Joan was making herself a cup of tea when there came a tap at the door.
It was Mrs. Phillips.
"I heard you come in," she said. "You're not busy, are you?"
"No," answered Joan. "I hope you're not. I'm generally in about this
time; and it's always nice to gossip over a dish of tea."
"Why do you say 'dish' of tea!" asked Mrs. Phillips, as she lowered
herself with evident satisfaction into the easy chair Joan placed for
her.
"Oh, I don't know," laughed Joan. "Dr. Johnson always talked of a 'dish'
of tea. Gives it a literary flavour."
"I've heard of him," said Mrs. Phillips. "He's worth reading, isn't he?"
"Well, he talked more amusingly than he wrote," explained Joan. "Get
Boswell's Life of him. Or I'll lend you mine," she added, "if you'll be
careful of it. You'll find all the passages marked that are best worth
remembering. At least, I think so."
"Thanks," said Mrs. Phillips. "You see, as the wife of a public man, I
get so little time for study."
"Is it settled yet?" asked Joan. "Are they going to make room for him in
the Cabinet?
"I'm afraid so," answered Mrs. Phillips. "Oh, of course, I want him to,"
she corrected herself. "And he must, of course, if the King insists upon
it. But I wish it hadn't all come with such a whirl. What shall I have
to do, do you think?"
Joan was pouring out the tea. "Oh, nothing," she answered, "but just be
agreeable to the right people. He'll tell you who they are. And take
care of him."
"I wish I'd taken more interest in politics when I was young," said Mrs.
Phillips. "Of course, when I was a girl, women weren't supposed to."
"Do you know, I shouldn't worry about them, if I were you," Joan advised
her. "Let him forget them when he's with you. A man can have too much
of a good thing," she laughed.
"I wonder if you're right," mused Mrs. Phillips. "He does often say that
he'd just as soon I didn't talk about them."
Joan shot a glance from over her cup. The poor puzzled face was staring
into the fire. Joan could almost hear him saying it.
"I'm sure I am," she said. "Make home-coming a change to him. As you
said yourself the other evening. It's good for him to get away from it
all, now and then."
"I must try," agreed Mrs. Phillips, looking up. "What sort of things
ought I to talk to him about, do you think?"
Joan gave an inward sigh. Hadn't the poor lady any friends of her own.
"Oh, almost anything," she answered vaguely: "so long as it's cheerful
and non-political. What used you to talk about before he became a great
man?"
There came a wistful look into the worried eyes. "Oh, it was all so
different then," she said. "'E just liked to--you know. We didn't seem
to 'ave to talk. 'E was a rare one to tease. I didn't know 'ow clever
'e was, then."
It seemed a difficult case to advise upon. "How long have you been
married?" Joan asked.
"Fifteen years," she answered. "I was a bit older than 'im. But I've
never looked my age, they tell me. Lord, what a boy 'e was! Swept you
off your feet, like. 'E wasn't the only one. I'd got a way with me, I
suppose. Anyhow, the men seemed to think so. There was always a few
'anging about. Like flies round a 'oney-pot, Mother used to say." She
giggled. "But 'e wouldn't take No for an answer. And I didn't want to
give it 'im, neither. I was gone on 'im, right enough. No use saying I
wasn't."
"You must be glad you didn't say No," suggested Joan.
"Yes," she answered, "'E's got on. I always think of that little poem,
'Lord Burleigh,'" she continued; "whenever I get worrying about myself.
Ever read it?"
"Yes," answered Joan. "He was a landscape painter, wasn't he?"
"That's the one," said Mrs. Phillips. "I little thought I was letting
myself in for being the wife of a big pot when Bob Phillips came along in
'is miner's jacket."
"You'll soon get used to it," Joan told her. "The great thing is not to
be afraid of one's fate, whatever it is; but just to do one's best." It
was rather like talking to a child.
"You're the right sort to put 'eart into a body. I'm glad I came up,"
said Mrs. Phillips. "I get a bit down in the mouth sometimes when 'e
goes off into one of 'is brown studies, and I don't seem to know what
'e's thinking about. But it don't last long. I was always one of the
light-'earted ones."
