Part 36

PHOEBE. Hullo! (She is taking off her things.) Wherever have you been? We’ve been scouring the neighbourhood—

(LADY MOGTON enters, followed by JANET.)

I say, you’re looking jolly chippy.

ELIZABETH. We had an extra enthusiastic meeting. She spoke for rather a long time. I made her come home with me and lie down. I think she is all right now.

LADY MOGTON. Would you like to see a doctor?

PHOEBE. There is a very good man close here. (She turns to JAWBONES, who is still near the window.) Gordon—

ANNYS. (Interrupting.) No. Please don’t. I am quite all right. I hate strange doctors.

PHOEBE. Well, let me send for Whitby; he could be here in twenty minutes.

ANNYS. I wish you would all leave me alone. There’s absolutely nothing to fuss about whatever. We pampered women—we can’t breathe the same air that ordinary mortals have to. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

PHOEBE. (To herself.) Obstinate pig.

(She catches JAWBONES’ eye; unnoticed by the others, she takes him aside. They whisper.)

ANNYS. How is it going?

LADY MOGTON. You must be prepared for winning. (She puts again the question that ANNYS has frequently been asked to answer during the last few days.) What are you going to do?

(MRS. MOUNTCALM-VILLIERS enters, as usual in a flutter of excitement.)

MRS. MOUNTCALM-VILLIERS. Am I late?

(They brush her back into silence. ELIZABETH takes charge of her.)

ANNYS. (She has risen.) You think it wise tactics, to make it impossible for Geoffrey to be anything else in the future but our enemy?

LADY MOGTON. (Contemptuously.) You are thinking of him, and not of the cause.

ANNYS. And if I were! Haven’t I made sacrifice enough?—more than any of you will ever know. Ay—and would make more, if I felt it was demanded of me. I don’t! (Her burst of anger is finished. She turns, smiling.) I’m much more cunning than you think. There will be other elections we shall want to fight. With the Under-Secretary for Home Affairs in sympathy with us, the Government will find it difficult to interfere. Don’t you see how clever I am?

(JAWBONES, having received his instructions from PHOEBE, has slipped out unobserved. He has beckoned to GINGER; she has followed him. PHOEBE has joined the group.)

MRS. MOUNTCALM-VILLIERS. There’s something in that.

JANET. Is Mr. Chilvers still in sympathy with us?

PHOEBE. Of course he is. A bit rubbed up the wrong way just at present; that’s our fault. When Annys goes down, early next mouth, to fight the Exchange Division of Manchester, we shall have him with us.

(A moment.)

LADY MOGTON. Where do you get that from?

PHOEBE. From St. Herbert. The present member is his cousin. They say he can’t live more than a week.

MRS. MOUNTCALM-VILLIERS. It really seems like Providence.

ANNYS. (Has taken the opportunity of giving PHOEBE a grateful squeeze of the hand.)