_ CHAPTER XV
She did not look round when Dick Farnborough ran in from the garden, saying: '
Is it--is it really?' For just then on the opposite side of the great hall, the centre of a little buzz of welcome, Stonor's tall figure appeared between host and hostess.
'What luck!' Farnborough said under his breath.
He hurried back and faced the rest of the party who were clustered outside the window trying to look unconcerned.
'Yes, by Jove!' he set their incredulity at rest. 'It
is!'
Discreetly they glanced and craned and then elaborately turned their backs, pretending to be talking among themselves. But, as though the girl standing there expectant in the middle of the hall were well aware of the enormous sensation the new arrival had created, she herself contributed nothing to it. Stonor came forward, and she met him with a soft, happy look, and the low words: 'What a good thing you managed it!' Then she made way for Mrs. Heriot's far more impressive greeting, innocent of the smallest reminder of the last encounter!
It was Lord John who cut these amenities short by chaffing Stonor for being so enterprising all of a sudden. 'Fancy your motoring out of town to see a supporter on Sunday!'
'I don't know how we ever covered the ground in the old days,' he answered. 'It's no use to stand for your borough any more. The American, you know, he "runs" for Congress. By-and-by we shall all be flying after the thing we want.' He smiled at Jean.
'Sh!' She glanced over her shoulder and spoke low. 'All sorts of irrelevant people here.'
One of them, unable any longer to resist the temptation, was making a second foray into the hall.
'How do you do, Mr. Stonor?' Farnborough stood there holding out his hand.
The great man seemed not to see it, but he murmured, 'How do you do?' and proceeded to share with Lady John his dislike of any means of locomotion except his own legs or those of a horse.
It took a great deal to disconcert Farnborough. 'Some of us were arguing in the smoking-room last night,' he said, 'whether it didn't hurt a candidate's chances going about in a motor.'
As Mr. Stonor, not deigning to reply to this, paused the merest instant in what he was saying to his hostess, Lord John came to the rescue of the audacious young gentleman.
'Yes, we've been hearing a great many stories about the unpopularity of motor-cars--among the class that hasn't got 'em, of course.'
'I'm sure,' Lady John put in, 'you gain more votes by being able to reach so many more of your constituents than we used----'
'Well, I don't know,' said Stonor. 'I've sometimes wondered whether the charm of our presence wasn't counterbalanced by the way we tear about smothering our fellow-beings in dust and running down their pigs and chickens,--not to speak of their children.'
'What on the whole are the prospects?' Lord John asked.
'We shall have to work harder than we realized,' Stonor answered gravely.
Farnborough let slip an 'Ah, I said so!' meant for Lady John, and then before Stonor's raised eyes, the over-zealous young politician retreated towards the window--but with hands in his pockets and head held high, like one who has made his mark. And so in truth he had. For Lady John let drop one or two good-natured phrases--what he had done, his hero-worship, his mother had been a Betham--Yes, he was one of the Farnboroughs of Moore Abbey. Though Stonor made no comment beyond a dry, 'The staple product of this country, young men like that!'--it appeared later that Lady John's good offices in favour of a probable nephew-in-law had not been invoked in vain.
Despite the menace of 'the irrelevant' dotting the lawn immediately outside the windows, the little group on the farther side of the hall still stood there talking in low tones with the sense of intimacy which belongs to a family party.
Jean had slipped her arm in her uncle's, and was smiling at Stonor--
'He says he believes I'll be able to make a real difference to his chances,' she said, half aside. 'Isn't it angelic of him?'
'Angelic?' laughed the great man. 'Macchiavellian. I pin all my hopes on your being able to counteract the pernicious influence of my opponent's glib wife.'
'You want me to have a real share in it all, don't you, Geoffrey?'
'Of course I do.' He smiled into her eyes.
That moth Farnborough, whirling in the political effulgence, was again hovering on the outskirts. He even made conversation to Mrs. Heriot, as an excuse to remain inside the window.
'But you don't mean seriously,' Lord John asked his guest, 'you don't mean, do you, that there's any possible complication about
your seat?'
'Oh, I dare say it's all right'--Stonor drew a Sunday paper out of his pocket. 'There's this agitation about the Woman Question. Oddly enough, it seems as if it might--there's just the off-chance--it
might affect the issue.'
'Affect it? How? God bless my soul!' Lord John's transparent skin flushed up to his white hair. 'Don't tell me any responsible person is going even to consider the lunacy of tampering with the British Constitution----'
'We
have heard that suggested, though for better reasons,' Stonor laughed, but not Lord John.
