'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.



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.



CHAPTER XVI

The last of the Trafalgar Square meetings was half over when the great chocolate-coloured motor, containing three persons besides the chauffeur, slowed up on the west side of the square. Neither of the two ladies in their all-enveloping veils was easily recognizable, still less the be-goggled countenance of the Hon. Geoffrey Stonor. When he took off his motor glasses, he did not turn down his dust collar. He even pulled farther over his eyes the peak of his linen cap.

By coming at all on this expedition, he had given Jean a signal proof of his desire to please her—but it was plain that he had no mind to see in the papers that he had been assisting at such a spectacle. While he gave instructions as to where the car should wait, Jean was staring at the vast crowd massed on the north side of the column. It extended back among the fountains, and even escaped on each side beyond the vigilance of the guardian lions. There were scores listening there who could not see the speakers even as well as could the occupants of the car. In front of the little row of women on the plinth a gaunt figure in brown serge was waving her arms. What she was saying was blurred in the general uproar.

'Oh, that's one!' Jean called out excitedly. 'Oh, let's hurry.'

But even after they left the car and reached the crowd, to hurry was a thing no man could do. For some minutes the motor-party had only occasional glimpses of the speakers, and heard little more than fragments.

'Who is that, Geoffrey?'

'The tall young fellow with the stoop? That appears to be the chairman.' Stonor himself stooped—to the eager girl who had clutched his sleeve from behind, and was following him closely through the press. 'The artless chairman, I take it, is scolding the people for not giving the woman a hearing!' They laughed together at the young man's foolishness.

Even had an open-air meeting been more of a commonplace to Stonor, it would have had for him that effect of newness that an old thing wears when seen by an act of sympathy through new eyes.

'You must be sure and explain everything to me, Geoffrey,' said the girl. 'This is to be an important chapter in my education.' Merrily and without a shadow of misgiving she spoke in jest a truer word than she dreamed. He fell in with her mood.

'Well, I rather gather that he's been criticizing the late Government, and Liberals have made it hot for him.'

'I shall never be able to hear unless we get nearer,' said Jean, anxiously.

'There's a very rough element in front there——'

'Oh, don't let us mind!'

'Most certainly I mind!'

'Oh, but I should be miserable if I didn't hear.'

She pleaded so bewitchingly for a front seat at the Show that unwillingly he wormed his way on. Suddenly he stood still and stared about.

'What's the matter?' said Lady John.

'I can't have you ladies pushed about in this crowd,' he said under his breath. 'I must get hold of a policeman. You wait just here. I'll find one.'

The adoring eyes of the girl watched the tall figure disappear.

'Look at her face!' Lady John, with her eyeglass up, was staring in the opposite direction. 'She's like an inspired charwoman!'

Jean turned, and in her eagerness pressed on, Lady John following.

The agreeable presence of the young chairman was withdrawn from the fighting-line, and the figure of the working-woman stood alone. With her lean brown finger pointing straight at the more outrageous of the young hooligans, and her voice raised shrill above their impertinence—

'I've got boys of me own,' she said, 'and we laugh at all sorts o' things, but I should be ashymed, and so would they, if ever they wus to be'yve as you're doin' to-d'y.'

When they had duly hooted that sentiment, they were quieter for a moment.

'People 'ave been sayin' this is a Middle-Class Woman's Movement. It's a libel. I'm a workin' woman m'self, the wife of a workin' man——'

'Pore devil!'

'Don't envy 'im, m'self!'

As one giving her credentials, she went on, 'I'm a Pore Law Guardian——'

'Think o' that, now! Gracious me!'

A friendly person in the crowd turned upon the scoffer.

'Shut up, cawn't yer.'

'Not fur you!

Further statements on the part of the orator were drowned by—

'Go 'ome and darn your ol' man's stockin's.'

'Just clean yer own doorstep.'

She glowered her contempt upon the interrupters.' It's a pore sort of 'ousekeeper that leaves 'er doorstep till Sunday afternoon. Maybe that's when you would do your doorstep. I do mine in the mornin', before you men are awake!' They relished that and gave her credit for a bull's eye.

'You think,' she went on quietly, seeing she had 'got them'—'you think we women 'ave no business servin' on Boards and thinking about politics.' In a tone of exquisite contempt, 'But wot's politics!' she demanded. 'It's just 'ousekeepin' on a big scyle.' Somebody applauded. 'Oo among you workin' men 'as the most comfortable 'omes? Those of you that gives yer wives yer wyges.'

