Miss Archer, reporter for the Millport News, stood just inside the first reception-room at the Town Hall. There was a suite of rooms, leading one into the other, showing a vista of hats and baldish heads and faces of all sorts wedged together in packs or moving in a slow stream with eddies and cross currents. The stream rose in the great entrance hall of the building. It was brought by contributory motors and broughams, from all parts of the town, suburbs and county, and it flowed upstairs and through the rooms and down again through a temporary congestion at the first door where Miss Archer stood with her little note book. A middle-aged woman, mastering fatigue with vivacity, stood beside her and made rapid remarks in an undertone, pointing out this or that noteworthy face or garment. Her hand was conspicuous by being so obviously ill at ease in its white glove. It was a worker’s hand, full of strength and sensibility, and the sillily cut glove sat on it like a bonnet on a horse. The Mayor and Mayoress remained just within the big folding doors which were set wide apart, a footman planted on either side. The footman on the left had nothing about him to allay the suspicion that he was stuffed, except his small twinkling eyes that spoke of much experience of humanity, a family life of his own and knowledge of the moral difficulties of rich men. His counterpart on the right was unable to give way to the same luxurious calm, being compelled to undergo the trouble of repeating strange syllables whispered into his ear, such as “—siz-an-Miss-S-Arkbury,” “—stron-misses J’n’per,” etc.; if it had not been that he knew the names of the greater number of the guests he would probably have broken down and been led weeping to the nearest public-house. As it was he battled bravely on, and beyond the momentary annoyance of the Harburys who became “Barleys,” and the Muskovilles who became “Musk-and-veal,” and so on, it didn’t really matter. People who knew them knew them, and those who didn’t didn’t mind.
“Who were those last, did you hear?” Miss Archer bent to ask her friend. “They’re new, surely; I must note their dresses; they’re very good. There—the woman in grey with sables, and the two girls.”
“‘Fulton!’ I thought he said,” answered the tired woman. She followed them with her eyes to where they stopped, looking at the crowd and talking now and then to each other. Susie was benevolently dimpling, as if the party were hers, and commenting to her daughters on the beauty of the rooms. “Architecture makes so much difference to a building, doesn’t it?” she said. “It would be so easy to spoil a big place like this by making it clumsy and in bad taste. But I do admire this immensely, don’t you?”
“There’s Mrs. Manley gone up to them now,” said Miss Archer’s friend. “I tell you—won’t they be the new general’s family that someone said had come? There’s some new arrangement or other about the soldiers. I know my nephew who’s a territorial said something about a General Fulton coming to be over the whole lot of them; not separated as they used to be.”
Miss Archer wrote down, “—in a distinguished combination of old gold and palest petunia, relieved by valuable antique buckles. Mrs. Slacks looked well in mauve, with one of the new violet pyramid hats.” “What did you say? Yes, I should think that’s very likely. Let me see. Grey poult de soie, isn’t it, with sables? and her two young daughters (she was scribbling again) in girlish foam of niaise crepe in the new swallow blue that has lately come into its own. Yes, that will do.”
“There’s Mrs. Carpenter speaking to them,” said the friend. “I don’t know how you are going to dish up that checked coat of hers again. I must catch Mr. Beaver if I can—he has just gone through—and see if he will take the chair on the 15th.” She disappeared among the crowd, and presently Miss Archer tripped away to take a turn through the rooms to make sure she had omitted no one of importance.
“Shall we find a table for you?” Mrs. Manley said to Susie. “It will take us through the rooms on the way and there are several people you must meet.”
A young woman, dressed with the touching pride of the connoisseur on a small income, turned as Mrs. Manley spoke, and smiled at her.
“How are you?” Mrs. Manley said. “I am showing Mrs. Fulton the lions. If you want tea we could fill a table. Mrs. Fulton, may I introduce you to Mrs. Vachell. You are sure to meet everywhere. General and Mrs. Fulton have just moved into the Babley’s house,” she explained to the other.
“Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Vachell. “I was going to call on you this week (she turned to Susie). Mrs. Babley left me several messages for you about the house, small things that she thought might be useful, but she didn’t want to bother you by writing about them. I only came back from Egypt yesterday.”
“Mrs. Vachell’s husband,” Mrs. Manley explained, “is the most distinguished something-or-other-ist of the century, only I never can pronounce it.”
