Jean Dunbarton received Mr. Geoffrey Stonor upon his entrance into Mrs.
Freddy's drawing-room with a charming little air of fluttered
responsibility.
'Mrs. Freddy and I have been lunching with the Whyteleafes. She had to
go afterwards to say good-bye to some people who are leaving for abroad.
So Mrs. Freddy asked me to turn over my Girls' Club to your cousin
Sophia----'
'Are you given to good works, too?' he interrupted. 'What a terribly
philanthropic age it is!'
Jean smiled as she went on with her explanation. 'Although it wasn't her
Sunday, Sophia, like an angel, has gone to the club. And I'm here to
explain. Mrs. Freddy said if she wasn't back on the stroke----'
'Oh, I dare say I'm a trifle early.'
It was a theory that presented fewer difficulties than that he should be
kept waiting.
'I was to beg you to give her a few minutes' grace in any case.'
Instead of finding a seat, he stood looking down at the charming face.
His indifference to Mrs Freddy's precise programme lent his eyes a
misleading look of absent-mindedness, which dashed the girl's obvious
excitement over the encounter.
'I see,' he had said slowly. What he saw was a graceful creature of
medium height, with a clear colour and grey-blue eyes fixed on him with
an interest as eager as it was frank. What the grey-blue eyes saw was
probably some glorified version of Stonor's straight, firm features, a
little blunt, which lacked that semblance of animation given by colour,
and seemed to scorn to make up for it by any mobility of expression. The
grey eyes, set somewhat too prominently, were heavy when not interested,
and the claim to good looks which nobody had dreamed of denying seemed
to rest mainly upon the lower part of his face. The lips, over-full,
perhaps, were firmly moulded, but the best lines were those curves from
the ear to the quite beautiful chin. The gloss on the straight
light-brown hair may have stood to the barber's credit, but only health
could keep so much grace still in the carriage of a figure heavier than
should be in a man of forty--one who, without a struggle, had declined
from polo unto golf. There was no denying that the old expression of
incipient sullenness, fleeting or suppressed, was deepening into the
main characteristic of his face, though it was held that he, as little
as any man, had cause to present that aspect to a world content to be
his oyster. Yet, as no doubt he had long ago learned, it was that very
expression which was the cause of much of the general concern people
seemed to feel to placate, to amuse, to dispel the menace of that cloud.
The girl saw it, and her heart failed her.
'Mrs. Freddy said if I told you the children were in the garden
expecting you, you wouldn't have the heart to go away directly.'
'She is right. I _haven't_ the heart.' And in that lifting of his cloud,
the girl's own face shone an instant.
'I should have felt it a terrible responsibility if you were to go.' She
spoke as if the gladness that was not to be repressed called for some
explanation. 'Mrs. Freddy says that she and Mr. Freddy see so little of
you nowadays. That was why she made such a point of my coming and trying
to--to----'
'You needed a great deal of urging then?' He betrayed the half-amused,
half-ironic surprise of the man accustomed to find people ready enough,
as a rule, to clutch at excuse for a _tete-a-tete_. Although she had
flushed with mingled embarrassment and excitement, he proceeded to
increase her perturbation by suggesting, 'Mrs. Freddy had to overcome
your dislike for the mission.'
'Dislike? Oh, no!'
'What then?'
'My--well----' She lifted her eyes, and dared to look him full in the
face as she said, 'I suppose you know you are rather alarming.'
'Am I?' he smiled.
People less interested in him than Jean were grateful to Geoffrey Stonor
when he smiled. They felt relieved from some intangible responsibility
for the order of the universe.
The girl brightened wonderfully. 'Oh, yes, very alarming indeed,' she
assured him cheerfully.
'How do you make that out?'
'I don't need to "make it out." It's so very plain.' Then a little
hastily, as if afraid of having said something that sounded like impious
fault-finding, 'Anybody's alarming who is so--so much talked about, and
so--well, like you, you understand.'
'I don't understand,' he objected mendaciously--'not a little bit.'
'I think you must,' she said, with her candid air. 'Though I had made up
my mind that I wouldn't be afraid of you any more since our week-end at
Ulland.'
'Ah, that's better!'
There was nothing in the words, but in the gentleness with which he
brought them out, so much that the girl turned her eyes away and played
with the handle of her parasol.
'Have you been reading any more poetry?' he said.
'No.'
'No? Why not?'
She shook her head. 'It doesn't sound the same.'
'What! I spoilt it for you?'
She laughed, and again she shook her head, but with something shy,
half-frightened in her look. Nervously she dashed at a diversion.
'I'm afraid I was a little misleading about the children. They aren't in
the garden yet. Shall we go up and see them having tea?'
'Oh, no, it would be bad for their little digestions to hurry them.'
He sat down. Her face gave him as much credit as though he had done some
fine self-abnegating deed.
They spoke of that Sunday walk in the valley below the Ulland links, and
the crossing of a swollen little stream on a rotting and rickety log.
'I _had_ to go,' she explained apologetically. 'Hermione had gone on and
forgotten the puppy hadn't learnt to follow. I was afraid he'd lose
himself.'
'It _was_ a dangerous place to go across,' he said, as if to justify
some past opinion.
Her eyes were a little mischievous. 'I never thought _you'd_ come.'
'Why?' he demanded.
'Oh, because I thought you'd be too----' His slow look quickened as if
to surprise in her some reflection upon his too solid flesh--or might it
even be upon the weight of years? But the uncritical admiration in her
face must have reassured him before the words, 'I thought you'd be too
grand. It was delightful to find you weren't.'
He kept his eyes on her. 'Are you always so happy?'