'Turn over the destinies of the Empire,' he said hotly, 'to a lot of ignorant women just because a few of 'em have odious manners and violent tongues!' The sight of Stonor's cool impassivity calmed him somewhat. He went on more temperately. 'Every sane person sees that the only trouble with England to-day is that too many ignorant people have votes already.'
'The penalty we pay for being more republican than the Republics.'
Lord John had picked up the Sunday paper and glanced down a column.
'If the worst came to the worst, you can do what the other four hundred have done.'
'Easily! But the mere fact that four hundred and twenty members have been worried into promising support--and then, once in the House, have let the matter severely alone----'
'Let it alone?' Lord John burst out again. 'I should think so indeed!'
'Yes,' laughed Stonor, 'only it's a device that's somewhat worn.'
'Still,' Lord John put on a Macchiavellian air that sat rather incongruously on his honest English face, 'Still, if they think they're getting a future Cabinet Minister on their side----'
'It will be sufficiently embarrassing for the Cabinet Minister.'
Stonor caught sight of Farnborough approaching and lowered his voice. He leaned his elbow on the end of the wide mantelpiece and gave his attention exclusively to Lord John, seeming to ignore even the pretty girl who still stood by her uncle with a hand slipped through his arm.
'Nobody says much about it,' Stonor went on, 'but it's realized that the last Labour member, and that Colne Valley Socialist--those men got in largely through the tireless activity of the women.'
'The Suffragettes!' exclaimed the girl, '
they were able to do that?'
'They're always saying they don't favour
any party,' said a voice.
Stonor looked up, and, to Jean's obvious relief, refrained from snubbing the irrepressible Farnborough.
'I don't know what they
say----' began Stonor.
'Oh,
I do!' Farnborough interrupted. 'They're not
for anybody. They're simply agin the Government.'
'Whatever they say, they're all Socialists.' Lord John gave a snort.
'No,' said Farnborough, with cool audacity. 'It only looks like that.'
Jean turned quite pink with anxiety. She, and all who knew him well, had seen Stonor crush the cocksure and the unwary with an awful effectualness. But Farnborough, with the courage of enthusiasm--enthusiasm for himself and his own future--went stoutly on.
'There are Liberals and even Unionists among 'em. And they do manage to hold the balance pretty even. I go and hear them, you see!'
'And speaking from the height of your advantage,' although Stonor was slightly satirical, he was exercising an exceptional forbearance, 'do you mean to tell me they are not more in sympathy with the Labour party than with any other?'
'If they are, it's not because the Suffragists are all for Socialism. But because the Labour party is the only one that puts Women's Suffrage in the forefront of its programme.'
Stonor took his elbow off the mantel. 'Whatever the reason,' he said airily, 'the result is momentarily inconvenient. Though I am one of those who think it would be easy to overestimate the importance----'
He broke off with an effect of dismissing both the matter and the man. As he turned away, he found himself without the smallest warning face to face with Vida Levering. She had come down the great staircase unobserved and unobserving; her head bent, and she in the act of forcing a recalcitrant hatpin through her hat--doing it under certain disadvantages, as she held her gloves and her veil in one hand.
As she paused there, confronting the tall figure of the new-comer, although it was obvious that her unpreparedness was not less than his own, there was to the most acute eye nothing in the remotest degree dramatic about the encounter--hardly more than a cool surprise, and yet there was that which made Jean say, smiling--
'Oh, you know one another already?'
'Everybody in this part of the world knows Mr. Stonor,' the lady said, 'but he doesn't know me.'
'This is Miss Levering. You knew her father, didn't you?'
Even before Lady John had introduced them, the people in the garden seemed not to be able to support the prospect of Miss Levering's threatened monopoly of the lion. They swarmed in--Hermione Heriot and Paul Filey appearing for the first time since church--they overflowed into the Hall, while Jean Dunbarton, with artless enthusiasm, was demanding of Miss Levering if the reason she knew Mr. Stonor was that she had been hearing him speak.
'Yes,' the lady met his eyes, 'I was visiting some relations near Dutfield. They took me to hear you.'
'Oh--the night the Suffragettes made their customary row----'
'They didn't attack
you,' she reminded him.
'They will if we win the election!' he said, with a cynical anticipation.
It was a mark of how far the Women's Cause had travelled that, although there was no man there (except the ineffectual Farnborough)--no one to speak of it even with tolerance, there was also no one, not even Greatorex, who any longer felt the matter to be much of a joke. Here again in this gathering was happening what the unprejudiced observer was seeing in similar circumstances all over England. The mere mention of Women's Suffrage in general society (rarest of happenings now)--that topic which had been the prolific mother of so much merriment, bred in these days but silence and constraint. The quickest-witted changed the topic amid a general sense of grateful relief. The thing couldn't be laughed at any longer, but it could still be pretended it wasn't there.
