none, Oh! she had a vast fund of ordinary commonsense.
Of that I can assure you. A bit of hard brain
fibre from her father had counteracted any over-sentimental
folly in the maternal heritage. And she came back
from school a very ladylike little person. If
pressed, she could reel off all kinds of artificial
scraps of knowledge, like a dear little parrot.
But she had never heard of Karl Marx and didn’t
want to hear. She had a vague notion that International
Socialism was a movement in favour of throwing bombs
at monarchs and of seizing the wealth of the rich
in order to divide it among the poor—and
she regarded it as abominable. When her father
gave her Fabian Society tracts to read, he might just
as well, for all her understanding of the argument,
set her down to a Treatise on the Infinitesimal Calculus.
Her brain stood blank before such abstract disquisitions.
She loved easily comprehended poetry and novels that
made her laugh or cry and set her mind dancing round
the glowing possibilities of life; all disastrous
stuff abhorred by the International Socialist, to
whom the essential problems of existence are of no
interest whatever. So, after a few futile attempts
to darken her mind, Gedge put her down as a mere fool
woman, and ceased to bother his head about her intellectual
development. That came to him quite naturally.
There is no Turk more contemptuous of his womankind’s
political ideas than the Gedges of our enlightened
England. But on other counts she was a distinct
asset. He regarded her with immense pride, as
a more ornamental adjunct to his house than any other
county builder and contractor could display, and,
recognising that she was possessed of some low feminine
cunning in the way of adding up figures and writing
letters, made use of her in his office as general clerical
factotum.
When the war broke out, he discovered, to his horror,
that Phyllis actually had political ideas—unshakable,
obstinate ideas opposed to his own—and
that he had been nourishing in his bosom a viperous
patriot. Phyllis, for her part, realised with
equal horror the practical significance of her father’s
windy theories. When Randall, who had stolen
her heart, took to visiting the house, in order, as
far as she could make out, to talk treason with her
father, the strain of the situation grew more than
she could bear. She fled to Betty for advice.
Betty promptly stepped in and whisked her off to the
hospital.
It was on the morning on which Randall interviewed
me in the garden, the morning after he had broken
with Gedge that Phyllis, having a little off-time,
went home. She found her father in the office
making out a few bills. He thrust forward his
long chin and aggressive beard and scowled at her.
“Oh, it’s you, is it? Come at last
where your duty calls you, eh?”
“I always come when I can, father,” she
replied.
She bent down and kissed his cheek. He caught
her roughly round the waist and, leaning back in his
chair, looked up at her sourly.