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diff --git a/30855-h/30855-h.htm b/30855-h/30855-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..211d691 --- /dev/null +++ b/30855-h/30855-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,15258 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman, by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells</title> + +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> +</head> +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman, by H. G. Wells</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: H. G. Wells</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: January 4, 2010 [eBook #30855]<br /> +[Most recently updated: November 17, 2022]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Juliet Sutherland, Graeme Mackreth, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN ***</div> + +<h1> +THE WIFE OF<br /> +SIR ISAAC HARMAN</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> +<h2 class="no-break">H. G. WELLS</h2> + +<p class='center' style="margin-top: 5em;"><small>New York<br /> +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> +1914<br /> +<br /> +<i>All rights reserved</i></small> +</p> + +<p class='center' style="margin-top: 10em;"><small> +COPYRIGHT, 1914,<br /> +<span class="smcap">By H. G. WELLS.</span><br /> +<br /> + +Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1914.</small> +</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01"><span class="smcap">Chapter I. Introduces Lady Harman</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02"><span class="smcap">Chapter II. The Personality of Sir Isaac</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03"><span class="smcap">Chapter III. Lady Harman at Home</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04"><span class="smcap">Chapter IV. The Beginnings of Lady Harman</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05"><span class="smcap">Chapter V. The World according to Sir Isaac</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06"><span class="smcap">Chapter VI. The Adventurous Afternoon</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07"><span class="smcap">Chapter VII. Lady Harman learns about Herself</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08"><span class="smcap">Chapter VIII. Sir Isaac as Petruchio</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09"><span class="smcap">Chapter IX. Mr. Brumley is troubled by Difficult Ideas</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10"><span class="smcap">Chapter X. Lady Harman comes out</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11"><span class="smcap">Chapter XI. The Last Crisis</span></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap12"><span class="smcap">Chapter XII. Love and a Serious Lady</span></a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01" id="chap01"></a>CHAPTER THE FIRST</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Introduces Lady Harman</span></p> + +<h4>§1</h4> + +<p>The motor-car entered a little white gate, came to a porch under a thick +wig of jasmine, and stopped. The chauffeur indicated by a movement of +the head that this at last was it. A tall young woman with a big soft +mouth, great masses of blue-black hair on either side of a broad, low +forehead, and eyes of so dark a brown you might have thought them black, +drooped forward and surveyed the house with a mixture of keen +appreciation and that gentle apprehension which is the shadow of desire +in unassuming natures....</p> + +<p>The little house with the white-framed windows looked at her with a +sleepy wakefulness from under its blinds, and made no sign. Beyond the +corner was a glimpse of lawn, a rank of delphiniums, and the sound of a +wheel-barrow.</p> + +<p>“Clarence!” the lady called again.</p> + +<p>Clarence, with an air of exceeding his duties, decided to hear, +descended slowly, and came to the door.</p> + +<p>“Very likely—if you were to look for a bell, Clarence....”</p> + +<p>Clarence regarded the porch with a hostile air, made no secret that he +thought it a fool of a porch, seemed on the point of disobedience, and +submitted. His gestures suggested a belief that he would next be asked +to boil eggs or do the boots. He found a bell and rang it with the +needless violence of a man who has no special knowledge of ringing +bells. How was <i>he</i> to know? he was a chauffeur. The bell did not so +much ring as explode and swamp the place. Sounds of ringing came from +all the windows, and even out of the chimneys. It seemed as if once set +ringing that bell would never cease....</p> + +<p>Clarence went to the bonnet of his machine, and presented his stooping +back in a defensive manner against anyone who might come out. He wasn’t +a footman, anyhow. He’d rung that bell all right, and now he must see to +his engine.</p> + +<p>“He’s rung so <i>loud!</i>” said the lady weakly—apparently to God.</p> + +<p>The door behind the neat white pillars opened, and a little red-nosed +woman, in a cap she had evidently put on without a proper glass, +appeared. She surveyed the car and its occupant with disfavour over her +also very oblique spectacles.</p> + +<p>The lady waved a pink paper to her, a house-agent’s order to view. “Is +this Black Strands?” she shouted.</p> + +<p>The little woman advanced slowly with her eyes fixed malevolently on the +pink paper. She seemed to be stalking it.</p> + +<p>“This is Black Strands?” repeated the tall lady. “I should be so sorry +if I disturbed you—if it isn’t; ringing the bell like that—and all. +You can’t think——”</p> + +<p>“This is Black <i>Strand</i>,” said the little old woman with a note of deep +reproach, and suddenly ceased to look over her glasses and looked +through them. She looked no kindlier through them, and her eye seemed +much larger. She was now regarding the lady in the car, though with a +sustained alertness towards the pink paper. “I suppose,” she said, +“you’ve come to see over the place?”</p> + +<p>“If it doesn’t disturb anyone; if it is quite convenient——”</p> + +<p>“Mr. Brumley is <i>hout</i>,” said the little old woman. “And if you got an +order to view, you got an order to view.”</p> + +<p>“If you think I might.”</p> + +<p>The lady stood up in the car, a tall and graceful figure of doubt and +desire and glossy black fur. “I’m sure it looks a very charming house.”</p> + +<p>“It’s <i>clean</i>,” said the little old woman, “from top to toe. Look as you +may.”</p> + +<p>“I’m sure it is,” said the tall lady, and put aside her great fur coat +from her lithe, slender, red-clad body. (She was permitted by a sudden +civility of Clarence’s to descend.) “Why! the windows,” she said, +pausing on the step, “are like crystal.”</p> + +<p>“These very ’ands,” said the little old woman, and glanced up at the +windows the lady had praised. The little old woman’s initial sternness +wrinkled and softened as the skin of a windfall does after a day or so +upon the ground. She half turned in the doorway and made a sudden +vergerlike gesture. “We enter,” she said, “by the ’all.... Them’s Mr. +Brumley’s ’ats and sticks. Every ’at or cap ’as a stick, and every stick +’as a ’at <i>or</i> cap, and on the ’all table is the gloves corresponding. +On the right is the door leading to the kitching, on the left is the +large droring-room which Mr. Brumley ’as took as ’is study.” Her voice +fell to lowlier things. “The other door beyond is a small lavatory +’aving a basing for washing ’ands.”</p> + +<p>“It’s a perfectly delightful hall,” said the lady. “So low and +wide-looking. And everything so bright—and lovely. Those long, Italian +pictures! And how charming that broad outlook upon the garden beyond!”</p> + +<p>“You’ll think it charminger when you see the garding,” said the little +old woman. “It was Mrs. Brumley’s especial delight. Much of it—with ’er +own ’ands.”</p> + +<p>“We now enter the droring-room,” she proceeded, and flinging open the +door to the right was received with an indistinct cry suggestive of the +words, “Oh, <i>damn</i> it!” The stout medium-sized gentleman in an artistic +green-grey Norfolk suit, from whom the cry proceeded, was kneeling on +the floor close to the wide-open window, and he was engaged in lacing up +a boot. He had a round, ruddy, rather handsome, amiable face with a sort +of bang of brown hair coming over one temple, and a large silk bow under +his chin and a little towards one ear, such as artists and artistic men +of letters affect. His profile was regular and fine, his eyes +expressive, his mouth, a very passable mouth. His features expressed at +first only the naïve horror of a shy man unveiled.</p> + +<p>Intelligent appreciation supervened.</p> + +<p>There was a crowded moment of rapid mutual inspection. The lady’s +attitude was that of the enthusiastic house-explorer arrested in full +flight, falling swiftly towards apology and retreat. (It was a +frightfully attractive room, too, full of the brightest colour, and with +a big white cast of a statue—a Venus!—in the window.) She backed over +the threshold again.</p> + +<p>“I thought you was out by that window, sir,” said the little old woman +intimately, and was nearly shutting the door between them and all the +beginnings of this story.</p> + +<p>But the voice of the gentleman arrested and wedged open the closing +door.</p> + +<p>“I——Are you looking at the house?” he said. “I say! Just a moment, +Mrs. Rabbit.”</p> + +<p>He came down the length of the room with a slight flicking noise due to +the scandalized excitement of his abandoned laces. The lady was reminded +of her not so very distant schooldays, when it would have been +considered a suitable answer to such a question as his to reply, “No, I +am walking down Piccadilly on my hands.” But instead she waved that pink +paper again. “The agents,” she said. “Recommended—specially. So sorry +if I intrude. I ought, I know, to have written first; but I came on an +impulse.”</p> + +<p>By this time the gentleman in the artistic tie, who had also the +artistic eye for such matters, had discovered that the lady was young, +delightfully slender, either pretty or beautiful, he could scarcely tell +which, and very, very well dressed. “I am glad,” he said, with +remarkable decision, “that I was not out. <i>I</i> will show you the house.”</p> + +<p>“’Ow <i>can</i> you, sir?” intervened the little old woman.</p> + +<p>“Oh! show a house! Why not?”</p> + +<p>“The kitchings—you don’t understand the range, sir—it’s beyond you. +And upstairs. You can’t show a lady upstairs.”</p> + +<p>The gentleman reflected upon these difficulties.</p> + +<p>“Well, I’m going to show her all I can show her anyhow. And after that, +Mrs. Rabbit, you shall come in. You needn’t wait.”</p> + +<p>“I’m thinking,” said Mrs. Rabbit, folding stiff little arms and +regarding him sternly. “You won’t be much good after tea, you know, if +you don’t get your afternoon’s exercise.”</p> + +<p>“Rendez-vous in the kitchen, Mrs. Rabbit,” said Mr. Brumley, firmly, and +Mrs. Rabbit after a moment of mute struggle disappeared discontentedly.</p> + +<p>“I do not want to be the least bit a bother,” said the lady. “I’m +intruding, I know, without the least bit of notice. I <i>do</i> hope I’m not +disturbing you——” she seemed to make an effort to stop at that, and +failed and added—“the least bit. Do please tell me if I am.”</p> + +<p>“Not at all,” said Mr. Brumley. “I hate my afternoon’s walk as a +prisoner hates the treadmill.”</p> + +<p>“She’s such a nice old creature.”</p> + +<p>“She’s been a mother—and several aunts—to us ever since my wife died. +She was the first servant we ever had.”</p> + +<p>“All this house,” he explained to his visitor’s questioning eyes, “was +my wife’s creation. It was a little featureless agent’s house on the +edge of these pine-woods. She saw something in the shape of the +rooms—and that central hall. We’ve enlarged it of course. Twice. This +was two rooms, that is why there is a step down in the centre.”</p> + +<p>“That window and window-seat——”</p> + +<p>“That was her addition,” said Mr. Brumley. “All this room +is—replete—with her personality.” He hesitated, and explained further. +“When we prepared this house—we expected to be better off—than we +subsequently became—and she could let herself go. Much is from Holland +and Italy.”</p> + +<p>“And that beautiful old writing-desk with the little single rose in a +glass!”</p> + +<p>“She put it there. She even in a sense put the flower there. It is +renewed of course. By Mrs. Rabbit. She trained Mrs. Rabbit.”</p> + +<p>He sighed slightly, apparently at some thought of Mrs. Rabbit.</p> + +<p>“You—you write——” the lady stopped, and then diverted a question that +she perhaps considered too blunt, “there?”</p> + +<p>“Largely. I am—a sort of author. Perhaps you know my books. Not very +important books—but people sometimes read them.”</p> + +<p>The rose-pink of the lady’s cheek deepened by a shade. Within her pretty +head, her mind rushed to and fro saying “Brumley? Brumley?” Then she had +a saving gleam. “Are you <i>George</i> Brumley?” she asked,—“<i>the</i> George +Brumley?”</p> + +<p>“My name <i>is</i> George Brumley,” he said, with a proud modesty. “Perhaps +you know my little Euphemia books? They are still the most read.”</p> + +<p>The lady made a faint, dishonest assent-like noise; and her rose-pink +deepened another shade. But her interlocutor was not watching her very +closely just then.</p> + +<p>“Euphemia was my wife,” he said, “at least, my wife gave her to me—a +kind of exhalation. <i>This</i>”—his voice fell with a genuine respect for +literary associations—“was Euphemia’s home.”</p> + +<p>“I still,” he continued, “go on. I go on writing about Euphemia. I have +to. In this house. With my tradition.... But it is becoming +painful—painful. Curiously more painful now than at the beginning. And +I want to go. I want at last to make a break. That is why I am letting +or selling the house.... There will be no more Euphemia.”</p> + +<p>His voice fell to silence.</p> + +<p>The lady surveyed the long low clear room so cleverly prepared for life, +with its white wall, its Dutch clock, its Dutch dresser, its pretty +seats about the open fireplace, its cleverly placed bureau, its +sun-trap at the garden end; she could feel the rich intention of living +in its every arrangement and a sense of uncertainty in things struck +home to her. She seemed to see a woman, a woman like herself—only very, +very much cleverer—flitting about the room and making it. And then this +woman had vanished—nowhither. Leaving this gentleman—sadly left—in +the care of Mrs. Rabbit.</p> + +<p>“And she is dead?” she said with a softness in her dark eyes and a fall +in her voice that was quite natural and very pretty.</p> + +<p>“She died,” said Mr. Brumley, “three years and a half ago.” He +reflected. “Almost exactly.”</p> + +<p>He paused and she filled the pause with feeling.</p> + +<p>He became suddenly very brave and brisk and businesslike. He led the way +back into the hall and made explanations. “It is not so much a hall as a +hall living-room. We use that end, except when we go out upon the +verandah beyond, as our dining-room. The door to the right is the +kitchen.”</p> + +<p>The lady’s attention was caught again by the bright long eventful +pictures that had already pleased her. “They are copies of two of +Carpaccio’s St. George series in Venice,” he said. “We bought them +together there. But no doubt you’ve seen the originals. In a little old +place with a custodian and rather dark. One of those corners—so full of +that delightful out-of-the-wayishness which is so characteristic, I +think, of Venice. I don’t know if you found that in Venice?”</p> + +<p>“I’ve never been abroad,” said the lady. “Never. I should love to go. I +suppose you and your wife went—ever so much.”</p> + +<p>He had a transitory wonder that so fine a lady should be untravelled, +but his eagerness to display his backgrounds prevented him thinking that +out at the time. “Two or three times,” he said, “before our little boy +came to us. And always returning with something for this place. Look!” +he went on, stepped across an exquisite little brick court to a lawn of +soft emerald and turning back upon the house. “That Dellia Robbia +placque we lugged all the way back from Florence with us, and that stone +bird-bath is from Siena.”</p> + +<p>“How bright it is!” murmured the lady after a brief still appreciation. +“Delightfully bright. As though it would shine even if the sun didn’t.” +And she abandoned herself to the rapture of seeing a house and garden +that were for once better even than the agent’s superlatives. And within +her grasp if she chose—within her grasp.</p> + +<p>She made the garden melodious with soft appreciative sounds. She had a +small voice for her size but quite a charming one, a little live bird of +a voice, bright and sweet. It was a clear unruffled afternoon; even the +unseen wheel-barrow had very sensibly ceased to creak and seemed to be +somewhere listening....</p> + +<p>Only one trivial matter marred their easy explorations;—his boots +remained unlaced. No propitious moment came when he could stoop and lace +them. He was not a dexterous man with eyelets, and stooping made him +grunt and his head swim. He hoped these trailing imperfections went +unmarked. He tried subtly to lead this charming lady about and at the +same time walk a little behind her. She on her part could not determine +whether he would be displeased or not if she noticed this slight +embarrassment and asked him to set it right. They were quite long +leather laces and they flew about with a sturdy negligence of anything +but their own offensive contentment, like a gross man who whistles a +vulgar tune as he goes round some ancient church; flick, flock, they +went, and flip, flap, enjoying themselves, and sometimes he trod on one +and halted in his steps, and sometimes for a moment she felt her foot +tether him. But man is the adaptable animal and presently they both +became more used to these inconveniences and more mechanical in their +efforts to avoid them. They treated those laces then exactly as nice +people would treat that gross man; a minimum of polite attention and all +the rest pointedly directed away from him....</p> + +<p>The garden was full of things that people dream about doing in their +gardens and mostly never do. There was a rose garden all blooming in +chorus, and with pillar-roses and arches that were not so much growths +as overflowing cornucopias of roses, and a neat orchard with shapely +trees white-painted to their exact middles, a stone wall bearing +clematis and a clothes-line so gay with Mr. Brumley’s blue and white +flannel shirts that it seemed an essential part of the design. And then +there was a great border of herbaceous perennials backed by delphiniums +and monkshood already in flower and budding hollyhocks rising to their +duty; a border that reared its blaze of colour against a hill-slope dark +with pines. There was no hedge whatever to this delightful garden. It +seemed to go straight into the pine-woods; only an invisible netting +marked its limits and fended off the industrious curiosity of the +rabbits.</p> + +<p>“This strip of wood is ours right up to the crest,” he said, “and from +the crest one has a view. One has two views. If you would care——?”</p> + +<p>The lady made it clear that she was there to see all she could. She +radiated her appetite to see. He carried a fur stole for her over his +arm and flicked the way up the hill. Flip, flap, flop. She followed +demurely.</p> + +<p>“This is the only view I care to show you now,” he said at the crest. “There +was a better one beyond there. But—it has been defiled.... Those +hills!... I knew you would like them. The space of it! And yet——. +This view—lacks the shining ponds. There are wonderful distant ponds. +After all I must show you the other! But you see there is the high-road, and +the high-road has produced an abomination. Along here we go. Now. Don’t look +down please.” His gesture covered the foreground. “Look right over the nearer +things into the distance. There!”