CHAPTER IV—LADY PHAYRE AND THE COMING MAN
“I WISH something new would happen,” said Lady Phayre.
“There is the session just begun,” replied Mr. Aloysius Gleam, drawing his arm-chair an inch nearer the fire. “We can promise you many New Year novelties.”
“Call you them novelties?” asked Lady Phayre. “They will be as old as—as the antepenultimate barrel-organ tune.”
“You want to go too fast. Great political reforms move slowly.”
“Yes, that is true—deadeningly true. I think I read it once in a newspaper.”
Gleam laughed, and spread out his hands before the blaze. He was familiar with her mood—a mild spiritual unrest, induced by supreme bodily comfort and intellectual disturbance. He had the faculty of the aesthetic as well as ultrademocratic tendencies, and he appreciated the harmony between her mood and the dim afternoon hour with its gathering shadows in comers of the room. Her comfortable attitude, with one hand hanging over the arm of the chair; her costume, a dark fur-edged tea-gown; her expression of wistful meditation—all betokened a relaxation of fibre trying to pamper itself into depression. So the Member laughed, and a smile played round his clean-shaven lips in the silence that followed.
The politician within the esoteric revolutionary ring, who did not know Lady Phayre, was like a Positivist ignorant of Auguste Comte. The analogy halts, however. Lady Phayre was far from being an evangelist; she was not even an apostle. She had been left with the key of a pleasant situation, and, like a wise woman, she used it. Her enemies called her insincere. If the late Sir Ephraim, they said, had sat as a Conservative, and had formed the cartilage as it were of a brilliant wing of that party, Lady Phayre’s flat would have become an audaciously unauthorised Primrose Habitation. But political opponents will say anything.
Certainly she took no combative part in political warfare. Her functions were rather those of an etherealised vivandière to the band. The members came exhausted into her drawing-room, where she revived them with pannikins of sympathy, and spread the delicate ointment of flattery over their bruises. Not but what she exposed herself in times of need to the dangers and fatigues of the campaign. She had risked typhoid in slums, and congestion of the lungs in draughty halls. She also kept bravely up with the march, picking her dainty way through prodigious quantities of speeches, pamphlets, and articles, both in type and manuscript. Now and then she stumbled sorely. Bimetallism was a morass, and trade statistics stone fences. On these occasions she would cry out for a helping hand, preferably that of Aloysius Gleam; after which she would survey herself with rueful introspection, and put to herself the question addressed to the immortal Scapin.
Her mood of to-day followed one of these periodic rescuings.
“Hendrick’s amendment is coming on this evening,” said Aloysius Gleam at last. “The audacity of it is novel enough. Come down. It will amuse you. Burnet has a lady’s ticket going a-begging.”
“I have had enough of Hendrick for some time,” replied Lady Phayre. “He took me down to dinner last night at the M’Kays’, and could talk of nothing else. I wish you could put some sense into him.”
“I wish I could. But a Collectivist who has broken loose is running headlong to destruction.”
“That was what I told him. Push Collectivism to its logical conclusion, and we get Mr. Bellamy’s intolerable paradise. He got purple in the face, said he was nothing if not logical, insisted on the establishment of comparative values for different kinds of labour and products, and called me a reactionary because I asked him how the State was going to determine the number of mutton chops that would go to a sonnet.”
“Is that phrase your own, Lady Phayre?” asked Gleam, pricking up his ears.
“No,” she replied, with a little touch of audacity. “I snapped it up as an unconsidered trifle out of a review article.”
“Goddard’s, I think, on Extremism as applied to Practical Politics.”
“You are an encyclopaedia,” said Lady Phayre, laughing. “You know everything.”
“Did you like the article?”
“Immensely. I detached it from the review, and restitched it with blue ribbon to use as a text-book. Without it I might have been led to destruction by Hendrick.”
“Ah, my dear Lady Phayre—I shall not tell it in Gath; but when are you going to have views of your own?”
“Views? Of course I have views,” said Lady Phayre, comfortably reversing the crossing of her feet, “just like everybody else, only theirs are fixed and mine are—dissolving. It gives greater variety to life. But I think the Goddard view will be lasting.”
“I shall tell him. He will be flattered.”
“Oh, you know him?”
“Pretty intimately. I may say that I trained him—in the sporting, not the pedagogic sense.”
“You never told me. Have you many more lights under your bushel?”
“A dazzling illumination of unsuspected virtues. But I didn’t do very much for Goddard except put him in the way of things; and he would have come to the front right enough without me. He is the coming man of the younger school of Progressists. The anomaly of his generation—a hot reformer with luminous common-sense—a popular demagogue with an idea of proportion—an original thinker—a powerful, eloquent speaker. Look at the work he has done on the Council, the Progressive League—ramifications spreading all over the country with organised courses of lectures on civism, social economics, and what not. Decidedly the coming man.”
“It does one good to see you enthusiastic,” cried Lady Phayre with a laugh. “Your criticisms are generally more bracing than genial. But why don’t I know Goddard?”
