He didn’t thirst at all to assist in their immediate problems. He was, indeed, unsympathetic to Colonial members of the English Parliament; he called them geographical anomalies. For his own energy and muscle his own country was the field; but there was a part of him that longed for dedication and share in the common wealth of aesthetics that is so much richer and more rewarding where the Empire began.
“Don’t you see, Sis,” he said to me, “the dear old show is far more our priceless inheritance than it is that of the freeborn Briton who pays the taxes, and thinks he comes in for it. He doesn’t inherit it at all—how can he? He’s always had it. He doesn’t know how beautiful and appreciable and humorous it all is—how can he? It’s what he has been brought up to.”
“He sees funny little things in us, I daresay,” I observed.
“Yes,” said Graham, “but they don’t amount to a fortune. Now, we with our empty country and our simple record, we’ve got a point of view, if you like. It’s inestimable. Life isn’t long enough to look in, if you want to get anything else done.”
He would get quite feverish about that. And the worst of it was, we hadn’t to be near any great national monument to produce such ardours in him. A street contact would be enough, a paragraph in a newspaper. Towse would do it; Lady Doleford, in particular, had this effect upon him.
“She’s like some dear old abbey,” he said. “She doesn’t belong at all to the present; she has no modern improvements. She looks as if she would much rather be dead and buried and razed to the ground; but she won’t be, you’ll see, until Peter the Earl marries Evelyn, and she sees things the way she wants them. Till then she’ll totter, the way she does now, but she won’t fall; her traditions will hold her together. The day after the wedding we will hear she has collapsed in the night.”
“What about Barbara?” I asked.
“Won’t Evelyn take care of her?”
“I suppose she would,” I replied; “I didn’t think of that.”
“She’s a nice girl—Barbara,” said Graham thoughtfully. “I take an interest in Barbara. I would protect Barbara myself if she were alone in the world. But with a brother the size of Doleford, and relatives like the sands of the sea ”
“You won’t be wanted,” I completed. “Evelyn says the relatives are all badly off, though. They haven’t sixpence among them, except the Lippingtons, and they’re not very near. There seems to be a kind of English relation that can lend you a house in town and mount you in the country, and present you at Court, but her usefulness stops there.”
“Then it all depends—for Barbara—upon brother Peter,” said Graham.
“I’m afraid it does,” I said.
Graham flung himself down in an armchair and thrust his hands into his pockets. We were in the flat.
“How do you think Lady Barbara compares with Ethel Carter?” he enquired.
“Ethel Carter of Montreal? Why, I don’t think there is any comparison!” I exclaimed. “They’re so different.”
“There’s always a comparison,” he insisted, “between one girl and another. They’re both tall, and they’ve got the same coloured hair.”
“Yes,” I said, “and the same number of fingers, and probably of toes. But as to type ”
“I don’t see,” said Graham, “that there’s such an extraordinary difference in type. Ethel hasn’t the bearing, quite, of Lady Barbie, but she’s much better read.”
“The daughter of a hundred earls, or even fifty, ought to hold herself well,” I said. “I suppose it doesn’t matter so much what she reads.”
“Perhaps, on the whole,” pursued Graham, “she is more like Kitty Curtis.”
“Kitty Curtis of Toronto!” I exclaimed.
“I don’t know any other. And I don’t know why you say ‘of Toronto’ in that tone precisely. It doesn’t convey—to me—any local disability.”
“Not in the least—when you’re there,” I hastened to agree.
“When you’re anywhere. I think Kitty’s manner is quite as good as Lady Barbara’s. Where she, Kitty, loses by comparison is in simplicity of nature,” pursued Graham. “What impresses you so much as dignity in Barbara Pavisay is just ”
“Having nothing to fall back upon.”
“Not at all. I was going to say just directness. She is absolutely devoid of self-consciousness,” Graham mused. “It’s very attractive. One likes comparing a girl like that with one’s own countrywomen. I must say she holds her own very well.”
