LITMIR.BIZ

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cease when her aunt began collecting her gloves, and they trooped forth to the drawing-room. There, seated between Mrs. Sleesor and Lady Britto, with Lady Malloring opposite, and Miss Bawtrey leaning over the piano toward them, she pinched herself to get rid of the feeling that, when all these were out of sight of each other, they would become silent and have on their lips a little, bitter smile. Would it be like that up in their bedrooms, or would it only be on her (Nedda’s) own lips that this little smile would come? It was a question she could not answer; nor could she very well ask it of any of these ladies. She looked them over as they sat there talking and felt very lonely. And suddenly her eyes fell on her grandmother. Frances Freeland was seated halfway down the long room in a sandalwood chair, somewhat insulated by a surrounding sea of polished floor. She sat with a smile on her lips, quite still, save for the continual movement of her white hands on her black lap. To her gray hair some lace of Chantilly was pinned with a little diamond brooch, and hung behind her delicate but rather long ears. And from her shoulders was depended a silvery garment, of stuff that looked like the mail shirt of a fairy, reaching the ground on either side. A tacit agreement had evidently been come to, that she was incapable of discussing ‘the Land’ or those other subjects such as the French murder, the Russian opera, the Chinese pictures, and the doings of one, L – , whose fate was just then in the air, so that she sat alone.

      And Nedda thought: ‘How much more of a lady she looks than anybody here! There’s something deep in her to rest on that isn’t in the Bigwigs; perhaps it’s because she’s of a different generation.’ And, getting up, she went over and sat down beside her on a little chair.

      Frances Freeland rose at once and said:

      “Now, my darling, you can’t be comfortable in that tiny chair. You must take mine.”

      “Oh, no, Granny; please!”

      “Oh, yes; but you must! It’s so comfortable, and I’ve simply been longing to sit in the chair you’re in. Now, darling, to please me!”

      Seeing that a prolonged struggle would follow if she did not get up, Nedda rose and changed chairs.

      “Do you like these week-ends, Granny?”

      Frances Freeland seemed to draw her smile more resolutely across her face. With her perfect articulation, in which there was, however, no trace of bigwiggery, she answered:

      “I think they’re most interesting, darling. It’s so nice to see new people. Of course you don’t get to know them, but it’s very amusing to watch, especially the head-dresses!” And sinking her voice: “Just look at that one with the feather going straight up; did you ever see such a guy?” and she cackled with a very gentle archness. Gazing at that almost priceless feather, trying to reach God, Nedda felt suddenly how completely she was in her grandmother’s little camp; how entirely she disliked bigwiggery.

      Frances Freeland’s voice brought her round.

      “Do you know, darling, I’ve found the most splendid thing for eyebrows? You just put a little on every night and it keeps them in perfect order. I must give you my little pot.”

      “I don’t like grease, Granny.”

      “Oh! but this isn’t grease, darling. It’s a special thing; and you only put on just the tiniest touch.”

      Diving suddenly into the recesses of something, she produced an exiguous round silver box. Prizing it open, she looked over her shoulder at the Bigwigs, then placed her little finger on the contents of the little box, and said very softly:

      “You just take the merest touch, and you put it on like that, and it keeps them together beautifully. Let me! Nobody’ll see!”

      Quite well understanding that this was all part of her grandmother’s passion for putting the best face upon things, and having no belief in her eyebrows, Nedda bent forward; but in a sudden flutter of fear lest the Bigwigs might observe the operation, she drew back, murmuring: “Oh, Granny, darling! Not just now!”

      At that moment the men came in, and, under cover of the necessary confusion, she slipped away into the window.

      It was pitch-black outside, with the moon not yet up. The bloomy, peaceful dark out there! Wistaria and early roses, clustering in, had but the ghost of color on their blossoms. Nedda took a rose in her fingers, feeling with delight its soft fragility, its coolness against her hot palm. Here in her hand was a living thing, here was a little soul! And out there in the darkness were millions upon millions of other little souls, of little flame-like or coiled-up shapes alive and true.

      A voice behind her said:

      “Nothing nicer than darkness, is there?”

      She knew at once it was the one who was going to bite; the voice was proper for him, having a nice, smothery sound. And looking round gratefully, she said:

      “Do you like dinner-parties?”

      It was jolly to watch his eyes twinkle and his thin cheeks puff out. He shook his head and muttered through that straggly moustache:

      “You’re a niece, aren’t you? I know your father. He’s a big man.”

      Hearing those words spoken of her father, Nedda flushed.

      “Yes, he is,” she said fervently.

      Her new acquaintance went on:

      “He’s got the gift of truth – can laugh at himself as well as others; that’s what makes him precious. These humming-birds here to-night couldn’t raise a smile at their own tomfoolery to save their silly souls.”

      He spoke still in that voice of smothery wrath, and Nedda thought: ‘He IS nice!’

      “They’ve been talking about ‘the Land’” – he raised his hands and ran them through his palish hair – “‘the Land!’ Heavenly Father! ‘The Land!’ Why! Look at that fellow!”

      Nedda looked and saw a man, like Richard Coeur de Lion in the history books, with a straw-colored moustache just going gray.

      “Sir Gerald Malloring – hope he’s not a friend of yours! Divine right of landowners to lead ‘the Land’ by the nose! And our friend Britto!”

      Nedda, following his eyes, saw a robust, quick-eyed man with a suave insolence in his dark, clean-shaved face.

      “Because at heart he’s just a supercilious ruffian, too cold-blooded to feel, he’ll demonstrate that it’s no use to feel – waste of valuable time – ha! valuable! – to act in any direction. And that’s a man they believe things of. And poor Henry Wiltram, with his pathetic: ‘Grow our own food – maximum use of the land as food-producer, and let the rest take care of itself!’ As if we weren’t all long past that feeble individualism; as if in these days of world markets the land didn’t stand or fall in this country as a breeding-ground of health and stamina and nothing else. Well, well!”

      “Aren’t they really in earnest, then?” asked Nedda timidly.

      “Miss Freeland, this land question is a perfect tragedy. Bar one or two, they all want to make the omelette without breaking eggs; well, by the time they begin to think of breaking them, mark me – there’ll be no eggs to break. We shall be all park and suburb. The real men on the land, what few are left, are dumb and helpless; and these fellows here for one reason or another don’t mean business – they’ll talk and tinker and top-dress – that’s all. Does your father take any interest in this? He could write something very nice.”

      “He takes interest in everything,” said Nedda. “Please go on, Mr. – Mr. – ” She was terribly afraid he would suddenly remember that she was too young and stop his nice, angry talk.

      “Cuthcott. I’m an editor, but I was brought up on a farm, and know something about it. You see, we English are grumblers, snobs to the backbone, want to be something better than we are; and education nowadays is all in the direction of despising what is quiet and humdrum. We never were a stay-at-home lot, like the French. That’s at the back of this business – they may treat it as they like, Radicals or Tories, but if they can’t get a fundamental change of opinion into the national mind as to what is a sane and profitable life; if they

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