straight from the cow. You can have all the curly bits.” She jerked her head upwards. “She’s curling her hair upstairs. Miss Sunley. Jenny, the lady toff what sleeps with the clothes-peg on her nose. Been at it for an hour. Come straight from in the millineree, not serving mind you, that’s what the slaveys do, that’s comming! Made me heat the irons, she did, caught me a cuff on the ear for the good of the house. There’s temper for you, Joseph, take a stitch in time before you leap!”

“Ah, be quiet will you… you cheeky little brat.” He rose from the table, made for the door.

She pretended to blush, remarking mincingly:

“Don’t be so formal, Mr. Gowlan, dear. Just call me plain Maggie. With such lovelee eyes ain’t it a shame you smoke. Oh, don’t think of leaving me so soon,” deliberately she got in his way, “just let me sing you a song before you go, Mr. Gowlan. One tiny little song.” Folding her hands in coy imitation of Jenny standing at the piano she began, very falsetto:

She stopped when the door banged behind him, burst into a peal of delighted laughter, then took a flying header on to the sofa. She lay curled up on the edge whanging the springs with her own delight.

Upstairs Joe shaved, scrubbed himself, robed carefully in the best blue serge, knotted a new green tie, neatly laced his shiny brown boots. Even so he was ready before Jenny; he waited impatiently in the hall. Yet when she did come down she took his breath away, knocked the puff right out of him: dressed in a pink frock, white satin shoes, a white crochet shawl—known in the vogue of the moment as a
fascinator
—over her hair. Her grey eyes had a cool lustre in her clear, petalled face. She was delicately sucking a scented cachou.

“By gum, Jenny, you look a treat!”

She accepted his homage as a matter of course, slipped her everyday cloth coat over her finery, took the front door key with a womanly air and put it in her coat pocket. Then she caught sight of his brown boots. Her lip dropped.

“I wish, Joe,” she said peevishly, “that you had got yourself a pair of pumps. I told you to a week ago.”

“Ah, all the fellows wear these at the Social, I asked them.”

“Don’t be a fool! As if I didn’t know! You’ll make me look ridiculous with these brown boots. Have you got the cab?”

“Cab!” His jaw fell; did she think he was Carnegie? he said sulkily: “We’re going by tram.”

Her eyes frosted with temper.

“I see! So that’s what you think of me! I’m not good enough to have a cab.”

From the landing above Ada called out:

“Don’t be late, you two. I’ve taken a Daisy powder and I’m going to bed.”

“Don’t you worry, ma,” Jenny answered in a mortal huff. “We certainly shan’t be late.”

They caught a red tram which was, unfortunately, very full. The tram’s fullness made Jenny more sulky, she stared the conductor out of countenance when he asked Joe for something smaller. During the whole journey she did not speak. But at last they reached Yarrow, got out of the crowded red tram. They approached the Oddfellows’ Hall in the chill silence of her offended dignity. When they entered the hall the Social had already begun.

Actually, it was not a bad Social, an intimate informal affair rather like the annual gathering of a large and happy middle-class family. At one end of the hall were tables set out with the supper: cakes, sandwiches, biscuits, green jellies, lots of small hard oranges that looked full of pips and were, bright red bottles of kola and two huge brass urns for tea and coffee. At the other end on a very high platform, screened by two aspidistras and a palm, was the orchestra, a grand orchestra, it had a full bass drum, used without stint, and Frank McGarvie at the piano. No one could put in more wonderful “twiddley-bits” than Frank. And the time? Impossible to put a foot wrong with Frank McGarvie’s time, it was so wonderful, as though bunged out with a hammer—
La
de dee,
La
de dee,
La
de dee—the floor of the Oddfellows’ Hall went up on the la and down, reverberating, on that final dee.

Every one was matey, there was no side, no nonsense of pencil and programme. Two foolscap sheets—beautifully written out by Frank McGarvie’s sister—were pasted on
opposite walls indicating the number and order of the dances!
Valse
…
Nights of Gladness
,
2 Valetta
…
In a Gondola with You
, and so on. Much companionable crowding took place round the lists, giggling, craning of necks, linking of arms, commingling of perfume, perspiration and exclamations: “Hey, Bella, hinny, can ye do the military two-step?”: in which fashion partners were achieved. Or a young husky, having scanned the list, might take a gallant slide across the slippy powdered floor, his impetus carrying him straight on to the bosom of his beloved. “It’s the lancers, lass, diddent ye know? Come on an’ dance it wi’ us.”