“That’s handsome of you,” I remarked ironically, but inwardly I was quite well pleased. If my brother could calmly adjudicate in this way upon the merits of Lady Barbara it seemed pretty clear that there was no need to fear a hopeless entanglement for him in that direction. Why I should have considered it so hopeless I can’t quite say; but even then I did. I don’t wish to seem exacting for Graham; but it seemed, without knowing more than the outside of Barbara, queer, unlikely, and ridiculous to the last degree, the kind of thing you instinctively dismissed from your mind without stopping to consider why.
Under this impression I encouraged Graham in his tendency to compare Lady Barbara with the girls at home, which he seemed rather to like to do about that time. He was constantly placing her among them, as if to see how she would look; any discussion of her had a way of leading to that. He would never agree with her superiorities where I found them; and where she came short, he would admit it somewhat grudgingly. What he apparently wanted was to establish to his own satisfaction that she occupied much the same level, was in all essentials very much the same sort of girl. That was inconsistent of him, for anyone could see that it was just as part of something very different that he admired her, part of the fine old scheme of things from which we were cut off by exactly that point of view which he valued so much. There was, of course, her beautiful figure, as there was her lovely hair, and one might go on enumerating, but the result would only be so many items and such an aggregate; I could almost see him turn from it with a sigh. It was as if he wanted, even then, for the interest of it, to take a simply human view of her, but invariably she would retreat before his efforts into the impressive architecture of her order; to all his invitations she remained obstinately aesthetic.
We were seeing a good deal of her, of everybody. We were in the midst of a period of dances and dinners and At Homes which made us feel like conjurers’ balls, with such wonderful nimbleness we went from one hand to another. One had always thought of London as a place of the austerest conventions, where it was very improbable that any stranger would quite know how to behave; but it was not easy, in the absence of almost all convention and behaviour, to recognise difficulties of that kind. I mean, of course, convention and behaviour of the sort one expected. These seemed to lurk only in an occasional grey citadel like Lady Doleford, which had an apologetic air of begging to remain, though consciously useless against modern weapons. I wouldn’t simply that there were not plenty of delightful standards, but they were certainly not exacting of time and circumstance; they made for ease and fluidity and forgetting—a word, a smile, an address scratched down, and there you were, breathless and enchanted, until you were somewhere else. We sometimes wondered how there could ever be time in it all for a friendship to be born, or even a reliable acquaintance; and I asked Mrs. Jerome Jarvis once, who told me that for her part she made a point of keeping her friendships for the country.
“You’ll see,” she said, “how they grow in the country—how they blossom in our lovely old halls. Has Margot Lippington told you that Billy and I are to be fellow-guests with you at Knowes on the 15th? I am devoted to Margot, you know, and she to me; there is nothing that we can’t and won’t perform for one another. I must say for Margot she’s a staunch friend.”
Then I began to wonder whether, for all its appearance of whirl and scramble and superficiality, the whole great organism wasn’t very much knit together indeed, by ties of mutual loyalty and obligation—wasn’t one fabric, down below, that was thoroughly warr
anted to wear. One heard so openly of efforts made on behalf of this or that desirable plan, of things done avowedly to help the Lippingtons to get the Canadian Viceroyalty, to fall in with Lady Doleford’s idea of an American for Peter, even to dispose suitably for his own good and in the general interest of Mr. Guy Pontex. These schemes and plans were never very practical or effective; they wore all the restraints of morality; but they were full of benevolent intention, and inspired, above all, with a sense of praiseworthy expediency. It must be very interesting, I fancied, to be fitted into them in any important way, as Evelyn was, and as I began to think Graham some day might be. (It was only that he was more and more about this time at the Colonial Office, and Lord Selkirk chaffed him openly about the probability that he would one day fill the official shoes of the High Commissioner.) Even my own small allotment in the general disposition, represented, as it was impossible by then not to see, by Billy Milliken, brought me an amusement that I won’t attempt to justify. I felt like a mouse in the paws of Mrs. Jarvis, her own small Colonial trophy, which she would presently drop at the feet of Society, like rather a fraudulent mouse, perhaps, that really felt no great alarm, and listened with fascination to the purrings of conquest.
