CHAPTER II

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_ It was always rather quiet at Cocker's while the contingent from

Ladle's and Thrupp's and all the other great places were at

luncheon, or, as the young men used vulgarly to say, while the

animals were feeding. She had forty minutes in advance of this to

go home for her own dinner; and when she came back and one of the

young men took his turn there was often half an hour during which

she could pull out a bit of work or a book--a book from the place

where she borrowed novels, very greasy, in fine print and all about

fine folks, at a ha'penny a day. This sacred pause was one of the

numerous ways in which the establishment kept its finger on the

pulse of fashion and fell into the rhythm of the larger life. It

had something to do, one day, with the particular flare of

importance of an arriving customer, a lady whose meals were

apparently irregular, yet whom she was destined, she afterwards

found, not to forget. The girl was blasee; nothing could belong

more, as she perfectly knew, to the intense publicity of her

profession; but she had a whimsical mind and wonderful nerves; she

was subject, in short, to sudden flickers of antipathy and

sympathy, red gleams in the grey, fitful needs to notice and to

"care," odd caprices of curiosity. She had a friend who had

invented a new career for women--that of being in and out of

people's houses to look after the flowers. Mrs. Jordan had a

manner of her own of sounding this allusion; "the flowers," on her

lips, were, in fantastic places, in happy homes, as usual as the

coals or the daily papers. She took charge of them, at any rate,

in all the rooms, at so much a month, and people were quickly

finding out what it was to make over this strange burden of the

pampered to the widow of a clergyman. The widow, on her side,

dilating on the initiations thus opened up to her, had been

splendid to her young friend, over the way she was made free of the

greatest houses--the way, especially when she did the dinner-

tables, set out so often for twenty, she felt that a single step

more would transform her whole social position. On its being asked

of her then if she circulated only in a sort of tropical solitude,

with the upper servants for picturesque natives, and on her having

to assent to this glance at her limitations, she had found a reply

to the girl's invidious question. "You've no imagination, my

dear!"--that was because a door more than half open to the higher

life couldn't be called anything but a thin partition. Mrs.

Jordan's imagination quite did away with the thickness.

 

Our young lady had not taken up the charge, had dealt with it good-

humouredly, just because she knew so well what to think of it. It

was at once one of her most cherished complaints and most secret

supports that people didn't understand her, and it was accordingly

a matter of indifference to her that Mrs. Jordan shouldn't; even

though Mrs. Jordan, handed down from their early twilight of

gentility and also the victim of reverses, was the only member of

her circle in whom she recognised an equal. She was perfectly

aware that her imaginative life was the life in which she spent

most of her time; and she would have been ready, had it been at all

worth while, to contend that, since her outward occupation didn't

kill it, it must be strong indeed. Combinations of flowers and

green-stuff, forsooth! What SHE could handle freely, she said to

herself, was combinations of men and women. The only weakness in

her faculty came from the positive abundance of her contact with

the human herd; this was so constant, it had so the effect of

cheapening her privilege, that there were long stretches in which

inspiration, divination and interest quite dropped. The great

thing was the flashes, the quick revivals, absolute accidents all,

and neither to be counted on nor to be resisted. Some one had only

sometimes to put in a penny for a stamp and the whole thing was

upon her. She was so absurdly constructed that these were

literally the moments that made up--made up for the long stiffness

of sitting there in the stocks, made up for the cunning hostility

of Mr. Buckton and the importunate sympathy of the counter-clerk,

made up for the daily deadly flourishy letter from Mr. Mudge, made

up even for the most haunting of her worries, the rage at moments

of not knowing how her mother did "get it."

 

She had surrendered herself moreover of late to a certain expansion

of her consciousness; something that seemed perhaps vulgarly

accounted for by the fact that, as the blast of the season roared

louder and the waves of fashion tossed their spray further over the

counter, there were more impressions to be gathered and really--for

it came to that--more life to be led. Definite at any rate it was

that by the time May was well started the kind of company she kept

at Cocker's had begun to strike her as a reason--a reason she might

almost put forward for a policy of procrastination. It sounded

silly, of course, as yet, to plead such a motive, especially as the

fascination of the place was after all a sort of torment. But she

liked her torment; it was a torment she should miss at Chalk Farm.

She was ingenious and uncandid, therefore, about leaving the

breadth of London a little longer between herself and that

austerity. If she hadn't quite the courage in short to say to Mr.

Mudge that her actual chance for a play of mind was worth any week

the three shillings he desired to help her to save, she yet saw

something happen in the course of the month that in her heart of

hearts at least answered the subtle question. This was connected

precisely with the appearance of the memorable lady. _

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