Yet in the end it was Carleton who opened the door for her.
Mrs. Denton was helpful, and would have been more so, if Joan had only understood. Mrs. Denton lived alone in an old house in Gower Street, with a high stone hall that was always echoing to sounds that no one but itself could ever hear. Her son had settled, it was supposed, in one of the Colonies. No one knew what had become of him, and Mrs. Denton herself never spoke of him; while her daughter, on whom she had centred all her remaining hopes, had died years ago. To those who remembered the girl, with her weak eyes and wispy ginger coloured hair, it would have seemed comical, the idea that Joan resembled her. But Mrs. Denton’s memory had lost itself in dreams; and to her the likeness had appeared quite wonderful. The gods had given her child back to her, grown strong and brave and clever. Life would have a new meaning for her. Her work would not die with her.
She thought she could harness Joan’s enthusiasm to her own wisdom. She would warn her of the errors and pitfalls into which she herself had fallen: for she, too, had started as a rebel. Youth should begin where age left off. Had the old lady remembered a faded dogs-eared volume labelled “Oddments” that for many years had rested undisturbed upon its shelf in her great library, and opening it had turned to the letter E, she would have read recorded there, in her own precise thin penmanship, this very wise reflection:
“Experience is a book that all men write, but no man reads.”
To which she would have found added, by way of complement, “Experience is untranslatable. We write it in the cipher of our sufferings, and the key is hidden in our memories.”
And turning to the letter Y, she might have read:
“Youth comes to teach. Age remains to listen,” and underneath the following:
“The ability to learn is the last lesson we acquire.”
Mrs. Denton had long ago given up the practice of jotting down her thoughts, experience having taught her that so often, when one comes to use them, one finds that one has changed them. But in the case of Joan the recollection of these twin “oddments” might have saved her disappointment. Joan knew of a new road that avoided Mrs. Denton’s pitfalls. She grew impatient of being perpetually pulled back.
For theNursing Timesshe wrote a series of condensed biographies, entitled “Ladies of the Lamp,” commencing with Elizabeth Fry. They formed a record of good women who had battled for the weak and suffering, winning justice for even the uninteresting. Miss Lavery was delighted with them. But when Joan proposed exposing the neglect and even cruelty too often inflicted upon the helpless patients of private Nursing Homes, Miss Lavery shook her head.
“I know,” she said. “One does hear complaints about them. Unfortunately it is one of the few businesses managed entirely by women; and just now, in particular, if we were to say anything, it would be made use of by our enemies to injure the Cause.”
There was a summer years ago—it came back to Joan’s mind—when she had shared lodgings with a girl chum at a crowded sea-side watering-place. The rooms were shockingly dirty; and tired of dropping hints she determined one morning to clean them herself. She climbed a chair and started on a row of shelves where lay the dust of ages. It was a jerry-built house, and the result was that she brought the whole lot down about her head, together with a quarter of a hundred-weight of plaster.
“Yes, I thought you’d do some mischief,” had commented the landlady, wearily.
It seemed typical. A jerry-built world, apparently. With the best intentions it seemed impossible to move in it without doing more harm than good to it, bringing things down about one that one had not intended.
She wanted to abolish steel rabbit-traps. She had heard the little beggars cry. It had struck her as such a harmless reform. But they told her there were worthy people in the neighbourhood of Wolverhampton—quite a number of them—who made their living by the manufacture of steel rabbit-traps. If, thinking only of the rabbits, you prohibited steel rabbit-traps, then you condemned all these worthy people to slow starvation. The local Mayor himself wrote in answer to her article. He drew a moving picture of the sad results that might follow such an ill-considered agitation: hundreds of grey-haired men, too old to learn new jobs, begging from door to door; shoals of little children, white-faced and pinched; sobbing women. Her editor was sorry for the rabbits. Had often spent a pleasant day with them himself. But, after all, the Human Race claimed our first sympathies.
She wanted to abolish sweating. She had climbed the rotting stairways, seen the famished creatures in their holes. But it seemed that if you interfered with the complicated system based on sweating then you dislocated the entire structure of the British export clothing trade. Not only would these poor creatures lose their admittedly wretched living—but still a living—but thousands of other innocent victims would also be involved in the common ruin. All very sad, but half a loaf—or even let us frankly say a thin slice—is better than no bread at all.
She wanted board school children’s heads examined. She had examined one or two herself. It seemed to her wrong that healthy children should be compelled to sit for hours within jumping distance of the diseased. She thought it better that the dirty should be made fit company for the clean than the clean should be brought down to the level of the dirty. It seemed that in doing this you were destroying the independence of the poor. Opposition reformers, in letters scintillating with paradox, bristling with classical allusion, denounced her attempt to impose middle-class ideals upon a too long suffering proletariat. Better far a few lively little heads than a broken-spirited people robbed of their parental rights.
Through Miss Lavery she obtained an introduction to the great Sir William. He owned a group of popular provincial newspapers, and was most encouraging. Sir William had often said to himself:
“What can I do for God who has done so much for me?” It seemed only fair.
He asked her down to his “little place in Hampshire,” to talk plans over. The “little place,” it turned out, ran to forty bedrooms, and was surrounded by three hundred acres of park. God had evidently done his bit quite handsomely.
It was in a secluded corner of the park that Sir William had gone down upon one knee and gallantly kissed her hand. His idea was that if she could regard herself as his “Dear Lady,” and allow him the honour and privilege of being her “True Knight,” that, between them, they might accomplish something really useful. There had been some difficulty about his getting up again, Sir William being an elderly gentleman subject to rheumatism, and Joan had had to expend no small amount of muscular effort in assisting him; so that the episode which should have been symbolical ended by leaving them both red and breathless.
He referred to the matter again the same evening in the library while Lady William slept peacefully in the blue drawing-room; but as it appeared necessary that the compact should be sealed by a knightly kiss Joan had failed to ratify it.
She blamed herself on her way home. The poor old gentleman could easily have been kept in his place. The suffering of an occasional harmless caress would have purchased for her power and opportunity. Had it not been somewhat selfish of her? Should she write to him—see him again?
She knew that she never would. It was something apart from her reason. It would not even listen to her. It bade or forbade as if one were a child without any right to a will of one’s own. It was decidedly exasperating.
There were others. There were the editors who frankly told her that the business of a newspaper was to write what its customers wanted to read; and that the public, so far as they could judge, was just about fed up with plans for New Jerusalems at their expense. And the editors who were prepared to take up any number of reforms, insisting only that they should be new and original and promise popularity.
And then she met Greyson.
It was at a lunch given by Mrs. Denton. Greyson was a bachelor and lived with an unmarried sister, a few years older than himself. He was editor and part proprietor of an evening paper. It had ideals and was, in consequence, regarded by the general public with suspicion; but by reason of sincerity and braininess was rapidly becoming a power. He was a shy, reserved man with an aristocratic head set upon stooping shoulders. The face was that of a dreamer, but about the mouth there was suggestion of the fighter. Joan felt at her ease with him in spite of the air of detachment that seemed part of his character. Mrs. Denton had paired them off together; and, during the lunch, one of them—Joan could not remember which—had introduced the subject of reincarnation.
