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Empty Sack

<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2> For the next twenty-four hours Jennie did her best to suspend the operation of thought. Thought got her nowhere. It led her into so many blind alleys that it made her head ache. She had once heard a returned traveler describe his efforts to get out of the labyrinth at Hampton Court, and felt herself now in the same situation. Each way seemed easy till she followed it and found herself balked by a hedge. But the fact that her head ached gave her an excuse for going to her room and locking herself in. She could thus pull her books from beneath the bed without fear of detection. The points as to which she needed enlightenment being spires and Lady Hamilton, she went at her task with the avidity of a starving person at sight of food. As to spires, she was quickly appeased, for her volume on the old churches of Paris had the Sainte-Chapelle as its frontispiece. Now that she had seen the name in print, she was sure of it. Because of being so little taxed, her memory was the more retentive. Every sound that had fallen from Mrs. Collingham's lips was stamped on her mind like a footprint hardened into rock on a bit of untracked soil. Within half an hour, she had learned the outlines of the history of the Sainte-Chapelle, and, with some fluttering of timid vanity, had grasped the comparison of its strong and exquisite grace with her own personality. But, after all, the Sainte-Chapelle was a thing of stone, whereas Lady Hamilton—she loved, the name—must have been of flesh and blood. Here, too, there was a frontispiece, the very Dian of the Frick Gallery to which Mrs. Collingham had referred. Unfortunately, the illustrations were in black and white, so that she could get no adequate idea as to the complexion or the color of the hair. The face, however, with its bewitching softness, its heavenly archnesses, bore some resemblance to her own. It was a shock to learn that the possessor of so much beauty, the bearer of so melodious a title, had begun life as Emma Lyon, a servant girl, but, after all, she reflected, the circumstance only created analogies with herself. There were more analogies still. Emma Lyon had been an artist's model. In an artist's studio she had made the acquaintance of men of lofty station, just as she herself had met Bob. She had loved and been loved. Romney was perhaps her Hubert Wray. Her career had been exciting and dramatic—the friend of a queen, the more-than-wife of one of the great men of the age. The tragic, miserable death didn't frighten Jennie, since misery and tragedy always stalked on the edge of her experience. She fell asleep amid vast, vague concepts of queens and heroes beset with loves and problems not unlike Jennie Follett's. All through the next day she stilled the working of thought by application to The Egoist. She took to it as to a drug. In the intervals of her household duties, or whenever her mind became active over her affairs, she ran to her room to begin again, "Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent clashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing." She got little farther, since, for her purpose, this was far enough. She was drugged already, as by dentist's gas. The more she read the more she felt herself wandering sleepily through realms of dream, where words, as she understood them, had ceased to have significance. So, by sheer force of will, she brought herself to that moment in the afternoon when she stood at the studio door. She hadn't thought; she hadn't, in her own phrase, imagined. She had allowed herself no instant in which to count the cost or to shrink from paying it. Hubert, love, and the family deliverance from poverty would be hers before nightfall, and she meant not to look beyond. She opened the door softly. Before showing herself, she stopped and listened. There was not a sound. It was often so if Hubert was painting, and the silence only assured her that if he was there, as he probably was, he was waiting for her alone. He was waiting for her alone with that look in his eyes, that maddened animal look which she had seen yesterday, so bestial and yet so compelling! Still more softly she moved forward among the studio odds and ends. Then she saw—and stopped. In the Byzantine chair, a nude woman, seated in the manner of the Egyptian cat-goddess, was holding up a skull. Though the woman looked the other way, Jennie could see her as a lovely creature, straight, strong, triumphant, and unashamed. Hubert was painting, busily, eagerly. He raised his eyes, saw Jennie as she cowered, took no notice of her at all, and went on with his work. It passed all that she had ever imagined of cruelty that, as she turned to make her way out again, he should glance up once more—and let her go. Hubert—and the woman dressed like that! The woman dressed like that—in this intimacy with Hubert! She herself shut out—cast out—sent to the devil! Some one else in her place, when she might so easily have kept it! Jennie's suffering was in the dry and stony stage at which it hardly seemed suffering at all. Yes, it did; she knew it was suffering—only, she couldn't feel. She could think lucidly and yet put the whole situation away from her for the reason that it would keep. Anguish would keep; tears would keep. She could postpone everything, since she had all the rest of her life to give to its contemplation. Just for the present, the memory of the woman in the chair with Hubert looking at her was so scorching to the mind that she could do nothing but snatch her faculties away from it. Coming to Fifth Avenue and seeing an electric bus stop near the curb, she climbed into it. It was the old story of not knowing where to go or what to do once her simple round of habits had been upset. Snuggled close to a window, she could at least be jolted along without effort of her own while she still fought off the consciousness of the frightful thing that had happened. It was not merely Hubert and the woman; it was everything. So much was included that she couldn't bear to think of this ruin to her beautiful house of cards. Such wealth and beauty in the