“I WISH something new would happen,” said Lady Phayre.

“There is the session just begun,” replied Mr. Aloysius Gleam, drawing his arm-chair an inch nearer the fire. “We can promise you many New Year novelties.”

“Call you them novelties?” asked Lady Phayre. “They will be as old as—as the antepenultimate barrel-organ tune.”

“You want to go too fast. Great political reforms move slowly.”

“Yes, that is true—deadeningly true. I think I read it once in a newspaper.”

Gleam laughed, and spread out his hands before the blaze. He was familiar with her mood—a mild spiritual unrest, induced by supreme bodily comfort and intellectual disturbance. He had the faculty of the aesthetic as well as ultrademocratic tendencies, and he appreciated the harmony between her mood and the dim afternoon hour with its gathering shadows in comers of the room. Her comfortable attitude, with one hand hanging over the arm of the chair; her costume, a dark fur-edged tea-gown; her expression of wistful meditation—all betokened a relaxation of fibre trying to pamper itself into depression. So the Member laughed, and a smile played round his clean-shaven lips in the silence that followed.

The politician within the esoteric revolutionary ring, who did not know Lady Phayre, was like a Positivist ignorant of Auguste Comte. The analogy halts, however. Lady Phayre was far from being an evangelist; she was not even an apostle. She had been left with the key of a pleasant situation, and, like a wise woman, she used it. Her enemies called her insincere. If the late Sir Ephraim, they said, had sat as a Conservative, and had formed the cartilage as it were of a brilliant wing of that party, Lady Phayre’s flat would have become an audaciously unauthorised Primrose Habitation. But political opponents will say anything.

Certainly she took no combative part in political warfare. Her functions were rather those of an etherealised vivandiÈre to the band. The members came exhausted into her drawing-room, where she revived them with pannikins of sympathy, and spread the delicate ointment of flattery over their bruises. Not but what she exposed herself in times of need to the dangers and fatigues of the campaign. She had risked typhoid in slums, and congestion of the lungs in draughty halls. She also kept bravely up with the march, picking her dainty way through prodigious quantities of speeches, pamphlets, and articles, both in type and manuscript. Now and then she stumbled sorely. Bimetallism was a morass, and trade statistics stone fences. On these occasions she would cry out for a helping hand, preferably that of Aloysius Gleam; after which she would survey herself with rueful introspection, and put to herself the question addressed to the immortal Scapin.

Her mood of to-day followed one of these periodic rescuings.

“Hendrick’s amendment is coming on this evening,” said Aloysius Gleam at last. “The audacity of it is novel enough. Come down. It will amuse you. Burnet has a lady’s ticket going a-begging.”

“I have had enough of Hendrick for some time,” replied Lady Phayre. “He took me down to dinner last night at the M’Kays’, and could talk of nothing else. I wish you could put some sense into him.”

“I wish I could. But a Collectivist who has broken loose is running headlong to destruction.”

“That was what I told him. Push Collectivism to its logical conclusion, and we get Mr. Bellamy’s intolerable paradise. He got purple in the face, said he was nothing if not logical, insisted on the establishment of comparative values for different kinds of labour and products, and called me a reactionary because I asked him how the State was going to determine the number of mutton chops that would go to a sonnet.”

“Is that phrase your own, Lady Phayre?” asked Gleam, pricking up his ears.

“No,” she replied, with a little touch of audacity. “I snapped it up as an unconsidered trifle out of a review article.”

“Goddard’s, I think, on Extremism as applied to Practical Politics.”

“You are an encyclopaedia,” said Lady Phayre, laughing. “You know everything.”

“Did you like the article?”

“Immensely. I detached it from the review, and restitched it with blue ribbon to use as a text-book. Without it I might have been led to destruction by Hendrick.”

“Ah, my dear Lady Phayre—I shall not tell it in Gath; but when are you going to have views of your own?”

“Views? Of course I have views,” said Lady Phayre, comfortably reversing the crossing of her feet, “just like everybody else, only theirs are fixed and mine are—dissolving. It gives greater variety to life. But I think the Goddard view will be lasting.”

“I shall tell him. He will be flattered.”

“Oh, you know him?”

“Pretty intimately. I may say that I trained him—in the sporting, not the pedagogic sense.”

“You never told me. Have you many more lights under your bushel?”

“A dazzling illumination of unsuspected virtues. But I didn’t do very much for Goddard except put him in the way of things; and he would have come to the front right enough without me. He is the coming man of the younger school of Progressists. The anomaly of his generation—a hot reformer with luminous common-sense—a popular demagogue with an idea of proportion—an original thinker—a powerful, eloquent speaker. Look at the work he has done on the Council, the Progressive League—ramifications spreading all over the country with organised courses of lectures on civism, social economics, and what not. Decidedly the coming man.”

“It does one good to see you enthusiastic,” cried Lady Phayre with a laugh. “Your criticisms are generally more bracing than genial. But why don’t I know Goddard?”

“He surely has not sprung suddenly into your horizon?”

“Of course not. The newspapers—general talk—I know all about him that way. I meant, why don’t I know him personally?”

There was a touch of reprimand in the “why.” Gleam was Lord Chamberlain in Ordinary to her ladyship.

“I was waiting until he got into the House at the next general election. You see, until seven years ago, when he came into some money that rendered him independent, he was a carpenter or something—no, cabinetmaker—and so, to be frank, I never thought of it.”

“And you call yourself a Radical! Well, what is the matter with him? Does he wear corduroys tied up at the knees, and carry a red pocket-handkerchief in his hat?”

“Oh dear no!” exclaimed Gleam hastily. “He is presentable. I told you of a little training——”

“Well, then, lose no time in bringing him,” said Lady Phayre. “He surely must have heard of me.”

