Restless Earth/Chapter 16

“. . .This is our concern, ladies and gentlemen! The concern of every one of us! These are our people, our blood relations, our brothers and sisters, hungry and homeless, robbed of their all by this terrible disaster, robbed of their loved ones! Men, whom yesterday were accounted rich, are penniless to-day! They and their wives and children are dependent upon us, ladies and gentlemen, for sustenance and shelter!

“Shall we refuse them?

“No!

“This is no time for the indulgence of petty spites—for the futile class-distinctions upon which we pride ourselves. In this hour of national calamity we must pull together and do our utmost to bring relief to the sufferers.

“A year ago we had the West Coast shake, and the nation rose nobly to the call for aid. Now we have a much greater disaster, and again the nation rises generously. Next year—next month—to-morrow!—it may be our turn to suffer. Let us do as we would be done by.

“On behalf of the citizens of this town, I have telegraphed the Prime Minister that we will billet three hundred refugees for so long as may be desired. ​I will ask those ladies and gentlemen who have room in their homes for one or more of these homeless sufferers to give their names to the secretary at the close of the meeting.

“May I ask for a show of hands of those who are prepared to accommodate one or more of these poor people?

“Ah! Thank you, ladies and gentlemen! Thank you! It is extremely gratifying to observe such a magnificent response. You make me very proud.

“We come, now, to the matter of the organisation for the collecting and dispatch of relief supplies. I am going to suggest that the town be cut up into blocks, and that separate committees be set up to arrange for the handling of donations in each district. Already some supplies have been sent to the stricken area by some of our more energetic citizens; but, it seems to me, without organisation we shall have considerable overlapping. Several ladies and gentlemen have signified their willingness to act on the various committees. I will read their names, and ask all who are willing to assist in the collection and packing of goods to stay behind after the meeting. . . .”

At public meetings in every community in the country, executives, dressed in brief authority, addressed crowds momentarily shaken from their calm by the catastrophe. They spoke ably or with difficulty; and the burden of their speech was identical from North Cape to the Bluff.

“Let us forget ourselves in mutual endeavour to assist others.”

On this, the day following the earthquake, national generosity flamed at white heat. At this moment the nation was willing and eager to provide shelter, food and clothing for every inhabitant of the devastated territory, and to pour out treasure enough to rebuild the destroyed towns on a magnificent scale. It waited with its wealth in its hand; waited to be asked—individually.

​It was the psychological moment for ungrudged giving. Unfortunately, no mechanism has yet been devised to take full advantage of such a phenomenon.

****

Patricia Weybourn leaned against the back wall in a crowded theatre in New Plymouth, and listened to the speakers whose eloquence moved her not at all.

Her expression was hard. Her eyes glittered coldly, and her lips curled in a sneer as the representatives of several local bodies grandiloquently presented cheques to the common relief fund amid applause. She detected the eternal personal motive in every speech and action of the executives and the donors—the little self-glorifications which are instinctive in the human race.

She smiled cynically when a speaker appealed to his audiences to “forget our little snobbishnesses in the present need for united effort”; and when the same speaker announced that Mrs. Langham—“Mrs. Percival Quesne Langham—has consented to act as chairwoman of the No. 2 Committee”—she laughed and drew the attention of many scandalised eyes.

Mrs. Langham, the most snobbish of them all! The woman who bled her husband white that she might entertain at bridge three times a week and motor resplendently to the houses of stylish society which detested her but considered it unwise to say so!

Mrs. Percival Quesne Langham, who pushed her way unblushingly into every public movement, and headed every subscription list with her long-suffering husband’s cheques; whose principal business in life seemed to be the broadcasting of scurrilous rumours, who boasted of blue blood, and who referred to New Zealanders as “colonials.”

It was so funny as to be almost tragic, thought the girl. Very well! If Mrs. Percival Quesne Langham could forget her “snobbishness,” so could Patricia Weybourn. They would work together in ​united effort to relieve suffering. The arrangement should prove a distraction.