“He surely has not sprung suddenly into your horizon?”
“Of course not. The newspapers—general talk—I know all about him that way. I meant, why don’t I know him personally?”
There was a touch of reprimand in the “why.” Gleam was Lord Chamberlain in Ordinary to her ladyship.
“I was waiting until he got into the House at the next general election. You see, until seven years ago, when he came into some money that rendered him independent, he was a carpenter or something—no, cabinetmaker—and so, to be frank, I never thought of it.”
“And you call yourself a Radical! Well, what is the matter with him? Does he wear corduroys tied up at the knees, and carry a red pocket-handkerchief in his hat?”
“Oh dear no!” exclaimed Gleam hastily. “He is presentable. I told you of a little training——”
“Well, then, lose no time in bringing him,” said Lady Phayre. “He surely must have heard of me.”
She was proud of her position: somewhat jealous of it too. That a generation of Progressists should arise which knew not Lady Phayre was a dreadful contingency. She had a prescriptive right to the homage of the coming man of the wing. Besides, an ex-cabinetmaker whose views on social polity she had thought worth while to tie up with blue ribbon was a novelty.
Aloysius Gleam took his leave. At the door he was summoned to pause.
“He won’t walk up and down the room and shake his finger at me, will he?”
“Like Fenton?” he laughed. “No, you can reassure your nerves. By the way,” he cried suddenly, “there is a large meeting at Stepney next week, Thursday, at which Goddard is going to speak, and I have promised to say something. Would you care to come?”
“I shall be delighted,” said Lady Phayre. “Then I can see for myself whether he is like Fenton.”
“Oh, I can guarantee that,” said Gleam, with a final word of adieu.
She sank back in her chair relieved. Fenton was an aggressive person, fond of hurling at her his theory of State education of babies as the sovereign panacea for the Weltschmerz. She was a practical woman; and philosophical ideas, unless gracefully conveyed, rather bored her. She could see no sense in their absolute use. A limitless volume of abstraction did not interest her so much as a cubic inch of solid fact. That was why she liked Aloysius Gleam.
She meditated a little longer before the fire, then she switched on the electric light, rang for the curtains to be drawn, and re-read Daniel Goddard’s article until it was time to dress for dinner.
It was not a new experience for Lady Phayre. She was familiar with platforms, and the sight of the pale, moving mass of human faces in front. She had listened to the speeches of many demagogues to the proletariat, and had found them singularly lacking in originality. Accordingly, it was with the air of an old campaigner that she settled herself down by the side of Aloysius Gleam, and surveyed the decorous occupants of the platform, and the noisy but enthusiastic audience of working men and women in the body of the hall.
Proceedings had already commenced when they entered. The chairman was concluding his introductory speech. The courteous applause that followed his remarks suddenly grew into the thunder that comes from the heart. Goddard was standing before the table, his massive dark face lit with pleasure at his welcome. He began to speak. His voice, rich and sonorous, rang out through the last dying cheers, and compelled willing attention. After a few moments he held the audience in his grasp.
Lady Phayre bent forward and looked with interested curiosity at the speaker, whom she saw mostly in profile, at intervals full-face, when he flashed round to the side benches. Her quick perception appreciated the mastery he had obtained over his hearers, their instant responsiveness to his touch. She herself was gradually drawn under the spell, felt herself but a chord of the instrument that responded to every shade of invective, irony, and promise. She was not unconscious of a certain unfamiliar sensuousness in this surrender of her individuality. Perhaps feminine instincts that had long lain dormant were awakened. The sense of power in the man set working deep-hidden springs of sensation. A strain of the barbaric lingers even in so super-refined a product as Lady Phayre. When Goddard had finished speaking, she leaned back in her chair with a kind of sigh.
“That’s the genuine article, isn’t it?” said Gleam, turning to her smilingly.
She nodded, rested her glance thoughtfully upon him for a moment. He seemed so small, precise, uninspiring compared with the huge-limbed man with the leonine face and rolling voice who had just been swaying her.
“He is a power among these people,” she said below her breath.
“I deserve some credit, don’t I?” he remarked. He was proud of Goddard, honestly delighted at the impression his pupil had made upon Lady Phayre.
The succeeding speeches, modest and formal, after Goddard’s magnetic harangue, were quickly over. After three cheers for Dan Goddard, the audience broke up. The occupants of the platform formed into little groups. Gleam drew Goddard from the largest of these.
“I want to present you to Lady Phayre, the Lady Superior of the League.”
And before the other could reply, he had taken him prisoner by the lapel of his coat, and brought him, in his brisk way, to where Lady Phayre was standing, and had gone through the formality of presentation.
“You have had a great success to-night, Mr. Goddard,” she said.
“It is easy to speak to an enthusiastic audience,” said Goddard. “You see we mean business,” he added, addressing Gleam. “We’ve done our share in agitation. It is for you people in the House now to carry the bill through.”
