Goddard went away, after paying his first visit to Lady Phayre, with a
wondering mind. His original intention had been to make it as short as
he possibly could: he had remained nearly a couple of hours. He could
scarcely believe his watch.
The delicate play of mind of a pretty and highly cultured woman was a
novelty as rare to him as the bubbling of champagne in his apprentice
days. He had gone expecting to endure the inane small-talk which his
second-hand experience persuaded him was the inevitable adjunct of a
lady’s tea-table; he had found conversation upon all the subjects dear
to him invested with a charm such as he had never before imagined. Talk
on social questions had ever been with him a deeply serious matter. Lady
Phayre had brought into it an unknown lightness, a sparkle, a mental
keenness, against which his own intellect sharpened itself, and at the
same time a bewildering waywardness that never allowed him to forget
she was a woman. In short, Lady Phayre was a revelation. He walked
along with a buoyant step, like a man who has made a new discovery that
promises to change the old order of things.
After a short interval a pretext arose for repeating the visit. He was
careful to magnify its importance for the sake of self-justification.
But on the third occasion he owned to himself that he had called out of
sheer desire for Lady Phayre’s society.
As he stood, hat in hand, in the drawing-room waiting for her, he had a
feeling of misgiving curiously like that of a boy who is fearful lest
he is taking too great advantage of a kindly neighbour’s invitation to
visit his fruit garden. Her smile of welcome, however, as she entered,
reassured him.
“How good of you to come. I had a bit of a headache, and was beginning
to mope by myself.”
“I too felt as if it would do me good to have a talk with you,” said
Goddard, seating himself.
“Surely you don’t mope?” said Lady Phayre, lifting her eyebrows.
“O Lord, no!” he exclaimed with a laugh. “I have too much to do.”
“I wish I were a man,” sighed Lady Phayre.
“I don’t,” said Goddard. “If you were, I don’t think I should have
wanted so much to come and see you.”
“Well, how am I to do you good? Will tea comfort you?”
“I think it would,” replied Goddard, smiling--“out of your gossamer
tea-cups, and with imperceptible films of bread and butter. They seem
outside of the uses of the weary, work-a-day world.”
“You shall have them, and until they come you shall tell me all the
news. I have heard nothing for two days.”
He opened his budget. It was somewhat heavy. The lighter trifles of
political gossip were beyond his range; but Lady Phayre listened
attentively, adroitly brought him to his own part in current affairs.
He had just been on a committee of the League, in the north of England,
inquiring into the working of the Factory Act for women in certain
trades. He had visited many white-lead works, where he had felt daunted
by the inevitableness of the sacrifice of human health and happiness.
“But manufacturers are obliged to enforce precautions,” said Lady
Phayre.
Goddard waved his hand impatiently.
“No precautions will ever prevent it. The poison gets in everywhere. The
dust is in the air--impregnates the food, finds its way into the baths,
creeps in through the tightest overalls. Women should not be allowed
in it--and yet they must work. One feels paralysed before these deadly
trades. I saw some women--young and vigorous--who had ‘got the lead,’ as
they call it--death written on their faces, one going to have a child;
that is one of the horrible parts of it--to be poisoned before one is
born.”
“You take it to heart,” said Lady Phayre in a low voice. She was touched
by his earnestness.
“I suppose I do,” replied Goddard. “If a man doesn’t, he had better
leave Social Reform alone.”
Lady Phayre handed him his tea. The strong, heavily veined hand
outstretched to receive the cup, conveyed to her a suggestion of
strength which she could not help associating with the earnestness
of his tone. For a moment Lady Phayre felt, not unpleasantly, the
insignificance of her sex.
“Do you know, when I see men like you devoting your whole lives to
the cause of others, I feel very small and petty,” she said, upon the
impulse.
Daniel looked at her in some confusion. No one had ever paid him such a
tribute before. Coming from Lady Phayre, it gratified more than a man’s
vanity. He laughed awkwardly.
“I don’t know that I do so much good after all,” he said. “You are a far
more important person, really. You are in the swim of everything--the
pivot of the party.”
“Oh, the party!” cried Lady Phayre. “Sometimes I get so tired of it. It
seems to be all concerned with means--the end lost sight of. Nothing day
after day but little moves, and counter-moves, and intrigues, and this
person’s speech, and that person’s vote. Oh, Mr. Goddard, when you get
into Parliament you will never develop into the typical party-man--the
lobbyist, and asker of questions, and mover of amendments. ‘You are so
different from most of the other men who come here.”
