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Paul laughed, for she did not refer to the first meeting of all. "I'm afraid I was very young and fatuous," said he. "It was years ago. I hadn't grown up." "Never mind. We talked about waking the country from its sleep." "And you gave me a phrase, Lady Chudley 'the Awakener of England. It stuck. It crystallized all sorts of vague ambitions. I've never forgotten it for five consecutive minutes.
That's magnificent; but the Empire ought to realize her as the great Motherheart. If England could only wake up as England again, what a wonderful thing it would be!" "It would," said Lady Chudley. "And you would like to be the awakener?" "Ay!" said Paul "what a dream!" "There was never a dream worth calling a dream that did not come true." "Do you believe that, too?" he asked delightedly.
"I've held to it all my life." Colonel Winwood, who had been moving hostwise from group to group in the great drawing-room, where already a couple of bridge tables had been arranged, approached slowly. Lady Chudley gave him a laughing glance of dismissal. Paul's spacious Elizabethan patriotism, rare at least in expression among the young men of the day, interested and amused her.
The men and women for whom he sat possessed the same quality as his never-forgotten goddess and Lady Chudley and the young architect a quality which he recognized keenly, but for which his limited vocabulary could find no definition. Afterward he realized that it was refinement in manner and speech and person. This quality he felt it essential to acquire.
She wore diamonds in her hair and a broad diamond clasp to the black velvet round her throat. "Miss Winwood has been telling me what an awful time you've had, Mr. Savelli," she said pleasantly. "Now, whenever I hear of people having had pneumonia I always want to talk to them and sympathize with them." "That's very kind of you, Lady Chudley," said Paul. "Only a fellow-feeling.
Yes, in the great palace he found himself an honoured guest. His name was known independently of his work for the Winwoods. He was doing good service to his party. The word had gone abroad perhaps Frank Ayres had kindly spoken it that he was the coming man. Lady Chudley said: "I wonder if you remember what we talked about when I first met you."
There were still a few people staying in the house the shooting party proper, and Lady Chudley, had long since gone but enough remained to be a social microcosm for Paul. Every eye was upon him. In spite of himself, his accusing hand went fingering the inanity of his waistcoat front.
How could he explain that he was occupying his rightful place in that drawing-room? But he held himself up and resolved to face the peril like a man. Lady Chudley smiled on him graciously how well he remembered her smile! and made him sit by her side. She was a dark, stately woman of forty, giving the impression that she could look confoundedly cold and majestic when she chose.
The house party were assembling in the drawing-room, when in sailed the great lady, the ever-memorable great lady, the Marchioness of Chudley, who had spoken to him and smiled on him in the Bludston factory. Fear laid a cold grip on his heart. He thought of pleading weakness and running away to the safe obscurity of his room. But it was too late.
Her voice had the same sweet timbre as his goddess's. After she had left him his quick ears caught her question to the Owner: "Where did you get your young Apollo? Not out of Lancashire, surely? He's wonderful." And just before she passed out of sight she turned and looked at him and smiled. He learned on inquiry that she was the Marchioness of Chudley.
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