'Of course,' the maid went on, 'though you never told me about it, I know you had things to bear while I was away, or else you wouldn't have gone away from your home that time—a mere child—and tried to teach for a living.'
'Itwasabsurd of me! But whosever fault it was, it wasn't yours.'
'Yes, miss, in a way it was. I owed it to your mother not to have left you. I've never told you how I blamed myself when Iheard—and I didn't wonder at you. Itwashard when your mother was hardly cold to see your father——'
'Yes; now that's enough, Wark. You know we never speak of that.'
'No, we've never spoken about it. And, of course, you won't need me any more like you did then. But it's looking back and remembering—it's that that's making it so hard to leave you now. But——'
'Well?'
'My friends have been talking to me.'
'About——'
'Yes, this post.' Then, almost angrily, 'I didn't try for it. It's come after me. My cousin knows the man.'
'The man who wants you to go to him as housekeeper?' Vida wrinkled her brows. Wark hadn't said 'gentleman,' who alone in her employer's experience had any need of a housekeeper. 'You mean you don't know him yourself?'
'Not yet, 'm. I know he's a market gardener, and he wants his house looked after.'
'What if he does? A market gardener won't be able to pay the wages I——'
'The wages aren't much to begin with—but he's getting along—except for the housekeeping. That's in a bad way.'
'What if it is? I never heard such nonsense. You don't want to leave me, Wark, for a market gardener you've never so much as seen;' and Miss Levering covered her discomfort by a little smiling.
'My cousin's seen him many a time. She likes him.'
'Let your cousin go, then, and keep his house for him.'
'My cousin has her own house to keep, and she's got a young baby.'
'Oh, the woman who brought her child here once?'
'Yes, 'm, the child you gave the coral beads to. My cousin has written and talked about it ever since.'
'About the beads?'
'About the market gardener. And the way his house is—Ever since we came back to England she's been going on at me about it. I told her all along I couldn't leave you, but she's always said (since that day you walked about with the baby and gave him the beads to play with, and wouldn't let her make himcry by taking them away)—ever since then my cousin has said you'd understand.'
'What would I understand?'
Wark laid her hand on the nearest of the shining bars of brass, and slowly she polished it with her open palm. She obviously found it difficult to go on with her defence.
'I wanted my cousin to come and explain to you.'
Here was Wark in a new light indeed! If she really wanted any creature on the earth to speak for her. As she stood there in stolid embarrassment polishing the shiny bar, Miss Levering clutched the tray to steady it, and with the other hand she pulled the pillow higher. One had to sit bolt upright, it seemed, and give this matter one's entire attention.
'I don't want to talk to your cousin about your affairs. We are old friends, Wark. Tell me yourself.'
She forced her eyes to meet her mistress's. 'He told my cousin: "Just you find me a good housekeeper," he said, "and if I like her," he said, "she won't be my housekeeper long."'
'Wark!You!You aren't thinking of marrying?'
'If he's what my cousin says——'
'A man you've never seen? Oh, mydearWark! Well, I shall hope and pray he won't think your housekeeping good enough.'
'He will! From what my cousin says, he's had a run of worthless huzzies. I don't expect he'll find much fault withmyhousekeeping after what he's been through.'
Vida looked wondering at the triumphant face of the woman.
'And so you're ready to leave me after all these years?'
'No, miss, I'm not to say "ready," but I think I'll have to go.'
'My poor old Wark'—the lady leaned over the tray—'I could almost think you are in love with this man you've only heard about!'
'No, miss, I'm not to say in love.'
'I believe you are! For what other reason would you have for leaving me?'
The woman looked as if she could show cause had she a mind. But she said nothing.
'You know,' Vida pursued—'you know quite well you don't need to marry for a home.'
'No, 'm; I'm quite comfortable, of course, with you. But time goes on. I don't get younger.'
'None of us do that, Wark.'
'That's just the trouble, miss. It ain't onlyme.'
Vida looked at her, more perplexed than ever by the curious regard in the hard-featured countenance. For there was something very like dumb reproach in Wark's face.
'Still,' said Miss Levering, 'you know, even if none of us do get younger, we are not any of us (to judge by appearances) on the brink of the grave. Even if I should be smashed up in a motor accident—I know you're always expecting that—even if I were killed to-morrow, still you'd find I hadn't forgotten you, Wark.'
'It isn't that, miss. It isn't death I'm afraid of.'
There was a pause—the longest that yet had come.
'Whatareyou afraid of?' Miss Levering asked.
'It's—you see, I've been looking these twelve years to see you married.'
'Me? What's that got to do with——'
'Yes, miss. You see, I've counted a good while on looking after children again some day. But if you won't get married——'
Vida flung her hair back with a burst of not very merry laughter.
'If I won't, you must! Butwhyin the world? I'd no idea you were so romantic. Why must there be a wedding in the family, Wark?'
'So there can be children, miss,' said the woman, stolidly.
'Well, there is a child. There's Doris.'
'Poor Miss Doris!' The woman shook her head. 'But she's got a good nurse. I say it, though she calls advice interfering. And Miss Doris has got a mother' (plain that Wark was again in the market garden). 'Yes,she'sgot a mother! and a sort of a father, and she's got a governess, and a servant to carry her about. I sometimes think what Miss Doris needs most is a little letting alone. Leastways, she don't needme. No, noryou, miss.'
'And you've given me up?' the mistress probed.
Wark raised her red eyes. 'Of course, miss, if I'm wrong——' Her knuckly hand slid down from the brass bar, and she came round to the side of the bed with an unmistakable eagerness in her face. 'If you're going to get married, I don't see as Icouldleave ye.'
The lady's lips twitched with an instant's silent laughter, but there was something else than laughter in her eyes.
'Oh, Icanbuy you off, can I? If I give you my word—if to save you from need to try the great experiment, I'll sacrificemyself——'
'I wouldn't like to see you make a sacrifice, miss,' Wark said, with perfect gravity. 'But'—as though reconsidering—'you wouldn't feel it so much, I dare say, after the child was there.'
They looked at one another.
'If it's children you yearn for, my poor Wark, you've waited too long, I'm afraid.'
'Oh, no, miss.' She spoke with a fatuous confidence.
'Why, you must be fifty.'
'Fifty-three, miss. But'—she met her mistress's eye unflinching—'Bunting—he's the market gardener—he's been married before. He's got three girls and two boys.'
'Heavens!' Vida fell back against the pillow. 'What a handful!'
'Oh, no, 'm. My cousin says they're nice children.' It would have been funny if it hadn't somehow been pathetic to see how instantly she was on the defensive. '"Healthy and hearty," my cousin says, all but the little one. She hardly thinks they'll raisehim.'