</p> + +<p>The lady regarded the wide view with serene appreciation. “I don’t see,” +she said, “that it’s in any way ruined. It’s perfect.”</p> + +<p>“You don’t see! Ah! you look right over. You look high. I wish I could +too. But that screaming board! I wish the man’s crusts would choke +him.”</p> + +<p>And indeed quite close at hand, where the road curved about below them, +the statement that Staminal Bread, the True Staff of Life, was sold only +by the International Bread Shops, was flung out with a vigour of yellow +and Prussian blue that made the landscape tame.</p> + +<p>His finger directed her questioning eye.</p> + +<p>“<i>Oh!</i>” said the lady suddenly, as one who is convicted of a stupidity +and coloured slightly.</p> + +<p>“In the morning of course it is worse. The sun comes directly on to it. +Then really and truly it blots out everything.”</p> + +<p>The lady stood quite silent for a little time, with her eyes on the +distant ponds. Then he perceived that she was blushing. She turned to +her interlocutor as a puzzled pupil might turn to a teacher.</p> + +<p>“It really is very good bread,” she said. “They make it——Oh! most +carefully. With the germ in. And one has to tell people.”</p> + +<p>Her point of view surprised him. He had expected nothing but a docile +sympathy. “But to tell people <i>here</i>!” he said.</p> + +<p>“Yes, I suppose one oughtn’t to tell them here.”</p> + +<p>“Man does not live by bread alone.”</p> + +<p>She gave the faintest assent.</p> + +<p>“This is the work of one pushful, shoving creature, a man named Harman. +Imagine him! Imagine what he must be! Don’t you feel his soul defiling +us?—this summit of a stupendous pile of—dough, thinking of nothing +but his miserable monstrous profits, seeing nothing in the delight of +life, the beauty of the world but something that attracts attention, +draws eyes, something that gives him his horrible opportunity of getting +ahead of all his poor little competitors and inserting—<i>this!</i> It’s the +quintessence of all that is wrong with the world;—squalid, shameless +huckstering!” He flew off at a tangent. “Four or five years ago they +made this landscape disease,—a knight!”</p> + +<p>He looked at her for a sympathetic indignation, and then suddenly +something snapped in his brain and he understood. There wasn’t an +instant between absolute innocence and absolute knowledge.</p> + +<p>“You see,” she said as responsive as though he had cried out sharply at +the horror in his mind, “Sir Isaac is my husband. Naturally ... I ought +to have given you my name to begin with. It was silly....”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley gave one wild glance at the board, but indeed there was not +a word to be said in its mitigation. It was the crude advertisement of a +crude pretentious thing crudely sold. “My dear lady!” he said in his +largest style, “I am desolated! But I have said it! It isn’t a pretty +board.”</p> + +<p>A memory of epithets pricked him. “You must forgive—a certain touch +of—rhetoric.”</p> + +<p>He turned about as if to dismiss the board altogether, but she remained +with her brows very faintly knit, surveying the cause of his offence.</p> + +<p>“It isn’t a <i>pretty</i> board,” she said. “I’ve wondered at times.... It +isn’t.”</p> + +<p>“I implore you to forget that outbreak—mere petulance—because, I +suppose, of a peculiar liking for that particular view. There +are—associations——”</p> + +<p>“I’ve wondered lately,” she continued, holding on to her own thoughts, +“what people <i>did</i> think of them. And it’s curious—to hear——”</p> + +<p>For a moment neither spoke, she surveyed the board and he the tall ease +of her pose. And he was thinking she must surely be the most beautiful +woman he had ever encountered. The whole country might be covered with +boards if it gave us such women as this. He felt the urgent need of some +phrase, to pull the situation out of this pit into which it had fallen. +He was a little unready, his faculties all as it were neglecting his +needs and crowding to the windows to stare, and meanwhile she spoke +again, with something of the frankness of one who thinks aloud.</p> + +<p>“You see,” she said, “one <i>doesn’t</i> hear. One thinks perhaps——And +there it is. When one marries very young one is apt to take so much for +granted. And afterwards——”</p> + +<p>She was wonderfully expressive in her inexpressiveness, he thought, but +found as yet no saving phrase. Her thought continued to drop from her. +“One sees them so much that at last one doesn’t see them.”</p> + +<p>She turned away to survey the little house again; it was visible in +bright strips between the red-scarred pine stems. She looked at it chin +up, with a still approval—but she was the slenderest loveliness, and +with such a dignity!—and she spoke at length as though the board had +never existed. “It’s like a little piece of another world; so bright and +so—perfect.”</p> + +<p>There was the phantom of a sigh in her voice.</p> + +<p>“I think you’ll be charmed by our rockery,” he said. “It was one of our +particular efforts. Every time we two went abroad we came back with +something, stonecrop or Alpine or some little bulb from the wayside.”</p> + +<p>“How can you leave it!”</p> + +<p>He was leaving it because it bored him to death. But so intricate is the +human mind that it was with perfect sincerity he answered: “It will be a +tremendous wrench.... I have to go.”</p> + +<p>“And you’ve written most of your books here and lived here!”</p> + +<p>The note of sympathy in her voice gave him a sudden suspicion that she +imagined his departure due to poverty. Now to be poor as an author is to +be unpopular, and he valued his popularity—with the better sort of +people. He hastened to explain. “I have to go, because here, you see, +here, neither for me nor my little son, is it Life. It’s a place of +memories, a place of accomplished beauty. My son already breaks away,—a +preparatory school at Margate. Healthier, better, for us to break +altogether I feel, wrench though it may. It’s full for us at least—a +new tenant would be different of course—but for <i>us</i> it’s full of +associations we can’t alter, can’t for the life of us change. Nothing +you see goes on. And life you know <i>is</i> change—change and going on.”</p> + +<p>He paused impressively on his generalization.</p> + +<p>“But you will want——You will want to hand it over to—to sympathetic +people of course. People,” she faltered, “who will understand.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley took an immense stride—conversationally. “I am certain +there is no one I would more readily see in that house than yourself,” +he said.</p> + +<p>“But——” she protested. “And besides, you don’t know me!”</p> + +<p>“One knows some things at once, and I am as sure you +would—understand—as if I had known you twenty years. It may seem +absurd to you, but when I looked up just now and saw you for the first +time, I thought—this, this is the tenant. This is her house.... Not a +doubt. That is why I did not go for my walk—came round with you.”</p> + +<p>“You really think you would like us to have that house?” she said. +“<i>Still?</i>”</p> + +<p>“No one better,” said Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“After the board?”</p> + +<p>“After a hundred boards, I let the house to you....”</p> + +<p>“My husband of course will be the tenant,” reflected Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>She seemed to brighten again by an effort: “I have always wanted +something like this, that wasn’t gorgeous, that wasn’t mean. I can’t +<i>make</i> things. It isn’t every one—can <i>make</i> a place....”</p> + +<h4>§2</h4> + +<p>Mr. Brumley found their subsequent conversation the fullest realization +of his extremest hopes. Behind his amiable speeches, which soon grew +altogether easy and confident again, a hundred imps of vanity were +patting his back for the intuition, the swift decision that had +abandoned his walk so promptly. In some extraordinary way the incident +of the board became impossible; it hadn’t happened, he felt, or it had +happened differently. Anyhow there was no time to think that over now. +He guided the lady to the two little greenhouses, made her note the +opening glow of the great autumnal border and brought her to the rock +garden. She stooped and loved and almost kissed the soft healthy +cushions of pampered saxifrage: she appreciated the cleverness of the +moss-bed—where there were droseras; she knelt to the gentians; she had +a kindly word for that bank-holiday corner where London Pride still +belatedly rejoiced; she cried out at the delicate Iceland poppies that +thrust up between the stones of the rough pavement; and so in the most +amiable accord they came to the raised seat in the heart of it all, and +sat down and took in the whole effect of the place, and backing of +woods, the lush borders, the neat lawn, the still neater orchard, the +pergola, the nearer delicacies among the stones, and the gable, the +shining white rough-cast of the walls, the casement windows, the +projecting upper story, the carefully sought-out old tiles of the roof. +And everything bathed in that caressing sunshine which does not scorch +nor burn but gilds and warms deliciously, that summer sunshine which +only northward islands know.</p> + +<p>Recovering from his first astonishment and his first misadventure, Mr. +Brumley was soon himself again, talkative, interesting, subtly and +gently aggressive. For once one may use a hackneyed phrase without the +slightest exaggeration; he was charmed...</p> + +<p>He was one of those very natural-minded men with active imaginations who +find women the most interesting things in a full and interesting +universe. He was an entirely good man and almost professionally on the +side of goodness, his pen was a pillar of the home and he was hostile +and even actively hostile to all those influences that would undermine +and change—anything; but he did find women attractive. He watched them +and thought about them, he loved to be with them, he would take great +pains to please and interest them, and his mind was frequently dreaming +quite actively of them, of championing them, saying wonderful and +impressive things to them, having great friendships with them, adoring +them and being adored by them. At times he had to ride this interest on +the curb. At times the vigour of its urgencies made him inconsistent and +secretive.... Comparatively his own sex was a matter of indifference to +him. Indeed he was a very normal man. Even such abstractions as Goodness +and Justice had rich feminine figures in his mind, and when he sat down +to write criticism at his desk, that pretty little slut of a Delphic +Sibyl presided over his activities.</p> + +<p>So that it was a cultivated as well as an attentive eye that studied the +movements of Lady Harman and an experienced ear that weighed the words +and cadences of her entirely inadequate and extremely expressive share +in their conversation. He had enjoyed the social advantages of a popular +and presentable man of letters, and he had met a variety of ladies; but +he had never yet met anyone at all like Lady Harman. She was pretty and +quite young and fresh; he doubted if she was as much as four-and-twenty; +she was as simple-mannered as though she was ever so much younger than +that, and dignified as though she was ever so much older; and she had a +sort of lustre of wealth about her——. One met it sometimes in young +richly married Jewesses, but though she was very dark she wasn’t at all +of that type; he was inclined to think she must be Welsh. This manifest +spending of great lots of money on the richest, finest and fluffiest +things was the only aspect of her that sustained the parvenu idea; and +it wasn’t in any way carried out by her manners, which were as modest +and silent and inaggressive as the very best can be. Personally he liked +opulence, he responded to countless-guinea furs....</p> + +<p>Soon there was a neat little history in his mind that was reasonably +near the truth, of a hard-up professional family, fatherless perhaps, of +a mercenary marriage at seventeen or so—and this....</p> + +<p>And while Mr. Brumley’s observant and speculative faculties were thus +active, his voice was busily engaged. With the accumulated artistry of +years he was developing his pose. He did it almost subconsciously. He +flung out hint and impulsive confidence and casual statement with the +careless assurance of the accustomed performer, until by nearly +imperceptible degrees that finished picture of the two young lovers, +happy, artistic, a little Bohemian and one of them doomed to die, making +their home together in an atmosphere of sunny gaiety, came into being in +her mind....</p> + +<p>“It must have been beautiful to have begun life like that,” she said in +a voice that was a sigh, and it flashed joyfully across Mr. Brumley’s +mind that this wonderful person could envy his Euphemia.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” he said, “at least we had our Spring.”</p> + +<p>“To be together,” said the lady, “and—so beautifully poor....”</p> + +<p>There is a phase in every relationship when one must generalize if one +is to go further. A certain practice in this kind of talk with ladies +blunted the finer sensibilities of Mr. Brumley. At any rate he was able +to produce this sentence without a qualm. “Life,” he said, “is sometimes +a very extraordinary thing.”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman reflected upon this statement and then responded with an air +of remembered moments: “Isn’t it.”</p> + +<p>“One loses the most precious things,” said Mr. Brumley, “and one loses +them and it seems as though one couldn’t go on. And one goes on.”</p> + +<p>“And one finds oneself,” said Lady Harman, “without all sorts of +precious things——” And she stopped, transparently realizing that she +was saying too much.</p> + +<p>“There is a sort of vitality about life,” said Mr. Brumley, and stopped +as if on the verge of profundities.</p> + +<p>“I suppose one hopes,” said Lady Harman. “And one doesn’t think. And +things happen.”</p> + +<p>“Things happen,” assented Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>For a little while their minds rested upon this thought, as chasing +butterflies might rest together on a flower.</p> + +<p>“And so I am going to leave this,” Mr. Brumley resumed. “I am going up +there to London for a time with my boy. Then perhaps we may +travel—Germany, Italy, perhaps—in his holidays. It is beginning again, I +feel with him. But then even we two must drift apart. I can’t deny him a +public school sooner or later. His own road....”</p> + +<p>“It will be lonely for you,” sympathized the lady. “I have my work,” +said Mr. Brumley with a sort of valiant sadness.</p> + +<p>“Yes, I suppose your work——”</p> + +<p>She left an eloquent gap.</p> + +<p>“There, of course, one’s fortunate,” said Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“I wish,” said Lady Harman, with a sudden frankness and a little +quickening of her colour, “that I had some work. Something—that was my +own.”</p> + +<p>“But you have——There are social duties. There must be all sorts of +things.”</p> + +<p>“There are—all sorts of things. I suppose I’m ungrateful. I have my +children.”</p> + +<p>“You have children, Lady Harman!”</p> + +<p>“I’ve <i>four</i>.”</p> + +<p>He was really astonished, “Your <i>own</i>?”</p> + +<p>She turned her fawn’s eyes on his with a sudden wonder at his meaning. +“My own!” she said with the faintest tinge of astonished laughter in her +voice. “What else could they be?”</p> + +<p>“I thought——I thought you might have step-children.”</p> + +<p>“Oh! of course! No! I’m their mother;—all four of them. They’re mine as +far as that goes. Anyhow.”</p> + +<p>And her eye questioned him again for his intentions.</p> + +<p>But his thought ran along its own path. “You see,” he said, “there is +something about you—so freshly beginning life. So like—Spring.”</p> + +<p>“You thought I was too young! I’m nearly six-and-twenty! But all the +same,—though they’re mine,—<i>still</i>——Why shouldn’t a woman have work +in the world, Mr. Brumley? In spite of all that.”</p> + +<p>“But surely—that’s the most beautiful work in the world that anyone +could possibly have.”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman reflected. She seemed to hesitate on the verge of some +answer and not to say it.</p> + +<p>“You see,” she said, “it may have been different with you.... When one +has a lot of nurses, and not very much authority.”</p> + +<p>She coloured deeply and broke back from the impending revelations.</p> + +<p>“No,” she said, “I would like some work of my own.”</p> + +<h4>§3</h4> + +<p>At this point their conversation was interrupted by the lady’s chauffeur +in a manner that struck Mr. Brumley as extraordinary, but which the tall +lady evidently regarded as the most natural thing in the world.</p> + +<p>Mr. Clarence appeared walking across the lawn towards them, surveying +the charms of as obviously a charming garden as one could have, with the +disdain and hostility natural to a chauffeur. He did not so much touch +his cap as indicate that it was within reach, and that he could if he +pleased touch it. “It’s time you were going, my lady,” he said. “Sir +Isaac will be coming back by the five-twelve, and there’ll be a nice +to-do if you ain’t at home and me at the station and everything in order +again.”</p> + +<p>Manifestly an abnormal expedition.</p> + +<p>“Must we start at once, Clarence?” asked the lady consulting a bracelet +watch. “You surely won’t take two hours——”</p> + +<p>“I can give you fifteen minutes more, my lady,” said Clarence, “provided +I may let her out and take my corners just exactly in my own way.”</p> + +<p>“And I must give you tea,” said Mr. Brumley, rising to his feet. “And +there is the kitchen.”</p> + +<p>“And upstairs! I’m afraid, Clarence, for this occasion only you +must—what is it?—let her out.”</p> + +<p>“And no ‘Oh Clarence!’ my lady?”</p> + +<p>She ignored that.</p> + +<p>“I’ll tell Mrs. Rabbit at once,” said Mr. Brumley, and started to run +and trod in some complicated way on one of his loose laces and was +precipitated down the rockery steps. “Oh!” cried the lady. “Mind!” and +clasped her hands.</p> + +<p>He made a sound exactly like the word “damnation” as he fell, but he +didn’t so much get up as bounce up, apparently in the brightest of +tempers, and laughed, held out two earthy hands for sympathy with a mock +rueful grimace, and went on, earthy-green at the knees and a little more +carefully towards the house. Clarence, having halted to drink deep +satisfaction from this disaster, made his way along a nearly parallel +path towards the kitchen, leaving his lady to follow as she chose to the +house.</p> + +<p>“<i>You’ll</i> take a cup of tea?” called Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“Oh! <i>I’ll</i> take a cup all right,” said Clarence in the kindly voice of +one who addresses an amusing inferior....</p> + +<p>Mrs. Rabbit had already got the tea-things out upon the cane table in +the pretty verandah, and took it ill that she should be supposed not to +have thought of these preparations.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley disappeared for a few minutes into the house.</p> + +<p>He returned with a conscious relief on his face, clean hands, brushed +knees, and his boots securely laced. He found Lady Harman already +pouring out tea.</p> + +<p>“You see,” she said, to excuse this pleasant enterprise on her part, “my +husband has to be met at the station with the car.... And of course he +has no idea——”</p> + +<p>She left what it was of which Sir Isaac had no idea to the groping +speculations of Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<h4>§4</h4> + +<p>That evening Mr. Brumley was quite unable to work. His mind was full of +this beautiful dark lady who had come so unexpectedly into his world.