“Never mind,” said Mrs. Vachell. “We’ll leave it at that. What a squash there is to-day. Do you suppose we shall ever get any tea?” They moved slowly on, and Mrs. Vachell found herself separated with the two girls.
“You must find it rather dreary being turned loose in a strange town,” she said almost pityingly. “Has anyone been any use?”
“We’re quite happy,” said Evangeline. “Do tell me why so many people come here. Is a Town Hall a sort of public party place? Oh dear, what a row that band makes!”
“If we can get to the tea room we shall be out of it,” said Mrs. Vachell. “No, this isn’t exactly a public party, but the Lord Mayor has to entertain everybody. You will find later that you meet your friends here, and it isn’t so bad. But you will probably be roped in to make yourselves useful before long.”
Teresa thrilled once more with the breath of the thing she sought. “How?” she asked.
“All sorts of ways. Child welfare or domestic training or inebriates—or perhaps imbeciles,” Mrs. Vachell added, mischievously putting on an extra screw as she noted the alarm in Evangeline’s face and the throb of excitement in Teresa’s.
Mrs. Carpenter was to be seen through the doorway, pushing slowly towards them, elbowing one, patronising another with a smile, making expressive gestures to friends here and there indicating that her task was nearly impossible—but—hold on, little sheep! The shepherdess is coming. You shall have tea if she has to commandeer some one else’s table.
“I wonder if you would mind——” she will probably say reproachfully. “This lady ought to sit down and it is impossible to find a table. I think we can get six chairs in here if it won’t be pressing you too near the wall.” It was by some manœuvre of this sort that she did in the end plant the girls, whom she had volunteered to find, and Mrs. Vachell, whom she could not very well get rid of, at a table where Mrs. Fulton and Mrs. Manley were already seated. The two elderly ladies who were there first drained their cups and withdrew, commenting on the bad management of the tea rooms and the “manners of some people.”
Mrs. Eric Manley, Mrs. Carpenter and Mrs. Vachell occupied positions in Millport not unlike those of the kings of England before Alfred. Their territories were less defined, their wars were not so bitter, but, as the history books say, “the country languished under their rule and longed for a just and wise leader to unite their petty factions under his sway.” Mrs. Manley ruled over the Fashionable-who-are-charitable, Mrs. Carpenter over the Charitable-who-are-fashionable-and-educated, and Mrs. Vachell over the Educated-and-incidentally-fashionable-and-charitable. They were ripe for the arrival of a visionary like Susie who should unite their people in the peaceful practices of Love—love of architecture-and-so-on, love of children, of all weathers, of the poor, “even those poor terrible drunken creatures who have been taught to be wicked,” of “your own beautiful homes.” We have anticipated this last object of her love. It became one of the stock phrases of those speeches which made her the idol of public meetings in days to come.
But although Destiny was hovering over the tea-table, they knew it not. Perhaps Teresa felt something of the fate in store for her. Their chairs were near a window, below which the trams stopped to load and discharge their passengers. The faces were there by the hundred, the drab clothing, the mud were as usual. Did the scene never alter she wondered? Did the stream of people pour on like that under lowering skies perpetually—all day—Sundays—holidays, even through the night? She had come from the crowded streets of London, but that was utterly different. There was variety, sunshine, even leisureliness in the squares and quiet places off the main traffic; and besides that, the significance of any individual was so small that no one could feel responsible for his neighbour unless he were invited to interest himself. In Millport every weary pedestrian seemed to carry a personal grudge against those who had the means to escape from the mud.
Mrs. Manley was comparing notes with Susie on the eternal subject of prices. Even cakes made at home were almost too expensive to eat every day, she complained. Her husband had had to give up keeping a tin of biscuits at his office, and he often came home to tea to save expense, unless he had to stay and carry on work that the clerks used to do. It was impossible to have the sort of entrées one used to, made with just a little sweetbread or cream or something; even the eggs mounted up now——
“Yes, yes, I know, my dear women,” Mrs. Carpenter interrupted, “but do you realise what it means to Charity? You are only on the visiting committee of my beloved Institute, you know,” she smiled at Mrs. Manley, “and you can have no idea. The very soap the women wash with costs us £20 a year more than it did; there now! What do you think of that? That is just soap alone.”
Mrs. Manley looked a little contemptuous. “Everyone uses soap,” she said. “I have to deal it out at our orphanage when it is my week for the store cupboard. But anyhow I believe there is only one thing that hasn’t gone up and that is bi-carbonate of soda. That is why everybody’s cakes taste of it. (She glanced at Mrs. Carpenter). How do you find things, Mrs. Fulton?”
