“Again you’re begging the question. That wisdom abounds doesn’t imply that everybody is wise enough to prefer it to folly.”
Louise got up and walked back to her dressing table. “But there, as Dare once reminded me, is where nature steps in. If people are hopelessly weak-willed, they have to be cared for and put up with; it’s not their fault. But nature’s average is quite high on the side of strength. Human beings are on the whole wise, just as they are on the whole healthy. And each human being who feels himself weak in spirit can take a spiritual tonic or go in for spiritual gymnastics, and if he doesn’t get better, why I suppose he just becomes a spiritual corpse . . . We’re getting almost morbidly serious about nothing on earth. I haven’t the vaguest idea what started us,—oh yes, your objection to my Mr. Dare dear. Let’s go and see if tea’s at four yet.”
“Louise!” Miriam cried, in a half-choked voice. “What a treasure you are.”
“Don’t be prosy,” said Louise, brushing Miriam’s forehead with her lips. “That fawn thing of yours wears like iron, doesn’t it. I’m in rags. If Keble gets in we’ll make him stand us a trip to New York for some duds.”
Miriam was grateful for the delicacy which had led Louise to terminate her homily with a flippant flourish, thus giving Miriam an opportunity to withdraw intact from the compromising currents into which she had nervously forced the interview. But the tyrant felt cheated, and only subsided at the tea-table when Keble drew Miriam into a final consultation and Louise challenged Dare to a toast-eating competition.
CHAPTER V
BEFORE Louise had been an hour in the Valley she saw that the election was not going to be the “walk-over” that Pat Goard was predicting, despite the solid support which Keble was receiving at the hands of all the commercial interests. Although she could be contemptuously disregardful of public opinion, she seldom made the mistake of misreading it to her advantage, and as she moved about among groups of idlers in Main Street she intuitively discovered that there was a formidable undercurrent of opposition to her husband.
It came to her with a shock that part of the opposition was directed at herself. She knew there were people in the Valley who thought of her as a “menace”. There were women who resented what they regarded as her superior airs, her new way of talking, her habit of dashing into town in an expensive motor. She found that her frivolous treatment of the far-off Watch-Night service had not been forgotten, had even been exhumed by people who had boisterously profited by Keble’s hospitality on the night in question. She discovered that sarcastic equivocations were being circulated regarding her “sick man” and Keble’s “secretary”. Further than that, capital was being made of the fact that Keble had brought laborers from the east to work on his land. This was a particularly malicious weapon, since Keble had advertised months in advance for local workmen, and of the few who had offered their services, he had engaged all who qualified for the work in hand.
She made a rapid computation of her enemies, then a rapid computation of her friends. Luckily she had invited Mr. and Mrs. Boots to her house during the visit of her English guests. That had greatly strengthened the Eveley prestige among the faithful. Mrs. Boots recalled that she was the first to tell the Eveleys that they should go in for politics. Even the tongue of the mail carrier’s wife had wagged less carelessly since Louise had invited Amy Sweet to dinner with a lord. Pearl Beatty, who had recently become Mrs. Jack Wallace, was a tower of strength for Keble’s cause, for while the women of the Valley whispered about her, Pearl’s respectability was now unchallengeable and most of her detractors owed money to Jack for ploughs and harness bought on credit. Moreover, Pearl, as a university graduate, could make the untutored respect her opinion, and she was phenomenally successful on the stump.