_ CHAPTER XIV
The fall of the Liberal Ministry was said by the simple-minded to have come as a bolt from the blue. Certainly into the subsequent General Election were entering elements but little foreseen.
Nevertheless, the last two bye-elections before the crash had resulted in the defeat of the Liberal candidate not by the Tory antagonist, but in one case by the nominee of the Labour party, in the other by an independent Socialist. Both these men had publicly thanked the Suffragettes for their notable share in piling up those triumphant and highly significant majorities. Now the country was facing an election where, for the first time in the history of any great nation, women were playing a part that even their political enemies could hardly with easy minds call subordinate.
Only faint echoes of the din penetrated the spacious quiet of Ulland House. Although the frequent week-end party was there, the great hall on this particular morning presented a deserted appearance as the tall clock by the staircase chimed the hour of noon. The insistence of the ancient timepiece seemed to have set up a rival in destruction of the Sunday peace, for no sooner had the twelfth stroke died than a bell began to ring. The little door in the wainscot beyond the clock was opened. An elderly butler put his head round the huge screen of Spanish leather that masked the very existence of the modest means of communication with the quarters of the Ulland domestics. So little was a ring at the front door expected at this hour that Sutton was still slowly getting into the left sleeve of his coat when his mistress appeared from the garden by way of the French window. The old butler withdrew a discreet instant behind the screen to put the last touches to his toilet, but Lady John had seen that he was there.
'Has Miss Levering gone for a walk?' she inquired of the servant.
'I don't know, m'lady.'
'She's not in the garden. Do you think she's not down yet?'
'I haven't seen her, m'lady,' said Sutton, emerging from his retirement and approaching the wide staircase on his way to answer the front-door bell.
'Never mind'--his mistress went briskly over to a wide-winged writing-table and seated herself before a litter of papers--'I won't have her disturbed if she's resting,' Lady John said, adding half to herself, 'she certainly needs it.'
'Yes, m'lady,' said Sutton, adjusting the maroon collar of his livery which had insisted upon riding up at the back.
'But I want her to know'--Lady John spoke while glancing through a letter before consigning it to the wastepaper basket--'the moment she comes down she must be told that the new plans arrived by the morning post.'
'Plans, m'la----'
'She'll understand. There they are.' The lady held up a packet about which she had just snapped an elastic band. 'I'll put them here. It's very important she should have them in time to look over before she goes.'
'Yes, m'lady.'
Sutton opened a door and disappeared. A footstep sounded on the marble floor of the lobby.
Over her shoulder Lady John called out, 'Is
that Miss Levering?'
'
No, m'lady. Mr. Farnborough.'
'I'm afraid I'm scandalously early.' In spite of his words the young man whipped off his dust coat and flung it to the servant with as much precipitation as though what he had meant to say was 'scandalously late.' 'I motored up from Dutfield. It didn't take me nearly so long as Lord John said.'
The lady had given the young man her hand without rising. 'I'm afraid my husband is no authority on motoring--and he's not home yet from church.'
'It's the greatest luck finding
you.' Farnborough sat himself down in the easy-chair on the other side of the wide writing-table undaunted by its business-like air or the preoccupied look of the woman before it. 'I thought Miss Levering was the only person under this roof who was ever allowed to observe Sunday as a real day of rest.'
'If you've come to see Miss Levering----' began Lady John.
'Is she here? I give you my word I didn't know it.'
'Oh?' said the lady, unconvinced.
'I thought she'd given up coming.'
'Well, she's begun again. She's helping me about something.'
'Oh, helping you, is she?' said Farnborough with absent eyes; and then suddenly 'all there,' 'Lady John, I've come to ask you to help
me.'
'With Miss Levering?' said Hermione Heriot's aunt. 'I can't do it.'
'No, no--all that's no good. She only laughs.'
'Oh,' breathed the lady, relieved, 'she looks upon you as a boy.'
'Such nonsense,' he burst out suddenly. 'What do you think she said to me the day before she went off yachting?'
'That she was four years older than you?'
'Oh, I knew that. No. She said
she knew she was all the charming things I'd been saying, but there was only one way to prove it, and that was to marry some one young enough to be her son. She'd noticed, she said, that was what the
most attractive women did--and she named names.'
Lady John laughed. '
You were too old!'
He nodded. 'Her future husband, she said, was probably just entering Eton.'
'Exactly like her.'
'No, no.' Dick Farnborough waived the subject away. 'I wanted to see you about the secretaryship.'
'You didn't get it then?'
'No. It's the grief of my life.'
'Oh, if you don't get one you'll get another.'
'But there
is only one,' he said desperately.
'Only one vacancy?'
'Only one man I'd give my ears to work for.'
Lady John smiled. 'I remember.'
He turned his sanguine head with a quick look. 'Do I
always talk about Stonor? Well, it's a habit people have got into.'
