According to Plato

by Frank Frankfort Moore

And then the thought came to her that she had not only made a fool of herself, she had also made a fool of Pierce Winwood. This reflection was too much for her. She turned her face to a pillow and wept silently into its depths.

This was the second time she had been moved to tears since the morning, and it was the memory of the incident of her first tears that caused her to weep the more piteously now. By a strange inconsistency it was this same memory that caused her to leap to her feet after an interval of silent sobbing, and to toss away her second handkerchief just as she had done her first and then to strike the palms of her hands together crying aloud:

“I will face them all—I will face them all. I am not afraid of any of them. I know my own mind now—now. I don’t care whether I have behaved honourably or basely or idiotically, I love one man and that man I mean to marry. That’s enough for me.”

It was in this spirit that she sat down in front of her escritoire and flung the ink upon a sheet of paper to the effect that if Dear Mr. Clifton would have the kindness to pay her a visit on the following afternoon she would be glad. She thumped the scrawl when face downward on the blotter, as good-natured people thump the back of a child that has swallowed a fishbone. It was a great satisfaction to her to pound away at it; and when she picked it up she saw that the blotting paper, which had been spotless before was now black. The face of the letter was also smudged, the absorbent not having been rapid enough in its action. But she knew that not only would the lines be deciphered by the man to whom they were addressed, he would also be made to understand something of the mood she was in when she had made that cavalry charge upon the paper using her broadest quill as a lance.

She gave a sigh of relief when she saw the envelope with the letter inside, lying on the table beside her; and then she wrote the date on another sheet of paper. The second letter, however, seemed to require more careful composition than the first. She sat looking wistfully at the blank paper for more than half an hour, without making sufficient progress to write the name of the one whom the post office authorities call the addressee. She leant back in her chair and bit at the feather end of the pen for a long time. At last she tore up the sheet of paper and dropped the fragments with great tenderness into the Dresden vase that stood on a carved bracket on the wall.

“I will not spoil his day,” she said pathetically. “I may have a good deal more to tell him by this time to-morrow. But I am not afraid to face anything that may come to pass. I know my own mind now—now.”

Her maid came to enquire if she was at home, and if she would have tea in her boudoir or in one of the drawing-rooms. She replied that she was not at home and that she would like her tea brought to her at once.

This was done and she found herself greatly refreshed, and able to enjoy an hour’s sleep before dinner, and to hear during that meal, her mother’s account of the two entertainments at which she had assisted, with a detailed description of some of the most innocuous of the dresses worn by the heroines of the lady correspondents’ columns. A word or two Lady Gwendolen threw in about the less interesting subject of the men who had walked through the garden of the Hyde Park Gate house, with the usual mournfulness of the men among five o’clock ices and angel-cakes, failed to move Josephine.

“You should have been there, Joe,” said the mother when the servants had left the dining-room, and the scent of fresh peeled peaches was in the air. “I told you that it was quite unlikely that your Ernest would call to-day, so you had your waiting at home for nothing. Amber was there wearing that ancient thing with the little sprigs of violets—she must have had that since May—but I think the hat was new—do you know it?—a fearfully broad thing of white straw with a droop on both sides and two ostrich feathers lying flat, one falling over the brim and coiling underneath, and who is the latest victim to her theories of training, do you think? Why, Lord Lully himself. She had ices with him, and held on to him with grim determination for half an hour, though he told me last week that he would be there and I saw that he was struggling hard to get away from her, poor boy! But if she fancies that Lord Lully is such a fool as the rest of them, she is going a little too far. I happen to know that he has his eyes open just as wide as his father could wish. Amber will make nothing of him, take my word for it. Theories! Experiments! Fiddlestrings and fiddlesticks! And his mother was quite civil to her too—almost gracious, only that we know that she never is so except for three weeks during a General Election, and she takes it out of her home circle when it’s all over and she need be civil no longer. I hope your father will get into the Cabinet and so relieve me from the General Election smile. I smiled him through three General Elections, but I decline to face a fourth. Why should an Under Secretary’s wife be supposed to make a Cheshire Cat of herself when the wife of a Cabinet Minister need only be civil?”

This and several other social problems were formulated by Lady Gwendolen for the consideration of her daughter while they ate their peaches, and then they had an interval to themselves before dressing for a very Small Dance at a very great house, following an Official Reception.