Greyson was unable to accept the theory because of the fact that, in old age, the mind in common with the body is subject to decay.
“Perhaps by the time I am forty—or let us say fifty,” he argued, “I shall be a bright, intelligent being. If I die then, well and good. I select a likely baby and go straight on. But suppose I hang about till eighty and die a childish old gentleman with a mind all gone to seed. What am I going to do then? I shall have to begin all over again: perhaps worse off than I was before. That’s not going to help us much.”
Joan explained it to him: that old age might be likened to an illness. A genius lies upon a bed of sickness and babbles childish nonsense. But with returning life he regains his power, goes on increasing it. The mind, the soul, has not decayed. It is the lines of communication that old age has destroyed.
“But surely you don’t believe it?” he demanded.
“Why not?” laughed Joan. “All things are possible. It was the possession of a hand that transformed monkeys into men. We used to take things up, you know, and look at them, and wonder and wonder and wonder, till at last there was born a thought and the world became visible. It is curiosity that will lead us to the next great discovery. We must take things up; and think and think and think till one day there will come knowledge, and we shall see the universe.”
Joan always avoided getting excited when she thought of it.
“I love to make you excited,” Flossie had once confessed to her in the old student days. “You look so ridiculously young and you are so pleased with yourself, laying down the law.”
She did not know she had given way to it. He was leaning back in his chair, looking at her; and the tired look she had noticed in his eyes, when she had been introduced to him in the drawing-room, had gone out of them.
During the coffee, Mrs. Denton beckoned him to come to her; and Miss Greyson crossed over and took his vacant chair. She had been sitting opposite to them.
“I’ve been hearing so much about you,” she said. “I can’t help thinking that you ought to suit my brother’s paper. He has all your ideas. Have you anything that you could send him?”
Joan considered a moment.
“Nothing very startling,” she answered. “I was thinking of a series of articles on the old London Churches—touching upon the people connected with them and the things they stood for. I’ve just finished the first one.”
“It ought to be the very thing,” answered Miss Greyson. She was a thin, faded woman with a soft, plaintive voice. “It will enable him to judge your style. He’s particular about that. Though I’m confident he’ll like it,” she hastened to add. “Address it to me, will you. I assist him as much as I can.”
Joan added a few finishing touches that evening, and posted it; and a day or two later received a note asking her to call at the office.
“My sister is enthusiastic about your article on Chelsea Church and insists on my taking the whole series,” Greyson informed her. “She says you have the Stevensonian touch.”
Joan flushed with pleasure.
“And you,” she asked, “did you think it had the Stevensonian touch?”
“No,” he answered, “it seemed to me to have more of your touch.”
“What’s that like?” she demanded.
“They couldn’t suppress you,” he explained. “Sir Thomas More with his head under his arm, bloody old Bluebeard, grim Queen Bess, snarling old Swift, Pope, Addison, Carlyle—the whole grisly crowd of them! I could see you holding your own against them all, explaining things to them, getting excited.” He laughed.
His sister joined them, coming in from the next room. She had a proposal to make. It was that Joan should take over the weekly letter from “Clorinda.” It was supposed to give the views of a—perhaps unusually—sane and thoughtful woman upon the questions of the day. Miss Greyson had hitherto conducted it herself, but was wishful as she explained to be relieved of it; so that she might have more time for home affairs. It would necessitate Joan’s frequent attendance at the office; for there would be letters from the public to be answered, and points to be discussed with her brother. She was standing behind his chair with her hands upon his head. There was something strangely motherly about her whole attitude.
Greyson was surprised, for the Letter had been her own conception, and had grown into a popular feature. But she was evidently in earnest; and Joan accepted willingly. “Clorinda” grew younger, more self-assertive; on the whole more human. But still so eminently “sane” and reasonable.
“We must not forget that she is quite a respectable lady, connected—according to her own account—with the higher political circles,” Joan’s editor would insist, with a laugh.
Miss Greyson, working in the adjoining room, would raise her head and listen. She loved to hear him laugh.
“It’s absurd,” Flossie told her one morning, as having met by chance they were walking home together along the Embankment. “You’re not ‘Clorinda’; you ought to be writing letters to her, not from her, waking her up, telling her to come off her perch, and find out what the earth feels like. I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll trot you round to Carleton. If you’re out for stirring up strife and contention, well, that’s his game, too. He’ll use you for his beastly sordid ends. He’d have roped in John the Baptist if he’d been running the ‘Jerusalem Star’ at the time, and have given him a daily column for so long as the boom lasted. What’s that matter, if he’s willing to give you a start?”
Joan jibbed at first. But in the end Flossie’s arguments prevailed. One afternoon, a week later, she was shown into Carleton’s private room, and the door closed behind her. The light was dim, and for a moment she could see no one; until Carleton, who had been standing near one of the windows, came forward and placed a chair for her. And they both sat down.
“I’ve glanced through some of your things,” he said. “They’re all right. They’re alive. What’s your idea?”
Remembering Flossie’s counsel, she went straight to the point. She wanted to talk to the people. She wanted to get at them. If she had been a man, she would have taken a chair and gone to Hyde Park. As it was, she hadn’t the nerve for Hyde Park. At least she was afraid she hadn’t. It might have to come to that. There was a trembling in her voice that annoyed her. She was so afraid she might cry. She wasn’t out for anything crazy. She wanted only those things done that could be done if the people would but lift their eyes, look into one another’s faces, see the wrong and the injustice that was all around them, and swear that they would never rest till the pain and the terror had been driven from the land. She wanted soldiers—men and women who would forget their own sweet selves, not counting their own loss, thinking of the greater gain; as in times of war and revolution, when men gave even their lives gladly for a dream, for a hope—
Without warning he switched on the electric lamp that stood upon the desk, causing her to draw back with a start.
“All right,” he said. “Go ahead. You shall have your tub, and a weekly audience of a million readers for as long as you can keep them interested. Up with anything you like, and down with everything you don’t. Be careful not to land me in a libel suit. Call the whole Bench of Bishops hypocrites, and all the ground landlords thieves, if you will: but don’t mention names. And don’t get me into trouble with the police. Beyond that, I shan’t interfere with you.”
She was about to speak.
“One stipulation,” he went on, “that every article is headed with your photograph.”
He read the sudden dismay in her eyes.
“How else do you think you are going to attract their attention?” he asked her. “By your eloquence! Hundreds of men and women as eloquent as you could ever be are shouting to them every day. Who takes any notice of them? Why should they listen any the more to you—another cranky highbrow: some old maid, most likely, with a bony throat and a beaky nose. If Woman is going to come into the fight she will have to use her own weapons. If she is prepared to do that she’ll make things hum with a vengeance. She’s the biggest force going, if she only knew it.”
He had risen and was pacing the room.
