Part 65

JEYES.

No, no; she wishes you to understand the exact nature of the friendship between her and me. I'm obeying instructions. [FARNCOMBE sits on the ottoman, nursing his hat and overcoat. Then JEYES sits in the arm-chair by the centre table, first turning the chair so that it faces FARNCOMBE.] Farncombe, I was under thirty, and still a subaltern, when I made Miss Parradell's acquaintance. Like most of my pals, I was spending my nights, whenever I could get away from Aldershot, in the stalls at the Pandora-- much the same as you've been doing recently, and as a certain class of young man'll go on doing as long as the Pandora, and similar shops, continue to flourish. Ha! How honoured we felt, we men, in those days, at knowing some of the Pandora girls, and having the privilege of supping 'em and standing 'em dinner on Sunday evenings! If they'd been royal princesses we couldn't have been more elated. [With a gesture.] Don't jump at conclusions. It generally ended there, or with our running into debt at a jeweller's. We were young, they were beautiful-- or we thought 'em so; but the majority of us weren't vicious, any more than the majority of the girls were-- though many of 'em were mighty calculating. It would have been better for us men if all the girls had been wicked; the glamour, the infatuation, the folly, would have been sooner over, and one of us at least would have had a different tale to tell.

LILY.

JEYES.

LILY.

Miss Du Cane-- Aggie Du Cane.

JEYES.

Agnes Du Cane. She's gone under. [To LILY.] Outside Buckley's oyster-bar, wasn't it?

LILY.

Not outside; in the parlour.

JEYES.

LILY.

JEYES.

I confess I wasn't overwhelmingly attracted by her at first; she was so unlike the rest. [Laughing bitterly.] Ha, ha, ha!

LILY.

JEYES.

But she was humble, and naive, and confiding; and my vanity was tickled by her delight at the little treats I gave her, and by her gratitude for a tuppeny-ha'penny present or two. Nobody, I believe, with any pretensions to being a gentleman, had paid her much attention before I arrived on the scene.

LILY.

JEYES.

I didn't find out that I was in love with her-- you guess it's a love story, don't you?----

FARNCOMBE.

JEYES.

I didn't find out that I was neck and heels in love with her until nearly a year afterwards, when my regiment went to the Curragh. That did it-- separation! What I suffered in that hole, thinking of her, starving for her! In less than three months I was in London again, on leave, and in my old stall at the Pandora. But even then, Farncombe, I hadn't your pluck.

FARNCOMBE.

Pluck?

JEYES.

The pluck to snap my fingers at the world and propose marriage to a Pandora girl. Besides, my mother was alive then, and-- [abruptly, with a wild look] would you like to know what she used to call these Pandora women, Farncombe? [Bending forward, his hands tightly clenched.] She used to call them a menace to society. With their beauty, and their flagrant opportunities for displaying it, they are a living curse, she used to say-- a source of constant dread to mothers whose hope it is to see their sons safely mated to modest, maidenly girls of the typical English pattern. She told us once-- my brothers and me-- frightened as to where we were drifting, that she was one of many mothers who prayed on their knees daily that their boys might be spared from being drawn into the net woven by their own weaknesses and passions-- drawn into it by these-- these----! [He breaks off, stares about him for a moment, and then rises.] Oh, but I oughtn't to have repeated this to you. Pardon. [Walking away unsteadily.] Ho, damned bad taste! [Behind the table, supporting himself by leaning upon it.] Where was I? Back from the Curragh! [Confused.] Yes-- yes-- and so things went on for a couple o' years-- I trailing after Lily closer than ever-- and at last-- at last I did ask her to be my wife.

LILY.