“If a rat in a trap or a squirrel in a cage is happy, then perhaps I am. I hate the life I’m living. Yes, I do, I hate it. If it weren’t for Noel and Madame Claire, I’d—I don’t know what I’d do. Something pretty desperate, just to get away from it.”
He sat looking at her as if he couldn’t trust his own senses. She couldn’t be serious.
“You’re a sentimentalist,” she went on. “You believe what you like to believe. I suppose you’ve imagined all sorts of pretty things about me. I assure you, that rather than go on living as I’ve been living, I’d change places with the between-maid in our kitchen. It wasn’t so bad during the war. I did nursing then. But now, because I’m the only daughter, mother and father won’t hear of my taking up any sort of work. I go once a week to Bermondsy to teach a class of girls hat-trimming, and even that’s frowned upon because I once got measles there. No, I’m expected to sit with folded hands until some young man comes along and marries me. Isn’t it extraordinary, in this day and age?”
Chip was still speechless.
“And I’ll go on like this till I die, I suppose, or marry somebody out of sheer boredom. And I keep asking myself what I ought to do. What would some one else do in my place? Should I simply walk out of the house, and try to live my own life? But where would I go, and what would I do? I’ve no training except nursing, and I should hate ordinary, peace-time nursing. And would it be fair to my family, who after all have spent a great deal of money on me? And each year I think, ‘Next year is sure to be different,’ but it isn’t. It’s exactly the same, or worse, and I’m a year older and have accomplished nothing. If it had been my lot to live in the country, I expect I would have hunted, or perhaps kept a lot of dogs, or looked after a garden. But as it is …”
She broke off. Captain Stevens descended on them to ask her to dance again, but she shook her head.
“I’m not a bit in the mood for it to-night. Look, the Winslow girls have just come. They’re heavenly dancers.”
Captain Stevens went, after a curious glance at Chip. Who was the fellow in the antiquated evening clothes, who was so quiet at dinner? A “oner” with the ladies, at any rate.
Judy turned once more to Chip.
“I’ve been perfectly beastly,” she said. “But I feel better for it. And if I’ve destroyed a lot of your illusions, I’m sorry, but at least you know more of Judy Pendleton than you did.”