“The advertiser has found that out, and is showing the way.” He snatched at an illustrated magazine, fresh from the press, that had been placed upon his desk, and opened it at the first page. “Johnson’s Blacking,” he read out, “advertised by a dainty little minx, showing her ankles. Who’s going to stop for a moment to read about somebody’s blacking? If a saucy little minx isn’t there to trip him up with her ankles!”
He turned another page. “Do you suffer from gout? Classical lady preparing to take a bath and very nearly ready. The old Johnny in the train stops to look at her. Reads the advertisement because she seems to want him to. Rubber heels. Save your boot leather! Lady in evening dress—jolly pretty shoulders—waves them in front of your eyes. Otherwise you’d never think of them.”
He fluttered the pages. Then flung the thing across to her.
“Look at it,” he said. “Fountain pens—Corn plasters—Charitable appeals—Motor cars—Soaps—Grand pianos. It’s the girl in tights and spangles outside the show that brings them trooping in.”
“Let them see you,” he continued. “You say you want soldiers. Throw off your veil and call for them. Your namesake of France! Do you think if she had contented herself with writing stirring appeals that Orleans would have fallen? She put on a becoming suit of armour and got upon a horse where everyone could see her. Chivalry isn’t dead. You modern women are ashamed of yourselves—ashamed of your sex. You don’t give it a chance. Revive it. Stir the young men’s blood. Their souls will follow.”
He reseated himself and leant across towards her.
“I’m not talking business,” he said. “This thing’s not going to mean much to me one way or the other. I want you to win. Farm labourers bringing up families on twelve and six a week. Shirt hands working half into the night for three farthings an hour. Stinking dens for men to live in. Degraded women. Half fed children. It’s damnable. Tell them it’s got to stop. That the Eternal Feminine has stepped out of the poster and commands it.”
A dapper young man opened the door and put his head into the room.
“Railway smash in Yorkshire,” he announced.
Carleton sat up. “Much of a one?” he asked.
The dapper gentleman shrugged his shoulders. “Three killed, eight injured, so far,” he answered.
Carleton’s interest appeared to collapse.
“Stop press column?” asked the dapper gentleman.
“Yes, I suppose so,” replied Carleton. “Unless something better turns up.”
The dapper young gentleman disappeared. Joan had risen.
“May I talk it over with a friend?” she asked. “Myself, I’m inclined to accept.”
“You will, if you’re in earnest,” he answered. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours. Look in to-morrow afternoon, and see Finch. It will be for theSunday Post—the Inset. We use surfaced paper for that and can do you justice. Finch will arrange about the photograph.” He held out his hand. “Shall be seeing you again,” he said.
It was but a stone’s throw to the office of theEvening Gazette. She caught Greyson just as he was leaving and put the thing before him. His sister was with him.
He did not answer at first. He was walking to and fro; and, catching his foot in the waste paper basket, he kicked it savagely out of his way, so that the contents were scattered over the room.
“Yes, he’s right,” he said. “It was the Virgin above the altar that popularized Christianity. Her face has always been woman’s fortune. If she’s going to become a fighter, it will have to be her weapon.”
He had used almost the same words that Carleton had used.
“I so want them to listen to me,” she said. “After all, it’s only like having a very loud voice.”
He looked at her and smiled. “Yes,” he said, “it’s a voice men will listen to.”
Mary Greyson was standing by the fire. She had not spoken hitherto.
“You won’t give up ‘Clorinda’?” she asked.
Joan had intended to do so, but something in Mary’s voice caused her, against her will, to change her mind.
“Of course not,” she answered. “I shall run them both. It will be like writing Jekyll and Hyde.”
“What will you sign yourself?” he asked.
“My own name, I think,” she said. “Joan Allway.”
Miss Greyson suggested her coming home to dinner with them; but Joan found an excuse. She wanted to be alone.
The twilight was fading as she left the office. She turned northward, choosing a broad, ill-lighted road. It did not matter which way she took. She wanted to think; or, rather, to dream.
It would all fall out as she had intended. She would commence by becoming a power in journalism. She was reconciled now to the photograph idea—was even keen on it herself. She would be taken full face so that she would be looking straight into the eyes of her readers as she talked to them. It would compel her to be herself; just a hopeful, loving woman: a little better educated than the majority, having had greater opportunity: a little further seeing, maybe, having had more leisure for thought: but otherwise, no whit superior to any other young, eager woman of the people. This absurd journalistic pose of omniscience, of infallibility—this non-existent garment of supreme wisdom that, like the King’s clothes in the fairy story, was donned to hide his nakedness by every strutting nonentity of Fleet Street! She would have no use for it. It should be a friend, a comrade, a fellow-servant of the great Master, taking counsel with them, asking their help. Government by the people for the people! It must be made real. These silent, thoughtful-looking workers, hurrying homewards through the darkening streets; these patient, shrewd-planning housewives casting their shadows on the drawn-down blinds: it was they who should be shaping the world, not the journalists to whom all life was but so much “copy.” This monstrous conspiracy, once of the Sword, of the Church, now of the Press, that put all Government into the hands of a few stuffy old gentlemen, politicians, leader writers, without sympathy or understanding: it was time that it was swept away. She would raise a new standard. It should be, not “Listen to me, oh ye dumb,” but, “Speak to me. Tell me your hidden hopes, your fears, your dreams. Tell me your experience, your thoughts born of knowledge, of suffering.”
She would get into correspondence with them, go among them, talk to them. The difficulty, at first, would be in getting them to write to her, to open their minds to her. These voiceless masses that never spoke, but were always being spoken for by self-appointed “leaders,” “representatives,” who immediately they had climbed into prominence took their place among the rulers, and then from press and platform shouted to them what they were to think and feel. It was as if the Drill-Sergeant were to claim to be the “leader,” the “representative” of his squad; or the sheep-dog to pose as the “delegate” of the sheep. Dealt with always as if they were mere herds, mere flocks, they had almost lost the power of individual utterance. One would have to teach them, encourage them.
She remembered a Sunday class she had once conducted; and how for a long time she had tried in vain to get the children to “come in,” to take a hand. That she might get in touch with them, understand their small problems, she had urged them to ask questions. And there had fallen such long silences. Until, at last, one cheeky ragamuffin had piped out:
“Please, Miss, have you got red hair all over you? Or only on your head?”
For answer she had rolled up her sleeve, and let them examine her arm. And then, in her turn, had insisted on rolling up his sleeve, revealing the fact that his arms above the wrists had evidently not too recently been washed; and the episode had ended in laughter and a babel of shrill voices. And, at once, they were a party of chums, discussing matters together.
They were but children, these tired men and women, just released from their day’s toil, hastening homeward to their play, or to their evening tasks. A little humour, a little understanding, a recognition of the wonderful likeness of us all to one another underneath our outward coverings was all that was needed to break down the barrier, establish comradeship. She stood aside a moment to watch them streaming by. Keen, strong faces were among them, high, thoughtful brows, kind eyes; they must learn to think, to speak for themselves.
