Читать книгу The Convert - Elizabeth Robins - Страница 9

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There was the faint sound of a distant door's opening, and there was a glimpse of the old butler. But before he could reach the French window with his announcement, his own colourless presence was masked, wiped out—not as the company had expected by the apparition of a man, but by a tall, lightly-moving young woman with golden-brown eyes, and wearing a golden-brown gown that had touches of wallflower red and gold on the short jacket. There were only wallflowers in the small leaf-green toque, and except for the sable boa in her hand (which so suddenly it was too warm to wear) no single thing about her could at all adequately account for the air of what, for lack of a better term, may be called accessory elegance that pervaded the golden-brown vision, taking the low sunlight on her face and smiling as she stepped through the window.

It was no small tribute to the lady had she but known it, that her coming was not received nor even felt as an anti-climax.

As she came forward, all about her rose a significant Babel: 'Here's Miss Levering!' 'It's Vida!' 'Oh, how do you do!'—the frou-frou of swishing skirts, the scrape of chairs pushed back over stone flags, and the greeting of the host and hostess, cordial to the point of affection—the various handshakings, the discreet winding through the groups of a footman with a fresh teapot, the Bedlington's first attack of barking merged in tail-wagging upon pleased recognition of a friend; and a final settling down again about the tea-table with the air full of scraps of talk and unfinished questions.

'You didn't see anything of my brother and his wife?' asked Lord Borrodaile.

'Oh, yes,' his host suddenly remembered. 'I thought the Freddys were coming by that four-thirty as well as——'

'No—nobody but me.' She threw her many-tailed boa on the back of the chair that Paul Filey had drawn up for her between the hostess and the place where Borrodaile had been sitting.

'There are two more good trains before dinner——' began Lord John.

'Oh, didn't I tell you,' said his wife, as she gave the cup just filled for the new-comer into the nearest of the outstretched hands—'didn't I tell you I had a note from Mrs. Freddy by the afternoon post? They aren't coming.'

Out of a little chorus of regret, came Borrodaile's slightly mocking, 'Anything wrong with the precious children?'

'She didn't mention the children—nor much of anything else—just a hurried line.'

'The children were as merry as grigs yesterday,' said Vida, looking at their uncle across the table. 'I went on to the Freddys' after the Royal Academy. No!' she put her cup down suddenly. 'Nobody is to ask me how I like my own picture! The Tunbridge children——'

'That thing Hoyle has done of you,' said Lord Borrodaile, deliberately, 'is a very brilliant and a very misleading performance.'

'Thank you.'

Filey and Lord John, in spite of her interdiction, were pursuing the subject of the much-discussed portrait.

'It certainly is one aspect of you——'

'Don't you think his Velasquez-like use of black and white——'

'The tiny Tunbridges, as I was saying,' she went on imperturbably, 'were having a teafight when I got there. I say "fight" advisedly.'

'Then I'll warrant,' said their uncle, 'that Sara was the aggressor.'

'She was.'

'You saw Mrs. Freddy?' asked Lady John, with an interest half amused, half cynical, in her eyes.

'For a moment.'

'She doesn't confess it, I suppose,' the hostess went on, 'but I imagine she is rather perturbed;' and Lady John glanced at Borrodaile with her good-humoured, worldly-wise smile.

'Poor Mrs. Freddy!' said Vida. 'You see, she's taken it all quite seriously—this Suffrage nonsense.'

'Yes;' Mrs. Freddy's brother-in-law had met Lady John's look with the same significant smile as that lady's own—'Yes, she's naturally feeling rather crestfallen—perhaps she'll see now!'

'Mrs. Freddy crestfallen, what about?' said Farnborough. But he was much preoccupied at that moment in supplying Lady Sophia with bits of toast the exact size for balancing on the Bedlington's nose. For the benefit of his end of the table Paul Filey had begun to describe the new one-man show of caricatures of famous people just opened in Bond Street. The 'mordant genius,' as he called it, of this new man—an American Jew—offered an irresistible opportunity for phrase-making. And still on the other side of the tea urn the Ullands were discussing with Borrodaile and Miss Levering the absent lady whose 'case' was obviously a matter of concern to her friends.

