The Stars Look Down (17 page)

She put in a great deal of cold hard thinking before she fell asleep. But she woke next morning feeling refreshed. Saturday was her half-day and when she came home at one o’clock she ate her lunch quickly and hurried upstairs to change. She spent a great deal of time upon her dressing; choosing her smartest frock, a pearl grey with pale pink trimmings, doing her hair in a new style, carefully smoothing her complexion with Vinolia cold cream. The result satisfied her. She went down to the parlour to wait for David.

She expected him at half-past two, but he came a good ten minutes before his time, thrilling with eagerness to see her. One glance reassured Jenny: he was head over ears in love with her. She let him in herself and he stood stock still in the passage, consuming her with his ardent eyes.

“Jenny,” he whispered. “You’re too good to be true.”

As she led the way into the parlour she laughed, pleased: David, she was forced to admit, had a way of saying things far beyond Joe’s capacity. But he had brought her the stupidest little present: not chocolates or candy or even perfume; nothing useful: but a bunch of wallflowers, hardly a bunch even, a small sort of posy which couldn’t have cost more than twopence at one of the market barrows. But never mind, never mind about that now. She smiled:

“I’m that pleased to see you, David, really I am, and such lovely flowers.”

“They’re nothing much, but they’re sweet, Jenny, and so are you. Their petals have a kind of mist on them… it’s like the lovely mist on your eyes.”

She did not know what to say; this style of conversation left her completely at a loss; she supposed it came from all the books he’d read in these last three years—“poems and that like.” Ordinarily she would have bustled away with the
wallflowers, making the correct ladylike remark: “I really do love arranging flowers.” But this afternoon she did not wish to bustle away from him. She wanted to keep near him. Still holding the flowers she sat down primly on the couch. He sat beside her, smiling at the stem propriety of their attitudes.

“We look like we were having our photograph taken.”

“What?” She gazed at him blankly, making him laugh outright.

“You know, Jenny,” he said, “I’ve never met anyone more… oh, more completely innocent than you. Like Francesca… Hither all dewy from her cloister fetched… a man called Stephen Phillips wrote that.”

Her eyes were downcast. Her grey dress, pale soft face and still hands clasping the flowers did give her a queer nunlike quality. She remained very quiet after he had spoken, wondering what on earth he meant. Innocent? Was he—could he be kidding her? No, surely not, he was too far gone on her for that. She said at length:

“You’re not to make fun of me. I haven’t been feeling too well this day or two.”

“Oh, Jenny.” His concern was instant. “What’s been wrong?”

She sighed, began to pick at the stem of one of his flowers.

“They’ve all been down on me here, all of them… Then there’s been trouble with Joe… he’s gone away.”

“Joe gone?”

She nodded.

“But why? In the name of goodness why?”

She was silent a moment, then, still plucking pathetically at the flower:

“He was jealous… He wouldn’t stay because… oh, well, if you must know, because I like you better than him.”

“But, Jenny,” he protested, confused. “Joe said… do you mean… do you really mean that after all Joe was fond of you?”

“Don’t let’s talk about it,” she answered with a little shiver. “I won’t talk about it. They’ve been on about it all the time. They blame me because I couldn’t stand Joe…” She lifted her eyes to his suddenly. “I can’t help myself, can I, David?”

At the subtle implication in her words his heart beat loudly, with a quick and exquisite elation. She preferred him. She had called him David. Gazing into her eyes as on that first evening when they met, he lost himself, knowing only
that he loved her, wanting her with all his soul. There was no one in the world but Jenny. There would never be anyone but Jenny. The thought, simply of her name, Jenny, was enchantment: a lark singing, a bud opening, beauty and sweetness, melody and perfume in one. With all the ardour of his young and hungry soul he desired her. He bent towards her, and she did not draw away.

“Jenny,” he murmured above the beating of his heart. “Do you mean that you like me?”

“Yes, David.”

“Jenny,” he whispered. “I knew right from the start it would be like this. You do love me, Jenny?”

She gave a little nervous nod.

He took her in his arms. Nothing in all his life transcended the rapture of that kiss. He kissed her lightly, almost reverently. There was a tragic youthfulness, a complete betrayal of his inexperience in the tender awkwardness of that embrace. It was the queerest kiss she had ever known. Some curious quality in the kiss helped a tear tremulously down her cheek, another, and another.