'You've come just in time to rescue me!' Mrs. Freddy said, sparkling at Stonor.
'You don't appear to be in any serious danger,' he said.
'But I am, or I
was! They were just insisting I should go upstairs and change my frock.'
'Is there anybody here so difficult as not to like that one?'
She made him a smart little curtsey. 'Although we're going to have luncheon in less than an hour, somebody was going to insist (out of pure mistaken philanthropy) in taking me for a walk. I've told Freddy that when I've departed for realms of bliss, he is to put on my tombstone, "Died of changing her clothes." I know the end will come some Sunday. We appear at breakfast dressed for church. That's a long skirt. We are usually shooed upstairs directly we get back, to put on a short one, so that we can go and look at the kennels or the prize bull. We come back muddy and smelling of stables. We get into something fresh for luncheon. After luncheon some one says, "Walk!" Another short skirt. We come back draggled and dreadful. We change. Something sweetly feminine for tea! The gong. We rush and dress for dinner! You've saved me one change, anyhow. You are my benefactor. Why don't you ask after my babies?'
'Well, how are the young barbarians?' He rubbed his hand over the lower part of his face. 'Your concern for personal appearance reminds me that a little soap and water after my dusty drive----'
Little as had fallen from him since his entrance, as he followed Lord John upstairs, he left behind that sense of blankness so curiously independent of either words or deeds. Greatorex, in his patent leather shoes and immaculate white gaiters, pattered over to Miss Levering, but she unkindly presented her back, and sat down at the writing-table to make a note on the abhorred Shelter plan. He showed his disapproval by marching off with Mr. Freddy, and there was a general trickling back into the garden in that aimless, before-luncheon mood.
But Mrs. Heriot and Lady John sat with their heads close together on the sofa, discussing in undertones the absorbing subject of the prospective new member of the family.
Mrs. Freddy perched on the edge of the writing-table between Miss Levering, who sat in front of it, and Jean, whose chair was on the other side. She was nearest Jean, but it was to her children's sworn friend that she turned to say enthusiastically--
'Delightful his coming in like that!' And no one needed to be told whose coming brought delight. 'We must tell Sara and Cecil.'
As Miss Levering seemed to be still absorbed in making notes on that boring plan, the lively Mrs. Freddy turned to her other neighbour.
'Penny for your thoughts,' she demanded with such suddenness that Jean Dunbarton started and reddened. 'Something very weighty, to judge from----'
'I believe I was thinking it was rather odd to hear two men like my uncle and Mr. Stonor talking about the influence of the Suffrage women really quite seriously.
Oh!'--she clutched Mrs. Freddy's arm, laughing apologetically--'I beg your pardon. I forgot. Besides, I wasn't thinking of your kind; I was thinking of the Suffragettes.'
'As the only conceivable ones to be exercising any influence. Thank you.'
'Oh, no, no. Indeed, I didn't mean----'
'Yes, you did. You're like the rest. You don't realize how we prepared the ground. All the same,' she went on, with her unfailing good humour, 'it's frightfully exciting seeing the Question come into practical politics at last. I only hope those women won't go and upset the apple-cart again.'
'How?'
'Oh, by doing something that will alienate all our good friends in both parties. It's queer they can't see our only chance to get what we want is by winning over the men.'
There was a low sound of impatience from the person at the writing-table, and a rustle of paper as the plan was thrown down.
'What's the matter?' said Mrs. Freddy.
'"Winning over the men" has been the woman's way since the Creation. Do you think the result should make us proud of our policy? Yes? Then go and walk in Piccadilly at midnight.'
Lady John and Mrs. Heriot rose as one, while Miss Levering was adding--
'No, I forgot----'
'Yes,' interposed Mrs. Heriot, with majesty, 'it is not the first time you've forgotten.'
'What I forgot was the magistrate's ruling. He said no decent woman had any business to be in London's main thoroughfares at night "
unless she has a man with her." You can hear that in Soho, too. "You're obliged to take up with a chap!" is what the women say.'
In a highly significant silence, Mrs. Heriot withdrew with her niece and Mrs. Freddy to where Hermione sat contentedly between two young men on the window-step. Lady John, naturally somewhat ruffled, but still quite kind, bent over her indiscreet guest to say--
'What an odd mood you are in to-day, my dear. I think Lydia Heriot's right. We oughtn't to do anything, or
say anything to encourage this ferment of feminism--and I'll tell you why: it's likely to bring a very terrible thing in its train.'