Life was terribly flat for Patricia Weybourn at this time. For her there was no joy in sacrifice. She did not feel that she had done a noble thing in sending her lover back to his wife. She considered, and called herself, a fool. Harley meant life to her—life in all its glorious fulness—and she had thrown it away. For whom? For a woman who, possibly, had lovers of her own. These quiet little women were deep.

Yes, she insisted, she had been a fool. What did she owe to Grace, anyhow? A friendship which she had forgotten for years? Hospitality? What were such little things in a whole life-time?

In her heart she cursed the earthquake and all it entailed. She felt no sympathy with the sufferers. Her own suffering forbade it. The earthquake had robbed her of her chance of happiness. It had raised an eternal barrier between her and the man she loved as she had never thought to love. Had it not occurred she would have been in her lover’s arms at this moment, dreaming of happy years ahead. Nothing else could have moved her to act with a quixotry entirely foreign to her make-up. She would have claimed and held Harley though an army of Graces wept and pleaded their Joans on her threshold.

But, with Grace dead, or injured———! Oh, why had the woman chosen to go to Napier instead of to Auckland, Rotorua, or the South Island?

She was sorry for poor little Grace, of course. Life had not treated Grace fairly. But she should have recognised her limitations—recognised that she was not physically equipped to hold a man like Harley enslaved for life. She had been wrong to use deception to capture and imprison him—the deception of a dependent weakness which no real man could ignore or fail to feel flattered by. If Harley had ever loved her, he must have become merely a husband long since. The two were mismated. Pas​sion had slept in him—a passion which she, Patricia Weybourn, alone had been able to awaken.

Now Grace, by her very weakness, held the lovers apart. She had won by leaving their consciences to fight for her. She had left the field, vanquished, and had become the victor by an accident; and, if she now lay dead over there, the victory could never be voided. The memory of her voice, of her gentle manner, of her calculated nobility, would ensure that Harley remain faithful to her in death as he had not been in life. Death would magnify her virtues, and falsely colour those of the woman who remained alive.

After all, one could not fight a dead friend.

But one might fight a living enemy and therein find a relief from heartache.

Mrs. Langham was Patricia Weybourn’s enemy. She was the natural enemy of all modistes, milliners and shop assistants. She was arrogant; ridiculous in her slavish following of fashions which never seemed to suit her; soulless in her bargaining; of a commanding presence when suitably corseted; loud of voice; beady of eye; tight of mouth; haughty in the presence of those of a lower social strata, and fulsome to those above her.

Patricia recalled her encounters with Mrs. Percival Quesne Langham. She recalled Mrs. Langham’s innuendoes and pryings concerning the Harleys; she recalled the lady’s wordy protest against her bill, and her threat to report the “disgraceful behaviour” of the New Plymouth manageress (who, she had reason to believe, was old enough to conduct herself with decorum in and out of business hours “if she cared to”) to the head office in Auckland. She recalled many unpleasant things about Mrs. Langham, and was grateful for a hate to indulge in this desolate hour.

She would do two worthy things simultaneously. She would perform her part in the work of relief, ​and humble the haughty Mrs. Langham to the earth in so doing.

“Surely,” she thought, smiling cynically, “the Recording Angel would give her several good marks for that!”

Others had endeavoured to humble Mrs. Langham, but the lady had frightened them off or out-manœuvred them. Patricia Weybourn had no capacity for fear now. She had nothing more to lose. And in worldly wisdom and recklessness of tongue she knew herself to be Mrs. Langham’s superior.

A wild desire to smash this town which had broken her, to outrage its snobocracy by tearing it apart and exposing its straw stuffing to the jeers of the crowd, to give the community something to remember her by, took possession of her. She was finished with the place, but she would leave with her head up and a memorable cloud of dust behind her.