</p> + +<p>Perhaps there are such things as premonitions. At any rate he had an +altogether disproportionate sense of the significance of the afternoon’s +adventure,—which after all was a very small adventure indeed. A mere +talk. His mind refused to leave her, her black furry slenderness, her +dark trustful eyes, the sweet firmness of her perfect lips, her +appealing simplicity that was yet somehow compatible with the completest +self-possession. He went over the incident of the board again and again, +scraping his memory for any lurking crumb of detail as a starving man +might scrape an insufficient plate. Her dignity, her gracious frank +forgiveness; no queen alive in these days could have touched her.... But +it wasn’t a mere elaborate admiration. There was something about her, +about the quality of their meeting.</p> + +<p>Most people know that sort of intimation. This person, it says, so fine, +so brave, so distant still in so many splendid and impressive +qualities, is yet in ways as yet undefined and unexplored, subtly and +abundantly—for <i>you</i>. It was that made all her novelty and distinction +and high quality and beauty so dominating among Mr. Brumley’s thoughts. +Without that his interest might have been almost entirely—academic. But +there was woven all through her the hints of an imaginable alliance, +with <i>us</i>, with the things that are Brumley, with all that makes +beautiful little cottages and resents advertisements in lovely places, +with us as against something over there lurking behind that board, +something else, something out of which she came. He vaguely adumbrated +what it was out of which she came. A closed narrow life—with horrid +vast enviable quantities of money. A life, could one use the word +<i>vulgar</i>?—so that Carpaccio, Della Robbia, old furniture, a garden +unostentatiously perfect, and the atmosphere of <i>belles-lettres</i>, seemed +things of another more desirable world. (She had never been abroad.) A +world, too, that would be so willing, so happy to enfold her, furs, +funds, freshness—everything.</p> + +<p>And all this was somehow animated by the stirring warmth in the June +weather, for spring raised the sap in Mr. Brumley as well as in his +trees, had been a restless time for him all his life. This spring +particularly had sensitized him, and now a light had shone.</p> + +<p>He was so unable to work that for twenty minutes he sat over a pleasant +little essay on Shakespear’s garden that by means of a concordance and +his natural aptitude he was writing for the book of the National +Shakespear Theatre, without adding a single fancy to its elegant +playfulness. Then he decided he needed his afternoon’s walk after all, +and he took cap and stick and went out, and presently found himself +surveying that yellow and blue board and seeing it from an entirely new +point of view....</p> + +<p>It seemed to him that he hadn’t made the best use of his conversational +opportunities, and for a time this troubled him....</p> + +<p>Toward the twilight he was walking along the path that runs through the +heather along the edge of the rusty dark ironstone lake opposite the +pine-woods. He spoke his thoughts aloud to the discreet bat that flitted +about him. “I wonder,” he said, “whether I shall ever set eyes on her +again....”</p> + +<p>In the small hours when he ought to have been fast asleep he decided she +would certainly take the house, and that he would see her again quite a +number of times. A long tangle of unavoidable detail for discussion +might be improvised by an ingenious man. And the rest of that waking +interval passed in such inventions, which became more and more vague and +magnificent and familiar as Mr. Brumley lapsed into slumber again....</p> + +<p>Next day the garden essay was still neglected, and he wrote a pretty +vague little song about an earthly mourner and a fresh presence that set +him thinking of the story of Persephone and how she passed in the +springtime up from the shadows again, blessing as she passed....</p> + +<p>He pulled himself together about midday, cycled over to Gorshott for +lunch at the clubhouse and a round with Horace Toomer in the afternoon, +re-read the poem after tea, decided it was poor, tore it up and got +himself down to his little fantasy about Shakespear’s Garden for a good +two hours before supper. It was a sketch of that fortunate poet (whose +definitive immortality is now being assured by an influential committee) +walking round his Stratford garden with his daughter, quoting himself +copiously with an accuracy and inappropriateness that reflected more +credit upon his heart than upon his head, and saying in addition many +distinctively Brumley things. When Mrs. Rabbit, with a solicitude +acquired from the late Mrs. Brumley, asked him how he had got on with +his work—the sight of verse on his paper had made her anxious—he could +answer quite truthfully, “Like a house afire.”</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02" id="chap02"></a>CHAPTER THE SECOND</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Personality of Sir Isaac</span></p> + +<h4>§1</h4> + +<p>It is to be remarked that two facts, usually esteemed as supremely +important in the life of a woman, do not seem to have affected Mr. +Brumley’s state of mind nearly so much as quite trivial personal details +about Lady Harman. The first of these facts was the existence of the +lady’s four children, and the second, Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley did not think very much of either of these two facts; if he +had they would have spoilt the portrait in his mind; and when he did +think of them it was chiefly to think how remarkably little they were +necessary to that picture’s completeness.</p> + +<p>He spent some little time however trying to recall exactly what it was +she had said about her children. He couldn’t now succeed in reproducing +her words, if indeed it had been by anything so explicit as words that +she had conveyed to him that she didn’t feel her children were +altogether hers. “Incidental results of the collapse of her girlhood,” +tried Mr. Brumley, “when she married Harman.”</p> + +<p>Expensive nurses, governesses—the best that money without prestige or +training could buy. And then probably a mother-in-law.</p> + +<p>And as for Harman——?</p> + +<p>There Mr. Brumley’s mind desisted for sheer lack of material. Given this +lady and that board and his general impression of Harman’s refreshment +and confectionery activity—the data were insufficient. A commonplace +man no doubt, a tradesman, energetic perhaps and certainly a little +brassy, successful by the chances of that economic revolution which +everywhere replaces the isolated shop by the syndicated enterprise, +irrationally conceited about it; a man perhaps ultimately to be +pitied—with this young goddess finding herself.... Mr. Brumley’s mind +sat down comfortably to the more congenial theme of a young goddess +finding herself, and it was only very gradually in the course of several +days that the personality of Sir Isaac began to assume its proper +importance in the scheme of his imaginings.</p> + +<h4>§2</h4> + +<p>In the afternoon as he went round the links with Horace Toomer he got +some definite lights upon Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>His mind was so full of Lady Harman that he couldn’t but talk of her +visit. “I’ve a possible tenant for my cottage,” he said as he and +Toomer, full of the sunny contentment of English gentlemen who had +played a proper game in a proper manner, strolled back towards the +clubhouse. “That man Harman.”</p> + +<p>“Not the International Stores and Staminal Bread man.”</p> + +<p>“Yes. Odd. Considering my hatred of his board.”</p> + +<p>“He ought to pay—anyhow,” said Toomer. “They say he has a pretty wife +and keeps her shut up.”</p> + +<p>“She came,” said Brumley, neglecting to add the trifling fact that she +had come alone.</p> + +<p>“Pretty?”</p> + +<p>“Charming, I thought.”</p> + +<p>“He’s jealous of her. Someone was saying that the chauffeur has orders +not to take her into London—only for trips in the country. They live in +a big ugly house I’m told on Putney Hill. Did she in any way <i>look</i>—as +though——?”</p> + +<p>“Not in the least. If she isn’t an absolutely straight young woman I’ve +never set eyes on one.”</p> + +<p>“<i>He</i>,” said Toomer, “is a disgusting creature.”</p> + +<p>“Morally?”</p> + +<p>“No, but—generally. Spends his life ruining little tradesmen, for the +fun of the thing. He’s three parts an invalid with some obscure kidney +disease. Sometimes he spends whole days in bed, drinking Contrexéville +Water and planning the bankruptcy of decent men.... So the party made a +knight of him.”</p> + +<p>“A party must have funds, Toomer.”</p> + +<p>“He didn’t pay nearly enough. Blapton is an idiot with the honours. When +it isn’t Mrs. Blapton. What can you expect when —— ——”</p> + +<p>(But here Toomer became libellous.)</p> + +<p>Toomer was an interesting type. He had a disagreeable disposition +profoundly modified by a public school and university training. Two +antagonistic forces made him. He was the spirit of scurrility incarnate, +that was, as people say, innate; and by virtue of those moulding forces +he was doing his best to be an English gentleman. That mysterious +impulse which compels the young male to make objectionable imputations +against seemly lives and to write rare inelegant words upon clean and +decent things burnt almost intolerably within him, and equally powerful +now was the gross craving he had acquired for personal association with +all that is prominent, all that is successful, all that is of good +report. He had found his resultant in the censorious defence of +established things. He conducted the <i>British Critic</i>, attacking with a +merciless energy all that was new, all that was critical, all those +fresh and noble tentatives that admit of unsavoury interpretations, and +when the urgent Yahoo in him carried him below the pretentious dignity +of his accustomed organ he would squirt out his bitterness in a little +sham facetious bookstall volume with a bright cover and quaint woodcuts, +in which just as many prominent people as possible were mentioned by +name and a sauce of general absurdity could be employed to cover and, if +need be, excuse particular libels. So he managed to relieve himself and +get along. Harman was just on the border-line of the class he considered +himself free to revile. Harman was an outsider and aggressive and new, +one of Mrs. Blapton’s knights, and of no particular weight in society; +so far he was fair game; but he was not so new as he had been, he was +almost through with the running of the Toomer gauntlet, he had a +tremendous lot of money and it was with a modified vehemence that the +distinguished journalist and humourist expatiated on his offensiveness +to Mr. Brumley. He talked in a gentle, rather weary voice, that came +through a moustache like a fringe of light tobacco.</p> + +<p>“Personally I’ve little against the man. A wife too young for him and +jealously guarded, but that’s all to his credit. Nowadays. If it wasn’t +for his blatancy in his business.... And the knighthood.... I suppose he +can’t resist taking anything he can get. Bread made by wholesale and +distributed like a newspaper can’t, I feel, be the same thing as the +loaf of your honest old-fashioned baker—each loaf made with individual +attention—out of wholesome English flour—hand-ground—with a personal +touch for each customer. Still, everything drifts on to these +hugger-mugger large enterprises; Chicago spreads over the world. One +thing goes after another, tobacco, tea, bacon, drugs, bookselling. +Decent homes destroyed right and left. Not Harman’s affair, I suppose. +The girls in his London tea-shops have of course to supplement their +wages by prostitution—probably don’t object to that nowadays +considering the novels we have. And his effect on the landscape——Until +they stopped him he was trying very hard to get Shakespear’s Cliff at +Dover. He did for a time have the Toad Rock at Tunbridge. +Still”—something like a sigh escaped from Toomer,—“his private life +appears to be almost as blameless as anybody’s can be.... Thanks no +doubt to his defective health. I made the most careful enquiries when +his knighthood was first discussed. Someone has to. Before his marriage +he seems to have lived at home with his mother. At Highbury. Very +quietly and inexpensively.”</p> + +<p>“Then he’s not the conventional vulgarian?”</p> + +<p>“Much more of the Rockefeller type. Bad health, great concentration, +organizing power.... Applied of course to a narrower range of +business.... I’m glad I’m not a small confectioner in a town he wants to +take up.”</p> + +<p>“He’s—hard?”</p> + +<p>“Merciless. Hasn’t the beginnings of an idea of fair play.... None at +all.... No human give or take.... Are you going to have tea here, or are +you walking back now?”</p> + +<h4>§3</h4> + +<p>It was fully a week before Mr. Brumley heard anything more of Lady +Harman. He began to fear that this shining furry presence would glorify +Black Strand no more. Then came a telegram that filled him with the +liveliest anticipations. It was worded: “Coming see cottage Saturday +afternoon Harman....”</p> + +<p>On Saturday morning Mr. Brumley dressed with an apparent ease and +unusual care....</p> + +<p>He worked rather discursively before lunch. His mind was busy picking up +the ends of their previous conversation and going on with them to all +sorts of bright knots, bows and elegant cats’ cradling. He planned +openings that might give her tempting opportunities of confidences if +she wished to confide, and artless remarks and questions that would make +for self-betrayal if she didn’t. And he thought of her, he thought of +her imaginatively, this secluded rare thing so happily come to him, who +was so young, so frank and fresh and so unhappily married (he was sure) +to a husband at least happily mortal. Yes, dear Reader, even on that +opening morning Mr. Brumley’s imagination, trained very largely upon +Victorian literature and <i>belles-lettres</i>, leapt forward to the very +ending of this story.... We, of course, do nothing of the sort, our lot +is to follow a more pedestrian route.... He lapsed into a vague series +of meditations, slower perhaps but essentially similar, after his +temperate palatable lunch.</p> + +<p>He was apprised of the arrival of his visitor by the sudden indignant +yaup followed by the general subdued uproar of a motor-car outside the +front door, even before Clarence, this time amazingly prompt, assaulted +the bell. Then the whole house was like that poem by Edgar Allan Poe, +one magnificent texture of clangour.</p> + +<p>At the first toot of the horn Mr. Brumley had moved swiftly into the +bay, and screened partly by the life-size Venus of Milo that stood in +the bay window, and partly by the artistic curtains, surveyed the +glittering vehicle. He was first aware of a vast fur coat enclosing a +lean grey-headed obstinate-looking man with a diabetic complexion who +was fumbling with the door of the car and preventing Clarence’s +assistance. Mr. Brumley was able to remark that the gentleman’s nose +projected to a sharpened point, and that his thin-lipped mouth was all +awry and had a kind of habitual compression, the while that his eyes +sought eagerly for the other occupant of the car. She was unaccountably +invisible. Could it be that that hood really concealed her? Could it +be?...</p> + +<p>The white-faced gentleman descended, relieved himself tediously of the +vast fur coat, handed it to Clarence and turned to the house. +Reverentially Clarence placed the coat within the automobile and closed +the door. Still the protesting mind of Mr. Brumley refused to +believe!...</p> + +<p>He heard the house-door open and Mrs. Rabbit in colloquy with a flat +masculine voice. He heard his own name demanded and conceded. Then a +silence, not the faintest suggestion of a feminine rustle, and then the +sound of Mrs. Rabbit at the door-handle. Conviction stormed the last +fastness of the disappointed author’s mind.</p> + +<p>“Oh <i>damn</i>!” he shouted with extreme fervour.</p> + +<p>He had never imagined it was possible that Sir Isaac could come alone.</p> + +<h4>§4</h4> + +<p>But the house had to be let, and it had to be let to Sir Isaac Harman. +In another moment an amiable though distinguished man of letters was in +the hall interviewing the great <i>entrepreneur</i>.</p> + +<p>The latter gentleman was perhaps three inches shorter than Mr. Brumley, +his hair was grey-shot brown, his face clean-shaven, his features had a +thin irregularity, and he was dressed in a neat brown suit with a +necktie very exactly matching it. “Sir Isaac Harman?” said Mr. Brumley +with a note of gratification.</p> + +<p>“That’s it,” said Sir Isaac. He appeared to be nervous and a little out +of breath. “Come,” he said, “just to look over it. Just to see it. +Probably too small, but if it doesn’t put you out——”</p> + +<p>He blew out the skin of his face about his mouth a little.</p> + +<p>“Delighted to see you anyhow,” said Mr. Brumley, filling the world of +unspoken things with singularly lurid curses.</p> + +<p>“This. Nice little hall,—very,” said Sir Isaac. “Pretty, that bit at +the end. Many rooms are there?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley answered inexactly and meditated a desperate resignation of +the whole job to Mrs. Rabbit. Then he made an effort and began to +explain.</p> + +<p>“That clock,” said Sir Isaac interrupting in the dining-room, “is a +fake.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley made silent interrogations.</p> + +<p>“Been there myself,” said Sir Isaac. “They sell those brass fittings in +Ho’bun.”</p> + +<p>They went upstairs together. When Mr. Brumley wasn’t explaining or +pointing out, Sir Isaac made a kind of whistling between his clenched +teeth. “This bathroom wants refitting anyhow,” he said abruptly. “I +daresay Lady Harman would like that room with the bay—but it’s +all—small. It’s really quite pretty; you’ve done it cleverly, but—the +size of it! I’d have to throw out a wing. And that you know might spoil +the style. That roof,—a gardener’s cottage?... I thought it might be. +What’s this other thing here? Old barn. Empty? That might expand a bit. +Couldn’t do only just this anyhow.”</p> + +<p>He walked in front of Mr. Brumley downstairs and still emitting that +faint whistle led the way into the garden. He seemed to regard Mr. +Brumley merely as a source of answers to his questions, and a seller in +process of preparation for an offer. It was clear he meant to make an +offer. “It’s not the house I should buy if I was alone in this,” he +said, “but Lady Harman’s taken a fancy somehow. And it might be +adapted....”</p> + +<p>From first to last Mr. Brumley never said a single word about Euphemia +and the young matrimony and all the other memories this house enshrined. +He felt instinctively that it would not affect Sir Isaac one way or the +other. He tried simply to seem indifferent to whether Sir Isaac bought +the place or not. He tried to make it appear almost as if houses like +this often happened to him, and interested him only in the most +incidental manner. They had their proper price, he tried to convey, +which of course no gentleman would underbid.</p> + +<p>In the exquisite garden Sir Isaac said: “One might make a very pretty +little garden of this—if one opened it out a bit.”</p> + +<p>And of the sunken rock-garden: “That might be dangerous of a dark +night.”</p> + +<p>“I suppose,” he said, indicating the hill of pines behind, “one could +buy or lease some of that. If one wanted to throw it into the place and +open out more.