“I WISH something new would happen,” said Lady Phayre.
“There is the session just begun,” replied Mr. Aloysius Gleam, drawing
his arm-chair an inch nearer the fire. “We can promise you many New Year
novelties.”
“Call you them novelties?” asked Lady Phayre. “They will be as old
as--as the antepenultimate barrel-organ tune.”
“You want to go too fast. Great political reforms move slowly.”
“Yes, that is true--deadeningly true. I think I read it once in a
newspaper.”
Gleam laughed, and spread out his hands before the blaze. He was
familiar with her mood--a mild spiritual unrest, induced by supreme
bodily comfort and intellectual disturbance. He had the faculty of the
aesthetic as well as ultrademocratic tendencies, and he appreciated the
harmony between her mood and the dim afternoon hour with its gathering
shadows in comers of the room. Her comfortable attitude, with one
hand hanging over the arm of the chair; her costume, a dark fur-edged
tea-gown; her expression of wistful meditation--all betokened a
relaxation of fibre trying to pamper itself into depression. So the
Member laughed, and a smile played round his clean-shaven lips in the
silence that followed.
The politician within the esoteric revolutionary ring, who did not
know Lady Phayre, was like a Positivist ignorant of Auguste Comte. The
analogy halts, however. Lady Phayre was far from being an evangelist;
she was not even an apostle. She had been left with the key of a
pleasant situation, and, like a wise woman, she used it. Her enemies
called her insincere. If the late Sir Ephraim, they said, had sat as
a Conservative, and had formed the cartilage as it were of a brilliant
wing of that party, Lady Phayre’s flat would have become an audaciously
unauthorised Primrose Habitation. But political opponents will say
anything.
Certainly she took no combative part in political warfare. Her functions
were rather those of an etherealised _vivandière_ to the band. The
members came exhausted into her drawing-room, where she revived them
with pannikins of sympathy, and spread the delicate ointment of flattery
over their bruises. Not but what she exposed herself in times of need
to the dangers and fatigues of the campaign. She had risked typhoid
in slums, and congestion of the lungs in draughty halls. She also kept
bravely up with the march, picking her dainty way through prodigious
quantities of speeches, pamphlets, and articles, both in type and
manuscript. Now and then she stumbled sorely. Bimetallism was a morass,
and trade statistics stone fences. On these occasions she would cry out
for a helping hand, preferably that of Aloysius Gleam; after which she
would survey herself with rueful introspection, and put to herself the
question addressed to the immortal Scapin.
Her mood of to-day followed one of these periodic rescuings.
“Hendrick’s amendment is coming on this evening,” said Aloysius Gleam at
last. “The audacity of it is novel enough. Come down. It will amuse you.
Burnet has a lady’s ticket going a-begging.”
“I have had enough of Hendrick for some time,” replied Lady Phayre.
“He took me down to dinner last night at the M’Kays’, and could talk of
nothing else. I wish you could put some sense into him.”
“I wish I could. But a Collectivist who has broken loose is running
headlong to destruction.”
“That was what I told him. Push Collectivism to its logical conclusion,
and we get Mr. Bellamy’s intolerable paradise. He got purple in the
face, said he was nothing if not logical, insisted on the establishment
of comparative values for different kinds of labour and products, and
called me a reactionary because I asked him how the State was going to
determine the number of mutton chops that would go to a sonnet.”
“Is that phrase your own, Lady Phayre?” asked Gleam, pricking up his
ears.
“No,” she replied, with a little touch of audacity. “I snapped it up as
an unconsidered trifle out of a review article.”
“Goddard’s, I think, on Extremism as applied to Practical Politics.”
“You are an encyclopaedia,” said Lady Phayre, laughing. “You know
everything.”
“Did you like the article?”
“Immensely. I detached it from the review, and restitched it with
blue ribbon to use as a text-book. Without it I might have been led to
destruction by Hendrick.”
“Ah, my dear Lady Phayre--I shall not tell it in Gath; but when are you
going to have views of your own?”
