“Well?” the woman demanded. “What is it?”
Recovering herself, Kate began, “I’ve come to ask you whether-”
“I know, I know,” Mrs. Conway growled impatiently. She gestured peremptorily to one of the chairs, her several chins waggling with the effort. “Sit down. It hurts my neck to look up at you. Where is she?”
“I have no idea,” Kate said, sitting on the edge of one of the upholstered armchairs. She felt very much like Alice in the presence of the Red Queen, and the room was so hot and stuffy that she could scarcely get her breath. “I hoped that you might suggest-”
“Why should I?” Mrs. Conway asked, drawing on her cigarette and blowing the smoke out of both nostrils like a maniacal dragon. “The girl never tells me a thing. Just comes and goes, back and forth to that silly newspaper.” Her voice became whiny. “The ungrateful child never pays her mother a minute’s attention, doesn’t even do me the courtesy of putting in her head to say good morning, or drop in for tea, or-”
“I understand,” Kate interrupted hastily, feeling that she was in danger of being swamped by the woman’s massive self-pity, “that you published the Clarion before Charlotte took it over.”
“Yes, and I did a far better job of it, too.” Mrs. Conway picked up the newspaper that lay on the divan beside her and waved it in the air with an expression of great disdain. “Just look at this, will you? Such namby-pamby, mealy-mouth porridge as I’ve never seen. When I published this paper, we printed strong stuff, I tell you. We were the voice of the revolution!” As she spoke, her own voice grew louder and more ringing, as if she were addressing a multitude. “We stirred men’s souls, I say. We struck their hearts as if they were gongs. We got them out on the streets with revolution on their lips and dynamite in their hands!”
Kate cleared her throat, feeling uneasy. There was something almost electric in the woman’s voice, something commanding. Perhaps Mrs. Conway had indeed stirred men to revolution, although if she had, things did not seem to have been greatly changed by it. “But you are no longer the editor?” she asked.
“Sadly, my health does not permit it.” With a melancholy sigh, Mrs. Conway put out a fat hand and plucked a chocolate out of the box, popping it, whole, into her mouth. “There are my lodgers to look after, of course-quite a demanding lot they are, too, always needing this and that and the other thing. I can hardly keep up with them. And I am otherwise engaged just now, on an important literary project.” She gestured toward a table pushed against the wall under a gas lamp, piled with stacks of papers. “I am writing the story of my life, which is quite extraordinary, really. I have known a great many fascinating revolutionists-Lenin, Kropotkin, Bakunin, Emma Goldman. My book will be of enormous significance.”
“I am sure,” Kate said in a tactful tone, although she felt that Mrs. Conway suffered from too great a sense of her own importance. “But I am deeply concerned about Charlotte.” She took out a calling card with the Sibley House address on it and handed it to Mrs. Conway. “I would very much appreciate it if you could send a note around to this address if you hear from her. Do you have any idea where she might be just now?”
“None at all,” Mrs. Conway said, carelessly dropping the card on the table. “I told the police as much, too, when they came around, pestering me about her. The girl is an adult, and not my concern. A true Anarchist-I consider myself such, of course-refuses to acknowledge any responsibility to family or comrades. A true Anarchist lives entirely for himself.” She paused, delicately searching with her fat fingers among the chocolates. Finding what she wanted, she dropped it into her mouth. “Although there is one person I might have mentioned to that detective,” she said, around the mouthful of chocolate, “if I had thought of her at the time.”
Kate stared at the woman, astonished by her glaring inconsistencies. But she only said, in the calmest voice she could manage, “And who is that?”
“One of those Rossetti girls. I’ve no idea which one, and anyway, I can never remember their names. They published that wretched little paper, the Torch, they called it.” She made a disgusted noise. “Such silly creatures. I could never see why Emma Goldman found them so interesting. Insipid, in my view. Not a breath of revolutionary spirit in them. It’s not surprising that they have abandoned the movement.”
The Rossetti girls, Kate thought with rising excitement. They were the authors of the manuscript she was reading, A Girl Among the Anarchists. If they were friends of Miss Conway, she just might have tried to make contact with them. “Do you happen to know,” she said, concealing her interest, “where I might find these young women?”
“Oh, one never knows things like that,” Mrs. Conway said carelessly. She fitted another cigarette into the holder and lit it. “Anyway, the Torch was put out some years ago, while the Clarion lives on-such as it is, of course. I will say this for Lottie: The child is persistent. Not a scrap of talent or gift, mind you, and no revolutionary boldness. But doggedly persistent, nonetheless. There’s something in that, I suppose.”
Kate could hardly decide whether she should feel pity for a woman who had so entirely deceived herself, or anger at a mother who had so little respect for her daughter. She rose. “Thank you for your time,” she said through clenched teeth, and turned toward the door.
“But I’m not finished yet!” Mrs. Conway exclaimed, her voice becoming shrill. “I haven’t told you about my publishing plans. I have been in contact with the editors at Duckworth, who have assured me that my memoir-”
“I think you are finished,” Kate said distinctly. “Quite finished.” And with that, she went out the door, closing it behind her as if to make sure that nothing from the room would escape into the outer air.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Now and again it happens that the [Russian] colony misses one or more of its prominent members, perhaps a man and a woman, or two women by themselves. They have disappeared suddenly, leaving no trace behind them. No one makes any enquiries, but these fugitives are not forgotten. Presently a newcomer brings tidings. Elzelina Kralchenskaya is in a Russian prison; Vera Ivanovna is in Siberia; Dmitry Konstantinovitch is dead.
Count E. Armfelt,
“ Russia in East London,” in Edwardian London,
Volume 1, 1902
When Charles arrived back at Sibley House, he spoke immediately to Richards, who just managed not to sniff at his lordship’s unconventional request. He murmured a polite, “As your lordship wishes.” Such things had never been asked for in the days of his lordship’s brother and father, but those days were gone forever. So, after some consultation with the male members of the household staff, Richards at last produced a pair of brown trousers with traces of mud on the knees, a dark overcoat, a soft cap, and a knitted scarf, and handed them over with a look of restrained distaste. Charles dressed and combed his hair straight back from his forehead without a parting, in the Slavic manner, turned up the collar of the overcoat, rammed the cap down on his head, and made for Euston Station.