“I’ll undertake to see that they don’t halt by the way,” said Lady Phayre with bewitching authority.
“I wish you were in the House, Goddard,” said Gleam.
“Get me a seat and I’ll come,” he replied with a laugh.
“You’ll have the Hough division offered you according to general whisper.”
“Not under a miracle,” said Goddard. “The moderate element in the constituency is too strong.”
“I heard they were going to run an Independent Labour candidate,” interposed Lady Phayre. “I know the neighbourhood pretty well. Some friends I often stay with live near Ecclesby, and I hear the local gossip through them.”
“They would withdraw the Labour man and support Goddard, if he stood,” explained Gleam.
But Goddard laughed deprecatingly and shook his head.
“It is all in the clouds. Repson has not resigned the seat yet. It is only a rumour that he intends doing so, and haste in the matter would be indecent. Anyhow,” he added, after a pause, to Lady Phayre, “if you would tell Mr. Gleam any news you may get, you would be doing me a service.”
“Why not come and get it first hand?” asked Lady Phayre sweetly. “I should be most pleased to see you if you would call—13 Queen’s Court Mansions—Tuesdays.”
“You are very kind,” said Goddard, bowing. “I had better give you a card,” she said, taking one from an elaborate little memoranda-book; “then you won’t forget the address.”
They remained a while in desultory talk. Then Lady Phayre departed under Gleam’s escort, and Goddard returned to the group that had been waiting for him. An eager discussion, prolonged until the party broke up in the street, swept away from Goddard’s mind every lingering impression of his first interview with Lady Phayre.
CHAPTER V—LIZZIE
The National Progressive League, under whose auspices the meeting at Stepney had been held, had originated in the minds of certain members of the extreme Parliamentary left, the most active of whom were the late Sir Ephraim Phayre, the chief, and Mr. Aloysius Gleam, his henchman. Its primary object was to form a strong wing of the Liberal party, in which extremists, opportunists, and the waverers on the edge of the Independent Labour Party might rally together around practical Collectivist principles. It sought to embrace academic Radicalism and the interests of the Labour Party in a broader scheme of imperial policy.
When Goddard threw himself into the work of the League it had all the promise and vitality of youth. Centres were being rapidly established throughout the kingdom. Systems of lectures on social and political subjects were being organised. Meetings, conferences, and demonstrations were arranged under its auspices. Pamphlets were published from its headquarters in London, as well as a vigorously written journal. Besides thus working on its own account, the League was gradually gathering influence enough to constitute itself a great agency. It sent speakers to political gatherings, and canvassers to Parliamentary and municipal elections. It gained the confidence of the great trades unions and operatives’ associations, and provided helpers in labour conflicts. It was in touch at all points with political life—a vast undertaking, offering an unlimited field for the energies of its supporters. Its Statistical Bureau alone was capable of almost infinite extension.
It was with a thrilling sense of pride that Goddard found himself in the full stream of the new movement. Every day brought him an added sense of power and responsibility. To qualify himself for the tasks that devolved upon him, he read deeply and widely, setting himself resolutely to fill in the gaps of his self-education. He studied French, German, Latin, beginning the latter with mensa, like a child, and strove to train his taste and judgment by extending his acquaintance with pure literature. His vigorous intellect assimilated rapidly, both from books and men, and gradually, as the months passed into years, his views became clearer, his judgments more penetrating, and his grasp more sure and far-reaching.
The League work, and afterwards his election to a political club, brought him into frequent contact with Aloysius Gleam. The latter was anxious to keep in touch with Goddard, not only because he foresaw in him a valuable man for the party, but also because he took a keen personal interest in the young man’s career. He had all a shrewd, generous little man’s vanity in extending to a big man the patronage he felt would soon not be needed. To his friends he prophesied great things of Goddard. He introduced him to the chief shortly before Sir Ephraim’s death.
“It is courageous of you to tackle that powerful-faced young giant,” said Sir Ephraim, laughing.
“Yes,” replied Gleam, “I feel like a hen hatching an ostrich egg.”
And when the young ostrich stalked out of the shell, and in the course of time took up its position in the world as a superior bird, Aloysius Gleam looked on with undisguised satisfaction.
Once, in the early days of Goddard’s affluence, Gleam interrupted a warm discussion.
“Why don’t you take elocution lessons?”
“I never thought of it,” Goddard replied. “I have no desire to become an elegant orator.”
“It might be useful to you in your private speech,” said Gleam, looking at him in his shrewd way. Goddard frowned perplexedly. Then he understood and coloured slightly.
“I don’t want to pretend to be better than I am,” he said. “If my speech shows I belong to the people, so much the better. No one will think the worse of me.”
Gleam laid his hand kindly on the young democrat’s arm—they were walking up and down the lobby of the House—and broke out into an impetuous harangue. The young man’s argument was easily demolished.