She would build again the Forum. The people’s business should no longer be settled for them behind lackey-guarded doors. The good of the farm labourer should be determined not exclusively by the squire and his relations. The man with the hoe, the man with the bent back and the patient ox-like eyes: he, too, should be invited to the Council board. Middle-class domestic problems should be solved not solely by fine gentlemen from Oxford; the wife of the little clerk should be allowed her say. War or peace, it should no longer be regarded as a question concerning only the aged rich. The common people—the cannon fodder, the men who would die, and the women who would weep: they should be given something more than the privilege of either cheering platform patriots or being summoned for interrupting public meetings.
From a dismal side street there darted past her a small, shapeless figure in crumpled cap and apron: evidently a member of that lazy, over-indulged class, the domestic servant. Judging from the talk of the drawing-rooms, the correspondence in the papers, a singularly unsatisfactory body. They toiled not, lived in luxury and demanded grand pianos. Someone had proposed doing something for them. They themselves—it seemed that even they had a sort of conscience—were up in arms against it. Too much kindness even they themselves perceived was bad for them. They were holding a meeting that night to explain how contented they were. Six peeresses had consented to attend, and speak for them.
Likely enough that there were good-for-nothing, cockered menials imposing upon incompetent mistresses. There were pampered slaves in Rome. But these others. These poor little helpless sluts. There were thousands such in every city, over-worked and under-fed, living lonely, pleasureless lives. They must be taught to speak in other voices than the dulcet tones of peeresses. By the light of the guttering candles, from their chill attics, they should write to her their ill-spelt visions.
She had reached a quiet, tree-bordered road, surrounding a great park. Lovers, furtively holding hands, passed her by, whispering.
She would write books. She would choose for her heroine a woman of the people. How full of drama, of tragedy must be their stories: their problems the grim realities of life, not only its mere sentimental embroideries. The daily struggle for bare existence, the ever-shadowing menace of unemployment, of illness, leaving them helpless amid the grinding forces crushing them down on every side. The ceaseless need for courage, for cunning. For in the kingdom of the poor the tyrant and the oppressor still sit in the high places, the robber still rides fearless.
In a noisy, flaring street, a thin-clad woman passed her, carrying a netted bag showing two loaves. In a flash, it came to her what it must mean to the poor; this daily bread that in comfortable homes had come to be regarded as a thing like water; not to be considered, to be used without stint, wasted, thrown about. Borne by those feeble, knotted hands, Joan saw it revealed as something holy: hallowed by labour; sanctified by suffering, by sacrifice; worshipped with fear and prayer.
In quiet streets of stately houses, she caught glimpses through uncurtained windows of richly-laid dinner-tables about which servants moved noiselessly, arranging flowers and silver. She wondered idly if she would every marry. A gracious hostess, gathering around her brilliant men and women, statesmen, writers, artists, captains of industry: counselling them, even learning from them: encouraging shy genius. Perhaps, in a perfectly harmless way, allowing it the inspiration derivable from a well-regulated devotion to herself. A salon that should be the nucleus of all those forces that influence influences, over which she would rule with sweet and wise authority. The idea appealed to her.
Into the picture, slightly to the background, she unconsciously placed Greyson. His tall, thin figure with its air of distinction seemed to fit in; Greyson would be very restful. She could see his handsome, ascetic face flush with pleasure as, after the guests were gone, she would lean over the back of his chair and caress for a moment his dark, soft hair tinged here and there with grey. He would always adore her, in that distant, undemonstrative way of his that would never be tiresome or exacting. They would have children. But not too many. That would make the house noisy and distract her from her work. They would be beautiful and clever; unless all the laws of heredity were to be set aside for her especial injury. She would train them, shape them to be the heirs of her labour, bearing her message to the generations that should follow.
At a corner where the trams and buses stopped she lingered for a while, watching the fierce struggle; the weak and aged being pushed back time after time, hardly seeming to even resent it, regarding it as in the natural order of things. It was so absurd, apart from the injustice, the brutality of it! The poor, fighting among themselves! She felt as once when watching a crowd of birds to whom she had thrown a handful of crumbs in winter time. As if they had not enemies enough: cats, weasels, rats, hawks, owls, the hunger and the cold. And added to all, they must needs make the struggle yet harder for one another: pecking at each other’s eyes, joining with one another to attack the fallen. These tired men, these weary women, pale-faced lads and girls, why did they not organize among themselves some system that would do away with this daily warfare of each against all. If only they could be got to grasp the fact that they were one family, bound together by suffering. Then, and not till then, would they be able to make their power felt? That would have to come first: theEsprit de Corpsof the Poor.
In the end she would go into Parliament. It would be bound to come soon, the woman’s vote. And after that the opening of all doors would follow. She would wear her college robes. It would be far more fitting than a succession of flimsy frocks that would have no meaning in them. What pity it was that the art of dressing—its relation to life—was not better understood. What beauty-hating devil had prompted the workers to discard their characteristic costumes that had been both beautiful and serviceable for these hateful slop-shop clothes that made them look like walking scarecrows. Why had the coming of Democracy coincided seemingly with the spread of ugliness: dull towns, mean streets, paper-strewn parks, corrugated iron roofs, Christian chapels that would be an insult to a heathen idol; hideous factories (Why need they be hideous!); chimney-pot hats, baggy trousers, vulgar advertisements, stupid fashions for women that spoilt every line of their figure: dinginess, drabness, monotony everywhere. It was ugliness that was strangling the soul of the people; stealing from them all dignity, all self-respect, all honour for one another; robbing them of hope, of reverence, of joy in life.
Beauty. That was the key to the riddle. All Nature: its golden sunsets and its silvery dawns; the glory of piled-up clouds, the mystery of moonlit glades; its rivers winding through the meadows; the calling of its restless seas; the tender witchery of Spring; the blazonry of autumn woods; its purple moors and the wonder of its silent mountains; its cobwebs glittering with a thousand jewels; the pageantry of starry nights. Form, colour, music! The feathered choristers of bush and brake raising their matin and their evensong, the whispering of the leaves, the singing of the waters, the voices of the winds. Beauty and grace in every living thing, but man. The leaping of the hares, the grouping of cattle, the flight of swallows, the dainty loveliness of insects’ wings, the glossy skin of horses rising and falling to the play of mighty muscles. Was it not seeking to make plain to us that God’s language was beauty. Man must learn beauty that he may understand God.
She saw the London of the future. Not the vision popular just then: a soaring whirl of machinery in motion, of moving pavements and flying omnibuses; of screaming gramophones and standardized “homes”: a city where Electricity was King and man its soulless slave. But a city of peace, of restful spaces, of leisured men and women; a city of fine streets and pleasant houses, where each could live his own life, learning freedom, individuality; a city of noble schools; of workshops that should be worthy of labour, filled with light and air; smoke and filth driven from the land: science, no longer bound to commercialism, having discovered cleaner forces; a city of gay playgrounds where children should learn laughter; of leafy walks where the creatures of the wood and field should be as welcome guests helping to teach sympathy and kindliness: a city of music, of colour, of gladness. Beauty worshipped as religion; ugliness banished as a sin: no ugly slums, no ugly cruelty, no slatternly women and brutalized men, no ugly, sobbing children; no ugly vice flaunting in every highway its insult to humanity: a city clad in beauty as with a living garment where God should walk with man.
