She was not very keen to visit Esmond, she thought it a common place, a place where it costs nothing to get in, and the very lowest people sprawled upon the grass and ate out of paper bags. Some of the commonest girls from the shop went there with their fellows on Sundays. But David appeared so much to wish her to go that she agreed.
He began by taking her the long way round so that he might show her the swallows’ nests. Quite eagerly he asked:
“Have you ever seen the nests, Jenny?”
She shook her head.
“I’ve only been here once, and I was a kid then, about five.”
He seemed astounded.
“But it’s the loveliest spot, Jenny! I take a walk here every week. It’s got moods, this place, just like the human soul, sometimes dark and melancholy, sometimes sunny, full of sunshine. Look! Just look at these nests, under the eaves of the lodge.”
She looked very carefully; but she could see only some daubs of mud plastered against the wall. Baffled, feeling rather angrily that she was missing something, she accompanied him past the banqueting hall, down the rhododendron walk to the waterfall. They stood together on the little arched stone bridge.
“See these chestnuts, Jenny,” he exclaimed happily. “Don’t they open out the sky? And the moss there on these stones. And the mill there, look, isn’t it wonderful? It’s exactly like one of the early Corots!”
She saw an old ruin of a house, with a red tiled roof and a wooden mill-wheel, covered with ivy and all sorts of queer colours. But it was a queer kind of tumbled-down place, and in any case it was no good now, it wasn’t working. She felt angrier than ever. They had tramped quite a long way, her feet were swollen, hurting her in her new tight shoes which she had thought such a bargain, four and eleven reduced from nine shillings, at the sales. She had seen nothing but grass, trees, flowers and sky, heard nothing but the sound of water and birds, eaten nothing but some damp egg sandwiches and two Canary bananas — they were not even the big waxy Jamaica kind which she preferred. She was confused, puzzled, all “upside down”; cross with David, herself, Joe, life, her shoes — was she really getting a corn? — cross with everything. She wanted a cup of tea, a glass of port, something! Standing there, on that lovely arched stone bridge, she compressed her rather pale lips, then opened them to say something extremely disagreeable. But at that moment she caught sight of David’s face.
His face was so happy, so rapt, suffused with such ardour, intensity and love that it took her all of a heap. She giggled suddenly. She giggled and giggled; it was so funny she could not stop. She had a perfect paroxysm of almost hysterical enjoyment.
David laughed too, out of sheer sympathy.
“What’s the matter, Jenny?” he kept asking. “Do tell me what’s the joke!”
“I don’t know,” she gasped, going into a fresh spasm of mirth. “That’s just it. I don’t know… I don’t know what I’m laughing at.”
At last she dried her streaming eyes on her small lace-edged hanky — an extra nice hanky, a lady had left in the toilet at Slattery’s.
“Oh dear,” she sighed. “That was a scream, wasn’t it?” This was a favourite phrase of Jenny’s: all events of unusual significance, when they lay beyond Jenny’s comprehension, were classed sympathetically as screams.
She felt quite restored, however, rather fond of him now; she allowed him to take her arm and be very close to her as they climbed the steep hill of the Dene towards the tram. But she cut the afternoon shorter than it might have been, pleaded tiredness, refused to let him see her to her home.
She went along Scottswood Road in a restless, excitable mood, nursing the idea which had come to her as she sat beside David in the tram. The street teemed with life. It was Saturday, about six o’clock; people were starting to stroll about, to enjoy themselves; it was a time that Jenny loved, the time when she most commonly set out with Joe.
She let herself into the house quietly and, by a stroke of luck which made her heart leap, she met Joe in the passage coming out.
“Hello, Joe,” she said brightly, forgetting that for a week she had cut him dead.
“Hello!” he said, not looking at her.
“I’ve had such a scream of an afternoon, Joe,” she went on gaily, coquettishly. “You’d have died, honestly you’d have died. I’ve seen every kind of swallow but a real one.”
He darted a quick suspicious glance at her as she stood in the dim passage blocking his way. She saw the look and came a little closer, making herself seductive, asking him with her face, her eyes, her body.
“Couldn’t you and I go out to-night, Joe?” she murmured seductively. “Honest, I’ve had a sickening afternoon. I’ve missed you a lot lately. I want to go out with you. I want to. Here I am ready, all dressed up…”
“Ah, what—”
She pressed against him, began to smooth his coat lapel, to slip her white finger into his buttonhole, with a childish yet suggestive appeal.
“I’m just dying to have a fling. Let’s go to the Percy Grill, Joe, and have a rare old time. You know, Joe… you know what…”
He shook his head rudely.
“No,” he said in a surly voice. “I’m busy, I’m worried, I’ve got things on my mind.” He brushed past her, banged through the door and was gone.
She lay back against the wall of the passage, her mouth a little open, her eyes upon the street door. She had asked him, lowered herself to ask him. She had held herself wide open, wide open, longing for him, and he had chucked a surly refusal in her face. Humiliation rushed over her; never, in all her life, had she been so wounded, so humiliated. Pale with temper, she bit her lips fiercely. She lay there for a moment mad, simply, with fury. Then she gathered herself, flung her head in the air, went into the back room as if nothing had happened.
Tossing her hat and gloves upon the sofa, she began to make herself a cup of tea. Ada, reclining in the rocker, lowered her magazine and watched her with displeasure.
“Where you been?” Ada asked laconically, very coldly.
“Out.”
“H’umph… out with that young Fenwick fella, eh?”
“Certainly,” Jenny agreed with a calm tranquillity. “Out with David Fenwick. And a most lovely afternoon I’ve had. Simply perfect. Such wonderful flowers and birds we’ve seen. He’s a nice fellow, oh, he really is nice.”
Ada’s indolent bosom heaved ominously.
“So he’s nice, is he?”
“Yes, indeed.” Jenny paused in her unruffled measuring of the tea to nod graciously. “He’s the nicest and best fellow I’ve ever met. I’m quite carried away by him.” And very airily she began to hum.
Ada could stand it no longer.
“Don’t hum at me,” she quivered with indignation. “I won’t have it. And let me tell you this, madam, I think you’re behaving shocking. You’re not treating Joe right. For four years now he’s run after you, taken you out and all, as good as your intended. And the minute this other young man comes along you turn Joe down and go cohorting all over the place with him…. It’s not fair on Joe.”
Jenny paused and sipped her tea with ladylike restraint.
“I think nothing of Joe Gowlan, ma. I could have Joe just by the raising of my little finger. But I haven’t raised it. Not just yet.”
“So that’s it, my lady! Joe isn’t good enough for you now… not grand enough now this school teacher has come on the carpet. You’re a fine customer, right enough. I should think so. Let me tell you, my lady, that I didn’t go about it that way with your dad. I treated him proper and human. And if you don’t treat Joe the same you’ll lose him as sure as your name’s Jenny Sunley.”