'What terrible thing?'
'Sex-Antagonism.'
'It's here.'
'Don't say that!' Lady John spoke very gravely.
'You're so conscious it's here, you're afraid to have it mentioned.'
Lady John perceived that Jean had quietly slipped away from the others, and was standing behind her.
If Mrs. Heriot had not been too absorbed in Dick Farnborough and Hermione she would have had a moment's pleasure in her handiwork--that half-shamed scrutiny in Jean Dunbarton's face. But as the young girl studied the quiet figure, looked into the tender eyes that gazed so steadily into some grey country far away, the effect of Mrs. Heriot's revelation was either weakened or transmuted subtly to something stronger than the thing that it replaced.
As the woman sat there leaning her head a little wearily on her hand, there was about the whole
Wesen an indefinable nobility that answered questions before they were asked.
But Lady John, upon perceiving her niece, had said hurriedly--
'If what you say is so, it's the fault of those women agitators.'
'Sex-Antagonism wasn't their invention,' Miss Levering answered. 'No woman begins that way. Every woman is in a state of natural subjection'--she looked up, and seeing Jean's face, smiled--'no, I'd rather say "allegiance" to her idea of romance and her hope of motherhood; they're embodied for her in man. They're the strongest things in life till man kills them. Let's be fair. If that allegiance dies, each woman knows why.'
Lady John, always keenly alive to any change in the social atmosphere, looked up and saw her husband coming downstairs with their guest. As she went to meet them, Stonor stopped halfway down to say something. The two men halted there deep in discussion. But scarcely deeper than those other two Lady John had left by the writing-table.
'Who is it you are going to marry?' Miss Levering had asked.
'It isn't going to be announced for a few days yet.' And then Jean relented enough to say in an undertone, almost confidentially, 'I should think you'd guess.'
'Guess what?' said the other, absent-mindedly, but again lifting her eyes.
'Who I'm going to marry.'
'Oh, I know him, then?' she said, surprised.
'Well, you've seen him.'
Miss Levering shook her head. 'There are so very many young men in the world.' But she looked with a moment's wondering towards the window, seeming to consider first Filey and then Farnborough.
'What made you think of going on that terrible pilgrimage?' asked the girl.
'Something I heard at a Suffrage meeting.'
'Well, do you know, ever since that Sunday at the Freddys', when you told us about the Suffragettes, I--I've been curious about them.'
'You said nothing would ever induce you to listen to such people.'
'I know, and it's rather silly, but one says a thing like that on the spur of the moment, and then one is bound by it.'
'You mean one imagines one is bound.'
'Then, too, I've been in Scotland ever since; but I've often thought about you and what you said that day at the Freddys'!'
'And yet you've been a good deal absorbed----'
'You see,' the girl put on a pretty little air of superiority, 'it isn't as if the man I'm going to marry wasn't very broad-minded. He wants me to be intelligent about politics. Are those women holding meetings in London now as well as in the constituencies?'
They both became aware at the same moment that Lord John was coming slowly down the last steps, with Stonor still more slowly following, talking Land Tenure. As Miss Levering rose and hurriedly turned over the things on the table to look for her veil, the handkerchief she had shut in her little Italian book dropped out. A further shifting of plans and papers sent it unobserved to the floor. Jean put once more the question that had remained unanswered.
'They collect too great crowds,' Miss Levering answered her. 'The authorities won't let them meet in Trafalgar Square after to-day. They have their last meeting there at three o'clock.'
'To-day! That's no use to people out of town--unless I could invent some excuse----'
'Wait till you can go without inventions and excuses.'
'You think all that wrong!'
'I think it rather undignified.'
'So do I--but if I'm ever to go----'
Lord John came forward, leaving Stonor to his hostess. 'Still talking over your Shelter plan?' he asked benevolently.
'No,' answered Miss Levering, 'we left the Shelter some time ago.'
He pinched his niece's ear with affectionate playfulness.
'Then what's all this chatterment about?'
The girl, a little confused, looked at her fellow-conspirator.
'The latest things in veils,' said Miss Levering, smiling, as she caught up hers.
'The invincible frivolity of women!' said Lord John, with immense geniality.
'Oh, they're coming for you,' Jean said. 'Don't forget your book. When shall I see you again, I wonder?'
But instead of announcing the carriage the servant held out a salver. On it lay a telegraph form scribbled over in pencil.
'A telephone message, miss.'
'For me?' said Jean, in surprise.
'Yes, miss. I didn't know you was here, miss. They asked me to write it down, and let you have it as soon as possible.'