The result was that in this, as in many other things, he took Gleam’s advice. He was no fool for angry pride to furnish him with cap and bells. He saw, when he came to consider the matter dispassionately, that though London Doric might be sweet in the ears of the proletariat, it grated on the finer susceptibilities of the House of Commons. Whereupon he set to work upon elocution with the tireless energy of a Demosthenes.
So in seven years he had gained for himself an ever-growing reputation. The great reviews had opened their pages to him. The League intrusted him with responsible work. He was on the London County Council, and a seat in Parliament awaited him at no distant future.
To please his wife, Daniel had not settled down in Sunington. He had bidden farewell reluctantly, for it meant the sundering of many ties, and the surrendering of many interests. But Lizzie had been insistent. Visions of domestic harmony, disturbed by incursions of Captain Jenkyns in an advanced state of profanity, had prompted earnest beseeching. Perhaps she was wise; for soon after her marriage the old reprobate, to the exceeding great scandal of the neighbourhood, took to himself a mistress-housekeeper in the shape of a flaunting, red-faced female of pugnacious instincts, who had retained possession of the house after his death. Their goings on, Emily and Sophie declared, had been something awful.
Lizzie had been well out of it. Daniel would never have been able to hold up his head for the disgrace; whereat Daniel had smiled somewhat sardonically. His skin was a little too tough, he said, for vicarious reprobation.
But Lizzie had other and more private reasons for wishing to migrate. In the first flush of her dignity she had shrunk from the streets with which she had been too grossly familiar during her early girlhood. She had larked with the butcher’s boy, played kiss in the ring with the greengrocer’s assistant, and kept very serious company with Joe Forster the tobacconist. Such daily reminiscences are apt to prove embarrassing. The translated Lizzie had felt out of her element in Sunington. So, to please her, Daniel had come into London and taken a house in Notting Hill, where they had remained during the seven years of their married life.
It was late when Goddard stood before the familiar door, on his return from the Stepney meeting. An expression of impatience escaped his lips as he noticed a light in the basement; otherwise, with the exception of the faintly illuminated fanlight, the house was in darkness. He let himself in with his latch-key, and walking the length of the dim passage, descended the kitchen stairs, groping his way. He opened the kitchen door softly, and found the housemaid asleep, with her head on the deal table. Awakened by his presence, the girl started in some confusion.
“Why haven’t you gone to bed, Jane?”
His tone was less one of reprimand than that of a man repeating a disagreeable formula.
“Mistress was very poorly to-night, sir, and I thought I had better sit up till you came.”
He nodded, looked at her sombrely from beneath his eyebrows.
“Did you see her to bed comfortably?”
“Oh yes, sir.”
“Hasn’t Miss Jenkyns been here?”
“No, sir. Miss Sophie came for an hour this afternoon.”
“Very well,” said Goddard, turning on his heel. “Go to bed now, there’s a good girl. You must be tired.”
He went heavily up the stairs again, turned off the gas in the hall, and continued his ascent. On the first floor he paused, leaned his ear against the bedroom door, and listened. Satisfied with a sound of heavy breathing within, he mounted the next flight and lit the gas in his own study, stirred a blackening fire, and after warming his hands for a few seconds, sat down at his writing-table.
It was a plainly furnished room, lined with books in sober bindings, sloping and falling, with great gaps, untidily, in the shelves. A great table, covered with a red baize cloth and piled with papers, pamphlets, and odd volumes, occupied the centre. An old arm-chair, its seat filled with a set of blue books, was drawn up near the fire. The mantelpiece was bare, save for a few pipes and smoker’s odds and ends. Above was pinned a broad-sheet almanac issued by some Reform organisation. Nowhere appeared any attempt at adornment.
Goddard sat in his round-backed wooden chair, opened a couple of letters that had come by the evening post, and then drummed with his fingers on the table in a preoccupied way. The setting of his face was too stern to express pain, and yet the deep vertical furrow between the brows and the tightly compressed lips indicated thoughts far removed from joyousness. At last he shook himself, brushed his hair from his forehead with a hasty gesture, and drawing a great breath, which ended like a sigh, separated some papers from the chaotic mass, and set to work on them, pen in hand. He worked for half-an-hour, only pausing to fill and light a pipe, and then with a yawn he rose and went through the communicating door into the adjoining room. A camp bedstead and the bare bedroom requisites were all that it contained. His seven years of affluence had brought him no sense of the minor luxuries of life. His personal tastes were as simple as when he lodged in the little top-floor-back in the working folks’ street in Sunington.
With his watch he drew from his waistcoat pocket the card he had received at Stepney: “Lady Phayre, 15 Queen’s Court Mansions.” He had forgotten her existence. He glanced at the card rather contemptuously, tore it across, and threw it into the grate. Then he undressed and slept the sleep of the weary man.
The next morning he began his breakfast alone, although the table was laid for two. As he ate, he ran through his correspondence, and jotted down notes in his pocket-book. He was a busy man, particularly occupied just now with heavy committee-work on the Council, and sundry organisation schemes connected with the League, and every moment was of value.