'Oh, I hope not. That would be rather too inhuman, wouldn't it?'
'Too celestial, perhaps!' He laughed--but he was looking into the blue
of her eyes as if through them he too had caught a glimpse of Paradise.
'I remember thinking at Ulland,' he said more slowly again, 'I had never
seen any one quite so happy.'
'I was happy at Ulland. But I'm not happy now.'
'Then your looks belie you.'
'No, I am very sad. I have to go away from this delightful London to
Scotland. I shall be away for weeks. It's too dismal.'
'Why do you go?'
'My grandfather makes me. He hates London. And his dreary old house on a
horrible windy hill--he simply loves that!'
'And you don't love it _at all_. I see.' He seemed to be thinking out
something.
Compunction visited the face before him. 'I didn't mean to say I didn't
love it _at all_. It's like those people you care to be with for a
little while, but if you must go being with them for ever you come to
hate them--almost.'
They sat silent for a moment, then with slow reflectiveness, like one
who thinks aloud, he said--
'I have to go to Scotland next week.'
'Do you! What part?'
'I go to Inverness-shire.'
'Why, that's where we are! Near----'
'Why shouldn't I drop down upon you some day?'
'Oh, _will_ you? That would be----' She seemed to save herself from some
gulf of betrayal. 'There are walks about my grandfather's more beautiful
than anything you ever saw--or perhaps I ought to say more beautiful
than anything _I_ ever saw.'
'Nicer walks than at Ulland?'
'Oh, no comparison! One is a bridle-path all along a wonderful brown
trout stream that goes racing down our hill. There's a moor on one side,
and a wood on the other, and a peat bog at the bottom.'
'We might perhaps stop short of the bog.'
'Yes, we'd stop at old McTaggart's. He's the head-keeper and a real
friend. McTaggart "has the Gaelic." But he hasn't much else, so perhaps
you'd prefer his wife.'
'Why should I prefer his wife?'
Jean's face was full of laughter. Stonor's plan of going to Scotland had
singularly altered the character of that country. Its very inhabitants
were now perceived to be enlivening even to talk about; to _know_--the
gamekeeper's wife alone--would repay the journey thither.
'I assure you Mrs. McTaggart is a travelled, experienced person.'
He shook his head while he humoured her. 'I'm not sure travel or
experience is what we chiefly prize--in ladies.'
'Oh, isn't it? I didn't know, you see. I didn't know how dreadfully you
might miss the terribly clever people you're accustomed to in London.'
'It's because of the terribly clever people we are glad to go away.'
He waxed so eloquent in his admiration of the womanly woman (who seemed
by implication to have steered clear of Mrs. McTaggart's pitfalls), that
Jean asked with dancing eyes--
'Are you consoling me for not being clever?'
'Are you sure you aren't?'
'Oh, dear, yes. No possible shadow of doubt about it.'
'Then,' he laughed, 'I'm coming to Inverness-shire! I'll even go so far
as to call on the McTaggarts if you'll undertake that she won't instruct
me about foreign lands.'
'No such irrelevance! She'd tell you about London. She was here for six
whole months. And she got something out of it I don't believe even you
have. A Certificate of Merit.'
'No. London certainly never gave me one.'
'You see! Mrs. McTaggart lived the life of the Metropolis with such
success that she passed an examination before she left. The subject was:
"Incidents in the Life of Abraham." It says so on the certificate. She
has it framed and hung in the parlour.'
He smiled. 'I admit few can point to such fruits of Metropolitan
Ausbildung. But I think I shall prefer the burnside--or even the bog.'
'No; the moors. They're best of all.' She sat looking straight before
her, with her heart's deep well overflowing at her eyes. As if she felt
vaguely that some sober reason must be found for seeing those same moors
in this glorified light all of a sudden, she went on, 'I'll show you a
special place where white heather grows, and the rabbits tumble about as
tame as kittens. It's miles away from the sea, but the gulls come
sunning themselves and walking about like pigeons. I used to hide up
there when I was little and naughty. Nobody ever found the place out
except an old gaberlunzie, and I gave him tuppence not to tell.'
'Yes, show me that place.' His face was wonderfully attractive so!
'And we'll take The Earthly--William Morris--along, won't we?'
'I thought you'd given up reading poetry.'
'Yes--to myself. I used to think I knew about poetry, yes, better than
anybody but the poets. There are people as arrogant as that.'
'Why, it's worse than Mrs. McTaggart!'
The girl was grave, even tremulous. 'But, no! I never had a notion of
what poetry really was till down at Ulland you took my book away from
me, and read aloud----'
* * * * *
Mr. Freddy let himself and Lord Borrodaile in at the front door so
closely on the heels of Mrs. Freddy that the servant who had closed the
door behind her had not yet vanished into the lower regions. At a word
from that functionary, Mr. Freddy left his brother depositing hat and
stick with the usual deliberation, and himself ran upstairs two steps at
a time. He caught up with his wife just outside the drawing-room door,
as she paused to take off her veil in front of that mirror which Mrs.
Freddy said should be placed between the front door and the drawing-room
in every house in the land for the reassurance of the timid feminine
creature. She was known to add privately that it was not ignored by
men--and that those who came often, contracted a habit of hurrying
upstairs close at the servant's heels, in order to have two seconds to
spare for furtive consultation, while he went on to open the
drawing-room door. She had observed this pantomime more than once,
leaning over the banisters, herself on the way downstairs.
'They tell me Stonor's been here half an hour,' said Mr. Freddy,
breathlessly. 'You're dreadfully late!'
'No, darling----'
He held out his watch to confound her. 'You tell me you aren't late?'