'I knew how it would be if I gave in about that telephone!' Lord John arraigned his wife. Even Mr. Stonor had to sympathize. 'They won't leave people in peace even one day in the week.'
'I've got your book,' Jean said, looking at Miss Levering over the top of the telegraph form, and then glancing at the title as she restored the volume to its owner. 'Dante! Whereabouts are you?' She opened it without waiting to hear. 'Oh, the Inferno.'
'No, I'm in a worse place,' said the other, smiling vaguely as she drew on her gloves.
'I didn't know there was a worse.'
'Yes, it's worse with the Vigliacchi.'
'I forget, were they Guelf or Ghibelline?'
'They weren't either, and that was why Dante couldn't stand them. He said there was no place in Heaven nor in Purgatory--not even a corner in Hell, for the souls who had stood aloof from strife.' The smile faded as she stood there looking steadily into the girl's eyes. 'He called them "wretches who never lived," Dante did, because they'd never felt the pangs of partisanship. And so they wander homeless on the skirts of limbo, among the abortions and off-scourings of Creation.'
The girl drew a fluttering breath. Miss Levering glanced at the clock, and turned away to make her leisurely adieux among the group at the window.
Mrs. Heriot left it at once. 'What was that about a telephone message, Jean darling?'
The girl glanced at the paper, and then quite suddenly said to Lady John--
'Aunt Ellen, I've got to go to London!'
'Not to-day!'
'My dear child!'
'Nonsense!'
'Is your grandfather worse?'
'N--no. I don't think my grandfather is any worse. But I must go, all the same.'
'You
can't go away,' whispered Mrs. Heriot, 'when Mr. Stonor----'
'Back me up!' Jean whispered to Lady John. 'He said he'd have to leave directly after luncheon. And anyhow--all these people--please have us another time.'
'I'll just see Miss Levering off,' said Lady John, 'and then I'll come back and talk about it.'
In the midst of the good-byeing that was going on over by the window, Jean suddenly exclaimed--
'There mayn't be another train! Miss Levering!'
But Stonor was standing in front of the girl barring the way. 'What if there isn't? I'll take you back in my motor,' he said aside.
'
Will you?' In her rapture at the thought Jean clasped her hands, and the paper fluttered to the floor. 'But I must be there by three,' she said.
He had picked up the telegraph form as well as the handkerchief lying near.
'Why, it's only an invitation to dine--Wednesday!'
'Sh!' She took the paper.
'Oh! I see!' He smiled and lowered his voice. 'It's rather dear of you to arrange our going off like that. You
are a clever little girl!'
'It's not exactly that I was arranging. I want to hear those women in Trafalgar Square--the Suffragettes.'
He stared at her more than half incredulous, but smiling still.
'How perfectly absurd! Besides,'--he looked across the room at Lady John--'besides, I expect she wouldn't like my carrying you off like that.'
'Then she'll have to make an excuse, and come too.'
'Ah, it wouldn't be quite the same if she did that.'
But Jean had thought it out. 'Aunt Ellen and I could get back quite well in time for dinner.'
The group that had closed about the departing guest dissolved.
'Why are you saying good-bye as if you were never coming back?' Lord John demanded.
'One never knows,' Miss Levering laughed. 'Maybe I shan't come back.'
'Don't talk as if you meant never!' said Mrs. Freddy.
'Perhaps I do mean never.' She nodded to Stonor.
He bowed ceremoniously.
'Never come back! What nonsense are you talking?' said Lady John.
'Is it premonition of death, or don't you like us any more?' laughed her husband.
The little group trailed across the great room, escorting the guest to the front door, Lady John leading the way. As they passed, Geoffrey Stonor was obviously not listening very attentively to Jean's enthusiastic explanation of her plan for the afternoon. He kept his eyes lowered. They rested on the handkerchief he had picked up, but hardly as if, after all, they saw it, though he turned the filmy square from corner to corner with an air partly of nervousness, partly of abstraction.
'Is it mine?' asked Jean.
He paused an instant. 'No. Yours,' he said, mechanically, and held out the handkerchief to Miss Levering.
She seemed not to hear. Lord John had blocked the door a moment, insisting on a date for the next visit. Jean caught up the handkerchief and went running forward with it. Suddenly she stopped, glancing down at the embroidered corner.
'But that's not an L! It's V--i----'
Stonor turned his back, and took up a magazine.
Lady John's voice sounded clear from the lobby. 'You must let Vida go, John, or she'll miss her train.'
Miss Levering vanished.
'I didn't know her name was Vida; how did you?' said Jean.
Stonor bent his head silently over the book. Perhaps he hadn't heard. That deafening old gong was sounding for luncheon. _