A POLITICAL WOMAN.GULLYand his wife had one of the new sets just inside the gates. These sets are more expensive, more convenient, more respectable than the old ones. Lucinda—she was Gully’s wife—would never have consented to an old set. She set her face sternly against Bohemianism when it took a certain form. She didn’t object to it in the form of Liberty tea-gowns and discreet flirtations in the name of art and literature. Gully was a journalist. He found the Inn convenient, but Lucinda was always hoping plaintively that some day they would be able to afford a house in Bloomsbury, or, better still, a modest place in the country.She had six rooms, every convenience, and a most superior maidservant, the long streamers of whose cap, when she ran out to post a letter, lent a certaincachetto the Inn.Lucinda was nice enough. Her struggles for a conventional manner of life were amusing. Shenever gave Gully any peace. She dragged him about to social functions. She made him use his influence to get her portrait in the ladies’ papers, as assistant at a charity concert or exhibitor at a cat show—she kept a couple of wild-looking Persians. She always had her photograph taken in evening dress. She was one of those coarse women—commonly called fine—who are disfigured by a big neck and big arms.She had her “At-Home” day, of course. She displayed a card bowl on a prominent table in the pleasant room overlooking the gardens which she called her drawing room. She peppered the conversation with references to dinners and receptions that she had been invited to.We were never allowed to smoke in the drawing room, nor to bring in our whisky. It was a modern drawing room, all white paint, cheap china, and cushion frills. She had a standard lamp with an amazing amber shade. She spent sixpence twice a week on cut flowers, and sold Gully’s old clothes for palms. It was a very fair attempt at Maida Vale—Lucinda and her drawing room.Therefore it was a surprise to me when Gully came round one night and said despondently:“I wish you could help me with Lucinda. She’s going all to pieces.”“Going to pieces!”I thought of dressmakers’ bills, of the minor journalists who sometimes dropped in to tea. Yet Lucinda was a safe woman. She was far too respectable to run into debt or to compromise herself. Gully proceeded to explain.“You know she makes me walk in the Park every Sunday afternoon. She wants to go in the morning when the fashionable frocks are about. But I draw the line at that. We compromise with the afternoon—when there is only the band and pretty shop girls I don’t so much mind. We were there six weeks ago, and we stopped to listen to a Socialist spouter—one of those rabid enthusiasts in a red tie. We had listened to them all—the religious ones, the atheists, the philosophers. Sometimes you get good copy out of fellows like that.“I wouldn’t let her stand about long. Her chest is weak, and the Wigans’ fancy-dress ball is comingon. It is to be a grand affair; they’ve talked of it for months. Lucinda was to go as a—blest if I can remember as what—but her bodice was to be the merest apology. You can’t blame a fine woman for showing off her neck and arms. Old Wigan is the proprietor of my paper, a very wealthy man, a very influential one too. It is to my interest to keep in with him. It would never do for us to snub him by keeping away. You’re never safe in journalism. Get a post as editor, and begin to bound on your so many hundreds a year. Phew! the paper changes hands or politics—where are you? Get regular weekly features, make yourself an authority on some subject or other. The public doesn’t want your subject—or you. Journalism is rotten, I tell you, rotten. Only the absolutely unscrupulous, or the totally ignorant, have the least chance. I know men in journalism who are making five pounds a week and more by writing gutter stuff. And I know clever men who barely scrape a hundred and fifty a year.“Where was I? Oh! Lucinda. I know that her bronchial attacks last half through the winter, so Ipulled her away out of the crowd. It was a bitterly cold day.“We walked off. She drew up the collar of her coat. I said that it had been foolish of us to stand about in the cold and risk bronchitis, with the Wigans’ fancy-dress ball coming on.“‘I don’t care a bit about the ball,’ she said. ‘I’m not going.’“‘Not care! not going! But your dress? You’ve bought the silk. It cost a pretty penny.’“‘Brocade. Twelve and six a yard,’ she groaned.“‘It seemed to me a little stiff. But so long as you are happy——’“‘Happy! Did you hear what he said? It is dreadful.’“‘Awful. The police ought to put a stop to——’“It was Lucinda who stopped—on the edge of the Serpentine.“‘Do you know what you are saying?’ she demanded.