She joined in the laugh against herself; then, with a little nod towards her a.s.sailant, she said to Edward Watton, who was sitting on her right hand. "_You"re_ not taken in, I know."
"Oh, if you mean that I go in for "cases" and "causes" too," cried Lady Leven, interrupting, "of course I do--I can"t be left alone. I must dance as my generation pipes."
"Which means," said her husband, drily, "that she went for two days filling soda-water bottles the week before last, and a day"s shirt-making last week. From the first, I was told that she would probably return to me with an eye knocked out, she being totally inexperienced and absurdly rash. As to the second, to judge from the description she gave me of the den she had been sitting in when she came home, and the headache she had next day, I still expect typhoid. The fortnight isn"t up till Wednesday."
There was a shout of mingled laughter and inquiry.
"How did you do it?--and whom did you bribe?" said Bayle to Lady Leven.
"I didn"t bribe anybody," she said indignantly. "You don"t understand. My friends introduced me."
Then, drawn out by him, she plunged into a lively account of her workshop experiences, interrupted every now and then by the sarcastic comments of her husband and the amus.e.m.e.nt of the two younger men who had brought their chairs close to her. Betty Leven ranked high among the lively chatterboxes of her day and set.
Lady Maxwell, however, had not laughed at Frank Leven"s speech. Rather, as he spoke of his wife"s experiences, her face had clouded, as though the blight of some too familiar image, some sad ever-present vision, had descended upon her.
Beimett also did not laugh. He watched the Levens indulgently for a few minutes, then insensibly he, Lady Maxwell, Edward Watton, and Tressady drew together into a circle of their own.
"Do you gather that Lord Fontenoy"s speech on Friday has been much taken up in the country?" said Bennett, bending forward and addressing Lady Maxwell. Tressady, who was observing him, noticed that his dress was precisely the "Sunday best" of the respectable workman, and was, moreover, reminded by the expression of the eyes and brow that Bennett was said to have been a well-known "local preacher" in his north-country youth.
Lady Maxwell smiled, and pointed to Tressady.
"Here," she said, "is Lord Fontenoy"s first-lieutenant."
Bennett looked at George.
"I should be glad," he said, "to know what Sir George thinks?"
"Why, certainly--we think it has been very warmly taken up," said George, promptly--"to judge from the newspapers, the letters that have been pouring in, and the pet.i.tions that seem to be preparing."
Lady Maxwell"s eyes gleamed. She looked at Bennett silently a moment, then she said:
"Isn"t it amazing to you how strong an impossible case can be made to look?"
"It is inevitable," said Bennett, with a little shrug, "quite inevitable. These social experiments of ours are so young--there is always a strong case to be made out against any of them, and there will be for years to come."
"Well and good," said George; "then we cavillers are inevitable too.
Don"t attack us--praise us rather; by your own confession, we are as much a part of the game as you are."
Bennett smiled slightly, but did not in reality quite follow. Lady Maxwell bent forward.
"Do you know whether Lord Fontenoy has any _personal_ knowledge of the trades he was speaking about?" she said, in her rich eager voice; "that is what I want so much to find out."
George was nettled by both the question and the manner.
"I regard Fontenoy as a very competent person," he said drily. "I imagine he did his best to inform himself. But there was not much need; the persons concerned--whom you think you are protecting--were so very eager to inform us!"
Lady Maxwell flushed.
"And you think that settles it--the eagerness of the cheap life to be allowed to maim and waste itself? But again and again English law has stepped in to prevent it--and again and again everybody has been thankful."
"It is all a question of balance, of course," said George. "Must a few unwise people be allowed to kill themselves--or thousands lose their liberty?"
His blue eyes scanned her beautiful impetuous face with a certain cool hardness. Internally he was more and more in revolt against a "monstrous regiment of women" and the influence upon the most complex economic problems of such a personality as that before him.