'That's it! That's it!' they roared with passion.

'Wantin' our money.'

'That's all this agitation's about.'

'Listen to me!' She came close to the edge of the plinth. 'If it wus only to use fur our comfort, d'ye think many o' you workin' men would be found turnin' over their wyges to their wives? No! Wot's the reason thousands do—and the best and the soberest? Because the workin' man knows that wot's a pound to 'im is twenty shillins to 'is wife, and she'll myke every penny in every one o' them shillins tell. She gets more fur 'im out of 'is wyges than wot 'e can. Some o' you know wot the 'omes is like w'ere the men don't let the women manage. Well, the Poor Laws and the 'ole Government is just in the syme muddle because the men 'ave tried to do the national 'ousekeepin' without the women!'

They hooted, but they listened, too.

'Like I said to you before, it's a libel to say it's only the well-off women wot's wantin' the vote. I can tell you wot plenty o' the poor women think about it. I'm one o' them! And I can tell you we see there's reforms needed. We ought to 'ave the vote; and we know 'ow to appreciate the other women 'oo go to prison for tryin' to get it for us!'

With a little final bob of emphasis, and a glance over her shoulder at the old woman and the young one behind her, she was about to retire. But she paused as the murmur in the crowd grew into distinct phrases.

''Inderin' policemen!'—'Mykin' rows in the street;' and a voice called out so near Jean that the girl jumped, 'It's the w'y yer goes on as mykes 'em keep ye from gettin' votes. They see ye ain't fit to 'ave——'

And then all the varied charges were swallowed in a general uproar.

'Where's Geoffrey? Oh, isn't she too funny for words?'

The agitated chairman had come forward. 'You evidently don't know,' he said, 'what had to be done by men before the extension of suffrage in '67. If it hadn't been for demonstrations——' But the rest was drowned.

The brown-serge woman stood there waiting, wavering a moment; and suddenly her shrill note rose clear over the indistinguishable Babel.

'You s'y woman's plyce is 'ome! Don't you know there's a third of the women in this country can't afford the luxury of stayin' in their 'omes? They got to go out and 'elp make money to p'y the rent and keep the 'ome from bein' sold up. Then there's all the women that 'aven't got even miserable 'omes. They 'aven't got any 'omes at all.'

'You said you got one. W'y don't you stop in it?'

'Yes, that's like a man. If one o' you is all right he thinks the rest don't matter. We women——'

But they overwhelmed her. She stood there with her gaunt arms folded—waiting. You felt that she had met other crises of her life with just that same smouldering patience. When the wave of noise subsided again, she was discovered to be speaking.

'P'raps your 'omes are all right! P'raps your children never goes 'ungry. P'raps you aren't livin', old and young, married and single, in one room.'

'I suppose life is like that for a good many people,' Jean Dunbarton turned round to say.

'Oh, yes,' said her aunt.

'I come from a plyce where many fam'lies, if they're to go on livin' at all, 'ave to live like that. If you don't believe me, come and let me show you!' She spread out her lean arms. 'Come with me to Canning Town—come with me to Bromley—come to Poplar and to Bow. No, you won't even think about the over-worked women and the underfed children, and the 'ovels they live in. And you want that we shouldn't think neither——'

'We'll do the thinkin'. You go 'ome and nuss the byby.'

'I do nurse my byby; I've nursed seven. What have you done for yours?' She waited in vain for the answer. 'P'raps,' her voice quivered, 'p'raps your children never goes 'ungry, and maybe you're satisfied—though I must say I wouldn't a thought it from the look o' yer.'

'Oh, I s'y!'

'But we women are not satisfied. We don't only want better things for our own children; we want better things for all. Every child is our child. We know in our 'earts we oughtn't to rest till we've mothered 'em every one.'

'Wot about the men? Are they all 'appy?'

There was derisive laughter at that, and 'No! No!' 'Not precisely!' ''Appy? Lord!'

'No, there's lots o' you men I'm sorry for,' she said.

'Thanks, awfully!'

'And we'll 'elp you if you let us,' she said.

''Elp us? You tyke the bread out of our mouths.'