She spoke sincerely for the moment. By the light of Goddard’s
earnestness she glanced ashamedly at her own political dilettanteism. A
momentary conception of nobler effort passed through her mind. Womanlike
she projected these higher subjective workings into increased regard
for the man. When Goddard took his leave, he was unaware how far he had
advanced in Lady Phayre’s good favour; but he realised that something
new and helpful had come into his own life.
After this he became a constant visitor at Queen’s Court Mansions.
Usually he chose the times when Lady Phayre was alone. In the general
society he now and then met in her drawing-room, he felt shy and
constrained, blundered in his speech, and grew hot with anger at
imaginary errors. A proud man, he was ashamed at himself for envying the
ease of manner of other men. In a mixed assembly he was helpless.
“I am not coming to your omnium gatherums any more,” he said once to
Lady Phayre. “I don’t know how to talk to these people. Their ways are
natural to them. I have to put them on, and I put them on crooked.”
“But you know how to talk to me,” she replied with a smile.
“You are different,” he said. “You know who and what I am. You are good
enough to take me just as birth and circumstances have made me.”
She bent forward and looked him sweetly in the face.
“Be to others just as you are to me.”
“That’s an utter impossibility!” he exclaimed quickly, with a flash in
his eye, at which her face flushed.
“Well, perhaps not quite the same,” she said. “But I like you to come
occasionally and show yourself at my little receptions. It completes
them, you know.”
So Goddard withdrew his decision and strove to adapt himself to society
ways. But it went sorely against the grain. The hour’s discomfort over,
he hurried home, threw his dress-coat on a chair, and smoked a pipe in
his shirt-sleeves with feelings of intense relief. Other invitations,
which Lady Phayre’s patronage necessarily procured for him, he refused
with obstinate persistence.
“I do far more good, both to myself and others, if I put in a spare
evening at a working-man’s club,” he said to Gleam, who was persuading
him to take advantage of social opportunities.
The months went by. Goddard worked with a zest which even he had not
known before. In the little comedy of their lives Lady Phayre played
Egeria with nice discrimination. Daniel imperceptibly acquired the habit
of setting forth all his schemes and ambitions for her approval. His
strenuous life had been so single-purposed that he had retained many
simplicities, and his nature came fresh to receive her sympathy. The
first time he handed her the manuscript of a review article he blushed
like a schoolboy. It was a pleasant time. He was too ingenuous to
suspect pitfalls in his path.
His domestic life continued its usual course. Lizzie had spells of
soberness and quasi-repentance, alternating with periods of outbreak.
These latter, however, were growing more frequent. To Daniel the
asperities of everyday existence became more and more external. A
dogged, almost Philistine sense of duty kept him uniformly kind
and considerate; but he had long since ceased to regard her as one
fulfilling any of a wife’s functions.
A bond of union between Lady Phayre and himself was formed by the
increasing rumours of trade disturbances at Ecclesby, and the consequent
complications introduced into the choice of a Parliamentary candidate
for the Hough division, in which it was situated. The sitting member
was daily expected to accept the Chiltern Hundreds. The Conservatives had
secured a strong candidate. The Liberal organisation was divided. The
influential local man desired by the moderate section would be opposed
by the Labour vote in favour of an Independent candidate. To save a
three-cornered contest, the advanced section had approached Goddard. All
through the summer, things had remained at a deadlock. Lady Phayre, with
feminine love of intrigue, had stimulated her friends at Ecclesby to
exert their influence in Goddard’s favour.
“I am going down there in the autumn,” she told him one day, “and I
shall open the campaign in person.”
But before she could fulfil her promise, the trade storm burst in
Ecclesby. A general strike and lock-out declared itself. Attempts at
compromise failed hopelessly. Terms of agreement, suggested by a board
of arbitration, were indignantly rejected by both sides. A long, bitter
struggle seemed inevitable. Daniel watched its progress with intense
interest. Principles of relation between Labour and Capital were at
stake, in whose cause he had fought from those far-off days when he
had carried a three-legged stool to Hyde Park on Sunday afternoons, and
harangued his casual and apathetic audience. It was a small strike when
compared with the great contests that have convulsed industry of late
years; but its result would have far-reaching consequences. He thirsted
to join in the battle, but the delicacy of his position as regards the
constituency kept his tongue silent. And as the days went on, and he saw
that the Trades Union was less and less able to hold its own, he chafed
in London, and poured out his heart to Lady Phayre.
At last, one memorable day, he found himself in a cab speeding to her,
all too slowly. A great delight was thrilling through his veins. Visions
of fierce conflict, victory, fulfilled ambition danced before his eyes.
