The Convert Part 32

With the dazed look in her eyes, and cheeks scarlet with sympathy and confusion, the girl had run forward to greet her aunt, and to do her little share toward dissipating the awkward chill that had fallen on the company.

After producing a stammered, 'Oh--a--I thought it was----' the immediate effect on Mrs. Heriot was to make her both furious and cowed. Though a nervous stream of talk trickled on, Mrs. Freddy's face did not lose its fl.u.s.tered look nor did the company regain its ease, until a further diversion was created by the appearance of Miss Levering with an alert, humorous-looking man of middle-age in her train.

'Mr. Greatorex was pa.s.sing just in time to help me out of my hansom,'

was her greeting to Mrs. Freddy.

'And I,' said the gentleman, 'insisted on being further rewarded by being brought in.'

'_That_ is Miss Levering?' whispered Jean, partly to distract her aunt.

'Yes; why not?' said Lord Borrodaile, overhearing.

'Oh, I somehow imagined her different.'

'She _is_ different,' said Aunt Lydia, with bitter gloom. 'You would never know in the least what she was like from the look of her.'

Lord Borrodaile's eyes twinkled. 'Is that so?' he said, indulgent to a mood which hardly perhaps made for dispa.s.sionate apprais.e.m.e.nt.

'You don't believe it!' said Mrs. Heriot. 'Of course not!'

'I was only thinking what a fillip it gave acquaintance to be in doubt whether a person was a sinner or a saint.'

'It wouldn't for me,' said Jean.

'Oh, you see, you're so Scotch.'

He was incorrigible!

'I didn't hear, who is the man?' Jean asked, as those not knowing usually did.

Although far from distinguished in appearance, Mr. Greatorex would have stood in no danger of being overlooked, even if he had not those twinkling jewel-like eyes, and two strands of coal-black hair trained across his large b.u.mpy cranium, from the left ear to the right, and securely pasted there.

'It's that wretched radical, St. John Greatorex.' Mrs. Heriot turned from her niece to Lord Borrodaile. 'What foundation is there,' she demanded, 'for the rumour that he tells such good stories at dinner? _I_ never heard any.'

'Ah, I believe he keeps them till the ladies have left the room.'

'You don't like him, either,' said Mrs. Heriot, reaching out for the balm of alliance with Lord Borrodaile.

But he held aloof. 'Oh, they say he has his points--a good judge of wine, and knows more about Parliamentary procedure than most of us.'

'How you men stand up for one another! You know perfectly well you can't endure him.' Mrs. Heriot jerked her head away and faced the group round the tea-table. 'What is she saying? That she's been to a Suffrage meeting in Hyde Park!'

'How could she! Nothing would induce me to go and listen to such people!' said Miss Dunbarton.

Her eyes, as well as Mrs. Heriot's, were riveted on the tall figure, tea-cup in hand, moving away from the table now to make room for some new arrivals, and drawing after her a portion of the company, including Lady Whyteleafe and Richard Farnborough, who one after another had come in a few moments before. It was to the young man that Greatorex was saying, with a twinkle, 'I am sure Mr. Farnborough agrees with me.'

Slightly self-conscious, he replied, 'About Miss Levering being too--a----'

'For that sort of thing altogether "too."'

'How do you know?' said the lady herself, with a teasing smile.

Greatorex started out of the chair in which he had just deposited himself at her side. 'G.o.d bless my soul!' he said.

'She's only saying that to get a rise out of you.' Farnborough seemed unable to bear the momentary shadow obscuring the lady's brightness.

'Ah, yes'--Greatorex leaned back again--'your frocks aren't serious enough.'

'Haven't I been telling you it's an exploded notion that the Suffrage people are all dowdy and dull?'

'Pooh!' said Mr. Greatorex.

'You talk about some of them being pretty,' Farnborough said. '_I_ didn't see a good-looking one among 'em.'

'Ah, you men are so unsophisticated; you missed the fine feathers.'

'Plenty o' feathers on the one I heard.'

'Yes, but not _fine_ feathers. A man judges of the general effect. We can, at a pinch, see past unbecoming clothes, can't we, Lady Whyteleafe?

We see what women could make of themselves if they took the trouble.'

'All the same,' said the lady appealed to, 'it's odd they don't see how much better policy it would be if they _did_ take a little trouble about their looks. Now, if we got our maids to do those women's hair for them--if we lent them our French hats--ah, _then_'--Lady Whyteleafe nodded till the pear-shaped pearls in her ears swung out like milk-white bells ringing an alarum--'they'd convert you creatures fast enough then.'

'Perhaps "convert" is hardly the word,' said Vida, with ironic mouth. As though on an impulse, she bent forward to say, with her lips near Lady Whyteleafe's pearl drop: 'What if it's the aim of the movement to get away from the need of just these little dodges?'

'Dodges?'

But without the exclamation, Miss Levering must have seen that she had been speaking in an unknown tongue. A world where beauty exists for beauty's sake--which is love's sake--and not for tricking money or power out of men, even the possibility of such a world is beyond the imagining of many.

Something was said about a deputation of women who had waited on Mr.

Greatorex.

'Hm, yes, yes.' He fiddled with his watch chain.

As though she had just recalled the circ.u.mstances, 'Oh, yes,' Vida said, 'I remember I thought at the time, in my modest way, it was nothing short of heroic of them to go asking audience of their arch opponent.'

'It didn't come off!' He wagged his strange head.

'Oh,' she said innocently, 'I thought they insisted on bearding the lion in his den.'

'Of course I wasn't going to be bothered with a lot of----'

'You don't mean you refused to go out and face them!'

He put on a comic look of terror. 'I wouldn't have done it for worlds!

But a friend of mine went and had a look at 'em.'

'Well,' she laughed,'did he get back alive?'