“I didn’t like the contemptuous curl of her lip, and returned with some pique:“‘I know whathewas saying. Extravagant balderdash! I ought to know something about politics. I take an interest in them—an intelligent interest. I write about them. There’s my weekly letter to the Midland daily, isn’t there? I vote Radical, I’m a Progressive. I’m for the amelioration of—all sorts of things.’“I wound up vaguely. You can’t talk sane, serious politics to your wife; the true political woman has yet to be born.“‘When we retire to the country in our ripe middle age,’ I went on, ‘I shall take an active interest in local affairs. I shall become a member of the parish council; shall look after rights of way and be down on barbed wire. I’ve my own ideas on the game laws—we shall never have enough money to preserve—and lots of things. I won’t dilate on them. You wouldn’t understand.’“It was getting dusk. In the distance the crowd—all the little crowds—were melting away. A soldier sat with a girl on a seat. His red coat was warm against the shadows.“‘There!’ broke out Lucinda passionately, beforewe were out of hearing. ‘Did you see those two on the seat?’“‘I did. I thought, so far as I could judge, you know, that they looked uncommonly happy.’“‘Happy! a soldier! a servant girl! What have they done? Surely you, as a practical politician, can tell me. Why should they be born to such a life? I ask you. No gleam of brightness to lighten the impenetrable gloo——’“‘Come now. You are quoting the maniac in the red tie.’“We got out of the Park and went along Oxford Street in silence until we were near the Circus. Then Lucinda burst out suddenly:“‘Two thousand acres of land——’“‘If you are going to tackle the agricultural problem——’“‘One third of the available capital——’“‘Don’t start on statistics; nothing more treacherous.’“‘How many families did he say lived in one room?’“‘Wasn’t listening.’“‘That is just it. People like you never do listen. People like you content themselves with reading stupid, woolly, political speeches. For my part, I always skip such things, and am thankful when Parliament adjourns and they put something really interesting in the papers.’”Gully stopped and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.“From that day,” he said solemnly, when he had refilled and lighted up, “she has given me no peace. She’ll compromise herself seriously—that’s what I’m afraid of. She’s been making election rosettes. She actually met a fellow by appointment in Broad Street. One of these Social Democrats; she wants me to review his book, ‘The Fall of the Capitalist.’ I put my foot down when it came to appointments—the scoundrel!“She’s always hurling Socialistic bricks at me. I’ve tried to convince her of her errors with a pencil and a bit of paper. I worked out a sum in proportion, with a landowner and a man with a patent who had a certain amount of capital to start with. She said she didn’t care a fig for my stupid landowner.“I’m afflicted with a wife who has ideas of her own and means to live up to them. It’s hard. I never counted on taking brains—of the bran-new sort—when I took Lucinda. I object to a clever woman. I work hard. I’ve got brains enough for both, and over. I ask for a pretty face, a fresh frock, good cooking—that’s all. I can get the rest from the papers, or I can drop in at the club.”“Look here, old man,” I said soothingly, “get her on facts. Never use pencil and paper to a woman—logic only irritates them. Make her live up to her doctrines—she’ll be sick of them in a week.”Women soon tire; all froth and no ballast. (I’m forgetting that you’re a woman, but you like the complete story.)He went away after I had given him a few tips. At the end of the week he came back.“Well?” I said optimistically, as he sat down and took out his pipe.“I think she is a trifle better,” he admitted, in a half-hearted way. “She won’t part with the servant; says she really hasn’t time and strength enoughfor housework. But she admits that a servant is inconsistent with her theories, and she looked quite happy when she added that she really believed I was beginning to see things in the right light. I’ve told her plainly that I’ll have no hypocrites in my home. Silver—her aunt left her some—flowers, Worcester tea-things, I wouldn’t stand. She murmured something about it being a duty with every citizen to keep up the graces of life, but she yielded in the end. She was crying a bit as she wrapped the silver—beautiful Georgian stuff—away in chamois-leather bags.“I said that a drawing room gave the very lie to her theories. She’s turned the key of that room.