'Now you're goin' to begin about us blackleggin' the men! W'y does any woman tyke less wyges than a man for the same work? Only because we can't get anything better. That's part the reason w'y we're yere to-d'y. Do you reely think,' she reasoned with them as man to man; 'do you think, now, we tyke those low wyges because we got a likin' fur low wyges? No. We're just like you. We want as much as ever we can get.'

''Ear! 'ear!'

'We got a gryte deal to do with our wyges, we women has. We got the children to think about. And w'en we get our rights, a woman's flesh and blood won't be so much cheaper than a man's that employers can get rich on keepin' you out o' work and sweatin' us. If you men only could see it, we got the syme cause, and if you 'elped us you'd be 'elpin' yerselves.'

'Rot!'

'True as gospel!' some one said.

'Drivel!'

As she retired against the banner with the others, there was some applause.

'Well, now,' said a man patronizingly, 'that wusn't so bad—fur a woman.'

'N—naw. Not fur a woman.'

Jean had been standing on tip-toe making signals. Ah, at last Geoffrey saw her! But why was he looking so grave?

'No policeman?' Lady John asked.

'Not on that side. They seem to have surrounded the storm centre, which is just in front of the place you've rather unwisely chosen.' Indeed it was possible to see, further on, half a dozen helmets among the hats.

What was happening on the plinth seemed to have a lessened interest for Jean Dunbarton. She kept glancing sideways up under the cap brim at the eyes of the man at her side.

Lady John on the other hand was losing nothing. 'Is she one of them? That little thing?'

'I—I suppose so,' answered Stonor, doubtfully, though the chairman, with a cheerful air of relief, had introduced Miss Ernestine Blunt to the accompaniment of cheers and a general moving closer to the monument.

Lady John, after studying Ernestine an instant through her glass, turned to a dingy person next her, who was smoking a short pipe.

'Among those women up there,' said Lady John, 'can you tell me, my man, which are the ones that a—that make the disturbances?'

The man removed his pipe and spat carefully between his feet. Then with deliberation he said—

'The one that's doing the talking now—she's the disturbingest o' the lot.'

'Not that nice little——'

'Don't you be took in, mum;' and he resumed the consolatory pipe.

'What is it, Geoffrey? Have I done anything?' Jean said very low.

'Why didn't you stay where I left you?' he answered, without looking at her.

'I couldn't hear. I couldn't even see. Please don't look like that. Forgive me,' she pleaded, covertly seeking his hand.

His set face softened. 'It frightened me when I didn't see you where I left you.'

She smiled, with recovered spirits. She could attend now to the thing she had come to see.

'I'm sorry you missed the inspired charwoman. It's rather upsetting to think—do you suppose any of our servants have—views?'

Stonor laughed. 'Oh, no! Our servants are all too superior.' He moved forward and touched a policeman on the shoulder. What was said was not audible—the policeman at first shook his head, then suddenly he turned round, looked sharply into the gentleman's face, and his whole manner changed. Obliging, genial, almost obsequious. 'Oh, he's recognized Geoffrey!' Jean said to her aunt. 'They have to do what a member tells them! They'll stop the traffic any time to let Geoffrey go by!' she exulted.

Stonor beckoned to his ladies. The policeman was forging a way in which they followed.

'This will do,' Stonor said at last, and he whispered again to the policeman. The man replied, grinning. 'Oh, really,' Stonor smiled, too. 'This is the redoubtable Miss Ernestine Blunt,' he explained over his shoulder, and he drew back so that Jean could pass, and standing so, directly in front of him, she could be protected right and left, if need were, by a barrier made of his arms.

'Now can you see?' he asked.

She looked round and nodded. Her face was without cloud again. She leaned lightly against his arm.

Miss Ernestine had meanwhile been catapulting into election issues with all the fervour of a hot-gospeller.

'What outrageous things she says about important people—people she ought to respect and be rather afraid of,' objected Jean, rather scandalized.

'Impudent little baggage!' said Stonor.

Reasons, a plenty, the baggage had why the Party which had so recently refused to enfranchise women should not be returned to power.

'You're in too big a hurry,' some one shouted. 'All the Liberals want is a little time.'

'Time! You seem not to know that the first petition in favour of giving us the Franchise was signed in 1866.'

'How do you know?'

She paused a moment, taken off her guard by the suddenness of the attack.