'Well, I wish your market gardener had confined himself to raising onions and cabbages. If he hadn't those children I don't believe you'd dream of——'
'Well, of course not, miss. But it seems like those children need some one to look after them more than—more than——'
'Than I do? That ought to be true.'
'One of 'em is little more than a baby.' The wooden woman offered it as an apology.
'Take the tray,' said Vida.
From the look on her face you would say she knew she had lost the faithfullest of servants, and that five little children somewhere in a market garden had won, if not a mother, at least a doughty champion.
No matter how late either Vida Levering or her half-sister had gone to bed the night before, they breakfasted, as they did so many other things, at the hour held to be most advantageous for Doris.
Mr. Fox-Moore was sometimes there and often not. On those mornings when his health or his exertions the night previous did not prevent his appearance, there was little conversation at the Fox-Moore breakfast table, except such as was initiated by the only child of the marriage, a fragile girl of ten. Little Doris, owing to some obscure threat of hip-disease, made much of her progress about the house in a footman's arms. But hardly, so borne, would she reach the threshold of the breakfast room before her thin little voice might be heard calling out, 'Fa-ther!Fa-ther!'
Those who held they had every ground for disliking the old man would have been surprised to watch him during the half hour that ensued, ministering to the rather querulous little creature, adapting his tone and view to her comprehension, with an art that plainly took its inspiration from affection. If Doris were not well enough to come down, Mr. Fox-Moore read his letters and glanced at 'the' paper, directing his few remarks to his sister-in-law, whom he sometimes treated in such a way as would have given a stranger the impression, in spite of the lady's lack of response, that there was some secret understanding between the two.
A great many years before, Donald Fox-Moore had tumbled into a Government office, the affairs of which he had ultimately got into such excellent running order, that, with a few hours' supervision from the chief each week, his clerks were easily able to maintain the high reputation of that particular department of the public service. What Mr. Fox-Moore did with the rest of his time was little known. A good deal of it was spent with a much younger bachelor brother near Brighton. At least, this was the family legend. In spite of his undoubted affection for his child, little of his leisure was wasted at home. When people looked at the sallow, smileless face of his wife they didn't blame him.
Sometimes, when a general sense of tension and anxiety betrayed his presence somewhere in the great dreary house, and the master yet forbore to descend for the early meal, he would rejoice the heart of his little daughter by having her brought to his room to make tea and share his breakfast.
On these occasions a sense of such unexpected surcease from care prevailed in the dining-room as called for some celebration of the holiday spirit. It found expression in the inclination of the two women to linger over their coffee, embracing the only sure opportunity the day offered for confidential exchange.
One of these occasions was the morning of Wark's warning, which, however, Vida determined to say nothing about till she was obliged. She had just handed up her cup for replenishing when the door opened, and, to the surprise of the ladies, the master of the house appeared on the threshold.
'Is—is anything the matter?' faltered his wife, half rising.
'Matter? Must something be the matter that I venture into my own breakfast-room of a morning?'
'No, no. Only I thought, as Doris didn't come, you were breakfasting upstairs, too.' No notice being taken of this, she at once set about heating water, for no one expected Mr. Fox-Moore to drink tea made in the kitchen.
'I thought,' said he, twitching an open newspaper off the table and folding it up—'I thought I asked to be allowed the privilege of opening my paper for myself.'
'YourTimeshasn't been touched,' said his wife, anxiously occupied with the spirit-lamp.
He stopped in the act of thrusting the paper in his pocket and shook it.
'What do you call this?'
'That is myTimes,' she said.
'YourTimes?'
'I ordered an extra copy, because you dislike so to have yours looked at till you've finished with it.'
'Dreadful hardshipthatis!' he said, glancing round, and seeing his own particular paper neatly folded and lying still on the side table.
'It was no great hardship when you read it before night. When you don't, it's rather long to wait.'
'To wait for what?'
'For the news of the day.'
'Don't you get the news of the day in theMorning Post?'
'I don't get such full Parliamentary reports nor the foreign correspondence.'
'Good Lord! what next?'
'I think you must blame me,' said Vida, speaking for the first time. 'I'm afraid you'll find it's only since I've been here that Janet has broken loose and taken in an extra copy.'
'Oh, it's on your account, is it?' he grumbled, but the edge had gone out of his ill-humour. 'I suppose youhaveto keep up with politics or you couldn't keep the ball rolling as you did last night?'
'Yes,' said Vida, with an innocent air. 'It is well known what superhuman efforts we have to make before we can qualify ourselves to talk to men.'
'Hm!' grumbled Fox-Moore. 'I never sawyouat a loss.'
'You did last night.'
'No, I didn't. I saw you getting on like a house afire with Haycroft and the beguiling Borrodaile. It's a pity all the decent men are married.'
Mrs. Fox-Moore allowed her own coffee to get cold while she hovered over the sacred rite of scientific tea-making. Mr. Fox-Moore, talking to Vida about the Foreign Office reception, to which they had all gone on after the Tunbridges' dinner, kept watching with a kind ofhalf-absent-mindedscorn his wife's fussily punctilious pains to prepare the brew 'his way.' When all was ready and the tea steaming on its way to him in the hands of its harassed maker, he curtly declined it, got up, and left the room. A moment after, the shutting of the front door announced the beginning of yet another of the master's absences.
'How can you stand it?' said Vida, under her breath.
'Oh, I don't mind his going away,' said the other, dully.
'No; but his coming back!'
'One of the things I'm grateful to Donald for'—she spoke as if there were plenty more—'he is very good to you, Vida.' And in her tone there was criticism of the beneficiary.
'You mean, he's not as rude to me as he is to you?'
'He is even forbearing. And you—you rather frighten me sometimes.'
'I see that.'
'It would be very terrible formeif he took it into his head not to like you.'
'If he took it into his head to forbid your having me here, you mean.'
'But even when you aren't polite he just laughs. Still, he's not a patient man.'
'Do you think you have to tell me that?'
'No, dear, only to remind you not to try him too far. For my sake, Vida, don't ever do that.'
She put out her yellow, parchment-like hand, and her sister closed hers over it an instant.
'Here's the hot milk,' said Vida. 'Now we'll have some more coffee.'
'Are you coming with me to-day?' Mrs. Fox-Moore asked quite cheerfully for her as the servant shut the door.
'Oh, is this Friday? N—no.' The younger woman looked at the chill grey world through the window, and followed up the hesitating negative with a quite definite, 'I couldn't stand slums to-day.' The two exchanged the look that means, 'Here we are again up against this recurring difference.' But there was no ill-humour in either face as their eyes met.
