Carnival Part 12

"I expect the old man will die first. I've been feeling very poorly this year."

"First I've heard of it."

"Why, only last night my finger was hurting something chronic."

"Show me."

"Be careful." Mr. Raeburn offered the sick finger for his wife's inspection.

"I can't see nothing."

"There, blessed if I'm not showing of you the wrong hand."

"You must have been shocking bad."

"Well, it's better now."

"That's enough of you and your fingers. Why shouldn't Jenny be a dancer?" persisted Mrs. Raeburn.

"Don't go blaring it all over the neighborhood, anyhow, and don't give me the blame for it if anything goes wrong."

"Look here, Charlie, when I married you, I hadn't got nothing better to do, had I?"

Charlie shook his head in sarcastic astonishment.

"Yes," went on Mrs. Raeburn. "You can wag your great, silly head, but I'm not going to have my Jenny marrying _any_body. She's going to be able to say, 'No, thank you,' to a sight of young chaps. And if I can't look after her sharp when she's at the theater, I can't look after her anywhere else, that's very certain."

"Well, I call it rank nonsense--rank nonsense, that's what I call it, and don't you turn round on me and say I put it into her head. What theater's she going to?"

"You silly man, she's got to learn first."

"Learn what?"

"Learn dancing--at a school."

"Learn dancing? If she's got to learn dancing, what's the sense in her going for an actress?"

"You had to learn carpentering, didn't you?"

"Of course, but that's very different to dancing. Anybody can dance--some better than others; but _learn_ dancing--well, there, the ideas some women gets in their heads, it's against all nature."

"Have you finished? Because I got my was.h.i.+ng to see to. You go and talk it over at the 'Arms.' I reckon they've got more patience than me."

Jenny was in bed when her mother told her she should become a pupil of Madame Aldavini.

"Aren't you glad?" she asked, as her daughter made no observation.

"Yes; it's all right," said Jenny, coldly it seemed.

"You are a comical child."

"Shall I go to-morrow?"

"We'll see."

Mrs. Raeburn thought to herself, as she left the room, how strange children were; and, having settled Jenny's future, she began to worry about May, who was just then showing symptoms of a weak spine, and lay awake thinking of her children half the night.

Chapter VIII: _Ambition Looks in the Gla.s.s_

On Mr. Vergoe's recommendation, Madame Aldavini granted an interview to Mrs. Raeburn and her daughter, and the old clown was to accompany them on the difficult occasion.

It was a warm April day when they set out, with a sky like the matrix of turquoise. The jagged purple clouds were so high that all felt the outside of an omnibus was the only place on such a day. Mrs. Raeburn and Jenny sat in front, and Mr. Vergoe sat immediately behind them, pointing out every object of interest on the route. At least, he pointed out everything until they reached Sadlers Wells Theater, after which reminiscences of Sadlers Wells occupied the rest of the journey. They swung along Rosebery Avenue and into Theobald's Road and pulled up at last by Southampton Row. Then they walked through a maze of narrow streets to Madame Aldavini's school, in Great Queen Street. No longer can it be found; whatever ghosts of dead _coryphees_ haunt the portals must spend a draughty purgatory in the very middle of Kingsway.

It was a tall, gray Georgian house, with flat windows and narrow sills and a suitable cornice of dancing Loves and Graces over the door, which had a large bra.s.s plate engraved with "School of Dancing," and more bells beside it than Jenny had ever seen beside one door in her life.

She thought what games could be played with Great Queen Street and its inhabitants, if it were in Islington and all the houses had as many bells. Mr. Vergoe pressed a b.u.t.ton labeled "Aldavini," and presently they were walking along a dark, dusty pa.s.sage into a little paneled room with a large desk and pictures of dancers in every imaginable kind of costume. At the desk sat Madame Aldavini herself in a dress of tawny satin. Jenny thought she looked like an organ-woman, with her dark, wrinkled face and glittering black eyes.

"And how is Mr. Vergoe?" she inquired.

"How are _you_, Madame?" he replied, with great deference.

"I am very well, thank you."

Mrs. Raeburn was presented and dropped her umbrella in embarra.s.sment, making Jenny feel very much ashamed of her mother and wish she were alone with Mr. Vergoe. Then she was introduced herself, and as Madame Aldavini fixed her with a piercing eye, Jenny felt so shy that she was only able to murmur incoherent politeness to the floor.

The dancing-mistress got up from her desk and looked critically at the proposed pupil.

"You think the child will make a dancer?" she said, turning sharply to Mrs. Raeburn.

"Oh, well, really I--well, she's always jigging about, if that's anything to go by."

Madame Aldavini gave a contemptuous sniff.

"I think she will make a very good dancer," Mr. Vergoe put in.

"You've seen her?"

"Many times," he said. "In fact, this visit is due to me--in a manner of speaking."

"Come, we'll see what she can do," said the mistress, and led the way out of the little room along a gla.s.s-covered arcade into the dancing-room.

The latter was probably a Georgian ballroom with fine proportions and Italian ceiling. A portion of it was curtained off for the pupils to change into practice dress, and all the way round the walls was a rail for toe-dancing. At the far end was a dais with a big arm-chair and a piano, over which hung a large oil painting of some bygone ballet at the Theatre de l'Opera in Paris, and also an engraving of Taglioni signed affectionately by that great Prima Ballerina a.s.soluta.

Madame Aldavini rang a bell, and presently Miss Carron, her pianist and a.s.sistant teacher, came in. Miss Carron was a Frenchwoman, who had lived so long in London that she spoke English better than French, except in moments of great anger, when her native tongue returned to her with an added force of expression from such long periods of quiescence.