Thus her apparent failure consumed itself. With the divine confidence of youth, the less successful she seemed to be the more she spurred herself on to strive. All her sense of right had told her, when she made her decision, that she would thus be doing her best; her judgment was arrived at coolly and sanely, and the present practical ill-success of it argued nothing against the principle.
Then came a crowning despondency and agitation in something Martin told her after he returned from a visit to Lady Sunningdale. The short history of that visit, however, claims an episodic precedence.
Lady Sunningdale had sent her motor over from Fareham to fetch Martin, and when he arrived, about tea-time, he rushed straight out on to the lawn to find her, but only encountered the chilling looks of several total strangers who were talking about fiscal problems and seemed surprised, if not pained, to see him. This was discouraging; and he was wondering what place there was to flee unto, when a footman came out after him to say that her ladyship was in her bedroom and wished to see him there immediately. Martin could not help giving a little giggle of amusement at this, and the footman, preceding him upstairs, threw open the door and announced him.
The room was large and very rose-coloured, on the principle of Lady Sunningdale’s famous maxim that bedrooms should be optimistic. She herself was reclining on the optimistic silk coverlet of her bed, with her shoes off and the blinds down.
“Is that you, monster?” she asked. “I am an absolute wreck. Yes, pull up one blind and sit down at a respectful distance. Martin, you must promise to play absolutely all the time you are here, like a barrel organ, or I shall die. I shall send a footman to you after each time with twopence on a tray and orders that you are not to move on. The house is crammed with perfectly dreadful people. I cannot imagine why I asked them. I hope you have not brought your gun, because I shan’t let you go shooting. You will have to talk to me all day, except when you are playing. Don’t tread on Suez Canal, or you’ll be drowned. Frank is here, and Stella. Otherwise—my dear, why are politicians so impossible? And why is Helen behaving like a mad-woman. Really, I thought she had more brains.”
Martin had pulled up one blind during this and revealed the room. There were pink-silk walls, on which were several pictures of Lady Sunningdale of not very recent date, a pink carpet, white furniture, and a particularly large and pink bed. Lady Sunningdale, fenced, like Egypt, on the one side by Suez Canal and on the other by Sahara, was lying propped up by a quantity of huge pillows and cushions. French books with yellow covers bestrewed the bed, and fragments of chewed pages suggested that the dogs had eaten one, like Jezebel, leaving only a few very indigestible pieces. A French maid hovered uneasily about a toilet-table, and appeared to be putting things in drawers. Considered as a wreck, finally, Lady Sunningdale looked particularly large and sea-worthy.
“Miss Plympton?” asked Martin, in an extremely disengaged voice, but with his face suddenly infected by the prevailing optimism.
Lady Sunningdale drew conclusions before most people could have arrived at data.
“Yes; ever since you played to us at Chartries she has been trying to learn the ‘Merry Peasant,’” she said. “She is not getting on very well; but art is long, is it not. So is life. Too long, I think, sometimes. But, my dear, the rest of them! They talk about fiscal problems and what they’ve shot. Even Frank appears to be vaguely interested in free trade or free food or free drinks or something, which is deplorable of him. I expect him here immediately. My bedroom is the only place where one can be free from those intolerable bores. There are three, three cabinet ministers in the house! Really, politics ought to be considered a dangerous habit, like morphia. In fact, there is a very great resemblance between them. They are both drugs that send me to sleep, and the habit grows on one. You have to take more and more, and the result is death of the intellect, which is quite as lamentable as death of the body, and renders you far more tiresome to other people. For, after all, when one’s body is dead one is put away. But people whose intellect is dead are not put away at all; they pervade society. There is no one in the world so lost as the intellectually lost. How big hell must be! Talking of that, how is your father? What a bear!”
Martin had settled himself in a rose-coloured chair, and gave a great shout of laughter, suddenly checked.