These young ladies accepted Melisande as one of them. Their numbers, they said, were always being depleted and made up again. Few girls stayed with Madam long. They married or went away for other reasons. The girls laughed when they said 'other reasons.* They were continually laughing at something which was said.
Exciting and amusing things happened to these girls; indeed everything that happened to them seemed to be amusing and exciting. Melisande had never known there were such people. They had no modesty, it seemed. They would walk about the room wearing nothing but a pair of shoes and a necklace, admiring themselves in the long mirror or listening to the comments of the others.
In the Convent when one of them had taken a bath, Melisande remembered, they had been warned not to look at themselves. God and the saints were watching, they had been led to understand; and any sly peep would have been recorded against them. But these girls were frankly curious about themselves and others; and when Melisande told them of the Convent attitude to nudity they were amused and laughed heartily.
"Well," said Genevra, who never minced her words and was not quite a lady, "if old Sir Frances didn't like to look at me, he'd be the first man who didn't."
"Saint Francis," corrected Lucie, who, as the daughter of a wellborn man and a village girl, chose to remember the paternal parent rather than the other.
Genevra retorted: "Saints or Sirs, you can't trust any of them. I reckon those old nuns weren't worth looking at any way."
After those bewildering evenings, when Melisande mingled with Fenella's guests wearing dresses which had been selected for her, the girls would lie in their beds talking of the evening. They talked with a frankness which at first amazed Melisande. They were frank about themselves. Melisande learned that Genevra had known terrible poverty in her early days. Genevra made no secret of her beginnings. Her mother, as a girl, had worked in a factory from the early hours of the morning until late at night; she had been shaken out of her sleep of exhaustion to start work again, beaten as she was dragged along to the factory, for she was ready to fall asleep on her feet; she had stood at her work through long hours, brutally treated by the overseer who had given her two children—Genevra and Genevra's young brother.
One morning, in the attic which had been their home, Genevra had awakened to find her mother still in bed; she had shaken her and been unable to awaken her when she had realized with cold surprise that she was dead. Genevra could not feel sorrow. Her mother had ill-treated her. The overseer, who sometimes visited the attic had begun to notice the extraordinary beauty of Genevra. Genevra had no great horror of incest—nor even any knowledge of it as such—but she was terrified of the overseer. She was conscious of the sudden change of manner in a man from whom hitherto she had received nothing but blows.
She knew that her brother had been sold, when he was three, to a master of chimney sweeps. One thing Genevra would never forget as long as she lived was the piteous crying of her brother as he was taken away. She had seen him once afterwards—that was a year later—deformed, grimed with soot, and burned on his arms and legs. That was her brother—her little brother who to her had seemed so pretty when he was a year old and she was three. • "Something happened to me," said Genevra. "Don't ask me what. I only knew that whatever happened to me, I wasn't going to work in a factory."
But Genevra took her tragedy lightly. Her life was a gay one. Others suffered in this terrible world, yes; but not Genevra; and if Genevra did better than others it was not due to luck, it was due to Genevra and her own unbounded energy and superior powers.
She talked more than the others.
"When we were in the attic a lady used to come sometimes. She'd bring us soup and bread. We used to have to say after her:
'Though I am but poor and mean I will move the rich to love me If I'm modest neat and clean And submit when they reprove me.'
2o8 IT BEGAN IN VAUXHALL GARDENS
"I never forgot that. I made up my mind I'd make the rich love me. There's a bit of sense in it, but like most things they tell you, you have to make it suit yourself.''
"You moved the rich to love you!" said Clotilde, and they laughed again.
"I'm clean, I'm sure," said Genevra. "Could you call me neat?"
"No," said Lucie. "Gaudy."
"And modest?"
"He whom we're thinking of wouldn't look for modesty. Do you submit when he reproves you?"
"But he reproves me for not submitting."
The 'rich' to whom they referred was a noble lord with a vast estate in the country. He had taken one look at Genevra and had found her enchanting; he had pursued her ever since. Genevra kept the little company informed of the progress of her love affair.
Before she met Fenella her name had been Jenny; but there were too many Jennys, said Fenella; and she christened her Genevra. Jenny had picked Fenella's pocket one day when Fenella had paid a visit to a mercer's shop. There had been Jenny near the entrance of the shop—a very hungry Jenny, pausing to look at the beautiful lady descending from her carriage and wondering whether there was a handkerchief she could quickly steal and take along to a man in the rookeries who would pay for such things. Jenny had been caught, but Fenella had intervened and had her brought to stand before her while she sat in the shop. Jenny, never at a loss for words, had poured the whole story into what her quick wits told her would be a sympathetic ear. Fenella heard of the overseer and his unwholesome advances, the brother crippled by his employers, and Jenny's present hunger.
Fenella had said they were to let her go and that she might present herself at the house in the square. Jenny had done this, had received a bath and delightful clothes to wear. Fenella had then changed her name to Genevra, and to Fenella Genevra gave her love and loyalty. To Fenella she owed all, including her friendship with the noble lord. She had persuaded the rich, in the forms of Fenella and the lord, to love her; and in the first place it had been due to being neither modest, neat nor clean, nor even submitting when reproved, for she had stood glowering at Fenella in the shop, until she realized that Fenella's intentions were kindly.
Lucie's story was different. She had been brought up quietly in the country with a governess. She had been two months with Fenella, and here she had been introduced to an earnest young man who would marry her.
Glotilde's story was different again. Clotilde was the daughter of a lady of high rank and her footman. She had been brought into the
lady's house and had spent part of her childhood there. Clotilde was lighthearted; she lacked Lucie's desire to stress her high-born streak, and Genevra's pressing need to set poverty behind her for ever. Clotilde fell in and out of love with speed; there was no restraint in Clotilde. Had she not been partly of noble birth, and had not regular sums of money been paid to Fenella by her mother, she would have joined Daisy, Kate and Mary Jane in their apartment from which only Genevra's special attractions and strength of character had saved her.