'I forget, do you know Mr. Stonor personally, or'--she smiled her good-humoured tolerant smile--'or are you just dazzled from afar?'
'Oh, I know him! The trouble is he doesn't know me. If he did he'd realize he can't be sure of winning his election without my valuable services.'
'Geoffrey Stonor's re-election is always a foregone conclusion.'
Farnborough banged his hand on the arm of the chair. 'That the great man shares that opinion is precisely his weak point'--then breaking into a pleasant smile as he made a clean breast of his hero-worship--'his
only weak point!'
'Oh, you think,' inquired Lady John, lightly, 'just because the Liberals swept the country the last time, there's danger of their----'
'How can we be sure
any Conservative seat is safe, after----' as Lady John smiled and turned to her papers again. 'Forgive me,' said the young man, with a tolerant air, 'I know you're not interested in politics
qua politics. But this concerns Geoffrey Stonor.'
'And you count on my being interested in him like all the rest?'
He leaned forward. 'Lady John, I've heard the news.'
'What news?'
'That your little niece, the Scotch heiress, is going to marry him.'
'Who told you that?'
She dropped the paper she had picked up and stared. No doubt about his having won her whole attention at last.
'Please don't mind my knowing.'
But Lady John was visibly perturbed. 'Jean had set her heart on having a few days with just her family in the secret, before the flood of congratulation broke loose.'
'Oh,
that's all right,' he said soothingly. 'I always hear things before other people.'
'Well, I must ask you to be good enough to be very circumspect.' Lady John spoke gravely. 'I wouldn't have my niece or Mr. Stonor think that any of us----'
'Oh, of course not.'
'She'll suspect something if you so much as mention Stonor; and you can't help mentioning Stonor!'
'Yes, I can. Besides I shan't see her!'
'But you will'--Lady John glanced at the clock. 'She'll be here in an hour.'
He jumped up delighted. 'What? To-day. The future Mrs. Stonor!'
'Yes,' said his hostess, with a harassed air. 'Unfortunately we had one or two people already asked for the week and----'
'And I go and invite myself to luncheon! Lady John.' He pushed back the armchair like one who clears the field for action. He stood before her with his legs wide apart, and a look of enterprise on his face. 'You can buy me off! I'll promise to remove myself in five minutes if you'll put in a word for me.'
'Ah!' Lady John shook her head. 'Mr. Stonor inspires a similar enthusiasm in so many young----'
'They haven't studied the situation as I have.' He sat down to explain his own excellence. 'They don't know what's at stake. They don't go to that hole Dutfield, as I did, just to hear his Friday speech.'
'But you were rewarded. My niece, Jean, wrote me it was "glorious."'
'Well, you know, I was disappointed,' he said judicially. 'Stonor's too content just to criticize, just to make his delicate pungent fun of the men who are grappling--very inadequately of course--still
grappling with the big questions. There's a carrying power'--he jumped to his feet again and faced an imaginary audience--'some of Stonor's friends ought to point it out--there's a driving power in the poorest constructive policy that makes the most brilliant criticism look barren.'
She regarded the budding politician with good-humoured malice.
'Who told you that?'
'You think there's nothing in it because
I say it. But now that he's coming into the family, Lord John or somebody really ought to point out--Stonor's overdoing his role of magnificent security.'
The lady sat very straight. 'I don't see even Lord John offering to instruct Mr. Stonor,' she said, with dignity.
'Believe me, that's just Stonor's danger! Nobody saying a word, everybody hoping he's on the point of adopting some definite line, something strong and original, that's going to fire the public imagination and bring the Tories back into power----'
'So he will.'
'Not if he disappoints meetings,' said Farnborough, hotly; 'not if he goes calmly up to town, and leaves the field to the Liberals.'
'When did he do anything like that?'
'Yesterday!' Farnborough flung out the accusation as he strode up and down before the divan. 'And now he's got this other preoccupation----'
'You mean----?'
'Yes, your niece--the spoilt child of fortune.' Farnborough stopped suddenly and smacked his forehead. 'Of
course!'--he wheeled round upon Lady John with accusing face--'I understand it now.
She kept him from the meeting last night!
Well!'--he collapsed in the nearest chair--'if that's the effect she's going to have, it's pretty serious!'
'You are,' said his hostess.
'I can assure you the election agent's more so. He's simply tearing his hair.'
She had risen. 'How do you know?' she asked more gravely.
'He told me so himself, yesterday. I scraped acquaintance with the agent, just to see if--if----'
'I see,' she smiled. 'It's not only here that you manoeuvre for that secretaryship!'
As Lady John moved towards the staircase she looked at the clock. Farnborough jumped up and followed her, saying confidentially--
'You see, you can never tell when your chance might come. The election chap's promised to keep me posted. Why, I've even taken the trouble to arrange with the people at the station to receive any message that might come over from Dutfield.'
'For you?' She smiled at his self-importance.