Presently the door opened, and Lizzie entered. She did not meet his following glance, but came forward with sullen, downcast eyes, and silently took her place at the table. The seven years had pressed upon her with the weight of fourteen. The devil had walked off with his own beauty. Although she was barely thirty, the plump freshness of youth had gone. The pink cheeks had paled and grown flabby; round contours had fallen into puffiness; the pout of the soft lips had relaxed into unlovely looseness of mouth marked by marring lines. A common, slatternly woman, with loose untidy hair and swollen eyelids, and dressed in an old morning wrapper, she was as unlike the rosebud bride of Sunington as the light is unlike the darkness; and yet by the inexorable law of development she was the same woman.
She poured herself out a cup of tea and broke some dry bread on her plate. Neither had spoken. Goddard’s brow darkened a little as he went on with his breakfast and his papers. She stole from time to time a shifting glance at him. The expression of absorbed interest on his dark face irritated her. The dead silence became unbearable. Suddenly she thrust back her chair a few inches, and struck the table sharply with her fingers.
“For God’s sake say something, can’t you,” she cried half-hysterically.
Goddard looked up gravely and laid down his pencil.
“What can I say to you, Lizzie?”
“Anything. Curse me, nag at me—anything; only don’t sit there as if I was the scum of the earth and you God Almighty.”
“Well, you have broken your promise once more. What else can I tell you? You can’t expect me to be pleased, and I see no good in cursing and nagging. So I hold my tongue.”
“I wish I was dead,” said Lizzie bitterly.
Goddard shrugged his shoulders. He had done his best according to his lights, and he had failed. Sometimes his heart echoed her wish.
“You have only yourself to thank,” he said.
“Have I? I’ve not got you to thank for anything. Oh dear, no! You know you hate me. You never did care for me. Even when we was first married you cared for your dirty old politics more than you did for me. Oh, why didn’t I marry Joe Forster? He has three big shops now, and can hold up his head as much as you can, for all you’re a County Councillor and have your name in the newspapers. And what good does that do to me, I’d like to know? It’s all your fault, every bit your fault, and you drive me to it; you know you do, and you’d be glad if I dropped down dead now.”
It was not a new story. Her words had no longer power to move him to anger. He accepted her grimly as a burden he had to bear through life.
“We made a mistake in marrying, Lizzie,” he said. “We both found it out long ago. I was not the sort of man you wanted, and perhaps I ought to have remained single. But I have done my duty by you honestly, and—so help me, God—I always shall. What is it you want that I do not try to give you?”
Many and many a woman, when she has been asked that question, the helpless question across the league-sundering gulf, has answered, aloud or dumbly, in a great yearning: “Love, a breath of passion, a touch of tenderness.” But in Lizzie that craving had never been deeper than the bloom on her cheek, and with the bloom it had perished. There are natures too common for the need of love, which is an instinct upwards of the soul. Instead, she answered querulously: “Why don’t you give me some money, and let me live away, somewhere?”
“To do God knows what with yourself? Not I, unless you would like this sort of thing.” He took from among the circulars with which he was daily deluged a chance-sent prospectus of a Home, and put it before her. She glanced at it, and then crumpled it up fiercely, and threw it into the fire.
“If you’re going to do that with me, you’d better look sharp, I can tell you,” she cried, trembling with sudden rage. “How long have you been making that little plan?”
“It is no plan. You could only go in there of your own free will. My only plan is to shelter you here, and make life as happy for you as you will let me.”
Lizzie sniffed contemptuously.
“What did you send for that thing for?”
“It came quite by chance.”
“That’s a damn lie!”
He bent forward, took her wrist, and looked at her sternly between the eyes, which lowered, abashed.
“You know I never tell lies,” he said. “I tell you that you shall never go to such a place unless you wish to. But you shall stay in my house. And listen to me. If this goes on much longer, I shall have to engage a special attendant to live here, who will watch you like a cat. It will be a disgrace for you that you can well spare yourself. So be warned, and turn over a new leaf.”
He rose, opened the morning paper, and skimmed through the news summary. Lizzie rubbed the wrist that he had held in an unconsciously tight grip, and then she began to whimper. But her tears had lost their effect upon Daniel. They came with maudlin frequency.
At last she broke into a great spluttering sob. “I have been miserable ever since little Jacky died. I wish I had died with him.”
The name of the child, dead three years before, touched the man’s heart. Of the two, perhaps he had felt the loss the more. Standing behind her, he laid a hand upon her shoulder, and said in a rough, tenderer tone—
“It was hard, my girl. But you are not the only one. Other women have been left desolate.”
“And other women have wished they were dead. I expect most of ’em do. It’s beastly to be a woman.”
“Well, you can’t help that,” he said grimly, resuming his newspaper. “You had better try and make the best of it.”
The servant entered with his boots, which she placed on the hearthrug. When he had laced them up he stamped them into ease and looked more cheerful. A man’s moral tone always undergoes a subtle change with the donning of the morning boot or the evening slipper.
