A pile of correspondence was awaiting her and, standing by the desk, she began to open and read it. Suddenly she paused, conscious that someone had entered the room and, turning, she saw Hilda. She must have left the door ajar, for she had heard no sound. The child closed the door noiselessly and came across, holding out a letter.
“Papa told me to give you this the moment you came in,” she said. Joan had not yet taken off her things. The child must have been keeping a close watch. Save for the signature it contained but one line: “I have accepted.”
Joan replaced the letter in its envelope, and laid it down upon the desk. Unconsciously a smile played about her lips.
The child was watching her. “I’m glad you persuaded him,” she said.
Joan felt a flush mount to her face. She had forgotten Hilda for the instant.
She forced a laugh. “Oh, I only persuaded him to do what he had made up his mind to do,” she explained. “It was all settled.”
“No, it wasn’t,” answered the child. “Most of them were against it. And then there was Mama,” she added in a lower tone.
“What do you mean,” asked Joan. “Didn’t she wish it?”
The child raised her eyes. There was a dull anger in them. “Oh, what’s the good of pretending,” she said. “He’s so great. He could be the Prime Minister of England if he chose. But then he would have to visit kings and nobles, and receive them at his house, and Mama—” She broke off with a passionate gesture of the small thin hands.
Joan was puzzled what to say. She knew exactly what she ought to say: what she would have said to any ordinary child. But to say it to this uncannily knowing little creature did not promise much good.
“Who told you I persuaded him?” she asked.
“Nobody,” answered the child. “I knew.”
Joan seated herself, and drew the child towards her.
“It isn’t as terrible as you think,” she said. “Many men who have risen and taken a high place in the world were married to kind, good women unable to share their greatness. There was Shakespeare, you know, who married Anne Hathaway and had a clever daughter. She was just a nice, homely body a few years older than himself. And he seems to have been very fond of her; and was always running down to Stratford to be with her.”
“Yes, but he didn’t bring her up to London,” answered the child. “Mama would have wanted to come; and Papa would have let her, and wouldn’t have gone to see Queen Elizabeth unless she had been invited too.”
Joan wished she had not mentioned Shakespeare. There had surely been others; men who had climbed up and carried their impossible wives with them. But she couldn’t think of one, just then.
“We must help her,” she answered somewhat lamely. “She’s anxious to learn, I know.”
The child shook her head. “She doesn’t understand,” she said. “And Papa won’t tell her. He says it would only hurt her and do no good.” The small hands were clenched. “I shall hate her if she spoils his life.”
The atmosphere was becoming tragic. Joan felt the need of escaping from it. She sprang up.
“Oh, don’t be nonsensical,” she said. “Your father isn’t the only man married to a woman not as clever as himself. He isn’t going to let that stop him. And your mother’s going to learn to be the wife of a great man and do the best she can. And if they don’t like her they’ve got to put up with her. I shall talk to the both of them.” A wave of motherliness towards the entire Phillips family passed over her. It included Hilda. She caught the child to her and gave her a hug. “You go back to school,” she said, “and get on as fast as you can, so that you’ll be able to be useful to him.”
The child flung her arms about her. “You’re so beautiful and wonderful,” she said. “You can do anything. I’m so glad you came.”
Joan laughed. It was surprising how easily the problem had been solved. She would take Mrs. Phillips in hand at once. At all events she should be wholesome and unobtrusive. It would be a delicate mission, but Joan felt sure of her own tact. She could see his boyish eyes turned upon her with wonder and gratitude.
“I was so afraid you would not be back before I went,” said the child. “I ought to have gone this afternoon, but Papa let me stay till the evening.”
“You will help?” she added, fixing on Joan her great, grave eyes.
Joan promised, and the child went out. She looked pretty when she smiled. She closed the door behind her noiselessly.
It occurred to Joan that she would like to talk matters over with Greyson. There was “Clorinda’s” attitude to be decided upon; and she was interested to know what view he himself would take. Of course he would be on P--’s side. The Evening Gazette had always supported the “gas and water school” of socialism; and to include the people’s food was surely only an extension of the principle. She rang him up and Miss Greyson answered, asking her to come round to dinner: they would be alone. And she agreed.