They discussed life on two thousand a year; the problems it would
present; and Mrs. Phillips became more cheerful. Joan laid herself out
to be friendly. She hoped to establish an influence over Mrs. Phillips
that should be for the poor lady's good; and, as she felt instinctively,
for poor Phillips's also. It was not an unpleasing face. Underneath the
paint, it was kind and womanly. Joan was sure he would like it better
clean. A few months' attention to diet would make a decent figure of her
and improve her wind. Joan watched her spreading the butter a quarter of
an inch thick upon her toast and restrained with difficulty the impulse
to take it away from her. And her clothes! Joan had seen guys carried
through the streets on the fifth of November that were less obtrusive.
She remembered, as she was taking her leave, what she had come for: which
was to invite Joan to dinner on the following Friday.
"It's just a homely affair," she explained. She had recovered her form
and was now quite the lady again. "Two other guests beside yourself: a
Mr. Airlie--I am sure you will like him. He's so dilletanty--and Mr.
McKean. He's the young man upstairs. Have you met him?"
Joan hadn't: except once on the stairs when, to avoid having to pass her,
he had gone down again and out into the street. From the doorstep she
had caught sight of his disappearing coat-tails round the corner.
Yielding to impishness, she had run after him, and his expression of
blank horror when, glancing over his shoulder, he found her walking
abstractedly three yards behind him, had gladdened all her evening.
Joan recounted the episode--so far as the doorstep.
"He tried to be shy with me," said Mrs. Phillips, "but I wouldn't let
him. I chipped him out of it. If he's going to write plays, as I told
him, he will have to get over his fear of a petticoat."
She offered her cheek, and Joan kissed it, somewhat gingerly.
"You won't mind Robert not wearing evening dress," she said. "He never
will if he can help it. I shall just slip on a semi-toilette myself."
Joan had difficulty in deciding on her own frock. Her four evening
dresses, as she walked round them, spread out upon the bed, all looked
too imposing, for what Mrs. Phillips had warned her would be a "homely
affair." She had one other, a greyish-fawn, with sleeves to the elbow,
that she had had made expressly for public dinners and political At
Homes. But that would be going to the opposite extreme, and might seem
discourteous--to her hostess. Besides, "mousey" colours didn't really
suit her. They gave her a curious sense of being affected. In the end
she decided to risk a black crepe-de-chine, square cut, with a girdle of
gold embroidery. There couldn't be anything quieter than black, and the
gold embroidery was of the simplest. She would wear it without any
jewellery whatever: except just a star in her hair. The result, as she
viewed the effect in the long glass, quite satisfied her. Perhaps the
jewelled star did scintillate rather. It had belonged to her mother. But
her hair was so full of shadows: it wanted something to relieve it. Also
she approved the curved line of her bare arms. It was certainly very
beautiful, a woman's arm. She took her gloves in her hand and went down.
Mr. Phillips was not yet in the room. Mrs. Phillips, in apple-green with
an ostrich feather in her hair, greeted her effusively, and introduced
her to her fellow guests. Mr. Airlie was a slight, elegant gentleman of
uncertain age, with sandy hair and beard cut Vandyke fashion. He asked
Joan's permission to continue his cigarette.
"You have chosen the better part," he informed her, on her granting it.
"When I'm not smoking, I'm talking."
Mr. McKean shook her hand vigorously without looking at her.
"And this is Hilda," concluded Mrs. Phillips. "She ought to be in bed if
she hadn't a naughty Daddy who spoils her."
A lank, black-haired girl, with a pair of burning eyes looking out of a
face that, but for the thin line of the lips, would have been absolutely
colourless, rose suddenly from behind a bowl of artificial flowers. Joan
could not suppress a slight start; she had not noticed her on entering.
The girl came slowly forward, and Joan felt as if the uncanny eyes were
eating her up. She made an effort and held out her hand with a smile,
and the girl's long thin fingers closed on it in a pressure that hurt.
She did not speak.
"She only came back yesterday for the half-term," explained Mrs.