“Jenny… you’re crying. Don’t you love me? Oh, my dear, tell me what’s wrong.”

“I do love you, David. I do,” she whispered. “I haven’t got anybody but you. I want you to go on loving me. I want you to take me out of here. I hate it here. I hate it. They’ve been beastly to me. And I’m sick of working in the millinery. I’ll not put up with it another minute. I want to be with you, right away. I want us to be married and happy and, oh, everything, David.”

The emotion in her voice moved him beyond the edge of ecstasy.

“I’ll take you away, Jenny. As soon as ever I can. Whenever I take my degree and get a post.”

She burst into tears.

“Oh, David, but that’s another whole year. And you’ll be in Durham, at the University, away from me. You’ll forget me. I couldn’t wait as long as that. I’m sick of it here, I tell you. Couldn’t you get a post now?” She wept bitterly; she did not know why.

It distressed him terribly to see her crying: he saw that she was overwrought and highly strung: but every sob she gave seemed to pierce him like a wound.

He soothed her, stroking her brow as her head lay upon his shoulder.

“It’s not so very long, Jenny. And don’t worry, oh, my dear, don’t worry. Why, I daresay I could get a post now if it came to the bit. I’m quite qualified to teach, you see. I’ve got the B.Litt already, you can take that in two years at the Baddeley. It’s not worth anything, nothing like the B.A., but I daresay if it came to a push I could get a job on the strength of it.”

“Could you, David?” Her streaming eyes implored him. “Oh, do try, David! How would you set about it?”

“Well.” Still stroking her brow he humoured her. Only the madness of his love made him go on. “I might write to a man at home who’s got some influence. A man named Barras. He might get me in somewhere in the county. But you see…”

“I do see, David,” she gulped. “I see exactly what you mean. You must take your B.A. But why not take it
afterwards
? Oh, think, David, you and me together in a nice little house somewhere. You working in the evenings with all your great big important books on the table and me sitting there beside you. It’s not so very hard to teach during the day. Then you can study, oh, ever so hard at night. Why, David, it would be wonderful. Wonderful!”

The picture, painted so romantically by Jenny, stirred him to a smiling tenderness. He looked at her protectively.

“But you see, Jenny, we must be practical…”

She smiled through her tears.

“David, David… don’t say another word. I’m so happy, I don’t want you to spoil it.” She jumped up, laughing. “Now, listen! We’ll go for a beautiful walk. Let’s go to Esmond Dene, it’s so lovely there, I do love it so, what with the trees and that
beautiful
old mill. And we’ll talk it all over, every bit of it. After all it wouldn’t do any harm just to write to this gentleman, Mr. Barras…” She broke off, fascinating him with her lovely eyes, all liquid and melting with her suppressed tears. She kissed him quickly, then ran off to get ready.

He stood smiling; uplifted, enraptured, perhaps a little perplexed. But nothing mattered beside the fact that Jenny loved him. She loved him. And he loved her. He thrilled with tenderness, an ardent hope for the future. Jenny would wait, of course she would wait… he was only twenty-two… he
must
take his B.A., she would come to see that later.

While he remained there, waiting for Jenny, the door flew
open and Sally came into the room. She stopped short when she saw him.

“I didn’t know you were here,” she said, frowning. “I only came to get some music.”

Her frown was like a cloud sailing into the clear sky of his happiness. She had always been very odd with him, abrupt, caustic, perversely disagreeable. She seemed to have a grudge against him, an instinct for flicking him on the raw. Suddenly he wanted to be on good terms with Sally now that he was so happy, now that he was marrying her sister. And on an impulse he said:

“Why do you look at me that way, Sally? Is it because you dislike me?”

She faced him steadily: she wore an old blue drill costume, relic of her last year’s school days; her hair was very untidy.

“I don’t dislike you,” she said, with none of her usual precocious flippancy.

He saw that she was speaking the truth. He smiled.

“But you’re… you’re always so sour to me.”

She answered with uncommon gravity:

“You know where to get sugar if you want it.” And lowering her eyes suddenly she turned and went out of the room.

As Sally went through the door Jenny came swimming in.