“I shall be back for supper early this evening,” he said, “so you won’t be lonely. Now be a good girl. Do.”
She made no reply, although he had spoken kindly and forgivingly, and she knew from past experience that the subject of the last night’s slip would not be alluded to again. As soon as he had gone, she drew from her dressing-gown pocket a soiled penny novelette, and settled down to her idle morning by the fireside. In the afternoon Emily came, a weary, shrivelled woman, to remain with her for a few hours. For some time past Daniel had made the sisters a secret allowance, as compensation for loss of time in their dressmaking business, on the condition of their keeping Lizzie company. Society in the ordinary sense she had none. It was the loneliness and idleness that had crushed her. At first it had seemed a grand thing to wear pretty dresses, and keep her hands white, and give over all the work of the house to the servants. Now the habit of sloth was ingrained. She had no occupation, no interests. Even her girlish fondness for finery was gone. The costume that gave her least trouble to put on was the one she selected. Like the once free-swimming sea-anemone she had grown encrusted to her rock, stretching out lazy tentacles. When her cousin arrived she was still attired in the old dressing-gown and down-at-heel slippers she had thrust on as she got out of her bed. Emily, who was precise and businesslike, hurried her off with an indignation not staled by custom, to dress herself decently. During her toilet she made the usual confession to Emily with pleas in mitigation, and the usual indictment of Daniel. But Emily was not sympathetic. She banged in the drawer, where she had been arranging Lizzie’s slovenly kept under-linen, and pulled out another viciously.
“You should have married a man like father,” she said. “That’s the sort of husband you should have had, who would have pulled you out of bed by your hair and given you a good sound hiding. Daniel’s thousands of miles too good for you.”
Lizzie turned round and faced her passionately, straining at the ends of her stay-lace.
“I wish sometimes he would beat me. There! I’ll make him do it one of these days.”
“Dan’s not the man to treat his wife like a dog.”
“No. He treats me like a tabby-cat—beneath his notice. He has always done it. I may be a silly fool, but it doesn’t require much intellec’ to know when folks look upon you as the dirt beneath their feet.”
“Well, the dirt ought to be grateful when a man like Daniel condescends to put his foot upon it,” replied Emily with conviction.
“Why didn’t you marry him yourself?” said Lizzie witheringly.
“Elizabeth Goddard, you’re no better than a fool,” returned Emily. “And if you’ve nothing pleasanter to say, I’ll go back home.”
As on many previous occasions, the threat moved Lizzie to tears, then to reproaches, finally to entreaties and submission. When peace was made they went off on a shopping expedition to Kensington High Street, where Lizzie, to make amends, bought her cousin a bonnet, and interested herself in a discussed readjustment of trimming. But outside a newsvendor’s Emily pointed with her umbrella to an item in the contents bill of a Radical evening paper: “Dan Goddard at Stepney—Enthusiastic Reception.”
“Oh yes, I see,” said Lizzie petulantly. “I suppose you think I ought to fall down and worship him when he comes back.”
Her ill-humour returned, and she regretted the bonnet—an additional grievance.
“If it wasn’t for him I’m blessed if I’d ever come near you,” said Emily in the discussion that followed.
And so it happened that when Goddard came home he found his wife in a fit of sulks. The experiment of a domestic evening failed, as it had done so many times before. She replied monosyllabically to his attempts at conversation, refused point-blank his offer to put her into a cab and drive her to a theatre—a wild delight of past years—and retired to bed at nine o’clock.
Goddard mounted to his own den, and plunged into his work with the zest of a man who has conscientiously acquitted himself of an irksome duty, and is free to apply himself without scruple to more congenial occupations.
CHAPTER VI—THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES
It was the Tuesday luncheon-hour. The diningroom of the political club was thronged with hungry councillors from Spring Gardens, and politicians to whom the weekly meetings of the Council were a matter of concern. The air buzzed with eager talk. There was a continual going to and fro between the tables—greetings, handshakes, hurried conversations between lunchers and passers-by. Elation over an important measure successfully carried through was the prevailing tone, encouraging grandiose imaginings. London was to have its hanging-gardens, like Babylon of old, and the streams that water the New Jerusalem would take a lesson in limpidness from the Thames.
Goddard sat at a table with three others, who were thus forecasting the municipal millennium. He listened with a smile. Had he not just pricked the visionaries with kindly satire in his review article on Extremism?
“And all ad majorent L. C. C. gloriam,” said he. “That way madness lies.”
There was an impatient laugh.
“You are a reactionary.”
“I am a practical man,” said Goddard. “I don’t like confusing means with ends. Matthew Arnold was right in calling faith in machinery our besetting sin. We have beatified too many of our institutions already, and made them too much puffed up with conceit for work-a-day purposes. We are always in danger of drifting into the idea that the work exists for the glorification of the instrument.”
“But what about our ideals?” cried one. “They are as necessary for the life of the party of progress, as the reverence for decayed antiquity is for that of the Tories. Man is a dreaming animal, and his dreams inspire his actions.”