She had reached a neighbourhood of narrow, crowded streets. The women were mostly without hats; and swarthy men, rolling cigarettes, lounged against doorways. The place had a quaint foreign flavour. Tiny cafés, filled with smoke and noise, and clean, inviting restaurants abounded. She was feeling hungry, and, choosing one the door of which stood open, revealing white tablecloths and a pleasant air of cheerfulness, she entered. It was late and the tables were crowded. Only at one, in a far corner, could she detect a vacant place, opposite to a slight, pretty-looking girl very quietly dressed. She made her way across and the girl, anticipating her request, welcomed her with a smile. They ate for a while in silence, divided only by the narrow table, their heads, when they leant forward, almost touching. Joan noticed the short, white hands, the fragrance of some delicate scent. There was something odd about her. She seemed to be unnecessarily conscious of being alone. Suddenly she spoke.
“Nice little restaurant, this,” she said. “One of the few places where you can depend upon not being annoyed.”
Joan did not understand. “In what way?” she asked.
“Oh, you know, men,” answered the girl. “They come and sit down opposite to you, and won’t leave you alone. At most of the places, you’ve got to put up with it or go outside. Here, old Gustav never permits it.”
Joan was troubled. She was rather looking forward to occasional restaurant dinners, where she would be able to study London’s Bohemia.
“You mean,” she asked, “that they force themselves upon you, even if you make it plain—”
“Oh, the plainer you make it that you don’t want them, the more sport they think it,” interrupted the girl with a laugh.
Joan hoped she was exaggerating. “I must try and select a table where there is some good-natured girl to keep me in countenance,” she said with a smile.
“Yes, I was glad to see you,” answered the girl. “It’s hateful, dining by oneself. Are you living alone?”
“Yes,” answered Joan. “I’m a journalist.”
“I thought you were something,” answered the girl. “I’m an artist. Or, rather, was,” she added after a pause.
“Why did you give it up?” asked Joan.
“Oh, I haven’t given it up, not entirely,” the girl answered. “I can always get a couple of sovereigns for a sketch, if I want it, from one or another of the frame-makers. And they can generally sell them for a fiver. I’ve seen them marked up. Have you been long in London?”
“No,” answered Joan. “I’m a Lancashire lass.”
“Curious,” said the girl, “so am I. My father’s a mill manager near Bolton. You weren’t educated there?”
“No,” Joan admitted. “I went to Rodean at Brighton when I was ten years old, and so escaped it. Nor were you,” she added with a smile, “judging from your accent.”
“No,” answered the other, “I was at Hastings—Miss Gwyn’s. Funny how we seem to have always been near to one another. Dad wanted me to be a doctor. But I’d always been mad about art.”
Joan had taken a liking to the girl. It was a spiritual, vivacious face with frank eyes and a firm mouth; and the voice was low and strong.
“Tell me,” she said, “what interfered with it?” Unconsciously she was leaning forward, her chin supported by her hands. Their faces were very near to one another.
The girl looked up. She did not answer for a moment. There came a hardening of the mouth before she spoke.
“A baby,” she said. “Oh, it was my own fault,” she continued. “I wanted it. It was all the talk at the time. You don’t remember. Our right to children. No woman complete without one. Maternity, woman’s kingdom. All that sort of thing. As if the storks brought them. Don’t suppose it made any real difference; but it just helped me to pretend that it was something pretty and high-class. ‘Overmastering passion’ used to be the explanation, before that. I guess it’s all much of a muchness: just natural instinct.”
The restaurant had been steadily emptying. Monsieur Gustav and his ample-bosomed wife were seated at a distant table, eating their own dinner.
“Why couldn’t you have married?” asked Joan.
The girl shrugged her shoulders. “Who was there for me to marry?” she answered. “The men who wanted me: clerks, young tradesmen, down at home—I wasn’t taking any of that lot. And the men I might have fancied were all of them too poor. There was one student. He’s got on since. Easy enough for him to talk about waiting. Meanwhile. Well, it’s like somebody suggesting dinner to you the day after to-morrow. All right enough, if you’re not troubled with an appetite.”
The waiter came to clear the table. They were almost the last customers left. The man’s tone and manner jarred upon Joan. She had not noticed it before. Joan ordered coffee and the girl, exchanging a joke with the waiter, added a liqueur.
“But why should you give up your art?” persisted Joan. It was that was sticking in her mind. “I should have thought that, if only for the sake of the child, you would have gone on with it.”
“Oh, I told myself all that,” answered the girl. “Was going to devote my life to it. Did for nearly two years. Till I got sick of living like a nun: never getting a bit of excitement. You see, I’ve got the poison in me. Or, maybe, it had always been there.”
“What’s become of it?” asked Joan. “The child?”
“Mother’s got it,” answered the girl. “Seemed best for the poor little beggar. I’m supposed to be dead, and my husband gone abroad.” She gave a short, dry laugh. “Mother brings him up to see me once a year. They’ve got quite fond of him.”
“What are you doing now?” asked Joan, in a low tone.
“Oh, you needn’t look so scared,” laughed the girl, “I haven’t come down to that.” Her voice had changed. It had a note of shrillness. In some indescribable way she had grown coarse. “I’m a kept woman,” she explained. “What else is any woman?”
She reached for her jacket; and the waiter sprang forward and helped her on with it, prolonging the business needlessly. She wished him “Good evening” in a tone of distant hauteur, and led the way to the door. Outside the street was dim and silent. Joan held out her hand.
“No hope of happy endings,” she said with a forced laugh. “Couldn’t marry him I suppose?”
“He has asked me,” answered the girl with a swagger. “Not sure that it would suit me now. They’re not so nice to you when they’ve got you fixed up. So long.”
She turned abruptly and walked rapidly away. Joan moved instinctively in the opposite direction, and after a few minutes found herself in a broad well-lighted thoroughfare. A newsboy was shouting his wares.
“’Orrible murder of a woman. Shockin’ details. Speshul,” repeating it over and over again in a hoarse, expressionless monotone.
He was selling the papers like hot cakes; the purchasers too eager to even wait for their change. She wondered, with a little lump in her throat, how many would have stopped to buy had he been calling instead: “Discovery of new sonnet by Shakespeare. Extra special.”
Through swinging doors, she caught glimpses of foul interiors, crowded with men and women released from their toil, taking their evening pleasure. From coloured posters outside the great theatres and music halls, vulgarity and lewdness leered at her, side by side with announcements that the house was full. From every roaring corner, scintillating lights flared forth the merits of this public benefactor’s whisky, of this other celebrity’s beer: it seemed the only message the people cared to hear. Even among the sirens of the pavement, she noticed that the quiet and merely pretty were hardly heeded. It was everywhere the painted and the overdressed that drew the roving eyes.