Jenny took a look at the assembly. She saw the poor refreshments, the pasted programmes on the steamy walls, the cheap and gaudy dresses, bright red, blue and green, the ridiculous dress suit of old Mike McKenna, the honoured master of ceremonies; she saw that gloves and slippers were considered by many to be non-essential; she saw the coterie of fat elderly puddlers’ wives seated in a corner, conversing amicably while their offspring skipped and hopped and slid upon the floor before them. Jenny saw all this in one long look. Then she turned up her pretty nose.

“This,” she sniffed to Joe, “gives me the pip.”

“What?” he gaped.

She snapped at him then, “It’s not
nice
, it’s not classy, it’s
low
.”

“But aren’t you going to dance?”

She tossed her head indifferently.

“Oh, we might as well, I suppose, take the benefit of the floor. The tickets are paid for, aren’t they?”

So they danced, but she held herself well away from him, and well apart from all the hand-clapping and stamping and screeches of merriment round about.

“Who’s that?” said she disdainfully as they two-stepped past the door.

Joe followed her eyes.
That
was an inoffensive looking fellow, a middle-aged man, with a round head, a compact figure and slightly bandy legs.

“Jack Lynch,” Joe said. “He’s a blacksmith in the shop. Seems to have a notion of you.”

“Him!” Jenny said, smirking stiffly at her own wit. “I’ve seen better in a cage.”

She lapsed into her monosyllabic mood, lifting her eyebrows, keeping her head well up in the air, condescending.
She wanted it to be seen that she was, in her own phrase, above all this.

Yet Jenny was a little premature. Gradually, as the evening wore on, people began to drop in: not the workpeople, the plain members of the Club who had crowded to the Social at the start, but the honorary members, a few draughtsmen from the drawing office, Mr. Irving, the accountant, and his wife, Morgan, the cashier, and actually old Mr. Clegg, the works manager. Jenny unbent slightly; she even smiled at Joe:

“It seems to be improving.”

No sooner had she spoken than the doors swung open and Stanley Millington arrived, Mr. Stanley himself,
our
Mr. Stanley. It was a great moment. He entered genially, crisp and well-groomed in a very smart dinner suit, bringing his fiancée with him.

This time Jenny really sat up, fixing her shrewd noticing stare upon the two smart young people as they smiled and shook hands with several of the older members of the Club.

“That’s Laura Todd with him,” she whispered breathlessly. “You know, her father’s the mining engineer in the Groat Market, I see her about plenty I can tell you. They got engaged last August, it was in the
Courier
.”

Joe stared at her eager face. Jenny’s burning interest in the “smart” society of Tynecastle, her delight in being posted to the last detail, left him quite nonplussed. But she now unbent completely towards him.

“Why aren’t we dancing, Joe?” she murmured, and rose to twirl languorously in his arms near Millington and Miss Todd.

“That frock of hers… a model… straight out of Bonar’s,” she whispered confidentially in Joe’s ears as they swept past. Bonar’s was, of course, the last word in Tynecastle. “And that lace…” she lifted her eyes expressively… “well…”

The gaiety increased, the drum thundered, Frank McGarvie put in more twiddley-bits than ever, the pace got fast and furious. Every one was so glad that young Mr. Stanley had found “time to come.” And to bring Miss Laura with him, too! Stanley Millington was “well thought of” in Yarrow. His father had died some years before while Stanley was seventeen and still at school at St. Bede’s. Stanley had therefore come hot foot to the works—athletic, upstanding, very fresh complexioned, with the small beginnings of a
moustache—to learn the business under old Henry Clegg. Now, at twenty-five, Stanley was in command, enthusiastic and indefatigable, always extremely eager to do what he called the correct thing. Every one agreed that Stanley had the right spirit, it was the advantage of having been “at a good school.”

