Apples of Gold

by Warwick Deeping

  And Miss Nancy of Lincoln's Inn Fields sat on his knee or on the end of the table and loved him with sudden and fierce impetuosity. She was in great heart. She swung her little red shoes, and made a mystery of herself, and gave him looks of fierce kindness, and that equivocal and provoking smile. She was a pretty creature, but she was more than that, for mere prettiness never made any man seriously unhappy.

  The gentlemen began to call on her to sing.

  "Sing, Nan, sing."

  "Give us the 'Parson's Daughter.'"

  But she would not sing. She was a young empress, and her mood was autocratic, though, in fact, she was waiting for Jordan to ask her to sing. But he, thinking that she was in earnest, did not meddle. She was a little piqued, and when the room still importuned her she flashed out at them:

  "I have said it. But if Mr. Jordan will make me a pulpit, I'll preach you a sermon."

  They cheered her.

  "A sermon!"

  "O—great. Get up on your sweet feet, O—Parson Nan."

  "Give it us hot and strong."

  But she insisted on Jordan making her a pulpit, so he set her in his chair, she standing, and he holding it in front of him, so that the back of the chair was her pulpit rail. She faced about and, bending down, gave Jordan a kiss, and she was in the act of kissing him when a man poked his head into the room, and realizing how deucedly superfluous he had become, withdrew a sulky face and sneaked away. It was Mr. Maurice St. Croix.

  XV

  So Jordan entered upon his second affair, and he made a romance of it, as is the way of some men whose hearts are bigger than the hearts of their fellows. Miss Nancy had a little house somewhere between Piccadilly and Marybone. She called it Lavender Cottage and Jordan carried a sprig of lavender over his heart.

  For, indeed, she was a very charming creature, and much desired, and she had fallen in love with Jordan in her own fierce, adventurous way. She liked his straight eyes and clean mouth, his strength, his power over lesser men. That she was sophisticated was not her fault, and though a woman may live three different lives, she puts her love into the best of them, and Nan's best was a very exquisite piece of self-expression, and no one else had been to her what Jordan was. And Jordan understood the real Nan as little as he understood Mr. Isaac Newton's explorations in mathematics. He did not know that there were three Nans—the girl who loved him, the actress, and the woman who looked shrewdly ahead and put the guineas by for the day when her beauty should wane.

  "I suppose I shall have a house at Richmond, and go to church, and keep a carriage, a blackamore, and singing birds!"

  But she did not tell Jordan this.

  Meanwhile, in these days of her early summer, she took life in both hands and made merry. She was ready for any mad adventure; her restlessness had found moments of wild happiness, and she pressed this happiness to her lips. It would not last, but like Lady Bacchus she wanted it to last just as long as she could keep it. Jordan's big tenderness thrilled her. Her problem was to keep his eyes shut and to prevent him from being too serious.

  These were great months, though poor Mrs. Mary wept over them, for Jordan no longer went to church with her, and he was talked of as a wild fellow. He was still the stalwart of the Whig mug-houses. He broke heads through all that winter, but he broke them in strange company. For Miss Nancy Sweethaws, dressed up as a young "spark"—and a very pretty little gentleman she made—would not be prevented from sharing in the adventure. She was bolder than most men. She called herself Dick Derrydown, and she insisted on carrying a cudgel. Indeed, she gave Jordan many anxious moments, for they played a rough game with rough playfellows, and she took her risks like a man. He had a special hat made for her, with a light iron plate in the crown, and the brim well stiffened with leather. He made her pad her figure and the shoulders of her coat and when there was stickplay he fought for two. Yet her nearness, the adventurous and daring love on her piquant little face, the dangers he warded from her, thrilled him as nothing else had thrilled him. He admired her gaillard courage, her irrepressible tongue, her roguish quickness. She had immense faith in his strength and his skill, and Jordan was touched by that faith.