She remembered a pet dog that someone had given her when she was a girl, and how one afternoon she had walked with the tears streaming down her face because, in spite of her scoldings and her pleadings, it would keep stopping to lick up filth from the roadway. A kindly passer-by had laughed and told her not to mind.
“Why, that’s a sign of breeding, that is, Missie,” the man had explained. “It’s the classy ones that are always the worst.”
It had come to her afterwards craving with its soft brown, troubled eyes for forgiveness. But she had never been able to break it of the habit.
Must man for ever be chained by his appetites to the unclean: ever be driven back, dragged down again into the dirt by his own instincts: ever be rendered useless for all finer purposes by the baseness of his own desires?
The City of her Dreams! The mingled voices of the crowd shaped itself into a mocking laugh.
It seemed to her that it was she that they were laughing at, pointing her out to one another, jeering at her, reviling her, threatening her.
She hurried onward with bent head, trying to escape them. She felt so small, so helpless. Almost she cried out in her despair.
She must have walked mechanically. Looking up she found herself in her own street. And as she reached her doorway the tears came suddenly.
She heard a quick step behind her, and turning, she saw a man with a latch key in his hand. He passed her and opened the door; and then, facing round, stood aside for her to enter. He was a sturdy, thick-set man with a strong, massive face. It would have been ugly but for the deep, flashing eyes. There was tenderness and humour in them.
“We are next floor neighbours,” he said. “My name’s Phillips.”
Joan thanked him. As he held the door open for her their hands accidentally touched. Joan wished him good-night and went up the stairs. There was no light in her room: only the faint reflection of the street lamp outside.
She could still see him: the boyish smile. And his voice that had sent her tears back again as if at the word of command.
She hoped he had not seen them. What a little fool she was.
A little laugh escaped her.
One day Joan, lunching at the club, met Madge Singleton.
“I’ve had such a funny letter from Flossie,” said Joan, “begging me almost with tears in her ink to come to her on Sunday evening to meet a ‘gentleman friend’ of hers, as she calls him, and give her my opinion of him. What on earth is she up to?”
“It’s all right,” answered Madge. “She doesn’t really want our opinion of him—or rather she doesn’t want our real opinion of him. She only wants us to confirm hers. She’s engaged to him.”
“Flossie engaged!” Joan seemed surprised.
“Yes,” answered Madge. “It used to be a custom. Young men used to ask young women to marry them. And if they consented it was called ‘being engaged.’ Still prevails, so I am told, in certain classes.”
“Thanks,” said Joan. “I have heard of it.”
“I thought perhaps you hadn’t from your tone,” explained Madge.
“But if she’s already engaged to him, why risk criticism of him,” argued Joan, ignoring Madge’s flippancy. “It’s too late.”
“Oh, she’s going to break it off unless we all assure her that we find him brainy,” Madge explained with a laugh. “It seems her father wasn’t brainy and her mother was. Or else it was the other way about: I’m not quite sure. But whichever it was, it led to ructions. Myself, if he’s at all possible and seems to care for her, I intend to find him brilliant.”
“And suppose she repeats her mother’s experience,” suggested Joan.
“There were the Norton-Browns,” answered Madge. “Impossible to have found a more evenly matched pair. They both write novels—very good novels, too; and got jealous of one another; and threw press-notices at one another’s head all breakfast-time; until they separated. Don’t know of any recipe myself for being happy ever after marriage, except not expecting it.”
“Or keeping out of it altogether,” added Joan.
“Ever spent a day at the Home for Destitute Gentlewomen at East Sheen?” demanded Madge.
“Not yet,” admitted Joan. “May have to, later on.”
“It ought to be included in every woman’s education,” Madge continued. “It is reserved for spinsters of over forty-five. Susan Fleming wrote an article upon it for theTeacher’s Friend; and spent an afternoon and evening there. A month later she married a grocer with five children. The only sound suggestion for avoiding trouble that I ever came across was in a burlesque of theBlue Bird. You remember the scene where the spirits of the children are waiting to go down to earth and be made into babies? Someone had stuck up a notice at the entrance to the gangway: ‘Don’t get born. It only means worry.’”
Flossie had her dwelling-place in a second floor bed-sitting-room of a lodging house in Queen’s Square, Bloomsbury; but the drawing-room floor being for the moment vacant, Flossie had persuaded her landlady to let her give her party there; it seemed as if fate approved of the idea. The room was fairly full when Joan arrived. Flossie took her out on the landing, and closed the door behind them.
“You will be honest with me, won’t you?” pleaded Flossie, “because it’s so important, and I don’t seem able to think for myself. As they say, no man can be his own solicitor, can he? Of course I like him, and all that—very much. And I really believe he loves me. We were children together when Mummy was alive; and then he had to go abroad; and has only just come back. Of course, I’ve got to think of him, too, as he says. But then, on the other hand, I don’t want to make a mistake. That would be so terrible, for both of us; and of course I am clever; and there was poor Mummy and Daddy. I’ll tell you all about them one day. It was so awfully sad. Get him into a corner and talk to him. You’ll be able to judge in a moment, you’re so wonderful. He’s quiet on the outside, but I think there’s depth in him. We must go in now.”
She had talked so rapidly Joan felt as if her hat were being blown away. She had difficulty in recognizing Flossie. All the cocksure pertness had departed. She seemed just a kid.
Joan promised faithfully; and Flossie, standing on tiptoe, suddenly kissed her and then bustled her in.
Flossie’s young man was standing near the fire talking, or rather listening, to a bird-like little woman in a short white frock and blue ribbons. A sombre lady just behind her, whom Joan from the distance took to be her nurse, turned out to be her secretary, whose duty it was to be always at hand, prepared to take down any happy idea that might occur to the bird-like little woman in the course of conversation. The bird-like little woman was Miss Rose Tolley, a popular novelist. She was explaining to Flossie’s young man, whose name was Sam Halliday, the reason for her having written “Running Waters,” her latest novel.
“It is daring,” she admitted. “I must be prepared for opposition. But it had to be stated.”
“I take myself as typical,” she continued. “When I was twenty I could have loved you. You were the type of man I did love.”
Mr. Halliday, who had been supporting the weight of his body upon his right leg, transferred the burden to his left.
“But now I’m thirty-five; and I couldn’t love you if I tried.” She shook her curls at him. “It isn’t your fault. It is that I have changed. Suppose I’d married you?”
“Bit of bad luck for both of us,” suggested Mr. Halliday.
“A tragedy,” Miss Tolley corrected him. “There are millions of such tragedies being enacted around us at this moment. Sensitive women compelled to suffer the embraces of men that they have come to loathe. What’s to be done?”
Flossie, who had been hovering impatient, broke in.
“Oh, don’t you believe her,” she advised Mr. Halliday. “She loves you still. She’s only teasing you. This is Joan.”