'Well, let us hope,' Lord John was saying as sternly as his urbanity permitted—'let us hope this exhibition in the House will be a lesson to her.'

'She wasn't concerned in it!' Vida quickly defended her.

'Nevertheless we are all hoping,' said Lady John, 'that it has come just in time to prevent her from going over the edge.'

'Over the edge!' Farnborough pricked up his ears at last in good earnest, feeling that the conversation on the other side had grown too interesting for him to be out of it any longer. 'Over what edge?'

'The edge of the Woman Suffrage precipice,' said Lady John.

'You call it a precipice?' Vida Levering raised her dark brows in a little smile.

'Don't you?' demanded her hostess.

'I should say mud-puddle.'

'From the point of view of the artist'—Paul Filey had begun laying down some new law, but turning an abrupt corner, he followed the wandering attention of his audience—'from the point of view of the artist,' he repeated, 'it would be interesting to know what the phenomenon is, that Lady John took for a precipice and that Miss Levering says is a mud-puddle.'

'Oh,' said Lord John, thinking it well to generalize and spare Mrs. Freddy further rending, 'we've been talking about this public demonstration of the unfitness of women for public affairs.'

'Give me some more toast dice!' Sophia said to Farnborough. 'You haven't seen Joey's new accomplishment. They're only discussing that idiotic scene the women made the other night.'

'Oh, in the gallery of the House of Commons?'

'Yes, wasn't it disgustin'?' said Paul Filey, facing about suddenly with an air of cheerful surprise at having at last hit on something that he and Lady Sophia could heartily agree about.

'Perfectly revolting!' said Hermione Heriot, not to be out of it. For it is well known that, next to a great enthusiasm shared, nothing so draws human creatures together as a good bout of cursing in common. So with emphasis Miss Heriot repeated, 'Perfectly revolting!'

Her reward was to see Paul turn away from Sophia and say, in a tone whose fervour might be called marked—

'I'm glad to hear you say so!'

She consolidated her position by asking sweetly, 'Does it need saying?'

'Not by people like you. But it does need saying when it comes to people we know——'

'Like Mrs. Freddy. Yes.'

That unfortunate little lady seemed to be 'getting it' on all sides. Even her brother-in-law, who was known to be in reality a great ally of hers—even Lord Borrodaile was chuckling as though at some reflection distinctly diverting.

'Poor Laura! She was being unmercifully chaffed about it last night.'

'I don't myself consider it any longer a subject for chaff,' said Lord John.

'No,' agreed his wife; 'I felt that before this last outbreak. At the time of the first disturbance—where was it?—in some town in the North several weeks ago——'

'Yes,' said Vida Levering; 'I almost think that was even worse!'

'Conceive the sublime impertinence,' said Lady John, 'of an ignorant little factory girl presuming to stand up in public and interrupt a speech by a minister of the Crown!'

'I don't know what we're coming to, I'm sure!' said Borrodaile, with a detached air.

'Oh, that girl—beyond a doubt,' said his host, with conviction—'that girl was touched.'

'Oh, beyond a doubt!' echoed Mr. Farnborough.

'There's something about this particular form of feminine folly——' began Lord John.

But he wasn't listened to—for several people were talking at once.

After receiving a few preliminary kicks, the subject had fallen, as a football might, plump into the very midst of a group of school-boys. Its sudden presence there stirred even the sluggish to unwonted feats. Every one must have his kick at this Suffrage Ball, and manners were for the nonce in abeyance.

In the midst of an obscuring dust of discussion, floated fragments of condemnation: 'Sexless creatures!' 'The Shrieking Sisterhood!' etc., in which the kindest phrase was Lord John's repeated, 'Touched, you know,' as he tapped his forehead—'not really responsible, poor wretches. Touched.'

'Still, everybody doesn't know that. It must give men a quite horrid idea of women,' said Hermione, delicately.

'No'—Lord Borrodaile spoke with a wise forbearance—'we don't confound a handful of half-insane females with the whole sex.'