Between these two daughters of one father existed that sort of haunting family resemblance often seen between two closely related persons, despite one being attractive and the other in some way repellent. The observer traces the same lines in each face, the same intensification of 'the family look' in the smile, and yet knows that the slight disparity in age fails to account for a difference wide as the poles.
And not alone difference of taste, of environment and experience, not these alone make up the sum of their unlikeness. You had only to look from the fresh simplicity of white muslin blouse and olive-coloured cloth in the one case, to the ungainly expensiveness of the black silk gown of the married woman, in order to get from the first a sense of dainty morning freshness, and from Mrs. Fox-Moore not alone a lugubriousmemento morisort of impression, but that more disquieting reminder of the ugly and over-elaborate thing life is to many an estimable soul. Janet Fox-Moore had the art of rubbing this dark fact in till, so to speak, the black came off.She seemed to achieve it partly by dint of wearing (instead of any relief of lace or even of linen at her throat) a hard band of that passementerie secretly so despised of the little Tunbridges. This device did not so much 'finish off' the neck of Mrs. Fox-Moore's gowns, as allow the funereal dulness of them to overflow on to her brown neck. It even cast an added shadow on her sallow cheek. The figure of the older woman, gaunt and thin enough, announced the further constriction of the corset. By way of revenge the sharp shoulder-blades poked the corset out till it defined a ridge in the black silk back. In front, too, the slab-like figure declined co-operation with the corset, and withdrew, leaving a hiatus that the silk bodice clothed though it did not conceal. You could not have told whether the other woman wore that ancient invention for a figure insufficient or over-exuberant. As you followed her movements, easy with the ease of a child, while she walked or stooped or caught up the fragile Doris, or raised her arm to take a book from the shelf, you got an impression of a physique in perfect because unconscious harmony with its environment. If, on the contrary, you watched but so much as the nervous, uncertain hand of the other woman, you would know here was one who had spent her years in alternately grasping the nettle and letting it go—reaping only stings in life's fair fields. Easy for any one seeing her in these days (though she wasn't thirty-six) to share Mrs. Freddy's incredulous astonishment at hearing from Haycroft the night before that Janet Levering had been 'the beauty of her family.' Mrs. Freddy's answer had been, 'Oh, don't make fun of her!' and Haycroft had had to assure her of his seriousness, while the little hostess still stared uncertain.
'Thelinesof her face are rather good,' she admitted. 'Oh, but those yellow and pink eyes, and her general muddiness!'
'Yes, yes,' Sir William had agreed. 'She's changed so that I would never have known her, but her colouring used to be her strong point. I assure you she was magnificent—oh, much more striking than the younger sister!'
The bloodless-looking woman who sat uneasily at her own board clutching at a thin fragment of cold dry toast that hung cheerlessly awry in the silver rack, like the last brown leaf to a frosty tree, while she crunched the toast, spoke dryly of the poor; of how 'interesting many of them are;' how when you take thetrouble to understand them, you no longer lump them all together in a featureless misery, you realize how significant and varied are their lives.
'Not half as significant and varied as their smells,' said her unchastened sister.
'Oh, you sometimes talk as if you had no heart!'
'The trouble is, I have no stomach. When you've lured me into one of those dingy alleys and that all-pervading greasy smell of poverty comes flooding into my face—well, simply all my most uncharitable feelings rise up in revolt. I want to hold my nose and hide my eyes, and call for the motor-car. Running away isn't fast enough,' she said, with energy and a sudden spark in her golden-brown eye.
Mrs. Fox-Moore poised the fat silver jug over her own belated cup, and waited for the thick cream to come out in a slow and grudging gobbet with a heavy plump into the coffee. As she waited, she gently rebuked that fastidiousness in her companion that shrank from contact with the unsavoury and the unfortunate.
'It isn't only my fastidiousness, as you call it, that is offended,' Vida retorted. 'I am penetrated by the hopelessness of what we're doing. It salves my conscience, oryours——' Hurriedly she added, '——that's not what you mean to do it for, Iknow, dear—and you're an angel and I'm a mere cumberer of the earth. But when I'm only just "cumbering," I feel less a fraud than when I'm pretending to do good.'
'You needn't pretend.'
'I can't do anything else. To go among your poor makes me feel in my heart that I'm simply flaunting my better fortune.'
'I never saw you flaunting it.'
'Well, I assure you it's when you've got me to go with you on one of your Whitechapel raids that I feel most strongly how outrageous it is that, in addition to all my other advantages, I should buy self-approval by doing some tuppenny-ha'penny service to a toiling, starving fellow-creature.'
Mrs. Fox-Moore set down her coffee-cup. 'You mustn't suppose——' she began.
'No, no,' Vida cut her short. 'I don't doubtyourmotives. I know too well how ready you are to sacrifice yourself. But it does fill me with a kind of rage to see some of those smug Settlementworkers, the people that plume themselves on leaving luxurious homes. They don't say how hideously bored they were in them. They are perfectly enchanted at the excitement and importance they get out of going to live among the poor, who don't want them——'
'Oh, my dear Vida!'
'Not a little bit! Well, thewilypaupers do, perhaps, for what they can get out of our sort.'
Mrs. Fox-Moore cast down her eyes as though convicted by the recollection of some concrete example.
'We're only scratching at the surface,' Vida, said—'such an ugly surface, too! And the more we scratch, the uglier things come to light.'
'You make too much of that disappointment at Christmas.'
'I wasn't even thinking of the hundredth time you've been disillusioned.' Vida threw down her table napkin, and stood up. 'I was thinking of people like our young parson cousin.'
'George——'
Vida made a shrug of half-impatient, half-humorous assent. 'Leaves the Bishop's Palace and comes to London. He, too, wants "to live for the poor." Never for an instant one of them. Always the patron—the person something may be got out of—or, at all events, hoped from.'
She seemed to be about to leave the room, but as her sister answered with some feeling, 'No, no, they love and respect him!' Vida paused, and brought up by the fire that the sudden cold made comforting.
'George is a different man since he's found his vocation,' Mrs. Fox-Moore insisted. 'You read it in his face.'
'Oh, if all you mean is thathe'shappier, why not? He's able to look on himself as a benefactor. He's tasting the intoxication of the King among Beggars.'
'You are grossly unfair, Vida.'
'So he thinks when I challenge him: "What good, what earthly good, is all this unless an anodyne—for you—is good?"'
'It seems to me a very real good that George Nuneaton and his kind should go into the dark places and brighten hopeless lives with a little Christian kindness—sometimes with a little timely counsel.'
'Yes, yes,' said the voice by the fire; 'and a little good music—don't forget the good music.'