“What’s the little cat been saying to you?” Not waiting for his reply she took his arm with a proprietary air, gave it a gentle squeeze. “Come along now, dear. I’m dying for us to have our lovely, lovely talk.”

She was bright now, yes, bright as a bird was Jenny. And why not? Hadn’t she every reason to be pleased, with a fiancé, not just a “boy” but a real fiancé, qualified to be a teacher. Oh! Marvellous to have a fiancé who was a teacher. She’d get out of Slattery’s right away, and out of Scottswood Road as well. She’d show them, show Joe too, she’d have a church wedding to spite them all, with a notice in the paper, she’d always set her mind on a church wedding, now what would she wear, something simple but nice… oh, yes, nice… nice… nice.

When David returned from his walk he wrote to Barras, “just to please” Jenny. A week later he had an answer, offering him a post as junior master at the New Bethel Street Council School in Sleescale. He showed it to Jenny, tom between reason and the rapture of his love for her, thinking of
his parents, his career, wondering what she would say. She flung her arms round his neck.

“Oh, David, darling,” she sobbed. “Isn’t that marvellous, too marvellous for words? Aren’t you glad I made you write? Isn’t it really
wonderful
?”

Pressed against her, his eyes shut, his lips on hers holding her, oh, so tight, he felt with surging intoxication that she was right: it was really quite wonderful.

That morning, even before the telegram arrived for his father, Arthur was conscious of a singular elation. He awoke into it, was aware from the moment he opened his eyes upon the square of blue sky through his open window that life was very precious—full of sunshine and strength and hope. Naturally he did not always wake this way. Some mornings there was no sunshine, nothing awaited him but heaviness, a kind of immobile darkness, and the dismal sense of his own deficiencies.

Why was he so happy? That, like his moods of misery, remained inexplicable. Perhaps a premonition of the morning telegram, or of seeing Hetty in the afternoon. More likely the joyful recognition of his own improvement for, lying in bed with his hands clasped behind his head and the long span of his eighteen-year body luxuriously stretched, his first real thought had been: “I didn’t eat the strawberries.”

Of course, the strawberries, though he was very fond of them, were nothing in themselves; they were a symbol, they stood for his own strength. Half-smiling, he recapitulated. The table last night, Aunt Caroline, head on one side as usual, purring, portioning the luscious bowl of home-grown strawberries—a rare luxury on Barras’s austere table. And the cream too, he nearly forgot the big silver jug of yellow cream—nothing he liked better than strawberries and cream. “Now, Arthur,” he heard Aunt Caroline say, preparing to delve generously for him. Then, himself, quickly: “No thank you, Aunt Carrie. I shan’t have any strawberries to-night.” “But, Arthur…” Surprise, even consternation in Aunt Carrie’s voice; his father’s aloof eye fixed momentarily upon him. Aunt Carrie again: “Aren’t you well, Arthur, my
dear?” Himself, laughing: “Perfectly well, Aunt Carrie, I just don’t feel like strawberries to-night.” He had sat, with watering teeth, watching them eat the strawberries.

That was the way to do it, a little thing, perhaps, but the book said bigger things would follow. Yes, he was satisfied this morning. “I do wish Arthur would show more character.” His mother’s petulant remark, overheard as he passed along the corridor outside her room, and fixed through all these months in the very centre of his mind, receded now, answered by his conduct towards the strawberries!

He jumped out of bed—it was wrong, really, to lie dreaming in bed—went through his exercises vigorously before the open window, dashed into the bathroom and took a cold bath: really cold, mind you, not a trickle, even, from the hot tap to temper the icy plunge. He came back to his room, glowing, dressed in his working suit with his eyes fixed religiously upon the placard which hung on the wall opposite his bed. The placard said in large heavily inked letters:
I will!
Beneath this was another: “
Look every man straight between the eyes!
”

Arthur finished lacing his boots, his heavy boots, for he would be going inbye today, and was ready. He went to a drawer, unlocked it and picked out a small red book;
The Cure of Self-consciousness
, one of a series of such books entitled
The Will and the Way
—and sat down seriously upon the edge of his bed to read. He always read one chapter before breakfast when, as the book declared, the mind was most receptive; and he preferred his bedroom because of its privacy—these little red books were a secret, guarded jealously.