“Hence this crazy society,” said Goddard, with a laugh. “I understand now. But man has reason to direct his inspirations. Have your ideals by all means, but see they are true ones—that they can be attained without the sacrifice of minor commonplace reforms. Best to build up your ideal as you go along.”
“Synthetic socialism—a good title,” murmured another, a journalist in the labour interest.
“Ezekiel has done it all before you, with his line upon line, precept upon precept,’” remarked Goddard. “They did know something down in Judee. But you’ve begged the question as to the glorification of the County Council. You want to make London flow with milk and honey. Is that your real end? Or is it to pose as a composite middle-class Jehovah? I think the latter. No. I believe in progress. I have given up my life to the cause of it, and I will fight for it till the last breath in my body. But I will look upon myself and any institution to which I belong as the merest tool in the hands of social evolution.” Here the discussion was interrupted by the waiter, whose temporary ideal was the perfection of his guidance of Goddard in the matter of sweets.
“I will have another helping of beef,” said Goddard. “I am hungry.”
“That accounts for your paradoxical humour,” said the journalist. “I have often noticed it.” Goddard nodded and leant back in his chair. Just then he caught sight of Aloysius Gleam, the pink of neatness, with an orchid in the buttonhole of his frock-coat, scanning the room through his eye-glass. When his glance met Goddard he came forward with the expression of a man who has found the object of his search. Pending the arrival of the beef, Goddard rose and advanced to meet him.
“I thought I should find you,” said Gleam. “I want to talk to you seriously.”
“So do I,” said Goddard. “You’re the very man I was longing for. Perhaps it’s about the same matter.”
“Perhaps,” said Gleam, with a twinkle of amusement. “You broach it.”
“The rumour about Ecclesby.”
“What rumour?” asked Gleam, becoming grave.
“The strike. There is a big storm brewing for the near future, I’m afraid. Haven’t you heard?”
“Not a suggestion,” returned Gleam.
“I had a report from Willaston—he is the League secretary there—forecasting probable events. Nothing is definite. I thought perhaps you might have heard.”
Gleam shook his head.
“What is wrong? New machinery, and Trades Union and Employers’ Federation at loggerheads about it?”
“No. Not machinery. Worse than that. Sweating, out-work. Simple tyranny. Here is the letter.”
“I don’t think much of it. It will blow over,” said Gleam, having looked through the letter. “Wait a bit though,” he added, with a quick glance. “Ecclesby is in the Hough division, isn’t it?”
“Of course,” said Goddard. “That’s why Willaston wrote to me in particular.”
“I’ll keep a look-out,” said Gleam. “Cleaver and Flyte are the leading firm there. Oddly enough, I am connected with them in a roundabout way in the City, through Rosenthal, you know. And then there are Flood & Sons in London.”
“What an encyclopaedia you are!” said Goddard.
Aloysius Gleam laughed, and curled his moustache.
“That reminds me of my mission,” he said.
“Why haven’t you called upon Lady Phayre?” Goddard disregarded the apparent non sequitur, and replied with an air of surprise—
“What have I to do in ladies’ drawing-rooms?”
“Sit, drink tea, and talk political gossip,” said Gleam.
“I wasn’t brought up to it,” replied Goddard.
“I have never done it, and therefore it is not to be done. Sound doctrine for a Progressist. Well, Lady Phayre is a little indignant.”
“Why? For not taking advantage of a piece of empty politeness?”
“Lady Phayre’s politeness is never empty when it is directed towards a member of the party. Her name is not unknown to you?” Goddard admitted that the fame of Lady Phayre had reached him.
“Well, then,” said Gleam, “I advise you, as your oldest political friend, to go and see her. She’s a charming woman, attached heart and soul to the party, and can give you help in the most unexpected ways. There never was a successful politician yet who despised the assistance of women.”
“Many have got into rare messes through women,” said Goddard.
“More have got out of them by their aid,” retorted Gleam convincedly.
“But she would be rather astonished if I turned up, wouldn’t she?” said Goddard.
Gleam broke into a laugh. There were unlooked for simplicities in Goddard.
“I tell you, my dear man,” he said, “that, as Lady Shepherdess of the party, Lady Phayre expects you to go and pay her your homage. Hang it, man! she paid you the compliment of journeying all the way to Stepney to hear you speak.”
Goddard’s face assumed an air of perplexity, oddly at variance with its usual stern, resolute expression. Then the obstinacy in his nature asserted itself.
“No. It’s very kind of Lady Phayre, and I feel flattered. But I’ll stick to my own ways. Call me bear, or Goth, or what you like—I have no relish for false positions. You know who I am and all about me, so I don’t mind talking frankly to you.”
The blood rose to his face as he said this, and he held up his head somewhat defiantly. He had barely as yet divested himself of the uncomfortable impression of masquerading in his well fitting clothes, and of incongruity in refined table adjuncts. If these occasioned a worrying feeling of unfamiliarity, the sense of a wrong element in a lady’s drawing-room was still more galling. Gleam was keen enough to perceive these workings of false pride, and he bore Goddard no malice.
