Nocturne | Page 9

"Alf" she drew a deep breath and looked straight
up at Jenny with inscrutable eyes of pain.
vi
The stew being finished, Emmy collected the plates, and retired once
again to the scullery. Now did Jenny show afresh that curiosity whose
first flush had been so ill-satisfied by the meat course. When, however,
Emmy reappeared with that most domestic of sweets, a bread pudding,
Jenny's face fell once more; for of all dishes she most abominated bread
pudding. Under her breath she adversely commented.
"Oh lor!" she whispered. "Stew and b.p. What a life!"

Emmy, not hearing, but second sighted on such matters, shot a
malevolent glance from her place. In an awful voice, intended to be a
trifle arch, she addressed her father.
"Bready butter pudding, Pa?" she inquired. The old man whinnied with
delight, and Emmy was appeased. She had one satisfied client, at any
rate. She cut into the pudding with a knife, producing wedges with a
dexterous hand.
"Hey ho!" observed Jenny to herself, tastelessly beginning the work of
laborious demolition.
"Jenny thinks it's common. She ought to have the job of getting the
meals!" cried Emmy, bitterly, obliquely attacking her sister by talking
at her. "Something to talk about then!" she sneered with chagrin, up in
arms at a criticism.
"Well, the truth is," drawled Jenny.... "If you want it ... I don't like
bread pudding." Somehow she had never said that before, in all the
years; but it seemed to her that bread pudding was like ashes in the
mouth. It was like duty, or funerals, or ... stew.
"The stuff's got to be finished up!" flared Emmy defiantly, with a sense
of being adjudged inferior because she had dutifully habituated herself
to the appreciation of bread pudding. "You might think of that! What
else am I to do?"
"That's just it, old girl. Just why I don't like it. I just hate to feel I'm
finishing it up. Same with stew. I know it's been something else first.
It's not fresh. Same old thing, week in, week out. Finishing up the
scraps!"
"Proud stomach!" A quick flush came into Emmy's cheeks; and tears
started to her eyes.
"Perhaps it is. Oh, but Em! Don't you feel like that yourself....
Sometimes? O-o-h!..." She drawled the word wearily. "Oh for a bit
more money! Then we could give stew to the cat's-meat man and bread
to old Thompson's chickens. And then we could have nice things to eat.
Nice birds and pastry ... and trifle, and ices, and wine.... Not all this
muck!"
"Muck!" cried Emmy, her lips seeming to thicken. "When I'm so hot....
And sick of it all! You go out; you do just exactly what you like.... And
then you come home and...." She began to gulp. "What about me?"
"Well, it's just as bad for both of us!" Jenny did not think so really; but

she said it. She thought Emmy had the bread and butter pudding nature,
and that she did not greatly care what she ate as long as it was not too
fattening. Jenny thought of Emmy as born for housework and
cooking--of stew and bread puddings. For herself she had dreamed a
nobler destiny, a destiny of romance, of delicious unknown things,
romantic and indescribably exciting. She was to have the adventures,
because she needed them. Emmy didn't need them. It was all very well
for Emmy to say "What about me!" It was no business of hers what
happened to Emmy. They were different. Still, she repeated more
confidently because there had been no immediate retort:
"Well, it's just as bad for both of us! Just as bad!"
"'Tisn't! You're out all day--doing what you like!"
"Oh!" Jenny's eyes opened with theatrical wideness at such a
perversion of the facts. "Doing what I like! The millinery!"
"You are! You don't have to do all the scraping to make things go
round, like I have to. No, you don't! Here have I ... been in this ... place,
slaving! Hour after hour! I wish _you'd_ try and manage better. I bet
you'd be thankful to finish up the scraps some way--any old way! I'd
like to see you do what I do!"
Momentarily Jenny's picture of Emmy's nature (drawn
accommodatingly by herself in order that her own might be
differentiated and exalted by any comparison) was shattered. Emmy's
vehemence had thus the temporary effect of creating a fresh reality out
of a common idealisation of circumstance. The legend would re-form
later, perhaps, and would continue so to re-form as persuasion flowed
back upon Jenny's egotism, until it crystallised hard and became
unchallengeable; but at any rate for this instant Jenny had had a
glimmer of insight into that tamer discontent and rebelliousness that
encroached like a canker upon Emmy's