Nocturne | Page 8

looking intently at his reflection in the looking-glass, as one who
encounters and examines a stranger. In the glass his face looked red and
ugly, and the tossed grey hair and heavy beard were made to appear
startlingly unkempt. His mouth was open, and his eyes shaded by
lowered lids. In a rather trembling voice he addressed Jenny upon her
entrance.
"Is supper ready?" he asked. "I heard you come in."
"Yes, Pa," said Jenny. "Aren't you going to brush your hair? Got a
fancy for it like that, have you? My! What a man! With his shirt
unbuttoned and his tie out. Come here! Let's have a look at you!"
Although her words were unkind, her tone was not, and as she rectified

his omissions and put her arm round him Jenny gave her father a light
hug. "All right, are you? Been a good boy?"
"Yes ... a good boy...." he feebly and waveringly responded. "What's
the noos to-night, Jenny?"
Jenny considered. It made her frown, so concentrated was her effort to
remember.
"Well, somebody's made a speech," she volunteered. "They can all do
that, can't they! And somebody's paid five hundred pounds transfer for
Jack Sutherdon ... is it Barnsley or Burnley?... And--oh, a fire at
Southwark.... Just the usual sort of news, Pa. No murders...."
"Ah, they don't have the murders they used to have," grumbled the old
man.
"That's the police, Pa." Jenny wanted to reassure him.
"I don't know how it is," he trembled, stiffening his body and rising
from the chair.
"Perhaps they hush 'em up!" That was a shock to him. He could not
move until the notion had sunk into his head. "Or perhaps people are
more careful.... Don't get leaving themselves about like they used to."
Pa Blanchard had no suggestion. Such perilous ideas, so frequently
started by Jenny for his mystification, joggled together in his brain and
made there the subject of a thousand ruminations. They tantalised Pa's
slowly revolving thoughts, and kept these moving through long hours
of silence. Such notions preserved his interest in the world, and his
senile belief in Magic, as nothing else could have done.
Together, their pace suited to his step, the two moved slowly to the
door. It took a long time to make the short journey, though Jenny
supported her father on the one side and he used a stick in his right
hand. In the passage he waited while she blew out his candle; and then
they went forward to the meal. At the approach Pa's eyes opened wider,
and luminously glowed.
"Is there dumplings?" he quivered, seeming to tremble with excitement.
"One for you, Pa!" cried Emmy from the kitchen. Pa gave a small
chuckle of joy. His progress was accelerated. They reached the table,
and Emmy took his right arm for the descent into a substantial chair.
Upon Pa's plate glistened a fair dumpling, a glorious mountain of paste
amid the wreckage of meat and gravy. "And now, perhaps," Emmy
went on, smoothing back from her forehead a little streamer of hair,

"you'll close the door, Jenny...."
It was closed with a bang that made Pa jump and Emmy look savagely
up.
"Sorry!" cried Jenny. "How's that dumpling, Pa?" She sat recklessly at
the table.
v
To look at the three of them sitting there munching away was a sight
not altogether pleasing. Pa's veins stood out from his forehead, and the
two girls devoted themselves to the food as if they needed it. There was
none of the airy talk that goes on in the houses of the rich while maids
or menservants come respectfully to right or left of the diners with
decanters or dishes. Here the food was the thing, and there was no
speech. Sometimes Pa's eyes rolled, sometimes Emmy glanced up with
unconscious malevolence at Jenny, sometimes Jenny almost winked at
the lithograph portrait of Edward the Seventh (as Prince of Wales)
which hung over the mantelpiece above the one-and-tenpenny-ha'penny
clock that ticked away so busily there. Something had happened long
ago to Edward the Seventh, and he had a stain across his Field
Marshal's uniform. Something had happened also to the clock, which
lay upon its side, as if kicking in a death agony. Something had
happened to almost everything in the kitchen. Even the plates on the
dresser, and the cups and saucers that hung or stood upon the shelves,
bore the noble scars of service. Every time Emmy turned her glance
upon a damaged plate, as sharp as a stalactite, she had the thought:
"Jenny's doing." Every time she looked at the convulsive clock Emmy
said to herself: "That was Miss Jenny's cleverness when she chucked
the cosy at Alf." And when Emmy said in this reflective silence of
animosity the name