The Greysons lived in a small house squeezed into an angle of the Outer Circle, overlooking Regent’s Park. It was charmingly furnished, chiefly with old Chippendale. The drawing-room made quite a picture. It was home-like and restful with its faded colouring, and absence of all show and overcrowding. They sat there after dinner and discussed Joan’s news. Miss Greyson was repairing a piece of old embroidery she had brought back with her from Italy; and Greyson sat smoking, with his hands behind his head, and his long legs stretched out towards the fire.
“Carleton will want him to make his food policy include Tariff Reform,” he said. “If he prove pliable, and is willing to throw over his free trade principles, all well and good.”
“What’s Carleton got to do with it?” demanded Joan with a note of indignation.
He turned his head towards her with an amused raising of the eyebrows. “Carleton owns two London dailies,” he answered, “and is in treaty for a third: together with a dozen others scattered about the provinces. Most politicians find themselves, sooner or later, convinced by his arguments. Phillips may prove the exception.”
“It would be rather interesting, a fight between them,” said Joan. “Myself I should back Phillips.”
“He might win through,” mused Greyson. “He’s the man to do it, if anybody could. But the odds will be against him.”
“I don’t see it,” said Joan, with decision.
“I’m afraid you haven’t yet grasped the power of the Press,” he answered with a smile. “Phillips speaks occasionally to five thousand people. Carleton addresses every day a circle of five million readers.”
“Yes, but when Phillips does speak, he speaks to the whole country,” retorted Joan.
“Through the medium of Carleton and his like; and just so far as they allow his influence to permeate beyond the platform,” answered Greyson.
“But they report his speeches. They are bound to,” explained Joan.
“It doesn’t read quite the same,” he answered. “Phillips goes home under the impression that he has made a great success and has roused the country. He and millions of other readers learn from the next morning’s headlines that it was ‘A Tame Speech’ that he made. What sounded to him ‘Loud Cheers’ have sunk to mild ‘Hear, Hears.’ That five minutes’ hurricane of applause, during which wildly excited men and women leapt upon the benches and roared themselves hoarse, and which he felt had settled the whole question, he searches for in vain. A few silly interjections, probably pre-arranged by Carleton’s young lions, become ‘renewed interruptions.’ The report is strictly truthful; but the impression produced is that Robert Phillips has failed to carry even his own people with him. And then follow leaders in fourteen widely-circulated Dailies, stretching from the Clyde to the Severn, foretelling how Mr. Robert Phillips could regain his waning popularity by the simple process of adopting Tariff Reform: or whatever the pet panacea of Carleton and Co. may, at the moment, happen to be.”
“Don’t make us out all alike,” pleaded his sister with a laugh. “There are still a few old-fashioned papers that do give their opponents fair play.”
“They are not increasing in numbers,” he answered, “and the Carleton group is. There is no reason why in another ten years he should not control the entire popular press of the country. He’s got the genius and he’s got the means.”
“The cleverest thing he has done,” he continued, turning to Joan, “is your Sunday Post. Up till then, the working classes had escaped him. With the Sunday Post, he has solved the problem. They open their mouths; and he gives them their politics wrapped up in pictures and gossipy pars.”
Miss Greyson rose and put away her embroidery. “But what’s his object?” she said. “He must have more money than he can spend; and he works like a horse. I could understand it, if he had any beliefs.”
“Oh, we can all persuade ourselves that we are the Heaven-ordained dictator of the human race,” he answered. “Love of power is at the bottom of it. Why do our Rockefellers and our Carnegies condemn themselves to the existence of galley slaves, ruining their digestions so that they never can enjoy a square meal. It isn’t the money; it’s the trouble of their lives how to get rid of that. It is the notoriety, the power that they are out for. In Carleton’s case, it is to feel himself the power behind the throne; to know that he can make and unmake statesmen; has the keys of peace and war in his pocket; is able to exclaim: Public opinion? It is I.”
“It can be a respectable ambition,” suggested Joan.
