said, and so on. Much to her credit, however teased by foolish fancies, she kept the surface of her brain moderate and vigilant, and subdued Mrs. Seal very tactfully more than once when she demanded, “Action!—everywhere!—at once!” as became her father’s daughter.
The other members of the committee, who were all rather elderly people, were a good deal impressed by Mary, and inclined to side with her and against each other, partly, perhaps, because of her youth. The feeling that she controlled them all filled Mary with a sense of power; and she felt that no work can equal in importance, or be so exciting as, the work of making other people do what you want them to do. Indeed, when she had won her point she felt a slight degree of contempt for the people who had yielded to her.
The committee now rose, gathered together their papers, shook them straight, placed them in their attache-cases, snapped the locks firmly together, and hurried away, having, for the most part, to catch trains, in order to keep other appointments with other committees, for they were all busy people. Mary, Mrs. Seal, and Mr. Clacton were left alone; the room was hot and untidy, the pieces of pink blotting-paper were lying at different angles upon the table, and the tumbler was half full of water, which some one had poured out and forgotten to drink.
Mrs. Seal began preparing the tea, while Mr. Clacton retired to his room to file the fresh accumulation of documents. Mary was too much excited even to help Mrs. Seal with the cups and saucers. She flung up the window and stood by it, looking out. The street lamps were already lit; and through the mist in the square one could see little figures hurrying across the road and along the pavement, on the farther side. In her absurd mood of lustful arrogance, Mary looked at the little figures and thought, “If I liked I could make you go in there or stop short; I could make you walk in single file or in double file; I could do what I liked with you.” Then Mrs. Seal came and stood by her.
“Oughtn’t you to put something round your shoulders, Sally?” Mary asked, in rather a condescending tone of voice, feeling a sort of pity for the enthusiastic ineffective little woman. But Mrs. Seal paid no attention to the suggestion.
“Well, did you enjoy yourself?” Mary asked, with a little laugh.
Mrs. Seal drew a deep breath, restrained herself, and then burst out, looking out, too, upon Russell Square and Southampton Row, and at the passers-by, “Ah, if only one could get every one of those people into this room, and make them understand for five minutes! But they must see the truth some day…. If only one could make them see it….”
Mary knew herself to be very much wiser than Mrs. Seal, and when Mrs. Seal said anything, even if it was what Mary herself was feeling, she automatically thought of all that there was to be said against it. On this occasion her arrogant feeling that she could direct everybody dwindled away.
“Let’s have our tea,” she said, turning back from the window and pulling down the blind. “It was a good meeting—didn’t you think so, Sally?” she let fall, casually, as she sat down at the table. Surely Mrs. Seal must realize that Mary had been extraordinarily efficient?
“But we go at such a snail’s pace,” said Sally, shaking her head impatiently.
At this Mary burst out laughing, and all her arrogance was dissipated.
“You can afford to laugh,” said Sally, with another shake of her head, “but I can’t. I’m fifty-five, and I dare say I shall be in my grave by the time we get it—if we ever do.”
“Oh, no, you won’t be in your grave,” said Mary, kindly.
“It’ll be such a great day,” said Mrs. Seal, with a toss of her locks. “A great day, not only for us, but for civilization. That’s what I feel, you know, about these meetings. Each one of them is a step onwards in the great march—humanity, you know. We do want the people after us to have a better time of it—and so many don’t see it. I wonder how it is that they don’t see it?”
She was carrying plates and cups from the cupboard as she spoke, so that her sentences were more than usually broken apart. Mary could not help looking at the odd little priestess of humanity with something like admiration. While she had been thinking about herself, Mrs. Seal had thought of nothing but her vision.
“You mustn’t wear yourself out, Sally, if you want to see the great day,” she said, rising and trying to take a plate of biscuits from Mrs. Seal’s hands.
“My dear child, what else is my old body good for?” she exclaimed, clinging more tightly than before to her plate of biscuits. “Shouldn’t I be proud to give everything I have to the cause?—for I’m not an intelligence like you. There were domestic circumstances—I’d like to tell you one of these days—so I say foolish things. I lose my head, you know. You don’t. Mr. Clacton doesn’t. It’s a great mistake, to lose one’s head. But my heart’s in the right place. And I’m so glad Kit has a big dog, for I didn’t think her looking well.”
They had their tea, and went over many of the points that had been raised in the committee rather more intimately than had been possible then; and they all felt an agreeable sense of being in some way behind the scenes; of having their hands upon strings which, when pulled, would completely change the pageant exhibited daily to those who read the newspapers. Although their views were very different, this sense united them and made them almost cordial in their manners to each other.
Mary, however, left the tea-party rather early, desiring both to be alone, and then to hear some music at the Queen’s Hall. She fully intended to use her loneliness to think out her position with regard to Ralph; but although she walked back to the Strand with this end in view, she found her mind uncomfortably full of different trains of thought. She started one and then another. They seemed even to take their color from the street she happened to be in. Thus the vision of humanity appeared to be in some way connected with Bloomsbury, and faded distinctly by the time she crossed the main road; then a belated organ-grinder in Holborn set her thoughts dancing incongruously; and by the time she was crossing the great misty square of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, she was cold and depressed again, and horribly clear-sighted. The dark removed the stimulus of human companionship, and a tear actually slid down her cheek, accompanying a sudden conviction within her that she loved Ralph, and that he didn’t love her. All dark and empty now was the path where they had walked that morning, and the sparrows silent in the bare trees. But the lights in her own building soon cheered her; all these different states of mind were submerged in the deep flood of desires, thoughts, perceptions, antagonisms, which washed perpetually at the base of her being, to rise into prominence in turn when the conditions of the upper world were favorable. She put off the hour of clear thought until Christmas, saying to herself, as she lit her fire, that it is impossible to think anything out in London; and, no doubt, Ralph wouldn’t come at Christmas, and she would take long walks into the heart of the country, and decide this question and all the others that puzzled her. Meanwhile, she thought, drawing her feet up on to the fender, life was full of complexity; life was a thing one must love to the last fiber of it.
She had sat there for five minutes or so, and her thoughts had had time to grow dim, when there came a ring at her bell. Her eye brightened; she felt immediately convinced that Ralph had come to visit her. Accordingly, she waited a moment before opening the door; she wanted to feel her hands secure upon the reins of all the troublesome emotions which the sight of Ralph would certainly arouse. She composed herself unnecessarily, however, for she had to admit, not Ralph, but Katharine and William Rodney. Her first impression was that they were both extremely well dressed. She felt herself shabby and slovenly beside them, and did not know how she should entertain them, nor could she guess why they had come. She had heard nothing of their engagement. But after the first disappointment, she was pleased, for she felt instantly that Katharine was a personality, and, moreover, she need not now exercise her self-control.
“We were passing and saw a light in your window, so we came up,” Katharine explained, standing and looking very tall and distinguished and rather absent-minded.
“We have been to see some pictures,” said William. “Oh, dear,” he exclaimed, looking about him, “this room reminds me of one of the worst hours in my existence—when I read a paper, and you all sat round