“Doesn’t she do anything?” Eddy asked sceptically, and Arnold answered him.
“Our Bridget? Sally only means she’s a lily of the field. She writes not, neither does she paint. She only mothers those who do, and hauls them out of scrapes. Eileen lives with her, you know, in a flat in Kensington. She tries to look after Eileen. Quite enough of a job, besides tending all the other ingenuous young persons of both sexes she has under her wing.”
Eddy watched her as she talked to Eileen Le Moine; a vivid, impatient, alive person, full of quips and cranks and quiddities and a constant flow of words. He could see, foreshortened, Eileen Le Moine’s face—very attractive, as Sally had said; broad brows below dark hair, rounded cheeks with deep dimples that came and went in them, great deep blue, black-lashed eyes, a wide mouth of soft, generous curves, a mouth that could look sulky but always had amusement lurking in it, and a round, decisive chin. She was perhaps four or five and twenty; a brilliant, perverse young person, full of the fun of living, an artist, a pleasure-lover, a spoilt child, who probably could be sullen, who certainly was wayward and self-willed, who had genius and charm and ideas and a sublime independence of other people’s codes, and possibly an immense untapped spring of generous self-sacrifice. She had probably been too like Cecil Le Moine (only more than he was, every way) to live with him; each would need something more still and restful as a permanent companion. They had no doubt been well advised to part, thought Eddy, who did not agree with James Peters about that way of regarding marriage.
“Isn’t Miss Carruthers ripping as Myra,” whispered Sally. “Cecil wrote it for her, you know. He says there’s no one else on the stage.”
Jane put up a hand to silence her, because the curtain had risen.
At the end the author was called and had a good reception; on the whole “Squibs” had been a success. Eddy looked up and saw Eileen Le Moine looking pleased and smiling as they clapped her boyish-looking husband—an amused, sisterly, half ironic smile. It struck Eddy as the smile she must inevitably give Cecil, and it seemed to illumine their whole relations. She couldn’t, certainly, be the least in love with him, and yet she must like him very much, to smile like that now that they were parted.
As Jane and Sally and Eddy and Billy Raymond rode down Holborn on their bus (Arnold had walked to Soho, where he lived) Eddy, sitting next Jane, asked “Did you like it?” being curious about Jane’s point of view.
She smiled. “Yes, of course. Wouldn’t anyone?” Eddy could have answered the question, instancing Hillier or James Peters, or his own parents or, indeed, many other critics. But Jane’s “anyone” he surmised to have a narrow meaning; anyone, she meant, of our friends; anyone of the sort one naturally comes into contact with. (Jane’s outlook was through a narrow gate on to woods unviolated by the common tourist; her experience was delicate, exquisite, and limited).
She added, “Of course it’s just a baby’s thing. He is just a baby, you know.”
“I should like to get to know him,” said Eddy. “He’s extraordinarily pleasing,” and she nodded.