She introduced her. Miss Tolley bowed; and allowed herself to be drawn away by a lank-haired young man who had likewise been waiting for an opening. He represented the Uplift Film Association of Chicago, and was wishful to know if Miss Tolley would consent to altering the last chapter and so providing “Running Waters” with a happy ending. He pointed out the hopelessness of it in its present form, for film purposes.
The discussion was brief. “Then I’ll send your agent the contract to-morrow,” Joan overheard him say a minute later.
Mr. Sam Halliday she liked at once. He was a clean-shaven, square-jawed young man, with quiet eyes and a pleasant voice.
“Try and find me brainy,” he whispered to her, as soon as Flossie was out of earshot. “Talk to me about China. I’m quite intelligent on China.”
They both laughed, and then shot a guilty glance in Flossie’s direction.
“Do the women really crush their feet?” asked Joan.
“Yes,” he answered. “All those who have no use for them. About one per cent. of the population. To listen to Miss Tolley you would think that half the women wanted a new husband every ten years. It’s always the one per cent. that get themselves talked about. The other ninety-nine are too busy.”
“You are young for a philosopher,” said Joan.
He laughed. “I told you I’d be all right if you started me on China,” he said.
“Why are you marrying. Flossie?” Joan asked him. She thought his point of view would be interesting.
“Not sure I am yet,” he answered with a grin. “It depends upon how I get through this evening.” He glanced round the room. “Have I got to pass all this crowd, I wonder?” he added.
Joan’s eyes followed. It was certainly an odd collection. Flossie, in her hunt for brains, had issued her invitations broadcast; and her fate had been that of the Charity concert. Not all the stars upon whom she had most depended had turned up. On the other hand not a single freak had failed her. At the moment, the centre of the room was occupied by a gentleman and two ladies in classical drapery. They were holding hands in an attitude suggestive of a bas-relief. Joan remembered them, having seen them on one or two occasions wandering in the King’s Road, Chelsea; still maintaining, as far as the traffic would allow, the bas-relief suggestion; and generally surrounded by a crowd of children, ever hopeful that at the next corner they would stop and do something really interesting. They belonged to a society whose object was to lure the London public by the force of example towards the adoption of the early Greek fashions and the simpler Greek attitudes. A friend of Flossie’s had thrown in her lot with them, but could never be induced to abandon her umbrella. They also, as Joan told herself, were reformers. Near to them was a picturesque gentleman with a beard down to his waist whose “stunt”—as Flossie would have termed it—was hygienic clothing; it seemed to contain an undue proportion of fresh air. There were ladies in coats and stand-up collars, and gentlemen with ringlets. More than one of the guests would have been better, though perhaps not happier, for a bath.
“I fancy that’s the idea,” said Joan. “What will you do if you fail? Go back to China?”
“Yes,” he answered. “And take her with me. Poor little girl.”
Joan rather resented his tone.
“We are not all alike,” she remarked. “Some of us are quite sane.”
He looked straight into her eyes. “You are,” he said. “I have been reading your articles. They are splendid. I’m going to help.”
“How can you?” she said. “I mean, how will you?”
“Shipping is my business,” he said. “I’m going to help sailor men. See that they have somewhere decent to go to, and don’t get robbed. And then there are the Lascars, poor devils. Nobody ever takes their part.”
“How did you come across them?” she asked. “The articles, I mean. Did Flo give them to you?”
“No,” he answered. “Just chance. Caught sight of your photo.”
“Tell me,” she said. “If it had been the photo of a woman with a bony throat and a beaky nose would you have read them?”
He thought a moment. “Guess not,” he answered. “You’re just as bad,” he continued. “Isn’t it the pale-faced young clergyman with the wavy hair and the beautiful voice that you all flock to hear? No getting away from nature. But it wasn’t only that.” He hesitated.
“I want to know,” she said.
“You looked so young,” he answered. “I had always had the idea that it was up to the old people to put the world to rights—that all I had to do was to look after myself. It came to me suddenly while you were talking to me—I mean while I was reading you: that if you were worrying yourself about it, I’d got to come in, too—that it would be mean of me not to. It wasn’t like being preached to. It was somebody calling for help.”
Instinctively she held out her hand and he grasped it.
Flossie came up at the same instant. She wanted to introduce him to Miss Lavery, who had just arrived.
“Hullo!” she said. “Are you two concluding a bargain?”
“Yes,” said Joan. “We are founding the League of Youth. You’ve got to be in it. We are going to establish branches all round the world.”
Flossie’s young man was whisked away. Joan, who had seated herself in a small chair, was alone for a few minutes.
Miss Tolley had chanced upon a Human Document, with the help of which she was hopeful of starting a “Press Controversy” concerning the morality, or otherwise, of “Running Waters.” The secretary stood just behind her, taking notes. They had drifted quite close. Joan could not help overhearing.
“It always seemed to me immoral, the marriage ceremony,” the Human Document was explaining. She was a thin, sallow woman, with an untidy head and restless eyes that seemed to be always seeking something to look at and never finding it. “How can we pledge the future? To bind oneself to live with a man when perhaps we have ceased to care for him; it’s hideous.”
Miss Tolley murmured agreement.
“Our love was beautiful,” continued the Human Document, eager, apparently, to relate her experience for the common good; “just because it was a free gift. We were not fettered to one another. At any moment either of us could have walked out of the house. The idea never occurred to us; not for years—five, to be exact.”
The secretary, at a sign from Miss Tolley, made a memorandum of it.
“And then did your feelings towards him change suddenly?” questioned Miss Tolley.
“No,” explained the Human Document, in the same quick, even tones; “so far as I was concerned, I was not conscious of any alteration in my own attitude. But he felt the need of more solitude—for his development. We parted quite good friends.”
“Oh,” said Miss Tolley. “And were there any children?”
“Only two,” answered the Human Document, “both girls.”
“What has become of them?” persisted Miss Tolley.
The Human Document looked offended. “You do not think I would have permitted any power on earth to separate them from me, do you?” she answered. “I said to him, ‘They are mine, mine. Where I go, they go. Where I stay, they stay.’ He saw the justice of my argument.”
“And they are with you now?” concluded Miss Tolley.
“You must come and see them,” the Human Document insisted. “Such dear, magnetic creatures. I superintend their entire education myself. We have a cottage in Surrey. It’s rather a tight fit. You see, there are seven of us now. But the three girls can easily turn in together for a night, Abner will be delighted.”
“Abner is your second?” suggested Miss Tolley.
“My third,” the Human Document corrected her. “After Eustace, I married Ivanoff. I say ‘married’ because I regard it as the holiest form of marriage. He had to return to his own country. There was a political movement on foot. He felt it his duty to go. I want you particularly to meet the boy. He will interest you.”
Miss Tolley appeared to be getting muddled. “Whose boy?” she demanded.
“Ivanoff’s,” explained the Human Document. “He was our only child.”