But his word "liberty" p.r.i.c.ked her. The look of feeling pa.s.sed away. Her eyes kindled as sharply and drily as his own.
"Freedom?--let me quote you Cromwell! "Every sectary saith, "O give me liberty!" But give it him, and to the best of his power he will yield it to no one else." So with your careless or brutal employer--give him liberty, and no one else shall get it."
"Only by metaphor--not legally," said George, stubbornly. "So long as men are not slaves by law there is always a chance for freedom. Any way _we_ stand for freedom--as an end, not a means. It is not the business of the State to make people happy--not at all!--at least that is our view--but it _is_ the business of the State to keep them free."
"Ah!" said Bennett, with a long breath, "there you"ve hit the nail--the whole difference between you and us."
George nodded. Lady Maxwell did not speak immediately. But George was conscious that he was being observed, closely considered. Their glances crossed an instant, in antagonism, certainly, if not in dislike.
"How long is it since you came home from India?" she asked him suddenly.
"About six months."
"And you were, I think, a long time abroad?"
"Nearly four years. Does that make you think I have not had much time to get up the things I am going to vote about?" said the young man, laughing. "I don"t know! On the broadest issues of politics, one makes up one"s mind as well in Asia as in Europe--better perhaps."
"On the Empire, I suppose--and England"s place in the world? That"s a side which--I know--I remember much too little. You think our life depends on a governing cla.s.s--and that _we_ and democracy are weakening that cla.s.s too much?"
"That"s about it. And for democracy it is all right. But _you_--you are the traitors!"
His thrust, however, did not rouse her to any corresponding rhetoric. She smiled merely, and began to question him about his travels. She did it with great deftness, so that after an answer or two both his temper and manner insensibly softened, and he found himself talking with ease and success. His mixed personality revealed itself--his capacity for certain veiled enthusiasms, his respect for power, for knowledge, his pessimist beliefs as to the average lot of men.
Bennett, who listened easily, was glad to help her make her guest talk.
Frank Leven left the group near the sofa and came to listen, too.
Tressady was more and more spurred, carried out of himself. Lady Maxwell"s fine eyes and stately ways were humanised after all by a quick responsiveness, which for most people, however critical, made conversation with her draw like a magnet. Her intelligence, too, was competent, left the mere feminine behind in these connections that Tressady offered her, no less than in others. She had not lived in the world of high politics for nearly five years for nothing; so that unconsciously, and indeed quite against his will, Tressady found himself talking to her, after a while, as though she had been a man and an equal, while at the same time taking more pains than he would ever have taken for a man.
"Well, you _have_ seen a lot!" said Frank Leven at last, with a rather envious sigh.
Bennett"s modest face suddenly reddened.
"If only Sir George will use his eyes to as good purpose at home--" he said involuntarily, then stopped. Few men were more unready and awkward in conversation; yet when roused he was one of the best platform speakers of his day.
George laughed.
"One sees best what appeals to one, I am afraid," he said, only to be instantly conscious that he had made a rather stupid admission in face of the enemy.
Lady Maxwell"s lip twitched; he saw the flash of some quick thought cross her face. But she said nothing.
Only when he got up to go, she bade him notice that she was always at home on Sundays, and would be glad that he should remember it. He made a rather cold and perfunctory reply. Inwardly he said to himself, "Why does she say nothing of Letty, whom she knows--and of our marriage--if she wants to make friends?"
Nevertheless, he left the house with the feeling of one who has pa.s.sed an hour not of the common sort. He had done himself justice, made his mark. And as for her--in spite of his flashes of dislike he carried away a strong impression of something pa.s.sionate and vivid that clung to the memory. Or was it merely eyes and pose, that astonishingly beautiful colour, and touch of cla.s.sic dignity which she got--so the world said--from some remote strain of Italian blood? Most probably!
All the same, she had fewer of the ordinary womanly arts than he had imagined. How easy it would have been to send that message to Letty she had not sent! He thought simply that for a clever woman she might have been more adroit.