Phillips. "There's no keeping her away from her books. 'Twas her own
wish to be sent to boarding-school. How would you like to go to Girton
and be a B.A. like Miss Allway?" she asked, turning to the child.
Phillips's entrance saved the need of a reply. To the evident surprise
of his wife he was in evening clothes.
"Hulloa. You've got 'em on," she said.
He laughed. "I shall have to get used to them sooner or later," he said.
Joan felt relieved--she hardly knew why--that he bore the test. It was a
well-built, athletic frame, and he had gone to a good tailor. He looked
taller in them; and the strong, clean-shaven face less rugged.
Joan sat next to him at the round dinner-table with the child the other
side of him. She noticed that he ate as far as possible with his right
hand--his hands were large, but smooth and well shaped--his left
remaining under the cloth, beneath which the child's right hand, when
free, would likewise disappear. For a while the conversation consisted
chiefly of anecdotes by Mr. Airlie. There were few public men and women
about whom he did not know something to their disadvantage. Joan,
listening, found herself repeating the experience of a night or two
previous, when, during a performance of _Hamlet_, Niel Singleton, who was
playing the grave-digger, had taken her behind the scenes. Hamlet, the
King of Denmark and the Ghost were sharing a bottle of champagne in the
Ghost's dressing-room: it happened to be the Ghost's birthday. On her
return to the front of the house, her interest in the play was gone. It
was absurd that it should be so; but the fact remained.
Mr. Airlie had lunched the day before with a leonine old gentleman who
every Sunday morning thundered forth Social Democracy to enthusiastic
multitudes on Tower Hill. Joan had once listened to him and had almost
been converted: he was so tremendously in earnest. She now learnt that
he lived in Curzon Street, Mayfair, and filled, in private life, the
perfectly legitimate calling of a company promoter in partnership with a
Dutch Jew. His latest prospectus dwelt upon the profits to be derived
from an amalgamation of the leading tanning industries: by means of which
the price of leather could be enormously increased.
It was utterly illogical; but her interest in the principles of Social
Democracy was gone.
A very little while ago, Mr. Airlie, in his capacity of second cousin to
one of the ladies concerned, a charming girl but impulsive, had been
called upon to attend a family council of a painful nature. The
gentleman's name took Joan's breath away: it was the name of one of her
heroes, an eminent writer: one might almost say prophet. She had
hitherto read his books with grateful reverence. They pictured for her
the world made perfect; and explained to her just precisely how it was to
be accomplished. But, as far as his own particular corner of it was
concerned, he seemed to have made a sad mess of it. Human nature of
quite an old-fashioned pattern had crept in and spoilt all his own
theories.
Of course it was unreasonable. The sign-post may remain embedded in
weeds: it notwithstanding points the way to the fair city. She told
herself this, but it left her still short-tempered. She didn't care
which way it pointed. She didn't believe there was any fair city.
There was a famous preacher. He lived the simple life in a small house
in Battersea, and consecrated all his energies to the service of the
poor. Almost, by his unselfish zeal, he had persuaded Joan of the
usefulness of the church. Mr. Airlie frequently visited him. They
interested one another. What struck Mr. Airlie most was the
self-sacrificing devotion with which the reverend gentleman's wife and
family surrounded him. It was beautiful to see. The calls upon his
moderate purse, necessitated by his wide-spread and much paragraphed
activities, left but a narrow margin for domestic expenses: with the
result that often the only fire in the house blazed brightly in the study
where Mr. Airlie and the reverend gentleman sat talking: while mother and
children warmed themselves with sense of duty in the cheerless kitchen.
And often, as Mr. Airlie, who was of an inquiring turn of mind, had
convinced himself, the only evening meal that resources would permit was
the satisfying supper for one brought by the youngest daughter to her
father where he sat alone in the small dining-room.
Mr. Airlie, picking daintily at his food, continued his stories: of
philanthropists who paid starvation wages: of feminists who were a holy
terror to their women folk: of socialists who travelled first-class and
spent their winters in Egypt or Monaco: of stern critics of public morals
who preferred the society of youthful affinities to the continued company
of elderly wives: of poets who wrote divinely about babies' feet and
whose children hated them.