'Sh--no. I do so sympathize with a girl who has no mother,' with which
enigmatic rejoinder she pushed open the door, and went briskly through
the double drawing-room to where Mr. Geoffrey Stonor and Jean Dunbarton
were sitting by a window that overlooked the square.
Stonor waved away Mrs. Freddy's shower of excuses, saying--
'You've come just in time to save us from falling out. I've been telling
Miss Dunbarton that in another age she would have been a sort of Dinah
Morris, or more likely another St. Ursula with a train of seven thousand
virgins.'
'And all because I've told him about my Girls' Club! and----'
'Yes,' he said, '"and"----' He turned away and shook hands with his two
kinsmen. He sat talking to them with his back to the girl.
It was a study in those delicate weights and measures that go to
estimating the least tangible things in personality, to note how his
action seemed not only to dim her vividness but actually to efface the
girl. In the first moments she herself accepted it at that. Her looks
said: He is not aware of me any more--ergo, I don't exist.
During the slight distraction incident to the bringing in of tea, and
Mr. Freddy's pushing up some of the big chairs, Mr. Stonor had a
moment's remembrance of her. He spoke of his Scottish plans and fell to
considering dates. Then all of a sudden she saw that again and yet more
woundingly his attention had wandered. The moment came while Lord
Borrodaile was busy Russianizing a cup of tea, and Mr. Freddy, balancing
himself on very wide-apart legs in front of his wife's tea-table, had
interrogated her--
'What do you think, shall I ring and say we aren't at home?'
'Perhaps it would be----' Mrs. Freddy's eye flying back from Stonor
caught her brother-in-law's. 'Freddy'--she arrested her husband as he
was making for the bell--'say, "except to Miss Levering."'
'All right. Except to Miss Levering.' And it was at that point that Jean
saw she wasn't being listened to.
Even Mrs. Freddy, looking up, was conscious of something in Stonor's
face that made her say--
'Old Sir Hervey's youngest daughter. You knew _him_, I suppose, even if
you haven't met her. Jean, you aren't giving Mr. Stonor anything to
eat.'
'No, no, thanks. I don't know why I took this.' He set down his tea-cup.
'I never have tea.'
'You're like everybody else,' said the girl, in a half-petulant aside.
'Does nobody have tea?'
She lowered her voice while the others discussed who had already been
sent away, and who might still be expected to invade.
'Nobody remembers anybody else when that Miss Levering of theirs is to
the fore. You began to say when--to talk about Scotland.'
He had taken out his watch. 'I was wondering if the children were down
yet. Shall we go and see?'
Jean jumped up with alacrity.
'Sh!' Mrs. Freddy held up a finger and silenced her little circle. 'They
must have thought I was ringing for toast--somebody's being let in!'
'Let's hope it's Miss Levering,' said Mr. Freddy.
'I must see those young barbarians of yours before I go,' said Stonor,
rising with decision.
The sound of voices on the stair was quite distinct now. By the time the
servant had opened the door and announced: 'Mrs. Heriot, Miss Heriot,
Captain Beeching,' Mr. Freddy, the usually gracious host, was leading
the way through the back drawing-room, unblushingly abetting Mr.
Stonor's escape under the very eyes of persons who would have gone miles
on the chance of meeting him.
Small wonder that Jean was consoled for knowing herself too shy to
follow, if she remembered that he had actually asked her to do so! She
showed no surprise at the tacit assumption on the part of his relations
that Geoffrey Stonor could never be expected to sit there as common
mortals might, making himself more or less agreeable to whoever might
chance to drop in. Unless they were 'very special' of course he couldn't
be expected to put up with them.
But what on earth was happening! No wonder Mrs. Freddy looked aghast.
For Mrs. Heriot had had the temerity to execute a short cut and waylay
the escaping lion. 'Oh, how do you do?'--she thrust out a hand. And he
went out as if she had been thin air! It was the kind of insolence that
used to be more common, because safer, than it is likely to be in
future--a form of condoned brutality that used to inspire more awe than
disgust. People were guilty even of a slavish admiration of those who
had the nerve to administer this wholly disproportionate reproof to the
merely maladroit. It could be done only by one whom all the world had
conspired to befog and befool about his importance in the scheme of
things.
Small wonder the girl, too, was bewildered. For no one seemed to dream
of resenting what had occurred. The lesson conveyed appeared to be that
the proper attitude to certain of your fellow-creatures was very much
the traditional one towards royalty. You were not to speak unless you
were spoken to. And yet this man who with impunity snubbed persons of
consideration, was the same one who was coming to call on Sally
McTaggart--he was going to walk the bridle-path along the burnside to
the white heather haven.
With the dazed look in her eyes, and cheeks scarlet with sympathy and
confusion, the girl had run forward to greet her aunt, and to do her
little share toward dissipating the awkward chill that had fallen on the
company.
After producing a stammered, 'Oh--a--I thought it was----' the immediate
effect on Mrs. Heriot was to make her both furious and cowed. Though a
nervous stream of talk trickled on, Mrs. Freddy's face did not lose its
flustered look nor did the company regain its ease, until a further
diversion was created by the appearance of Miss Levering with an alert,
humorous-looking man of middle-age in her train.
'Mr. Greatorex was passing just in time to help me out of my hansom,'
was her greeting to Mrs. Freddy.
'And I,' said the gentleman, 'insisted on being further rewarded by
being brought in.'
'_That_ is Miss Levering?' whispered Jean, partly to distract her aunt.
'Yes; why not?' said Lord Borrodaile, overhearing.
'Oh, I somehow imagined her different.'
'She _is_ different,' said Aunt Lydia, with bitter gloom. 'You would
never know in the least what she was like from the look of her.'
