I want to see England going ahead. I want to see her workers properly fed. I want to see the corn upon her unused acres, the cattle grazing on her wasted pastures. I object to the food being thrown into the sea--left to rot upon the ground while men are hungry--side-tracked in Chicago, while the children grow up stunted. I want the commissariat properly organized."He had been staring through her rather than at her, so it had seemed to Joan. Suddenly their eyes met, and he broke into a smile.
"I'm so awfully sorry," he said. "I've been talking to you as if you were a public meeting. I'm afraid I'm more used to them than Iam to women. Please forgive me."
The whole man had changed. The eyes had a timid pleading in them.
Joan laughed. "I've been feeling as if I were the King of Bavaria," she said.
"How did he feel?" he asked her, leaning forward.
"He had his own private theatre," Joan explained, "where Wagner gave his operas. And the King was the sole audience.""I should have hated that," he said, "if I had been Wagner."He looked at her, and a flush passed over his boyish face.
"All right," he said, "if it had been a queen."Joan found herself tracing patterns with her spoon upon the tablecloth. "But you have won now," she said, still absorbed apparently with her drawing, "you are going to get your chance."He gave a short laugh. "A trick," he said, "to weaken me. They think to shave my locks; show me to the people bound by their red tape. To put it another way, a rat among the terriers."Joan laughed. "You don't somehow suggest the rat," she said:
"rather another sort of beast."
"What do you advise me?" he asked. "I haven't decided yet."They were speaking in whispered tones. Through the open doors they could see into the other room. Mrs. Phillips, under Airlie's instructions, was venturing upon a cigarette.
"To accept," she answered. "They won't influence you--the terriers, as you call them. You are too strong. It is you who will sway them. It isn't as if you were a mere agitator. Take this opportunity of showing them that you can build, plan, organize; that you were meant to be a ruler. You can't succeed without them, as things are. You've got to win them over. Prove to them that they can trust you."He sat for a minute tattooing with his fingers on the table, before speaking.
"It's the frills and flummery part of it that frightens me," he said. "You wouldn't think that sensitiveness was my weak point.
But it is. I've stood up to a Birmingham mob that was waiting to lynch me and enjoyed the experience; but I'd run ten miles rather than face a drawing-room of well-dressed people with their masked faces and ironic courtesies. It leaves me for days feeling like a lobster that has lost its shell.""I wouldn't say it, if I didn't mean it," answered Joan; "but you haven't got to trouble yourself about that . . . You're quite passable." She smiled. It seemed to her that most women would find him more than passable.
He shook his head. "With you," he said. "There's something about you that makes one ashamed of worrying about the little things.
But the others: the sneering women and the men who wink over their shoulder while they talk to you, I shall never be able to get away from them, and, of course, wherever I go--"He stopped abruptly with a sudden tightening of the lips. Joan followed his eyes. Mrs. Phillips had swallowed the smoke and was giggling and spluttering by turns. The yellow ostrich feather had worked itself loose and was rocking to and fro as if in a fit of laughter of its own.
He pushed back his chair and rose. "Shall we join the others?" he said.
He moved so that he was between her and the other room, his back to the open doors. "You think I ought to?" he said.
"Yes," she answered firmly, as if she were giving a command. But he read pity also in her eyes.
"Well, have you two settled the affairs of the kingdom? Is it all decided?" asked Airlie.
"Yes," he answered, laughing. "We are going to say to the people, 'Eat, drink and be wise.'"He rearranged his wife's feather and smoothed her tumbled hair.
She looked up at him and smiled.
Joan set herself to make McKean talk, and after a time succeeded.
They had a mutual friend, a raw-boned youth she had met at Cambridge. He was engaged to McKean's sister. His eyes lighted up when he spoke of his sister Jenny. The Little Mother, he called her.
"She's the most beautiful body in all the world," he said. "Though merely seeing her you mightn't know it."He saw her "home"; and went on up the stairs to his own floor.
Joan stood for a while in front of the glass before undressing; but felt less satisfied with herself. She replaced the star in its case, and took off the regal-looking dress with the golden girdle and laid it carelessly aside. She seemed to be growing smaller.
In her white night dress, with her hair in two long plaits, she looked at herself once more. She seemed to be no one of any importance at all: just a long little girl going to bed. With no one to kiss her good night.
She blew out the candle and climbed into the big bed, feeling very lonesome as she used to when a child. It had not troubled her until to-night. Suddenly she sat up again. She needn't be back in London before Tuesday evening, and to-day was only Friday. She would run down home and burst in upon her father. He would be so pleased to see her.
She would make him put his arms around her.