“Views? Of course I have views,” said Lady Phayre, comfortably reversing
the crossing of her feet, “just like everybody else, only theirs are
fixed and mine are--dissolving. It gives greater variety to life. But I
think the Goddard view will be lasting.”
“I shall tell him. He will be flattered.”
“Oh, you know him?”
“Pretty intimately. I may say that I trained him--in the sporting, not
the pedagogic sense.”
“You never told me. Have you many more lights under your bushel?”
“A dazzling illumination of unsuspected virtues. But I didn’t do very
much for Goddard except put him in the way of things; and he would have
come to the front right enough without me. He is the coming man of the
younger school of Progressists. The anomaly of his generation--a hot
reformer with luminous common-sense--a popular demagogue with an idea of
proportion--an original thinker--a powerful, eloquent speaker. Look
at the work he has done on the Council, the Progressive
League--ramifications spreading all over the country with organised
courses of lectures on civism, social economics, and what not. Decidedly
the coming man.”
“It does one good to see you enthusiastic,” cried Lady Phayre with a
laugh. “Your criticisms are generally more bracing than genial. But why
don’t I know Goddard?”
“He surely has not sprung suddenly into your horizon?”
“Of course not. The newspapers--general talk--I know all about him that
way. I meant, why don’t I know him personally?”
There was a touch of reprimand in the “why.” Gleam was Lord Chamberlain
in Ordinary to her ladyship.
“I was waiting until he got into the House at the next general election.
You see, until seven years ago, when he came into some money that
rendered him independent, he was a carpenter or something--no,
cabinetmaker--and so, to be frank, I never thought of it.”
“And you call yourself a Radical! Well, what is the matter with
him? Does he wear corduroys tied up at the knees, and carry a red
pocket-handkerchief in his hat?”
“Oh dear no!” exclaimed Gleam hastily. “He is presentable. I told you of
a little training----”
“Well, then, lose no time in bringing him,” said Lady Phayre. “He surely
must have heard of _me_.”
She was proud of her position: somewhat jealous of it too. That a
generation of Progressists should arise which knew not Lady Phayre was a
dreadful contingency. She had a prescriptive right to the homage of
the coming man of the wing. Besides, an ex-cabinetmaker whose views on
social polity she had thought worth while to tie up with blue ribbon was
a novelty.
Aloysius Gleam took his leave. At the door he was summoned to pause.
“He won’t walk up and down the room and shake his finger at me, will
he?”
“Like Fenton?” he laughed. “No, you can reassure your nerves. By the
way,” he cried suddenly, “there is a large meeting at Stepney next week,
Thursday, at which Goddard is going to speak, and I have promised to say
something. Would you care to come?”
“I shall be delighted,” said Lady Phayre. “Then I can see for myself
whether he is like Fenton.”
“Oh, I can guarantee that,” said Gleam, with a final word of adieu.
She sank back in her chair relieved. Fenton was an aggressive person,
fond of hurling at her his theory of State education of babies as the
sovereign panacea for the Weltschmerz. She was a practical woman; and
philosophical ideas, unless gracefully conveyed, rather bored her.
She could see no sense in their absolute use. A limitless volume of
abstraction did not interest her so much as a cubic inch of solid fact.
That was why she liked Aloysius Gleam.
She meditated a little longer before the fire, then she switched on the
electric light, rang for the curtains to be drawn, and re-read Daniel
Goddard’s article until it was time to dress for dinner.
*****
It was not a new experience for Lady Phayre. She was familiar with
platforms, and the sight of the pale, moving mass of human faces in
front. She had listened to the speeches of many demagogues to the
proletariat, and had found them singularly lacking in originality.
Accordingly, it was with the air of an old campaigner that she settled
herself down by the side of Aloysius Gleam, and surveyed the decorous
occupants of the platform, and the noisy but enthusiastic audience of
working men and women in the body of the hall.