'An object-lesson in practical religion, isn't that something?'
'Practical! Good Heaven! A handful of complacent, expensively educated young people playing at reform. The poor wanting work, wanting decent housing—wantingbread—and offered a little cultivated companionship.'
'Vida, what have you been reading?'
'Reading? I've been visiting George at his Settlement. I've been intruding myself on the privacy of the poor once a week with you—and I'm done with it! Personally I don't get enough out of it to reconcile me to their getting so little.'
'You're burning,' observed the toneless voice from the head of the table.
'Yes, I believe I was a little hot,' Vida laughed as she drew her smoking skirt away from the fire. But she still stood close to the cheerful blaze, one foot on the fender, the green cloth skirt drawn up, leaving the more delicate fabric of her silk petticoat to meet the fiery ordeal. 'If it annoys you to hear me say that's my view of charity, why, don't make me talk about it;' but the face she turned for an instant over her shoulder was far gentler than her words. 'And don't in future'—she was again looking down into the fire, and she spoke slowly as one who delivers a reluctant ultimatum—'don't ask me to help, except with money.Thatdoesn't cost so much.'
'I am disappointed.' Nothing further, but the sound of a chair moved back, eloquent somehow of a discouragement deeper than words conveyed.
Vida turned swiftly, and, coming back to her sister, laid an arm about her shoulder.
'I'm a perfect monster! But you know, my dear, you rather goaded me into saying all this by looking such a martyr when I've tried to get out of going——'
'Very well, I won't ask you again.' But the toneless rejoinder was innocent of rancour. Janet Fox-Moore gave the impression of being too chilled, too drained of the generous life-forces, even for anger.
'Besides,' said Vida, hurriedly, 'I'd nearly forgotten; there's the final practising at eleven.'
'I'dforgotten your charity concert was so near!' As Mrs. Fox-Moore gathered up her letters, she gave way for the first time to a wintry little smile.
'The concert's mine, I admit, but the charity's the bishop's. What absurd things we women fill up the holes in our lives with!' Vida said, as she followed her sister into the hall. 'Do you know the real reason I'm getting up this foolish concert?'
'Because you like singing, and do it so well that—yes, without your looks and the indescribable "rest," you'd be a success. I told you that, when I begged you to come and try London.'
'The reason I'm slaving over the concert—it isn't all musical enthusiasm. It amuses me to organize it. All the ticklish, difficult, "bothering" part of getting up a monster thing of this sort, reconciling malcontents, enlisting the great operatic stars and not losing the great social lights—it all interests me like a game. I'm afraid the truth is I like managing things.'
'Perhaps Mrs. Freddy's not so far wrong.'
'Does Mrs. Freddy accuse me of being a "managing woman," horrid thought?'
'She was talking about you in her enthusiastic way when she was here the other day. "Vida could administer a state," she said. Yes,Ilaughed, too, but Mrs. Freddy shook her head quite seriously, and said, "To think of a being like Vida—not even a citizen."'
'I'm not a citizen?' exclaimed the lady, laughing down at her sister over the banisters. 'Does she think because I've lived abroad I've forfeited my rights of——'
'No, all she means is—— Oh, you know the bee she's got in her bonnet. She means, as she'll tell you, that "you have no more voice in the affairs of England than if you were a Hottentot."'
'I can't say I've ever minded that. But it has an odd sound, hasn't it—to hear one isn't a citizen.'
'Mrs. Freddy forgets——'
'I know! I know what you're going to say,' said the other, light-heartedly. 'Mrs. Freddy forgets our unique ennobling influence;' and the tall young woman laughed as she ran up the last half of the long flight of stairs. At the top she halted a moment, and called down to Mrs. Fox-Moore, who was examining the cards left the day before, 'Speaking of our powerful influenceover our men-folk—Mr. Freddy wasn't present, was he, when she aired her views?'
'No.'
'I thought not. Her influence over Mr. Freddy is maintained by the strictest silence on matters he isn't keen about.'
Seeing Ulland House for the first time on a fine afternoon in early May against the jubilant green of its woodland hillside, the beholder, a little dazzled in that first instant by the warmth of colour burning in the ancient brick, might adapt the old dean's line and call the coral-tinted structure rambling down the hillside, 'A rose-red dwelling half as old as Time.'
Its original architecture had been modified by the generations as they passed. One lord of Ulland had expressed his fancy on the eastern facade in gable and sculptured gargoyle; another his fear or his defiance in the squat and sturdy tower with its cautious slits in lieu of windows. Yet another Ulland had brought home from eighteenth-century Italy a love of colonnades and terraced gardens; and one still later had cut down to the level of the sward the high ground-floor windows, so that where before had been two doors or three, were now a dozen giving egress to the gardens.
The legend so often encountered in the history of old English houses was not neglected here—that it had been a Crusader of this family who had himself brought home from the Holy Land the Lebanon cedar that spread wide its level branches on the west, cutting the sunset into even bars. Tradition also said it was a counsellor of Elizabeth who had set the dial on the lawn. Even the latest lord had found a way to leave his impress upon the time. He introduced 'Clock golf' at Ulland. From the upper windows on the south and west the roving eye was caught by the great staring face of this new timepiece on the turf—its Roman numerals showing keen and white upon the vivid green. On the other side of the cedar, that incorrigible Hedonist, the crumbling dial, told you in Latin that he only marked the shining hours. But the brand new clock on the lawn bore neither watchword nor device—seemed even to have dropped its hands as though in modesty withheld from pointing to hours so little worthy of record.
Two or three men, on this fine Saturday, had come down from London for the week-end to disport themselves on the Ulland links,half a mile beyond the park. After a couple of raw days, the afternoon had turned out quite unseasonably warm, and though the golfers had come back earlier than usual, not because of the heat but because one of their number had a train to catch, they agreed it was distinctly reviving to find tea served out of doors.
Already Lady John was in her place on the pillared colonnade, behind the urn. Already, too, one of her pair of pretty nieces was at hand to play the skilful lieutenant. Hermione Heriot, tactful, charming, twenty-five, was equally ready to hand bread and butter, or, sitting quietly, to perform the greater service—that of presenting the fresh-coloured, discreetly-smiling vision called 'the typical English girl.' Miss Heriot fulfilled to a nicety the requirements of those who are sensibly reassured by the spectacle of careful conventionality allied to feminine charm—a pleasant conversability that may be trusted to soothe and counted on never to startle. Hermione would almost as soon have stood on her head in Piccadilly as have said anything original, though to her private consternation such perilous stuff had been known to harbour an uneasy instant in her bosom. She carried such inconvenient cargo as carefully hidden as a conspirator would a bomb under his cloak. It had grown to be as necessary to her to agree with the views and fashions of the majority as it was disquieting to her to see these contravened, or even for a single hour ignored. From the crown of her carefully dressed head to the tips of her pointed toes she was engaged in testifying her assent to the prevailing note. Despite all this to recommend her, she was not Lady John's favourite niece. No doubt about Jean Dunbarton holding that honour; and, to Hermione's credit, her own love for her cousin enabled her to accept the situation with a creditable equability. Jean Dunbarton was due now at any moment, she having already sent over her luggage with her maid the short two miles from the Bishop's Palace, where the girl had dined and slept the night before.