“It has been responsible for most of man’s miseries,” he answered. “Every world’s conqueror meant to make it happy after he had finished knocking it about. We are all born with it, thanks to the devil.” He shifted his position and regarded her with critical eyes. “You’ve got it badly,” he said. “I can see it in the tilt of your chin and the quivering of your nostrils. You beware of it.”
Miss Greyson left them. She had to finish an article. They debated “Clorinda’s” views; and agreed that, as a practical housekeeper, she would welcome attention being given to the question of the nation’s food. The Evening Gazette would support Phillips in principle, while reserving to itself the right of criticism when it came to details.
“What’s he like in himself?” he asked her. “You’ve been seeing something of him, haven’t you?”
“Oh, a little,” she answered. “He’s absolutely sincere; and he means business. He won’t stop at the bottom of the ladder now he’s once got his foot upon it.”
“But he’s quite common, isn’t he?” he asked again. “I’ve only met him in public.”
“No, that’s precisely what he isn’t,” answered Joan. “You feel that he belongs to no class, but his own. The class of the Abraham Lincolns, and the Dantons.”
“England’s a different proposition,” he mused. “Society counts for so much with us. I doubt if we should accept even an Abraham Lincoln: unless in some supreme crisis. His wife rather handicaps him, too, doesn’t she?”
“She wasn’t born to be the châtelaine of Downing Street,” Joan admitted. “But it’s not an official position.”
“I’m not so sure that it isn’t,” he laughed. “It’s the dinner-table that rules in England. We settle everything round a dinner-table.”
She was sitting in front of the fire in a high-backed chair. She never cared to loll, and the shaded light from the electric sconces upon the mantelpiece illumined her.
“If the world were properly stage-managed, that’s what you ought to be,” he said, “the wife of a Prime Minister. I can see you giving such an excellent performance.”
“I must talk to Mary,” he added, “see if we can’t get you off on some promising young Under Secretary.”
“Don’t give me ideas above my station,” laughed Joan. “I’m a journalist.”
“That’s the pity of it,” he said. “You’re wasting the most important thing about you, your personality. You would do more good in a drawing-room, influencing the rulers, than you will ever do hiding behind a pen. It was the drawing-room that made the French Revolution.”
The firelight played about her hair. “I suppose every woman dreams of reviving the old French Salon,” she answered. “They must have been gloriously interesting.” He was leaning forward with clasped hands. “Why shouldn’t she?” he said. “The reason that our drawing-rooms have ceased to lead is that our beautiful women are generally frivolous and our clever women unfeminine. What we are waiting for is an English Madame Roland.”
Joan laughed. “Perhaps I shall some day,” she answered.
He insisted on seeing her as far as the bus. It was a soft, mild night; and they walked round the Circle to Gloucester Gate. He thought there would be more room in the buses at that point.
“I wish you would come oftener,” he said. “Mary has taken such a liking to you. If you care to meet people, we can always whip up somebody of interest.”
She promised that she would. She always felt curiously at home with the Greysons.
They were passing the long sweep of Chester Terrace. “I like this neighbourhood with its early Victorian atmosphere,” she said. “It always makes me feel quiet and good. I don’t know why.”
“I like the houses, too,” he said. “There’s a character about them. You don’t often find such fine drawing-rooms in London.”
“Don’t forget your promise,” he reminded her, when they parted. “I shall tell Mary she may write to you.”
She met Carleton by chance a day or two later, as she was entering the office. “I want to see you,” he said; and took her up with him into his room.
“We must stir the people up about this food business,” he said, plunging at once into his subject. “Phillips is quite right. It overshadows everything. We must make the country self-supporting. It can be done and must. If a war were to be sprung upon us we could be starved out in a month. Our navy, in face of these new submarines, is no longer able to secure us. France is working day and night upon them. It may be a bogey, or it may not. If it isn’t, she would have us at her mercy; and it’s too big a risk to run. You live in the same house with him, don’t you? Do you often see him?”
“Not often,” she answered.
He was reading a letter. “You were dining there on Friday night, weren’t you?” he asked her, without looking up.