Lord Borrodaile's eyes twinkled. 'Is that so?' he said, indulgent to a
mood which hardly perhaps made for dispassionate appraisement.
'You don't believe it!' said Mrs. Heriot. 'Of course not!'
'I was only thinking what a fillip it gave acquaintance to be in doubt
whether a person was a sinner or a saint.'
'It wouldn't for me,' said Jean.
'Oh, you see, you're so Scotch.'
He was incorrigible!
'I didn't hear, who is the man?' Jean asked, as those not knowing
usually did.
Although far from distinguished in appearance, Mr. Greatorex would have
stood in no danger of being overlooked, even if he had not those
twinkling jewel-like eyes, and two strands of coal-black hair trained
across his large bumpy cranium, from the left ear to the right, and
securely pasted there.
'It's that wretched radical, St. John Greatorex.' Mrs. Heriot turned
from her niece to Lord Borrodaile. 'What foundation is there,' she
demanded, 'for the rumour that he tells such good stories at dinner? _I_
never heard any.'
'Ah, I believe he keeps them till the ladies have left the room.'
'You don't like him, either,' said Mrs. Heriot, reaching out for the
balm of alliance with Lord Borrodaile.
But he held aloof. 'Oh, they say he has his points--a good judge of
wine, and knows more about Parliamentary procedure than most of us.'
'How you men stand up for one another! You know perfectly well you can't
endure him.' Mrs. Heriot jerked her head away and faced the group round
the tea-table. 'What is she saying? That she's been to a Suffrage
meeting in Hyde Park!'
'How could she! Nothing would induce me to go and listen to such
people!' said Miss Dunbarton.
Her eyes, as well as Mrs. Heriot's, were riveted on the tall figure,
tea-cup in hand, moving away from the table now to make room for some
new arrivals, and drawing after her a portion of the company, including
Lady Whyteleafe and Richard Farnborough, who one after another had come
in a few moments before. It was to the young man that Greatorex was
saying, with a twinkle, 'I am sure Mr. Farnborough agrees with me.'
Slightly self-conscious, he replied, 'About Miss Levering being
too--a----'
'For that sort of thing altogether "too."'
'How do you know?' said the lady herself, with a teasing smile.
Greatorex started out of the chair in which he had just deposited
himself at her side. 'God bless my soul!' he said.
'She's only saying that to get a rise out of you.' Farnborough seemed
unable to bear the momentary shadow obscuring the lady's brightness.
'Ah, yes'--Greatorex leaned back again--'your frocks aren't serious
enough.'
'Haven't I been telling you it's an exploded notion that the Suffrage
people are all dowdy and dull?'
'Pooh!' said Mr. Greatorex.
'You talk about some of them being pretty,' Farnborough said. '_I_
didn't see a good-looking one among 'em.'
'Ah, you men are so unsophisticated; you missed the fine feathers.'
'Plenty o' feathers on the one I heard.'
'Yes, but not _fine_ feathers. A man judges of the general effect. We
can, at a pinch, see past unbecoming clothes, can't we, Lady Whyteleafe?
We see what women could make of themselves if they took the trouble.'
'All the same,' said the lady appealed to, 'it's odd they don't see how
much better policy it would be if they _did_ take a little trouble about
their looks. Now, if we got our maids to do those women's hair for
them--if we lent them our French hats--ah, _then_'--Lady Whyteleafe
nodded till the pear-shaped pearls in her ears swung out like milk-white
bells ringing an alarum--'they'd convert you creatures fast enough
then.'
'Perhaps "convert" is hardly the word,' said Vida, with ironic mouth. As
though on an impulse, she bent forward to say, with her lips near Lady
Whyteleafe's pearl drop: 'What if it's the aim of the movement to get
away from the need of just these little dodges?'
'Dodges?'
But without the exclamation, Miss Levering must have seen that she had
been speaking in an unknown tongue. A world where beauty exists for
beauty's sake--which is love's sake--and not for tricking money or power
out of men, even the possibility of such a world is beyond the imagining
of many.
Something was said about a deputation of women who had waited on Mr.
Greatorex.
'Hm, yes, yes.' He fiddled with his watch chain.
As though she had just recalled the circumstances, 'Oh, yes,' Vida said,
'I remember I thought at the time, in my modest way, it was nothing
short of heroic of them to go asking audience of their arch opponent.'
'It didn't come off!' He wagged his strange head.
'Oh,' she said innocently, 'I thought they insisted on bearding the lion
in his den.'
'Of course I wasn't going to be bothered with a lot of----'
'You don't mean you refused to go out and face them!'
He put on a comic look of terror. 'I wouldn't have done it for worlds!
But a friend of mine went and had a look at 'em.'
'Well,' she laughed,'did he get back alive?'
'Yes, but he advised me not to go. "You're quite right," he said. "Don't
you think of bothering," he said. "I've looked over the lot," he said,
"and there isn't a week-ender among 'em."'
Upon the general laugh that drew Hermione and Captain Beeching into the
group, Jean precipitated herself gaily into the conversation. 'Have they
told you about Mrs. Freddy's friend who came to tea here in the winter?'
she asked Hermione. 'He was a member of Parliament, too--quite a little
young one--he said women would never be respected till they had the
vote!'
Mr. Greatorex snorted, the other men smiled, and all the women, except
Aunt Lydia, did the same.
'I remember telling him,' Mrs. Heriot said, with marked severity, 'that
he was too young to know what he was talking about.'
'Yes, I'm afraid you all sat on the poor gentleman,' said Lord
Borrodaile.