</p> + +<p>“From my point of view,” he said, “it isn’t a house. It’s——” He sought +in his mind for an expression—“a Cottage Ornay.”</p> + +<p>This history declines to record either what Mr. Brumley said or what he +did not say.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac surveyed the house thoughtfully for some moments from the turf +edging of the great herbaceous border.</p> + +<p>“How far,” he asked, “is it from the nearest railway station?...”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley gave details.</p> + +<p>“Four miles. And an infrequent service? Nothing in any way suburban? +Better to motor into Guildford and get the Express. H’m.... And what +sort of people do we get about here?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley sketched.</p> + +<p>“Mildly horsey. That’s not bad. No officers about?... Nothing nearer +than Aldershot.... That’s eleven miles, is it? H’m. I suppose there +aren’t any <i>literary</i> people about here, musicians or that kind of +thing, no advanced people of that sort?”</p> + +<p>“Not when I’ve gone,” said Mr. Brumley, with the faintest flavour of +humour.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac stared at him for a moment with eyes vacantly thoughtful.</p> + +<p>“It mightn’t be so bad,” said Sir Isaac, and whistled a little between +his teeth.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley was suddenly minded to take his visitor to see the view and +the effect of his board upon it. But he spoke merely of the view and +left Sir Isaac to discover the board or not as he thought fit. As they +ascended among the trees, the visitor was manifestly seized by some +strange emotion, his face became very white, he gasped and blew for +breath, he felt for his face with a nervous hand.</p> + +<p>“Four thousand,” he said suddenly. “An outside price.”</p> + +<p>“A minimum,” said Mr. Brumley, with a slight quickening of the pulse.</p> + +<p>“You won’t get three eight,” gasped Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>“Not a business man, but my agent tells me——” panted Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“Three eight,” said Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>“We’re just coming to the view,” said Mr. Brumley. “Just coming to the +view.”</p> + +<p>“Practically got to rebuild the house,” said Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>“There!” said Mr. Brumley, and waved an arm widely.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac regarded the prospect with a dissatisfied face. His pallor had +given place to a shiny, flushed appearance, his nose, his ears, and his +cheeks were pink. He blew his face out, and seemed to be studying the +landscape for defects. “This might be built over at any time,” he +complained.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley was reassuring.</p> + +<p>For a brief interval Sir Isaac’s eyes explored the countryside vaguely, +then his expression seemed to concentrate and run together to a point. +“H’m,” he said.</p> + +<p>“That board,” he remarked, “quite wrong there.”</p> + +<p>“<i>Well!</i>” said Mr. Brumley, too surprised for coherent speech.</p> + +<p>“Quite,” said Sir Isaac Harman. “Don’t you see what’s the matter?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley refrained from an eloquent response.</p> + +<p>“They ought to be,” Sir Isaac went on, “white and a sort of green. Like +the County Council notices on Hampstead Heath. So as to blend.... You +see, an ad. that hits too hard is worse than no ad. at all. It leaves a +dislike.... Advertisements ought to blend. It ought to seem as though +all this view were saying it. Not just that board. Now suppose we had a +shade of very light brown, a kind of light khaki——”</p> + +<p>He turned a speculative eye on Mr. Brumley as if he sought for the +effect of this latter suggestion on him.</p> + +<p>“If the whole board was invisible——” said Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac considered it. “Just the letters showing,” he said. “No,—that +would be going too far in the other direction.”</p> + +<p>He made a faint sucking noise with his lips and teeth as he surveyed the +landscape and weighed this important matter....</p> + +<p>“Queer how one gets ideas,” he said at last, turning away. “It was my +wife told me about that board.”</p> + +<p>He stopped to survey the house from the exact point of view his wife had +taken nine days before. “I wouldn’t give this place a second thought,” +said Sir Isaac, “if it wasn’t for Lady Harman.”</p> + +<p>He confided. “<i>She</i> wants a week-end cottage. But <i>I</i> don’t see why it +<i>should</i> be a week-end cottage. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be made +into a nice little country house. Compact, of course. By using up that +barn.”</p> + +<p>He inhaled three bars of a tune. “London,” he explained, “doesn’t suit +Lady Harman.”</p> + +<p>“Health?” asked Mr. Brumley, all alert.</p> + +<p>“It isn’t her health exactly,” Sir Isaac dropped out. “You see—she’s a +young woman. She gets ideas.”</p> + +<p>“You know,” he continued, “I’d like to have a look at that barn again. +If we develop that—and a sort of corridor across where the shrubs +are—and ran out offices....”</p> + +<h4>§5</h4> + +<p>Mr. Brumley’s mind was still vigorously struggling with the flaming +implications of Sir Isaac’s remark that Lady Harman “got ideas,” and Sir +Isaac was gently whistling his way towards an offer of three thousand +nine hundred when they came down out of the pines into the path along +the edge of the herbaceous border. And then Mr. Brumley became aware of +an effect away between the white-stemmed trees towards the house as if +the Cambridge boat-race crew was indulging in a vigorous scrimmage. +Drawing nearer this resolved itself into the fluent contours of Lady +Beach-Mandarin, dressed in sky-blue and with a black summer straw hat +larger than ever and trimmed effusively with marguerites.</p> + +<p>“Here,” said Sir Isaac, “can’t I get off? You’ve got a friend.”</p> + +<p>“You must have some tea,” said Mr. Brumley, who wanted to suggest that +they should agree to Sir Isaac’s figure of three thousand eight hundred, +but not as pounds but guineas. It seemed to him a suggestion that might +prove insidiously attractive. “It’s a charming lady, my friend Lady +Beach-Mandarin. She’ll be delighted——”</p> + +<p>“I don’t think I can,” said Sir Isaac. “Not in the habit—social +occasions.”</p> + +<p>His face expressed a panic terror of this gallant full-rigged lady ahead +of them.</p> + +<p>“But you see now,” said Mr. Brumley, with a detaining grip, “it’s +unavoidable.”</p> + +<p>And the next moment Sir Isaac was mumbling his appreciations of the +introduction.</p> + +<p>I must admit that Lady Beach-Mandarin was almost as much to meet as one +can meet in a single human being, a broad abundant billowing personality +with a taste for brims, streamers, pennants, panniers, loose sleeves, +sweeping gestures, top notes and the like that made her altogether less +like a woman than an occasion of public rejoicing. Even her large blue +eyes projected, her chin and brows and nose all seemed racing up to the +front of her as if excited by the clarion notes of her abundant voice, +and the pinkness of her complexion was as exuberant as her manners. +Exuberance—it was her word. She had evidently been a big, bouncing, +bright gaminesque girl at fifteen, and very amusing and very much +admired; she had liked the rôle and she had not so much grown older as +suffered enlargement—a very considerable enlargement.</p> + +<p>“Ah!” she cried, “and so I’ve caught you at home, Mr. Brumley! And, poor +dear, you’re at my mercy.” And she shook both his hands with both of +hers.</p> + +<p>That was before Mr. Brumley introduced Sir Isaac, a thing he did so soon +as he could get one of his hands loose and wave a surviving digit or so +at that gentleman.</p> + +<p>“You see, Sir Isaac,” she said, taking him in, in the most generous way; +“I and Mr. Brumley are old friends. We knew each other of yore. We have +our jokes.”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac seemed to feel the need of speech but got no further than a +useful all-round noise.</p> + +<p>“And one of them is that when I want him to do the least little thing +for me he hides away! Always. By a sort of instinct. It’s such a Small +thing, Sir Isaac.”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac was understood to say vaguely that they always did. But he had +become very indistinct.</p> + +<p>“Aren’t I always at your service?” protested Mr. Brumley with a +responsive playfulness. “And I don’t even know what it is you want.”</p> + +<p>Lady Beach-Mandarin, addressing herself exclusively to Sir Isaac, began +a tale of a Shakespear Bazaar she was holding in an adjacent village, +and how she knew Mr. Brumley (naughty man) meant to refuse to give her +autographed copies of his littlest book for the Book Stall she was +organizing. Mr. Brumley confuted her gaily and generously. So +discoursing they made their way to the verandah where Lady Harman had so +lately “poured.”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac was borne along upon the lady’s stream of words in a state of +mulish reluctance, nodding, saying “Of course” and similar phrases, and +wishing he was out of it all with an extreme manifestness. He drank his +tea with unmistakable discomfort, and twice inserted into the +conversation an entirely irrelevant remark that he had to be going. But +Lady Beach-Mandarin had her purposes with him and crushed these +quivering tentatives.</p> + +<p>Lady Beach-Mandarin had of course like everybody else at that time her +own independent movement in the great national effort to create an +official British Theatre upon the basis of William Shakespear, and she +saw in the as yet unenlisted resources of Sir Isaac strong possibilities +of reinforcement of her own particular contribution to the great Work. +He was manifestly shy and sulky and disposed to bolt at the earliest +possible moment, and so she set herself now with a swift and +concentrated combination of fascination and urgency to commit him to +participations. She flattered and cajoled and bribed. She was convinced +that even to be called upon by Lady Beach-Mandarin is no light +privilege for these new commercial people, and so she made no secret of +her intention of decorating the hall of his large but undistinguished +house in Putney, with her redeeming pasteboard. She appealed to the +instances of Venice and Florence to show that “such men as you, Sir +Isaac,” who control commerce and industry, have always been the +guardians and patrons of art. And who more worthy of patronage than +William Shakespear? Also she said that men of such enormous wealth as +his owed something to their national tradition. “You have to pay your +footing, Sir Isaac,” she said with impressive vagueness.</p> + +<p>“Putting it in round figures,” said Sir Isaac, suddenly and with a white +gleam of animosity in his face, the animosity of a trapped animal at the +sight of its captors, “what does coming on your Committee mean, Lady +Beach-Mandarin?”</p> + +<p>“It’s your name we want,” said the lady, “but I’m sure you’d not be +ungenerous. The tribute success owes the arts.”</p> + +<p>“A hundred?” he threw out,—his ears red.</p> + +<p>“Guineas,” breathed Lady Beach-Mandarin with a lofty sweetness of +consent.</p> + +<p>He stood up hastily as if to escape further exaction, and the lady rose +too.</p> + +<p>“And you’ll let me call on Lady Harman,” she said, honestly doing her +part in the bargain.</p> + +<p>“Can’t keep the car waiting,” was what Brumley could distinguish in his +reply.</p> + +<p>“I expect you have a perfectly splendid car, Sir Isaac,” said Lady +Beach-Mandarin, drawing him out. “Quite the modernest thing.”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac replied with the reluctance of an Income Tax Return that it +was a forty-five Rolls Royce, good of course but nothing amazing.</p> + +<p>“We must see it,” she said, and turned his retreat into a procession.</p> + +<p>She admired the car, she admired the colour of the car, she admired the +lamps of the car and the door of the car and the little fittings of the +car. She admired the horn. She admired the twist of the horn. She +admired Clarence and the uniform of Clarence and she admired and coveted +the great fur coat that he held ready for his employer. (But if she had +it, she said, she would wear the splendid fur outside to show every +little bit of it.) And when the car at last moved forward and +tooted—she admired the note—and vanished softly and swiftly through +the gates, she was left in the porch with Mr. Brumley still by sheer +inertia admiring and envying. She admired Sir Isaac’s car number Z 900. +(Such an easy one to remember!) Then she stopped abruptly, as one might +discover that the water in the bathroom was running to waste and turn it +off.</p> + +<p>She had a cynicism as exuberant as the rest of her.</p> + +<p>“Well,” she said, with a contented sigh and an entire flattening of her +tone, “I laid it on pretty thick that time.... I wonder if he’ll send me +that hundred guineas or whether I shall have to remind him of it....” +Her manner changed again to that of a gigantic gamin. “I mean to have +that money,” she said with bright determination and round eyes....</p> + +<p>She reflected and other thoughts came to her. “Plutocracy,” she said, +“<i>is</i> perfectly detestable, don’t you think so, Mr. Brumley?” ... And +then, “I can’t <i>imagine</i> how a man who deals in bread and confectionery +can manage to go about so completely half-baked.”</p> + +<p>“He’s a very remarkable type,” said Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>He became urgent: “I do hope, dear Lady Beach-Mandarin, you will +contrive to call on Lady Harman. She is—in relation to <i>that</i>—quite +the most interesting woman I have seen.”</p> + +<h4>§6</h4> + +<p>Presently as they paced the croquet lawn together, the preoccupation of +Mr. Brumley’s mind drew their conversation back to Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“I wish,” he repeated, “you would go and see these people. She’s not at +all what you might infer from him.”</p> + +<p>“What could one infer about a wife from a man like that? Except that +she’d have a lot to put up with.”</p> + +<p>“You know,—she’s a beautiful person, tall, slender, dark....”</p> + +<p>Lady Beach-Mandarin turned her full blue eye upon him.</p> + +<p>“<i>Now!</i>” she said archly.</p> + +<p>“I’m interested in the incongruity.”</p> + +<p>Lady Beach-Mandarin’s reply was silent and singular. She compressed her +lips very tightly, fixed her eye firmly on Mr. Brumley’s, lifted her +finger to the level of her left eyelash, and then shook it at him very +deliberately five times. Then with a little sigh and a sudden and +complete restoration of manner she remarked that never in any year +before had she seen peonies quite so splendid. “I’ve a peculiar sympathy +with peonies,” she said. “They’re so exactly my style.”</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03" id="chap03"></a>CHAPTER THE THIRD</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Lady Harman at Home</span></p> + +<h4>§1</h4> + +<p>Exactly three weeks after that first encounter between Lady +Beach-Mandarin and Sir Isaac Harman, Mr. Brumley found himself one of a +luncheon party at that lady’s house in Temperley Square and talking very +freely and indiscreetly about the Harmans.</p> + +<p>Lady Beach-Mandarin always had her luncheons in a family way at a large +round table so that nobody could get out of her range, and she insisted +upon conversation being general, except for her mother who was +impenetrably deaf and the Swiss governess of her only daughter Phyllis +who was incomprehensible in any European tongue. The mother was +incalculably old and had been a friend of Victor Hugo and Alfred de +Musset; she maintained an intermittent monologue about the private lives +of those great figures; nobody paid the slightest attention to her but +one felt she enriched the table with an undertow of literary +associations. A small dark stealthy butler and a convulsive boy with +hair (apparently) taking the place of eyes waited. On this occasion Lady +Beach-Mandarin had gathered together two cousins, maiden ladies from +Perth, wearing valiant hats, Toomer the wit and censor, and Miss +Sharsper the novelist (whom Toomer detested), a gentleman named Roper +whom she had invited under a misapprehension that he was the Arctic +Roper, and Mr. Brumley. She had tried Mr. Roper with questions about +penguins, seals, cold and darkness, icebergs and glaciers, Captain +Scott, Doctor Cook and the shape of the earth, and all in vain, and +feeling at last that something was wrong, she demanded abruptly whether +Mr. Brumley had sold his house.</p> + +<p>“I’m selling it,” said Mr. Brumley, “by almost imperceptible degrees.”</p> + +<p>“He haggles?”</p> + +<p>“Haggles and higgles. He higgles passionately. He goes white and breaks +into a cold perspiration. He wants me now to include the gardener’s +tools—in whatever price we agree upon.”</p> + +<p>“A rich man like that ought to be easy and generous,” said Lady +Beach-Mandarin.</p> + +<p>“Then he wouldn’t be a rich man like that,” said Mr. Toomer.</p> + +<p>“But doesn’t it distress you highly, Mr. Brumley,” one of the Perth +ladies asked, “to be leaving Euphemia’s Home to strangers? The man may +go altering it.”</p> + +<p>“That—that weighs with me very much,” said Mr. Brumley, recalled to his +professions. “There—I put my trust in Lady Harman.”</p> + +<p>“You’ve seen her again?” asked Lady Beach-Mandarin.</p> + +<p>“Yes. She came with him—a few days ago. That couple interests me more +and more. So little akin.”</p> + +<p>“There’s eighteen years between them,” said Toomer.</p> + +<p>“It’s one of those cases,” began Mr. Brumley with a note of scientific +detachment, “where one is really tempted to be ultra-feminist. It’s +clear, he uses every advantage. He’s her owner, her keeper, her +obstinate insensitive little tyrant.... And yet there’s a sort of +effect, as though nothing was decided.... As if she was only just +growing up.”</p> + +<p>“They’ve been married six or seven years,” said Toomer. “She was just +eighteen.”</p> + +<p>“They went over the house together and whenever she spoke he +contradicted her with a sort of vicious playfulness. Tried to poke +clumsy fun at her. Called her ‘Lady Harman.’ Only it was quite evident +that what she said stuck in his mind.... Very queer—interesting +people.”</p> + +<p>“I wouldn’t have anyone allowed to marry until they were +five-and-twenty,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin.</p> + +<p>“Sweet seventeen sometimes contrives to be very marriageable,” said the +gentleman named Roper.</p> + +<p>“Sweet seventeen must contrive to wait,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin. +“Sweet fourteen has to—and when I was fourteen—I was Ardent! There’s +no earthly objection to a little harmless flirtation of course. It’s the +marrying.”</p> + +<p>“You’d conduce to romance,” said Miss Sharsper, “anyhow. Eighteen won’t +bear restriction and everyone would begin by eloping—illegally.”</p> + +<p>“I’d put them back,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin. “Oh! remorselessly.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Roper, who was more and more manifestly not the Arctic one, remarked +that she would “give the girls no end of an adolescence....”