Jumping Jenny Read Online Free PDF

Roger nodded, with sympathetic understanding. “Shall I strangle the woman for you?”
    “I wish to heaven someone would,” said Mrs. Lefroy, with sudden bitterness. “We all do.”
    Roger examined his fingernails. “If I were Mistress Ena Stratton,” he thought to himself, “I’d watch my step.”
III
    In the end the introduction was effected with complete ease.
    “Oh, Ena,” said Ronald Stratton, “I don’t think you’ve met Roger Sheringham yet, have you? Mr. Sheringham, my sister-in-law.”
    Ena Stratton looked at Roger with large eyes swimming with discipleship, weltschmerz, humble pride, and all the other things with which a high-souled young woman’s eyes should swim when confronted with a successful author. Roger saw that these proper emotions were being registered for him almost automatically.
    “How do you do?” he said, without any weltschmerz at all.
    Ena Stratton was a young woman of about twenty-seven. She was moderately tall, of good, athletic-looking figure, with dark, almost black hair, which she wore cut in a straight fringe across her already rather low forehead; her hands and feet were on the large side. Her face was neither exactly ugly, nor exactly pretty. It was a hag-ridden face, Roger thought, with big grey eyes whose promise was counteracted by the wide, thin-lipped cruelty of her mouth. When she smiled, the corners of her mouth seemed in some curious way to be drawn downwards rather than up. There were innumerable wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and two deeply graven lines running down from her nostrils. Her complexion was sallow.
    Judging by appearances, Roger thought, not a nice person. He wondered why David Stratton had married her. Presumably she had looked nicer then. That neurotic type stamps its own face very early.
    “Shall we dance?” said Roger.
    “I’d rather have a drink. I haven’t had one for at least half an hour.” She spoke slowly, and her voice was not unpleasant, rather deep and with a particularly clear enunciation. She managed to convey that for a woman of her sophistication not to have had a drink for at least half an hour was quite too ridiculous.
    Roger piloted her to the bar, and asked what she would have.
    “A whisky, please. And don’t drown it.”
    Roger gave her a stiff whisky-and-soda, and she tasted it.
    “I think I’ll have a little more whisky in this, please. I like it almost neat, you know.”
    “Ass of a woman !” thought Roger. “Why does she imagine it’s clever to like her whisky neat, and a good deal too much of it at that?” He handed her the amended drink.
    “Thanks. Yes, that’s better. I feel like getting drunk to-night.”
    “Do you?” said Roger lamely.
    “Yes. I don’t often feel like that, but I do to-night. Really, sometimes getting drunk seems the only thing worthwhile in life. Don’t you ever feel like that?”
    “Only in private,” said Roger, rather prudishly. He noticed that she was repeating a set of remarks which he had overheard earlier, almost word for word. Evidently Mrs. Stratton was extremely proud of her own appreciation of intemperance.
    “Oh,” she expostulated, “there’s no point in getting drunk in private.”
    In other words, thought Roger, she admits to being an exhibitionist. Well, that was probably exactly what she was: an exhibitionist. And rather a crude one at that.
    Aloud he said:
    “By the way, I really must congratulate you on your dress, Mrs. Stratton. It’s extremely good. Just like Mrs. Pearcey’s in Madame Tussaud’s. I recognised her at once. How very brave of you to come as a charwoman, hat and all, against such competition.”
    “Competition? Oh, you mean Celia, and Mrs. Lefroy. But you see, I’m a character-actress. Costume parts don’t interest me at all. Anyone can do a costume part, don’t you think?”
    “Can they?”
    “Oh, yes, I think so. Of course one of my best parts actually was a costume one. Did you see ‘Sweet Nell of Old Drury’? No? It was a