Breathlessly he hurried on: 'Immense unexpected pressure of work, you know--now that we've forced the Liberals to appeal to the country----'
He stopped as the sound of light steps came flying through the lobby, and a young girl rushed into the hall calling out gaily--
'Aunt Ellen! Here I----'
She stopped precipitately, and her outstretched arms fell to her sides. A radiant, gracious figure, she stood poised an instant, the light of gladness in her eyes only partially dimmed by the horrid spectacle of an interloper in the person of a strange young man.
'My darling Jean!'
Lady John went forward and kissed her at the moment that the master of the house came hurrying in from the garden with a cheerful--
'I
thought that was you running up the avenue!'
'Uncle, dear!'
The pretty vision greeted him with the air of a privileged child of the house, interrupting only for an instant the babel of cross-purpose explanation about carriages and trains.
Lord John had shaken hands with Dick Farnborough and walked him towards the window, saying through the torrent--
'Now they'll tell each other for the next ten minutes that she's an hour earlier than we expected.'
Although young Farnborough had looked upon the blooming addition to the party with an undisguised interest, he readily fell in with Lord John's diplomatic move to get him out of the way. He even helped towards his own effacement, looking out through the window with--
'The Freddy Tunbridges said they were coming to you this week.'
'Yes, they're dawdling through the park with the Church Brigade.'
'Oh, I'll go and meet them;' and Farnborough disappeared.
As Lord John turned back to his two ladies he offered it as his opinion--
'That discreet young man will get on.'
'But
how did you get here?' Lady John was still wondering.
Breathless, the girl answered, 'He motored me down.'
'Geoffrey Stonor?'
She nodded, beaming.
'Why, where is he then?'
'He dropped me at the end of the avenue, and went on to see a supporter about something.'
'You let him go off like that!' Lord John reproached her.
'Without ever----' Lady John interrupted herself to take Jean's two hands in hers. 'Just tell me, my child, is it all right?'
'My engagement? Absolutely.'
Such radiant security shone in the soft face that the older woman, drawing the girl down beside her on the divan, dared to say--
'Geoffrey Stonor isn't going to be--a little too old for you.'
Jean chimed out the gayest laugh in the world. 'Bless me! am I such a chicken?'
'Twenty-four used not to be so young, but it's become so.'
'Yes, we don't grow up so quick,' she agreed merrily. 'But, on the other hand, we
stay up longer.'
'You've got what's vulgarly called "looks," my dear,' said her uncle, 'and that will help to
keep you up.'
'I know what Uncle John's thinking,' she turned on him with a pretty air of challenge. 'But I'm not the only girl who's been left "what's vulgarly called" money.'
'You're the only one of our immediate circle who's been left so beautifully much.'
'Ah! but remember, Geoffrey could--everybody
knows he could have married any one in England.'
'I am afraid everybody does know it,' said her ladyship, faintly ironic, 'not excepting Mr. Stonor.'
'Well, how spoilt is the great man?' inquired Lord John, mischievously.
'Not the least little bit in the world. You'll see! He so wants to know my best-beloved relations better.' She stopped to bestow another embrace on Lady John. 'An orphan has so few belongings, she has to make the most of them.'
'Let us hope he'll approve of us on further acquaintance.'
'Oh, he will! He's an angel. Why, he gets on with my grandfather!'
'Does he?' said her aunt, unable to forbear teasing her a little. 'You mean to say Mr. Geoffrey Stonor isn't just a tiny bit "superior" about Dissenters.'
'Not half as much so as Uncle John, and all the rest of you! My grandfather's been ill again, you know, and rather difficult--bless him! but Geoffrey----' she clasped her hands to fill out her wordless content with him.
'Geoffrey
must have powers of persuasion, to get that old Covenanter to let you come in an abhorred motor-car, on Sunday, too!'
Jean pursed her red lips and put up a cautionary finger with a droll little air of alarm.
'Grandfather didn't know!' she half whispered.
'Didn't know?'
'I honestly meant to come by train,' she hastened to exculpate herself. 'Geoffrey met me on my way to the station. We had the most glorious run! Oh, Aunt Ellen, we're so happy!' She pressed her cheek against Lady John's shoulder. 'I've so looked forward to having you to myself the whole day just to talk to you about----'
Lord John turned away with affected displeasure. 'Oh, very well----'
She jumped up and caught him affectionately by the arm. '
You'd find it dreffly dull to hear me talk about Geoffrey the whole blessed day!'
'Well, till luncheon, my dear----' Lady John had risen with a glance at the clock. 'You mustn't mind if I----' She broke off and went to the writing-table, saying aside to her husband, 'I'm beginning to feel a little anxious; Miss Levering wasn't only tired last night, she was ill.'
'I thought she looked very white,' said Lord John.
'Oh, dear! Have you got other people?' demanded the happy egoist.