  One night in one of these scrimmages down Newgate way she was hit on the head by a Jack's club, and her slim legs gave way under her.

  "O—Jordan!"

  Jordan had felled the fellow who had hit her, and he had her hanging in the hollow of his left arm.

  "I'm sorry—Nan."

  "My dear, it is part of the game"—and then she fainted.

  Jordan was frightened. He picked her up and carried her into a quiet alley, and seeing a light in a window he knocked at the door. He could see a little, dark mark on Nancy's cheek, and he knew that it was blood.

  Someone came to the door.

  "Who's there?"

  "A woman's hurt. Let her rest here till I get a surgeon."

  "A woman? How did she get hurt?"—the voice was suspicious.

  "The mob," said Jordan; "we got caught in the scuffle."

  "I don't open my door at this hour of night."

  "O very well," said Jordan, "if you don't open it I'll open it for you. I'm Big Jordan of Nando's."

  The door was opened and the old fellow behind it became polite. His eyes protruded when he saw the breeches and stockings which covered the lower part of the figure Jordan held in his arms.

  "I thought you said it was a woman?"

  "So it is. Look at her hair."

  "It isn't a wig?"

  "Well? What of it my friend!" said Jordan; "show me where I can lay her down, and fetch me a light."

  The old fellow led him into the parlour, whence two prim-looking, middle-aged spinsters fled with every sign of delighted horror. Jordan laid Nan on a settle, and kneeling down put his arm under her head. The old fellow brought a light.

  "How did it happen, sir?"

  Jordan was parting Nancy's hair.

  "Someone hit her. I guess that man has a sore head."

  He found the wound high up over one ear. It had been made by the edge of the iron cap in her hat, and was a mere slit. To Jordan it did not look serious, and while he was examining it he felt a hand catch his wrist.

  "Not much damage, my dear?"

  She turned her head and her bright eyes were under his.

  "I shall have a little headache to-morrow."

  "Nan—you frightened the life out of me."

  "Did I, poor lad?"

  "You did."

  "Well—kiss me."

  She put her arms round his neck, and the two ladies who were looking through the crack of the door gave a little shriek of shocked envy.

  "Heavens!" said Nan, a little out of breath, "did you hear the rats in the wainscoting? Were those rats, sir?"

  "No," said the old gentleman rather testily, "they were not."

  But this incident inspired in Jordan another sort of tenderness towards her. He grew more protective. He ceased to live for the adventure of the moment, and began to think ahead.

  "Look here. Nan, you must marry me."

  "Dear lad, don't be foolish."

  "I'm not being foolish. I say that you have got to marry me."

  She refused to take it seriously; she tried to put him off by pretending that a man lost interest in a woman directly he married her.

  "Don't spoil it, my dear," she said; "a man should leave his prayer book behind when he falls in love with a woman like me."

  He grew rather grim.

  "What do you mean by that, Nan?"

  "Why—you dear big silly, I'm much too fond of you to marry you."

  "Isn't that the one reason why you should marry me?"

  She pinched his ear.

  "It might be. We are always taught to believe it, but it isn't always true. O—come along; don't be so serious."

  She was troubled by his seriousness, by his romantic sincerity, by the possessive note in his tenderness. In her knowledge of life as it is she was centuries older than he was. She understood all the c
ompromises, the social arrangements, the reservations with which Society solaces itself, and she regarded marriage as the greatest and most dangerous of compromises. She did not want to marry Jordan because she wanted to keep him as her lover. As a husband he might be an uncommonly awkward problem. She recognized him as one of those big-hearted creatures who manage to settle down quite contentedly when the youth in them has had its adventures, and a wife and children and the sober affairs of living arrive. She knew that "settling down" was impossible for her—"Until I get into my coffin," as she put it. She was not made for marriage. She knew that Jordan was blind to those other sides of her character; he forgot the actress in her; he was unaware of her passion for money. Perhaps her love for him was the most generous feeling she had ever experienced. But she began to feel that they were nearing the crossroads, where he would insist on her choosing the road which meant comradeship for life.