shop windows! Such streams of people in their new spring clothes! She had heard it said that every heart had its bitterness, but she didn't think that that could be possible. If everyone had a heartache like hers, or even the memory of such a heartache, it would make too monstrous a world, too deplorable a human race. After all, there must be some sense in the presence of mankind on earth, and if all were kicked about and bruised, there would be none. She preferred to think that the people on the pavements and in the limousines were as happy as they looked, and that she alone was selected for bewilderment and pain. She wondered where she was going. There was a ferry far up on the Riverside Drive which would take her across to New Jersey, and thence, by a combination of trolley-cars, she could work her way southward to Pemberton Heights. This would consume an hour and more, and so eat up part of the afternoon. What she would do when she arrived home with her dreams all shattered God alone knew. If she could only have seen her friend, Mrs. Collingham, clinging to that kind hand as she poured out her heart.... Just then a huge building came into sight on the left, and with it a new impulse. She had often meant to visit it, though the day never seemed to come. Gussie had once gone to the Metropolitan Museum in company with Sadie Inglis, since when she had been in the habit of saying that she had as good as taken a trip abroad. Jennie didn't want a trip abroad; she wanted soothing, comforting, affection. She wanted another drop of that experienced, womanly sympathy, instinct with kindliness and knowledge of the world which she had tasted for the first and only time on that blissful afternoon at Collingham Lodge. <div class="align-center auto-scaled figure" style="margin-left: 22%; width: 55%" id="figure-7"> <ANTIMG style="display: block; width: 100%" alt="JENNIE, YOU HAVEN'T GOT A HUNDRED DOLLARS! TELL ME YOU HAVEN'T!" src="images/illus2.jpg" width-obs="100%"/> <div class="caption italics"> JENNIE, YOU HAVEN'T GOT A HUNDRED DOLLARS! TELL ME YOU HAVEN'T!</div> </div> It was to get nearer to Collingham Lodge that she left the bus to drag herself up the long flight of steps and into the vast, cool hall. There were others going in, chiefly the Slavs and Italians for whom she felt a legitimate Anglo-Saxon contempt, so that she had nothing to do but to follow them. Thus she found herself at the top of another long flight of steps, gazing about her in an awe that soon became an intoxicating sense of beauty. It was Jennie's first approach to beauty on this scale of immensity and variety. It was her first draught of Art. Her childhood's poring over Ancient Rome Restored had given her a feeling for line and economy, but she had never dreamed that color, substance, and texture could be used with this daring, profuse creativeness. Having no ability to seize details, she drifted helplessly up and down aisles of splendor and gleam. Here there were gold and silver, here was tapestry, here crystal, here enamel. The pictures were endless, endless. She could no more deal with them than with a sunset. Life came to the Scarborough tradition in her as it does to a frozen limb, with distress and yet with an element of ecstasy. A soul that had passed to a higher plane of existence, whom there was no one to welcome and guide, might have ventured timidly into the celestial land as Jennie among these lovely things outside her comprehension. She came to herself, as it were, on hearing a man's voice say, in a kind of tone and idiom with which she was familiar: "Have you looked at this Cellini now? That's the only authentic bit of Cellini in the United States. There's six or seven other pieces in different museums that people says is Cellini, but there's always a hitch in the proof." Turning, she saw a stocky man in custodian's uniform who was addressing a group of Italians, two bareheaded women, three children between ten and fifteen, and a man. All were interested. All studied the gold shell with its dragon-shaped handle in purplish enamel. They commented, criticized, appraised, even the children pointing out excellencies to one another. When they had drifted away, Jennie turned to the kindly Irishman, who, by dint of living with beauty, had grasped its spirit, and put a hesitating question. She asked him to repeat the name of the gold-smith, pronouncing it after him till she registered it on her mind as she had that of Lady Hamilton. "Sure, there was an artist for you," the custodian went on. "The breed is dead and gone. Hot-timpered fellow, though. Had more mistresses and killed more men than you could count. Should read about him in a book he wrote himself." He looked at Jennie from the corner of an eye, accustomed to "size up" an individual here and there among the thousands who floated daily through his little domain, apparently finding in her something that merited further favors. "Are you wise to this Memling?" he asked, leading the way to a corner of the wall where hung a small portrait. "There's only two other men in the wor-rld that could have painted that head, and that's Holbein and Rembrandt. Memling himself never did it but just that wance." Jennie looked, registering Memling's name. It was the head of an elderly man; so living, kindly, and humorous that she loved him. When she turned to her guide he stood with a smile of curiosity, like that of a mother showing her baby to a friend. "What d'ye say to that now?" Jennie said what she could—that it was marvelous, but that she didn't know anything about art. Since he was so kind, she ventured, however, on another question. Did the museum contain a portrait of Lady Hamilton? He pursed up his nose. Not a good one. Not a Romney. There was one in gallery twenty-four, but it was by John Opie, of whom he had no high opinion. In comparison with Romney, he thought Opie big and coarse, but, since there was nothing better to be seen, Jennie might choose to glance at this second-rate specimen. "And I'll tell you another thing," he went on, confidentially. "You're not used to looking at pictures and such like, are you, now?" Jennie said she was not. "Well, then, go to gallery twenty-four. Find