'It was such fun. He was flat as a pancake when we'd done with him. Aunt
Ellen was here. She told him with her most distinguished air she didn't
want to be respected.'
'Dear Lady John!' murmured Miss Levering. 'I can hear her!'
'Quite right,' said Captain Beeching. 'Awful idea to think you're
_respected_.'
'Simply revolting,' agreed Miss Heriot.
'Poor little man!' laughed Jean, 'and he thought he was being _so_
agreeable!'
'Instead of which it was you.'
Miss Levering said the curious words quite pleasantly, but so low that
only Jean heard them.
The girl looked up. 'Me?'
'You had the satisfaction of knowing you had made yourself immensely
popular with all other men.'
The girl flushed. 'I hope you don't think I did it for that reason.'
The little passage was unnoticed by the rest of the company, who were
listening to Lord Borrodaile's contented pronouncement: 'I'm afraid the
new-fangled seed falls on barren ground in our old-fashioned
gardens--_pace_ my charming sister-in-law.'
Greatorex turned sharply. 'Mrs. Tunbridge! God bless my soul, you don't
mean----'
'There is one thing I will say for her'--Mrs. Freddy's brother-in-law
lazily defended the honour of the house--'she doesn't, as a rule,
obtrude her opinions. There are people who have known her for years, and
haven't a notion she's a light among the misguided.'
But Greatorex was not to be reassured. 'Mrs. Tunbridge! Lord, the perils
that beset the feet of man!' He got up with a half-comic ill humour.
'You're not going!' The hostess flitted over to remonstrate. 'I haven't
had a word with you.'
'Yes, yes; I'm going.'
Mrs. Freddy looked bewildered at the general laugh.
'He's heard aspersions cast upon your character,' said Lord Borrodaile.
'His moral sense is shocked.'
'Honestly, Mrs. Tunbridge'--Farnborough was for giving her a chance to
clear herself--'what do you think of your friends' recent exploits?'
'My friends?'
'Yes; the disorderly women.'
'They are not my friends,' said Mrs. Freddy, with dignity, 'but I don't
think you must call them----'
'Why not?' said Lord Borrodaile. '_I_ can forgive them for worrying the
Liberals'--he threw a laughing glance at Greatorex--'but they _are_
disorderly.'
'Isn't the phrase consecrated to a different class?' said Miss Levering,
quietly.
'You're perfectly right.' Greatorex, for once, was at one with Lord
Borrodaile. 'They've become nothing less than a public nuisance. Going
about with dog-whips and spitting in policemen's faces.'
'I wonder,' said Mrs. Freddy, with a harassed air--'I wonder if they did
spit!'
'Of course they did!' Greatorex exulted.
'You're no authority on what they do,' said Mrs. Freddy. 'You run away.'
'Run away?' He turned the laugh by precipitately backing away from her
in a couple of agitated steps. 'Yes, and if ever I muster up courage to
come back, it will be to vote for better manners in public life, not
worse than we have already.'
'So should I,' observed Mrs. Freddy, meekly. 'Don't think I defended the
Suffragettes.'
'But still,' said Miss Levering, with a faint accent of impatience, 'you
_are_ an advocate for the Suffrage, aren't you?'
'I don't beat the air.'
'Only policemen,' Greatorex mocked.
'If you cared to know the attitude of the real workers in the Reform,'
Mrs. Freddy said plaintively, 'you might have seen in any paper that we
lost no time in dissociating ourselves from the two or three
hysterical----' She caught her brother-in-law's critical eye, and
instantly checked her flow of words.
There was a general movement as Greatorex made his good-byes. Mrs.
Heriot signalled her daughter.
In the absence of the master, Lord Borrodaile made ready to do the
honours of the house to a lady who had had so little profit of her
visit. Beeching carried off the reluctant Farnborough. Mrs. Freddy kept
up her spirits until after the exodus; then, with a sigh, she sat down
beside Vida. 'It's true what that old cynic says,' she admitted
sorrowfully. 'The scene has put back the Reform a generation.'
'It must have been awfully exciting. I wish I'd been there,' said Jean.
'I _was_ there.'
'Oh, was it as bad as the papers said?'
'Worse. I've never been so moved in public--no tragedy, no great opera
ever gripped an audience as the situation in the House did that night.
There we all sat breathless--with everything more favourable to us than
it had been within the memory of woman. Another five minutes and the
resolution would have passed. Then--all in a moment'--Mrs. Freddy
clasped her hands excitedly--'all in a moment a horrible, dingy little
flag was poked through the grille of the Woman's Gallery--cries--insults--
scuffling--the police--the ignominious turning out of the women--_us_ as
well as the---- Oh, I can't _think_ of it without----' She jumped up and
walked to and fro. 'Then the next morning!' She paused. 'The people
gloating. Our friends antagonized--people who were wavering--nearly won
over--all thrown back! Heart-breaking! Even my husband! Freddy's been an
angel about letting me take my share when I felt I must--but, of course,
I've always known he doesn't like it. It makes him shy. I'm sure it
gives him a horrid twist inside when he sees even the discreetest little
paragraph to say that I am "one of the speakers." But he's always been
an angel about it before this. After the disgraceful scene, he said, "It
just shows how unfit women are for any sort of coherent thinking or
concerted action."'
'To think,' said Jean, more sympathetically, 'that it should be women
who've given their own scheme the worst blow it ever had!'
'The work of forty years destroyed in five minutes!'
'They must have felt pretty sick,' said the girl, 'when they waked up
the next morning--those Suffragettes.'
'I don't waste any sympathy on _them_. I'm thinking of the penalty _all_
women have to pay because two or three hysterical----'
'Still, I think I'm sorry for them,' the girl persisted. 'It must be
dreadful to find you've done such a lot of harm to the thing you care
most about in the world.'