Joan flushed. What did he mean by cross-examining her in this way? She was not at all used to impertinence from the opposite sex.
“Your information is quite correct,” she answered.
Her anger betrayed itself in her tone; and he shot a swift glance at her.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said. “A mutual friend, a Mr. Airlie, happened to be of the party, and he mentioned you.”
He threw aside the letter. “I’ll tell you what I want you to do,” he said. “It’s nothing to object to. Tell him that you’ve seen me and had a talk. I understand his scheme to be that the country should grow more and more food until it eventually becomes self-supporting; and that the Government should control the distribution. Tell him that with that I’m heart and soul in sympathy; and would like to help him.” He pushed aside a pile of papers and, leaning across the desk, spoke with studied deliberation. “If he can see his way to making his policy dependent upon Protection, we can work together.”
“And if he can’t?” suggested Joan.
He fixed his large, colourless eyes upon her. “That’s where you can help him,” he answered. “If he and I combine forces, we can pull this through in spite of the furious opposition that it is going to arouse. Without a good Press he is helpless; and where is he going to get his Press backing if he turns me down? From half a dozen Socialist papers whose support will do him more harm than good. If he will bring the working class over to Protection I will undertake that the Tariff Reformers and the Agricultural Interest shall accept his Socialism. It will be a victory for both of us.
“If he gain his end, what do the means matter?” he continued, as Joan did not answer. “Food may be dearer; the Unions can square that by putting up wages; while the poor devil of a farm labourer will at last get fair treatment. We can easily insist upon that. What do you think, yourself?”
“About Protection,” she answered. “It’s one of the few subjects I haven’t made up my mind about.”
He laughed. “You will find all your pet reforms depend upon it, when you come to work them out,” he said. “You can’t have a minimum wage without a minimum price.”
They had risen.
“I’ll give him your message,” said Joan. “But I don’t see him exchanging his principles even for your support. I admit it’s important.”
“Talk it over with him,” he said. “And bear this in mind for your own guidance.” He took a step forward, which brought his face quite close to hers: “If he fails, and all his life’s work goes for nothing, I shall be sorry; but I shan’t break my heart. He will.”
Joan dropped a note into Phillips’s letter-box on her return home, saying briefly that she wished to see him; and he sent up answer asking her if she would come to the gallery that evening, and meet him after his speech, which would be immediately following the dinner hour.
It was the first time he had risen since his appointment, and he was received with general cheers. He stood out curiously youthful against the background of grey-haired and bald-headed men behind him; and there was youth also in his clear, ringing voice that not even the vault-like atmosphere of that shadowless chamber could altogether rob of its vitality. He spoke simply and good-humouredly, without any attempt at rhetoric, relying chiefly upon a crescendo of telling facts that gradually, as he proceeded, roused the House to that tense stillness that comes to it when it begins to think.
“A distinctly dangerous man,” Joan overheard a little old lady behind her comment to a friend. “If I didn’t hate him, I should like him.”
He met her in the corridor, and they walked up and down and talked, too absorbed to be aware of the curious eyes that were turned upon them. Joan gave him Carleton’s message.
“It was clever of him to make use of you,” he said. “If he’d sent it through anybody else, I’d have published it.”
“You don’t think it even worth considering?” suggested Joan.
“Protection?” he flashed out scornfully. “Yes, I’ve heard of that. I’ve listened, as a boy, while the old men told of it to one another, in thin, piping voices, round the fireside; how the labourers were flung eight-and-sixpence a week to die on, and the men starved in the towns; while the farmers kept their hunters, and got drunk each night on fine old crusted port. Do you know what their toast was in the big hotels on market day, with the windows open to the street: ‘To a long war and a bloody one.’ It would be their toast to-morrow, if they had their way. Does he think I am going to be a party to the putting of the people’s neck again under their pitiless yoke?”
“But the people are more powerful now,” argued Joan. “If the farmer demanded higher prices, they could demand higher wages.”