He sprang up the steps of Queen’s Court Mansions, tingling with the news
he was carrying to his--to his what? He did not know. An impulse, whose
sanity he never questioned, brought him hither irresistibly. During the
long interview with the strike leaders, from which he had freshly come,
his thoughts had turned to her, had identified the anticipation of
telling her with the pride of the moment. The gift of feminine sympathy
was still so new to him that he rushed to it with a child’s indubitative
eagerness.
The door of the flat opened as he reached the landing, and Lady Phayre
appeared, dressed for walking, in a dark fawn costume trimmed with fur
and a toque to match.
“You look pleased,” she said, smiling at his dark, flushed face and
shining eyes. “Whatever has happened?”
“I am going down to Ecclesby to lead the strike,” he said, panting a
little. “The Trades Union people have just been to me, and I have come
to tell you at once.”
The news pleased her, the homage flattered her. She beamed gracious
appreciation upon him, invited him to enter and acquaint her with the
details. They both remained standing in the drawing-room.
“It’s very simple,” he said. “The union is badly organised, is gradually
losing hold on the men. No one seems able to take the lead. They are
making a mess of it. I was afraid they would. I was only telling you so
lately. So they have begged me to come and help them.”
“I see,” said Lady Phayre, with kindling cheeks, “they want a strong man
with a strong will; a leader of men.” She put out her hand impulsively.
“I am so proud.”
The words and the touch of her hand quivered deliciously through
Goddard’s frame.
“It is the biggest thing I have been called upon to do yet,” he said.
“Of course I have no official position in the matter; I cannot approach
the masters in any way. But the Union has guaranteed free action; placed
itself unreservedly in my hands. All the responsibility is practically
mine. I shall win,” he added, after a pause, during which he took three
or four strides backwards and forwards in the room. “Somehow I feel it.
I have eternal justice on my side. Oh, to think what success will mean
for all these people!”
“And for you, my friend,” said Lady Phayre. “Win, and there’s Parliament
for you with a triumphant majority.”
He looked at her for a moment open-mouthed. She saw a new intelligence
dawn in his glance.
“Do you mean to tell me you never thought of that?” she asked quickly.
“No,” he said simply; “it had not struck me.” Lady Phayre turned her
face from him, and buttoned her glove. There are some feelings which
rush into a woman’s eyes that it is not advisable to show to the man who
evokes them. When she had slipped the last button she looked up at him
smilingly.
“I think you’re the only man in England who could have said that. When
do you commence operations?”
“The day after to-morrow. There will be a big open-air demonstration.
Then I’ll settle down to regular work--visiting, picketing,
speechifying, overhauling the books, agitating for help from cognate
trades. I shall have my hands full.”
He prepared to take his departure, seeing that she was going out.
“You can walk part of the way with me, if you like,” she said
graciously.
It was an undreamed-of honour. Save his mother and his wife, he did not
remember to have walked in the street with any woman. He strode by
her side proud and happy. Their way lay through Hyde Park. The October
leaves shimmered like golden scales in the afternoon sun, shedding a
glory around him. The few passers-by seemed non-existent. The great
stretch of lawn rolled on either side towards the just visible white
house-tops. In front, the chequered path of the burnished avenue. From
time to time his companion raised her delicate face to him. A slanting
beam caught the light of her eyes and the gold tints of her hair under
her dainty toque. A strange, unknown feeling stole upon his heart.
A great silence and splendour had fallen over life.
It was Lady Phayre who broke the silence at last. Her voice was sweetly
silvery.
“If I came to Ecclesby, could I be of any use to you?”
“You would only have to look as you look now,” he answered, “and there
is nothing you couldn’t help me to do.”
“I----”
Lady Phayre began, stopped abruptly as a little tremor shook her
shoulders delicately, then recovering herself, broke into a laugh.
“I shall look ever so much more businesslike, I assure you. I’ll go and
make friends with the wives. It will be useful against canvassing time.
I am an old campaigner in electioneering, you know. But I have never
taken an active part in a strike. It will be a new thing for the
political woman to do. I am always seeking after something new. I must
have been an Athenian in past ages--an Athenian of the Athenians--and
my soul got so impregnated that it has never been able to free itself. I
wonder if they would let me make a speech, Mr. Goddard?”
“We will ask the Union,” he laughed, following her unwittingly into the
lighter track she had started upon. “But will you really come and help?”
“Of course.”
“How can I thank you?” said Goddard.
“Post me up in all the ins and outs and technicalities,” she replied
brightly.
He took up his parable, and told her of shifts and piece-work, and the
intricacies of sliding-scales of wages, and the complications of
the trade. And, in truth, it was a parable. For the idyllic hour of
Goddard’s life had come, and air, and trees, and sun, and words all lost
their outer sense, and became informed with hidden meaning.