Goddard mounted the stairs of Queen’s Court Mansions with a heavy
tread. He was physically tired, and his heart was sullenly sore. He
had felt himself irresistibly drawn hither, though his pride hated the
ordeal of confessing his failure to a woman, especially to Lady Phayre.
The old, fierce class feeling was ineradicable. She was above him.
Success, brilliance alone could keep him on her level. Failure brought
him down. A glimmering realisation of this had come to him in the train,
and he had pulled up his coat-collar angrily, and doggedly resolved to
swallow his humble-pie to the last mouthful. But it did not occur to do
otherwise than drive straight to her from the railway station.
He deposited his bag and ulster in the hall, and followed the servant
into the drawing-room. The first glimpse of it cheered him. The subdued
light, the dancing fire, the warm tones of carpet and curtains, the
cosy atmosphere, the charm of perfectly harmonised surroundings, struck
gratefully upon his sense.
Lady Phayre dropped on the hearthrug the book she was reading, and
rising quickly, made a step or two to meet him. Her eyes were wide, in
great concern.
“Oh, how tired you are looking. Come and sit down, in the big chair
by the fire. It was good of you to come. See, I have been waiting for
you--with Monmouth.”
She smiled, and directed her glance downwards to the white cat which had
stalked up and was rubbing itself, with arched back and outstanding fur,
against Goddard’s legs. He stooped and patted the beast.
“I am just done-up,” he said, sitting down wearily in the chair, and
throwing back his head.
He was looking exhausted. A pallor appeared beneath his dark skin; his
eyes were rather sunken, thus bringing into strange relief his somewhat
massively hewn features. A strand of black straight hair fell from the
side-parting across his forehead. Lady Phayre, standing with one hand on
the back of her chair, regarded him pityingly.
“Have you had anything to eat?”
“Oh, yes; I think so.”
“Tell me when. Ah! I see you haven’t. I’ll order you something in the
dining-room.”
“I couldn’t think----” he began; but she interrupted him.
“You must, to please me. I can’t bear to see you so tired. You will feel
quite a different man. And a small bottle of champagne.”
Man has not been born of a woman who could have refused Lady Phayre,
when she spoke with that coaxing charm.
Goddard’s face softened into assent, and he followed her with his eyes,
in a dumb, wondering way, as she went to give the necessary directions.
He had never quite familiarised himself with his surroundings in that
room. It always seemed a corner of Paradise that had somehow got left
behind upon the unlovely earth. The feeling had never been so strong as
at present. With his brain throbbing from the painful emotions of the
day, his eyes still dazed by the various scenes--the mean, squalid
streets, the grim, closed factories, the poverty-stricken homes,
the idle, sullen men lounging at street-corners, the crowd of gaunt,
unresponsive faces at the meeting--and with his body exhausted with
fatigue and hunger, this warm nest of exquisite peace and comfort was
deliciously unreal. Even Moumouth, luxuriously coiled on his velvet
cushion, seemed a creature of a different sphere from that of the lean
grey cats he had seen darting from doorways across alleys, preceding
the appearance of red-shawled women. And the voice of Lady Phayre hummed
like far-away music in his ears, and her delicate womanly sympathy was
like soft hands against his cheek. It was almost a dream. He leaned
forward, elbows on knees, his fingers through his hair. He longed for
her to come back, so that he could tell her of the failure. Somehow, it
no longer struck him as an ordeal. The magic of her presence had charmed
away his repugnance.
She returned, knelt down on the long fender-stool, and spread out her
hands before the blaze.
“They won’t be long.”
She turned her head sideways towards him as she spoke. Her attitude was
alive with feminine grace and charm.
“You are as good as you are beautiful,” he said, in reply to her
hospitable remark.
She met his full glance, and smiled contentedly. The blunt sincerity of
the tribute compensated for its lack of the finer imaginative shades.
There was a moment’s silence. Then she raised her eyes again, but this
time with sad expectancy.
“Well?”
He broke out in a kind of groan.
