But pride came to her aid. Grindstone was moving about ready to dress her for dinner. No one should see that she was wounded, or that she took home displeasure which she did not merit. So she held up her head, and was chilling and dignified all dinner-time; after which she repaired to Lady Tyrrell's conversazione.

CHAPTER XIX The Monstrous Regiment of Women

Descend, my muse!

Raymond had been invited by one of his fellow-guests to make a visit at his house, and this was backed up on the morning after his return by a letter containing a full invitation to both himself and his wife. He never liked what he called "doing nothing in other people's houses," but he thought any sacrifice needful that might break up Cecil's present intimacies, and change the current of her ideas; and his mother fully agreed in thinking that it would be well to being a round of visits, to last until the Session of Parliament should have begin. By the time it was over Julius and Rosamond would be in their own house, and it might be easier to make a new beginning.

The friends whom he could reckon on as sure to welcome him and his bride were political acquaintances of mark, far above the Dunstone range, and Cecil could not but be gratified, even while Mrs.

Duncombe and her friend declared that they were going to try to demoralize her by the seductions of the aristocracy.

After all, Cecil was too much of an ingrained Charnock to be very deeply imbued with Women's Rights. All that she wanted was her own way, and opposition. Lady Tyrrell had fascinated her and secured her affection, and she followed her lead, which was rather that of calm curiosity and desire to hear the subject ventilated than actual partisanship, for which her ladyship was far too clever, as well as too secure in her natural supremacy. They had only seemed on that side because other people were so utterly alien to it, and because of their friendship with the really zealous Mrs. Duncombe.

The sanitary cause which had become mixed with it was, however, brought strongly before their minds by Mrs. Tallboys' final lecture, at which she impressed on the ladies' minds with great vehemence that here they might lead the way. If men would not act as a body, the ladies should set the example, and shame them, by each doing her very utmost in the cleansing of the nests of disease that reeked in the worn-out civilization of the cities of the old country. The ladies listened: Lady Tyrrell, with a certain interest in such an eager flow of eloquence; Eleonora, with thoughts far away. Bessie Duncombe expressed a bold practical determination to get one fragment, at least, of the work done, since she knew Pettitt, the hair-dresser, was public-spirited enough to allow her to carry out her ideas on his property, and Cecil, with her ample allowance, as yet uncalled for, in the abundance of her trousseau, promised to supply what the hair-dresser could not advance, as a tangible proof of her sincerity.

She held a little council with Mrs. Duncombe at the working society, when she resigned her day into that lady's hands on going away. "I shall ask Mrs. Miles Charnock," said that lady. "You don't object?"

"Oh no, only don't ask her till I'm gone, and you know she will only come on condition of being allowed to expound."

"We must have somebody, and now the thing has gone on so long, and will end in three months, the goody element will not do much harm, and, unluckily, most women will not act without it."

"You have been trying to train Miss Moy."

"I shall try still, but I can't get her to take interest in anything but the boisterous side of emancipation."

"I can't bear the girl," said Cecil; "I am sure she comes only for the sake of the horses."

"I'm afraid so; but she amuses Bob, and there's always a hope of moving her father through her, though she declares that the Three Pigeons is his tenderest point, and that he had as soon meddle with it as with the apple of his eye. I suppose he gets a great rent from that Gadley."

"Do you really think you shall do anything with her?" said Cecil, who might uphold her at home, but whose taste was outraged by her.

"I hope so! At any rate, she is not conventional. Why, when I was set free from my school at Paris, and married Bob three months later, I hadn't three ideas in my head beyond horses and balls and soldiers. It has all come with life and reading, my dear."

And a very odd 'all' it was, so far; but there was this difference between Bessie Duncombe and Cecil Charnock Poynsett, that the 'gospel of progress' was to the one the first she had ever really known, and became a reaching forward to a newly-perceived standard of benevolence and nobleness: to the other it was simply retrograding, and that less from conviction than from the spirit of rivalry and opposition.

Lady Tyrrell with her father and sister were likewise going to leave home, to stay among friends with whom Sir Harry could hunt until the London campaign, when Eleonora was to see the world. Thus the bazaar was postponed until the return of the ladies in the summer, when the preparations would be more complete and the season more suitable. The church must wait for it, for nothing like a sufficient amount of subscription had been as yet promised.

There was still, however, to come that select dinner-party at Mrs.

Duncombe's, to which Julius, moved by her zeal and honesty, as well as by curiosity, had promised his presence with Rosamond, "at his peril," as she said.