"Do you think it's all true?" Joan whispered to her host.
He shrugged his shoulders. "No reason why it shouldn't be," he said.
"I've generally found him right."
"I've never been able myself," he continued, "to understand the Lord's
enthusiasm for David. I suppose it was the Psalms that did it."
Joan was about to offer comment, but was struck dumb with astonishment on
hearing McKean's voice: it seemed he could talk. He was telling of an
old Scotch peasant farmer. A mean, cantankerous old cuss whose curious
pride it was that he had never given anything away. Not a crust, nor a
sixpence, nor a rag; and never would. Many had been the attempts to make
him break his boast: some for the joke of the thing and some for the
need; but none had ever succeeded. It was his one claim to distinction
and he guarded it.
One evening it struck him that the milk-pail, standing just inside the
window, had been tampered with. Next day he marked with a scratch the
inside of the pan and, returning later, found the level of the milk had
sunk half an inch. So he hid himself and waited; and at twilight the
next day the window was stealthily pushed open, and two small, terror-
haunted eyes peered round the room. They satisfied themselves that no
one was about and a tiny hand clutching a cracked jug was thrust swiftly
in and dipped into the pan; and the window softly closed.
He knew the thief, the grandchild of an old bedridden dame who lived some
miles away on the edge of the moor. The old man stood long, watching the
small cloaked figure till it was lost in the darkness. It was not till
he lay upon his dying bed that he confessed it. But each evening, from
that day, he would steal into the room and see to it himself that the
window was left ajar.
After the coffee, Mrs. Phillips proposed their adjourning to the "drawing-
room" the other side of the folding doors, which had been left open.
Phillips asked her to leave Joan and himself where they were. He wanted
to talk to her. He promised not to bore her for more than ten minutes.
The others rose and moved away. Hilda came and stood before Joan with
her hands behind her.
"I am going to bed now," she said. "I wanted to see you from what Papa
told me. May I kiss you?"
It was spoken so gravely that Joan did not ask her, as in lighter mood
she might have done, what it was that Phillips had said. She raised her
face quietly, and the child bent forward and kissed her, and went out
without looking back at either of them, leaving Joan more serious than
there seemed any reason for. Phillips filled his pipe and lighted it.
"I wish I had your pen," he said, suddenly breaking the silence. "I'm
all right at talking; but I want to get at the others: the men and women
who never come, thinking it has nothing to do with them. I'm shy and
awkward when I try to write. There seems a barrier in front of me. You
break through it. One hears your voice. Tell me," he said, "are you
getting your way? Do they answer you?"
"Yes," said Joan. "Not any great number of them, not yet. But enough to
show that I really am interesting them. It grows every week."
"Tell them that," he said. "Let them hear each other. It's the same at
a meeting. You wait ten minutes sometimes before one man will summon up
courage to put a question; but once one or two have ventured they spring
up all round you. I was wondering," he added, "if you would help me; let
me use you, now and again."
"It is what I should love," she answered. "Tell me what to do." She was
not conscious of the low, vibrating tone in which she spoke.
"I want to talk to them," he said, "about their stomachs. I want them to
see the need of concentrating upon the food problem: insisting that it
shall be solved. The other things can follow."
"There was an old Egyptian chap," he said, "a governor of one of their
provinces, thousands of years before the Pharaohs were ever heard of.
They dug up his tomb a little while ago. It bore this inscription: 'In
my time no man went hungry.' I'd rather have that carved upon my
gravestone than the boastings of all the robbers and the butchers of
history. Think what it must have meant in that land of drought and
famine: only a narrow strip of river bank where a grain of corn would
grow; and that only when old Nile was kind. If not, your nearest
supplies five hundred miles away across the desert, your only means of
transport the slow-moving camel. Your convoy must be guarded against
attack, provided with provisions and water for a two months' journey. Yet
he never failed his people. Fat year and lean year: 'In my time no man
went hungry.' And here, to-day, with our steamships and our railways,
with the granaries of the world filled to overflowing, one third of our
population lives on the border line of want. In India they die by the
roadside. What's the good of it all: your science and your art and your
religion! How can you help men's souls if their bodies are starving? A
hungry man's a hungry beast.