“It’s all over. I needn’t tell you that. You got my letter this morning,
and you must have guessed from my wire this afternoon. We give in
to-morrow unconditionally--after all these weeks of struggle and
sacrifice. It is the most crushing blow labour has ever had. And I’ll
stake my existence another week would have seen them through. Rosenthal
is no more going to finance these firms than he is going to finance
me. It has been cruel. I have been working at it since six o’clock this
morning. It has been like trying to fly a kite with a cannon-ball at its
tail. At the meeting this afternoon I did all I knew. I have never lost
my head with passion before. They were all like dead men; went away
dragging their boots. Some of them cursed me. Managers came round me
afterwards. ‘Didn’t I know? The strike fund was exhausted.’ As if I was
ignorant of it! ‘Two more days would see the end of it.’ I said, ‘In
God’s name, see the two days out.’ They shook their heads; were going to
announce surrender then and there; but I managed to make them put it off
till the morning. And then I came away--eating my heart out.”
He set his teeth and glowered at the fire. The story of the defeat had
brought back the bitterness in all its intensity. Lady Phayre did not
speak, instinctively knowing that, with him, silence was the truest
sympathy.
“The bitter part to me,” he continued, with note of passion that
vibrated through the woman, “is, that if I could have had a hundredth
part of the grip on them to-day that I had a week ago, I should have
brought them through. I know it as I know water goes down hill. I have
failed. It is my failure. I have been responsible for all these poor
creatures’ sacrifices during the past weeks; and now all the poverty,
hunger, despair, for nothing. You saw what it was a few days ago. You
should have been there this morning. I saw a man seize a bit of bread
and treacle out of a child’s hand and begin to devour it--like a wolf--I
couldn’t stand it.”
Lady Phayre looked at him quickly, and then for the first time noticed
a slight bruise and an abrasion on his forehead. She drew her own
conclusions.
“Oh, the awful misery of it all,” said Goddard between his teeth.
“I am sorry,” said Lady Phayre in a low voice, “sorry to my inmost
heart; but I am sorrier for you.”
“Ah! you mustn’t say that,” cried Goddard passionately. “Think--you
couldn’t mean it. It would be inhuman!”
“It is only too human,” murmured Lady Phayre.
He was about to speak, when the maid-servant announced that the supper
was ready; so, instead of replying to Lady Phayre’s murmur, he remained
silently wondering.
She led the way into the dining-room, where a dainty but substantial
meal was spread--a piece of salmon with crisp salad, a truffled pie, a
cold fruit-tart. Only one place was laid. It had seemed to Lady Phayre
she could give him kinder welcome if she sat by him as he ate than if
she went through the formal pretence of joining him at the meal. Then
she wondered, in the feminine way, whether he was cognisant of it. The
servant uncorked the champagne and retired. Lady Phayre sat down near
him, resting her elbow on the table. At first he leaned back in his
chair, looked at his plate, then at her.
“I feel too sick at heart to eat. The thought of those poor starving
women and children!”
“Your going without food will not fill their mouths, you know,” said
Lady Phayre in sympathetic remonstrance.
“I suppose I feel my own personal humiliation too,” he said
ungraciously, as if forcing out the admission. “One may as well
be honest. It’s the biggest thing I’ve set my hand to as yet, with
everything depending upon it. And to have to throw it up when victory
was staring one in the face! It is maddening!”
He bent forward impatiently and took up his fork. He laid it on his
plate, and turned to Lady Phayre.
“You are the only person in the world I could say that to.”
“Do you know why?”
The words were half whispered, but she looked at him full and clearly.
“Because you are yourself, I suppose--your good opinion dear to me, your
sympathy a necessity.”
“And all that because you know I believe in you.”
Her eyes fell beneath his gaze, which was stern and yet half pleading.
Then she raised them again slowly, with the delicious upward sweep of
her lashes, and repeated--
“I believe in you.”
A thrill ran through the man; his dark, powerful face lit up. Lady
Phayre shifted her attitude, and broke into a silvery laugh.
“And all this time you are not eating. If you don’t begin at once I
shall go away.”
Goddard laughed shamefacedly, with a vague consciousness that he had
been ungracious in not having commenced before. He helped himself to
the salmon. After the first mouthful or two his aversion to food
disappeared, and he went on eating with the appetite of a bigframed,
very hungry man. With the exception of a sandwich and a glass of beer
at the station bar before starting, he had eaten nothing since his early
breakfast. The food and the wine restored his physical well-being.
