Carnival Part 59

"He's going to," Irene a.s.serted, twisting the k.n.o.b on the corner of the bed round and round until it squeaked. "But I don't want to get married, not yet."

"Oh, no, it's only a rumor. Why ever not? If I loved a fellow as you think you love Danby, I'd get married quick enough."

"Well, you didn't----"

"That's enough of you," said Jenny, sitting up in bed. "No, I know I didn't. But that was different."

"Why was it different? My Danby's a gentleman."

"Yes, when he's asleep. He _can't_ be much or he wouldn't have dressed you up such a sight. I'd like to see a man make such a poppy-show of me," cried Jenny, indignant at the recollection of the incident.

"Oh, well, he doesn't do it now," said Irene pacifically. "Aren't you coming out with us?"

"You're very free all of a sudden with your Danby," Jenny continued mockingly. "I remember when you was afraid for your life some girl would carry him off under your nose. Yet you let him go all the time to France. I think you're silly."

Jenny could not refrain from teasing Irene. The habit was firmly established and, although she had not now the sense of outraged independence which prompted her att.i.tude in old days, she kept it up because such rallying was easier than sympathetic attention.

"His brother Jack says he'd like to meet you."

Jenny laughed derisively.

"I thought you weren't giving your Danby away with a pound of nothing.

Do you remember when I used to call Jack Danby 'Tin Ribs the Second,'

and you used to get so ratty?"

"Well, what a liberty," said Irene, laughing at the now almost forgotten insult.

Towards the dripping fog-stained close of November Arthur and Jack Danby arrived from Paris and, tall as lamp-posts, waited for the two girls at the top of the court in Jermyn Street. It did not strike Jenny at the time that the appointment seemed girt with intrigue, as if whispers had gone to the making of it, whispers that voiced a deceitful purpose in her friend. Jenny had often arraigned the methods of Mrs. Dale and denounced the encouragement of Winnie and Irene in any a.s.sociation whose profit transcended its morality. But she never really understood Irene, and her teasing was a sign of this. Under the circ.u.mstances of lovers reunited, she accepted her place at Jack Danby's side without suspicion; and was only dimly aware of the atmosphere of satisfaction which clung to the two brothers and her friend.

In the bronzed glow of the Trocadero grill-room she had an opportunity of studying the two men, and because the result of this was a decided preference for Jack, she lost any suspicion of a plot, and appeared almost to enjoy his company.

All Arthur Danby's features, even his ears, seemed excessively pointed, while his thinness and length of limb accentuated this peaked effect of countenance. His complexion had preserved the clearness of youth, but had become waxy from dissipation, and in certain lights was feathered with fine lines that looked like scratches on a smooth surface. His eyelids were puffy and tinged slightly round the rims with a redness which was the more obvious from the vivid light blue eyes it surrounded.

A certain diabolic strangeness redeemed the whole effect from mere unpleasantness. Jack Danby was not so tall as his brother, and his features were less sharply pointed, although they were as clearly defined. He had similar eyes of almost cobalt blue when contrasted with the dead whiteness of a skin that gave the impression of being powdered.

The younger brother's eyes preserved more fire and seemed under the influence of a suggestive conversation to be lighted up from behind in a way that sent a sudden breathlessness through many women. Jenny, when she looked at him full, was aware less of his eyes than of her own, which seemed to her to be kindling in the dry sparks that were radiated by his; and even as she felt scorched by the brain which was thus expressed, her own eyes would melt, as it were, to meet appropriately the liquid softness that succeeded. His lips were never remarkably red, and as the evening advanced they adopted the exact shade of his complexion, which from paleness took on the lifeless monotone of color that is seen in the rain-soaked petal of a pink rose. Danby's mouth curved upwards, and when he smiled, he only smiled on one side of his face. The immediate expression he conveyed was that of profound la.s.situde changed by any topic of sly licentiousness to a startling concentration.