'One or two. Your uncle's responsible for asking that old cynic, St. John Greatorex, and I'm responsible for----'
Jean stopped in the act of taking off her long gloves. 'Mr. Greatorex! He's a Liberal, isn't he?' she said with sudden gravity.
'Little Jean!' Lord John chuckled, 'beginning to "think in parties!"'
'It's very natural now that she should----'
'I only meant it was odd he should be
here. Of course I'm not so silly----'
'It's all right, my child,' said her uncle, kindly. 'We naturally expect now that you'll begin to think like Geoffrey Stonor, and to feel like Geoffrey Stonor, and to talk like Geoffrey Stonor. And quite proper, too!'
'Well,'--Jean quickly recovered her smiles--'if I
do think with my husband, and feel with him--as of course I shall--it will surprise me if I ever find myself talking a tenth as well!' In her enthusiasm she followed her uncle to the French window. 'You should have heard him at Dutfield.' She stopped short. 'The Freddy Tunbridges!' she exclaimed, looking out into the garden. A moment later her gay look fell. 'What? Not Aunt Lydia! Oh-h!' She glanced back reproachfully at Lady John, to find her making a discreet motion of 'I couldn't help it!' as the party from the garden came in.
The greetings of the Freddys were cut short by Mrs. Heriot, who embraced her niece with a significant warmth.
'
I wasn't surprised,' she said
sotto voce. 'I always prophesied----'
'Sh--
Please----' the girl escaped.
'We haven't met since you were in short skirts,' said the young man who had been watching his opportunity. 'I'm Dick Farnborough.'
'Oh, I remember.' Jean gave him her hand.
Mrs. Freddy was looking round and asking where was the Elusive One?
'Who is the Elusive One?' Jean demanded.
'Lady John's new ally in good works!' said Mrs. Freddy. 'Why, you met her one day at my house before you went back to Scotland.'
'Oh, you mean Miss Levering.'
'Yes; nice creature, isn't she?' said Lord John, benevolently.
'I used rather to love her,' said Mrs. Freddy, brightly, 'but she doesn't come to us any more. She seems to be giving up going anywhere, except here, so far as I can make out.'
'She knows she can rest here,' said Lady John.
'What does she do to tire her?' demanded Mr. Freddy. 'Hasn't she been amusing herself in Norway?'
'Since she came back she's been helping my sister and me with a scheme of ours,' said Lady John.
'She certainly knows how to juggle money out of the men!' admitted Mrs. Heriot.
'It would sound less equivocal, Lydia, if you added that the money is to build baths in our Shelter for Homeless Women.'
'Homeless women?' echoed Mr. Freddy.
'Yes; in the most insanitary part of Soho.'
'Oh--a--really.' Mr. Freddy stroked his smart little moustache.
'It doesn't sound quite in Miss Levering's line,' Farnborough hazarded.
'My dear boy,' said his hostess, 'you know as little about what's in a woman's line as most men.'
'Oh, I say!' Mr. Freddy looked round with a laugh.
Lord John threw out his chest and dangled his eyeglass with an indulgent air.
'Philanthropy,' he said, 'in a woman like Miss Levering, is a form of restlessness. But she's a
nice creature. All she needs is to get some "nice" fella to marry her!'
Mrs. Freddy laughingly hooked herself on her husband's arm.
'Yes; a woman needs a balance wheel, if only to keep her from flying back to town on a hot day like this.'
'Who,' demanded the host, 'is proposing anything so----'
'The Elusive One,' said Mrs. Freddy.
'Not Miss----'
'Yes; before luncheon.'
Dick Farnborough glanced quickly at the clock, and then his eyes went questing up the great staircase. Lady John had met the chorus of disapproval with--
'She must be in London by three, she says.'
Lord John stared. '
To-day? Why she only came late last night! What must she go back for, in the name of----'
'Well,
that I didn't ask her. But it must be something important, or she would stay and talk over the plans for the new Shelter.'
Farnborough had pulled out his cigarette case and stepped out through the window into the garden. But he went not as one who means to take a stroll and enjoy a smoke, rather as a man on a mission.
A few minutes after, the desultory conversation in the hall was arrested by the sound of voices near the windows.
They were in full view now--Vida Levering, hatless, a cool figure in pearl-grey with a red umbrella; St. John Greatorex, wearing a Panama hat, talking and gesticulating with a small book, in which his fingers still kept the place; Farnborough, a little supercilious, looking on.
'I protest! Good Lord! what are the women of this country coming to? I
protest against Miss Levering being carried indoors to discuss anything so revolting.'
As Lord John moved towards the window the vermilion disk of the umbrella closed and dropped like a poppy before it blooms. As the owner of it entered the hall, Greatorex followed in her wake, calling out--
'Bless my soul! what can a woman like you
know about such a thing?'
'Little enough,' said Miss Levering, smiling and scattering good-mornings.