Lady Phayre looked on, pleased, she could scarcely tell why. These
big, earnest men were sometimes like babies--so helpless, if left to
themselves. She tended on him now and then in a pretty way without
leaving her seat, passed his plate, handed him the little silver jug
of cream, and, when the meal was over, fetched from a cupboard a box of
cigarettes. Like a man unaccustomed to delicate feminine ministrations,
Goddard accepted them rather tongue-tied, with a certain tremulous
bashfulness. The little hospitable actions, so homely and therefore
charming to a man of gentler nurture, were to him full of a rare exotic
sweetness. All through the meal she exerted herself to talk to him
brightly of little things, incidents that had brought them into pleasant
contact during the late struggle. He finished his cigarette, and they
returned to the drawingroom.
Goddard stood before the fire, with his hands in his jacket pockets.
The sense of personal humiliation still smouldered within him, but the
raging of the flame had been subdued. He felt that he could hold up his
head again. And it was the loyal tender sympathy of that woman in the
low arm-chair before him who had brought it about. He had never known
before how a woman could be a necessity in a man’s life. Till then he
even had not realised how imperious were the cravings for her, in spite
of the revolt of his galled pride, during that weary journey back to
town. She looked so fair and exquisite. His eyes met hers. But something
more than her beauty stirred the eternal masculine within him, and when
he spoke his voice vibrated.
“Will you always treat me like this, Lady Phayre?”
She smiled.
“Is it much to do for you?”
“It is growing to mean everything in the world to me. I have lived a
rough life away from women--ladies--women like you. Hitherto it has
never occurred to me that I was not self-sufficing--that I could
ever look to a woman for help. A year ago I should have laughed at
it--thought it a sickly fancy of the hyper-sensitive semi-men in novels.
But I have needed you this day, and I came to you because something
stronger than I impelled me. And you have given me new life to-night. Do
you know that?”
“You were looking so worn out and sad when you came in, that it pained
me,” said Lady Phayre, non-committally.
But Goddard’s ear detected a soft note in her voice. He came near to
her, sat down on the fender-stool, almost by her knees.
“Why are all women not like you? What a great beautiful world it would
be.”
“Any woman would have done the same; given you of her best to cheer you.
Besides, I was grieved--you have worked so nobly. Everybody has been
talking about you--of nothing else. I felt so proud I had been working
with you in my poor way--and I had set my heart upon your winning.”
“And I have failed miserably,” said Goddard. “Therefore you ought to
feel I was unworthy of your trust.”
“You don’t mean that. It hurts me,” she cried quickly, really wounded.
Goddard’s heart came into his eyes. The goddess had come down from
the far-off pedestal where he had worshipped her, and was by his side,
throbbing woman. He had a strange intoxicating sense of her nearness. He
raised his hand and touched the edges of the feather firescreen she was
holding in her lap.
“Forgive me,” he said. “It is hard to believe that my success or my
failure is of concern to you.”
“Why is it hard?” she asked in a low voice, looking down.
“Because it means more than my wildest dreams could ever bid me hope,”
he replied, with a sudden rush of passion.
There was a long silence. Lady Phayre could find no words to answer,
conscious that her muteness was an expectation of fuller avowal.
But Goddard’s brain was whirling with wonder and strange joy. His hand
sunk a hair’s-breadth, and touched her knee. The contact was electric to
him. He drew his hand away quickly, and, rising to his feet, stretched
himself, as if he had awakened out of a dream. He could scarcely realise
what had happened. His enthusiastic practical life had not been fertile
in psychological moments. Lady Phayre looked up at him with angelic
sweetness. Generally more graceful than seductive, she was bewilderingly
woman at this moment. Suddenly, with an instinct of self-preservation,
she rose too, and laughed.
“I told you I believed in you, you know. Our little faiths are of moment
to us.”
Her light tone saved the situation. Talk was resumed, but it did not
flow so spontaneously as before. At last Goddard rose to leave. She was
solicitous as to his rest. Had he any more work to-night?
“I am going straight home,” he answered, with a laugh.
He held her hand for a long time and looked her in the eyes.
“You will sleep happier than if you had not come to me?” she asked.
“Ah! God bless you,” he said, rather huskily.
And then he squeezed her hand, and went hurriedly from the room.