"I spent a week at Grimsby, some years ago, organizing a fisherman's
union. They used to throw the fish back into the sea, tons upon tons of
it, that men had risked their lives to catch, that would have fed half
London's poor. There was a 'glut' of it, they said. The 'market' didn't
want it. Funny, isn't it, a 'glut' of food: and the kiddies can't learn
their lessons for want of it. I was talking with a farmer down in Kent.
The plums were rotting on his trees. There were too many of them: that
was the trouble. The railway carriage alone would cost him more than he
could get for them. They were too cheap. So nobody could have them.
It's the muddle of the thing that makes me mad--the ghastly muddle-headed
way the chief business of the world is managed. There's enough food
could be grown in this country to feed all the people and then of the
fragments each man might gather his ten basketsful. There's no miracle
needed. I went into the matter once with Dalroy of the Board of
Agriculture. He's the best man they've got, if they'd only listen to
him. It's never been organized: that's all. It isn't the fault of the
individual. It ought not to be left to the individual. The man who
makes a corner in wheat in Chicago and condemns millions to
privation--likely enough, he's a decent sort of fellow in himself: a kind
husband and father--would be upset for the day if he saw a child crying
for bread. My dog's a decent enough little chap, as dogs go, but I don't
let him run my larder.
"It could be done with a little good will all round," he continued, "and
nine men out of every ten would be the better off. But they won't even
let you explain. Their newspapers shout you down. It's such a damned
fine world for the few: never mind the many. My father was a farm
labourer: and all his life he never earned more than thirteen and
sixpence a week. I left when I was twelve and went into the mines. There
were six of us children; and my mother brought us up healthy and decent.
She fed us and clothed us and sent us to school; and when she died we
buried her with the money she had put by for the purpose; and never a
penny of charity had ever soiled her hands. I can see them now. Talk of
your Chancellors of the Exchequer and their problems! She worked herself
to death, of course. Well, that's all right. One doesn't mind that
where one loves. If they would only let you. She had no opposition to
contend with--no thwarting and hampering at every turn--the very people
you are working for hounded on against you. The difficulty of a man like
myself, who wants to do something, who could do something, is that for
the best part of his life he is fighting to be allowed to do it. By the
time I've lived down their lies and got my chance, my energy will be
gone."
He knocked the ashes from his pipe and relit it.
"I've no quarrel with the rich," he said. "I don't care how many rich
men there are, so long as there are no poor. Who does? I was riding on
a bus the other day, and there was a man beside me with a bandaged head.
He'd been hurt in that railway smash at Morpeth. He hadn't claimed
damages from the railway company and wasn't going to. 'Oh, it's only a
few scratches,' he said. 'They'll be hit hard enough as it is.' If he'd
been a poor devil on eighteen shillings a week it would have been
different. He was an engineer earning good wages; so he wasn't feeling
sore and bitter against half the world. Suppose you tried to run an army
with your men half starved while your officers had more than they could
eat. It's been tried and what's been the result? See that your soldiers
have their proper rations, and the General can sit down to his six-course
dinner, if he will. They are not begrudging it to him.
"A nation works on its stomach. Underfeed your rank and file, and what
sort of a fight are you going to put up against your rivals. I want to
see England going ahead. I want to see her workers properly fed. I want
to see the corn upon her unused acres, the cattle grazing on her wasted
pastures. I object to the food being thrown into the sea--left to rot
upon the ground while men are hungry--side-tracked in Chicago, while the
children grow up stunted. I want the commissariat properly organized."
He had been staring through her rather than at her, so it had seemed to
Joan. Suddenly their eyes met, and he broke into a smile.
"I'm so awfully sorry," he said. "I've been talking to you as if you
were a public meeting. I'm afraid I'm more used to them than I am to
women. Please forgive me."
The whole man had changed. The eyes had a timid pleading in them.
Joan laughed. "I've been feeling as if I were the King of Bavaria," she
said.