'I should think so indeed!' He breathed a sigh of relief and recovered his waggishness. 'It's all this fellow Farnborough's wicked jealousy--routing us out of the summer-house where we were sitting,
perfectly happy--weren't we?'
'Ideally,' said the lady.
'There. You hear!'
He interrupted Lord John's inquiry as to the seriousness of Miss Levering's unpopular and mysterious programme for the afternoon. But the lady quietly confirmed it, and looked over her hostess's shoulder at the plan-sheet that Lady John was silently holding out between two extended hands.
'Haled indoors on a day like this'--Greatorex affected a mighty scorn of the document--'to talk about--Public Sanitation, forsooth! Why, God bless my soul, do you realize that's
drains!'
'I'm dreadfully afraid it is,' said Miss Levering, smiling down at the architectural drawing.
'And we in the act of discussing Italian literature!' Greatorex held out the little book with an air of comic despair. 'Perhaps you'll tell me that isn't a more savoury topic for a lady.'
'But for the tramp population less conducive to savouriness--don't you think--than baths?' She took the book from him, shutting her handkerchief in the place where his finger had been.
'No, no'--Greatorex, Panama in hand, was shaking his piebald head--'I can't understand this morbid interest in vagrants. You're too--much too---- Leave it to others!'
'What others?'
'Oh, the sort of woman who smells of india-rubber,' he said, with smiling impertinence. 'The typical English spinster. You've seen her. Italy's full of her. She never goes anywhere without a mackintosh and a collapsible bath--
rubber. When you look at her it's borne in upon you that she doesn't only smell of rubber. She is rubber, too.'
They all laughed.
'Now you frivolous people go away,' Lady John said. 'We've only got a few minutes to talk over the terms of the late Mr. Barlow's munificence before the carriage comes for Miss Levering.'
In the midst of the general movement to the garden, Mrs. Freddy asked Farnborough did he know she'd got that old horror to give Lady John L8000 for her charity before he died?
'Who got him to?' demanded Greatorex.
'Miss Levering,' answered Lady John. 'He wouldn't do it for me, but she brought him round.'
'Bah-ee Jove!' said Freddy. 'I expect so.'
'Yes.' Mrs. Freddy beamed in turn at her lord and at Farnborough as she strolled with them through the window. '
Isn't she wonderful?'
'Too wonderful,' said Greatorex to the lady in question, lowering his voice, 'to waste your time on the wrong people.'
'I shall waste less of my time after this.' Miss Levering spoke thoughtfully.
'I'm relieved to hear it. I can't see you wheedling money for shelters and rot of that sort out of retired grocers.'
'You see, you call it rot. We couldn't have got L8000 out of
you.'
Speaking still lower, 'I'm not sure,' he said slyly.
She looked at him.
'If I gave you that much--for your little projects--what would you give me?' he demanded.
'Barlow didn't ask that.' She spoke quietly.
'Barlow!' he echoed, with a truly horrified look. 'I should think not!'
'Barlow!' Lord John caught up the name on his way out with Jean. 'You two still talking Barlow? How flattered the old beggar'd be! Did you hear'--he turned back and linked his arm in Greatorex's--'did you hear what Mrs. Heriot said about him? "So kind, so munificent--so
vulgar, poor soul, we couldn't know him in London--but we shall meet him in heaven!"'
The two men went out chuckling.
Jean stood hesitating a moment, glancing through the window at the laughing men, and back at the group of women, Mrs. Heriot seated magisterially at the head of the writing-table, looking with inimical eyes at Miss Levering, who stood in the middle of the hall with head bent over the plan.
'Sit here, my dear,' Lady John called to her. Then with a glance at her niece, 'You needn't stay, Jean; this won't interest you.'
Miss Levering glanced over her shoulder as she moved to the chair opposite Lady John, and in the tone of one agreeing with the dictum just uttered, 'It's only an effort to meet the greatest evil in the world,' she said, and sat down with her back to the girl.
'What do you call the greatest evil in the world?' Jean asked.
A quick look passed between Mrs. Heriot and Lady John.
Miss Levering answered without emphasis, 'The helplessness of women.'
The girl still stood where the phrase had arrested her.
After a moment's hesitation, Lady John went over to her and put an arm about her shoulder.
'I know, darling, you can think of nothing but "him," so just go----'
'Indeed, indeed,' interrupted the girl, brightly, 'I can think of everything better than I ever did before. He has lit up everything for me--made everything vivider, more--more significant.'
'Who has?' Miss Levering asked, turning round.
As though she had not heard, Jean went on, 'Oh, yes, I don't care about other things less but a thousand times more.'
'You
are in love,' said Lady John.
'Oh, that's it. I congratulate you.' Over her shoulder Miss Levering smiled at the girl.
'Well, now'--Lady John returned to the outspread plan--'
this, you see, obviates the difficulty you raised.'
'Yes, it's a great improvement,' Miss Levering agreed.
