Phyllis had a good deal to think of after she had sat for half an hour with her father in the room where they worked together for the discomfiture of the opposite party, and had given him some account of the representation of the play at the Parthenon. Her father was delighted to find her in high spirits. So many people come back from the theater looking glum and worn out, yawning and mumbling when asked what they have seen and what it had all been about. Phyllis was not glum, nor did she mumble. She was able to describe scene after scene, and more than once she sprang from her seat, carried away by her own powers of description, and began to act the bits that had impressed her--bits the force of which could only be understood when described with gestures and pretty posturing.
Her father thought he had never seen anything so pretty in his life.
(What a girl she was, to be sure, to have so easily recovered from the effects of that terrible ordeal through which she had passed--having to dismiss at a moment's notice the man whom she had promised to marry!) He had certainly never seen anything so fascinating as her pretty posturing, with the electric lights gleaming over her white neck with its gracious curves, and her firm white arms from which her gloves had been stripped.
It had been his intention to describe to her a scene which had taken place in the House of Commons that night--a scene of Celt and Saxon mingling in wild turmoil over a question of neglected duty on the part of a Government official: not the one who was subsequently decorated by the sovereign a few days after his neglect of duty had placed the country in jeopardy, and had precipitated the downfall of the ministry and the annihilation of his party as a political factor; not this man, but another, who had referred to Trafalgar Square as the private thoroughfare of the crown. The scene had been an animated one, and Mr. Ayrton had hoped to derive a good deal of pleasure from describing it to his daughter; but when he had listened to her, and watched her for a few minutes, he came to the conclusion that it would be absurd for him to make an effort to compete with her. What was his wretched little story of Parliamentary squalor compared with these psychological subtleties which had interested his daughter all the evening?
He listened to and watched that lovely thing, overflowing with the animation that comes from a quick intelligence--a keen appreciation of the intelligence of the great artists who had interpreted a story which thrilled the imagination of generation after generation, and he felt that Parliament was a paltry thing. Parliament--what was Parliament? The wrangle of political parties over a paltry issue. It had no real life in it; it had nothing of the fullness and breadth of the matters that interested such people as had minds--imagination.
"You are tired," she cried at last. "It is thoughtless of me to keep you out of your bed. You have had a weary night, I am sure. Was it the Irish again, or the horrid teetotalers?"
"It was both, my dear," said he. "Phyllis," he added solemnly, "an Irish teetotaler is a fearful thing."
"You shall forget all the intemperate teetotalers in a beautiful sleep," said she, putting her arms around his neck. "Good-night, papa!
It was so thoughtless of me to keep you up. It is one o'clock."
"It appears to me that you are the one who should be ready to succumb," said her father. "I had nothing to stimulate my imagination.
Practical politics has not yet discovered a good working reply to the man who calls his fellow-man a liar, so the political outlook is not very cheering."
"That is what is greatly needed: a satisfactory retort--verbal, of course--to that every-day assertion."
"It has become the most potent influence in the House of Commons, during the past year or two; and the worst of the matter is that the statement is nearly always correct."
"Then there is all the greater need for a /modus vivendi/"--she had an ample acquaintance with the jargon of diplomacy. "I don't despair of Parliament being able to suggest an efficient retort."
"Parliament: two ragamuffins quarreling up an entry over a rotten orange. Good-night, my child!"
She was at last in her own room: an apartment of gracious-tinted fabrics and pink satin panels; of tapestried sofas made by French artists before the lovely daughter of Maria Teresa went to her death.
She switched on the lights in the candle sconces, and threw herself down upon one of the sofas. Her theater wrap and fan she had laid over a chair.
It was not to the drama which she had seen superbly acted at the Parthenon that her thoughts went out; but to the words which her dearest friend had spoken when driving back from the theater.
What words were they?
She could not recollect them now; but she was still conscious of the impression which they had produced upon her while they were being spoken. That impression was that up to that instant all the issues of her life had been unworthy of a moment's consideration. She had taken what she believed to be a deep interest in many matters during the five years that she had been the head of her father's house. She had, she knew, been of the greatest help to her father in his political life, not merely turning her memory to good account in discovering the incautious phrases in the speeches of the men who were foolish enough to be his opponents, but actually advising him, when he asked her, on many matters about which the newspapers had been full. Then she had taken an active part in more than one of those "movements" which became the topic of a London season until compelled by an invisible but all-powerful authority to move on and make way for the next new thing. She had moved with every movement, and had proved her capacity to control herself when the movement became uncontrollable. And then she had thought how worthy a position in life would be that of the wife of the rector of a church like St. Chad's.
