Part 11 (2/2)

But Mary shook her head. She thought she would have been very well content at home. She could have got plenty of teaching to do. She thought of the little house as of a resting place from which she was to be debarred. But she would not dispute her father's will for her. He rallied her, saying that if they kept her her head and shoulders would presently be pus.h.i.+ng themselves above the slates.

”It was big enough for you,” she said indignantly, ”and your mind rises to greater heights than mine ever will. You cramped yourself into it, if it were a question of cramping. Why should not I?”

”Sometimes it was not big enough, Moll,” he answered. ”Sometimes it was sore cramping, and at other times it was big enough to contain the heaven and all the stars. Perhaps the ambition I flung away for myself I keep for you. I would not have you at microscopic work all your days.”

So it was settled. For a little while longer Mary stayed on at home.

Then, when the leaves were just opening out in pale green silk, and all the world was fragrant and full of the joy of birds, she went, unwillingly, and turning back many times to make her sorrowful farewells.

”I don't want you to stay till you begin to feel cramped,” Walter Gray had said. ”I had rather you went away with your illusions.”

She did carry away her illusions. It was a happy and blessed thing for her that she could make illusions about common things all the days she was to live. Yet somewhere, in her hidden heart, she knew her father was right.

CHAPTER XI

THE LION

Mary was established, high up in Chenevix House. She was amazed at the s.p.a.ciousness of the rooms, the feeling in them as though the streets were far away. The square was a wonder of waving and tossing green, across which Mary looked from her window and saw other stately old houses like the one she was in. At first she was never tired of admiring the miracle of spring in London. She realised that no country greenness is equal to the glory of the new leaf against the dingy house-fronts, the green freshness about the black stems and boughs and branches.

Lady Agatha was in a perpetual whirl of affairs and gaiety. All her days, and her nights into the small hours, seemed to be filled. At this time Mary had a great deal of her time to herself. In the morning she wrote her Ladys.h.i.+p's letters, and selected from the newspapers such things as her Ladys.h.i.+p ought to read. By-and-by she would be much busier. She was taking lessons in short-hand and type-writing in the afternoons. Her Ladys.h.i.+p would come in only in time to dress for dinner.

She had been driving in the park, she had been calling, she had been at a concert, or a matinee, or an ”At Home.” She had been attending this or that meeting. She was never in bed before the summer dawn, yet she would be at the breakfast-table as fresh as a milkmaid, smiling at Mary and telling her this and that bit of news or event of the time since they had met.

Mrs. Morres, who had to accompany her to many places, slept every hour of the day she could. She confessed to Mary in her dry way, that did not ask for pity, that she found her Ladys.h.i.+p's energy superhuman. Sometimes there was an interesting debate in the House of Commons, and Lady Agatha must drop in after dinner to sit for an hour behind the gilded grille.

Afterwards she would go on to a political reception. Later to a ball, where she would dance as though there had been nothing in all the long day to tire her.

Once or twice she had a quiet dinner-party, to which Mary came down in her frock of filmy black, which made a delightful setting for her fair paleness. At these dinners she encountered famous men and women, and looked at them from afar off with wistful interest. In the drawing-room afterwards she saw Lady Agatha the centre of a brilliant group. Someone said of her that she was likely to be the spoilt child of politics, since she could be audacious with even the greatest, and move them to speak when no one else could. The great men shook their heads at her and smiled. They warned her that she went too fast for them, that impulsiveness, charming as it was in a woman, was not to be permitted in politics. ”If you would but learn diplomacy, my dear lady!” Sir Michael Auberon sighed. But diplomacy seemed likely to be the last thing Lady Agatha Chenevix would learn.

Mary used to sit under Mrs. Morres's wing, and listen, through her witty and wise talk, to the utterances of the great. She felt very shy of these companies of distinguished men and women. Lady Agatha made one or two attempts to draw her closer. Then, perceiving that she was happier in her corner, she let her be.

In her corner Mary listened. She listened with all her ears. Her cheeks would flush and her eyes s.h.i.+ne as she listened. There was a younger school of politicians which was well represented at Lady Agatha's parties. Their theories had the generosity of youth. Sir Michael Auberon would listen to them, nodding his head, his fine, beautiful old face lit up with as great a generosity as warmed theirs. He was very fond of his ”boys.” If he must show them what was impracticable in their views he did it gently. He rallied them with tenderness. He had none of the mockery which is so searing and blighting a thing to hot youth.

One night Mary, looking down the dinner-table, saw a face she remembered. The owner of the face--a tall, loosely-built, plain-looking young man--glanced her way at the moment, and stared--stared and looked away again with a baffled air. Mary knew him at once for the boy she had met seven or eight years before at the Court. He had aged considerably.

Men like him have a way of falling into their manhood all at once. His hair was even a little thin on top--with that and his lean, hatchet face he might have been thirty-five.

Afterwards in the drawing-room he was one of those who stood nearest to Sir Michael. Some of the others laughed at him, calling him Don Quixote, and she heard Sir Michael say that the young man's theories were those of the Gironde. ”The Revolution devours her own children,” he said, with his fine old ironic smile. ”And a good many of us have to eat our own professions before we're forty. The great thing would be if we could keep our youthful generosity with the wisdom of our prime.”

Looking towards Mary, he caught the flame of enthusiasm in her eyes, and again he smiled. But this time it was a smile without irony, rather an understanding and, one might have said, a grateful smile. All the world knew that Sir Michael's private sorrows were heavy ones, and that he leant the more on the alleviations and consolations his public life brought him.

Afterwards he asked to be introduced to Mary and talked with her for a little while, making her the envy of the room.

”She has a clear mind as well as a sound heart,” he said. ”She is on fire with the pa.s.sion for humanity. Take her about with you”--this to Lady Agatha. ”Let her see how the people live--what serfs we have under our free banner. There is fine material in her. She should do good work.”

Meanwhile Mrs. Morres sat by Mary, doing crochet, with a quiet smile.

Her tongue dripped cold water on all the enthusiasms.

”Believe me, my dear, they will do nothing,” she said placidly in Mary's ear. That placidity of hers gave her the air of being as relentless as a Fate. ”Parties are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Let Sir Michael get into office and he'll do nothing. Those fine young gentlemen over there will be the office-holders of twenty years to come, the fat sinecurists and pluralists. The people were better off when, like the lower animals, they had no souls. They were protected by their betters. Now they are at war with them and they are more soulless than before. Dear me, how much fine talk I have heard that never came to anything!”

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