mrs stafford could hardly wait for the dinner, and the evening, to be over, so that she could start packing, and be ready to slip out of mrs foster’s house at the crack of dawn.
on her way to a proper celebration of her freedom - at last! - from mr stafford and all his useless schemes.
meanwhile there was the dinner to be gotten through. she did not care how bland the food might be. or how boring the guests at table.
she found herself three seats from the hostess’s right, between mrs foster’s daughter angeline, and a young woman she did not know, and who did not look quite comfortable in her clothes, as if they had been provided for her for the dinner.
mrs stafford smiled at the unknown young woman. “i do not believe we’ve met.”
“i am sure we have not,” mary replied.
“this is ms brown, mrs stafford,” mademoiselle feval, the governess, seated on mary’s right, said. “i am relying on her to make the conversation at dinner interesting.”
“oh?” mrs stafford replied politely. “and why might that be?”
“you will never guess what ms brown is,” mademoiselle feval continued.
“i am sure that i can not,” mrs stafford smiled.
“she is a feminist! and - she aspires to start her own religion.”
“well, one meets persons starting new religions everywhere - but a feminist! that is interesting, ” mrs stafford agreed. “though I am afraid i have forgotten quite what a feminist is - though i am sure i must have learned it at school.”
“that is what many people think, and say,” mary smiled back at mrs stafford. “and i think the reason for that is that they are taught that feminism triumphed in the previous centuries and that therefore there is no more need of it. nothing, however, could be further from the truth.”
“you do not say so,” mademoiselle feval prompted mary.
“i do say so,” mary replied. “the other thing people do not realize is that feminism, so far from being something completely unheard of that suddenly emerged from nowhere in the preceding centuries, has its origins in what is commonly misunderstood as quote prehistory unquote, and is in fact iitself the true prehistory of the human race, or what is left of it, after the ravages of millenia of patriarchy. ”
“that sounds like a most interesting theory,” mrs stafford. “you must have done a great deal of research to support it.”
“i have indeed. but perhaps the best place to commence my account is not with my own researches, but with the story of matriarchy itself - how it came to be, and how it came to be buried for thousands of years.”
“do go on, please,” mademoiselle feval urged.
*
mademoiselle feval, mrs stafford, and darcy filbertson, seated directly across from mary, listened attentively to mary’s recital.
angeline, seated on mrs stafford’s left, also listented to mary with one ear while also listening politely and making an occasional interjection to the small talk between mr mahmoud, on her left, and mrs foster, who sat at the head of the table.
lord chandler ignored mrs cream, who in her turn kept up a steady stream of cutural commentary to m chan, who nodded at proper intervals while enjoying his dinner.
the young duke, at the foot of the table, conversed with joe, seated directly on his right, in his , the duke’s, friendliest manner.
“what do you think of the old pile, eh?” the duke asked joe. “must seen pretty dreary to a young chap like yourself, used to a life of adventure.”
joe did not know how to reply.
“it’s big,” he finally said.
38. the gamblers
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