“Mr. Serracold has been telling me of the reforms he desires to effect,” Isadora said conversationally.
Rose flashed her a dazzling smile. “I am sure you must have your own knowledge of such needs,” she responded. “No doubt in your husband’s ministry he becomes painfully aware of the poverty and injustice there is which could be eased with more equitable laws?” She said it as a challenge, daring Isadora to claim ignorance and so brand herself a hypocrite in the Christianity which, through the Bishop, she professed.
Isadora responded without stopping to measure her words.
“Of course. It is not the changes I find trouble in imagining, but how we can effect them. For a law to be any good it must be enforceable, and there must be a punishment we are willing and able to inflict if it is broken, as it assuredly will be, even if only to test us.”
Rose was delighted. “You have actually thought about it!” Her surprise was palpable. “I apologize for slighting your sincerity.” She lowered her voice so it was audible only to those closest to them, and then went on speaking in spite of the sudden hush as others strained to hear what she was going to say. “We must talk together, Mrs. Underhill.” She put out an elegant hand, long-fingered, jeweled with rings, and drew Isadora away from the group in which they had found themselves more or less by chance. “Time is terribly short,” she went on. “We must go far beyond the core of the party if we are to do any real good. Abolishing fees for elementary schooling last year has already had wonderful effects, but it is only a beginning. We must do much more. Education for all is the only lasting answer to poverty.” She drew in her breath and then plunged on. “We must make a way for women to be able to restrict their families. Poverty and exhaustion, both physical and mental, are the unavoidable outcomes of having child after child whom you have not strength to care for nor money to feed and clothe.” She regarded Isadora with candid challenge in her eyes again. “And I am sorry if that is against your religious convictions, but being a bishop’s wife with a residence provided for you is a far cry from being in one or two rooms with no water and little fire and trying to keep a dozen children clean and fed.”
“Would an eight-hour day help or hurt that?” Isadora asked, willing herself not to take offense at things which were, after all, irrelevant to the real issue.
Rose’s arched eyebrows rose. “How could it possibly make it worse? Every laborer, man or woman, should be protected against exploitation!” The anger flared up in her face, pink color across her white skin.
Isadora was intending to ask Rose’s opinion rather than express any of her own, but was prevented in either by their being joined by a friend of Rose who greeted her with affection. She was introduced to Isadora as Mrs. Swann, and in return presented her companion, a woman of perhaps forty, with the confidence of maturity and still sufficient of the bloom of youth to attract the eye of most men. There was a grace in the way she held her dark head, and her deportment was that of someone who is quite certain of herself, yet interested in others.
“Mrs. Octavia Cavendish,” Mrs. Swann said with a touch of pride.
Isadora realized only just before speaking that the newcomer must be a widow to be so addressed. “Are you interested in politics, Mrs. Cavendish?” she asked. Since the evening was to that end it was a natural assumption.
“Only so far as it changes laws, I hope to the benefit of all,” Mrs. Cavendish replied. “It takes great wisdom to see ahead what will be the results of our actions. Sometimes the most nobly inspired paths are disastrous in their unforeseen ends.”
Rose opened her remarkable eyes very wide. “Mrs. Underhill was about to tell us how the eight-hour day could be ill,” she said, staring at Mrs. Cavendish. “I fear perhaps she is a Conservative at heart!”
“Really, Rose,” Mrs. Swann cautioned her with a quick glance of apology towards Isadora.
“No!” Rose said impatiently. “It is time we were less mealymouthed and said what we really mean. Is honesty too much to ask-indeed, to demand? Have we not the duty to pose questions and challenge the answers?”
“Rose, eccentricity is one thing, but you risk going too far!” Mrs. Swann said with a nervous hiccup. She placed a hand on Rose’s arm but it was impatiently shaken off. “Mrs. Underhill may not-”
“Don’t you?” Rose asked, her flashing smile returning briefly.
Before Isadora could answer, Mrs. Cavendish stepped in. “It is very hard to be overworked, and quite unjust,” she said smoothly. “But it is still better than having no work at all. .”