  She began to be very careful. If he was to remain her lover there were certain worldly facts that had to be hidden from him. He was possessive, protective, the potential husband in his attitude towards her, and if anything were to open his eyes to the truth she knew that the shock would be passionate and fierce.

  She dreaded it. So much did she dread it that there were times when she thought of throwing her real self to the winds and marrying him, but always there was something in her, a generous yet cynical tenderness, which would not let her do it.

  "No," she said, "I am not going to inflict that sort of tragedy upon him. Even the other thing would be kinder. And they say a bad woman has no morals!"

  About that time, too, he began to insist that she should give up her masquerading with him against the mob. It was all part of his larger tenderness, his serious attitude towards her.

  She humoured him.

  "Just once more. Gossip has it, my dear, that there is to be a wild affair next week. We'll share that, and it shall be the last."

  "You promise, Nan?"

  "I promise."

  Nan's "wild affair" proved a wild affair indeed, for the Tory mob assembled in great strength by the Old Bailey, and in Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street. They marched down into the City to attack the Whigs at the Roebuck, but getting a hot reception, marched back to their own quarters. Meanwhile, the City Whigs had followed them up, and the Jacks found themselves caught between the City gentlemen and a body of Whigs from the western mug-houses, led by Jordan and Mr. Dick Derrydown. The battle was fought out in Fleet Street and on Ludgate Hill, and was a very brisk affair while it lasted.

  Nan had the skin over her knuckles broken, but Big Jordan was so well known to the Jacks and so wholesomely feared by them that they did not press their attentions upon him and the slim young fellow who fought at his side.

  The Whigs had budgeted for a victory, and when the Tory mob had betaken itself to its alleys, they collected the captured hats and sticks, lit torches and paraded the town. Heads were poked out of the windows to see them go by, and in a narrow part of the Strand three people were gathered at an upper window over a bookseller's shop. Mr. Maurice St. Croix had received a visit from Mr. Sylvester and his daughter, and on the landlady running up to say that the mob was out, they had thought it wiser to stay to supper.

  "I will see you home, sir, later, when all is quiet," said Maurice the dutiful.

  They were seated at the supper table when the Whig procession came up the Strand, singing Lilliburlero, and carrying the captured hats on their sticks. The street was narrow here, and the torches made a yellow glare between the rows of high houses. Maurice went to the window and opened it.

  "The Whigs!" said he; "they have thrashed the Papists. Come and wave a hand to good Protestants, Sis."

  Douce joined her brother, and Mr. Sylvester, having no quarrel with men who used such muscular vigour in defending all those principles of which he approved, followed Douce to the window. His high, polished forehead shone in the torchlight. Maurice was sitting sideways on the window-sill, with Douce close to him, her red hair coiled in plaits about her head. The smoke and the flames of the torches blurred the faces below; she saw the hats carried on sticks, the open mouths shouting the song. And suddenly her brother touched her arm, and glancing at him she was aware of the sneer on his face.

  "See the fellow in the white coat."

  Douce saw him. He was leading the march, with a slim young man walking arm in arm with him. She thought it was Jordan, but she was not sure.

  Maurice turned to his father.

  "There's Nando's adopted child. There, in the white coat, with Nan Sweethaws, the actress, hanging on his arm."

  Sylvester's eyes followed his son's pointing hand. He looked puzzled.

  "I cannot say that I see the actress, Maurice."

  Maurice laughed.

  "Quite right, sir—you think she's a man because she is not in petticoats. But she amuses herself by dressing up like a young fop and going about with Mr. Jordan."

  Sylvester looked shocked.

  "The depravity of the woman!" said he; "and that is the sort of woman March consorts with?"

  "She is his mistress, sir, if that is what you mean."

  "S'sh!" said his father with a glance at Douce.