They were kept so long at the door of Aucuba Villa that they had begun to doubt if they had not mistaken the day, until the Sirenwood carriage crashed up behind them; and after the third pull at the bell they were admitted by an erect, alert figure,--a remnant of Captain Duncombe's military life.

He marshalled them into the drawing-room, where by dim firelight they could just discern the Professor and a certain good-natured horsey friend of the Captain's, who sprang up from easy-chairs on the opposite sides of the fire to greet them, while the man hastily stirred up the fire, lighted the gas, dashed at the table, shutting up an open blotting-book that lay on it, closing an ink-bottle, and gathering up some torn fragments or paper, which he would have thrown into the scrap-basket but that it was full of little books on the hundred ways of dressing a pumpkin. Then he gave a wistful look at the ami de la maison, as if commending the guests to him, and receiving a nod in return, retired.

"I fear we are too early," said Lady Tyrrell.

"Fact is," said the familiar, whose name Julius was trying to remember, "there's been a catastrophe; cook forgot to order the turkey, went to bed last night in hysterics, and blew out the gas instead of turning it off. No, no"--as the guests expecting fatal consequences, looked as if they thought they had better remove themselves: "she came round, and Duncombe has driven over to Backsworth to bring home the dinner. He'll soon be back."

This not appearing greatly to reassure the visitors, the Professor added, "No, no, ladies. Mrs. Duncombe charged me to say that she will be perfectly fixed in a short time, and I flatter myself that my wife is equal to any emergency."

"It is very kind in her," said Lady Tyrrell.

"I confess," said Professor Tallboys, "that I am not sorry that such an occasion should occur of showing an American lady's domestic powers. I flatter myself they do not discredit her cause."

Just then were heard the wheels of the drag, and in rushed one of the boys, grasping Eleonora's skirts, and proclaiming, "We've got the grub! Oysters and a pie! Oh my!"

"Satisfactory!" said the friend. "But let go, Ducky, you are rumpling Miss Vivian."

"She's coming to see the quarion! You promised, Lena! Here's a jolly crayfish! He'll pinch!"

There was a small conservatory or glazed niche on one side of the room, into which the boy dragged Lenore, and Julius followed, dimly sensible of what the quarion might be, and hoping for a word with the young lady, while he trusted to his wife to occupy her sister.

The place contained two desolate camellias, with leaves in the same proportion as those on trees in the earlier ages of illumination, and one scraggy, leafless geranium, besides a green and stagnant tank, where a goldfish moved about, flapping and gasping, as the boy disturbed it in his search for the crayfish. He absorbed all the conversation, so that Julius could only look back into the room, where an attempt at artistic effect was still dimly visible through accumulated litter. The Venus of Milo stood on a bracket, with a riding-whip in her arms, and a bundle of working society tickets behind her, and her vis-a-vis, the Faun of Praxiteles, was capped by a glove with one finger pointing upwards, and had a ball of worsted tangled about his legs; but further observation was hindered by the man-servant's voice at the outer door, "Master Ducky, where are you?

Your ma says you are to go to bed directly."

"No, no, I'll put myself to bed!"

"Come, sir, please do, like a good boy--Master Pinney won't go without you, and I must put him to bed while they are dishing up.

Come, sir, I've got a mince-pie for you."

"And some oysters--Bobby said I should have some oysters!"

"Yes, yes; come along, sir."

And Master Ducky submitted to his fate, while Julius looked his wonder, and asked, "Is he nursery-maid?"

"Just now, since the bonne went," said Lenore. "He is a most faithful, attached servant, who will do anything for them. _She_ does attach people deeply when the first shock is over."

"I am coming to believe so," he answered. "There seem to me to be excellent elements."

"I am so glad!" said Lenore; "she is so thorough, so true and frank; and much of this oddness is really an inconsistent struggle to keep out of debt."

"Well! at any rate I am thankful to her for this opportunity of seeing you," said Julius. "We have both been longing to speak our welcome to you."

"Thank you. It is so kind," she fervently whispered; "all the kinder for the state of things that is insisted on--though you know that it can make no real difference," she added, apparently addressing the goldfish.

"Frank knows it," said Julius, in a low voice.

"I trust he does, though I cannot see him to assure him--you will?"

she added, looking up at him with a shy brightness in her eye and a flush on her cheek.

"Yes, indeed!" he said, laying his hand on hers for a moment. "I fear you may both have much to pull through, but I think you are of a steadfast nature."

"I hope so--I think I am, for none of my feelings seem to me ever to change, except that I get harder, and, I am afraid, bitterer."