“I try not to worry about it,” Susie replied. Love seemed to envelope the table as she spoke, and even Mrs. Carpenter felt that she had not got the nail plumb on the head with her last blow. Mrs. Vachell pricked up her ears. “I do so want those two,” Susie continued with a fond look at her daughters, “not to have all their young time clouded by perpetual half-pennies. Of course we are not extravagant, but we have none of us very large appetites and, as I say, I just try not to worry. I have no doubt that what we are going through now is somehow for the good of the world.”
Mrs. Carpenter drew a long breath and turned back a piece of fur at her wrist. “Of course we all believe that,” she said, “or we shouldn’t be here; at least I hope not. But what do you propose, Mrs. Fulton, to do about the terrible suffering as it is?” Even the best accredited lamb in its first year at Millport must not have things all its own way in the fold.
Susie’s eyes brimmed. “I think and think,” she said earnestly, “but I can’t see how it is to be avoided. It seems somehow as if it was meant, and we can only learn the meaning by helping everywhere we can when we get the chance. I think some of the saddest cases are often the least known, don’t you?” Mrs. Vachell was taking an Olympic pleasure in the new forces which Susie was evidently going to bring in on the side of good against evil. She looked on from the high ground of quicker wits than her two sister rulers. She now wanted to see what Susie did with her two daughters. “It is the younger generation that will have to find out these things,” she said, looking at the girls.
“Oh, shall we,” said Evangeline, rather bored. Teresa shrugged her shoulders and passed the cake. Mrs. Carpenter alone took up the challenge. “I think girls have lost all taste for the mere pleasure-loving life they used to lead,” she said, “I know mine won’t look at it. ‘Oh, Mother,’ they say, ‘We’re so bored with parties.’ They are all going to have professions and Lena is going to do social work.” Mrs. Manley, being childless, said nothing.
“Are they!” Susie exclaimed, full of interest. “How wonderful! I often thought as a girl how much I should have liked to be something, but I never had a chance and I am afraid I had no talents.” She dimpled at the three leaders. “I could only admire and enjoy. We must really be going, I think, dears. You belong to the University, don’t you, Mrs. Vachell?” she asked as they dispersed. “It must be so delightful.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Vachell replied, “my husband does. Have you met Mrs. Gainsborough yet?”
“The Principal’s wife?” said Susie. “No, she called last week, but I was out. I was so sorry.” They were walking down the great staircase by this time.
“You must be sure to call on her At Home day,” Mrs. Vachell warned her, “or you will frighten her. It is every Tuesday.”
“Frighten her?” Susie repeated.
“Yes, because if she hasn’t met you first she will have to ask you to dinner without knowing you and she can’t bear that. There she is, by the way, still in the hall. Will you come and speak to her?”
Susie allowed herself to be the means of violently startling a massive woman—there is no other way to think of her—dressed in old-fashioned clothes, who was peering timidly through the glass doors that opened on to the street. She turned in a fright when Mrs. Vachell spoke to her. “Oh! is that you!” she exclaimed thankfully. “I can’t think why my cab hasn’t come. I ordered it at a quarter past five and it is nearly six now and it has come on so wet.”
Mrs. Vachell introduced Susie and her daughters and slipped away.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Gainsborough again—(it was her usual beginning)—“so delighted to meet you—so sorry you were out when I called. And these are your girls?—quite so—yes——” She relapsed into silence and went on looking helplessly at the rain.
“Mayn’t we drive you home?” Susie suggested. “Our car is there.” Mrs. Gainsborough threw up her hands and followed, murmuring. As they drove home through the crowded, dripping streets, Evangeline and Teresa crushed suffocatingly under the shadow of Mrs. Gainsborough’s knees, Susie’s kind little face peeping from behind a bunch of aged ostrich tips in Mrs. Gainsborough’s bonnet, all three of them disconcerted by the unusual smell of warm eau-de-Cologne that filled their car, very little was said. Mrs. Gainsborough was at her request left on the doorstep of a house, cinnamon-coloured like the Fultons’, at the corner of a cinnamon-coloured square. Once safely on her own territory her nervousness left her, and her smiles and genuine pleasure in the small service rendered brought Teresa another fleeting vision of the joy she perpetually sought.