  But Douce stood there paying no heed to either of them. She saw the crowd below as a mass of meaningless faces, bobbing hats and marching feet. The torches flared; the Whigs roared their song, but Douce was conscious of a tragic stillness within her.

  Her eyes were dark and very sad. Her left hand had twisted itself into the curtain. The woman in her suffered envy and pity, anger and regret.

  "He was not bad in the beginning," she thought; "why does not some good woman save him?"

  And at the back of her consciousness was the suppressed desire that she might be that woman.

  XVI

  Nan was troubled.

  "What is to be done with the man?" she asked herself. "He will marry me in spite of myself if I am not careful."

  Every night he came to the theatre and, waiting till the play was over, took grave possession of her and snatched her away from the many gentlemen who professed to be in love with her. He made her put on her cloak, and, if the night were fine, he gave her his arm as far as Lavender Cottage. If it was raining or the streets were foul, he called a chair, packed her into it, and walked beside it to her home. Moreover, his devotion was perfectly sincere and natural; he was not an exacting lover, and it was this steadfast tenderness of his which began to make her afraid.

  "What have I done?" she asked herself. "Here is a pretty problem for a little devil of a woman! As things are, I might just as well be married to him. If only he were not what he is!"

  There were times when she seemed moody and impatient, because Jordan's love had begun to hurt her, and she did not wish to be hurt. All her experience of life—the life of a woman who stands for herself against the world—had inculcated hardness, the necessity for a humorous cynicism. Neither did she want to hurt Jordan, and she began to foresee the inevitableness of the wound. In the beginning she had believed that the affair could be arranged, that she could teach him to laugh with her at the things that did not matter to her, and to accept the game as a game. But he was not like that. He was different from all the other men who had loved her. His seriousness, his romantic freshness made impossible the working of her plan. There was nothing of the careless, casual rake in him. That was the trouble.

  And yet she did not want to let him go.

  "Nan—when are you going to give me an answer?"

  "To what, my dear?"

  He looked at her with grave intentness.

  "You know very well. When are you going to marry me?"

  To gain time she pretended to be roguish and provoking.

  "When you see two moons in the sky."

  But it hurt her.

  "Fool," she thought, "dear fool, why must I seem to you so much better than I am? Oh, it would be so much easier if you saw the real woman in me. But I was the fool. It is more my fault than yours."
/>
  She decided to temporize, and she worked out a plan by which it might be possible for her to be herself and to keep her lover.

  "I am not the kind of woman, my dear, that you ought to marry. Must you think of marriage?"

  "I'm not going to be content with anything else, Nan. You will still be Nancy of Lincoln's Inn Fields."

  "Shall I!" she said, "shall I! But if you mean to be serious—I shall be serious too."

  "I am asking you to be serious."

  "But not in the way you mean! I'm very fond of you, you great big thing—but am I fond enough of you to marry you? That's what I want to find out."

  "Don't you know?" he asked her.

  She took his grave face between her hands and kissed him.

  "No—I don't. Look at it with my eyes, my dear. Don't you see that it might mean my having to give up everything? Do you think this wild and wicked bird would be happy in a cage?"

  "Where is the cage?"

  "Is not marriage a cage? Yes—it is all very well for some gentle, tame, quiet woman, but for me? Now listen: if you are still of the same mind, I am going to play the little tyrant."

  "Well, Nan, you will have to play the tyrant."

  "I take you at your word, my lad. You will give up coming to fetch me from the theatre. You will be allowed to see me twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays. D'you see?"

  "I can't say that I do."

  "Listen. I am going to give myself and you six months' schooling. I want to see if you can learn your lesson while I try to learn mine. At the end of the six months I will give you my answer."

  "It means that I must see you only twice a week, Nan?"

  "It does. Now, most of the day you are teaching these gentlemen to fence. Supposing I give you Tuesday and Friday evening, when the play is over, if I am playing?"