'You wasn't there!'

'That was the trouble. Haw! Haw!'

'That petition,' she said, 'was presented forty years ago.'

'Give 'er a 'reain' now she 'as got out of 'er crydle.'

'It was presented to the House of Commons by John Stuart Mill. Give the Liberals time!' she echoed. 'Thirty-three years ago memorials in favour of the suffrage were presented to Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli. In 1896, 257,000 women of these British Isles signed an appeal to the members of Parliament. Bills or Resolutions have been before the House, on and off, for the last thirty-six years. All that "time" thrown away! At the opening of this year we found ourselves with no assurance that if we went on in the same way, any girl born into the world in our time would ever be able to exercise the rights of citizenship though she lived to be a hundred. That was why we said all this has been in vain. We must try some other way. How did you working men get the suffrage, we asked ourselves. Well, we turned up the records—and we saw. We don't want to follow such a violent example. We would much rather not—but if that's the only way we can make the country see we're in earnest—we are prepared to show them!'

'An' they'll show you!'

'Give ye another month 'ard!'

In the midst of the laughter and interruptions, a dirty, beery fellow of fifty or so, from whom Stonor's arm was shielding Jean, turned to the pal behind him with—

'Ow'd yer like to be that one's 'usband? Think o' comin' 'ome to that!'

'I'd soon learn 'er!' answered the other, with a meaning look.

'Don't think that going to prison again has any fears for us. We'd go for life if by doing that we got freedom for the rest of the women.'

'Hear! Hear!'

'Rot!'

'W'y don't the men 'elp ye to get yer rights?'

'Here's some one asking why the men don't help. It's partly they don't understand yet—they will before we've done!' She wagged her head in a sort of comical menace, and the crowd screamed with laughter—'partly, they don't understand yet what's at stake——'

'Lord!' said an old fellow, with a rich chuckle. 'She's a educatin' of us!'

'—and partly that the bravest man is afraid of ridicule. Oh, yes, we've heard a great deal all our lives about the timidity and the sensitiveness of women. And it's true—we are sensitive. But I tell you, ridicule crumples a man up. It steels a woman. We've come to know the value of ridicule. We've educated ourselves so that we welcome ridicule. We owe our sincerest thanks to the comic writers. The cartoonist is our unconscious friend. Who cartoons people who are of no importance? What advertisement is so sure of being remembered? If we didn't know it by any other sign, the comic papers would tell us—we've arrived!'

She stood there for one triumphant moment in an attitude of such audacious self-confidence, that Jean turned excitedly to her lover with—

'I know what she's like! The girl in Ibsen's "Master Builder"!'

'I don't think I know the young lady.'

'Oh, there was a knock at the door that set the Master Builder's nerves quivering. He felt in his bones it was the Younger Generation coming to upset things. He thought it was a young man——'

'And it was really Miss Ernestine Blunt? He has my sympathies.'

The Younger Generation was declaring from the monument—

'Our greatest debt of gratitude we owe to the man who called us female hooligans!'

That tickled the crowd, too; she was such a charming little pink-cheeked specimen of a hooligan.

'I'm being frightfully amused, Geoffrey,' said Jean.

He looked down at her with a large indulgence. 'That's right,' he said.

'We aren't hooligans, but we hope the fact will be overlooked. If everybody said we were nice, well-behaved women, who'd come to hear us? Not the men.'

The people dissolved in laughter, but she was grave enough.

'Men tell us it isn't womanly for us to care about politics. How do they know what's womanly? It's for women to decide that. Let them attend to being manly. It will take them all their time.'

'Pore benighted man!'

'Some of you have heard it would be dreadful if we got the vote, because then we'd be pitted against men in the economic struggle. But it's too late to guard against that. It's fact. But facts, we've discovered, are just what men find it so hard to recognize. Men are so dreadfully sentimental.' She smiled with the crowd at that, but she proceeded to hammer in her pet nail. 'They won't recognize those eighty-two women out of every hundred who are wage-earners. We used to believe men when they told us that it was unfeminine—hardly respectable—for women to be students and to aspire to the arts that bring fame and fortune. But men have never told us it was unfeminine for women to do the heavy drudgery that's badly paid. That kind of work had to be done by somebody, and men didn't hanker after it. Oh, no! Let the women scrub and cook and wash, or teach without diplomas on half pay. That's all right. But if they want to try their hand at the better-rewarded work of the liberal professions—oh, very unfeminine indeed.'