“The servant has given notice; of course she thinks the spoons are pawned. Lucinda is upset. But I said cheerily that it was so nice to be indifferent, to be supported by the consciousness of a worthy mission. I said that simplicity was the great thing. I suggested that we should sell the furniture—giving the proceeds to the Socialistic cause—and go to a boarding house. They board you in Gower Street for twenty-five shillings aweek—with a reduction, no doubt, on married couples. I said that she would then be quite free from housekeeping and would be able to throw more soul into her political work. You should have seen her face! I think she’s beginning to be sorry that she converted me. Converts always go too far.“But she’s not cured,” he concluded solemnly. “She went off this morning to Brentford, where some member of her party has his committee room.”“Perhaps we had better play our trump card,” I said. “What time will she be back?”“About nine.”“Very well. I’ll look round with Smithers and Arnold. It’s a job that Jimmy would enjoy, but he’s so lantern-jawed she’d know him at once.”At nine Gully, Smithers, Arnold, and I were in Lucinda’s drawing room, smoking very strong tobacco and drinking hot gin and water; it gave me heartburn for nearly a week. But it made a good steam and fume; effect was what we wanted. We all four looked—well, rough. A bristly chin and no collar alters a man immensely. As luck would have it, neither Smithers nor I had shaved thatmorning; nor the morning before, in my case. Arnold wore a false beard.Why do absconding criminals take the trouble to disguise themselves—decent, middle-class criminals who are accustomed to razors and clean linen? A bristly chin and a neck without a collar would do the whole business, without trouble or expense. If, added to that, the criminal gets his “portrait” in the paper, he’s safe.My feet were on the sofa. The gin bottle and a jug of beer stood on Lucinda’s pet polished table. Arnold was gently scraping his boots on the copper scuttle, and Smithers had his head well into the white curtains. The rugs were kicked up; there were spent matches all over the floor. It was an education to see how by a few well-thought-out touches we had wrecked the room.Lucinda was pretty punctual. She stood on the threshold for one second before she fled. I looked round. There was blank tragedy on her face. Gully got up, appearing a little guilty. He went out to her. Judging by the direction of their voices he found her in the lobby, with her face buried inhis overcoat. She was crying. We three in the untidy room, thick with smoke and stale with spirit, heard her say in a muffled way:“This is too much. You’ve taken away the—s—silver—all the decencies of life. You talk to me of a cheap boarding house. I’ll never consent to it; I’d rather die or go back to papa. And you’ve brought those wretches into my drawing room.”“But we agreed, darling, that it wasn’t to be a drawing room any longer. We said that we’d devote it to the people. Your own idea was a laundresses’ weekly tea, and——”“You look disreputable. You look like—a—brigand. No collar—that tie. I never was so miserable. I never would have married you if——”“My dearest, you wouldn’t have me wound the susceptibilities of those worthy fellows——”“And one with his hateful great feet on the embroidered cushion my cousin Ethel sent from India, and another——”“Lucinda, you surprise me. I thought you’d be so pleased. I arranged it as a delicate attention—apleasant surprise party. Sons of toil, dear, all of them, and——”“Dirty brutes! I hate the whole thing. I’m tired to death.” We heard her stamp her feet viciously on the oil-cloth. “The election is all going to pieces. Let it!Idon’t care. Just look at my new skirt—all mud and torn to ribbons. You never saw such a filthy place, such a set of roughs! I couldn’t even get a decent cup of tea. And—and—I went into the wrong committee room, and the man—the other man—laughed, the idiot! I wish I’d—— Oh, Tom! I never thought you could be so cruel, so unmanly. Do be yourself again. I can’t think what has come over you. It has worried me dreadfully. Let us be comfortable again. Send those monsters away.”Gully said impressively:“Will you go to the Wigans’ ball? I’ve got my way to make in the world. Wigan’s wife is—well, you know her. Decent old charwoman; got sense enough to hold her tongue. Wigan is sensitive on that point. If we snub his wife it may be bad for me.”“Will I go? What a question! Of course I will.”“And committee rooms and mass-meetings and particularly that Socialist cad——”“Don’t mention him. I’m sick, I tell you—sick, sick. He hardly spoke a civil word to me—after the way I’ve slaved. Go and send those men away, if you love me.”“You don’t think a little friendly supper——”“I won’t hear of it.”We heard—well, we heard him kiss her—and then we heard her whisk away into the bedroom to bathe her eyes, and Gully came in with a wide grin to dismiss us. As we went through the passage we heard the vigorous splash of water in the basin.Gully let us out. We went down the stone stairs, with stealthy handshakes and smothered chuckles, leaving him alone with Lucinda, and master once more.