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley did not attend very closely to the subsequent conversation. +His mind had gone back to Black Strand and the second visit that Lady +Harman, this time under her natural and proper protection, had paid him. +A little thread from the old lady’s discourse drifted by him. She had +scented marriage in the air and she was saying, “of course they ought to +have let Victor Hugo marry over and over again. He would have made it +all so beautiful. He could throw a Splendour over—over almost +anything.” Mr. Brumley sank out of attention altogether. It was so +difficult to express his sense of Lady Harman as a captive, enclosed but +unsubdued. She had been as open and shining as a celandine flower in the +sunshine on that first invasion, but on the second it had been like +overcast weather and her starry petals had been shut and still. She +hadn’t been in the least subdued or effaced, but closed, inaccessible to +conversational bees, that astonishing honey of trust and easy friendship +had been hidden in a dignified impenetrable reserve. She had had the +effect of being not so much specially shut against Mr. Brumley as +habitually shut against her husband, as a protection against his +continual clumsy mental interferences. And once when Sir Isaac had made +a sudden allusion to price Mr. Brumley had glanced at her and met her +eyes....</p> + +<p>“Of course,” he said, coming up to the conversational surface again, “a +woman like that is bound to fight her way out.”</p> + +<p>“Queen Mary!” cried Miss Sharsper. “Fight her way out!”</p> + +<p>“Queen Mary!” said Mr. Brumley, “No!—Lady Harman.”</p> + +<p>“<i>I</i> was talking of Queen Mary,” said Miss Sharsper.</p> + +<p>“And Mr. Brumley was thinking of Lady Harman!” cried Lady +Beach-Mandarin.</p> + +<p>“Well,” said Mr. Brumley, “I confess I do think about her. She seems to +me to be so typical in many ways of—of everything that is weak in the +feminine position. As a type—yes, she’s perfect.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve never seen this lady,” said Miss Sharsper. “Is she beautiful?”</p> + +<p>“I’ve not seen her myself yet,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin. “She’s Mr. +Brumley’s particular discovery.”</p> + +<p>“You haven’t called?” he asked with a faint reproach.</p> + +<p>“But I’ve been going to—oh! tremendously. And you revive all my +curiosity. Why shouldn’t some of us this very afternoon——?”</p> + +<p>She caught at her own passing idea and held it. “Let’s Go,” she cried. +“Let’s visit the wife of this Ogre, the last of the women in captivity. +We’ll take the big car and make a party and call <i>en masse</i>.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Toomer protested he had no morbid curiosities.</p> + +<p>“But you, Susan?”</p> + +<p>Miss Sharsper declared she would <i>love</i> to come. Wasn’t it her business +to study out-of-the-way types? Mr. Roper produced a knowing sort of +engagement—“I’m provided for already, Lady Beach-Mandarin,” he said, +and the cousins from Perth had to do some shopping.</p> + +<p>“Then we three will be the expedition,” said the hostess. “And +afterwards if we survive we’ll tell you our adventures. It’s a house on +Putney Hill, isn’t it, where this Christian maiden, so to speak, is held +captive? I’ve had her in my mind, but I’ve always intended to call with +Agatha Alimony; she’s so inspiring to down-trodden women.”</p> + +<p>“Not exactly down-trodden,” said Mr. Brumley, “not down-trodden. That’s +what’s so curious about it.”</p> + +<p>“And what shall we do when we get there?” cried Lady Beach-Mandarin. “I +feel we ought to do something more than call. Can’t we carry her off +right away, Mr. Brumley? I want to go right in to her and say ‘Look +here! I’m on your side. Your husband’s a tyrant. I’m help and rescue. +I’m all that a woman ought to be—fine and large. Come out from under +that unworthy man’s heel!’”</p> + +<p>“Suppose she isn’t at all the sort of person you seem to think she is,” +said Miss Sharsper. “And suppose she came!”</p> + +<p>“Suppose she didn’t,” reflected Mr. Roper.</p> + +<p>“I seem to see your flight,” said Mr. Toomer. “And the newspaper +placards and head-lines. ‘Lady Beach-Mandarin elopes with the wife of an +eminent confectioner. She is stopped at the landing stage by the staff +of the Dover Branch establishment. Recapture of the fugitive after a hot +struggle. Brumley, the eminent <i>littérateur</i>, stunned by a spent +bun....’”</p> + +<p>“We’re all talking great nonsense,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin. “But +anyhow we’ll make our call. And <i>I</i> know!—I’ll make her accept an +invitation to lunch without him.”</p> + +<p>“If she won’t?” threw out Mr. Roper.</p> + +<p>“I <i>will</i>,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin with roguish determination. “And if +I can’t——”</p> + +<p>“Not ask him too!” protested Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“Why not get her to come to your Social Friends meeting,” said Miss +Sharsper.</p> + +<h4>§2</h4> + +<p>When Mr. Brumley found himself fairly launched upon this expedition he +had the grace to feel compunction. The Harmans, he perceived, had +inadvertently made him the confidant of their domestic discords and to +betray them to these others savoured after all of treachery. And besides +much as he had craved to see Lady Harman again, he now realized he +didn’t in the least want to see her in association with the exuberant +volubility of Lady Beach-Mandarin and the hard professional +observation, so remarkably like the ferrule of an umbrella being poked +with a noiseless persistence into one’s eye, of Miss Sharsper. And as he +thought these afterthoughts Lady Beach-Mandarin’s chauffeur darted and +dodged and threaded his way with an alacrity that was almost distressing +to Putney.</p> + +<p>They ran over the ghost of Swinburne, at the foot of Putney Hill,—or +perhaps it was only the rhythm of the engine changed for a moment, and +in a couple of minutes more they were outside the Harman residence. +“Here we are!” said Lady Beach-Mandarin, more capaciously gaminesque +than ever. “We’ve done it now.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley had an impression of a big house in the distended +stately-homes-of-England style and very necessarily and abundantly +covered by creepers and then he was assisting the ladies to descend and +the three of them were waiting clustered in the ample Victorian doorway. +For some little interval there came no answer to the bell Mr. Brumley +had rung, but all three of them had a sense of hurried, furtive and +noiseless readjustments in progress behind the big and bossy oak door. +Then it opened and a very large egg-shaped butler with sandy whiskers +appeared and looked down himself at them. There was something paternal +about this man, his professional deference was touched by the sense of +ultimate responsibility. He seemed to consider for a moment whether he +should permit Lady Harman to be in, before he conceded that she was.</p> + +<p>They were ushered through a hall that resembled most of the halls in the +world, it was dominated by a handsome oak staircase and scarcely gave +Miss Sharsper a point, and then across a creation of the Victorian +architect, a massive kind of conservatory with classical touches—there +was an impluvium in the centre and there were arches hung with +manifestly costly Syrian rugs, into a large apartment looking through +four French windows upon a verandah and a large floriferous garden. At a +sideways glance it seemed a very pleasant garden indeed. The room itself +was like the rooms of so many prosperous people nowadays; it had an +effect of being sedulously and yet irrelevantly over-furnished. It had +none of the large vulgarity that Mr. Brumley would have considered +proper to a wealthy caterer, but it confessed a compilation of “pieces” +very carefully authenticated. Some of them were rather splendid +“pieces”; three big bureaus burly and brassy dominated it; there was a +Queen Anne cabinet, some exquisite coloured engravings, an ormolu mirror +and a couple of large French vases that set Miss Sharsper, who had a +keen eye for this traffic, confusedly cataloguing. And a little +incongruously in the midst of this exhibit, stood Lady Harman, as if she +was trying to conceal the fact that she too was a visitor, in a creamy +white dress and dark and defensive and yet entirely unabashed.</p> + +<p>The great butler gave his large vague impression of Lady +Beach-Mandarin’s name, and stood aside and withdrew.</p> + +<p>“I’ve heard so much of you,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin advancing with +hand upraised. “I had to call. Mr. Brumley——”</p> + +<p>“Lady Beach-Mandarin met Sir Isaac at Black Strand,” Mr. Brumley +intervened to explain.</p> + +<p>Miss Sharsper was as it were introduced by default.</p> + +<p>“My vividest anticipations outdone,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin, squeezing +Lady Harman’s fingers with enthusiasm. “And what a charming garden you +have, and what a delightful situation! Such air! And on the very verge +of London, high, on this delightful <i>literary</i> hill, and ready at any +moment to swoop in that enviable great car of yours. I suppose you come +a great deal into London, Lady Harman?”</p> + +<p>“No,” reflected Lady Harman, “not very much.” She seemed to weigh the +accuracy of this very carefully. “No,” she added in confirmation.</p> + +<p>“But you should, you ought to; it’s your duty. You’ve no right to hide +away from us. I was telling Sir Isaac. We look to him, we look to you. +You’ve no right to bury your talents away from us; you who are rich and +young and brilliant and beautiful——”</p> + +<p>“But if I go on I shall begin to flatter you,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin +with a delicious smile. “I’ve begun upon Sir Isaac already. I’ve made +him promise a hundred guineas and his name to the Shakespear Dinners +Society,—nothing he didn’t mention eaten (<i>you</i> know) and all the +profits to the National movement—and I want your name too. I know +you’ll let us have your name too. Grant me that, and I’ll subside into +the ordinariest of callers.”</p> + +<p>“But surely; isn’t his name enough?” asked Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“Without yours, it’s only half a name!” cried Lady Beach-Mandarin. “If +it were a <i>business</i> thing——! Different of course. But on my list, I’m +like dear old Queen Victoria you know, the wives must come too.”</p> + +<p>“In that case,” hesitated Lady Harman.... “But really I think Sir +Isaac——”</p> + +<p>She stopped. And then Mr. Brumley had a psychic experience. It seemed to +him as he stood observing Lady Harman with an entirely unnecessary and +unpremeditated intentness, that for the briefest interval her attention +flashed over Lady Beach-Mandarin’s shoulder to the end verandah window; +and following her glance, he saw—and then he did not see—the arrested +figure, the white face of Sir Isaac, bearing an expression in which +anger and horror were extraordinarily intermingled. If it was Sir Isaac +he dodged back with amazing dexterity; if it was a phantom of the living +it vanished with an air of doing that. Without came the sound of a +flower-pot upset and a faint expletive. Mr. Brumley looked very quickly +at Lady Beach-Mandarin, who was entirely unconscious of anything but her +own uncoiling and enveloping eloquence, and as quickly at Miss Sharsper. +But Miss Sharsper was examining a blackish bureau through her glasses as +though she were looking for birthmarks and meant if she could find one +to claim the piece as her own long-lost connection. With a mild but +gratifying sense of exclusive complicity Mr. Brumley reverted to Lady +Harman’s entire self-possession.</p> + +<p>“But, dear Lady Harman, it’s entirely unnecessary you should consult +him,—entirely,” Lady Beach-Mandarin was saying.</p> + +<p>“I’m sure,” said Mr. Brumley with a sense that somehow he had to +intervene, “that Sir Isaac would not possibly object. I’m sure that if +Lady Harman consults him——”</p> + +<p>The sandy-whiskered butler appeared hovering.</p> + +<p>“Shall I place the tea-things in the garden, me lady?” he asked, in the +tone of one who knows the answer.</p> + +<p>“Oh <i>please</i> in the garden!” cried Lady Beach-Mandarin. “Please! And how +delightful to <i>have</i> a garden, a London garden, in which one <i>can</i> have +tea. Without being smothered in blacks. The south-west wind. The dear +<i>English</i> wind. All your blacks come to <i>us</i>, you know.”</p> + +<p>She led the way upon the verandah. “Such a wonderful garden! The space, +the breadth! Why! you must have Acres!”</p> + +<p>She surveyed the garden—comprehensively; her eye rested for a moment on +a distant patch of black that ducked suddenly into a group of lilacs. +“Is dear Sir Isaac at home?” she asked.</p> + +<p>“He’s very uncertain,” said Lady Harman, with a quiet readiness that +pleased Mr. Brumley. “Yes, Snagsby, please, under the big cypress. And +tell my mother and sister.”</p> + +<p>Lady Beach-Mandarin having paused a moment or so upon the verandah +admiring the garden as a whole, now prepared to go into details. She +gathered her ample skirts together and advanced into the midst of the +large lawn, with very much of the effect of a fleet of captive balloons +dragging their anchors. Mr. Brumley followed, as it were in attendance +upon her and Lady Harman. Miss Sharsper, after one last hasty glance at +the room, rather like the last hasty glance of a still unprepared +schoolboy at his book, came behind with her powers of observation +strainingly alert.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley was aware of a brief mute struggle between the two ladies of +title. It was clear that Lady Harman would have had them go to the left, +to where down a vista of pillar roses a single large specimen cypress +sounded a faint but recognizable Italian note, and he did his loyal best +to support her, but Lady Beach-Mandarin’s attraction to that distant +clump of lilac on the right was equally great and much more powerful. +She flowed, a great and audible tide of socially influential womanhood, +across the green spaces of the garden, and drew the others with her. And +it seemed to Mr. Brumley—not that he believed his eyes—that beyond +those lilacs something ran out, something black that crouched close to +the ground and went very swiftly. It flashed like an arrow across a +further space of flower-bed, dropped to the ground, became two +agitatedly receding boot soles and was gone. Had it ever been? He +glanced at Lady Harman, but she was looking back with the naïve anxiety +of a hostess to her cypress,—at Lady Beach-Mandarin, but she was +proliferating compliments and decorative scrolls and flourishes like the +engraved frontispiece to a seventeenth-century book.</p> + +<p>“I know I’m inordinately curious,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin, “but +gardens are my Joy. I want to go into every corner of this. Peep into +everything. And I feel somehow”—and here she urged a smile on Lady +Harman’s attention—“that I shan’t begin to know <i>you</i>, until I know all +your environment.”</p> + +<p>She turned the flank of the lilacs as she said these words and advanced +in echelon with a stately swiftness upon the laurels beyond.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman said there was nothing beyond but sycamores and the fence, +but Lady Beach-Mandarin would press on through a narrow path that +pierced the laurel hedge, in order, she said, that she might turn back +and get the whole effect of the grounds.</p> + +<p>And so it was they discovered the mushroom shed.</p> + +<p>“A mushroom shed!” cried Lady Beach-Mandarin. “And if we look in—shall +we see hosts and regiments of mushrooms? I must—I must.”</p> + +<p>“I <i>think</i> it is locked,” said Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley darted forward; tried the door and turned quickly. “It’s +locked,” he said and barred Lady Beach-Mandarin’s advance.</p> + +<p>“And besides,” said Lady Harman, “there’s no mushrooms there. They won’t +come up. It’s one of my husband’s—annoyances.”</p> + +<p>Lady Beach-Mandarin had turned round and now surveyed the house. “What a +splendid idea,” she cried, “that wistaria! All mixed with the laburnum. +I don’t think I have ever seen such a charming combination of blossoms!”</p> + +<p>The whole movement of the party swept about and faced cypress-ward. Away +there the sandy-whiskered butler and a footman and basket chairs and a +tea-table, with a shining white cloth, and two ladies were now grouping +themselves....</p> + +<p>But the mind of Mr. Brumley gave little heed to these things. His mind +was full of a wonder, and the wonder was this, that the mushroom shed +had behaved like a living thing. The door of the mushroom shed was not +locked and in that matter he had told a lie. The door of the mushroom +shed had been unlocked quite recently and the key and padlock had been +dropped upon the ground. And when he had tried to open the mushroom shed +it had first of all yielded to his hand and then it had closed again +with great strength—exactly as a living mussel will behave if one takes +it unawares. But in addition to this passionate contraction the mushroom +shed had sworn in a hoarse whisper and breathed hard, which is more than +your mussel can do....</p> + +<h4>§3</h4> + +<p>Mr. Brumley’s interest in Lady Harman was to be almost too crowded by +detail before that impulsive call was over. Superposed upon the mystery +of the mushroom shed was the vivid illumination of Lady Harman by her +mother and sister. They had an effect of having reluctantly become her +social inferiors for her own good; the mother—her name he learnt was +Mrs. Sawbridge—had all Lady Harman’s tall slenderness, but otherwise +resembled her only in the poise of her neck and an occasional gesture; +she was fair and with a kind of ignoble and premeditated refinement in +her speech and manner. She was dressed with the restraint of a prolonged +and attenuated widowhood, in a rich and complicatedly quiet dress of +mauve and grey. She was obviously a transitory visitor and not so much +taking the opulence about her and particularly the great butler for +granted as pointedly and persistently ignoring it in an effort to seem +to take it for granted. The sister, on the other hand, had Lady Harman’s +pale darkness but none of her fineness of line. She missed altogether +that quality of fineness. Her darkness was done with a quite perceptible +heaviness, her dignity passed into solidity and her profile was, with an +entire want of hesitation, handsome. She was evidently the elder by a +space of some years and she was dressed with severity in grey.</p> + +<p>These two ladies seemed to Mr. Brumley to offer a certain resistance of +spirit to the effusion of Lady Beach-Mandarin, rather as two small +anchored vessels might resist the onset of a great and foaming tide, but +after a time it was clear they admired her greatly. His attention was, +however, a little distracted from them by the fact that he was the sole +representative of the more serviceable sex among five women and so in +duty bound to stand by Lady Harman and assist with various handings and +offerings. The tea equipage was silver and not only magnificent but, as +certain quick movements of Miss Sharsper’s eyes and nose at its +appearance betrayed, very genuine and old.</p> + +<p>Lady Beach-Mandarin having praised the house and garden all over again +to Mrs. Sawbridge, and having praised the cypress and envied the tea +things, resumed her efforts to secure the immediate establishment of +permanent social relations with Lady Harman. She reverted to the +question of the Shakespear Dinners Society and now with a kind of large +skilfulness involved Mrs. Sawbridge in her appeal. “Won’t <i>you</i> come on +our Committee?” said Lady Beach-Mandarin.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Sawbridge gave a pinched smile and said she was only staying in +London for quite a little time, and when pressed admitted that there +seemed no need whatever for consulting Sir Isaac upon so obviously +foregone a conclusion as Lady Harman’s public adhesion to the great +movement.