As Ernestine proceeded to show how all this obsolete unfairness had its roots in political inequality, Lady John dropped her glass with a sigh.

'You are right,' she said to Jean. 'This is Hilda, harnessed to a purpose. A portent to shake middle-aged nerves.'

With Jean blooming there before him, Stonor had no wish to prove his own nerves middle-aged.

'I think she's rather fun, myself. Though she ought to be taken home and well smacked.'

Somebody had interrupted to ask, 'If the House of Commons won't give you justice, why don't you go to the House of Lords?'

'What?' She hadn't heard, but the question was answered by some one who had.

'She'd 'ave to 'urry up. Case of early closin'!'

'You'll be allowed to ask any question you like,' she said, 'at the end of the meeting.'

'Wot's that? Oh, is it question time? I s'y, miss, 'oo killed Cock Robin?'

'I've got a question, too,' a boy called through his hollowed hands. 'Are—you—married?'

'Ere's your chance. 'E's a bachelor.'

'Here's a man,' says Ernestine, 'asking, "If the women get full citizenship, and a war is declared, will the women fight?"'

'Haw! haw!'

'Yes.'

'Yes. Just tell us that!'

'Well'—she smiled—'you know some say the whole trouble about us is that we do fight. But it's only hard necessity makes us do that. We don't want to fight—as men seem to—just for fighting's sake. Women are for peace.'

'Hear! hear!'

'And when we have a share in public affairs there'll be less likelihood of war. Wasn't it a woman, the Baroness von Suttner, whose book about peace was the corner-stone of the Peace Congress? Wasn't it that book that converted the millionaire maker of armaments of war? Wasn't it the Baroness von Suttner's book that made Nobel offer those great international prizes for the Arts of Peace? I'm not saying women can't fight. But we women know all war is evil, and we're for peace. Our part—we're proud to remember it—our part has been to go about after you men in war time and pick up the pieces!'

A great shout went up as the truth of that rolled in upon the people.

'Yes; seems funny, doesn't it? You men blow people to bits, and then we come along and put them together again. If you know anything about military nursing, you know a good deal of our work has been done in the face of danger; but it's always been done.'

'That's so. That's so.'

'Well, what of it?' said a voice. 'Women must do something for their keep.'

'You complain that more and more we're taking away from you men the work that's always been yours. You can't any longer keep woman out of the industries. The only question is, on what terms shall she continue to be in? As long as she's in on bad terms, she's not only hurting herself, she's hurting you. But if you're feeling discouraged about our competing with you, we're willing to leave you your trade in war. Let the men take life! We give life!' Her voice was once more moved and proud. 'No one will pretend ours isn't one of the dangerous trades either. I won't say any more to you now, because we've got others to speak to you, and a new woman helper that I want you to hear.'

With an accompaniment of clapping she retired to hold a hurried consultation with the chairman.

Jean turned to see how Geoffrey had taken it. 'Well?'

He smiled down at her, echoing, 'Well?'

'Nothing so very reprehensible in what she said, was there?'

'Oh, "reprehensible"!'

'It makes one rather miserable all the same.'

He pressed his guardian arm the closer. 'You mustn't take it as much to heart as all that.'

'I can't help it. I can't indeed, Geoffrey. I shall never be able to make a speech like that.'

He stared, considerably taken aback. 'I hope not indeed.'

'Why? I thought you said you wanted me to——'

'To make nice little speeches with composure? So I did. So I do——' as he looked down upon the upturned face he seemed to lose his thread.

She was for helping him to recover it. 'Don't you remember how you said——'

'That you have very pink cheeks? Well, I stick to it.'

She smiled. 'Sh! Don't tell everybody.'

'And you're the only female creature——'

'That's a most proper sentiment.'

'The only one I ever saw who didn't look a fright in motor things.'

'I'm glad you don't think me a fright. Oh!'—she turned at the sound of applause—'we're forgetting all about——'

A big sandy man, not hitherto seen, was rolling his loose-knit body up and down the platform, smiling at the people and mopping a great bony skull, on which, low down, a few scanty wisps of colourless hair were growing.