After that, nothing mattered. She would lose herself somewhere, no doubt. Who cared what became of her? Not she.

When the meeting had broken up, groups of earnest men and women remained upon the stage and in the auditorium—committees Nos. 1 to 7, and their helpers—making plans. The chairman of the meeting discussed the position with the newly-appointed secretary of the newly-elected Earthquake Relief Board in low tones. Curious idlers filled the exits and lingered in the aisles.

Mrs. Langham was holding an informal court in the front stalls, receiving suggestions from the members of her respectful committee with regal tolerance, and her strident objections could be heard above the din of many voices.

Patricia Weybourn approached the No. 2 Committee without that deference which the chairwoman considered her due from one so far beneath her socially. Consequently, the chairwoman failed to notice ​the intruder, although Patricia stood directly before her.

It was some moments later when Patricia took advantage of a mild dispute regarding the advisability of sending pillow-cases to the stricken-area to offer a suggestion.

“Why not stick to absolute necessities, such as food and clothing?” she asked bluntly. “Something to cover their nakedness and fill their stomachs? The chances are they have no pillows.”

Mrs. Langham smiled frostily, her eyebrows questing skywards.

No. 2 Committee followed the lead of its chairwoman and regarded Patricia with disapproval.

“My dear Miss Weybourn,” said Mrs. Langham, making a bored gesture with her hand to intimate her followers, “I have chosen my committee, and I daresay we shall be able to do some little good. I am sorry there are no vacancies here.”

Any other than Patricia would have accepted the dismissal, and Mrs. Langham’s expression became one of suffering as the girl spoke again.

“I shall be pleased to work under the direction of the committee, Mrs. Langham,” Patricia informed her, with a smile of fictitious meekness. “Anything I can do to help———”

“We are already inundated with offers of help, thank you,” lied the other unblushingly. “We have more help than we know how to use. Good-night!”

Mrs. Langham turned her commanding back upon the girl, and the five elderly ladies and two elderly subdued men of her committee followed faithfully. No. 2 Committee, in its entirety, had heard of, and seen, Miss Weybourn in her leisure and business hours, and it felt that her presence emphasised its own obvious righteousness. Her audacity in imagining that No. 2 Committee would welcome her help was pitiable rather than ridiculous.

No. 2 Committee moved in a body to a row of stalls further down the auditorium.

​Patricia followed, smiling maliciously.

Mrs. Langham, having seated herself with the aid of one of the elderly subdued men, frowned angrily when she glanced up to find the girl confronting her.

“Well?” she snapped, registering her approval of her committee’s attitude by quick glances to right and left and a meaning lift of her upper lip. “Is there something else?”

“I am awaiting the committee’s instructions, Mrs. Langham,” answered Patricia, with a provocative smile. “This is not the moment for snobbishness, and you cannot refuse offers of help, no matter how thickly they come.”

“Indeed?”’ asked Mrs. Langham, with a short laugh.

“Indeed, Mrs. Langham,” affirmed the girl. “You see, this is not your private earthquake. It is the concern of every one of us. I insist on doing my share to help.”

“A commendable resolve, Miss Weybourn,” said Mrs. Langham tartly. “I am sure you will be able to find many who will value your services. I regret that Mr. Harley is not here to-night. I felt sure that we might depend upon his services. I’m sure he———.”

Patricia flushed, and restrained her anger with difficulty.

“As No. 2 Committee will have control of the area in which I live, I claim the right to assist it, Mrs. Langham,” she interrupted in a cold, level voice.

“No. 2 Committee thanks you, Miss Weybourn, and regrets that it cannot use you,” replied Mrs. Langham with icy finality. “Good-night!”

Idlers in the vicinity, sensing an interesting development, drifted in the direction of the No. 2 Committee. The chairman of the meeting interrupted an argument by the secretary with a slight gesture, and nodded in the direction of Mrs. Langham. The secretary looked in that direction with ​interest. Nos. 1 and 3 to 7 Committees (inclusive) interrupted their deliberations and looked enquiringly. In a few moments most of the other people in the theatre were looking in the direction of No. 2 Committee. For Mrs. Langham had intended that she should be heard, and now sat waiting for the general attention which she considered she merited.