</p> + +<p>“I shall put his hundred guineas down to Sir Isaac and Lady Harman,” +said Lady Beach-Mandarin with an air of conclusion, “and now I want to +know, dear Lady Harman, whether we can’t have <i>you</i> on our Committee of +administration. We want—just one other woman to complete us.”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman could only parry with doubts of her ability.</p> + +<p>“You ought to go on, Ella,” said Miss Sawbridge suddenly, speaking for +the first time and in a manner richly suggestive of great principles at +stake.</p> + +<p>“Ella,” thought the curious mind of Mr. Brumley. “And is that Eleanor +now or Ellen or—is there any other name that gives one Ella? Simply +Ella?”</p> + +<p>“But what should I have to do?” fenced Lady Harman, resisting but +obviously attracted.</p> + +<p>Lady Beach-Mandarin invented a lengthy paraphrase for prompt +acquiescences.</p> + +<p>“I shall be chairwoman,” she crowned it with. “I can so easily <i>see you +through</i> as they say.”</p> + +<p>“Ella doesn’t go out half enough,” said Miss Sawbridge suddenly to Miss +Sharsper, who was regarding her with furtive intensity—as if she was +surreptitiously counting her features.</p> + +<p>Miss Sharsper caught in mid observation started and collected her mind. +“One ought to go out,” she said. “Certainly.”</p> + +<p>“And independently,” said Miss Sawbridge, with meaning.</p> + +<p>“Oh independently!” assented Miss Sharsper. It was evident she would now +have to watch her chance and begin counting all over again from the +beginning.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley had an impression that Mrs. Sawbridge had said something +quite confidential in his ear. He turned perplexed.</p> + +<p>“Such charming weather,” the lady repeated in the tone of one who +doesn’t wish so pleasant a little secret to be too generally discussed.</p> + +<p>“Never known a better summer,” agreed Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>And then all these minor eddies were submerged in Lady Beach-Mandarin’s +advance towards her next step, an invitation to lunch. “There,” said +she, “I’m not Victorian. I always separate husbands and wives—by at +least a week. You must come alone.”</p> + +<p>It was clear to Mr. Brumley that Lady Harman wanted to come alone—and +was going to accept, and equally clear that she and her mother and +sister regarded this as a very daring thing to do. And when that was +settled Lady Beach-Mandarin went on to the altogether easier topic of +her Social Friends, a society of smart and influential women; who +devoted a certain fragment of time every week to befriending respectable +girls employed in London, in a briskly amiable manner, having them to +special teas, having them to special evenings with special light +refreshments, knowing their names as far as possible and asking about +their relations, and generally making them feel that Society was being +very frank and amiable to them and had an eye on them and meant them +well, and was better for them than socialism and radicalism and +revolutionary ideas. To this also Lady Harman it seemed was to come. It +had an effect to Mr. Brumley’s imagination as if the painted scene of +that lady’s life was suddenly bursting out into open doors—everywhere.</p> + +<p>“Many of them are <i>quite</i> lady-like,” echoed Mrs. Sawbridge suddenly, +picking up the whole thing instantly and speaking over her tea cup in +that quasi-confidential tone of hers to Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“Of course they are mostly quite dreadfully Sweated,” said Lady +Beach-Mandarin. “Especially in the confectionery——” She thought of her +position in time. “In the inferior class of confectioners’ +establishments,” she said and then hurried on to: “Of course when you +come to lunch,—Agatha Alimony. I’m most anxious for you and her to +meet.”</p> + +<p>“Is that <i>the</i> Agatha Alimony?” asked Miss Sawbridge abruptly.</p> + +<p>“The one and only,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin, flashing a smile at her. +“And what a marvel she is! I do so want you to know her, Lady Harman. +She’d be a Revelation to you....”</p> + +<p>Everything had gone wonderfully so far. “And now,” said Lady +Beach-Mandarin, thrusting forward a face of almost exaggerated +motherliness and with an unwonted tenderness suffusing her voice, “show +me the Chicks.”</p> + +<p>There was a brief interrogative pause.</p> + +<p>“Your Chicks,” expanded Lady Beach-Mandarin, on the verge of crooning. +“Your <i>little</i> Chicks.”</p> + +<p>“<i>Oh!</i>” cried Lady Harman understanding. “The children.”</p> + +<p>“Lucky woman!” cried Lady Beach-Mandarin. “Yes.”</p> + +<p>“One hasn’t begun to be friends,” she added, “until one has +seen—them....”</p> + +<p>“So <i>true</i>,” Mrs. Sawbridge confided to Mr. Brumley with a look that +almost languished....</p> + +<p>“Certainly,” said Mr. Brumley, “rather.”</p> + +<p>He was a little distraught because he had just seen Sir Isaac step +forward in a crouching attitude from beyond the edge of the lilacs, peer +at the tea-table with a serpent-like intentness and then dart back +convulsively into cover....</p> + +<p>If Lady Beach-Mandarin saw him Mr. Brumley felt that anything might +happen.</p> + +<h4>§4</h4> + +<p>Lady Beach-Mandarin always let herself go about children.</p> + +<p>It would be unjust to the general richness of Lady Beach-Mandarin to say +that she excelled herself on this occasion. On all occasions Lady +Beach-Mandarin excelled herself. But never had Mr. Brumley noted quite +so vividly Lady Beach-Mandarin’s habitual self-surpassingness. She +helped him, he felt, to understand better those stories of great waves +that sweep in from the ocean and swamp islands and devastate whole +littorals. She poured into the Harman nursery and filled every corner of +it. She rose to unprecedented heights therein. It seemed to him at +moments that they ought to make marks on the walls, like the marks one +sees on the houses in the lower valley of the Main to record the more +memorable floods. “The dears!” she cried: “the <i>little</i> things!” before +the nursery door was fairly opened.</p> + +<p>(There should have been a line for that at once on the jamb just below +the lintel.)</p> + +<p>The nursery revealed itself as a large airy white and green apartment +entirely free from old furniture and done rather in the style of an +æsthetically designed hospital, with a tremendously humorous decorative +frieze of cocks and puppies and very bright-coloured prints on the +walls. The dwarfish furniture was specially designed in green-stained +wood and the floor was of cork carpet diversified by white furry rugs. +The hospital quality was enhanced by the uniformed and disciplined +appearance of the middle-aged and reliable head nurse and her subdued +but intelligent subordinate.</p> + +<p>Three sturdy little girls, with a year step between each of them, stood +up to receive Lady Beach-Mandarin’s invasion; an indeterminate baby +sprawled regardless of its dignity on a rug. “Aah!” cried Lady +Beach-Mandarin, advancing in open order. “Come and be hugged, you dears! +Come and be hugged!” Before she knelt down and enveloped their shrinking +little persons Mr. Brumley was able to observe that they were pretty +little things, but not the beautiful children he could have imagined +from Lady Harman. Peeping through their infantile delicacy, hints all +too manifest of Sir Isaac’s characteristically pointed nose gave Mr. +Brumley a peculiar—a eugenic, qualm.</p> + +<p>He glanced at Lady Harman and she was standing over the ecstasies of her +tremendous visitor, polite, attentive—with an entirely unemotional +speculation in her eyes. Miss Sawbridge, stirred by the great waves of +violent philoprogenitive enthusiasm that circled out from Lady +Beach-Mandarin, had caught up the baby and was hugging it and addressing +it in terms of humorous rapture, and the nurse and her assistant were +keeping respectful but wary eyes upon the handling of their four +charges. Miss Sharsper was taking in the children’s characteristics with +a quick expertness. Mrs. Sawbridge stood a little in the background and +caught Mr. Brumley’s eye and proffered a smile of sympathetic tolerance.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley was moved by a ridiculous impulse, which he just succeeded +in suppressing, to say to Mrs. Sawbridge, “Yes, I admit it looks very +well. But the essential point, you know, is that it isn’t so....”</p> + +<p>That it wasn’t so, indeed, entirely dominated his impression of that +nursery. There was Lady Beach-Mandarin winning Lady Harman’s heart by +every rule of the game, rejoicing effusively in those crowning triumphs +of a woman’s being, there was Miss Sawbridge vociferous in support and +Mrs. Sawbridge almost offering to join hands in rapturous benediction, +and there was Lady Harman wearing her laurels, not indeed with +indifference but with a curious detachment. One might imagine her +genuinely anxious to understand why Lady Beach-Mandarin was in such a +stupendous ebullition. One might have supposed her a mere cold-hearted +intellectual if it wasn’t that something in her warm beauty absolutely +forbade any such interpretation. There came to Mr. Brumley again a +thought that had occurred to him first when Sir Isaac and Lady Harman +had come together to Black Strand, which was that life had happened to +this woman before she was ready for it, that her mind some years after +her body was now coming to womanhood, was teeming with curiosity about +all she had hitherto accepted, about Sir Isaac, about her children and +all her circumstances....</p> + +<p>There was a recapitulation of the invitations, a renewed offering of +outlooks and vistas and Agatha Alimony. “You’ll not forget,” insisted +Lady Beach-Mandarin. “You’ll not afterwards throw us over.”</p> + +<p>“No,” said Lady Harman, with that soft determination of hers. “I’ll +certainly come.”</p> + +<p>“I’m so sorry, so very sorry, not to have seen Sir Isaac,” Lady +Beach-Mandarin insisted.</p> + +<p>The raid had accomplished its every object and was drifting doorward. +For a moment Lady Beach-Mandarin desisted from Lady Harman and threw her +whole being into an eddying effort to submerge the already subjugated +Mrs. Sawbridge. Miss Sawbridge was behind up the oak staircase +explaining Sir Isaac’s interest in furniture-buying to Miss Sharsper. +Mr. Brumley had his one moment with Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“I gather,” he said, and abandoned that sentence.</p> + +<p>“I hope,” he said, “that you will have my little house down there. I +like to think of <i>you</i>—walking in my garden.”</p> + +<p>“I shall love that garden,” she said. “But I shall feel unworthy.”</p> + +<p>“There are a hundred little things I want to tell you—about it.”</p> + +<p>Then all the others seemed to come into focus again, and with a quick +mutual understanding—Mr. Brumley was certain of its mutuality—they +said no more to one another. He was entirely satisfied he had said +enough. He had conveyed just everything that was needed to excuse and +explain and justify his presence in that company.... Upon a big table in +the hall he noticed that a silk hat and an umbrella had appeared since +their arrival. He glanced at Miss Sharsper but she was keenly occupied +with the table legs. He began to breathe freely again when the partings +were over and he could get back into the automobile. “Toot,” said the +horn and he made a last grave salutation to the slender white figure on +the steps. The great butler stood at the side of the entrance and a step +or so below her, with the air of a man who has completed a difficult +task. A small attentive valet hovered out of the shadows behind.</p> + +<h4>§5</h4> + +<p>(A fragment of the conversation in Lady Beach-Mandarin’s returning +automobile may be recorded in a parenthesis here.</p> + +<p>“But did you see Sir Isaac?” she cried, abruptly.</p> + +<p>“Sir Isaac?” defended the startled Mr. Brumley. “Where?”</p> + +<p>“He was dodging about in the garden all the time.”</p> + +<p>“Dodging about the garden!... I saw a sort of gardener——”</p> + +<p>“I’m sure I saw Him,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin. “Positive. He hid away +in the mushroom shed. The one you found locked.”</p> + +<p>“But my <i>dear</i> Lady Beach-Mandarin!” protested Mr. Brumley with the air +of one who listens to preposterous suggestions. “What can make you +think——?”</p> + +<p>“Oh I <i>know</i> I saw him,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin. “I know. He seemed +all over the place. Like a Boy Scout. Didn’t you see him too, Susan?”</p> + +<p>Miss Sharsper was roused from deep preoccupation. “What, dear?” she +asked.</p> + +<p>“See Sir Isaac?”</p> + +<p>“Sir Isaac?”</p> + +<p>“Dodging about the garden when we went through it.”</p> + +<p>The novelist reflected. “I didn’t notice,” she said. “I was busy +observing things.”)</p> + +<h4>§6</h4> + +<p>Lady Beach-Mandarin’s car passed through the open gates and was +swallowed up in the dusty stream of traffic down Putney Hill; the great +butler withdrew, the little manservant vanished, Mrs. Sawbridge and her +elder daughter had hovered and now receded from the back of the hall; +Lady Harman remained standing thoughtfully in the large +Bulwer-Lyttonesque doorway of her house. Her face expressed a vague +expectation. She waited to be addressed from behind.</p> + +<p>Then she became aware of the figure of her husband standing before her. +He had come out of the laurels in front. His pale face was livid with +anger, his hair dishevelled, there was garden mould and greenness upon +his knees and upon his extended hands.</p> + +<p>She was startled out of her quiet defensiveness. “Why, Isaac!” she +cried. “Where have you been?”</p> + +<p>It enraged him further to be asked so obviously unnecessary a question. +He forgot his knightly chivalry.</p> + +<p>“What the Devil do you mean,” he cried, “by chasing me all round the +garden?”</p> + +<p>“Chasing you? All round the garden?”</p> + +<p>“You heard me breaking my shins on that infernal flower-pot you put for +me, and out you shot with all your pack of old women and chased me round +the garden. What do you mean by it?”</p> + +<p>“I didn’t think you were in the garden.”</p> + +<p>“Any Fool could have told I was in the garden. Any Fool might have known +I was in the garden. If I wasn’t in the garden, then where the Devil was +I? Eh? Where else could I be? Of course I was in the garden, and what +you wanted was to hunt me down and make a fool of me. And look at me! +Look, I say! Look at my hands!”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman regarded the lord of her being and hesitated before she +answered. She knew what she had to say would enrage him, but she had +come to a point in their relationship when a husband’s good temper is no +longer a supreme consideration. “You’ve had plenty of time to wash +them,” she said.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” he shouted. “And instead I kept ’em to show you. I stayed out +here to see the last of that crew for fear I might run against ’em in +the house. Of all the infernal old women——”</p> + +<p>His lips were providentially deprived of speech. He conveyed his +inability to express his estimate of Lady Beach-Mandarin by a gesture of +despair.</p> + +<p>“If—if anyone calls and I am at home I have to receive them,” said Lady +Harman, after a moment’s deliberation.</p> + +<p>“Receiving them’s one thing. Making a Fool of yourself——”</p> + +<p>His voice was rising.</p> + +<p>“Isaac,” said Lady Harman, leaning forward and then in a low penetrating +whisper, “<i>Snagsby!</i>”</p> + +<p>(It was the name of the great butler.)</p> + +<p>“<i>Damn</i> Snagsby!” hissed Sir Isaac, but dropping his voice and drawing +near to her. What his voice lost in height it gained in intensity. “What +I say is this, Ella, you oughtn’t to have brought that old woman out +into the garden at all——”</p> + +<p>“She insisted on coming.”</p> + +<p>“You ought to have snubbed her. You ought to have done—anything. How +the Devil was I to get away, once she was through the verandah? There I +was! <i>Bagged!</i>”</p> + +<p>“You could have come forward.”</p> + +<p>“What! And meet <i>her</i>!”</p> + +<p>“<i>I</i> had to meet her.”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac felt that his rage was being frittered away upon details. “If +you hadn’t gone fooling about looking at houses,” he said, and now he +stood very close to her and spoke with a confidential intensity, “you +wouldn’t have got that Holy Terror on our track, see? And now—here we +are!”</p> + +<p>He walked past her into the hall, and the little manservant suddenly +materialised in the middle of the space and came forward to brush him +obsequiously. Lady Harman regarded that proceeding for some moments in a +preoccupied manner and then passed slowly into the classical +conservatory. She felt that in view of her engagements the discussion of +Lady Beach-Mandarin was only just beginning.</p> + +<h4>§7</h4> + +<p>She reopened it herself in the long drawing-room into which they both +drifted after Sir Isaac had washed the mould from his hands. She went to +a French window, gathered courage, it seemed, by a brief contemplation +of the garden, and turned with a little effort.</p> + +<p>“I don’t agree,” she said, “with you about Lady Beach-Mandarin.”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac appeared surprised. He had assumed the incident was closed. +“<i>How?</i>” he asked compactly.</p> + +<p>“I don’t agree,” said Lady Harman. “She seems friendly and jolly.”</p> + +<p>“She’s a Holy Terror,” said Sir Isaac. “I’ve seen her twice, Lady +Harman.”</p> + +<p>“A call of that kind,” his wife went on, “—when there are cards left +and so on—has to be returned.”</p> + +<p>“You won’t,” said Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman took a blind-tassel in her hand,—she felt she had to hold +on to something. “In any case,” she said, “I should have to do that.”</p> + +<p>“In any case?”</p> + +<p>She nodded. “It would be ridiculous not to. We——It is why we know so +few people—because we don’t return calls....”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac paused before answering. “We don’t <i>want</i> to know a lot of +people,” he said. “And, besides——Why! anybody could make us go running +about all over London calling on them, by just coming and calling on us. +No sense in it. She’s come and she’s gone, and there’s an end of it.”</p> + +<p>“No,” said Lady Harman, gripping her tassel more firmly. “I shall have +to return that call.”</p> + +<p>“I tell you, you won’t.”</p> + +<p>“It isn’t only a call,” said Lady Harman. “You see, I promised to go +there to lunch.”</p> + +<p>“Lunch!”</p> + +<p>“And to go to a meeting with her.”</p> + +<p>“Go to a meeting!”</p> + +<p>“—of a society called the Social Friends. And something else. Oh! to go +to the committee meetings of her Shakespear Dinners Movement.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve heard of that.”</p> + +<p>“She said you supported it—or else of course....”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac restrained himself with difficulty.</p> + +<p>“Well,” he said at last, “you’d better write and tell her you can’t do +any of these things; that’s all.”</p> + +<p>He thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and walked to the French +window next to the one in which she stood, with an air of having settled +this business completely, and being now free for the tranquil +contemplation of horticulture. But Lady Harman had still something to +say.</p> + +<p>“I am going to <i>all</i> these things,” she said. “I said I would, and I +will.”</p> + +<p>He didn’t seem immediately to hear her. He made the little noise with +his teeth that was habitual to him. Then he came towards her. “This is +your infernal sister,” he said.