'Do you picture the Suffragettes sitting in sack-cloth?' said Vida,
speaking at last.
'Well, they can't help realizing _now_ what they've done.'
'Isn't it just possible they realize they've waked up interest in the
Woman Question so that it's advertised in every paper, and discussed
under every roof, from Land's End to John-o'-Groats? Don't you think
_they_ know there's been more said and written about it in these days
since the scene than in the ten years before it!'
'You aren't saying you think it was a good way to get what they wanted!'
exclaimed Mrs. Freddy.
'I'm only pointing out that it seems not such a bad way to get it known
they _do_ want something, and--"want it bad,"' Vida added, smiling.
Jean drew her low chair almost in front of the lady who had so wounded
her sensibilities a little while before with that charge of
popularity-hunting.
'Mrs. Tunbridge says before that horrid scene everything was favourable
at last,' the girl hazarded.
'Yes,' said Mrs. Freddy, 'we never had so many friends in the House
before----'
'"Friends,"' echoed the other woman, with a faint smile.
'Why do you say it like that?'
'Because I was thinking of a funny story--(he _said_ it was funny)--a
Liberal Whip told me the other day. A Radical member went out of the
House after his speech in favour of the Women's Bill, and as he came
back half an hour later he heard some members talking in the lobby about
the astonishing number who were going to vote for the measure. And the
Friend of Woman dropped his jaw and clutched the man next him. "My God!"
he said, "you don't mean they're going to _give_ it to them!"'
'Sh! Here is Ronald.' Mrs. Freddy's tact brought her smiling to her feet
as the figure of her brother-in-law appeared in the doorway. But she
turned her back on him and affected absorption in the tableau presented
by Jean leaning forward, elbow on knee, chin in hand, gazing steadily in
Vida Levering's face.
'I don't want to interrupt you two,' said the hostess, 'but I think you
must look at the pictures.'
'Oh, yes, I brought them specially'--Lord Borrodaile deflected his
course in order to take up from the table two squares of cardboard tied
face to face with tape.
'Bless the man!' Mrs. Freddy contemplated him with smiling affectation
of scorn. 'I mean the new photographs of the children. He's thinking of
some reproductions Herbert Tunbridge got while he was abroad--pictures
of things somebody's unearthed in Sicily or Cyprus.'
'Crete, my dear.' He turned his back on the fond mother and Jean who was
already oh-ing with appreciation at the first of a pile of little Saras
and Cecils. When he came back to his corner of the sofa he made no
motion to undo his packet, but 'Now then!' he said, as he often did on
sitting down beside Vida Levering--as though they had been interrupted
on the verge of coming to an agreement about something.
She, with an instinct of returning the ball, usually tossed at him some
scrap of news or a jest, or some small social judgment. This time when
he uttered his 'Now then,' with that anticipatory air, she answered
instantly--'Yes; something rather odd has been happening. I've been
seeing beyond my usual range.'
'Really!' He smiled at her with a mixture of patronage and affection.
'And did you find there was "something new under the sun" after all?'
'Well, perhaps not so new, though it seemed new to me. But something
differently looked at. Why do we pretend that all conversion is to some
religious dogma--why not to a view of life?'
'Bless my soul! I begin to feel nervous.'
'Do you remember once telling me that I had a thing that was rare in my
sex--a sense of humour?'
'I remember often thinking it,' he said handsomely.
'It wasn't the first time I'd heard that. And it was one of the
compliments I liked best.'
'We all do. It means we have a sense of proportion--the mental
suppleness that is capable of the ironic view; an eye that can look
right as well as left.'
She nodded. 'When you wrote to me once, "My dear Ironist," I--yes--I
felt rather superior. I'm conscious now that it's been a piece of
hidden, intellectual pride with me that I could smile at most things.'
'Well, do you mean to forswear pride? For you can't live without
smiling.'
'I've seen something to-day that I don't feel I want to smile at. And
yet to you it's the most ludicrous spectacle in London.'
'This is all very mysterious.' He turned his long, whimsical face on one
side as he settled himself more comfortably against the cushion.
'You heard why I was late?' she said.
'I took the liberty of doubting the reason you gave!'
'You mustn't. It wasn't even my first offence.'
'You must find time hang very heavy on your hands.'
'On the contrary. I've never known the time to go so fast. Oh, heaps of
people would do what I have, if they only knew how queer and interesting
it is, and how already the outer aspect of the thing is changing. At the
first meetings very few women of any class. Now there are
dozens--scores. Soon there'll be hundreds. There were three thousand
people in the park this afternoon, so a policeman told me, but hardly
any of the class that what Dick Farnborough calls "runs England."'
'I suppose not.'
'You don't even know yet you'll have to deal with all that passionate
feeling, all that fixed determination to bring about a vast,
far-reaching change!--a change so great----'
'That it would knock civilized society into a cocked hat.'
'I wonder.'
'You _wonder_?'
'I wonder if you oughtn't to be reassured by the--bigness of the thing.
It isn't only these women in Hyde Park. They have a Feministe Movement
in France. They say there's a Frauenbewegung in Germany. From Finland to
Italy----'
'Oh, yes, strikes and uprisings. It's an uneasy Age.'
'People in India wanting a greater share in the government----'
'Mad as the Persians----' he smiled--'fancy _Persians_ clamouring for a
representative chamber! It's a sort of epidemic.'
'The Egyptians, too, restless under "benefits." And now everywhere, as
if by some great concerted movement--the Women!'