A pictorial representation of the party would have some decorative value. The two brothers had ordered red mullet, which lay scattered about their plates in mingled hues of cornelian, rose and tarnished copper. Their wine was Lacrima Christi of the precise tint to carry on the scheme of color. Jenny and Irene were drinking champagne whose pale amber sparkled against the prevailing l.u.s.ter, contrasting and lightening the arrangement of metallic tints, just as Jenny's fair hair set off and was at the same time enhanced by Irene's copper-brown. As a group of revellers the four of them composed into a rich enough study in _genre_, and the fanciful observer would extract from the position of the two men a certain potentiality for romantic events as, somewhat hunched and looking up from down-turned heads, they both sat with legs outstretched to the extent of their length. The more imaginative observer would perceive in the group something unhealthy, something _faisande_, an air of too deliberate enjoyment that seemed to imply a perfect knowledge of the limitations of human pleasure. These men and girls aimed no arrow of fleeting gayety to pierce in a straight, sharp course the heart of the present. Sophistication clung to them, and weariness. That senescent October moon which a year ago marked the end of love's halcyon would have been a suitable light for such a party. Jenny herself had gone back to that condition of cynicism which before the days of Maurice was due to ignorance, but was now a profounder cynicism based on experience.

Irene had always been skeptical of emotional heights, had always accepted life sensually without much enthusiasm either for the gratification or the denial of her ambitions. As for the two men, they had grown thin on self-indulgence.

"Fill up your gla.s.ses, girls," said Arthur.

"Fill up," echoed Jack. "Is there time for another bottle?" he added anxiously.

"This cheese is very good," commented Arthur.

"Delicious," the other agreed.

"You two seem to think of nothing but eating and drinking," said Jenny distastefully.

"Oh, no, we think of other things, don't we, Jack?" contradicted the older brother, with a sort of frigid relish.

"Rather," the younger one corroborated, looking sideways at Jenny.

"We must have a good time this winter," Arthur announced. "We needn't go back to Paris for a month or two. We must have a good time at our flat in Victoria."

"London's a much wickeder city than Paris," said Jack, addressing the air like some pontiff of vice. "I like these November nights with shapes of women looming up through the fog. A friend of mine----" As Jack Danby descended to personal reminiscence, he lost his sinister power and became mean and common. "When I say friend--I should say business friend, eh, Arthur?" he asked, smiling on the side of his face nearer to his brother. "Well, he's a lord as a matter of fact," he continued in accents of studied indifference.

"Tell the girls about him," urged his brother, and "Fill up your gla.s.ses," he murmured as, leaning back in his chair, he seemed to fade away into clouds of smoke blown from a very long, thin and black cigar.

"This lord--I won't tell you his name----" said Jack, "he wanders about in fogs until he meets a shape that attracts him. Then he hands her a velvet mask, and takes her home. What an imagination," chuckled the narrator.

"Well, I call him a dirty rotter," said Jenny.

"Do you?" asked Jack, as if struck by the novelty of such a point of view.

The lights were being extinguished now. The quenching of the orange illumination, and the barren waste of empty tables gave the grill-room a raffish look which consorted well with the personalities of the two brothers. The party broke up in the abrupt fas.h.i.+on of England, and within a few minutes of sitting comfortably round a richly lighted supper-table, the two girls were seated in a dark taxi on the way to Camden Town.

"How do you like Jack Danby?" Irene inquired.

"He's all right. Only I don't know--I think if I'd met him last year I'd have thought him a swine. I think I must be turning funny. What are they--these long friends of yours?" she added, after a pause. "What do they do in Paris?"

"They bring out books," Irene informed her.

"Books?" echoed Jenny. "What sort of books?"

"Ordinary books, I suppose," said Irene, slightly huffed by Jenny's contemptuous incredulity.

"Well, what do they want to live in Paris for, if they're ordinary books?"

"That's where their business is."

"Funny place to do a business in ordinary books."

"I don't see why."

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter. But _I_ think it's funny, that's all. You _are_ deep, Irene."

"Oh, yes," said Irene, looking out of the window at the waves of light that broke against the window with each pa.s.sing street lamp. "You always say that, but I'm not near so deep as what you are."

"Yes, you are, because I'm always catching you out in a lie _which_ you don't me."

"No, because I'm not so nosy."

"Now don't be silly and get in a paddy about nothing," Jenny advised.

"You can't help having funny friends. Only what I can't understand is myself. I think they're both beasts, and yet I'd like to see them again.

That's where I'm funny, I think."

Irene a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of lofty indifference.