She pulled impatiently at the resisting fingers, and loosening them, after a struggle, did actually go so far as to touch the girl’s cheek with her lips. Then sinking back into her chair she resumed her interrupted discourse.
The taste of salt tears had not, it seemed, softened her into any weak compliance. Really strong and healthy natures learn the art, by degrees, of proving adamant, to the insidious cunning of these persuasions.
“Girls of our class,” she announced sententiously, “must set the lower orders in England an example of hardiness. Father says it is dreadful how effeminate the labouring people are becoming. They are afraid of work, afraid of fresh air, afraid of cold water, afraid of discipline. They only think of getting more to eat and drink.”
The Pariah turned her face to the wall and lay motionless, contemplating the cracks and crevices in the oak panelling.
Under the same indifferent stars the other Pariah of Nevilton was also staring hopelessly at the wall. What secrets these impassive surfaces, near the pillows of sleepers, could reveal, if they could only speak!
“Father says that what we all want is more physical training,” Gladys went on. “This next winter you and I must do some practising in the Yeoborough Gymnasium. It is our superior physical training, father says, which enables us to hold the mob in check. Just look at these workmen and peasants, how clumsily they slouch about!”
Lacrima turned round at this. “Your father and his friends are shamefully hard on their workmen. I wish they would strike again!”
Gladys smiled complacently. The scene was really beginning to surpass even what she had hoped.
“Why are you such a baby, Lacrima?” she said. “Stop a moment. I will show you the things you shall wear.”
She glided off into her own room, and presently returned with a child’s bathing dress.
“Look, dear! Isn’t it lucky? I’ve had these in my wardrobe ever since we were at Eastbourne, years and years ago. They will not be a bit too small for you. Or if they are—it doesn’t matter. No one will see us. And I’ll lend you my mackintosh to go out in.”
Lacrima’s head sank back upon her pillows and she stared at her cousin with a look of helpless terror.
“You needn’t look so horrified, you silly little thing. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Besides, people oughtn’t to give way to their feelings. They ought to be brave and show spirit. It’s lucky for you you did come to us. There’s no knowing what a cowardly little thing you’d have grown into, if you hadn’t. Mother is quite right. It will do you ever so much good to bathe with me. You can’t be drowned, you know. The water isn’t out of your depth anywhere. Father says every girl in England ought to learn to swim, so as to be able to rescue people. He says that this is the great new idea of the Empire—that we should all join in making the race braver and stronger. You are English now, you know—not Italian any more. I am going to take fencing lessons soon. Father says you never can tell what may happen, and we ought all to be prepared.”
Lacrima did not speak. A vision of a fierce aggressive crowd of hard, hostile, healthy young persons, drilling, riding, shooting, fencing, and dragging such renegades as herself remorselessly along with them, blocked every vista of her mind.
“I hate the Empire!” she cried at last. Gladys had subsided once more into her chair—the little bathing-suit, symbol of our natural supremacy, clasped fondly in her lap.
“I know,” she said, “where you get your socialistic nonsense from. Yes, I do! You needn’t shake your head. You get it from Maurice Quincunx.”
“I don’t get it from anybody,” protested the Pariah; and then, in a weak murmur, “it grows up naturally, in my heart.”
“What is that you’re saying?” cried Gladys. “Sometimes I think you are really not right in your mind. You mutter so. You mutter, and talk to yourself. It irritates me more than I can say. It would irritate a saint.”
“I am sorry if I annoy you, cousin.”
“Annoy me? It would take more than a little coward like you to annoy me! But I am not going to argue about it. Father says arguing is only fit for feeble people. He says we Romers never argue. We think, and then we do. I’m going to bed. So there’s your book! I hope you’ll enjoy it Miss Socialism!”
She picked up the volume from the floor and flung it into her cousin’s lap. The gesture of contempt with which she did this would admirably have suited some Roman Drusilla tossing aside the culture of slaves.
An hour later the door between the two rooms was hesitatingly opened, and a white figure stole to the head of Gladys’ couch. “You’re not asleep, dear, are you? Oh Gladys, darling! Please, please, please, don’t make me bathe with you! You don’t know how I dread it.”
But the daughter of the Romers vouchsafed no reply to this appeal, beyond a drowsy “Nonsense—nonsense—let’s only pray tomorrow will be fine.”
The night-owls, that swept, on heavy, flapping wings, over the village, from the tower of St. Catharine’s Church to the pinnacles of the manor, brought no miraculous intervention from the resting-place of the Holy-Rood. What was St. Catharine doing that she had thus deserted the sanctuary of her name? Perhaps the Alexandrian saint found the magic of the heathen hill too strong for her; or perhaps because of its rank heresy, she had blotted her former shrine altogether from her tender memory.
CHAPTER VII
IDYLLIC PLEASURES
Mortimer Romer could not be called a many-sided man. His dominant lust for power filled his life so completely that he had little room for excursions into the worlds of art or literature. He was, however, by no means narrow or stupid in these matters. He had at least the shrewdness to recognize the depth of their influence over other people. Indeed, as he was so constantly occupied with this very question of influence, with the problem of what precise motives and impulses did actually stir and drive the average mass of humanity, it was natural that he should, sooner or later, have to assume some kind of definite attitude towards these things. The attitude he finally hit upon, as most harmonious with his temperament, was that of active and genial patronage combined with a modest denial of the possession of any personal knowledge or taste. He recognized that an occasion might easily arise, when some association with the æsthetic world, even of this modest and external kind, might prove extremely useful to him. He might find it advisable to make use of these alien forces, just as Napoleon found it necessary to make use of religion. The fact that he himself was devoid of ideal emotions, whether religious or æsthetic, mattered nothing. Only fools confined their psychological interest within the narrow limits of their subjective tastes. Humanity was influenced by these things, and Romer was concerned with influencing humanity. Not that these deviations into artistic by-paths carried him very far. He would invite “cultivated” people to stay with him in his noble House—at least they would appreciate that!—and then hand them over to the care of his charming daughter, a method of hospitality which, it must be confessed, seemed to meet with complete approval on the part of those concerned. Thus the name of the owner of Leo’s Hill came to be associated, in many artistic and literary circles, with the names of such admirable and friendly patrons of these pursuits, as could be counted upon for practical and efficient, if not for intellectual aid, in the contest with an unsympathetic and materialistic world. It was not perhaps the more struggling and less prosperous artists who found him their friend. To most of these his attitude, though kind and attentive, was hardly cordial. He knew too little of the questions at issue, to risk giving his support to the Pariahs and Anarchists