'Yes, yes; there's plenty of regrettable restlessness up and down the
world, a sort of wave of revolt against the constituted authorities. If
it goes too far--nothing for us but a military despotism!'
She shook her head with a look of such serene conviction that he
persisted, 'I'd be sorry if we came to it--but if this spirit grows,
this rebellion against all forms of control----'
'No, no, against other people's control. Suppose it ends in people
learning self-control.'
'That's the last thing the masses can do. There are few, even of the
_elite_, who have ever done it, and they belong to the Moral
Aristocracy--the smallest and most rigid in the world. This thing that
you're just opening your eyes to, is the rage against restraint that
goes with decadence. But the phlegmatic Englishman won't lead in that
degringolade.'
'You mean we won't be among the first of the great nations to give women
the Suffrage?'
'_England?_' The slow head-shake and the smile airily relegated the
Woman's Movement to the limbo of the infinitely distant.
'Just because the men won't have it?' and for the second time she said,
'I wonder. For myself, I rather think the women are going to win.'
'Not in my time. Not even in yours.'
'Why?'
'Oh, the men will never let it come to the point.'
'It's interesting to hear you say that. You justify the militant women,
you know.'
'That is perhaps _not_ to hit the bull's eye!' he said, a little grimly.
Then dropping his unaccustomed air of chill disapproval, he appealed to
his friend's better taste. A confession of sheer physical loathing crept
into his face as he let fall two or three little sentences about these
women's offence against public decorum. 'Why, it is as hideous as war!'
he wound up, dismissing it.
'Perhaps it _is_ war.' Her phrase drew the cloud of menace down again;
it closed about them. It seemed to trouble her that he would not meet
her gaze. 'Don't think----' she prayed, and stumbling against the new
hardness in his face, broke off, withdrew her eyes and changed the form
of what she had meant to say. 'I think I like good manners, too, but I
see it would be a mistake to put them first. What if we have to earn the
right to be gentle and gracious without shame?'
'You seriously defend these people!'
'I'm not sure they haven't taken the only way.' She looked at her
friend with a fresh appeal in her eyes. But his were wearing their new
cold look. She seemed to nerve herself to meet some numbing danger of
cowardice. 'The old rule used to be patience--with no matter what wrong.
The new feeling is: shame on any one who weakly suffers wrong! Isn't it
too cheap an idea of morals that women should take credit for the
enduring that keeps the wrong alive? You won't say women have no stake
in morals. Have we any right to let the world go wrong while we get
compliments for our forbearance and for pretty manners?'
'You began,' said Borrodaile, 'by explaining other women's notions. You
have ended by seeming to adopt them as your own. But you are a person of
some intelligence. You will open your eyes before you go too far. You
belong to the people who are responsible for handing on the world's
treasure. As we've agreed, there never was a time when it was attacked
from so many sides. Can't you see what's at stake?'
'I see that many of the pleasantest things may be in eclipse for a
time.'
'My dear, they would die off the face of the earth.'
'No, they are too necessary.'
'To you and me. Not to the brawlers in Hyde Park. The life of civilized
beings is a very complex thing. It isn't filled by good intentions nor
even by the cardinal virtues. The function of the older societies is to
hand on the best things the world has won, so that those who come after,
instead of having to go back to barbarism, may start from where the best
of their day left off. We do for manners and the arts in general what
the Moors did for learning when the wild hordes came down. There were
capital chaps among the barbarians,' he smiled, 'I haven't a doubt! But
it was the men who held fast to civilization's clue, they were the
people who mattered. _We_ matter. We hold the clue.' He was recovering
his spirits. 'Your friends want to open the gates still wider to the
Huns. You want even the Moors overwhelmed.'
'Many women are as jealous to guard the old gains as the men are. Wait!'
She leaned forward. 'I begin to see! They are more keen about it than
the mass of men. The women! They are civilization's only ally against
your brother, the Goth.'
He laughed. 'When you are as absurd as that, my dear, I don't mind. No,
not a little bit. And I really believe I'm too fond of you to quarrel on
any ground.'
'You don't care enough about anything to quarrel about it,' she said,
smiling, too. 'But it's just as well'--she rose and began to draw on her
glove--'just as well that each of us should know where to find the
other. So tell me, what if it should be a question of going forward in
the suffrage direction or going back?'
'You mean----'
'----on from latchkeys and University degrees to Parliament, or back.'
'Oh, back,' he said hastily. 'Back. Yes, back to the harem.'
When the words were out, Lord Borrodaile had laughed a little
uneasily--like one who has surprised even himself by some
too-illuminating avowal. 'See here,' he put out a hand. 'I'm not going
to let you go for a minute or two. I've brought something to show you.
This foolish discussion put it out of my head.' But the revealing word
he had flung out--it seemed to have struck wide some window that had
been shuttered close before. The woman stood there in the glare. She did
not refuse to be drawn back to her place on the sofa, but she looked
round first to see if the others had heard and how they took it. A
glimpse of Mrs. Freddy's gown showed her out of earshot on the balcony.
'I've got something here really rather wonderful,' Lord Borrodaile went
on, with that infrequent kindling of enthusiasm. He had taken one of the
unmounted photographs from between its two bits of cardboard and was
holding it up before his eyeglass. 'Yes, he's an extraordinary
beggar!'--which remark in the ears of those who knew his lordship,
advertized his admiration of either some man of genius or 'Uebermensch'
of sorts. Before he shared the picture with his companion he told her of
what was not then so widely known--details of that most thrilling moment
perhaps in all the romance of archaeology--where the excavators of
Knossos came upon the first authentic picture of a man belonging to that
mysterious and forgotten race that had raised up a civilization in some
things rivalling the Greek--a race that had watched Minoan power wane
and die, and all but the dimmest legend of it vanish, before the
builders of Argos and Mycenae began laying their foundation stones.
