Roxton had weathered Lent and Easter, and Lady Sophia Gillingham, Dame President of the local habitation of the Primrose League; patroness of all Roxton charities, Dissenting enterprises excepted; and late lady-in-waiting to the Queen; had called her many dear friends together to discuss the coming Midsummer Bazaar that was held annually for the benefit of the Roxton Cottage Hospital. Roxton, like the majority of small country towns, was a veritable complexity of cliques, and by “Roxton” should be understood the superior people who were Unionists in politics, and Church Christians in religion. There were also Chapel Christians in Roxton, chiefly of Radical persuasion, and therefore hardly decent in the sight of the genteel. People of “peculiar views” were rare, and not generally encouraged. Some of the orthodox even refused to buy a local tradesman’s boots, because that particular tradesman was not a believer in the Trinity. The inference is obvious that the “Roxton” concerned in Lady Sophia’s charitable bazaar, was superior and highly cultured Roxton, the Roxton of dinner-jackets and distinction, equipages, and Debrett.
To be a very dear friend of Lady Sophia Gillingham’s was to be one of the chosen and elect of God, and Betty Steel had come by that supreme and angelic exaltation. Perhaps Mignon’s kitten had purred and gambolled Mrs. Betty into favor; more probably the physician’s wife had nothing to learn from any cat. Betty Steel and her husband dined frequently at Roxton Priory. The brunette had even reached the unique felicity of being encouraged in informal and unexpected calls. Lady Sophia possessed a just and proper estimate of her own social position. She was fat, commonplace, and amiable, poorly educated, a woman of few ideas. But she was Lady Sophia Gillingham, and would have expected St. Peter to give her proper precedence over mere commoners in the anteroom of heaven.
The third Thursday after Easter Mrs. Betty Steel drove homeward in a radiant mood, with the spirit of spring stolen from the dull glint of a fat old lady’s eyes. There had been an opening committee meeting, and Lady Sophia had expressed it to be her wish that Mrs. Steel should be elected secretary. Moreover, the production of a play had been discussed, a pink muslin drama suited to the susceptibilities of the Anglican public. The part of heroine had been offered, not unanimously, to Mrs. Betty. And with a becoming spirit of diffidence she had accepted the honor, when pressed most graciously by the Lady Sophia’s own prosings.
Mrs. Betty might have impersonated April as she swept homeward under the high beneficence of St. Antonia’s elms. The warmth of worldly well-being plumps out a woman’s comeliness. She expands and ripens in the sun of prosperity and praise, in contrast to the thousands of the ever-contriving poor, whose sordid faces are but the reflection of sordid facts.
Betty Steel’s face had an April alluringness that day; its outlines were soft and beautiful, suggestive of the delicacy of apple bloom seen through morning mist. She was exceeding well content with life, was Mrs. Betty, for her husband was in a position to write generous checks, and the people of Roxton seemed ready to pay her homage.
Parker Steel was reading in the dining-room when this triumphant and happy lady came in like a white flower rising from a sheath of green. It was only when selfishly elated that the wife showed any flow of affection for her husband. For the once she had the air of an enthusiastic girl whom marriage had not robbed of her ideals.
“Dear old Parker—”
She went towards him with an out-stretching of the hands, as he dropped the Morning Post, and half rose from the lounge chair.
“Had a good time?”
“Quite splendid.”