“They would never overtake the farmer,” he answered, with a laugh. “And the last word would always be with him. I am out to get rid of the landlords,” he continued, “not to establish them as the permanent rulers of the country, as they are in Germany. The people are more powerful — just a little, because they are no longer dependent on the land. They can say to the farmer, ‘All right, my son, if that’s your figure, I’m going to the shop next door — to South America, to Canada, to Russia.’ It isn’t a satisfactory solution. I want to see England happy and healthy before I bother about the Argentine. It drives our men into the slums when they might be living fine lives in God’s fresh air. In the case of war it might be disastrous. There, I agree with him. We must be able to shut our door without fear of having to open it ourselves to ask for bread. How would Protection accomplish that? Did he tell you?”
“Don’t eat me,” laughed Joan. “I haven’t been sent to you as a missionary. I’m only a humble messenger. I suppose the argument is that, good profits assured to him, the farmer would bustle up and produce more.”
“Can you see him bustling up?” he answered with a laugh; “organizing himself into a body, and working the thing out from the point of view of the public weal? I’ll tell you what nine-tenths of him would do: grow just as much or little as suited his own purposes; and then go to sleep. And Protection would be his security against ever being awakened.”
“I’m afraid you don’t like him,” Joan commented.
“He will be all right in his proper place,” he answered: “as the servant of the public: told what to do, and turned out of his job if he doesn’t do it. My scheme does depend upon Protection. You can tell him that. But this time, it’s going to be Protection for the people.”
They were at the far end of the corridor; and the few others still promenading were some distance away. She had not delivered the whole of her message. She crossed to a seat, and he followed her. She spoke with her face turned away from him.
“You have got to consider the cost of refusal,” she said. “His offer wasn’t help or neutrality: it was help or opposition by every means in his power. He left me in no kind of doubt as to that. He’s not used to being challenged and he won’t be squeamish. You will have the whole of his Press against you, and every other journalistic and political influence that he possesses. He’s getting a hold upon the working classes. The Sunday Post has an enormous sale in the manufacturing towns; and he’s talking of starting another. Are you strong enough to fight him?”
She very much wanted to look at him, but she would not. It seemed to her quite a time before he replied.
“Yes,” he answered, “I’m strong enough to fight him. Shall rather enjoy doing it. And it’s time that somebody did. Whether I’m strong enough to win has got to be seen.”
She turned and looked at him then. She wondered why she had ever thought him ugly.
“You can face it,” she said: “the possibility of all your life’s work being wasted?”
“It won’t be wasted,” he answered. “The land is there. I’ve seen it from afar and it’s a good land, a land where no man shall go hungry. If not I, another shall lead the people into it. I shall have prepared the way.”
She liked him for that touch of exaggeration. She was so tired of the men who make out all things little, including themselves and their own work. After all, was it exaggeration? Might he not have been chosen to lead the people out of bondage to a land where there should be no more fear.
“You’re not angry with me?” he asked. “I haven’t been rude, have I?”
“Abominably rude,” she answered, “you’ve defied my warnings, and treated my embassy with contempt.” She turned to him and their eyes met. “I should have despised you, if you hadn’t,” she added.
There was a note of exultation in her voice; and, as if in answer, something leapt into his eyes that seemed to claim her. Perhaps it was well that just then the bell rang for a division; and the moment passed.
He rose and held out his hand. “We will fight him,” he said. “And you can tell him this, if he asks, that I’m going straight for him. Parliament may as well close down if a few men between them are to be allowed to own the entire Press of the country, and stifle every voice that does not shout their bidding. We haven’t dethroned kings to put up a newspaper Boss. He shall have all the fighting he wants.”
They met more often from that day, for Joan was frankly using her two columns in the Sunday Post to propagate his aims. Carleton, to her surprise, made no objection. Nor did he seek to learn the result of his ultimatum. It looked, they thought, as if he had assumed acceptance; and was willing for Phillips to choose his own occasion. Meanwhile replies to her articles reached Joan in weekly increasing numbers. There seemed to be a wind arising, blowing towards Protection. Farm labourers, especially, appeared to be enthusiastic for its coming. From their ill-spelt, smeared epistles, one gathered that, after years of doubt and hesitation, they had — however reluctantly — arrived at the conclusion that without it there could be no hope for them. Factory workers, miners, engineers — more fluent, less apologetic — wrote as strong supporters of Phillips’s scheme; but saw clearly how upon Protection its success depended. Shopmen, clerks — only occasionally ungrammatical — felt sure that Robert Phillips, the tried friend of the poor, would insist upon the boon of Protection being no longer held back from the people. Wives and mothers claimed it as their children’s birthright. Similar views got themselves at the same time, into the correspondence columns of Carleton’s other numerous papers. Evidently Democracy had been throbbing with a passion for Protection hitherto unknown, even to itself.