GULLYand his wife had one of the new sets just inside the gates. These sets are more expensive, more convenient, more respectable than the old ones. Lucinda—she was Gully’s wife—would never have consented to an old set. She set her face sternly against Bohemianism when it took a certain form. She didn’t object to it in the form of Liberty tea-gowns and discreet flirtations in the name of art and literature. Gully was a journalist. He found the Inn convenient, but Lucinda was always hoping plaintively that some day they would be able to afford a house in Bloomsbury, or, better still, a modest place in the country.
She had six rooms, every convenience, and a most superior maidservant, the long streamers of whose cap, when she ran out to post a letter, lent a certaincachetto the Inn.
Lucinda was nice enough. Her struggles for a conventional manner of life were amusing. Shenever gave Gully any peace. She dragged him about to social functions. She made him use his influence to get her portrait in the ladies’ papers, as assistant at a charity concert or exhibitor at a cat show—she kept a couple of wild-looking Persians. She always had her photograph taken in evening dress. She was one of those coarse women—commonly called fine—who are disfigured by a big neck and big arms.
She had her “At-Home” day, of course. She displayed a card bowl on a prominent table in the pleasant room overlooking the gardens which she called her drawing room. She peppered the conversation with references to dinners and receptions that she had been invited to.
We were never allowed to smoke in the drawing room, nor to bring in our whisky. It was a modern drawing room, all white paint, cheap china, and cushion frills. She had a standard lamp with an amazing amber shade. She spent sixpence twice a week on cut flowers, and sold Gully’s old clothes for palms. It was a very fair attempt at Maida Vale—Lucinda and her drawing room.
Therefore it was a surprise to me when Gully came round one night and said despondently:
“I wish you could help me with Lucinda. She’s going all to pieces.”
“Going to pieces!”
I thought of dressmakers’ bills, of the minor journalists who sometimes dropped in to tea. Yet Lucinda was a safe woman. She was far too respectable to run into debt or to compromise herself. Gully proceeded to explain.
“You know she makes me walk in the Park every Sunday afternoon. She wants to go in the morning when the fashionable frocks are about. But I draw the line at that. We compromise with the afternoon—when there is only the band and pretty shop girls I don’t so much mind. We were there six weeks ago, and we stopped to listen to a Socialist spouter—one of those rabid enthusiasts in a red tie. We had listened to them all—the religious ones, the atheists, the philosophers. Sometimes you get good copy out of fellows like that.
“I wouldn’t let her stand about long. Her chest is weak, and the Wigans’ fancy-dress ball is comingon. It is to be a grand affair; they’ve talked of it for months. Lucinda was to go as a—blest if I can remember as what—but her bodice was to be the merest apology. You can’t blame a fine woman for showing off her neck and arms. Old Wigan is the proprietor of my paper, a very wealthy man, a very influential one too. It is to my interest to keep in with him. It would never do for us to snub him by keeping away. You’re never safe in journalism. Get a post as editor, and begin to bound on your so many hundreds a year. Phew! the paper changes hands or politics—where are you? Get regular weekly features, make yourself an authority on some subject or other. The public doesn’t want your subject—or you. Journalism is rotten, I tell you, rotten. Only the absolutely unscrupulous, or the totally ignorant, have the least chance. I know men in journalism who are making five pounds a week and more by writing gutter stuff. And I know clever men who barely scrape a hundred and fifty a year.
“Where was I? Oh! Lucinda. I know that her bronchial attacks last half through the winter, so Ipulled her away out of the crowd. It was a bitterly cold day.
“We walked off. She drew up the collar of her coat. I said that it had been foolish of us to stand about in the cold and risk bronchitis, with the Wigans’ fancy-dress ball coming on.
“‘I don’t care a bit about the ball,’ she said. ‘I’m not going.’
“‘Not care! not going! But your dress? You’ve bought the silk. It cost a pretty penny.’
“‘Brocade. Twelve and six a yard,’ she groaned.
“‘It seemed to me a little stiff. But so long as you are happy——’
“‘Happy! Did you hear what he said? It is dreadful.’
“‘Awful. The police ought to put a stop to——’
“It was Lucinda who stopped—on the edge of the Serpentine.
“‘Do you know what you are saying?’ she demanded.