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman reflected. “No,” she decided. “It’s myself.”</p> + +<p>“I might have known when we asked her here,” said Sir Isaac with an +habitual disregard of her judgments that was beginning to irritate her +more and more. “You can’t take on all these people. They’re not the sort +of people we want to know.”</p> + +<p>“I want to know them,” said Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“I don’t.”</p> + +<p>“I find them interesting,” Lady Harman said. “And I’ve promised.”</p> + +<p>“Well you oughtn’t to have promised without consulting me.”</p> + +<p>Her reply was the material of much subsequent reflection on the part of +Sir Isaac. There was something in her manner....</p> + +<p>“You see, Isaac,” she said, “you kept so out of the way....”</p> + +<p>In the pause that followed her words, Mrs. Sawbridge appeared from the +garden smiling with a determined amiability, and bearing a great bunch +of the best roses (which Sir Isaac hated to have picked) in her hands.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04" id="chap04"></a>CHAPTER THE FOURTH</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Beginnings of Lady Harman</span></p> + +<h4>§1</h4> + +<p>Lady Harman had been married when she was just eighteen.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Sawbridge was the widow of a solicitor who had been killed in a +railway collision while his affairs, as she put it, were unsettled; and +she had brought up her two daughters in a villa at Penge upon very +little money, in a state of genteel protest. Ellen was the younger. She +had been a sturdy dark-eyed doll-dragging little thing and had then shot +up very rapidly. She had gone to a boarding-school at Wimbledon because +Mrs. Sawbridge thought the Penge day-school had made Georgina opiniated +and unladylike, besides developing her muscular system to an unrefined +degree. The Wimbledon school was on less progressive lines, and anyhow +Ellen grew taller and more feminine than her sister and by seventeen was +already womanly, dignified and intensely admired by a number of +schoolmates and a large circle of their cousins and brothers. She was +generally very good and only now and then broke out with a venturesome +enterprise that hurt nobody. She got out of a skylight, for example, +and perambulated the roof in the moonshine to see how it felt and did +one or two other little things of a similar kind. Otherwise her conduct +was admirable and her temper in those days was always contagiously good. +That attractiveness which Mr. Brumley felt, was already very manifest, +and a little hindered her in the attainment of other distinctions. Most +of her lessons were done for her by willing slaves, and they were happy +slaves because she abounded in rewarding kindnesses; but on the other +hand the study of English literature and music was almost forced upon +her by the zeal of the two visiting Professors of these subjects.</p> + +<p>And at seventeen, which is the age when girls most despise the +boyishness of young men, she met Sir Isaac and filled him with an +invincible covetousness....</p> + +<h4>§2</h4> + +<p>The school at Wimbledon was a large, hushed, faded place presided over +by a lady of hidden motives and great exterior calm named Miss Beeton +Clavier. She was handsome without any improper attractiveness, an +Associate in Arts of St. Andrew’s University and a cousin of Mr. Blenker +of the <i>Old Country Gazette</i>. She was assisted by several resident +mistresses and two very carefully married visiting masters for music and +Shakespear, and playground and shrubbery and tennis-lawn were all quite +effectively hidden from the high-road. The curriculum included Latin +Grammar—nobody ever got to the reading of books in that formidable +tongue—French by an English lady who had been in France, Hanoverian +German by an irascible native, the more seemly aspects of English +history and literature, arithmetic, algebra, political economy and +drawing. There was no hockey played within the precincts, science was +taught without the clumsy apparatus or objectionable diagrams that are +now so common, and stress was laid upon the carriage of the young ladies +and the iniquity of speaking in raised voices. Miss Beeton Clavier +deprecated the modern “craze for examinations,” and released from such +pressure her staff did not so much give courses of lessons as circle in +a thorough-looking and patient manner about their subjects. This +turn-spit quality was reflected in the school idiom; one did not learn +algebra or Latin or so-forth, one <i>did</i> algebra, one was <i>put into</i> +Latin....</p> + +<p>The girls went through this system of exercises and occupations, +evasively and as it were <i>sotto voce</i>, making friends, making enemies, +making love to one another, following instincts that urged them to find +out something about life—in spite of the most earnest discouragement.... +None of them believed for a moment that the school was preparing them for +life. Most of them regarded it as a long inexplicable passage of blank, +grey occupations through which they had to pass. Beyond was the sunshine.</p> + +<p>Ellen gathered what came to her. She realized a certain beauty in music +in spite of the biographies of great musicians, the technical +enthusiasms and the general professionalism of her teacher; the +literature master directed her attention to memoirs and through these +she caught gleams of understanding when the characters of history did +for brief intervals cease to be rigidly dignified and institutional like +Miss Beeton Clavier and became human—like schoolfellows. And one little +spectacled mistress, who wore art dresses and adorned her class-room +with flowers, took a great fancy to her, talked to her with much +vagueness and emotion of High Aims, and lent her with an impressive +furtiveness the works of Emerson and Shelley and a pamphlet by Bernard +Shaw. It was a little difficult to understand what these writers were +driving at, they were so dreadfully clever, but it was clear they +reflected criticism upon the silences of her mother and the rigidities +of Miss Beeton Clavier.</p> + +<p>In that suppressed and evasive life beneath the outer forms and +procedures of school and home, there came glimmerings of something that +seemed charged with the promise of holding everything together, the key, +religion. She was attracted to religion, much more attracted than she +would confess even to herself, but every circumstance in her training +dissuaded her from a free approach. Her mother treated religion with a +reverence that was almost indistinguishable from huffiness. She never +named the deity and she did not like the mention of His name: she threw +a spell of indelicacy over religious topics that Ellen never thoroughly +cast off. She put God among objectionable topics—albeit a sublime one. +Miss Beeton Clavier sustained this remarkable suggestion. When she read +prayers in school she did so with the balanced impartiality of one who +offers no comment. She seemed pained as she read and finished with a +sigh. Whatever she intended to convey, she conveyed that even if the +divinity was not all He should be, if, indeed, He was a person almost +primitive, having neither the restraint nor the self-obliteration of a +refined gentlewoman, no word of it should ever pass her lips. And so +Ellen as a girl never let her mind go quite easily into this reconciling +core of life, and talked of it only very rarely and shyly with a few +chosen coevals. It wasn’t very profitable talk. They had a guilty +feeling, they laughed a little uneasily, they displayed a fatal +proclivity to stab the swelling gravity of their souls with some forced +and silly jest and so tumble back to ground again before they rose too +high....</p> + +<p>Yet great possibilities of faith and devotion stirred already in the +girl’s heart. She thought little of God by day, but had a strange sense +of Him in the starlight; never under the moonlight—that was in no sense +divine—but in the stirring darkness of the stars. And it is remarkable +that after a course of astronomical enlightenment by a visiting master +and descriptions of masses and distances, incredible aching distances, +then even more than ever she seemed to feel God among the stars....</p> + +<p>A fatal accident to a schoolfellow turned her mind for a time to the +dark stillnesses of death. The accident happened away in Wales during +the summer holidays; she saw nothing of it, she only knew of its +consequence. Hitherto she had assumed it was the function of girls to +grow up and go out from the grey intermediate state of school work into +freedoms and realities beyond. Death happened, she was aware, to young +people, but not she had thought to the people one knew. This termination +came with a shock. The girl was no great personal loss to Ellen, they +had belonged to different sets and classes, but the conception of her as +lying very very still for ever was a haunting one. Ellen felt she did +not want to be still for evermore in a confined space, with life and +sunshine going on all about her and above her, and it quickened her +growing appetite for living to think that she might presently have to be +like that. How stifled one would feel!</p> + +<p>It couldn’t be like that.</p> + +<p>She began to speculate about that future life upon which religion +insists so much and communicates so little. Was it perhaps in other +planets, under those wonderful, many-mooned, silver-banded skies? She +perceived more and more a kind of absurdity in the existence all about +her. Was all this world a mere make-believe, and would Miss Beeton +Clavier and every one about her presently cast aside a veil? Manifestly +there was a veil. She had a very natural disposition to doubt whether +the actual circumstances of her life were real. Her mother for instance +was so lacking in blood and fire, so very like the stiff paper wrapping +of something else. But if these things were not real, what was real? +What might she not presently do? What might she not presently be? +Perhaps death had something to do with that. Was death perhaps no more +than the flinging off of grotesque outer garments by the newly arrived +guests at the feast of living? She had that feeling that there might be +a feast of living.</p> + +<p>These preoccupations were a jealously guarded secret, but they gave her +a quality of slight detachment that added a dreaming dignity to her dark +tall charm.</p> + +<p>There were moments of fine, deep excitement that somehow linked +themselves in her mind with these thoughts as being set over against the +things of every day. These too were moments quite different and separate +in quality from delight, from the keen appreciation of flowers or +sunshine or little vividly living things. Daylight seemed to blind her +to them, as they blinded her to starshine. They too had a quality of +reference to things large and remote, distances, unknown mysteries of +light and matter, the thought of mountains, cool white wildernesses and +driving snowstorms, or great periods of time. Such were the luminous +transfigurations that would come to her at the evening service in +church.</p> + +<p>The school used to sit in the gallery over against the organist, and for +a year and more Ellen had the place at the corner from which she could +look down the hazy candle-lit vista of the nave and see the +congregation as ranks and ranks of dim faces and vaguely apprehended +clothes, ranks that rose with a peculiar deep and spacious rustle to +sing, and sang with a massiveness of effect she knew in no other music. +Certain hymns in particular seemed to bear her up and carry her into +another larger, more wonderful world: “Heart’s Abode, Celestial Salem” +for example, a world of luminous spiritualized sensuousness. Of such a +quality she thought the Heavenly City must surely be, away there and +away. But this persuasion differed from those other mystical intimations +in its detachment from any sense of the divinity. And remarkably mixed +up with it and yet not belonging to it, antagonistic and kindred like a +silver dagger stuck through a mystically illuminated parchment, was the +angelic figure of a tall fair boy in a surplice who stood out amidst the +choir below and sang, it seemed to her, alone.</p> + +<p>She herself on these occasions of exaltation would be far too deeply +moved to sing. She was inundated by a swimming sense of boundaries +nearly transcended, as though she was upon the threshold of a different +life altogether, the real enduring life, and as though if she could only +maintain herself long enough in this shimmering exaltation she would get +right over; things would happen, things that would draw her into that +music and magic and prevent her ever returning to everyday life again. +There one would walk through music between great candles under eternal +stars, hand-in-hand with a tall white figure. But nothing ever did +happen to make her cross that boundary; the hymn ceased, the “Amen” +died away, as if a curtain fell. The congregation subsided. Reluctantly +she would sink back into her seat....</p> + +<p>But all through the sermon, to which she never gave the slightest +attention, her mind would feel mute and stilled, and she used to come +out of church silent and preoccupied, returning unwillingly to the +commonplaces of life....</p> + +<h4>§3</h4> + +<p>Ellen met Sir Isaac—in the days before he was Sir Isaac—at the house +of a school friend with whom she was staying at Hythe, and afterwards +her mother and sister came down and joined her for a fortnight at a +Folkstone boarding house. Mr. Harman had caught a chill while inspecting +his North Wales branches and had come down with his mother to +recuperate. He and his mother occupied a suite of rooms in the most +imposing hotel upon the Leas. Ellen’s friend’s people were partners in a +big flour firm and had a pleasant new æsthetic white and green house of +rough-cast and slates in the pretty country beyond the Hythe golf links, +and Ellen’s friend’s father was deeply anxious to develop amiable +arrangements with Mr. Harman. There was much tennis, much croquet, much +cycling to the Hythe sea-wall and bathing from little tents and sitting +about in the sunshine, and Mr. Harman had his first automobile with +him—they were still something of a novelty in those days—and was +urgent to take picnic parties to large lonely places on the downs.</p> + +<p>There were only two young men in that circle, one was engaged to Ellen’s +friend’s sister, and the other was bound to a young woman remote in +Italy; neither was strikingly attractive and both regarded Harman with +that awe tempered by undignified furtive derision which wealth and +business capacity so often inspire in the young male. At first he was +quiet and simply looked at her, as it seemed any one might look, then +she perceived he looked at her intently and continuously, and was +persistently close to her and seemed always to be trying to do things to +please her and attract her attention. And then from the general +behaviour of the women about her, her mother and Mrs. Harman and her +friend’s mother and her friend’s sister, rather than from any one +specific thing they said, it grew upon her consciousness that this +important and fabulously wealthy person, who was also it seemed to her +so modest and quiet and touchingly benevolent, was in love with her.</p> + +<p>“Your daughter,” said Mrs. Harman repeatedly to Mrs. Sawbridge, “is +charming, perfectly charming.”</p> + +<p>“She’s <i>such</i> a child,” said Mrs. Sawbridge repeatedly in reply.</p> + +<p>And she told Ellen’s friend’s mother apropos of Ellen’s friend’s +engagement that she wanted all her daughters to marry for love, she +didn’t care what the man had so long as they loved each other, and +meanwhile she took the utmost care that Isaac had undisputed access to +the girl, was watchfully ready to fend off anyone else, made her take +everything he offered and praised him quietly and steadily to her. She +pointed out how modest and unassuming he was, in spite of the fact that +he was “controlling an immense business” and in his own particular trade +“a perfect Napoleon.”</p> + +<p>“For all one sees to the contrary he might be just a private gentleman. +And he feeds thousands and thousands of people....”</p> + +<p>“Sooner or later,” said Mrs. Harman, “I suppose Isaac will marry. He’s +been such a good son to me that I shall feel it dreadfully, and yet, you +know, I wish I could see him settled. Then <i>I</i> shall settle—in a little +house of my own somewhere. Just a little place. I don’t believe in +coming too much between son and daughter-in-law....”</p> + +<p>Harman’s natural avidity was tempered by a proper modesty. He thought +Ellen so lovely and so infinitely desirable—and indeed she was—that it +seemed incredible to him that he could ever get her. And yet he had got +most of the things in life he had really and urgently wanted. His doubts +gave his love-making an eager, lavish and pathetic delicacy. He watched +her minutely in an agony of appreciation. He felt ready to give or +promise anything.</p> + +<p>She was greatly flattered by his devotion and she liked the surprises +and presents he heaped upon her extremely. Also she was sorry for him +beyond measure. In the deep recesses of her heart was an oleographic +ideal of a large brave young man with blue eyes, a wave in his fair +hair, a wonderful tenor voice and—she could not help it, she tried to +look away and not think of it—a broad chest. With him she intended to +climb mountains. So clearly she could not marry Mr. Harman. And because +of that she tried to be very kind indeed to him, and when he faltered +that she could not possibly care for him, she reassured him so vaguely +as to fill him with wild gusts of hope and herself with a sense of +pledges. He told her one day between two sets of tennis—which he played +with a certain tricky skill—that he felt that the very highest +happiness he could ever attain would be to die at her feet. Presently +her pity and her sense of responsibility had become so large and deep +that the dream hero with the blue eyes was largely overlaid and hidden +by them.</p> + +<p>Then, at first a little indirectly and then urgently and with a voice +upon the edge of tears, Harman implored her to marry him. She had never +before in the whole course of her life seen a grown-up person on the +very verge of tears. She felt that the release of such deep fountains as +that must be averted at any cost. She felt that for a mere schoolgirl +like herself, a backward schoolgirl who had never really mastered +quadratics, to cause these immense and tragic distresses was abominable. +She was sure her former headmistress would disapprove very highly of +her. “I will make you a queen,” said Harman, “I will give all my life to +your happiness.”</p> + +<p>She believed he would.</p> + +<p>She refused him for the second time but with a weakening certainty in a +little white summer-house that gave a glimpse of the sea between green +and wooded hills. She sat and stared at the sea after he had left her, +through a mist of tears; so pitiful did he seem. He had beaten his poor +fists on the stone table and then caught up her hand, kissed it and +rushed out.... She had not dreamt that love could hurt like that.</p> + +<p>And all that night—that is to say for a full hour before her wet +eyelashes closed in slumber—she was sleepless with remorse for the +misery she was causing him.</p> + +<p>The third time when he said with suicidal conviction that he could not +live without her, she burst into tears of pity and yielded. And +instantly, amazingly, with the famished swiftness of a springing panther +he caught her body into his arms and kissed her on the lips....