your Opie, which you'll see hanging over one of the doors—and don't look at anything else. You'll have seen all you can absor-rb in wan day. Come back to-morrer, or anny other toime, and come straight to me. You'll find me here, and I'll tell you what to look at next. But don't take more to-day than you can enjoy." He walked with her till she reached the boundary of his realm. "You look like a gur-rl that'd have an eye and a taste for beauty. You don't find them often among Americans, and when you do it's a god-send. Poles, Jews, Russians, yes. When the French and Italian officers was in New York, their eyes 'd fairly eat the museum up. But Americans—they don't know and they don't want to know—not wan in a hundred thousand. Well, good-day to you and good luck. I'm always here, and I'm just the wan to tell you which is the things to pick out." But by the time she discovered her Lady Hamilton she had only the courage to note listlessly that the hair was somewhat the color of her own—not chestnut, not russet, not copper, not red-gold, but perhaps a combination of them all. She had reached her limitations unexpectedly. The tide she had dammed had burst its barriers and rushed in on her. She sank to a chair in the middle of the almost empty room, her eyes blinded by sudden tears. Hubert was still with that woman! The woman was perhaps resting now and they were talking! She would be so much at her ease that she would talk without taking the trouble to throw her wrap round her. Hubert, too, would be at ease, preferring her without her wrap rather than with it. In vain she reminded herself that the situation was one to which an artist was accustomed. She hadn't been in a studio for a year without learning that much, though she got no comfort from it now. No comfort was possible with the vision of this naked magnificence seared on her memory. Hubert had let her come without a welcome, and go without a protest. He was probably glad when she went so that he might be alone with this wanton who didn't know shame. In the end, she saw but one course before her. She would make the best of Bob. To do so would mean that Bob would be disinherited by his ogre of a father, but with Mrs. Collingham's aid a counteracting influence might be found. Moreover, she could thus return home, confess herself Bob's wife, and offer the hundred dollars to her father as cash lawfully her own. Life would be simplified in this way, even though happiness were dead. She was the last of the commuting family to reach the house that evening, and on crossing the threshold was greeted with a sense of cheer. It did not mean much to her at first, for, with the optimism of a hand-to-mouth existence, a sense of cheer was the last thing the family ever abandoned. She herself cast all outward air of trouble away from her on opening the door, because it was in the tradition. Her father was seated quietly smoking his pipe, which he had not done for the past week or more. Gussie held the middle of the floor, her arms extended in a serpentine wave, humming a dance tune and practicing the step. To mark the rhythm, Gladys was clapping her hands with a slow, tom-tom beat. Pansy alone stood apart, blinking and unresponsive, as if for reasons of her own she considered this mirth ill-timed. "Look, Jen!" Gladys giggled, as her eldest sister passed down the room. "This is the new thing at the Washington. Gus has got it so you wouldn't know her from Samarine herself." Jennie went on to the kitchen, where, as she expected, her mother was getting the supper, and did her best to be nonchalant. "Hello, momma! What's the good word? What makes everyone so gay?" Lizzie looked up, a cover in one hand and a spoon in the other. Her face was so radiant that Jennie was still more mystified. "Oh, Jennie darling, your father has the money! He can make the payment to-morrow, and everything will come right." So Jennie's plans recoiled upon herself. She had meant to tell her mother here and now that for four days past she had been Bob Collingham's wife, and had a hundred dollars in her top bureau drawer. Her mother was to tell her father, and her father Teddy and the girls. But now—well, what would be the use? By keeping her secret she might put off inevitable fate a little longer. "Who lent it?" Jennie asked, after she had chosen her line of action. "Nobody; that's the wonderful part of it. It's a hundred and fifty dollars Teddy has earned." "'Earned!' How?" "Selling bonds for a man he knows. He doesn't want anything said about it, because it's what he calls 'on the side.' If the house knew of it—that he was working in off times for some one else—he might lose his job. But, oh, Jennie, isn't it wonderful?" Jennie thought it wonderful for other reasons than Teddy's glory and the peace of the family mind. It was less easy to renounce Hubert than it had been an hour or two earlier. If he snapped his fingers she had said to herself, while crossing the ferry, she would run to him like a dog, in spite of everything; and if she did it, she would want to be free from the complications that must ensue if she were to proclaim herself Bob's wife. Having assented to her mother's praise of Teddy, she went back through the living room and on upstairs to take off her hat and coat. Near the top of the stairs, the door of the bathroom opened suddenly and Teddy appeared in his shirt sleeves. There being nothing unusual in that, she was about to say, "Hello, Ted!" and ascend the few remaining steps to her room. But seeing her moving upward in the dim hall light, Teddy started back within the bathroom, and, with a movement he couldn't control, slammed the door noisily. The action was so odd that she called out to him: "It's only me, goose! What's the matter with you? Have you got the jumps?" The door opened and Teddy reappeared, grinning sheepishly. "I—I didn't have my coat on," was the only explanation he could find. "Dear, dear!" Jennie threw over her shoulder, as she passed into her own room. "We've got terribly modest all of a sudden, haven't we?" But weeks later she recalled this lame excuse. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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