The rest of the Ulland House party were arriving by the next train. As Miss Levering was understood to be one of those expected it will be seen that a justified faith in the excellence of the Ulland links had not made Lady John unmindful of the wisdom of including among 'the week-enders' a nice assortment of pretty women for the amusement of her golfers in the off hours.
Of this other young lady swinging her golf club as she cameacross the lawn with the men—sole petticoat among them—it could not be pretended that any hostess, let alone one so worldly-wise as Lady John Ulland, would look to have the above-hinted high and delicate office performed by so upright and downright—not to say so bony—a young woman, with face so like a horse, and the stride of a grenadier. Under her short leather-bound skirt the great brown-booted feet seemed shamelessly to court attention—as it were out of malice to catch your eye, while deliberately they trampled on the tenderest traditions clinging still about the Weaker Sex.
Lady John held in her hand the top of the jade and silver tea-caddy. Hermione, as well as her aunt, knew that this top held four teaspoonsful of tea. Lady John filled it once, filled it twice, and turned the contents out each time into the gaping pot. Then, absent-mindedly, she paused, eyeing the approaching party,—that genial silver-haired despot, her husband, walking with Lord Borrodaile, the gawky girl between them, except when she paused to practise a drive. The fourth person, a short, compactly knit man, was lounging along several paces behind, but every now and then energetically shouting out his share in the conversation. The ground of Lady John's interest in the group seemed to consist in a half-mechanical counting of noses. Her eyes came back to the tea-table and she made a third addition to the jade and silver measure.
'We shall be only six for the first brew,' prompted the girl at her side.
'Paul Filey is mooning somewhere about the garden.'
'Oh!'
'Why do you say it like that?'
Hermione's eyes rested a moment on the golfer who was bringing up the rear. He was younger than his rather set figure had at a distance proclaimed him.
'I was only thinking Dick Farnborough can't abide Paul,' said the girl.
'A typical product of the public school is hardly likely to appreciate an undisciplined creature with a streak of genius in him like Paul Filey.'
'Oh, I rather love him myself,' said the girl, lightly, 'only as Sophia says he does talk rather rot at times.'
With her hand on the tea-urn, releasing a stream of boiling water into the pot, Lady John glanced over the small thickset angel that poised himself on one podgy foot upon the lid of the urn.
'Sophia's too free with her tongue. It's a mistake. It frightens people off.'
'Men, you mean?'
'Especially men.'
'I often think,' said the young woman, 'that men—all except Paul—would be more shocked at Sophia—if—she wasn't who she is.'
'No doubt,' agreed her aunt. 'Still I sympathize with her parents. I don't see how they'll ever marry her. She might just as well be Miss Jones—that girl—for all she makes of herself.'
'Yes; I've often thought so, too,' agreed Hermione, apparently conscious that the very most was made ofher.
'She hasn't even been taught to walk.' Lady John was still watching the girl's approach.
'Yet she looks best out of doors,' said Hermione, firmly.
'Oh, yes! She comes into the drawing-room as if she were crossing a ploughed field!'
'All the same,' said Hermione, under her breath, 'when sheisindoors I'd rather see her walking than sitting.'
'You mean the way she crosses her legs?'
'Yes.'
'But that, too—it seems like so many other things, a question only of degree. Nobody objects to seeing a pair of neat ankles crossed—it looks rather nice and early Victorian. Nowadays lots of girls cross their knees—and nobody says anything. But Sophia crosses her—well, herthighs.'
And the two women laughed understandingly.
A stranger might imagine that the reason for Lady Sophia's presence in the party was that she, by common consent, played a capital game of golf—'for a woman.' That fact, however, was rather against her. For people who can play the beguiling game,wantto play it—and want to play it not merely now and then out of public spirit to make up a foursome, but constantly and for pure selfish love of it. Woman may, if she likes, take it as a compliment to her sex that this proclivity—held to be wholly natural in aman—is called 'rather unfeminine' in a woman. But it was a defect like the rest, forgiven the Lady Sophia for her father's sake. Lord Borrodaile, held to be one of the most delightful of men, was much in request for parties of this description. One reason for his daughter's being there was that it glossed the fact that Lady Borrodaile was not—was, indeed, seldom present, and one may say never missed, in the houses frequented by her husband.
But as he and his friends not only did not belong to, but looked down upon, the ultra smart set, where the larger freedoms are practised in lieu of the lesser decencies, Lord Borrodaile lived his life as far removed from any touch of scandal and irregularity as the most puritanic of the bourgeoisie. Part and parcel of his fastidiousness, some said—others, that from his Eton days he had always been a lazy beggar. As though to show that he did not shrink from reasonable responsibility towards his female impedimenta, any inquiry as to the absence of Lady Borrodaile was met by reference to Sophia. In short, where other attractive husbands brought a boring wife, Lord Borrodaile brought an undecorative daughter. While to the onlooker nearly every aspect of this particular young woman would seem destined to offend a beauty-loving, critical taste like that of Borrodaile, he was probably served, as other mortals are, by that philosophy of the senses which brings in time a deafness and a blindness to the unloveliness that we needs must live beside. Lord Borrodaile was far too intelligent not to see, too, that when people had got over Lady Sophia's uncompromising exterior, they found things in her to admire as well as to stand a little in awe of. Unlike one another as the Borrodailes were, in one respect they presented to the world an undivided front. From their point of view, just as laws existed to keep other people in order, so was 'fashion' an affair for the middle classes. The Borrodailes might dress as dowdily as they pleased, might speak as uncompromisingly as they felt inclined. Were they not Borrodailes of Borrodaile? Though open expression of this spirit grows less common, they would not have denied that it is still the prevailing temper of the older aristocracy. And so it has hitherto been true that among its women you find that sort of freedom which is the prerogative of those called the highest and of those called the lowest. It is the women of all the grades between these two extremes who have dared not to be themselves, who ape themanners, echo the catchwords, and garb themselves in the elaborate ugliness, devised for the blind meek millions.