She was proud of her position: somewhat jealous of it too. That a generation of Progressists should arise which knew not Lady Phayre was a dreadful contingency. She had a prescriptive right to the homage of the coming man of the wing. Besides, an ex-cabinetmaker whose views on social polity she had thought worth while to tie up with blue ribbon was a novelty.

Aloysius Gleam took his leave. At the door he was summoned to pause.

“He won’t walk up and down the room and shake his finger at me, will he?”

“Like Fenton?” he laughed. “No, you can reassure your nerves. By the way,” he cried suddenly, “there is a large meeting at Stepney next week, Thursday, at which Goddard is going to speak, and I have promised to say something. Would you care to come?”

“I shall be delighted,” said Lady Phayre. “Then I can see for myself whether he is like Fenton.”

“Oh, I can guarantee that,” said Gleam, with a final word of adieu.

She sank back in her chair relieved. Fenton was an aggressive person, fond of hurling at her his theory of State education of babies as the sovereign panacea for the Weltschmerz. She was a practical woman; and philosophical ideas, unless gracefully conveyed, rather bored her. She could see no sense in their absolute use. A limitless volume of abstraction did not interest her so much as a cubic inch of solid fact. That was why she liked Aloysius Gleam.

She meditated a little longer before the fire, then she switched on the electric light, rang for the curtains to be drawn, and re-read Daniel Goddard’s article until it was time to dress for dinner.

It was not a new experience for Lady Phayre. She was familiar with platforms, and the sight of the pale, moving mass of human faces in front. She had listened to the speeches of many demagogues to the proletariat, and had found them singularly lacking in originality. Accordingly, it was with the air of an old campaigner that she settled herself down by the side of Aloysius Gleam, and surveyed the decorous occupants of the platform, and the noisy but enthusiastic audience of working men and women in the body of the hall.

Proceedings had already commenced when they entered. The chairman was concluding his introductory speech. The courteous applause that followed his remarks suddenly grew into the thunder that comes from the heart. Goddard was standing before the table, his massive dark face lit with pleasure at his welcome. He began to speak. His voice, rich and sonorous, rang out through the last dying cheers, and compelled willing attention. After a few moments he held the audience in his grasp.

Lady Phayre bent forward and looked with interested curiosity at the speaker, whom she saw mostly in profile, at intervals full-face, when he flashed round to the side benches. Her quick perception appreciated the mastery he had obtained over his hearers, their instant responsiveness to his touch. She herself was gradually drawn under the spell, felt herself but a chord of the instrument that responded to every shade of invective, irony, and promise. She was not unconscious of a certain unfamiliar sensuousness in this surrender of her individuality. Perhaps feminine instincts that had long lain dormant were awakened. The sense of power in the man set working deep-hidden springs of sensation. A strain of the barbaric lingers even in so super-refined a product as Lady Phayre. When Goddard had finished speaking, she leaned back in her chair with a kind of sigh.

“That’s the genuine article, isn’t it?” said Gleam, turning to her smilingly.

She nodded, rested her glance thoughtfully upon him for a moment. He seemed so small, precise, uninspiring compared with the huge-limbed man with the leonine face and rolling voice who had just been swaying her.

“He is a power among these people,” she said below her breath.

“I deserve some credit, don’t I?” he remarked. He was proud of Goddard, honestly delighted at the impression his pupil had made upon Lady Phayre.

The succeeding speeches, modest and formal, after Goddard’s magnetic harangue, were quickly over. After three cheers for Dan Goddard, the audience broke up. The occupants of the platform formed into little groups. Gleam drew Goddard from the largest of these.

“I want to present you to Lady Phayre, the Lady Superior of the League.”

And before the other could reply, he had taken him prisoner by the lapel of his coat, and brought him, in his brisk way, to where Lady Phayre was standing, and had gone through the formality of presentation.

“You have had a great success to-night, Mr. Goddard,” she said.

“It is easy to speak to an enthusiastic audience,” said Goddard. “You see we mean business,” he added, addressing Gleam. “We’ve done our share in agitation. It is for you people in the House now to carry the bill through.”

“I’ll undertake to see that they don’t halt by the way,” said Lady Phayre with bewitching authority.

“I wish you were in the House, Goddard,” said Gleam.

“Get me a seat and I’ll come,” he replied with a laugh.

“You’ll have the Hough division offered you according to general whisper.”

“Not under a miracle,” said Goddard. “The moderate element in the constituency is too strong.”

“I heard they were going to run an Independent Labour candidate,” interposed Lady Phayre. “I know the neighbourhood pretty well. Some friends I often stay with live near Ecclesby, and I hear the local gossip through them.”

“They would withdraw the Labour man and support Goddard, if he stood,” explained Gleam.

But Goddard laughed deprecatingly and shook his head.

“It is all in the clouds. Repson has not resigned the seat yet. It is only a rumour that he intends doing so, and haste in the matter would be indecent. Anyhow,” he added, after a pause, to Lady Phayre, “if you would tell Mr. Gleam any news you may get, you would be doing me a service.”

“Why not come and get it first hand?” asked Lady Phayre sweetly. “I should be most pleased to see you if you would call—13 Queen’s Court Mansions—Tuesdays.”

“You are very kind,” said Goddard, bowing. “I had better give you a card,” she said, taking one from an elaborate little memoranda-book; “then you won’t forget the address.”

They remained a while in desultory talk. Then Lady Phayre departed under Gleam’s escort, and Goddard returned to the group that had been waiting for him. An eager discussion, prolonged until the party broke up in the street, swept away from Goddard’s mind every lingering impression of his first interview with Lady Phayre.