Proceedings had already commenced when they entered. The chairman was
concluding his introductory speech. The courteous applause that followed
his remarks suddenly grew into the thunder that comes from the heart.
Goddard was standing before the table, his massive dark face lit
with pleasure at his welcome. He began to speak. His voice, rich and
sonorous, rang out through the last dying cheers, and compelled willing
attention. After a few moments he held the audience in his grasp.
Lady Phayre bent forward and looked with interested curiosity at the
speaker, whom she saw mostly in profile, at intervals full-face, when he
flashed round to the side benches. Her quick perception appreciated the
mastery he had obtained over his hearers, their instant responsiveness
to his touch. She herself was gradually drawn under the spell, felt
herself but a chord of the instrument that responded to every shade
of invective, irony, and promise. She was not unconscious of a certain
unfamiliar sensuousness in this surrender of her individuality. Perhaps
feminine instincts that had long lain dormant were awakened. The sense
of power in the man set working deep-hidden springs of sensation. A
strain of the barbaric lingers even in so super-refined a product as
Lady Phayre. When Goddard had finished speaking, she leaned back in her
chair with a kind of sigh.
“That’s the genuine article, isn’t it?” said Gleam, turning to her
smilingly.
She nodded, rested her glance thoughtfully upon him for a moment. He
seemed so small, precise, uninspiring compared with the huge-limbed man
with the leonine face and rolling voice who had just been swaying her.
“He is a power among these people,” she said below her breath.
“I deserve some credit, don’t I?” he remarked. He was proud of Goddard,
honestly delighted at the impression his pupil had made upon Lady
Phayre.
The succeeding speeches, modest and formal, after Goddard’s magnetic
harangue, were quickly over. After three cheers for Dan Goddard, the
audience broke up. The occupants of the platform formed into little
groups. Gleam drew Goddard from the largest of these.
“I want to present you to Lady Phayre, the Lady Superior of the League.”
And before the other could reply, he had taken him prisoner by the
lapel of his coat, and brought him, in his brisk way, to where Lady
Phayre was standing, and had gone through the formality of presentation.
“You have had a great success to-night, Mr. Goddard,” she said.
“It is easy to speak to an enthusiastic audience,” said Goddard. “You
see we mean business,” he added, addressing Gleam. “We’ve done our share
in agitation. It is for you people in the House now to carry the bill
through.”
“I’ll undertake to see that they don’t halt by the way,” said Lady
Phayre with bewitching authority.
“I wish you were in the House, Goddard,” said Gleam.
“Get me a seat and I’ll come,” he replied with a laugh.
“You’ll have the Hough division offered you according to general
whisper.”
“Not under a miracle,” said Goddard. “The moderate element in the
constituency is too strong.”
“I heard they were going to run an Independent Labour candidate,”
interposed Lady Phayre. “I know the neighbourhood pretty well. Some
friends I often stay with live near Ecclesby, and I hear the local
gossip through them.”
“They would withdraw the Labour man and support Goddard, if he stood,”
explained Gleam.
But Goddard laughed deprecatingly and shook his head.
“It is all in the clouds. Repson has not resigned the seat yet. It is
only a rumour that he intends doing so, and haste in the matter would
be indecent. Anyhow,” he added, after a pause, to Lady Phayre, “if
you would tell Mr. Gleam any news you may get, you would be doing me a
service.”
“Why not come and get it first hand?” asked Lady Phayre sweetly. “I
should be most pleased to see you if you would call--13 Queen’s Court
Mansions--Tuesdays.”
“You are very kind,” said Goddard, bowing. “I had better give you a
card,” she said, taking one from an elaborate little memoranda-book;
“then you won’t forget the address.”
They remained a while in desultory talk. Then Lady Phayre departed under
Gleam’s escort, and Goddard returned to the group that had been waiting
for him. An eager discussion, prolonged until the party broke up in the
street, swept away from Goddard’s mind every lingering impression of his
first interview with Lady Phayre.