“I didn’t like the contemptuous curl of her lip, and returned with some pique:
“‘I know whathewas saying. Extravagant balderdash! I ought to know something about politics. I take an interest in them—an intelligent interest. I write about them. There’s my weekly letter to the Midland daily, isn’t there? I vote Radical, I’m a Progressive. I’m for the amelioration of—all sorts of things.’
“I wound up vaguely. You can’t talk sane, serious politics to your wife; the true political woman has yet to be born.
“‘When we retire to the country in our ripe middle age,’ I went on, ‘I shall take an active interest in local affairs. I shall become a member of the parish council; shall look after rights of way and be down on barbed wire. I’ve my own ideas on the game laws—we shall never have enough money to preserve—and lots of things. I won’t dilate on them. You wouldn’t understand.’
“It was getting dusk. In the distance the crowd—all the little crowds—were melting away. A soldier sat with a girl on a seat. His red coat was warm against the shadows.
“‘There!’ broke out Lucinda passionately, beforewe were out of hearing. ‘Did you see those two on the seat?’
“‘I did. I thought, so far as I could judge, you know, that they looked uncommonly happy.’
“‘Happy! a soldier! a servant girl! What have they done? Surely you, as a practical politician, can tell me. Why should they be born to such a life? I ask you. No gleam of brightness to lighten the impenetrable gloo——’
“‘Come now. You are quoting the maniac in the red tie.’
“We got out of the Park and went along Oxford Street in silence until we were near the Circus. Then Lucinda burst out suddenly:
“‘Two thousand acres of land——’
“‘If you are going to tackle the agricultural problem——’
“‘One third of the available capital——’
“‘Don’t start on statistics; nothing more treacherous.’
“‘How many families did he say lived in one room?’
“‘Wasn’t listening.’
“‘That is just it. People like you never do listen. People like you content themselves with reading stupid, woolly, political speeches. For my part, I always skip such things, and am thankful when Parliament adjourns and they put something really interesting in the papers.’”
Gully stopped and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
“From that day,” he said solemnly, when he had refilled and lighted up, “she has given me no peace. She’ll compromise herself seriously—that’s what I’m afraid of. She’s been making election rosettes. She actually met a fellow by appointment in Broad Street. One of these Social Democrats; she wants me to review his book, ‘The Fall of the Capitalist.’ I put my foot down when it came to appointments—the scoundrel!
“She’s always hurling Socialistic bricks at me. I’ve tried to convince her of her errors with a pencil and a bit of paper. I worked out a sum in proportion, with a landowner and a man with a patent who had a certain amount of capital to start with. She said she didn’t care a fig for my stupid landowner.
“I’m afflicted with a wife who has ideas of her own and means to live up to them. It’s hard. I never counted on taking brains—of the bran-new sort—when I took Lucinda. I object to a clever woman. I work hard. I’ve got brains enough for both, and over. I ask for a pretty face, a fresh frock, good cooking—that’s all. I can get the rest from the papers, or I can drop in at the club.”
“Look here, old man,” I said soothingly, “get her on facts. Never use pencil and paper to a woman—logic only irritates them. Make her live up to her doctrines—she’ll be sick of them in a week.”
Women soon tire; all froth and no ballast. (I’m forgetting that you’re a woman, but you like the complete story.)
He went away after I had given him a few tips. At the end of the week he came back.
“Well?” I said optimistically, as he sat down and took out his pipe.
“I think she is a trifle better,” he admitted, in a half-hearted way. “She won’t part with the servant; says she really hasn’t time and strength enoughfor housework. But she admits that a servant is inconsistent with her theories, and she looked quite happy when she added that she really believed I was beginning to see things in the right light. I’ve told her plainly that I’ll have no hypocrites in my home. Silver—her aunt left her some—flowers, Worcester tea-things, I wouldn’t stand. She murmured something about it being a duty with every citizen to keep up the graces of life, but she yielded in the end. She was crying a bit as she wrapped the silver—beautiful Georgian stuff—away in chamois-leather bags.
“I said that a drawing room gave the very lie to her theories. She’s turned the key of that room.
“The servant has given notice; of course she thinks the spoons are pawned. Lucinda is upset. But I said cheerily that it was so nice to be indifferent, to be supported by the consciousness of a worthy mission. I said that simplicity was the great thing. I suggested that we should sell the furniture—giving the proceeds to the Socialistic cause—and go to a boarding house. They board you in Gower Street for twenty-five shillings aweek—with a reduction, no doubt, on married couples. I said that she would then be quite free from housekeeping and would be able to throw more soul into her political work. You should have seen her face! I think she’s beginning to be sorry that she converted me. Converts always go too far.