Mrs. Heriot, joining in for the first time, spoke with emphasis--
'But it's going to cost a great deal more.'
'It's worth it,' said Miss Levering.
'But we'll have nothing left for the organ at St. Pilgrim's.'
'My dear Lydia,' said Lady John, 'we're putting the organ aside.'
'We can't afford to "put aside" the elevating influence of music.' Mrs. Heriot spoke with some asperity.
'What we must make for, first, is the cheap and humanely conducted lodging-house.'
'There are several of those already; but poor St. Pilgrim's----'
'There are none for the poorest women,' said Miss Levering.
'No; even the excellent Barlow was for multiplying Rowton Houses. You can never get men to realize--you can't always get women----'
'It's the work least able to wait,' said Miss Levering.
'I don't agree with you,' Mrs. Heriot bridled, 'and I happen to have spent a great deal of my life in works of charity.'
'Ah, then,'--Miss Levering lifted her eyes from the map to Mrs. Heriot's face--'you'll be interested in the girl I saw dying in a tramp ward a little while ago.
Glad her cough was worse, only she mustn't die before her father. Two reasons. Nobody but her to keep the old man out of the workhouse, and "father is so proud." If she died first, he would starve--worst of all, he might hear what had happened up in London to his girl.'
With an air of profound suspicion, Mrs. Heriot interrupted--
'She didn't say, I suppose, how she happened to fall so low?'
'Yes, she did. She had been in service. She lost the train back one Sunday night, and was too terrified of her employer to dare to ring him up after hours. The wrong person found her crying on the platform.'
'She should have gone to one of the Friendly Societies.'
'At eleven at night?'
'And there are the Rescue Leagues. I myself have been connected with one for twenty years----'
'Twenty years!' echoed Miss Levering. 'Always arriving "after the train's gone,"--after the girl and the wrong person have got to the journey's end.'
Mrs. Heriot's eyes flashed, but before she could speak Jean asked--
'Where is she now?'
'Never mind.' Lady John turned again to the plan.
'Two nights ago she was waiting at a street corner in the rain.
'Near a public-house, I suppose?' Mrs. Heriot threw in.
'Yes; a sort of public-house. She was plainly dying. She was told she shouldn't be out in the rain. "I mustn't go in yet," she said. "
This is what he gave me," and she began to cry. In her hand were two pennies silvered over to look like half-crowns.'
'I don't believe that story!' Mrs. Heriot announced. 'It's just the sort of thing some sensation-monger trumps up. Now, who tells you these----?'
'Several credible people. I didn't believe them till----'
'Till?' Jean came nearer.
'Till I saw for myself.'
'
Saw? ' exclaimed Mrs. Heriot. 'Where----?'
'In a low lodging-house not a hundred yards from the church you want a new organ for.'
'How did
you happen to be there?'
'I was on a pilgrimage.'
'A pilgrimage?' echoed Jean.
Miss Levering nodded. 'Into the Underworld.'
'
You went!' Even Lady John was aghast.
'How could you?' Jean whispered.
'I put on an old gown and a tawdry hat----' She turned suddenly to her hostess. 'You'll never know how many things are hidden from a woman in good clothes. The bold free look of a man at a woman he believes to be destitute--you must
feel that look on you before you can understand--a good half of history.'
Mrs. Heriot rose as her niece sat down on the footstool just below the writing-table.
'Where did you go--dressed like that?' the girl asked.
'Down among the homeless women, on a wet night, looking for shelter.'
'Jean!' called Mrs. Heriot.
'No wonder you've been ill,' Lady John interposed hastily.
'And it's like
that?' Jean spoke under her breath.
'No,' came the answer, in the same hushed tone.
'No?'
'It's so much worse I dare not tell about it, even if you weren't here I couldn't.'
But Mrs. Heriot's anger was unappeased. 'You needn't suppose, darling, that those wretched creatures feel it as we would.'
Miss Levering raised grave eyes. 'The girls who need shelter and work aren't
all serving-maids.'
'We know,' said Mrs. Heriot, with an involuntary flash, 'that all the women who make mistakes aren't.'
'That is why
every woman ought to take an interest in this,' said Miss Levering, steadily; 'every girl, too.'
'Yes. Oh, yes!' Jean agreed.
'No.' Lady John was very decisive. 'This is a matter for us older----'
'Or for a person who has some special knowledge,' Mrs. Heriot amended, with an air of sly challenge. '
We can't pretend to have access to such sources of information as Miss Levering.'
'Yes, you can'--she met Mrs. Heriot's eye--'for I can give you access. As you suggest, I have some personal knowledge about homeless girls.'
'Well, my dear'--with a manufactured cheerfulness Lady John turned it aside--'it will all come in convenient.' She tapped the plan.
Miss Levering took no notice. 'It once happened to me to take offence at an ugly thing that was going on under my father's roof. Oh,
years ago! I was an impulsive girl. I turned my back on my father's house.'
