The Convert. Elizabeth Robins

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      'Still, I don't think she ought to call it "scratch" when she's got an Ambassador and a Cabinet Minister——'

      'Just the party to ask a scratch Cabinet Minister to,' he insisted, stopping between the two cards inscribed respectively with their names. 'As for the Ambassador, he's an old friend of ours—knows his London well—knows we are the most tolerant society on the face of the earth.'

      In spite of her companion's affectation of a smiling quarrelsomeness, Vida unfolded her table-napkin with the air of one looking forward to her tête-à-tête with the man who had brought her down. But Lord Borrodaile was a person most women liked talking to, and hardly had she begun to relish that combination in the man of careless pleasantry and pungent criticism, when Vida caught an agonized glance from her hostess, which said plainly, 'Rescue the man on your right,'—and lo! Miss Levering became aware that already, before the poor jaded politician had swallowed his soup, Mrs. Townley had fallen to catechising him about the new Bill—a theme talked threadbare by newspaperdom and all political England. But Mrs. Townley, albeit not exactly old, was one of those old-fashioned women who take what used to be called 'an intelligent interest in politics.' You may pick her out in any drawing-room from the fact that politicians shun her like the plague. Rich, childless, lonely, with more wits than occupation, practically shelved at a time when her intellectual life is most alert—the Mrs. Townleys of the world do, it must be admitted, labour under the delusion that men fighting the battle of public life, go out to dine for the express purpose of telling the intelligent female 'all about it.' She is a staunch believer not so much in women's influence as in woman's. And there is no doubt in her mind which woman's. If among her smart relations who ask her to their houses and go to hers (from that sentiment of the solidarity of the family so powerful in English life), if amongst these she succeeds from time to time in inducing two or three public officials, or even private members, to prove how good a cook she keeps, she thinks she is exercising an influence on the politics of her time. Her form of conversation consists in plying her victim with questions. Not here one there one, to keep the ball rolling, but a steady and pitiless fire of 'Do you think?' and 'Why do you?'

      Obedient to her hostess's wireless telegram, Miss Levering bent her head, and said to Mrs. Townley's neighbour—

      'I know I ought not to talk to you till after the entrée.'

      'Pray do!' said Sir William, with a sudden glint in his little eyes; and then with a burnt-child air of caution, 'Unless——' he began.

      'Oh, you make conditions!' said Miss Levering, laughing.

      'Only one. Promise not'—he lowered his voice—'promise not to say "Bill."'

      'I won't even go so far as to say "William."'

      He laughed as obligingly as though the jest had been a good one. A little ashamed, its maker hastened to leave it behind.

      'There's nothing I should quite so much hate talking about as politics—saving your presence.'

      'Ah!'

      'I was thinking of something much more important.'

      Even her rallying tone did not wholly reassure the poor man.

      'More important?' he repeated.

      'Yes; I long to know (and I long to be forgiven for asking), what Order that is you are wearing, and what you did to get it.'

      Haycroft breathed freely. He talked for the next ten minutes about the bauble, making a humorous translation of its Latin 'posy,' and describing in the same vein the service to a foreign state that had won him the recognition. He wouldn't have worn the thing to-night except out of compliment to the ambassador from the Power in question. They were going on together to the reception at the Foreign Office. As to the Order, Haycroft seemed to feel he owed it to himself to smile at all such toys, but he did not disdain to amuse the pretty lady with the one in question, any more than being humane (and even genial sitting before Mrs. Freddy's menu), he would have refused to show the whirring wheels of his watch to a nice child. The two got on so well that the anxious look quite faded out of Mrs. Freddy's face, and she devoted herself gaily to the distinguished foreigner at her side. But Haycroft at a party was, like so many Englishmen, as the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do they spin. The man Vida had rescued from Mrs. Graham Townley was, when in the society of women, so accustomed to seeing them take on themselves the onus of entertainment, was himself so unused to being at the smallest trouble, that when the 'Order' was exhausted, had Vida not invented another topic, there would have been an absolute cessation of all converse till Mrs. Graham Townley had again caught him up like a big reluctant fish on the hook of interrogation. At a reproachful aside from Lord Borrodaile, Miss Levering broke off in the middle of her second subject to substitute, 'But I am monopolizing you disgracefully,' and she half turned away from the eminent politician into whose slightly flushed face and humid eyes had come something like animation.

      'Not at all. Not at all. Go on.'

      'No, I've gone far enough. Do you realize that we left "Orders" and "Honours" half an hour ago, and ever since we've been talking scandal?'

      'Criticizing life,' he amended—'a pursuit worthy of two philosophers.'

      'I did it—' said the lady, with an air of half-amused discontent with herself; 'you know why I did it.'

      He met her eye, and the faint motion that indicated the woman on his other side. 'Terrible person,' he whispered. 'She goes out to dine as a soldier goes into action.'

      For the next few minutes they made common cause in heaping ridicule on 'the political woman.'

      'But, after all'—Vida pulled herself up—'it may be only a case of sour grapes on my part. I'm afraid my conversation is inclined to be frivolous.'

      He turned and gave her her reward—the feeling smile that says, 'Thank God!' But, strangely, it did not reflect itself in the woman's face. Something quite different there, lurking under the soft gaiety. Was it consciousness of this being the second time during the evening that she had employed the too common vaunt of the woman of that particular world? Did some ironic echo reach her of that same boast (often as mirthless and as pitiful as the painted smile on the cruder face), the 'I'm afraid I'm rather frivolous' of the well-to-do woman, whose frivolity—invaluable asset!—is beginning to show wear?

      'Well, to return to our mutton,' he said; and, as his companion seemed suddenly to be overtaken by some unaccountable qualm, 'What a desert life would be,' he added encouragingly, 'if we couldn't talk to the discreet about the indiscreet.'

      'I wonder if there wouldn't be still more oases in the desert,' she said idly, 'if there were a new law made——'

      He glanced at her with veiled apprehension in the pause.

      'You being so Liberal,' she went on with faint mockery, 'you're the very one to introduce the measure' (he shrank visibly, and seemed about to remind her of her pledge). 'It shall ordain,' she went on, 'that those who have found satisfactory husbands or wives are to rest content with their good fortune, and not be so greedy as to insist on having the children, too.'

      'Oh!' His gravity relaxed.

      'But, on the other hand, all the lonely women, the widows and spinsters, who haven't got anything else, they shall have the children.'

      'I won't go so far as that,' he laughed, boundlessly relieved that the conversation was not taking the strenuous СКАЧАТЬ