That lady, Janet,—Janet Rockingham Welford, as her name was given in full on the title pages of several novels and below the columns of articles in The New World—was an old friend of Bertram’s. Not old herself, for she was on the vital side of thirty, but they had played together and pulled each other’s hair at a kindergarten in the Cromwell Road, read fairy tales together under the trees in Kensington Gardens, and, years later, had met each other at “parties” in the wonderful remote days before the War—was it a thousand years ago, or in another life. After that they had not met until, surprisingly, one night, in Christy’s rooms.
While Bertram had been in the trenches, Janet had been at Boulogne, with more buttons to her uniform than Bertram could boast, driving ambulances and maimed men from the railway to the “clearing stations,” after a wild three months with a convoy in Belgium, when she was often under fire in Dixmude and Pervyse, more reckless of danger than the Belgian officers and English stretcher-bearers.
Now she was living in a little flat in Overstrand Mansions, Battersea Park, writing audacious fiction (Bertram blushed when reading it), pacifist articles (rather too bitter!), and occasional verse—very mystical—for evening newspapers. She also found time to play the companion and guide to blinded soldiers in Regent’s Park, to act as secretary of a Socialist club, to speak at Labour meetings, to give evenings at home to young men and women of advanced views, and to call on Christy for inspiration, advice, and intellectual refreshment.
She was what she called “decidedly Left but not extreme.” Bertram, after some conversational enquiries and experiences, found her so extreme that he could see no further way “Left” than instant and bloody onslaught against established order. Her political, social and moral views made him feel that his hair was rising on his scalp. She frightened him. She also attracted him by an irresistible gaiety and audacity—by an overflowing good nature and joy of life.
The first time he’d met her in Christy’s rooms, she had come in like a gust of south wind, calling Christy absurd, newly-invented names because he had failed to come to one of her “receptions.”
“You reptilian, hypersensitive Bohunk! You self-absorbed, psychoanalytical Pumpdoodlum!”
Then she had seen Bertram, with an instant recognition met by a slow-dawning remembrance in his mind. Those big, brown eyes, that short, straight nose, that whimsical, biggish mouth—in what former life had he seen this girl, kissed her, if he remembered well, pulled that mass of coiled hair, not coiled so neatly then?— Why, yes, Janet Welford!
She made a dart at him and seized him by a coat lapel.
“Bertram Pollard, by all that’s romantic! My boy lover of Cromwell Road! My dream knight of Kensington! He whom first I kissed, and would gladly do again, but for maidenly modesty and Luke Christy! Lord, how my little heart throbs within this silken bodice!”
Of course he was utterly embarrassed, shy as a schoolboy, red-faced as a cut beetroot.