Dick Farnborough was in the middle of a spirited account of that earlier outbreak in the North—

'She was yelling like a Red Indian, and the policeman carried her out scratching and spitting——'

'Ugh!' Hermione exchanged looks of horror with Paul Filey.

'Oh, yes,' said Lady John, with disgust, 'we saw all that in the papers.'

Miss Levering, too, had turned her face away—not as Hermione did, to summon a witness to her detestation, but rather as one avoiding the eyes of the men.

'You see,' said Farnborough, with gusto, 'there's something about women's clothes—especially their hats, you know—they—well, they ain't built for battle.'

'They ought to wear deer-stalkers,' was Lady Sophia's contribution to the New Movement.

'It is quite true,' Lady John agreed, 'that a woman in a scrimmage can never be a heroic figure.'

'No, that's just it,' said Farnborough. 'She's just funny, don't you know!'

'I don't agree with you about the fun,' Borrodaile objected. 'That's why I'm glad they've had their lesson. I should say there was almost nothing more degrading than this public spectacle of——' Borrodaile lifted his high shoulders higher still, with an effect of intense discomfort. 'It never but once came my way that I remember, but I'm free to own,' he said, 'there's nothing that shakes my nerves like seeing a woman struggling and kicking in a policeman's arms.'

But Farnborough was not to be dissuaded from seeing humour in the situation.

'They say they swept up a peck of hairpins after the battle!'

As though she had had as much of the subject as she could very well stand, Miss Levering leaned sideways, put an arm behind her, and took possession of her boa.

'They're just ending the first act of Siegfried. How glad I am to be in your garden instead of Covent Garden!'

Ordinarily there would have been a movement to take the appreciative guest for a stroll.

Perhaps it was only chance, or the enervating heat, that kept the company in their chairs listening to Farnborough—

'The cattiest one of the two, there she stood like this, her clothes half torn off, her hair down her back, her face the colour of a lobster and the crowd jeering at her——'

'I don't see how you could stand and look on at such a hideous scene,' said Miss Levering.

'Oh—I—I didn't! I'm only telling you how Wilkinson described it. He said——'

'How did Major Wilkinson happen to be there?' asked Lady John.

'He'd motored over from Headquarters to move a vote of thanks to the chairman. He said he'd seen some revolting things in his time, but the scrimmage of the stewards and the police with those women——!' Farnborough ended with an expressive gesture.

'If it was as horrible as that for Major Wilkinson to look on at—what must it have been for those girls?' It was Miss Levering speaking. She seemed to have abandoned the hope of being taken for a stroll, and was leaning forward, chin in hand, looking at the fringe of the teacloth.

Richard Farnborough glanced at her as if he resented the note of wondering pity in the low tone.

'It's never so bad for the lunatic,' he said, 'as for the sane people looking on.'

'Oh, I don't suppose they mind,' said Hermione—'women like that.'

'It's flattery to call them women. They're sexless monstrosities,' said Paul Filey.

'You know some of them?' Vida raised her head.

'I?' Filey's face was nothing less than aghast at the mere suggestion.

'But you've seen them——?'

'Heaven forbid!'

'But I suppose you've gone and listened to them haranguing the crowds.'

'Now do I look like a person who——'

'Well, you see we're all so certain they're such abominations,' said Vida, 'I thought maybe some of us knew something about them.'

Dick Farnborough was heard saying to Lord John in a tone of cheerful vigour—

'Locking up is too good for 'em. I'd give 'em a good thrashin'.'

'Spirited fellow!' said Miss Levering, promptly, with an accent that brought down a laugh on the young gentleman's head.

He joined in it, but with a naïf uneasiness. What's the matter with the woman?—his vaguely bewildered face seemed to inquire. After all, I'm only agreeing with her.

'Few of us have time, I imagine,' said Filey, 'to go and listen to their ravings.'

As Filey was quite the idlest of men, without the preoccupation of being a tolerable sportsman or even a player of games, Miss Levering's little laugh was echoed by others beside Lady Sophia.

'At all events,' said Vida to Lord Borrodaile, as she stood up, and he drew her chair out of her way, 'even if we don't know much about these women, we've spent a happy hour denouncing them.'