Not honest enough to say, “Yes, you are,” Georgie hedged, with some little confusion.
“What makes you think so, Feo?”
“Your infernal rudeness, my dear, which you wouldn’t have dared to indulge in a week ago. You’ve all sensed the fact that I’m sick to tears of the games I’ve led you into, and would gladly have gone in for babies if I’d had the luck to seem desirable to the right man.” She made a long arm and rang the bell. “I am ripe for repentance, you see, or perhaps it might be more accurate, though less dramatic, to say eager for a new sensation. It isn’t coming off, but you can all go and hang yourselves so far as I’m concerned. I’m out. I’m going to continue to be serious. Bring lunch in here,” she added, as a footman framed himself in the doorway, “quickly. I’m starving.”
Almost any other girl who had been the favorite of such a woman as Feo would have found in this renunciation of leadership something to cause emotion. Mere gratitude for many favors and much kindness seemed to demand that. But this young phlegmatic thing was just as unmoved as she had been on receipt of the various war office telegrams officially regretting the deaths of Lord Clayburgh, Captain Graham Macoover, and Sir Harry Pytchley. She lit the inevitable cigarette, chose the much-cushioned divan, and stretched herself at full length.
“I can do with a little groundsel too,” she said, as though the other subject had been threshed out.
And so it had, for the time being. Feo, oddly enough, had no bricks to throw. She could change her religion, it seemed, without pitching mud at the church of her recent beliefs. It was not until lunch was finished and the last trickle of resentment at Georgie’s failure to apologize had gone out of her system that she returned to the matter and began, in a way, to think aloud. It was not as indiscreet as it might have been, because Georgie Malwood was completely self-contained and had developed concentration to such a degree, her first three husbands having been given to arguing, that she could lie and follow her own train of thought as easily in a room in which a mass of women were playing bridge as in a monkey house. Her interest in Feo was dead. She was over.
And so Feo gave herself away to a little person whose ears were closed.
“I don’t know what exactly to do,” she said. “At the moment, I feel like a fish out of water. If Arrowsmith had liked me and been ready to upset the conventional ideas of his exemplary family, I’d have eloped with him, however frightfully it would have put Edmund in the cart. I don’t mind owning that Arrowsmith is the only man I’ve ever met who could have turned me into the Spartan mother and worthy haus-frau. I had dreams of living with him behind the high walls of a nice old house and making the place echo with the pattering feet of babes. It’s the culminating disappointment of several months of ’em,—the bad streak which all of us have to go through at one time or another, I suppose. However, he doesn’t like me, worse luck, and so there it is. So I think I’d better make the best of a bad job and cultivate Edmund. I think I’d better study the life of Lady Randolph Churchill and make myself useful to my husband. Politics are in a most interesting state just now, with Lloyd George on the verge of collapse at last, and the brainy dishonesty of a woman suddenly inspired with political ambition is exactly what Edmund needs to push him to the top. He has been too long without a woman’s unscrupulous influence.”
She began to pace the room with long swinging strides, eagerly, clutching at this new idea like a drowning man to a spar. Her eyes began to sparkle and the old ring came back to her voice. Here was a way to use her superabundant energy and build up a new hobby.
“I’m no longer a flapping girl with everything to discover,” she went on, “I’ve had my share of love stuff. By Jove, I’ll use my intelligence, for a change. I’ll get into the fight and develop strategy. Every one’s looking to Edmund as the one honest man in the political game, and I’ll buckle to and help him. He’s an amazing creature. I’ve always admired him, and there’s something that suits my present state of mind in making up to him for my perfectly rotten treatment all these years. If I can’t make a lover into a husband, by Jingo, I can set to work to make a husband into a lover. There’s an idea for you, Feo, my pet! There’s a mighty interesting scheme to dig your teeth into, my broad-shouldered friend!”