"You see, you call it rot. We couldn"t have got 8000 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 pa.s.sed 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. n.o.body 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.