Besides, Billy wasn’t so inconsiderable, after all; at least, in the eyes of the world, judging by the flattering attention paid him. It couldn’t have been entirely because he would dance. His income, though small, was definite; and he had chosen the Bar as a profession, though this, he confided to me, was nominal, and merely masked, for the moment, his intention of going into politics.
“The country’s got into the hands of such a lot of bounders lately,” he told me. “A fellow feels more or less expected to do what he can to get it back again.”
He had, therefore, lofty ideals; he was ready with any reasonable personal sacrifice for his native land. I say any reasonable sacrifice because there was, I understood, a limit. It had to do with an amendment of the Rules of Procedure about adjournments, which threatened week-ends and the dinner-hour.
“Of course they may make the House impossible for gentlemen altogether,” said Billy. “And if they do ”
If they did, one was obliged to contemplate the contingency that Billy would withdraw. He had not hitherto paid much attention to political matters; he would have to mug them up fresh in any case, he said, at the approach of his candidature, so there was no special point in worrying about it beforehand.
“Besides,” he said, “there’s always some Cabinet Johnny to speak for you, you know—it isn’t as if you had to do it all off your own bat.”
“He has great confidence in his mother, too. Haven’t you, Billy?” said Mrs. Jerome Jarvis, who was party to this conversation.
“I don’t wish to boast, but it would be idle to deny that my Panhard and I made our Member—last year, in the Redbury bye. How I slaved for that man! I took statistics to bed with me, and spoke three times a day to get them off my mind. Much the best way—otherwise you muddle them. I consider statistics the worst feature of English elections. But Billy shall be returned, Miss Trent—you have his mother’s pledge.”
It was to Billy’s political influence—or possibly his mother’s—that I owed the tea-party in the House, the day I was at last sent an order to view. Graham had often been; but there is very little room for us, and I had to wait such a long time before Lord Selkirk could arrange for my admission that Mrs. Jarvis took it into her own hands. It seems a little ungrateful, if many Members owe their seats to a lady and a motor, not to provide more accommodation; and Evelyn, who was also of the party, said that such a thing as the grille couldn’t live in Washington for ten minutes.
“The American woman,” she remarked, “may not be such a power in politics as they are over here; but the men know better than to invite her to appear in public in a cage for any reason whatever.”
We were in charge, very naturally, of the Member for Redbury, to whom Mrs. Jarvis had been such a successful godmother. His name was Tally—Mr. Albert Tally. He presently came for us, and took us down to the Lobby, where among groups of living legislators in silk hats and effigies of dead ones in stone, we were joined by Billy Milliken, who had been in the Distinguished Strangers’ Gallery. Mr. Tally also introduced a Mr. Popplewell, who was even a greater surprise, as a Member of Parliament, than Mr. Tally had been. I had thought Mr. Tally as young as it was possible to be, and be elected; but Mr. Popplewell was younger still, younger in appearance, at all events, even than Billy Milliken. However, it was all very cheerful, and when we were presently further joined by two cousins and a youthful aunt of Mr. Popplewell’s it became even more so. We went along the corridors in a body, corridors lined with shelves, weighted with Acts of the serious Parliaments of old days, and finally found a little Gothic room with a window on the river and a table spread.
“Nursery tea—how perfectly sweet!” exclaimed Mr. Popplewell’s youthful aunt, and one of Mr. Popplewell’s cousins at once removed the seed-cake from his reach, because, she declared, this was a party and he mustn’t have all the cake. Mr. Tally at once retorted by seizing the bread and butter, and Mr. Popplewell’s aunt, who had been asked to pour out tea, held the teapot aloft and threatened to withhold it until they should behave more properly.
“I call it a nice alimentary tea,” said Mrs. Jerome Jarvis, and it was. Honest bread and butter and plenty of it, buns of the most corpulent, good thick slices of seed-cake.