She knew that the low-bred girl before her was spoiling for a fight. She realised that her reference to Harley had stung the girl to recklessness. She welcomed fhis opportunity to publicly repay the insolence and pin-sticking of this bold creature who cared nothing for her own reputation and that of the town upon which she had sprung from some mysterious and doubtful past.

“Good-night, Miss Weybourn,” she repeated, as the girl made no move to go. “You will excuse me, I’m sure, but I have some private business to transact with my committee.”

“Pardon me, Mrs. Langham,” replied Patricia with equal distinctness, “I fail to see what private business you can have with a committee engaged on national affairs.”

“Really, Miss Weybourn, your attitude and persistence are wearing. I have told you that we cannot use your services. I have thanked you for the offer———.”

“You have no right to refuse my services———.”

“This is a New Plymouth effort, Miss Weybourn, since you insist upon the reason of our refusal, and the Committee feels it is right to refuse the help of—ah—outsiders.”

Immediately she had spoken Mrs, Langham knew that she had blundered, for there were murmurs of protest in every direction. She heard someone on the stage mention snobs. One of the elderly subdued men on her committee had the temerity to click his tongue deprecatingly. Too late she remembered that the girl had the advantage of youth and a very decided beauty, and that most men, ​being fools, would feel called upon to click their tongues in her defence.

“Of course,” she added hastily, with a smile meant to disarm Patricia, who had flushed angrily at the insult, “when I say ‘outsiders,’ Miss Weybourn, I mean—ah—well———.”

“Outsiders,” Patricia finished the sentence for her grimly. “Those outside your own set.”

“Not at all, not at all. What I mean is that I consider it unwise to include a comparative stranger in our circle of friends. You mustn’t misunderstand. My committee consists of old friends; friends who have helped me on other committees. We have done much good work in the past together, and we feel that we shall accomplish more if we are left alone to work in our own way.”

Patricia looked keenly and appraisingly at the old friends, all of whom, save one, allowed their disapproval of her to show on their faces. The exception was the man who had clicked his tongue. His eyes seemed to beg her to carry on the good work.

“You require new blood on your committee, Mrs. Langham,” she decided, clipping her words and speaking in a raised voice. “I see one or two members who have long since lost the confidence of the public.”

“Well!” exclaimed one of the members, in pained surprise. “Well, I never!”

Some idler chuckled audibly, and there was a faint movement of approval in the audience, for whose close attention Mrs. Langham evinced less gratification than she should have done.

“And am I to understand that you represent the public of New Plymouth?” asked Mrs. Langham, staring up haughtily at this hussy who dared thus to publicly challenge her august judgment.

“Yes!” came the instant answer from somewhere in the crowd.

“Then the public is unfortunate!” snapped Mrs. Langham, losing her temper.

​She rose to her feet and confronted the girl, separated from her by a row of stalls.

“Why, I never heard of such a thing!” she cried. “Do you know to whom you are speaking, young woman? Do you know who I am?”

“Of course. Mrs. Percival Quesne Langham, and a snob.”

Mrs. Langham dilated, amazed at such daring.

“Snob ?” she squeaked incredulously.

“What else?”’ asked Patricia, smiling coldly. “Why, else, do you call yourself ‘Quesne’ when you were christened ‘Queenie’?”

The question was in the worst of taste, and Patricia knew it. She knew, also, that the public taste is never high, and the resultant laughter in the audience gratified her.

“Oh!” gasped Mrs. Langham. “Oh!”