Borrodaile, with an accent that for him was almost emotion, emphasized
the strangeness to the scholar of having to abandon the old idea of the
Greek being the sole flower of Mediterranean civilization. For here was
this wonderful island folk--a people standing between and bridging East
and West--these Cretan men and women who, though they show us their
faces, their delicate art and their stupendous palaces, have held no
parley with the sons of men, some say for three and thirty centuries.
'But wait! They'll tell us tales before those fellows have done! I
wouldn't mind hearing what this beggar has to say for himself!' At last
he shared the picture. They agreed that he was a beggar to be reckoned
with--this proud athlete coming back to the world of men after his long
sleep, not blinded by the new day, not primitive, apologetic, but
meeting us with a high imperial mien, daring and beautiful.
'What do you suppose he is carrying in that vase?' Vida asked; 'or is
that some trophy?'
'No, no, it's the long drinking cup--to the expert eye that is added
evidence of his high degree of civilization. But _think_, you know, a
man like that walking the earth so long before the Greeks! And here.
This courtly train looking on at the games. What do you say to the
women!'
'Why, they had got as far as flouncing their gowns and puffing their
sleeves! Their hair!'--'Dear me, they must have had a M. Raoul to ondule
and dress it.' 'Amazing!--was there ever anything so modern dug out of
the earth before?' 'No, nothing like it!' he said, holding the pictures
up again between the glass and his kindling eye. 'Ce sont vraiment des
Parisiennes!'
Over his shoulder the modern woman looked long at that strange company.
'It is nothing less than uncanny,' she said at last. 'It makes one
vaguely wretched.'
'What does?'
'To realize that so long ago the world had got so far. Why couldn't
people like these go further still? Why didn't their sons hold fast what
so great a race had won?'
'These things go in cycles.'
'Isn't that a phrase?'--the woman mused--'to cover our ignorance of how
things go--and why? Why should we be so content to go the old way to
destruction? If I were "the English" of this splendid specimen of a
Cretan, I would at least find a new way to perdition.'
'Perhaps we shall!'
They sat trying from the accounts of Lord Borrodaile's archaeological
friends to reconstruct something of that vanished world. It was a game
they had played at before, with Etruscan vases and ivories from
Ephesus--the man bringing to it his learning and his wit, the woman her
supple imagination and a passion of interest in the great romance of the
Pilgrimage of Man.
But to-day she bore a less light-hearted part--'It all came to an end!'
she repeated.
'Well, so shall we.'
'But--we--_you_ will leave your like behind to "hold fast to the clue,"
as you said a little while ago.'
'Till the turn of the wheel carries the English down. Then somewhere
else on our uneasy earth men will begin again----'
'----the fruitless round! But it's horrible--the waste of effort in the
world! It's worse than horrible. It's insane.' She looked up suddenly
into his face. 'You are wise. Tell me what you think the story of the
world means, with its successive clutches at civilization--all those
histories of slow and painful building--by Ganges and by Nile and in the
Isles of Greece.'
'It's a part of the universal rhythm that all things move to--Nature's
way,' he answered.
'Or was it because of some offence against one of her high laws that she
wiped the old experiments out? What if the meaning of history is that an
Empire maintained by brute force shall perish by brute force!'
'Ah,' he fixed her with those eyes of his. 'I see where you are going.'
'You can't either of you go anywhere,' said Mrs. Freddy, appearing
through the balcony window, 'till you've seen the children's pictures.'
Vida's eye had once more fallen on the reproduction of one of the Cretan
frescoes with a sudden intensification of interest.
'What is it?' Borrodaile asked, looking over her shoulder.
Woman-like she offered the man the outermost fringe of her thought.
'Even Lady Whyteleafe,' she said, 'would be satisfied with the attention
they paid to their hair.'
'Come, you two.' Mrs. Freddy was at last impatient. 'Jean's got the
_really_ beautiful pictures, showing them to Geoffrey. Let us all go
down to help him to decide which is the best.'
'Geoffrey?'
'Geoffrey Stonor--you know him, of course. But nobody knows the very
nicest side of Geoffrey, do they?' she appealed to Borrodaile,--'nobody
who hasn't seen him with children?'
'I never saw him with children,' said Vida, buttoning the last button of
her glove.
'Well, come down and watch him with Sara and Cecil. They perfectly adore
him.'
'No, it's too late.'
But the fond mother drew her friend to the window. 'You can see them
from here.'
Vida was not so hurried, apparently, but what she could stand there
taking in the picture of Sara and Cecil climbing about their big, kind
cousin, with Jean and Mr. Freddy looking on.
'Children!' Their mother waved a handkerchief. 'Here's another friend!
Chil---- They're too absorbed to notice,' she said apologetically,
turning to find Vida had left the window, and was saying good-bye to
Borrodaile.
'Oh, yes,' he agreed, 'they won't care about anybody else while Geoffrey
is there.' Lord Borrodaile stooped and picked up a piece of folded paper
off the sofa. 'Did I drop that?' He opened it. '_Votes for_----' He read
the two words out in an accent that seemed to brand them with
foolishness, even with vulgarity. 'No, decidedly I did not drop it.'
He was conveying the sheet to the wastepaper basket as one who piously
removes some unsavoury litter out of the way of those who walk
delicately. Miss Levering arrested him with outstretched hand.
'Do you want it?' His look adjured her to say, 'No.'
'Yes, I want it.'
'What for?' he persisted.
'I want it for an address there is on it.'