“But she’s not cured,” he concluded solemnly. “She went off this morning to Brentford, where some member of her party has his committee room.”
“Perhaps we had better play our trump card,” I said. “What time will she be back?”
“About nine.”
“Very well. I’ll look round with Smithers and Arnold. It’s a job that Jimmy would enjoy, but he’s so lantern-jawed she’d know him at once.”
At nine Gully, Smithers, Arnold, and I were in Lucinda’s drawing room, smoking very strong tobacco and drinking hot gin and water; it gave me heartburn for nearly a week. But it made a good steam and fume; effect was what we wanted. We all four looked—well, rough. A bristly chin and no collar alters a man immensely. As luck would have it, neither Smithers nor I had shaved thatmorning; nor the morning before, in my case. Arnold wore a false beard.
Why do absconding criminals take the trouble to disguise themselves—decent, middle-class criminals who are accustomed to razors and clean linen? A bristly chin and a neck without a collar would do the whole business, without trouble or expense. If, added to that, the criminal gets his “portrait” in the paper, he’s safe.
My feet were on the sofa. The gin bottle and a jug of beer stood on Lucinda’s pet polished table. Arnold was gently scraping his boots on the copper scuttle, and Smithers had his head well into the white curtains. The rugs were kicked up; there were spent matches all over the floor. It was an education to see how by a few well-thought-out touches we had wrecked the room.
Lucinda was pretty punctual. She stood on the threshold for one second before she fled. I looked round. There was blank tragedy on her face. Gully got up, appearing a little guilty. He went out to her. Judging by the direction of their voices he found her in the lobby, with her face buried inhis overcoat. She was crying. We three in the untidy room, thick with smoke and stale with spirit, heard her say in a muffled way:
“This is too much. You’ve taken away the—s—silver—all the decencies of life. You talk to me of a cheap boarding house. I’ll never consent to it; I’d rather die or go back to papa. And you’ve brought those wretches into my drawing room.”
“But we agreed, darling, that it wasn’t to be a drawing room any longer. We said that we’d devote it to the people. Your own idea was a laundresses’ weekly tea, and——”
“You look disreputable. You look like—a—brigand. No collar—that tie. I never was so miserable. I never would have married you if——”
“My dearest, you wouldn’t have me wound the susceptibilities of those worthy fellows——”
“And one with his hateful great feet on the embroidered cushion my cousin Ethel sent from India, and another——”
“Lucinda, you surprise me. I thought you’d be so pleased. I arranged it as a delicate attention—apleasant surprise party. Sons of toil, dear, all of them, and——”
“Dirty brutes! I hate the whole thing. I’m tired to death.” We heard her stamp her feet viciously on the oil-cloth. “The election is all going to pieces. Let it!Idon’t care. Just look at my new skirt—all mud and torn to ribbons. You never saw such a filthy place, such a set of roughs! I couldn’t even get a decent cup of tea. And—and—I went into the wrong committee room, and the man—the other man—laughed, the idiot! I wish I’d—— Oh, Tom! I never thought you could be so cruel, so unmanly. Do be yourself again. I can’t think what has come over you. It has worried me dreadfully. Let us be comfortable again. Send those monsters away.”
Gully said impressively:
“Will you go to the Wigans’ ball? I’ve got my way to make in the world. Wigan’s wife is—well, you know her. Decent old charwoman; got sense enough to hold her tongue. Wigan is sensitive on that point. If we snub his wife it may be bad for me.”
“Will I go? What a question! Of course I will.”
“And committee rooms and mass-meetings and particularly that Socialist cad——”
“Don’t mention him. I’m sick, I tell you—sick, sick. He hardly spoke a civil word to me—after the way I’ve slaved. Go and send those men away, if you love me.”
“You don’t think a little friendly supper——”
“I won’t hear of it.”
We heard—well, we heard him kiss her—and then we heard her whisk away into the bedroom to bathe her eyes, and Gully came in with a wide grin to dismiss us. As we went through the passage we heard the vigorous splash of water in the basin.
Gully let us out. We went down the stone stairs, with stealthy handshakes and smothered chuckles, leaving him alone with Lucinda, and master once more.