'If you can't afford a bottle of Tatcho,' a boy called out, 'w'y don't you get yer 'air cut?'

He just shot out one hand and wagged it in grotesque greeting, not in the least discomposed.

'I've been addressin' a big meetin' at 'Ammersmith this morning, and w'en I told 'em I wus comin' 'ere this awfternoon to speak fur the women—well—then the usual thing began.'

An appreciative roar rose from the crowd.

'Yes,' he grinned, 'if you want peace and quiet at a public meetin', better not go mentionin' the lydies these times!'

He stopped, and the crowd filled in the hiatus with laughter.

'There wus a man at 'Ammersmith, too, talkin' about Woman's sphere bein' 'Ome. 'Ome do you call it? 'Ome!' and at the word his bonhomie suffered a singular eclipse. ''Ome!' he bellowed, as if some one had struck him in a vital spot, and the word was merely a roar of pain. ''Ome! You've got a kennel w'ere you can munch your tommy. You got a corner w'ere you can curl up fur a few hours till you go out to work again. But 'omes! No, my men, there's too many of you ain't able to give the women 'omes fit to live in; too many of you in that fix fur you to go on jawin' at those o' the women 'oo want to myke the 'omes a little more deservin' o' the name.'

'If the vote ain't done us any good,' a man bawled up at him, ''ow'll it do the women any good?'

'Look 'ere! See 'ere!' he rolled his shapeless body up and down the stone platform, taking in great draughts of cheer from some invisible fountain. 'Any men here belongin' to the Labour Party?' he inquired.

To an accompaniment of shouts and applause he went on, smiling and rubbing his hands in a state of bubbling Brotherliness.

'Well, I don't need tell those men the vote 'as done us some good. They know it. And it'll do us a lot more good w'en you know 'ow to use the power you got in your 'and.'

'Power!' grumbled an old fellow. 'It's those fellows at the bottom of the street'—he hitched his head toward St. Stephen's—'it's them that's got the power.'

The speaker pounced on him. 'It's you and men like you that give it to them. Wot did you do last election? You carried the Liberals into Parliament Street on your own shoulders. You believed all their fine words. You never asked yerselves, "Wot's a Liberal, anyway?"'

In the chorus of cheers and booing some one sang out, 'He's a jolly good fellow!'

'No 'e ain't,' said the Labour man, with another wheel about and a pounce. 'No 'e ain't, or, if 'e's jolly, it's only because 'e thinks you're such a cod-fish you'll go swellin' 'is majority again.'

Stonor joined in that laugh. He rather liked the man.

'Yes, it's enough to make any Liberal "jolly" to see a sheep like you lookin' on, proud and 'appy, while you see Liberal leaders desertin' Liberal principles.'

Through the roar of protest and argument, he held out those grotesque great hands of his with the suggestion—

'You show me a Liberal, and I'll show you a Mr. Facing-both-ways. Yuss. The Liberal, 'e sheds the light of his warm and 'andsome smile on the workin' man, and round on the other side 'e's tippin' the wink to the great landowners. Yuss. That's to let 'em know 'e's standin' between them and Socialists. Ha! the Socialists!' Puffing and flushed and perspiring he hurled it out again and again over the heads of the people. 'The Socialists! Yuss. Socialists! Ha! ha!' When he and the audience had a little calmed down, 'The Liberal,' he said, with that look of sly humour, ''e's the judicial sort o' chap that sits in the middle.'

'On the fence.'

He nodded. 'Tories one side, Socialists the other. Well, it ain't always so comfortable in the middle. No. Yer like to get squeezed. Now, I says to the women, wot I says is, the Conservatives don't promise you much, but wot they promise they do.' He whacked one fist into the other with tremendous effect.

'This fellow isn't half bad,' Stonor said to Lady John.

'But the Liberals, they'll promise you the earth and give you the whole o' nothin'.'

There were roars of approval. Liberal stock had sunk rather low in Trafalgar Square.

'Isn't it fun?' said Jean. 'Now aren't you glad I brought you?'

'Oh, this chap's all right!'

'We men 'ave seen it 'appen over and over. But the women can tyke an 'int quicker 'n what we can. They won't stand the nonsense men do. Only they 'aven't got a fair chawnce even to agitate fur their rights. As I wus comin' up ere, I 'eard a man sayin', "Look at this big crowd. W'y, we're all men! If the women want the vote, w'y ain't they here to s'y so?" Well, I'll tell you w'y. It's because they've 'ad to get the dinner fur you and me, and now they're washin' up dishes.'