“He means it kindly,” laughed Phillips. “He is offering me an excuse to surrender gracefully. We must have a public meeting or two after Christmas, and clear the ground.” They had got into the habit of speaking in the plural.
Mrs. Phillips’s conversion Joan found more difficult than she had anticipated. She had persuaded Phillips to take a small house and let her furnish it upon the hire system. Joan went with her to the widely advertised “Emporium” in the City Road, meaning to advise her. But, in the end, she gave it up out of sheer pity. Nor would her advice have served much purpose, confronted by the “rich and varied choice” provided for his patrons by Mr. Krebs, the “Furnisher for Connoisseurs.”
“We’ve never had a home exactly,” explained Mrs. Phillips, during their journey in the tram. “It’s always been lodgings, up to now. Nice enough, some of them; but you know what I mean; everybody else’s taste but your own. I’ve always fancied a little house with one’s own things in it. You know, things that you can get fond of.”
Oh, the things she was going to get fond of! The things that her poor, round foolish eyes gloated upon the moment that she saw them! Joan tried to enlist the shopman on her side, descending even to flirtation. Unfortunately he was a young man with a high sense of duty, convinced that his employer’s interests lay in his support of Mrs. Phillips. The sight of the furniture that, between them, they selected for the dining-room gave Joan a quite distinct internal pain. They ascended to the floor above, devoted to the exhibition of “ Recherché drawing-room suites.” Mrs. Phillips’s eye instinctively fastened with passionate desire upon the most atrocious. Joan grew vehement. It was impossible.
“I always was a one for cheerful colours,” explained Mrs. Phillips.
Even the shopman wavered. Joan pressed her advantage; directed Mrs. Phillips’s attention to something a little less awful. Mrs. Phillips yielded.
“Of course you know best, dear,” she admitted. “Perhaps I am a bit too fond of bright things.”
The victory was won. Mrs. Phillips had turned away. The shopman was altering the order. Joan moved towards the door, and accidentally caught sight of Mrs. Phillips’s face. The flabby mouth was trembling. A tear was running down the painted cheek.
Joan slipped her hand through the other’s arm.
“I’m not so sure you’re not right after all,” she said, fixing a critical eye upon the rival suites. “It is a bit mousey, that other.”
The order was once more corrected. Joan had the consolation of witnessing the childish delight that came again into the foolish face; but felt angry with herself at her own weakness.
It was the woman’s feebleness that irritated her. If only she had shown a spark of fight, Joan could have been firm. Poor feckless creature, what could have ever been her attraction for Phillips!
She followed, inwardly fuming, while Mrs. Phillips continued to pile monstrosity upon monstrosity. What would Phillips think? And what would Hilda’s eyes say when they looked upon that recherché drawing-room suite? Hilda, who would have had no sentimental compunctions! The woman would be sure to tell them both that she, Joan, had accompanied her and helped in the choosing. The whole ghastly house would be exhibited to every visitor as the result of their joint taste. She could hear Mr. Airlie’s purring voice congratulating her.
She ought to have insisted on their going to a decent shop. The mere advertisement ought to have forewarned her. It was the posters that had captured Mrs. Phillips: those dazzling apartments where bejewelled society reposed upon the “high-class but inexpensive designs” of Mr. Krebs. Artists ought to have more self-respect than to sell their talents for such purposes.
