Lesbia Newman (1889)/Chapter 37
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Leading to the Second Part.
‘Hallo! visitors, bother! I must stop in for them,’ said Lesbia to herself, for just as she was leading her bicycle down the vicarage garden, a day or two after the visit to Ruddymere, she saw a wagonette pull up at the garden gate, and a footman dismount from it. In a minute she recognised the visitors.
‘Why, it’s the Lockstables from their honeymoon, bringing Fri with them! How are you all? this is quite unexpected, come in—yes, yes, I can ride afterwards; you're just in time for a cup of tea with mamma and auntie, but Uncle Spines is out in the village; he was sent for. But how soon you’ve come back from Italy, Rose! you can’t have done it properly in so short a time?’
‘We didn’t care to be gallivanting abroad any longer, with this great smash at home,’ said Lockstable. ‘What insanity made that unfortunate fellaw Redhill throw away his life, and the lives of all those fine fellaws, after the battle was lost?’
‘They did nobly for their country, Athelstan,’ said his wife.
‘Country be shot!’ was the reply. ‘Catch me dying for my country! Not if I know it. My creed is, that a fellaw’s put here, not to die for his country, but to live for pudding and kisses,—eh, Rose?’
‘Yes, that is your ‘creed,’ Athelstan, and I’m afraid you have no other,’ answered his wife.
‘There’s some truth in what you say, though, Mr Lockstable,’ remarked Lesbia. ‘It was a manifestly useless, and, therefore, unjustifiable sacrifice.’
‘Ah, you're a sensible young lady, Miss Newman. By the way, I’ve brought you a present from the Swiss, the actual weapon used by William Tell at Hastings, or anyhow, one fit to be used by your muscular arms, whenever you visit mountains with glaciers. Where the deuce an’ all—ah, I left it in the carriage.’
‘How d’you do, won’t you come in?’ said Mrs Bristley, advancing from the house and shaking hands with each. ‘My husband will be sorry to miss you, but he may be in by five.’
‘Here you are, Miss Newman,’ said Lockstable, presenting her with a very workman-like ice-axe.
‘Thanks endless; what a first-rate tool!’ said Lesbia, taking it from his hands. ‘But you needn’t call me Miss Newman any longer, now that you are an appendage of my friend Rose.’
‘Lesbia, then—you must get your uncle to take you to the Alps; it’s just what you’d enjoy. I believe you'd go for Mont Blanc all alone, like that fellaw Jock o’ Ballsack—’
‘Jacques Balmat of Chamounix, I suppose you mean,’ said Lesbia laughing. ‘Balzac was a French novelist; and as for Jock o’ Hazeldean, I’m sure I don’t know who he was. But I shouldn’t take Balmat’s route; I should ascend from St Geovais by the Dôme, and return by the Côte, the Corridor, and the Bossous.’
‘Not without a guide, Lesbie,’ said Mrs Lockstable. ‘It would be tempting Providence. ‘The change of weather alone is a great danger on the high range. The local guides are well accustomed to observe it, and no one who values his life should venture on those heights without one.’
‘No, by the cross of Christopher Columbus!’ put in her husband. ‘Why, I needed a guide inside a London ’bus yesterday, although Rose was with me. We were sitting near the door in one of the red pennies which run between ‘Woyl Oak’ and the Strand, you know. I took a fellaw opposite me for one of the fellaws of my club, and shook hands with him violently. He was a perfect stranger, and stone-deaf into the bargain. Didn’t he stare like an owl, and didn’t our co-’bussers giggle!’
While the rest of the company were still chatting in the drawing-room, Friga led her intimate friend out again into the garden, and, taking her hand, said,—
‘Lesbie, something has been haunting me ever since the news of the disaster of Queenstown, about which, I will confess to you, I care very little politically. That something is the interview which you and your uncle had some time ago with Cardinal Power, and which you gave me an account of. I understand your view, Lesbie, to be, that if women’s rights are to be vindicated, the religious department must not be neglected; because it is mainly by appeals to the superstitious credulity and ignorance of the masses that our subjection has been maintained. You hold, do you not, that it is essential to the regeneration of society and a higher civilisation, that the spiritual dominion should pass out of the hands of those who have usurped it, and that the priestess of nature should also become the priestess by society’s ordinances; and further, that the divine supremacy itself should be ascribed to our sex. Is that your doctrine?’
‘Certainly, Fri; what of it?’
‘Why, that on these grounds you have approached the Church of Rome through her chief representative here, as being the body most fitted to accept and act upon that view of the future of human religion, the one most competent and able to carry it into effect if she will.’
‘Yes; what then?’
‘Why, then I think it is time you followed up your first interview with the cardinal by another. If this revolution is going to shake society to pieces, the endurance of even his Church will be tried, the more especially if the rumours mentioned by the correspondent of the Daily Twaddler this morning should prove true, that an Italian woman of influence and position is getting up an agitation against the Church in Rome itself, which may end in a regular persecution,’
‘Look here, then, Fri; if I go and call on the cardinal again, will you go with me?’
‘I! Do you think that would be of any use, Lesbia? I sympathise with your aims as heartily as your uncle can, but my talents are not equal to his; in fact I am no orator, though I study a good deal.’
‘I think it might be of service, Fri. The world’s the world, and its motives are not always those of pure reason. Your father has lately been in a prominent position before it, while my uncle is only an obscure clever man.’
‘My father!’ said Friga, laughing. ‘Yes; he has been in a prominent position before the world of late; very. More prominent than successful. However, if you think I might be useful to bait your hook, as a possible convert to Romanism, I’ll go through the ceremony of calling with you, at all events.’
‘That’s settled then; we must arrange an opportunity. Now, how are you going home?’
‘Direct. The wagonette will drop me at the park gate, and then take the Lockstables to Frogmore Station; they return to town this evening.’
‘Well, I can ride my bike to the park gate, and then walk a bit with you. That'll give us a few minutes to consult about seeing the cardinal.’