'D'you think we ought to st'y at 'ome and wash the dishes?'

He laughed with good-natured shrewdness. 'Well, if they'd leave it to us once or twice per'aps we'd understand a little more about the Woman Question. I know w'y my wife isn't here. It's because she knows I can't cook, and she's 'opin' I can talk to some purpose. Yuss,'—he acknowledged another possible view,—'yuss, maybe she's mistaken. Any'ow, here I am to vote for her and all the other women, and to——'

They nearly drowned him with 'Oh-h!' and 'Hear! hear!'

'And to tell you men what improvements you can expect to see w'en women 'as the share in public affairs they ought to 'ave!'

Out of the babel came the question, 'What do you know about it? You can't even talk grammar.'

His broad smile faltered a little.

'Oh, what shame!' said Jean, full of sympathy. 'He's a dear—that funny cockney.'

But he had been dashed for the merest moment.

'I'm not 'ere to talk grammar, but to talk Reform. I ain't defendin' my grammar,' he said, on second thoughts, 'but I'll say in pawssing that if my mother 'ad 'ad 'er rights, maybe my grammar would 'ave been better.'

It was a thrust that seemed to go home. But, all the same, it was clear that many of his friends couldn't stomach the sight of him up there demeaning himself by espousing the cause of the Suffragettes. He kept on about woman and justice, but his performance was little more than vigorous pantomime. The boyish chairman looked harassed and anxious, Miss Ernestine Blunt alert, watchful.

Stonor bent his head to whisper something in Jean Dunbarton's ear. She listened with lowered eyes and happy face. The discreet little interchange went on for several minutes, while the crowd booed at the bald-headed Labourite for his mistaken enthusiasm. Geoffrey Stonor and his bride-to-be were more alone now in the midst of this shouting mob than they had been since the Ulland House luncheon-gong had broken in upon and banished momentary wonderment about the name—that name beginning with V. Plain to see in the flushed and happy face that Jean Dunbarton was not 'asking questions.' She was listening absorbed to the oldest of all the stories.

And now the champion of the Suffragettes had come to the surface again with his—

'Wait a bit—'arf a minute, my man.'

'Oo you talkin' to? I ain't your man!'

'Oh, that's lucky for me. There seems to be an individual here who doesn't think women ought to 'ave the vote.'

'One? Oh-h!'

They all but wiped him out again in laughter; but he climbed on the top of the great wave of sound with—

'P'raps the gentleman who thinks they oughtn't to 'ave a vote, p'raps 'e don't know much about women. Wot? Oh, the gentleman says 'e's married. Well, then, fur the syke of 'is wife we mustn't be too sorry 'e's 'ere. No doubt she's s'ying, "'Eaven be prysed those women are mykin' a demonstrytion in Trafalgar Square, and I'll 'ave a little peace and quiet at 'ome for one Sunday in me life."'

The crowd liked that, and found themselves jeering at the interrupter as well as at the speaker.

'Why, you'—he pointed at some one in the crowd—'you're like the man at 'Ammersmith this morning. 'E wus awskin' me, "'Ow would you like men to st'y at 'ome and do the fam'ly washin'?" I told 'im I wouldn't advise it. I 'ave too much respect fur'—they waited while slyly he brought out—'me clo'es.'

'It's their place,' said some one in a rage; 'the women ought to do the washin'.'

'I'm not sure you aren't right. For a good many o' you fellas from the look o' you, you cawn't even wash yourselves.'

This was outrageous. It was resented in an incipient riot. The helmets of the police bobbed about. An angry voice had called out—

'Oo are you talkin' to?'

The anxiety of the inexperienced chairman was almost touching.

The Socialist revelled in the disturbance he'd created. He walked up and down with that funny rolling gait, poking out his head at intervals in a turtle-esque fashion highly provocative, holding his huge paws kangaroo fashion, only with fingers stiffly pointed, and shooting them out at intervals towards the crowd in a very ecstasy of good-natured contempt.

'Better go 'ome and awsk yer wife to wash yer fice,' he advised. 'You cawn't even do that bit o' fam'ly washin'. Go and awsk some woman.'