As the Lady Sophia, now a little in advance of her companions, came stalking towards the steps, out from a little path that wound among the thick-growing laurels issued Paul Filey. He raised his eyes, and hurriedly thrust a small book into his pocket. The young lady paused, but only apparently to pat, or rather to administer an approving cuff to, the Bedlington terrier lying near the lower step.
'Well,' she said over her shoulder to Filey, 'our side gave a good account of itself that last round.'
'I was sure it would as soon as my malign influence was removed.'
'Yes; from the moment I took on Dick Farnborough, the situation assumed a new aspect. You'llneverplay a good game, you know, if you go quoting Baudelaire on the links.'
'Poor Paul!' his hostess murmured to her niece, 'I always tremble when I see him exposed to Sophia's ruthless handling.'
'Yes,' whispered Hermione. 'She says she's sure he thinks of himself as a prose Shelley; and for some reason that infuriates Sophia.'
With a somewhat forced air of amusement, Mr. Filey was following his critic up the steps, she still mocking at his 'drives' and the way he negotiated his bunkers.
Arrived at the top of the little terrace, whose close-shorn turf was level with the flagged floor of the colonnade, Mr. Filey sought refuge near Hermione, as the storm-tossed barque, fleeing before the wind, hies swift to the nearest haven.
Bending over the Bedlington, the Amazon remained on the top step, her long, rather good figure garbed in stuff which Filey had said was fit only for horse-blankets, but which was Harris tweed slackly belted by a broad canvas girdle drawn through a buckle of steel.
'Willyou tell me,' he moaned in Hermione's ear, 'why the daughter of a hundred earls has the manners of a groom, and dresses herself in odds and ends of the harness room?'
'Sh! Somebody told her once you'd said something of that sort.'
'No!' he said. 'Who?'
'It wasn't I.'
'Of course not. But did she mind? What did she say, eh?'
'She only said, "He got that out of a novel of Miss Broughton's."'
Filey looked a little dashed. 'No! Has Miss Broughton said it, too? Then there are more of them!' He glanced again at the Amazon. 'Horrible thought!'
'Don't be so unreasonable. She couldn't play golf in a long skirt and high heels!'
'Whowantsa woman to play golf?'
Hermione gave him his tea with a smile. She knew with an absolute precision just how perfectly at that moment she herself was presenting the average man's picture of the ideal type of reposeful womanhood.
As Lord John and the two other men, his companions, came up the steps in the midst of a discussion—
'If you stop to argue, Mr. Farnborough,' said Lady John, holding out a cup, 'you won't have time for tea before you catch that train.'
'Oh, thank you!' He hastened to relieve her, while Hermione murmured regrets that he wasn't staying. 'Lady John didn't ask me,' he confided. As he saw in Hermione's face a project to intercede for him, he added, 'And now I've promised my mother—we've got a lot of people coming, and two men short!'
'Two men short! how horrible for her!' She said it half laughing, but her view of the reality of the dilemma was apparent in her letting the subject drop.
Farnborough, standing there tea-cup in hand, joined again in the discussion that was going on about some unnamed politician of the day, with whose character and destiny the future of England might quite conceivably be involved.
Before a great while this unnamed person would be succeeding his ailing and childless brother. There were lamentations in prospect of his too early translation to the Upper House.
The older men had been speaking of his family, in which the tradition of public service, generations old, had been revived in the person of this younger son.
'I have never understood,' Lord John was saying, 'how a man with such opportunities hasn't done more.'
'A man as able, too,' said Borrodaile, lazily. 'Think of thetribute he wrung out of Gladstone at the very beginning of his career. Whatever we may think of the old fox, Gladstone had an eye for men.'
'Bequiet, will you!' Lady Sophia administered a little whack to the Bedlington. 'Sh! Joey! don't you hear they're talking about our cousin?'
'Who?' said Filey, bending over the lady with a peace-offering of cake.
'Why, Geoffrey Stonor,' answered Sophia.
'Isit Stonor they mean?'
'Well, of course.'
'How do you know?' demanded Filey, in the pause.
'Oh, wherever there are two or three gathered together talking politics and "the coming man"—who has such a frightful lot in him that very little ever comes out—it's sure to be Geoffrey Stonor they mean, isn't it, Joey?'
'Perhaps,' said her father, dryly, 'you'll just mention that to him at dinner to-night.'
'What!' said Farnborough, with a keen look in his eyes. 'You don't mean he's coming here!'
Sophia, too, had looked round at her host with frank interest.
'Comin' to play golf?'
'Well, he mayn't get here in time for a round to-night, but we're rather expecting him by this four-thirty.'
'What fun!' Lady Sophia's long face had brightened.
'May I stay over till the next train?' Farnborough was whispering to Lady John as he went round to her on the pretext of more cream. 'Thank you—then I won't go till the six forty-two.'
'I didn't know,' Lady Sophia was observing in her somewhat crude way, 'that you knew Geoffrey as well as all that.'
'We don't,' said Lord John. 'He's been saying for years he wanted to come down and try our links, but it's by a fluke that he's coming, after all.'
'He never comes to seeus. He's far too busy, ain't he, Joey, even if we can't see that he accomplishes much?'
'Give him time and you'll see!' said Farnborough, with a wag of his head.
'Yes,' said Lord John, 'he's still a young man. Barely forty.'
'Barely forty!Theybelieve in prolonging their youth, don'tthey?' said Lady Sophia to no one in particular, and with her mouth rather more full of cake than custom prescribes. 'Good thing it isn't us, ain't it, Joey?'
'For a politician fortyisyoung,' said Farnborough.
'Oh, don't I know it!' she retorted. 'I was reading the life of Randolph Churchill the other day, and I came across a paragraph of filial admiration about the hold Lord Randolph had contrived to get so early in life over the House of Commons. It occurred to me to wonder just how much of a boy Lord Randolph was at the time. I was going to count up when I was saved the trouble by coming to a sentence that said he was then "an unproved stripling of thirty-two." You shouldn't laugh. It wasn't meant sarcastic.'
'Unless you're leader of the Opposition, I suppose it's not very easy to do much while your party's out of power,' hazarded Lady John, 'is it?'
'One of the most interesting things about our coming back will be to watch Stonor,' said Farnborough.
'After all, they said he did very well with his Under Secretaryship under the last Government, didn't they?' Again Lady John appealed to the two elder men.
'Oh, yes,' said Borrodaile. 'Oh, yes.'
'And the way'—Farnborough made up for any lack of enthusiasm—'the way he handled that Balkan question!'
'All that was pure routine,' Lord John waved it aside. 'But if Stonor had ever looked upon politics as more than a game, he'd have been a power long before this.'
