The Convert. Elizabeth Robins
to have dropped its hands as though in modesty withheld from pointing to hours so little worthy of record.
Two or three men, on this fine Saturday, had come down from London for the week-end to disport themselves on the Ulland links, half a mile beyond the park. After a couple of raw days, the afternoon had turned out quite unseasonably warm, and though the golfers had come back earlier than usual, not because of the heat but because one of their number had a train to catch, they agreed it was distinctly reviving to find tea served out of doors.
Already Lady John was in her place on the pillared colonnade, behind the urn. Already, too, one of her pair of pretty nieces was at hand to play the skilful lieutenant. Hermione Heriot, tactful, charming, twenty-five, was equally ready to hand bread and butter, or, sitting quietly, to perform the greater service—that of presenting the fresh-coloured, discreetly-smiling vision called 'the typical English girl.' Miss Heriot fulfilled to a nicety the requirements of those who are sensibly reassured by the spectacle of careful conventionality allied to feminine charm—a pleasant conversability that may be trusted to soothe and counted on never to startle. Hermione would almost as soon have stood on her head in Piccadilly as have said anything original, though to her private consternation such perilous stuff had been known to harbour an uneasy instant in her bosom. She carried such inconvenient cargo as carefully hidden as a conspirator would a bomb under his cloak. It had grown to be as necessary to her to agree with the views and fashions of the majority as it was disquieting to her to see these contravened, or even for a single hour ignored. From the crown of her carefully dressed head to the tips of her pointed toes she was engaged in testifying her assent to the prevailing note. Despite all this to recommend her, she was not Lady John's favourite niece. No doubt about Jean Dunbarton holding that honour; and, to Hermione's credit, her own love for her cousin enabled her to accept the situation with a creditable equability. Jean Dunbarton was due now at any moment, she having already sent over her luggage with her maid the short two miles from the Bishop's Palace, where the girl had dined and slept the night before.
The rest of the Ulland House party were arriving by the next train. As Miss Levering was understood to be one of those expected it will be seen that a justified faith in the excellence of the Ulland links had not made Lady John unmindful of the wisdom of including among 'the week-enders' a nice assortment of pretty women for the amusement of her golfers in the off hours.
Of this other young lady swinging her golf club as she came across the lawn with the men—sole petticoat among them—it could not be pretended that any hostess, let alone one so worldly-wise as Lady John Ulland, would look to have the above-hinted high and delicate office performed by so upright and downright—not to say so bony—a young woman, with face so like a horse, and the stride of a grenadier. Under her short leather-bound skirt the great brown-booted feet seemed shamelessly to court attention—as it were out of malice to catch your eye, while deliberately they trampled on the tenderest traditions clinging still about the Weaker Sex.
Lady John held in her hand the top of the jade and silver tea-caddy. Hermione, as well as her aunt, knew that this top held four teaspoonsful of tea. Lady John filled it once, filled it twice, and turned the contents out each time into the gaping pot. Then, absent-mindedly, she paused, eyeing the approaching party—that genial silver-haired despot, her husband, walking with Lord Borrodaile, the gawky girl between them, except when she paused to practise a drive. The fourth person, a short, compactly knit man, was lounging along several paces behind, but every now and then energetically shouting out his share in the conversation. The ground of Lady John's interest in the group seemed to consist in a half-mechanical counting of noses. Her eyes came back to the tea-table and she made a third addition to the jade and silver measure.
'We shall be only six for the first brew,' prompted the girl at her side.
'Paul Filey is mooning somewhere about the garden.'
'Oh!'
'Why do you say it like that?'
Hermione's eyes rested a moment on the golfer who was bringing up the rear. He was younger than his rather set figure had at a distance proclaimed him.
'I was only thinking Dick Farnborough can't abide Paul,' said the girl.
'A typical product of the public school is hardly likely to appreciate an undisciplined creature with a streak of genius in him like Paul Filey.'
'Oh, I rather love him myself,' said the girl, lightly, 'only as Sophia says he does talk rather rot at times.'
With her hand on the tea-urn, releasing a stream of boiling water into the pot, Lady John glanced over the small thickset angel that poised himself on one podgy foot upon the lid of the urn.
'Sophia's too free with her tongue. It's a mistake. It frightens people off.'
'Men, you mean?'
'Especially men.'
'I often think,' said the young woman, 'that men—all except Paul—would be more shocked at Sophia—if—she wasn't who she is.'
'No doubt,' agreed her aunt. 'Still I sympathize with her parents. I don't see how they'll ever marry her. She might just as well be Miss Jones—that girl—for all she makes of herself.'
'Yes; I've often thought so, too,' agreed Hermione, apparently conscious that the very most was made of her.
'She hasn't even been taught to walk.' Lady John was still watching the girl's approach.
'Yet she looks best out of doors,' said Hermione, firmly.
'Oh, yes! She comes into the drawing-room as if she were crossing a ploughed field!'
'All the same,' said Hermione, under her breath, 'when she is indoors I'd rather see her walking than sitting.'
'You mean the way she crosses her legs?'
'Yes.'
'But that, too—it seems like so many other things, a question only of degree. Nobody objects to seeing a pair of neat ankles crossed—it looks rather nice and early Victorian. Nowadays lots of girls cross their knees—and nobody says anything. But Sophia crosses her—well, her thighs.'
And the two women laughed understandingly.
A stranger might imagine that the reason for Lady Sophia's presence in the party was that she, by common consent, played a capital game of golf—'for a woman.' That fact, however, was rather against her. For people who can play the beguiling game, want to play it—and want to play it not merely now and then out of public spirit to make up a foursome, but constantly and for pure selfish love of it. Woman may, if she likes, take it as a compliment to her sex that this proclivity—held to be wholly natural in a man—is called 'rather unfeminine' in a woman. But it was a defect like the rest, forgiven the Lady Sophia for her father's sake. Lord Borrodaile, held to be one of the most delightful of men, was much in request for parties of this description. One reason for his daughter's being there was that it glossed the fact that Lady Borrodaile was not—was, indeed, seldom present, and one may say never missed, in the houses frequented by her husband.
But as he and his friends not only did not belong to, but looked down upon, the ultra smart set, where the larger freedoms are practised in lieu of the lesser decencies, Lord Borrodaile lived his life as far removed from any touch of scandal and irregularity as the most puritanic of the bourgeoisie. Part and parcel of his fastidiousness, some said—others, that from his Eton days he had always been a lazy beggar. As though to show that he did not shrink from reasonable responsibility towards his female impedimenta, any inquiry as to the absence of Lady Borrodaile was met by reference to Sophia. In short, where other attractive husbands brought a boring wife, Lord Borrodaile brought an undecorative daughter. While to the onlooker nearly every aspect of this particular young woman would seem destined to offend a beauty-loving, critical taste like that of Borrodaile, he was probably served, as other mortals are, by that philosophy of the senses which brings in time a deafness and a blindness to the unloveliness that we needs must live beside. Lord Borrodaile was far too intelligent not to see, too, that when people had got over Lady Sophia's uncompromising exterior, they found things