“I’m afraid they’ve forgotten the jam,” said Mr. Tally, and this made everybody laugh very much. Mr. Tally was very lively, very talkative, and his mouth had a disused air when he wasn’t laughing. Mr. Popplewell, though less mature, was graver in appearance. He suggested, to have arrived at his present dignity, having done something remarkable at the University. I asked Billy if this wasn’t so, and he corroborated it.
“Double First,” he murmured; “but Tally was stroke for Magdalen the year they went up three places on the river.”
“What’s going on?” asked Mr. Tally. “I’ve been in the reading-room. I’ve only occupied a seat for a quarter of an hour myself this Session, and then I was turned out.”
“Federated Employers again. Whangworth was up when I came out. Rotten subject and a rotter to talk about it,” said Mr. Popplewell.
“Why were you turned out?” I asked Mr. Tally.
“Well, there isn’t anything like room enough for us all, you know, and the new lot’s so beastly keen on places—they seem to enjoy sittin’ in ’em. Can’t imagine why, unless it’s because of the cushions. I find it rather stuffy myself. I’m sorry you came in for Whangworth—he’s about our most colossal bore.”
“Queer thing, you know,” said Mr. Popplewell, “a bore like Whangworth can always catch the Speaker’s eye. I suppose he knows he’s got to see them in the end—they get up like india-rubber till he does. At all events they’re most successful in getting the floor. And then, in the classic phrase of the newspapers, ‘the House empties.’”
Billy was entirely occupied with the aunt and two cousins of Mr. Popplewell—they were ardently discussing different kinds of buns, Billy stoutly maintaining against all attacks that there was nothing to be said for any kind of bun. Mr. Tally listened longingly to the debate, but he was too far away to join.
“It’s a pity,” he said to me instead, “you didn’t happen to hear Sammy Simmons instead. Awfully amusing speeches he makes. The House always fills up when it’s known Sammy Simmons is on his legs. I go in myself.”
“Rather. Simmons is as good as a musical comedy,” said Mr. Popplewell.
“How can we hear anything behind that absurd grating?” asked Mrs. Jerome Jarvis. “I feel like something in the Zoo—I do really—and not the politest animal either. Yet you allow us to call you civilised men!”
“It’s your own fault, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Popplewell; and we all exclaimed: “How?”
“You used to be allowed in, you know, but you didn’t behave at all nicely on a certain occasion.”
“When?” asked Evelyn.
“Oh, not very lately!”
“What did we do?” I enquired.
“Cheeky to the Sergeant-at-Arms, I believe. Wouldn’t go out pleasantly when he told you to. Sat tight, and no opera-hat was ever in it with your head-dresses.”
“I don’t believe a word of it!” said Mrs. Jarvis.
“Solemn fact, I assure you. You were technically recognised as strangers then, and when somebody moved that the House be cleared of strangers not one of you would budge. It took two hours to get rid of you.”
“When?” asked Evelyn again.
“I’m not absolutely certain, but I think about 1778,” said Mr. Popplewell.
“Two hundred and fifty odd years,” remarked Evelyn. “You know how to take notice of a thing, don’t you? About when do you usually begin to forgive and forget a matter like that?”
“It really is your own fault, though,” repeated Mr. Popplewell. “For a hundred years before that we let you in freely—as strangers.”
“And now we’re not even strangers!” exclaimed Mrs. Jarvis.
Just then a bell sounded in the distance, and Mr. Tally and Mr. Popplewell leapt to their feet. “Division!” they cried, and sped with flying coat-tails out of the room, abandoning their tea.
“Take care of my party, Milliken,” Mr. Tally put his head in to say. “I’ll be back in ten minutes or so,” and continued his high-spirited course to the lobbies. It was a very sporting exit.
They did come back to finish the honours of the afternoon, and Billy carefully corrected me for asking who won.
Evelyn and I drove home together. “I never thought,” she exclaimed, “that the Westminster House of Commons could be so cheerful.”
“Nor I,” I said.
“Of course we were lucky in our Members,” she said. “Most of them are at least ninety-five and in the habit of sitting there all night.”
“I hope a few of them are ninety-five,” I said, “for the sake of the country.”
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