'That was ill-advised.' Lady John glanced at her niece.
'So all my relations said'--Miss Levering, too, looked at Jean--'and I couldn't explain.'
'Not to your mother?' the girl asked.
'My mother was dead. I went to London to a small hotel, and tried to find employment. I wandered about all day and every day from agency to agency. I was supposed to be educated. I'd been brought up partly in Paris, I could play several instruments and sing little songs in four different tongues.'
In the pause Jean asked, 'Did nobody want you to teach French or sing the little songs?'
'The heads of schools thought me too young. There were people ready to listen to my singing. But the terms, they were too hard. Soon my money was gone. I began to pawn my trinkets.
They went.'
'And still no work?'
'No; but by that time I had some real education--an unpaid hotel bill, and not a shilling in the world. Some girls think it hardship to have to earn their living. The horror is not to be allowed to.'
Jean bent forward. 'What happened?'
Lady John stood up. 'My dear,' she asked her visitor, 'have your things been sent down?'
'Yes. I am quite ready, all but my hat.'
'Well?' insisted Jean.
'Well, by chance I met a friend of my family.'
'That was lucky.'
'I thought so. He was nearly ten years older than I. He said he wanted to help me.' Again she paused.
'And didn't he?' Jean asked.
Lady John laid her hand on Miss Levering's shoulder.
'Perhaps, after all, he did,' she said. 'Why do I waste time over myself? I belonged to the little class of armed women. My body wasn't born weak, and my spirit wasn't broken by the
habit of slavery. But, as Mrs. Heriot was kind enough to hint, I do know something about the possible fate of homeless girls. What was true a dozen years ago is true to-day. There are pleasant parks, museums, free libraries in our great rich London, and not one single place where destitute women can be sure of work that isn't killing, or food that isn't worse than prison fare. That's why women ought not to sleep o' nights till this Shelter stands spreading out wide arms.'
'No, no,' said the girl, jumping up.
'Even when it's built,'--Mrs. Heriot was angrily gathering up her gloves, her fan and her Prayer-book--'you'll see! Many of those creatures will prefer the life they lead. They
like it. A woman told me--one of the sort that knows--told me many of them like it so much that they are indifferent to the risk of being sent to prison. "
It gives them a rest,"' she said.
'A rest!' breathed Lady John, horror-struck.
Miss Levering glanced at the clock as she rose to go upstairs, while Lady John and Mrs. Heriot bent their heads over the plan covertly talking.
Jean ran forward and caught the tall grey figure on the lower step.
'I want to begin to understand something of----,' she began in a beseeching tone. 'I'm horribly ignorant.'
Miss Levering looked down upon her searchingly. 'I'm a rather busy person,' she said.
'I have a quite special reason for wanting
not to be ignorant. I'll go to town to-morrow,' said Jean, impulsively, 'if you'll come and lunch with me--or let me come to you.'
'Jean!' It was Aunt Lydia's voice.
'I must go and put my hat on,' said Miss Levering, hurrying up the stair.
Mrs. Heriot bent towards her sister and half whispered, 'How little she minds talking about horrors!'
'They turn me cold. Ugh! I wonder if she's signed the visitor's book.' Lady John rose with harassed look. 'Such foolishness John's new plan of keeping it in the lobby. It's twice as likely to be forgotten.'
'For all her Shelter schemes, she's a hard woman,' said Aunt Lydia.
'Miss Levering is!' exclaimed Jean.
'Oh, of course
you won't think so. She has angled very adroitly for your sympathy.'
'She doesn't look----' protested the girl.
Lady John, glancing at her niece, seemed in some intangible way to take alarm.
'I'm not sure but what she does. Her mouth--always like this--as if she were holding back something by main force.'
'Well, so she is,' slipped out from between Aunt Lydia's thin lips as Lady John disappeared into the lobby.
'Why haven't I seen Miss Levering before this summer?' Jean asked.
'Oh, she's lived abroad.' The lady was debating with herself. 'You don't know about her, I suppose?'
'I don't know how Aunt Ellen came across her, if that's what you mean.'
'Her father was a person everybody knew. One of his daughters made a very good marriage. But this one--I didn't bargain for you and Hermione getting mixed up with her.'
'I don't see that we're either of us---- But Miss Levering seems to go everywhere. Why shouldn't she?'
With sudden emphasis, 'You mustn't ask her to Eaton Square,' said Aunt Lydia.
'I have.'
Mrs. Heriot half rose from her seat. 'Then you'll have to get out of it!'
'Why?'
'I am sure your grandfather would agree with me. I warn you I won't stand by and see that woman getting you into her clutches.'
'Clutches? Why should you think she wants me in her clutches?'
'Just for the pleasure of clutching! She's the kind that's never satisfied till she has everybody in the pitiful state your Aunt Ellen's in about her. Richard Farnborough, too, just on the very verge of asking Hermione to marry him!'
