The Convert Part 15

'Who is our fourth?' said Lady Sophia, suddenly.

'Oh, Borrodaile!' Lord John stopped halfway across the lawn and called back, 'aren't you coming?'

'It's not a bit of use,' said Sophia. 'You'll see. He's safe to sit there and talk to Miss Levering till the dressing-bell rings.'

'Isn't she a _nice_ creature!' said Lord John. 'I can't think how a woman like that hasn't got some nice fella to marry her!'

'Would you like to see my yellow garden, Vida?' Lady John asked. 'It's rather glorious at this moment.'

Obvious from the quick lifting of the eyes that the guest was on the point of welcoming the proposal, had Filey not swallowed his belated cup of tea with surprising quickness after saying, 'What's a yellow garden?'

in the unmistakable tone of one bent upon enlarging his experience. Lady John, with all her antennae out, lost no time in saying to Vida--

'Perhaps you're a little tired. Hermione, you show Mr. Filey the garden.

And maybe, Lord Borrodaile would like to see it, too.'

Although the last-named failed to share the enthusiasm expected in a gardener, he pulled his long, slackly-put-together figure out of the chair and joined the young people.

When they were out of earshot, 'What's the matter?' asked Lady John.

'Matter?'

'Yes, what did poor Paul say to make you fall upon him like that?'

'I didn't "fall upon" him, did I?'

'Well, yes, I rather thought you did.'

'Oh, I suppose I--perhaps it did jar on me, just a little, to hear a c.o.c.ksure boy----'

'He's not a boy. Paul is over thirty.'

'I was thinking of d.i.c.k Farnborough, too--talking about women like that, before women.'

'Oh, all they meant was----'

'Yes, I know. Of course we _all_ know they aren't accustomed to treating our s.e.x in general with overmuch respect when there are only men present--but--do you think it's quite decent that they should be so free with their contempt of women before us?'

'But, my dear Vida! _That_ sort of woman! Haven't they deserved it?'

'That's just what n.o.body seems to know. I've sat and listened to conversations like the one at tea for a week now, and I've said as much against those women as anybody. Only to-day, somehow, when I heard that boy--yes, I was conscious I didn't like it.'

'You're behaving exactly as Dr. Johnson did about Garrick. You won't allow any one to abuse those women but yourself.'

Lady John cleared the whole trivial business away with a laugh.

'Now, be nice to Paul. He's dying to talk to you about his book. Let us go and join them in the garden. See if you can stand before my yellow blaze and not feel melted.'

The elder woman and the younger went down the terrace through a little copse to her ladys.h.i.+p's own area of experimentation. A gate of old Florentine scrolled iron opened suddenly upon a blaze of yellow in all the shades from the orange velvet of the wallflower through the shaded saffron of azalias and a dozen tints of tulip to the palest primrose and jonquil.

The others were walking round the enclosing gra.s.s paths that served as broad green border, and Filey, who had been in all sorts of queer places, said the yellow garden made him think of a Mexican serape--'one of those silk scarves, you know--native weaving made out of the pineapple fibre.'

But Vida only said, 'Yes. It's a good scheme of colour.'

She sat on the rustic seat while Lady John explained to Lord Borrodaile, whose gardens were renowned, how she and Simonson treated this and that plant to get so fine a result. Filey had lost no time in finding a place for himself by Miss Levering, while Hermione trailed dutifully round the garden with the others. Occasionally she looked over her shoulder at the two on the seat by the sunken wall--Vida leaning back in the corner motionless, absolutely inexpressive; Filey's eager face bent forward. He was moving his hands in a way he had learned abroad.

'You were rather annoyed with me,' he was saying. 'I saw that.'

The lady did not deny the imputation.

'But you oughtn't to be. Because you see it's only because my ideal of woman is'--again that motion of the hands--'_what_ it is, that when I see her stepping down from her pedestal I----' the hands indicated consternation, followed hard by cataclysmic ruin. 'Of course, lots of men don't care. I _do_. I care enormously, and so you must forgive me.

Won't you?' He bent nearer.

'Oh, _I've_ nothing to forgive.'

'I know without your telling me, I feel instinctively, _you_ more than most people--you'd simply loathe the sort of thing we were talking about at tea--women yelling and fighting men----'

'Yes--yes, don't go all over that.'

'No, of course I won't,' he said soothingly. 'I can feel it to my very spine, how you shrink from such horrors.'

Miss Levering, raising her eyes suddenly, caught the look Hermione cast backward as Lady John halted her party a moment near the pansy-strip in the gorgeous yellow carpet spread out before them.

'Don't you want to sit down?' Vida called out to the girl, drawing aside her gown.

'What?' said Hermione, though she had heard quite well. Slowly she retraced her steps down the gra.s.s path as if to have the words repeated.

But if Miss Levering's idea had been to change the conversation, she was disappointed. There was nothing Paul Filey liked better than an audience, and he had already the impression that Miss Heriot was what he would have scorned to call anything but 'simpatica.'

'I'm sure you've shown the new garden to dozens already,' Miss Levering said to the niece of the house. 'Sit down and confess you've had enough of it!'

'Oh, I don't think,' began Hermione, suavely, 'that one ever gets too much of a thing like that!'

'There! I'm glad to hear you say so. How can we have too much beauty!'

exclaimed Filey, receiving the new occupant of the seat as a soul worthy of high fellows.h.i.+p. Then he leaned across Miss Heriot and said to the lady in the corner, 'I'm making that the theme of my book.'

'Oh, I heard you were writing something.'

'Yes, a sort of plea for the aesthetic basis of society! It's the only cure for the horrors of modern civilization--for the very thing we were talking about at tea! What is it but a loss of the sense of beauty that's to blame?' Elbows on knees, he leaned so far forward that he could see both faces, and yet his own betrayed the eye turned inward--the face of the one who quotes. The ladies knew that he was obliging them with a memorized extract from 'A Plea for the aesthetic Basis.' 'Nothing worse can happen to the world than loss of its sense of Beauty. Men, high and low alike, cling to it still as incarnated in women.' (Hermione crossed her pointed toes and lowered her long eyelashes.) 'We have made Woman the object of our deepest adoration! We have set her high on a throne of gold. We have searched through the world for jewels to crown her. We have built millions of temples to our ideal of womanhood and called them homes. We have fought and wrought and sung for her--and all we ask in return is that she should tend the sacred fire, so that the light of Beauty might not die out of the world.' He was not ill-pleased with his period. 'But women'--he leaned back, and ill.u.s.trated with the pliant white hands that were ornamented with outlandish rings--'women are not content with their high and holy office.'

'_Some_ women,' amended Hermione, softly.

'There are more and more every day who are not content,' he said sternly; then, for an instant unbending and craning a little forward, 'Of course I don't mean you--_you_ are exceptions--but of women in the ma.s.s! Look at them! They force their way into men's work, they crowd into the universities--yes, yes' (in vain Hermione tried to rea.s.sure him by 'exceptions')--'Beauty is nothing to them! They fling aside their delicate, provocative draperies, they cast off their scented sandals.

They pull on brown boots and bicycling skirts! They put man's yoke of hard linen round their ivory throats, and they scramble off their jewelled thrones to mount the rostrum and the omnibus!'

'Why? _Why_ do they?' Vida demanded, laughing. 'n.o.body ever tells me why. I can't believe they're as unselfish as _you_ make out.'