“Very well, then,” he said with a smile. “Perhaps you are right in your pig-headed way. I mustn’t keep you from your lunch. Good-bye. I’ll bear Ecclesby in mind.”
He shook hands, waved a salute to one of the men at Goddard’s table, and after exchanging a few words with a party near the door, went away. Goddard returned to his beef, which was getting cold, and, after the meal, retired with his three companions to the smoking-room, where an argument arose that banished Lady Phayre from his mind.
He could have resisted Aloysius Gleam’s persuasion to the crack of doom; but when the stars in their courses began to take up the matter, he was as helpless as Sisera. If he had marched straight out of the club, he possibly might never have spoken to Lady Phayre again. But the stars turned his steps aside to the Central News tape-machine in the strangers’ waiting-room, and there he found himself suddenly face to face with her sitting—a dainty vision—in an arm-chair near the entrance.
Her face brightened as she saw him, and she made a slight forward movement in expectation of his advance. Goddard could do no less than acknowledge these manifestations of friendliness.
“Have you seen Mr. Gleam in the club? They are keeping me such a time waiting.”
“I am afraid he’s gone,” said Goddard, an announcement which the page-boy came up that moment to confirm.
“What a nuisance,” said Lady Phayre. “I want a couple of ladies’ tickets all in a hurry for the House. I have a country girl staying with me, and have only this evening free.”
She looked at Goddard with a little air of concern. Now when Lady Phayre looked at a man like that, she simply rested all her responsibilities upon his shoulders. They became the man’s own personal affairs. Goddard was a man like any other. He reflected instinctively.
“I dare say I could get some men in the club to ballot for you—if you don’t mind waiting a little longer.”
“Would you really try?” she said, her eyes beaming gratitude and apparent astonishment.
“With pleasure,” said Goddard.
During his absence she turned over the advertisement pages of a railway time-table, and devised in her mind various club improvements that might conduce to the comfort of lady strangers. When he came back she rose, saw from the look of pleasure on his face that he had been successful.
“I have seen Jervons, the member for Twickenham. He undertakes to get half-a-dozen men to ballot for you; so if they are successful the orders will be round at your house before five o’clock. Will that do?”
“Beautifully,” said Lady Phayre: “a thousand thanks.”
“I’m afraid it won’t be very interesting,” said Goddard—“the Army Estimates will be on.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” said Lady Phayre cheerfully: “the child will be pleased, whatever it is. I shall take a novel.”
He did not reply, but looked down at her from his superior height, one hand grasping his hat and stick, the other on his hip. There was a tiny pause. So Lady Phayre looked up at him and smiled. There was just the faintest gleam of mockery in her eyes, a transient consciousness of the feminine magic that had made the huge, powerful man do her bidding with the lightness of an Ariel. She put out a delicately gloved hand from her sealskin muff.
“I was saving up a quarrel with you, Mr. Goddard,” she said, “for not having been to see me. Surely you could have spared just one half-hour.”
There was so much frankness and charm in her tone and in her attitude, as she stood with half-extended hand, and head slightly inclined to one side, that Goddard reddened with a sense of boorishness.
“I am hardly a society man, Lady Phayre,” he said lamely, his pride not allowing him to formulate the more conventional apology.
She laughed. She had known men positively intrigue for the right of entrance at her door, and here was one refusing the privilege. He was a curiosity. Her self-pride was pricked.
“You mean my frivolity frightens you,” she said. “But I am not as frivolous as I look, I assure you. I can talk even earnestly at times.”
“Oh, it isn’t you,” he began.
“Then it is my friends. Well, some of them are as unbutterfly-like as bats. But if you don’t like a crowd, avoid an ‘at home’ day, and come any afternoon.”
“Do you honestly care whether I come or not?” asked Goddard bluntly.
“Well, considering that I have gone out of my way to ask you twice,” she replied, rather staggered, “you might have taken my sincerity for granted.”
She raised her chin a little, and put back her hand into her muff. Goddard realised that he had been rude. The desirable aspects of Lady Phayre’s friendship also began to dawn upon him.
“Forgive me, Lady Phayre,” he said, after an awkward pause. “You see what a bear I am.”
The admission brought out again smile and hand.
“Can I come and see you?” he added whimsically.
“Do you honestly want to?” she asked, echoing his tone.
“I should very much like to, indeed,” said Goddard.
That evening, Lady Phayre sent down her card, from behind the grating, to Aloysius Gleam. He came up after a while.
“I didn’t know you were here,” he said.
“Who do you think got me the tickets?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea.”
“Mr. Goddard,” said Lady Phayre.
“Miss Mabel,” said Gleam, turning to the country girl, who was listening to a technical statement by the War Secretary with rapt attention, “Lady Phayre is like Providence: her ways are inscrutable.”