'Ah,' said Borrodaile, slowly, 'you go as far as that? I doubt myself if he has enough of the demagogue in him.'
'But that's just why. The English people are not like the Americans or the French. The English have a natural distrust of the demagogue. I tell you if Stonor once believed in anything with might and main, he'd be a leader of men.'
'Here he is now.'
Farnborough was the first to distinguish the sound of carriage wheels behind the shrubberies. The others looked up and listened. Yes, the crunch of gravel. The wall of laurel was too thick to give any glimpse from this side of the drive that wound round to the main entrance. But some animating vision nevertheless seemedmiraculously to have penetrated the dense green wall, to the obvious enlivenment of the company.
'It's rather exciting seeing him at close quarters,' Hermione said to Filey.
'Yes! He's the only politician I can get up any real enthusiasm for. He's so many-sided. I saw him yesterday at a Bond Street show looking at caricatures of himself and all his dearest friends.'
'Really. How did he take the sacrilege?'
'Oh, he was immensely amused at the fellow's impudence. You see, Stonor could understand the art of the thing as well as the fun—the fierce economy of line——'
Nobody listened. There were other attempts at conversation, mere decent pretence at not being absorbed in watching for the appearance of Geoffrey Stonor.
There was the faint sound of a distant door's opening, and there was a glimpse of the old butler. But before he could reach the French window with his announcement, his own colourless presence was masked, wiped out—not as the company had expected by the apparition of a man, but by a tall, lightly-moving young woman with golden-brown eyes, and wearing a golden-brown gown that had touches of wallflower red and gold on the short jacket. There were only wallflowers in the small leaf-green toque, and except for the sable boa in her hand (which so suddenly it was too warm to wear) no single thing about her could at all adequately account for the air of what, for lack of a better term, may be called accessory elegance that pervaded the golden-brown vision, taking the low sunlight on her face and smiling as she stepped through the window.
It was no small tribute to the lady had she but known it, that her coming was not received nor even felt as an anti-climax.
As she came forward, all about her rose a significant Babel: 'Here's Miss Levering!' 'It's Vida!' 'Oh, how do youdo!'—the frou-frou of swishing skirts, the scrape of chairs pushed back over stone flags, and the greeting of the host and hostess, cordial to the point of affection—the various handshakings, the discreet winding through the groups of a footman with a fresh teapot, the Bedlington's first attack of barking merged in tail-wagging upon pleased recognition of a friend; and a final settling down again about the tea-table with the air full of scraps of talk and unfinished questions.
'You didn't see anything of my brother and his wife?' asked Lord Borrodaile.
'Oh, yes,' his host suddenly remembered. 'I thought the Freddys were coming by that four-thirty as well as——'
'No—nobody but me.' She threw her many-tailed boa on the back of the chair that Paul Filey had drawn up for her between the hostess and the place where Borrodaile had been sitting.
'There are two more good trains before dinner——' began Lord John.
'Oh, didn't I tell you,' said his wife, as she gave the cup just filled for the new-comer into the nearest of the outstretched hands—'didn't I tell you I had a note from Mrs. Freddy by the afternoon post? They aren't coming.'
Out of a little chorus of regret, came Borrodaile's slightly mocking, 'Anything wrong with the precious children?'
'She didn't mention the children—nor much of anything else—just a hurried line.'
'The children were as merry as grigs yesterday,' said Vida, looking at their uncle across the table. 'I went on to the Freddys' after the Royal Academy. No!' she put her cup down suddenly. 'Nobody is to ask me how I like my own picture! The Tunbridge children——'
'That thing Hoyle has done of you,' said Lord Borrodaile, deliberately, 'is a very brilliant and a very misleading performance.'
'Thank you.'
Filey and Lord John, in spite of her interdiction, were pursuing the subject of the much-discussed portrait.
'It certainly is one aspect of you——'
'Don't you think his Velasquez-like use of black and white——'
'The tiny Tunbridges, as I was saying,' she went on imperturbably, 'were having a teafight when I got there. I say "fight" advisedly.'
'Then I'll warrant,' said their uncle, 'that Sara was the aggressor.'
'She was.'
'You saw Mrs. Freddy?' asked Lady John, with an interest half amused, half cynical, in her eyes.
'For a moment.'
'She doesn't confess it, I suppose,' the hostess went on, 'but I imagine she is rather perturbed;' and Lady John glanced at Borrodaile with her good-humoured, worldly-wise smile.
'Poor Mrs. Freddy!' said Vida. 'You see, she's taken it all quite seriously—this Suffrage nonsense.'
'Yes;' Mrs. Freddy's brother-in-law had met Lady John's look with the same significant smile as that lady's own—'Yes, she's naturally feeling rather crestfallen—perhaps she'llseenow!'
'Mrs. Freddy crestfallen, what about?' said Farnborough. But he was much preoccupied at that moment in supplying Lady Sophia with bits of toast the exact size for balancing on the Bedlington's nose. For the benefit of his end of the table Paul Filey had begun to describe the new one-man show of caricatures of famous people just opened in Bond Street. The 'mordant genius,' as he called it, of this new man—an American Jew—offered an irresistible opportunity for phrase-making. And still on the other side of the tea urn the Ullands were discussing with Borrodaile and Miss Levering the absent lady whose 'case' was obviously a matter of concern to her friends.
'Well, let us hope,' Lord John was saying as sternly as his urbanity permitted—'let us hope this exhibition in the House will be a lesson to her.'
'Shewasn't concerned in it!' Vida quickly defended her.
'Nevertheless we are all hoping,' said Lady John, 'that it has come just in time to prevent her from going over the edge.'
'Over the edge!' Farnborough pricked up his ears at last in good earnest, feeling that the conversation on the other side had grown too interesting for him to be out of it any longer. 'Over what edge?'
'The edge of the Woman Suffrage precipice,' said Lady John.
'You call it a precipice?' Vida Levering raised her dark brows in a little smile.
'Don't you?' demanded her hostess.
'I should say mud-puddle.'
'From the point of view of the artist'—Paul Filey had begun laying down some new law, but turning an abrupt corner, he followed the wandering attention of his audience—'from the point of view of the artist,' he repeated, 'it would be interesting to know what the phenomenon is, that Lady John took for a precipice and that Miss Levering says is a mud-puddle.'
'Oh,' said Lord John, thinking it well to generalize and spare Mrs. Freddy further rending, 'we've been talking about this public demonstration of the unfitness of women for public affairs.'
'Give me some more toast dice!' Sophia said to Farnborough. 'You haven't seen Joey's new accomplishment. They're only discussing that idiotic scene the women made the other night.'