She recognised that she was in a tight corner—that her social career was in the balance. She upbraided herself for ever having disclosed the ghastly secret of her baptismal name to this unspeakable creature in a moment when credit for the purchase of a gown was essential. Now she would be called Quesne to her face, and Queenie behind her back. The name would damn her. Already she discerned a pained expression upon the faces of her friends on the committee.

She adopted the tactics of weaker women. She glared at Patricia for a moment, then, with a faint sniff, fumbled for the fragment of cambric which was by courtesy her handkerchief.

“I never was so insulted,” she moaned piteously, as she sank into her seat; “never!”

She bowed her head, valiantly choking back the urge to retort in her accustomed manner—to answer insult with insult—to speak her mind about this shameless, insolent creature who dared to humiliate her thus. But instinct warned her that the time was inopportune. She must wait.

​There was a moment of silence, an awkward moment made even more embarrassing by Mrs. Langham’s bass sobbing. Then the elderly subdued man, who had clicked his tongue, fumbled in a pocket and produced a silver-mounted bottle of smelling salts which he hastened to offer to the distressed lady.

The man was Mr. Percival Langham, barrister and solicitor, and the bottle was the identical one which he had carried to public meetings ever since the desire for peace had urged him to accompany his wife to such functions. He had learned that smelling-salts were potent to avert slumber.

“My dear, my dear!” he murmured, proffering the bottle. “Pull yourself together.”

He looked up at Patricia reproachfully, yet the defiant girl thought she detected a glint of admiration in his eyes.

“You are unkind, Miss Weybourn,” was all he could force himself to say. “Rather unkind.”

At this moment, the chairman of the meeting, who had made his way unostentatiously into the midst of the No. 2 Committee, spoke placatingly.

“Pardon me, Miss Weybourn,” he said, addressing Patricia directly and smiling pleasantly, “I have not had the pleasure of meeting you before, but, of course, I have seen you, and Mrs. Warburton has often spoken of you.”

“How do you do?” Patricia replied formally, ta.k.ilng the proffered hand and smiling her sweetest smile.

“You must excuse my speaking to you without an introduction,” continued Mr. Warburton, seeming not to be aware of the look of baffled rage on Mrs. Langham’s raised face. “But formality must be waived for the moment. Observing your eagerness to help, I venture to think that you might care to assist my committee—if the No. 2 Committee cannot use you.”

Patricia hesitated.

​“I quite understand that it would be more convenient for you to assist Mrs. Langham’s committee—it will have charge in your district—but we are all in need of willing helpers, and———.”

Mrs. Langham, who for years had angled in vain for an invitation to the Warburton home, saw that the moment was pregnant with possibilities. She must rise or fall on an instant decision.

She decided to rise, no matter the cost to her peculiar pride.

She sprang to her feet abruptly, toppling her husband into a seat and smashing his precious bottle.

“I—I’m so sorry, Miss Weybourn,” she apologised, dabbing her lined cheeks, from which the powder bloom had departed. “I had no right to speak as I did. I—we are all very much upset by this terrible catastrophe, and we are not responsible for our hasty words. Mr. Warburton is quite right. This is no time for quarrelling over anything, especially over such trivial—ah—imaginary trifles. Please forgive me?”

“Does that mean that my committee is not to have Miss Weybourn’s assistance?” asked Mr. Warburton, smiling at the repentant lady.

“I’m sorry, my dear Mr. Warburton,” answered Mrs. Langham, with a fond glance at Patricia, whose ironical expression chafed her almost unbearably. “We cannot spare her.”

She glanced at No. 2 Committee, whose expression did not bear her out in this. She was not dismayed.

“I can’t tell you how humiliated I feel,” she continued, with a catch in her voice. “I cannot imagine how I came to be so—so———.”

She reached out and clasped Patricia’s nearest hand.

“You will help us?” she pleaded, smiling through the tears which she could command at will. “And you will forgive me?”

​Patricia drew her hand away firmly. She looked into the older woman’s eyes, and her gaze was piercing and cold.