Flossie appeared, towing a white-haired, distinguished-looking man, a Mr. Folk. She introduced him and immediately disappeared. Joan wished she had been left alone a little longer. She would like to have heard more. Especially was she curious concerning Abner, the lady’s third. Would the higher moral law compel him, likewise, to leave the poor lady saddled with another couple of children? Or would she, on this occasion, get in—or rather, get off, first? Her own fancy was to back Abner. She did catch just one sentence before Miss Tolley, having obtained more food for reflection than perhaps she wanted, signalled to her secretary that the note-book might be closed.
“Woman’s right to follow the dictates of her own heart, uncontrolled by any law,” the Human Document was insisting: “That is one of the first things we must fight for.”
Mr. Folk was a well-known artist. He lived in Paris. “You are wonderfully like your mother,” he told Joan. “In appearance, I mean,” he added. “I knew her when she was Miss Caxton. I acted with her in America.”
Joan made a swift effort to hide her surprise. She had never heard of her mother having been upon the stage.
“I did not know that you had been an actor,” she answered.
“I wasn’t really,” explained Mr. Folk. “I just walked and talked naturally. It made rather a sensation at the time. Your mother was a genius. You have never thought of going on the stage yourself?”
“No,” said Joan. “I don’t think I’ve got what you call the artistic temperament. I have never felt drawn towards anything of that sort.”
“I wonder,” he said. “You could hardly be your mother’s daughter without it.”
“Tell me,” said Joan. “What was my mother like? I can only remember her as more or less of an invalid.”
He did not reply to her question. “Master or Mistress Eminent Artist,” he said; “intends to retire from his or her particular stage, whatever it may be. That paragraph ought always to be put among the obituary notices.”
“What’s your line?” he asked her. “I take it you have one by your being here. Besides, I am sure you have. I am an old fighter. I can tell the young soldier. What’s your regiment?”
Joan laughed. “I’m a drummer boy,” she answered. “I beat my drum each week in a Sunday newspaper, hoping the lads will follow.”
“You feel you must beat that drum,” he suggested. “Beat it louder and louder and louder till all the world shall hear it.”
“Yes,” Joan agreed, “I think that does describe me.”
He nodded. “I thought you were an artist,” he said. “Don’t let them ever take your drum away from you. You’ll go to pieces and get into mischief without it.”
“I know an old actress,” he continued. “She’s the mother of four. They are all on the stage and they’ve all made their mark. The youngest was born in her dressing-room, just after the curtain had fallen. She was playing the Nurse to your mother’s Juliet. She is still the best Nurse that I know. ‘Jack’s always worrying me to chuck it and devote myself to the children,’ she confided to me one evening, while she was waiting for her cue. ‘But, as I tell him, I’m more helpful to them being with them half the day alive than all the day dead.’ That’s an anecdote worth remembering, when your time comes. If God gives woman a drum he doesn’t mean man to take it away from her. She hasn’t got to be playing it for twenty-four hours a day. I’d like you to have seen your mother’s Cordelia.”
Flossie was tacking her way towards them. Joan acted on impulse. “I wish you’d give me your address,” she said “where I could write to you. Or perhaps you would not mind my coming and seeing you one day. I would like you to tell me more about my mother.”
He gave her his address in Paris where he was returning almost immediately.
“Do come,” he said. “It will take me back thirty-three years. I proposed to your mother on La Grande Terrasse at St. Germain. We will walk there. I’m still a bachelor.” He laughed, and, kissing her hand, allowed himself to be hauled away by Flossie, in exchange for Mrs. Phillips, for whom Miss Lavery had insisted on an invitation.
Joan had met Mrs. Phillips several times; and once, on the stairs, had stopped and spoken to her; but had never been introduced to her formally till now.
“We have been meaning to call on you so often,” panted Mrs. Phillips. The room was crowded and the exertion of squeezing her way through had winded the poor lady. “We take so much interest in your articles. My husband—” she paused for a second, before venturing upon the word, and the aitch came out somewhat over-aspirated—“reads them most religiously. You must come and dine with us one evening.”
Joan answered that she would be very pleased.
“I will find out when Robert is free and run up and let you know,” she continued. “Of course, there are so many demands upon him, especially during this period of national crisis, that I spare him all the social duties that I can. But I shall insist on his making an exception in your case.”
Joan murmured her sense of favour, but hoped she would not be allowed to interfere with more pressing calls upon Mr. Phillips’s time.
“It will do him good,” answered Mrs. Phillips; “getting away from them all for an hour or two. I don’t see much of him myself.”
She glanced round and lowered her voice. “They tell me,” she said, “that you’re a B.A.”
“Yes,” answered Joan. “One goes in for it more out of vanity, I’m afraid, than for any real purpose that it serves.”
“I took one or two prizes myself,” said Mrs. Phillips. “But, of course, one forgets things. I was wondering if you would mind if I ran up occasionally to ask you a question. Of course, as you know, my ’usband ’as ’ad so few advantages”—the lady’s mind was concerned with more important matters, and the aspirates, on this occasion, got themselves neglected—“It is wonderful what he ’as done without them. But if, now and then, I could ’elp him—”
There was something about the poor, foolish painted face, as it looked up pleadingly, that gave it a momentary touch of beauty.
“Do,” said Joan, speaking earnestly. “I shall be so very pleased if you will.”
“Thank you,” said the woman. Miss Lavery came up in a hurry to introduce her to Miss Tolley. “I am telling all my friends to read your articles,” she added, resuming the gracious patroness, as she bowed her adieus.
Joan was alone again for a while. A handsome girl, with her hair cut short and parted at the side, was discussing diseases of the spine with a curly-headed young man in a velvet suit. The gentleman was describing some of the effects in detail. Joan felt there was danger of her being taken ill if she listened any longer; and seeing Madge’s brother near the door, and unoccupied, she made her way across to him.
Niel Singleton, or Keeley, as he called himself upon the stage, was quite unlike his sister. He was short and plump, with a preternaturally solemn face, contradicted by small twinkling eyes. He motioned Joan to a chair and told her to keep quiet and not disturb the meeting.
“Is he brainy?” he whispered after a minute.
“I like him,” said Joan.
“I didn’t ask you if you liked him,” he explained to her. “I asked you if he was brainy. I’m not too sure that you like brainy men.”
“Yes, I do,” said Joan. “I like you, sometimes.”
“Now, none of that,” he said severely. “It’s no good your thinking of me. I’m wedded to my art. We are talking about Mr. Halliday.”
“What does Madge think of him?” asked Joan.
“Madge has fallen in love with him, and her judgment is not to be relied upon,” he said. “I suppose you couldn’t answer a straight question, if you tried.”
“Don’t be so harsh with me,” pleaded Joan meekly. “I’m trying to think. Yes,” she continued, “decidedly he’s got brains.”
“Enough for the two of them?” demanded Mr. Singleton. “Because he will want them. Now think before you speak.”
Joan considered. “Yes,” she answered. “I should say he’s just the man to manage her.”
“Then it’s settled,” he said. “We must save her.”
“Save her from what?” demanded Joan.