'Oh, is that it?' the girl smiled wisely.
'No!' Too late Mrs. Heriot saw her misstep. 'That's
not it! And I am sure, if Mr. Stonor knew what I do, he would agree with me that you must not ask her to the house.'
'Of course I'd do anything he asked me to. But he would give me a reason. And a very good reason, too!' The pretty face was very stubborn.
Aunt Lydia's wore the inflamed look not so much of one who is angry as of a person who has a cold in the head.
'I'll give you the reason!' she said. 'It's not a thing I should have preferred to tell you, but I know how difficult you are to guide--so I suppose you'll have to know.' She looked round and lowered her voice. 'It was ten or twelve years ago. I found her horribly ill in a lonely Welsh farmhouse.'
'Miss Levering?'
Mrs. Heriot nodded. 'We had taken the Manor for that August. The farmer's wife was frightened, and begged me to go and see what I thought. I soon saw how it was--I thought she was dying.'
'
Dying? What was the----'
'I got no more out of her than the farmer's wife did. She had no letters. There had been no one to see her except a man down from London, a shady-looking doctor--nameless, of course. And then this result. The farmer and his wife, highly respectable people, were incensed. They were for turning the girl out.'
'
Oh! but----'
'Yes. Pitiless some of these people are! Although she had forfeited all claim--still she was a daughter of Sir Hervey Levering. I insisted they should treat the girl humanely, and we became friends--that is, "sort of." In spite of all I did for her----'
'What did you do?'
'I--I've told you, and I lent her money. No small sum either----'
'Has she never paid it back?'
'Oh, yes; after a time. But I
always kept her secret--as much as I knew.'
'But you've been telling me----'
'That was my duty--and I never had her full confidence.'
'Wasn't it natural she----'
'Well, all things considered, she might have wanted to tell me who was responsible.'
'Oh, Aunt Lydia.'
'All she ever said was that she was ashamed'--Mrs. Heriot was fast losing her temper and her fine feeling for the innocence of her auditor--'ashamed that she "hadn't had the courage to resist"--not the original temptation, but the pressure brought to bear on her "not to go through with it," as she said.'
With a shrinking look the girl wrinkled her brows. 'You are being so delicate--I'm not sure I understand.'
'The only thing you need understand,' said her aunt, irritably, 'is that she's not a desirable companion for a young girl.'
There was a pause.
'When did you see her after--after----'
Mrs. Heriot made a slight grimace. 'I met her last winter at--of all places--the Bishop's!'
'They're relations of hers.'
'Yes. It was while you were in Scotland. They'd got her to help with some of their work. Now she's taken hold of ours. Your aunt and uncle are quite foolish about her, and I'm debarred from taking any steps, at least till the Shelter is out of hand.'
The girl's face was shadowed--even a little frightened. It was evident she was struggling not to give way altogether to alarm and repulsion.
'I do rather wonder that after that, she can bring herself to talk about--the unfortunate women of the world.'
'The effrontery of it!' said her aunt.
'Or--the courage!' The girl put her hand up to her throat as if the sentence had caught there.
'Even presumes to set
me right! Of course I don't
mind in the least, poor soul--but I feel I owe it to your dead mother to tell you about her, especially as you're old enough now to know something about life.'
'And since a girl needn't be very old to suffer for her ignorance'--she spoke slowly, moving a little away. But she stopped on the final sentence: 'I
felt she was rather wonderful!'
'
Wonderful!'
'To have lived through
that, when she was--how old?'
Mrs. Heriot rose with an increased irritation. 'Nineteen or thereabouts.'
'Five years younger than I!' Jean sat down on the divan and stared at the floor. 'To be abandoned, and to come out of it like this!'
Mrs. Heriot went to her and laid her hand on the girl's shoulder.
'It was too bad to have to tell you such a sordid story to-day of all days.'
'It is a terrible story, but this wasn't a bad time. I feel very sorry to-day for women who aren't happy.' She started as a motor-horn was faintly heard. 'That's Geoffrey!' She jumped to her feet.
'Mr. Stonor. What makes you think----?'
'Yes, yes. I'm sure. I'm sure!' Every shadow fled out of her face in the sudden burst of sunshine.
Lord John hurried in from the garden as the motor-horn sounded louder.
'Who do you think is coming round the drive?'
Jean caught hold of him. 'Oh, dear! are those other people all about? How am I ever going to be able to behave like a girl who--who isn't engaged to the only man in the world worth marrying!'
'You were expecting Mr. Stonor all the time!' exclaimed Aunt Lydia.
'He promised he'd come to luncheon if it was humanly possible. I was afraid to tell you for fear he'd be prevented.'
Lord John was laughing as he went towards the lobby. 'You felt we couldn't have borne the disappointment!'
'I felt I couldn't,' said the girl, standing there with a rapt look. _