“I will help you, Mrs. Langham,” she answered, her words sounding more like a threat than an offer of assistance. “I will forgive you when I am satisfied that your apology is sincere. At the moment, it is not. You are not even remotely repentant. You are merely playing for an invitation to the Warburtons’—as you have been playing for it for years.”

The words created a profound sensation.

There was a moment of dead silence, then somebody applauded. Immediately there followed a wave of sound—cat-calls, laughter, and exclamations of approval, admiration or condemnation. Mr. Warburton ran a finger around his collar and coughed in embarrassment. Mrs. Langham uttered a pitiful shriek and collapsed into her seat with a thud which threatened the whole row of stalls. Mr. Langham, squeezing himself awkwardly between the rows of seats, searched for a bottle which he hoped he could not find, chuckling uncontrollably and fearful that his wife would observe him.

Mr. Warburton spoke to Patricia, who sneered openly at her chosen enemy.

“Isn’t that rather unkind, Miss Weybourn?” he asked gently.

“The truth is seldom kind, Mr. Warburton. Good-night.”

The people in the aisles moved aside respectfully as Patricia made her way to the exit. Most of them approved her sense and her courage.

Mr. Warburton followed her and touched her arm as she was leaving the building.

“Excuse me, Miss Weybourn———.”

Patricia turned so sharply that he was taken aback.

“Well?” she snapped.

“Miss—er—Weybourn, if I might advise you. I—er—I think it rather unwise in you to—er—to ​fight Mrs. Langham. She can be a—er—a rather unscrupulous opponent, you know.”

Mr. Warburton felt and looked decidedly uncomfortable, and spoke with difficulty. He was a man of peace. He detested quarrels; scandal sickened him. He did his best to avoid and avert both in the town which was his pride.

Patricia drew herself up. Her eyes blazed. She beat her breast with her clenched hands. The ferocity of her expression appalled the worthy man.

“Fight!” she said, speaking between her clenched teeth in a low voice. “I’ll fight her to a finish—and I don’t care whose finish it is! I shall assist No. 2 Committee, or fight it en masse! It is a collection of snobs of the worst type! I’m an outsider! A courtesan!”

“Miss Weybourn!”

“Ask them! Ask Mrs. Percival Quesne Langham! She knows! She spends her life peeping into other people’s affairs! She is without sin!—without conscience—without anything but a desire to be everything in this tin-pot town!”

“My dear girl———”

“Fight! I feel like fighting the world! It doesn’t like me, and I don’t like it!”

Her expression changed swiftly. She spread her hands, shrugged her shoulders, sighed whimsically, and smiled.

“End of Round One,” she said. “The challenger wins on points, having the support of the principal onlookers.”

She gripped the surprised Mr. Warburton by the upper arm gratefully—a man-like gesture.

“Sorry I was rude about your town, Mr. Warburton. It’s a grand little town, and you’re not responsible for some of its inhabitants. Good-night.”

Mr. Warburton watched her disappearing figure with approving eyes, then he turned back into the theatre.

“So it’s ‘Queenie’ Langham, eh?” he mused. “I’m ​sure Sylvia will find that most interesting. Looks as though the French ancestor has moved further back in history. Bah! The woman is impossible.”

He was rather abstracted during the remainder of the proceedings, and short in his replies to Mrs. Langham, who fawned upon him. Every now and then it would occur to him that perhaps Harley had not been so much to blame for his indiscretion, after all.

****

In the comparative darkness of Courtenay Street, Patricia Weybourn quickly walked off the glow of battle. She walked the entire length of the street twice, striving to hold her hate of Mrs. Langham to the exclusion of her love for Harley. She was not strong enough.

She leaned against a retaining wall and gazed upwards at the calm, star-speckled sky—and at last came the tears which she had almost despaired of shedding.

A few belated passers-by peered curiously at the girl who stood motionless with up-flung head in the full light of the stars, but the early dawn alone had power to disturb her.