The contract was concluded in Mr. Krebs’ private office: a very stout gentleman with a very thin voice, whose dream had always been to one day be of service to the renowned Mr. Robert Phillips. He was clearly under the impression that he had now accomplished it. Even as Mrs. Phillips took up the pen to sign, the wild idea occurred to Joan of snatching the paper away from her, hustling her into a cab, and in some quiet street or square making the woman see for herself that she was a useless fool; that the glowing dreams and fancies she had cherished in her silly head for fifteen years must all be given up; that she must stand aside, knowing herself of no account.
It could be done. She felt it. If only one could summon up the needful brutality. If only one could stifle that still, small voice of Pity.
Mrs. Phillips signed amid splutterings and blots. Joan added her signature as witness.
She did effect an improvement in the poor lady’s dress. On Madge’s advice she took her to a voluble little woman in the Earl’s Court Road who was struck at once by Madame Phillips’s remarkable resemblance to the Baroness von Stein. Had not Joan noticed it? Whatever suited the Baroness von Stein — allowed by common consent to be one of the best-dressed women in London — was bound to show up Madame Phillips to equal advantage. By curious coincidence a costume for the Baroness had been put in hand only the day before. It was sent for and pinned upon the delighted Madame Phillips. Perfection! As the Baroness herself would always say: “My frock must be a framework for my personality. It must never obtrude.” The supremely well-dressed woman! One never notices what she has on: that is the test. It seemed it was what Mrs. Phillips had always felt herself. Joan could have kissed the voluble, emphatic little woman.
But the dyed hair and the paint put up a fight for themselves.
“I want you to do something very brave,” said Joan. She had invited herself to tea with Mrs. Phillips, and they were alone in the small white-panelled room that they were soon to say good-bye to. The new house would be ready at Christmas. “It will be a little hard at first,” continued Joan, “but afterwards you will be glad that you have done it. It is a duty you owe to your position as the wife of a great leader of the people.”
The firelight showed to Joan a comically frightened face, with round, staring eyes and an open mouth.
“What is it you want me to do?” she faltered.
“I want you to be just yourself,” said Joan; “a kind, good woman of the people, who will win their respect, and set them an example.” She moved across and seating herself on the arm of Mrs. Phillips’s chair, touched lightly with her hand the flaxen hair and the rouged cheek. “I want you to get rid of all this,” she whispered. “It isn’t worthy of you. Leave it to the silly dolls and the bad women.”
There was a long silence. Joan felt the tears trickling between her fingers.
“You haven’t seen me,” came at last in a thin, broken voice.
Joan bent down and kissed her. “Let’s try it,” she whispered.
A little choking sound was the only answer. But the woman rose and, Joan following, they stole upstairs into the bedroom and Mrs. Phillips turned the key.
It took a long time, and Joan, seated on the bed, remembered a night when she had taken a trapped mouse (if only he had been a quiet mouse!) into the bathroom and had waited while it drowned. It was finished at last, and Mrs Phillips stood revealed with her hair down, showing streaks of dingy brown.
Joan tried to enthuse; but the words came haltingly. She suggested to Joan a candle that some wind had suddenly blown out. The paint and powder had been obvious, but at least it had given her the mask of youth. She looked old and withered. The life seemed to have gone out of her.
“You see, dear, I began when I was young,” she explained; “and he has always seen me the same. I don’t think I could live like this.”
The painted doll that the child fancied! the paint washed off and the golden hair all turned to drab? Could one be sure of “getting used to it,” of “liking it better?” And the poor bewildered doll itself! How could one expect to make of it a statue: “The Woman of the People.” One could only bruise it.
It ended in Joan’s promising to introduce her to discreet theatrical friends who would tell her of cosmetics less injurious to the skin, and advise her generally in the ancient and proper art of “making up.”
It was not the end she had looked for. Joan sighed as she closed her door behind her. What was the meaning of it? On the one hand that unimpeachable law, the greatest happiness of the greatest number; the sacred cause of Democracy; the moral Uplift of the people; Sanity, Wisdom, Truth, the higher Justice; all the forces on which she was relying for the regeneration of the world — all arrayed in stern demand that the flabby, useless Mrs. Phillips should be sacrificed for the general good. Only one voice had pleaded for foolish, helpless Mrs. Phillips — and had conquered. The still, small voice of Pity.