'Oh, in the gallery of the House of Commons?'
'Yes, wasn't it disgustin'?' said Paul Filey, facing about suddenly with an air of cheerful surprise at having at last hit on something that he and Lady Sophia could heartily agree about.
'Perfectly revolting!' said Hermione Heriot, not to be out of it. For it is well known that, next to a great enthusiasm shared, nothing so draws human creatures together as a good bout of cursing in common. So with emphasis Miss Heriot repeated, 'Perfectly revolting!'
Her reward was to see Paul turn away from Sophia and say, in a tone whose fervour might be called marked—
'I'm glad to hear you say so!'
She consolidated her position by asking sweetly, 'Does it need saying?'
'Not by people like you. But itdoesneed saying when it comes to people we know——'
'Like Mrs. Freddy. Yes.'
That unfortunate little lady seemed to be 'getting it' on all sides. Even her brother-in-law, who was known to be in reality a great ally of hers—even Lord Borrodaile was chuckling as though at some reflection distinctly diverting.
'Poor Laura! She was being unmercifully chaffed about it last night.'
'I don't myself consider it any longer a subject for chaff,' said Lord John.
'No,' agreed his wife; 'Ifelt that before this last outbreak. At the time of the first disturbance—where was it?—in some town in the North several weeks ago——'
'Yes,' said Vida Levering; 'I almost think that was even worse!'
'Conceive the sublime impertinence,' said Lady John, 'of an ignorant little factory girl presuming to stand up in public and interrupt a speech by a minister of the Crown!'
'I don't know what we're coming to, I'm sure!' said Borrodaile, with a detached air.
'Oh,thatgirl—beyond a doubt,' said his host, with conviction—'that girl was touched.'
'Oh, beyond a doubt!' echoed Mr. Farnborough.
'There's something about this particular form of feminine folly——' began Lord John.
But he wasn't listened to—for several people were talking at once.
After receiving a few preliminary kicks, the subject had fallen, as a football might, plump into the very midst of a group of school-boys. Its sudden presence there stirred even the sluggish to unwonted feats. Every one must have his kick at this Suffrage Ball, and manners were for the nonce in abeyance.
In the midst of an obscuring dust of discussion, floated fragments of condemnation: 'Sexless creatures!' 'The Shrieking Sisterhood!' etc., in which the kindest phrase was Lord John's repeated, 'Touched, you know,' as he tapped his forehead—'not really responsible, poor wretches. Touched.'
'Still, everybody doesn't know that. It must give men a quite horrid idea of women,' said Hermione, delicately.
'No'—Lord Borrodaile spoke with a wise forbearance—'we don't confound a handful of half-insane females with the whole sex.'
Dick Farnborough was in the middle of a spirited account of that earlier outbreak in the North—
'She was yelling like a Red Indian, and the policeman carried her out scratching and spitting——'
'Ugh!' Hermione exchanged looks of horror with Paul Filey.
'Oh, yes,' said Lady John, with disgust, 'we saw all that in the papers.'
Miss Levering, too, had turned her face away—not as Hermione did, to summon a witness to her detestation, but rather as one avoiding the eyes of the men.
'You see,' said Farnborough, with gusto, 'there's something about women's clothes—especiallytheir hats, you know—they—well, they ain't built for battle.'
'They ought to wear deer-stalkers,' was Lady Sophia's contribution to the New Movement.
'It is quite true,' Lady John agreed, 'that a woman in a scrimmage can never be a heroic figure.'
'No, that's just it,' said Farnborough. 'She's just funny, don't you know!'
'I don't agree with you about the fun,' Borrodaile objected. 'That's why I'm glad they've had their lesson. I should say there was almost nothing more degrading than this public spectacleof——' Borrodaile lifted his high shoulders higher still, with an effect of intense discomfort. 'It never but once came my way that I remember, but I'm free to own,' he said, 'there's nothing that shakes my nerves like seeing a woman struggling and kicking in a policeman's arms.'
But Farnborough was not to be dissuaded from seeing humour in the situation.
'They say they swept up a peck of hairpins after the battle!'
As though she had had as much of the subject as she could very well stand, Miss Levering leaned sideways, put an arm behind her, and took possession of her boa.
'They're just ending the first act ofSiegfried. How glad I am to be in your garden instead of Covent Garden!'
Ordinarily there would have been a movement to take the appreciative guest for a stroll.
Perhaps it was only chance, or the enervating heat, that kept the company in their chairs listening to Farnborough—
'The cattiest one of the two, there she stood like this, her clothes half torn off, her hair down her back, her face the colour of a lobster and the crowd jeering at her——'
'I don't see how you could stand and look on at such a hideous scene,' said Miss Levering.
'Oh—I—I didn't! I'm only telling you how Wilkinson described it. He said——'
'How did Major Wilkinson happen to be there?' asked Lady John.
'He'd motored over from Headquarters to move a vote of thanks to the chairman. He said he'd seen some revolting things in his time, but the scrimmage of the stewards and the police with those women——!' Farnborough ended with an expressive gesture.
'If it was as horrible as that for Major Wilkinson to look on at—what must it have been for those girls?' It was Miss Levering speaking. She seemed to have abandoned the hope of being taken for a stroll, and was leaning forward, chin in hand, looking at the fringe of the teacloth.
Richard Farnborough glanced at her as if he resented the note of wondering pity in the low tone.
'It's never so bad for the lunatic,' he said, 'as for the sane people looking on.'
'Oh, I don't supposetheymind,' said Hermione—'women likethat.'
'It's flattery to call them women. They're sexless monstrosities,' said Paul Filey.
'You know some of them?' Vida raised her head.
'I?' Filey's face was nothing less than aghast at the mere suggestion.
'But you've seen them——?'
'Heaven forbid!'
'But I suppose you've gone and listened to them haranguing the crowds.'
'NowdoI look like a person who——'
'Well, you see we're all so certain they're such abominations,' said Vida, 'I thought maybe some of us knew something about them.'
Dick Farnborough was heard saying to Lord John in a tone of cheerful vigour—
'Locking up is too good for 'em. I'd give 'em a good thrashin'.'
'Spirited fellow!' said Miss Levering, promptly, with an accent that brought down a laugh on the young gentleman's head.
He joined in it, but with anaïfuneasiness. What's the matter with the woman?—his vaguely bewildered face seemed to inquire. After all, I'm only agreeing with her.
'Few of us have time, I imagine,' said Filey, 'to go and listen to their ravings.'
As Filey was quite the idlest of men, without the preoccupation of being a tolerable sportsman or even a player of games, Miss Levering's little laugh was echoed by others beside Lady Sophia.