"_She_ will break down if it goes on," said Lady Madeleine, in a melancholy voice.
Naseby laughed.
"Not at all! Lady Maxwell was made for war--she thrives on it. Don"t you, too, enjoy it?"
"I don"t know," said the girl, drearily. "I don"t know what I was made for."
And over her feather fan her wide eyes travelled to the distant ogress figure of her mother, sitting majestical in black wig and diamonds beside the Russian Amba.s.sador. Naseby"s also travelled thither--unwillingly. It was a disagreeable fact that Lady Kent had begun to be very amiable to him of late.
Lady Madeleine"s remark made him silent a moment. Then he looked at her oddly.
"I am going to offend you," he said deliberately. "I am going to tell you that you were made to wear white satin and pearls, and to look as you look this evening."
The girl flushed hotly.
"I knew you despised women," she said, in a strained voice, staring back at him reproachfully. During her months of distress and humiliation she had found her only comfort in "movements" and "causes"--in the moral aspirations generally--so far as her mother would allow her to have anything to do with them. She had tried, for instance, to work with Marcella Maxwell--to understand her.
But Naseby held his ground.
"Do I despise women because I think they make the grace and poetry of the world?" he asked her. "And, mind you, I don"t draw any lines. Let them be county councillors and guardians, and inspectors, and queens as much as they like. I"m very docile. I vote for them. I do as I"m told."
"Only, you don"t think that _I_ can do anything useful!"
"I don"t think you"re cut out for a "platform woman," if that"s what you mean," he said, laughing--"even Lady Maxwell isn"t. And if she was, she wouldn"t count. The women who matter just now--and you women are getting a terrible amount of influence--more than you"ve had any time this half century--are the women who sit at home in their drawing-rooms, wear beautiful gowns, and attract the men who are governing the country to come and see them."
"Lady Maxwell doesn"t sit at home and wear beautiful gowns!"
"I vow she does!" said Naseby, with spirit. "I can vouch for it. I was caught that way myself. Not that I belong to the men who are governing the country. And now she has roped me to her chariot for good and all.
Ah, Ancoats! how do you do?"
He got up to make room for the master of the house as he spoke. But as he walked away he said to himself, with a kind of delight: "Good! she didn"t turn a hair."
Lady Madeleine, indeed, received her former suitor with a cool dignity that might have seemed impossible to anyone so plaintively pretty. He lingered beside her, twirling his carefully pointed moustache, that matched the small Richelieu chin, and looking at her with a furtive closeness from time to time.
"Well--so you have just come back from Paris?" she said indifferently.
"Yes; I stayed a day or two after my mother. One didn"t want to come back to this dull hole."
"Did you see the new piece at the Francais?"
He made a face.
"Not I! One couldn"t be caught by such _vieux jeu_ as that! There was a splendid woman in one of the _cafes chantants_--but I suppose you don"t go to _cafes chantants?"_
"No," said Madeleine, eyeing him over her fan with a composure that astonished herself. "No, I don"t go to _cafes chantants_."
Ancoats looked blank a moment, then resumed, with fervour:
"This woman"s divine--_epatant_! Then, at the Chat Noir--but--ah! well, perhaps you don"t go to the Chat Noir?"
"No, I don"t go to the Chat Noir."
He fidgeted for a minute. She sat silent. Then he said:
"There are some new French pictures in the next room. Will you come and see them?"
"Thank you, I think I"ll stay here," she said coldly.
He lingered another second or two, then departed. The girl drew a long breath, then instinctively turned her white neck to see if Naseby had really left her. Strange! he too, from far away, was looking round. In another moment he was making his way slowly back to her.
"Ah, there"s Tressady! Now for news."
The remark was Naseby"s. He and Lady Madeleine were, as it happened, inspecting the very French pictures that the girl had just refused to look at in Ancoats"s company.
But now they hurried back to the main drawing-room where the Tressadys were already surrounded by an eager crowd.
"Eighteen majority," Tressady was saying. "The Socialists saved it at the last moment, after growling and threatening till n.o.body knew what was going to happen. Forty Ministerialists walked out, twenty more, at least, were away unpaired, and the Old Liberals voted against the Government to a man."
"Oh! they"ll go--they"ll go on the next clause," said an elderly peer, whose ruddy face glowed with delight. "Serve them right, too! Maxwell"s whole aim is revolution made easy. The most dangerous man we have had for years! Looks so precious moderate, too, all the time. Tell me how did Slade vote after all?"
And Tressady found himself b.u.t.tonholed by one person after another; pressed for the events and incidents of the evening: how this person had voted, how that; how Ministers had taken it; whether, after this Pyrrhic victory there was any chance of the Bill"s withdrawal, or at least of some radical modification in the coming clauses. Almost everyone in the crowded room belonged, directly or indirectly, to the governing political cla.s.s. Barely three people among them could have given a coherent account of the Bill itself. But to their fathers and brothers and cousins would belong the pa.s.sing or the destroying of it. And in this country there is no game that amuses so large a number of intelligent people as the political game.
"I don"t know why he should look so d--d excited over it," said Lord Cathedine to Naseby in a contemptuous aside, with a motion of the head towards Tressady, showing pale and tall above the crowd. "He seems to have voted straight this time, but he"s as shaky as he can be. You never know what that kind of fellow will be up to. Ah, my lady! and how are you?"
He made a low bow, and Naseby, turning, saw young Lady Tressady advancing.
"Are you, too, talking politics?" said Letty, with affected disgust, giving her hand to Cathedine and a smile to Naseby.
"We will now talk of nothing but your scarlet gown," said Cathedine in her ear. "Amazing!"
"You like it?" she said, with nonchalant self-possession. "It makes me look dreadfully wicked, I know." And she threw a complacent glance at a mirror near, which showed her a gleam of white shoulders in a setting of flame-coloured tulle.
"Well, you wouldn"t wish to look good," said Cathedine, pulling his black moustache. "Any fool can do that!"
"You cynic!" she said, laughing. "Come and talk to me over there. Have you got me my invitations?"
Cathedine followed, a disagreeable smile on his full lips, and they settled themselves in a corner out of the press. Nor were they disturbed by the sudden hush and parting of the crowd when, five minutes later, amid a general joyous excitement, Fontenoy walked in.
Mrs. Allison forgot her usual dignity, and hurried to meet the leader as he came up to her, with his usual flushed and haggard air.
"Magnificent!" she said tremulously. "Now you are going to win!"
He shook his head, and would hardly let himself be congratulated by any of the admirers, men or women, who pressed to shake hands with him. To most of them he said, impatiently, that it was no good hallooing till one was out of the wood, that for his own part he had expected more, and that the Government might very well rally on the next clause. Then, when he had effectively chilled the enthusiasm of the room, he drew his hostess aside.
"Well, and are you happier?" he said to her in a low voice, his whole expression changing.
"Oh, dear friend! don"t think of me," she said, putting out a thin hand to him with a grateful gesture. "Yes, the boy has been very good--he gives me a great deal of his time. But how can one _know_--how can one possibly know?"