“That is extortion!” Rose said with a wild anger cutting in her voice.
Mrs. Cavendish kept her temper admirably. “If it is done deliberately, then of course it is. But if an employer is facing falling profits and more intense competition, then he cannot afford to increase his costs. And if he does, then he will lose his business altogether and his employees will lose their places. We need to keep an Empire, now that we have one, whether we want it or not.” She smiled to rid her words of sting but none of their power of conviction. “Politics is what is possible, not always what we wish,” she added. “I think that is part of the responsibility.”
Isadora looked from Mrs. Cavendish to Rose, and saw the sudden amazement in Rose. She had encountered someone of equal and opposite conviction, and her own power could not override the logic of the argument. In spite of herself, she was temporarily beaten. It was a new experience.
Isadora looked at Aubrey Serracold and saw the tenderness in his eyes, and a kind of sadness, a knowledge that precious things can be broken.
Isadora might have felt like that about John Cornwallis. There was a heart and mind in him, a hunger for honor, a revulsion from the tawdry, that she would have suffered any wound to protect. It was of infinite value, not just to her, but in and of itself. There was nothing in Reginald Underhill which awoke that fierce ache in her that was half pain, half joy.
The moment was broken by the arrival of another man, the familiarity of his glance at Mrs. Cavendish making it apparent that he was with her. Isadora was not surprised that she should have at least one admirer. She was a remarkable woman in far more than mere physical beauty. There was character, intelligence, and a clarity of mind in her which was most unusual.
“May I introduce my brother,” Mrs. Cavendish said quickly. “Sir Charles Voisey. Mrs. Underhill, Mr. and Mrs. Serracold.” She added the last two with a slight grimace, and Isadora remembered with a jolt that of course Voisey and Serracold were contesting the same seat for Parliament. One of them had to lose. She looked at Voisey with quickened interest. He did not resemble his sister that she could see. His coloring was slightly auburn, while her skin was clear and her hair dark, shining brown. His face was long, his nose a little crooked as if at some time it had been broken and badly set. The only thing they had in common was their agile intelligence and a sense of inner power. In him it was so intense she almost expected to feel a heat in the air.
She murmured something polite and sensible. She was acutely aware that Aubrey Serracold was now hiding his feelings, the knowledge that his opponent was a different kind of man, that there could be no holds or blows barred in the battle. This courteous exchange now was a matter of form, and not intended to deceive anyone.
There was anger in Rose’s stiff, elegant body with her long back and slender hips encased in bright taffeta, her fingers glittering as she moved her hands. The skin of her neck and throat looked almost blue-white in the light from the chandeliers above them, as if peering a little closer one might see the veins. There was also fear of something. Isadora could sense it as if it were a perfume in the air amongst the lavender, jasmine and the numerous scents from the bowls of lilies on the tables. Did it matter to her so much to win? Or was it something else?
They were shown in to dinner, all in the correct order of precedence. As a bishop’s wife, Isadora went in early, after the most senior of the nobility, long before such ordinary men as mere parliamentary candidates. The tables were laden with crystal and porcelain. Ranks of knives, forks and spoons gleamed by every setting.
The ladies took their seats, and then the gentlemen. The first course was served immediately and the business of the evening continued, the conversation, the weighing and judging, the bright chatter disguising the bargains made, the weaknesses tested and, when found, exploited. This was where future alliances were born, and future enmities.
Isadora only half listened. She had heard most of the arguments before: the economics, the moral issues, the finances, the religious difficulties and justifications, the political necessities.
She was startled and her attention was drawn, her mind suddenly clear, when she heard the Bishop mention Voisey’s name and his tone altered to one of enthusiasm. “Innocence does not protect us from the errors of well- meaning men whose knowledge of human nature is far less than their desire to do good,” he said earnestly. He did not look at Aubrey Serracold, but Isadora saw at least three others around the table who did. Rose stiffened, her hand on her wineglass motionless.