Founded fifty years before by a group of rich northern nonconformist merchants, St. Bede’s, in the short span of its existence, had achieved the true public school tradition. Prefects, fags, tuck shop,
esprit de corps
, inspiring school song, St. Bede’s has them all and more, as though Dr. Fuller, the first head master, had gone round all the ancient schools of England with a butterfly net, capturing skilfully from each the choicest of its customs. Sport bulks largely at St. Bede’s. Colours are awarded freely. They are pretty colours; purple, scarlet and gold. Stanley, passionately devoted to his old school, was naturally devoted to its colours. Usually he wore something on his person—tie, cuff links, braces or suspenders, emblazoned in the famous purple, scarlet and gold—a kind of testimony to the true sportsmanship for which St. Bede’s has always stood.

In a manner of speaking, Mr. Stanley’s sportsmanship was the reason of his coming to the Social. He wanted to be decent, to do the decent, the correct thing. And so he was here, extremely agreeable, shaking horny hands, interspersing his waltzes with Laura with several dances with the heavier wives of the old employees.

As the evening wore on, Jenny’s bright smile, which had developed upon the entry of our Mr. Stanley and Laura Todd, became a trifle fixed; her laughter, which always seemed to ripple out, as she wheeled past either the one, or the other, or both, a trifle forced. Jenny was burning to be “noticed” by Miss Todd, dying simply for our Mr. Stanley to ask her to dance. But, no, nothing happened, it really was too bad. Instead Jack Lynch kept staring at her, following her about, trying to get the chance to ask her for a dance.

Jack was not a bad lad, the trouble was that Jack was drunk. Everybody knew that Jack was fond of a bead and to-night, nipping in and out of the Hall to the adjacent Duke of Cumberland, Jack had strung a good few beads on his alcoholic rosary. In the ordinary way Jack would have stood by the Hall door, nodding happily to the music and at the end gone home unsteadily upon his bandy legs to bed. But to-night Jack’s bad angel hovered near.

The last dance before supper Jack straightened his tie, and swaggered over to Jenny.

“Come awa’, hinny,” he said in his broad Tyneside. “You an’ me’ll show them.”

Jenny tossed her head and looked pointedly across the room. Joe, sitting beside her, said:

“Away you go, Jack. Miss Sunley’s dancing with me.”

Jack swayed on his feet:

“But aw want her to dawnce wi’ me.” He reached out his arm with rough gallantry. There was not an ounce of harm in Jack but he staggered, so that his big paw fell accidentally on Jenny’s shoulder.

Jenny screamed dramatically. And Joe, rising in a sudden heat, planted a right hook dexterously on the point of Jack’s chin. Jack measured his length on the floor. Hubbub broke.

“I say, what’s all this?” Mr. Stanley, thrusting his way forward, came through the crowd to where Joe stood gallantly with his chest stuck out and his arm round the pale-faced, frightened Jenny. “What’s happened? What’s the trouble?”

The manly Joe, with his heart in his boots, replied virtuously:

“He was drunk, Mr. Millington, rotten drunk. A fellow’s got to draw the line somewhere.” Joe had been out on a beautiful blind with Lynch the Saturday before, they had both been chucked out of the Empire Bar, but he forgot, oh, he rose above that now. “He was drunk and interfered with my friend, Mr. Stanley. I only protected her.”

Stanley took in the pair of them—the clean-limbed young fellow… beauty in distress; then, with a frown, the figure of the fallen drunkard.

“Drunk,” he exclaimed. “That’s too bad, really too bad. I can’t have any of that here! My people are decent people and I want them to enjoy themselves decently. Carry him out, will you. Attend to it, Mr. Clegg, please. And let him come and see me at the office to-morrow. He can have his ticket.”

Jack Lynch, the obscenity, was carried out. Next day he was sacked. Stanley turned again to Joe and Jenny; smiled in answer to Joe’s grin and Jenny’s melting winsomeness.

“
That’s
all right,” he nodded reassuringly. “You’re Joe Gowlan, aren’t you? I know you perfectly. I know all you chaps, make a point of it. Introduce me to your girl, Joe. How do you do, Miss Sunley? You must dance with me if you will, Miss Sunley, take that little unpleasantness away if
we can. And you, Joe, let me introduce you to
my
girl. Perhaps you’ll dance with her, eh?”

So Jenny floated away ecstatically in the arms of Mr. Stanley, holding herself very, very properly, elbow fashionably straight, conscious that every eye in the room was fixed upon her. And Joe pranced heavily with Miss Todd, whose eyes seemed to find amusement in him and a certain interest.

“That was a lovely punch,” she said with the little humorous twist to her lips that was her mannerism.