"How did he feel?" he asked her, leaning forward.
"He had his own private theatre," Joan explained, "where Wagner gave his
operas. And the King was the sole audience."
"I should have hated that," he said, "if I had been Wagner."
He looked at her, and a flush passed over his boyish face.
"All right," he said, "if it had been a queen."
Joan found herself tracing patterns with her spoon upon the tablecloth.
"But you have won now," she said, still absorbed apparently with her
drawing, "you are going to get your chance."
He gave a short laugh. "A trick," he said, "to weaken me. They think to
shave my locks; show me to the people bound by their red tape. To put it
another way, a rat among the terriers."
Joan laughed. "You don't somehow suggest the rat," she said: "rather
another sort of beast."
"What do you advise me?" he asked. "I haven't decided yet."
They were speaking in whispered tones. Through the open doors they could
see into the other room. Mrs. Phillips, under Airlie's instructions, was
venturing upon a cigarette.
"To accept," she answered. "They won't influence you--the terriers, as
you call them. You are too strong. It is you who will sway them. It
isn't as if you were a mere agitator. Take this opportunity of showing
them that you can build, plan, organize; that you were meant to be a
ruler. You can't succeed without them, as things are. You've got to win
them over. Prove to them that they can trust you."
He sat for a minute tattooing with his fingers on the table, before
speaking.
"It's the frills and flummery part of it that frightens me," he said.
"You wouldn't think that sensitiveness was my weak point. But it is.
I've stood up to a Birmingham mob that was waiting to lynch me and
enjoyed the experience; but I'd run ten miles rather than face a drawing-
room of well-dressed people with their masked faces and ironic
courtesies. It leaves me for days feeling like a lobster that has lost
its shell."
"I wouldn't say it, if I didn't mean it," answered Joan; "but you haven't
got to trouble yourself about that . . . You're quite passable." She
smiled. It seemed to her that most women would find him more than
passable.
He shook his head. "With you," he said. "There's something about you
that makes one ashamed of worrying about the little things. But the
others: the sneering women and the men who wink over their shoulder while
they talk to you, I shall never be able to get away from them, and, of
course, wherever I go--"
He stopped abruptly with a sudden tightening of the lips. Joan followed
his eyes. Mrs. Phillips had swallowed the smoke and was giggling and
spluttering by turns. The yellow ostrich feather had worked itself loose
and was rocking to and fro as if in a fit of laughter of its own.
He pushed back his chair and rose. "Shall we join the others?" he said.
He moved so that he was between her and the other room, his back to the
open doors. "You think I ought to?" he said.
"Yes," she answered firmly, as if she were giving a command. But he read
pity also in her eyes.
"Well, have you two settled the affairs of the kingdom? Is it all
decided?" asked Airlie.
"Yes," he answered, laughing. "We are going to say to the people, 'Eat,
drink and be wise.'"
He rearranged his wife's feather and smoothed her tumbled hair. She
looked up at him and smiled.
Joan set herself to make McKean talk, and after a time succeeded. They
had a mutual friend, a raw-boned youth she had met at Cambridge. He was
engaged to McKean's sister. His eyes lighted up when he spoke of his
sister Jenny. The Little Mother, he called her.
"She's the most beautiful body in all the world," he said. "Though
merely seeing her you mightn't know it."
He saw her "home"; and went on up the stairs to his own floor.
Joan stood for a while in front of the glass before undressing; but felt
less satisfied with herself. She replaced the star in its case, and took
off the regal-looking dress with the golden girdle and laid it carelessly
aside. She seemed to be growing smaller.
In her white night dress, with her hair in two long plaits, she looked at
herself once more. She seemed to be no one of any importance at all:
just a long little girl going to bed. With no one to kiss her good
night.
She blew out the candle and climbed into the big bed, feeling very
lonesome as she used to when a child. It had not troubled her until to-
night. Suddenly she sat up again. She needn't be back in London before
Tuesday evening, and to-day was only Friday. She would run down home and
burst in upon her father. He would be so pleased to see her.
She would make him put his arms around her.