</p> + +<h4>§4</h4> + +<p>They were married with every circumstance of splendour, with very +expensive music, and portraits in the illustrated newspapers and a great +glitter of favours and carriages. The bridegroom was most thoughtful and +generous about the Sawbridge side of the preparations. Only one thing +was a little perplexing. In spite of his impassioned impatience he +delayed the wedding. Full of dark hints and a portentous secret, he +delayed the wedding for twenty-five whole days in order that it should +follow immediately upon the publication of the birthday honours list. +And then they understood.</p> + +<p>“You will be Lady Harman,” he exulted; “<i>Lady</i> Harman. I would have +given double.... I have had to back the <i>Old Country Gazette</i> and I +don’t care a rap. I’d have done anything. I’d have bought the rotten +thing outright.... Lady Harman!”</p> + +<p>He remained loverlike until the very eve of their marriage. Then +suddenly it seemed to her that all the people she cared for in the world +were pushing her away from them towards him, giving her up, handing her +over. He became—possessive. His abjection changed to pride. She +perceived that she was going to be left tremendously alone with him, +with an effect, as if she had stepped off a terrace on to what she +believed to be land and had abruptly descended into very deep water....</p> + +<p>And while she was still feeling quite surprised by everything and +extremely doubtful whether she wanted to go any further with this +business, which was manifestly far more serious, out of all proportion +more serious, than anything that had ever happened to her before—and +<i>unpleasant</i>, abounding indeed in crumpling indignities and horrible +nervous stresses, it dawned upon her that she was presently to be that +strange, grown-up and preoccupied thing, a mother, and that girlhood and +youth and vigorous games, mountains and swimming and running and +leaping were over for her as far as she could see for ever....</p> + +<p>Both the prospective grandmothers became wonderfully kind and helpful +and intimate, preparing with gusto and an agreeable sense of delegated +responsibility for the child that was to give them all the pride of +maternity again and none of its inconveniences.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05" id="chap05"></a>CHAPTER THE FIFTH</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The World according to Sir Isaac</span></p> + +<h4>§1</h4> + +<p>Her marriage had carried Ellen out of the narrow world of home and +school into another that had seemed at first vastly larger, if only on +account of its freedom from the perpetual achievement of small +economies. Hitherto the urgent necessity of these had filled life with +irksome precautions and clipped the wings of every dream. This new life +into which Sir Isaac led her by the hand promised not only that release +but more light, more colour, more movement, more people. There was to be +at any rate so much in the way of rewards and compensation for her pity +of him.</p> + +<p>She found the establishment at Putney ready for her. Sir Isaac had not +consulted her about it, it had been his secret, he had prepared it for +her with meticulous care as a surprise. They returned from a honeymoon +in Skye in which the attentions of Sir Isaac and the comforts of a +first-class hotel had obscured a marvellous background of sombre +mountain and wide stretches of shining sea. Sir Isaac had been very fond +and insistent and inseparable, and she was doing her best to conceal a +strange distressful jangling of her nerves which she now feared might +presently dispose her to scream. Sir Isaac had been goodness itself, but +how she craved now for solitude! She was under the impression now that +they were going to his mother’s house in Highbury. Then she thought he +would have to go away to business for part of the day at any rate, and +she could creep into some corner and begin to think of all that had +happened to her in these short summer months.</p> + +<p>They were met at Euston by his motor-car. “<i>Home</i>,” said Sir Isaac, with +a little gleam of excitement, when the more immediate luggage was +aboard.</p> + +<p>As they hummed through the West-End afternoon Ellen became aware that he +was whistling through his teeth. It was his invariable indication of +mental activity, and her attention came drifting back from her idle +contemplation of the shoppers and strollers of Piccadilly to link this +already alarming symptom with the perplexing fact that they were +manifestly travelling west.</p> + +<p>“But this,” she said presently, “is Knightsbridge.”</p> + +<p>“Goes to Kensington,” he replied with attempted indifference.</p> + +<p>“But your mother doesn’t live this way.”</p> + +<p>“<i>We</i> do,” said Sir Isaac, shining at every point of his face.</p> + +<p>“But,” she halted. “Isaac!—where are we going?”</p> + +<p>“Home,” he said.</p> + +<p>“You’ve not taken a house?”</p> + +<p>“Bought it.”</p> + +<p>“But,—it won’t be ready!”</p> + +<p>“I’ve seen to that.”</p> + +<p>“Servants!” she cried in dismay.</p> + +<p>“That’s all right.” His face broke into an excited smile. His little +eyes danced and shone. “Everything,” he said.</p> + +<p>“But the servants!” she said.</p> + +<p>“You’ll see,” he said. “There’s a butler—and everything.”</p> + +<p>“A butler!” He could now no longer restrain himself. “I was weeks,” he +said, “getting it ready. Weeks and weeks.... It’s a house.... I’d had my +eye on it before ever I met you. It’s a real <i>good</i> house, Elly....”</p> + +<p>The fortunate girl-wife went on through Brompton to Walham Green with a +stunned feeling. So women have felt in tumbrils. A nightmare of butlers, +a galaxy of possible butlers, filled her soul.</p> + +<p>No one was quite so big and formidable as Snagsby, towering up to +receive her, upon the steps of the home her husband was so amazingly +giving her.</p> + +<p>The reader has already been privileged to see something of this house in +the company of Lady Beach-Mandarin. At the top of the steps stood Mrs. +Crumble, the new and highly recommended cook-housekeeper in her best +black silk flounced and expanded, and behind her peeped several neat +maids in caps and aprons. A little valet-like under-butler appeared and +tried to balance Snagsby by hovering two steps above him on the opposite +side of the Victorian mediæval porch.</p> + +<p>Assisted officiously by Snagsby and amidst the deferential unhelpful +gestures of the under-butler, Sir Isaac handed his wife out of the car. +“Everything all right, Snagsby?” he asked brusquely if a little +breathless.</p> + +<p>“Everything in order, Sir Isaac.”</p> + +<p>“And here;—this is her ladyship.”</p> + +<p>“I ’ope her ladyship ’ad a pleasent journey to ’er new ’ome. I’m sure if +I may presume, Sir Isaac, we shall all be very glad to serve her +ladyship.”</p> + +<p>(Like all well-trained English servants, Snagsby always dropped as many +h’s as he could when conversing with his superiors. He did this as a +mark of respect and to prevent social confusion, just as he was always +careful to wear a slightly misfitting dress coat and fold his trousers +so that they creased at the sides and had a wide flat effect in front.)</p> + +<p>Lady Harman bowed a little shyly to his good wishes and was then led up +to Mrs. Crumble, in a stiff black silk, who curtseyed with a submissive +amiability to her new mistress. “I’m sure, me lady,” she said. “I’m +sure——”</p> + +<p>There was a little pause. “Here they are, you see, right and ready,” +said Sir Isaac, and then with an inspiration, “Got any tea for us, +Snagsby?”</p> + +<p>Snagsby addressing his mistress inquired if he should serve tea in the +garden or the drawing-room, and Sir Isaac decided for the garden.</p> + +<p>“There’s another hall beyond this,” he said, and took his wife’s arm, +leaving Mrs. Crumble still bowing amiably before the hall table. And +every time she bowed she rustled richly....</p> + +<p>“It’s quite a big garden,” said Sir Isaac.</p> + +<h4>§2</h4> + +<p>And so the woman who had been a girl three weeks ago, this tall, +dark-eyed, slightly perplexed and very young-looking lady, was +introduced to the home that had been made for her. She went about it +with an alarmed sense of strange responsibilities, not in the least +feeling that anything was being given to her. And Sir Isaac led her from +point to point full of the pride and joy of new possession—for it was +his first own house as well as hers—rejoicing over it and exacting +gratitude.</p> + +<p>“It’s all right, isn’t it?” he asked looking up at her.</p> + +<p>“It’s wonderful. I’d no idea.”</p> + +<p>“See,” he said, indicating a great brass bowl of perennial sunflowers on +the landing, “your favourite flower!”</p> + +<p>“My favourite flower?”</p> + +<p>“You said it was—in that book. Perennial sunflower.”</p> + +<p>She was perplexed and then remembered.</p> + +<p>She understood now why he had said downstairs, when she had glanced at a +big photographic enlargement of a portrait of Doctor Barnardo, “your +favourite hero in real life.”</p> + +<p>He had brought her at Hythe one day a popular Victorian device, a +confession album, in which she had had to write down on a neat +rose-tinted page, her favourite author, her favourite flower, her +favourite colour, her favourite hero in real life, her “pet aversion,” +and quite a number of such particulars of her subjective existence. She +had filled this page in a haphazard manner late one night, and she was +disconcerted to find how thoroughly her careless replies had come home +to roost. She had put down “pink” as her favourite colour because the +page she was writing upon suggested it, and the paper of the room was +pale pink, the curtains strong pink with a pattern of paler pink and +tied with large pink bows, and the lamp shades, the bedspread, the +pillow-cases, the carpet, the chairs, the very crockery—everything but +the omnipresent perennial sunflowers—was pink. Confronted with this +realization, she understood that pink was the least agreeable of all +possible hues for a bedroom. She perceived she had to live now in a +chromatic range between rather underdone mutton and salmon. She had said +that her favourite musical composers were Bach and Beethoven; she really +meant it, and a bust of Beethoven materialized that statement, but she +had made Doctor Barnardo her favourite hero in real life because his +name also began with a B and she had heard someone say somewhere that he +was a very good man. The predominance of George Eliot’s pensive rather +than delightful countenance in her bedroom and the array of all that +lady’s works in a lusciously tooled pink leather, was due to her equally +reckless choice of a favourite author. She had said too that Nelson was +her favourite historical character, but Sir Isaac with a delicate +jealousy had preferred to have this heroic but regrettably immoral +personality represented in his home only by an engraving of the Battle +of Copenhagen....</p> + +<p>She stood surveying this room, and her husband watched her eagerly. She +was, he felt, impressed at last!...</p> + +<p>Certainly she had never seen such a bedroom in her life. By comparison +even with the largest of the hotel apartments they had occupied it was +vast; it had writing-tables and a dainty bookcase and a blushing sofa, +and dressing-tables and a bureau and a rose-red screen and three large +windows. Her thoughts went back to the narrow little bedroom at Penge +with which she had hitherto been so entirely content. Her own few little +books, a photograph or so,—they’d never dare to come here, even if she +dared to bring them.</p> + +<p>“Here,” said Sir Isaac, flinging open a white door, “is your +dressing-room.”</p> + +<p>She was chiefly aware of a huge white bath standing on a marble slab +under a window of crinkled pink-stained glass, and of a wide space of +tiled floor with white fur rugs.</p> + +<p>“And here,” he said, opening a panel that was covered by wall paper, “is +<i>my</i> door.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” he said to the question in her eyes, “that’s my room. You got +this one—for your own. It’s how people do now. People of our +position.... There’s no lock.”</p> + +<p>He shut the door slowly again and surveyed the splendours he had made +with infinite satisfaction.</p> + +<p>“All right?” he said, “isn’t it?”... He turned to the pearl for which +the casket was made, and slipped an arm about her waist. His arm +tightened.</p> + +<p>“Got a kiss for me, Elly?” he whispered.</p> + +<p>At this moment, a gong almost worthy of Snagsby summoned them to tea. It +came booming in to them with a vast officious arrogance that brooked no +denial. It made one understand the imperatives of the Last Trump, albeit +with a greater dignity.... There was a little awkward pause.</p> + +<p>“I’m so dirty and trainy,” she said, disengaging herself from his arm. +“And we ought to go to tea.”</p> + +<h4>§3</h4> + +<p>The same exceptional aptitude of Sir Isaac for detailed administration +that had relieved his wife from the need of furnishing and arranging a +home, made the birth of her children and the organization of her nursery +an almost detached affair for her. Sir Isaac went about in a preoccupied +way, whistling between his teeth and planning with expert advice the +equipment of an ideal nursery, and her mother and his mother became as +it were voluminous clouds of uncommunicative wisdom and precaution. In +addition the conversation of Miss Crump, the extremely skilled and +costly nurse, who arrived a full Advent before the child, fresh from the +birth of a viscount, did much to generalize whatever had remained +individual of this thing that was happening. With so much intelligence +focussed, there seemed to Lady Harman no particular reason why she +should not do her best to think as little as possible about the +impending affair, which meant for her, she now understood quite clearly, +more and more discomfort culminating in an agony. The summer promised to +be warm, and Sir Isaac took a furnished house for the great event in the +hills behind Torquay. The maternal instinct is not a magic thing, it has +to be evoked and developed, and I decline to believe it is indicative of +any peculiar unwomanliness in Lady Harman that when at last she beheld +her newly-born daughter in the hands of the experts, she moaned +druggishly, “Oh! please take it away. Oh! Take it—away. +Anywhere—anywhere.”</p> + +<p>It was very red and wrinkled and aged-looking and, except when it opened +its mouth to cry, extraordinarily like its father. This resemblance +disappeared—along with a crop of darkish red hair—in the course of a +day or two, but it left a lurking dislike to its proximity in her mind +long after it had become an entirely infantile and engaging baby.</p> + +<h4>§4</h4> + +<p>Those early years of their marriage were the happiest period of Sir +Isaac’s life.</p> + +<p>He seemed to have everything that man could desire. He was still only +just forty at his marriage; he had made for himself a position +altogether dominant in the world of confectionery and popular +refreshment, he had won a title, he had a home after his own heart, a +beautiful young wife, and presently delightful children in his own +image, and it was only after some years of contentment and serenity and +with a certain incredulity that he discovered that something in his +wife, something almost in the nature of discontent with her lot, was +undermining and threatening all the comfort and beauty of his life.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac was one of those men whom modern England delights to honour, a +man of unpretentious acquisitiveness, devoted to business and distracted +by no æsthetic or intellectual interests. He was the only son of his +mother, the widow of a bankrupt steam-miller, and he had been a delicate +child to rear. He left Mr. Gambard’s college at Ealing after passing the +second-class examination of the College of Preceptors at the age of +sixteen, to go into a tea-office as clerk without a salary, a post he +presently abandoned for a clerkship in the office of a large refreshment +catering firm. He attracted the attention of his employers by suggesting +various administrative economies, and he was already drawing a salary of +two hundred and fifty pounds a year when he was twenty-one. Many young +men would have rested satisfied with so rapid an advancement, and would +have devoted themselves to the amusements that are now considered so +permissible to youth, but young Harman was made of sterner stuff, and it +only spurred him to further efforts. He contrived to save a +considerable proportion of his salary for some years, and at the age of +twenty-seven he started, in association with a firm of flour millers, +the International Bread and Cake Stores, which spread rapidly over the +country. They were not in any sense of the word “International,” but in +a search for inflated and inflating adjectives this word attracted him +most, and the success of the enterprise justified his choice. Originally +conceived as a syndicated system of baker’s shops running a specially +gritty and nutritious line of bread, the Staminal Bread, in addition to +the ordinary descriptions, it rapidly developed a catering side, and in +a little time there were few centres of clerkly employment in London or +the Midlands where an International could not be found supplying the +midday scone or poached egg, washed down by a cup of tea, or coffee, or +lemonade. It meant hard work for Isaac Harman. It drew lines on his +cheeks, sharpened his always rather pointed nose to an extreme +efficiency, greyed his hair, and gave an acquired firmness to his rather +retreating mouth. All his time was given to the details of this +development; always he was inspecting premises, selecting and dismissing +managers, making codes of rules and fines for his growing army of +employees, organizing and reorganizing his central offices and his +central bakeries, hunting up cheaper and cheaper supplies of eggs and +flour, and milk and ham, devising advertisements and agency +developments. He had something of an artist’s passion in these things; +he went about, a little bent and peaky, calculating and planning and +hissing through his teeth, and feeling not only that he was getting on, +but that he was getting on in the most exemplary way. Manifestly, +anybody in his line of business who wanted to be leisurely, or to be +generous, who possessed any broader interests than the shop, who +troubled to think about the nation or the race or any of the deeper +mysteries of life, was bound to go down before him. He dealt privately +with every appetite—until his marriage no human being could have +suspected him of any appetite but business—he disposed of every +distracting impulse with unobtrusive decision; and even his political +inclination towards Radicalism sprang chiefly from an irritation with +the legal advantages of landlordism natural to a man who is frequently +leasing shops.</p> + +<p>At school Sir Isaac had not been a particularly prominent figure; his +disposition at cricket to block and to bowl “sneaks” and “twisters” +under-arm had raised his average rather than his reputation; he had +evaded fights and dramatic situations, and protected himself upon +occasions of unavoidable violence by punching with his white knuckles +held in a peculiar and vicious manner. He had always been a little +insensitive to those graces of style, in action if not in art, which +appeal so strongly to the commoner sort of English mind; he played first +for safety, and that assured, for the uttermost advantage. These +tendencies became more marked with maturity. When he took up tennis for +his health’s sake he developed at once an ungracious service that had +to be killed like vermin; he developed an instinct for the deadest ball +available, and his returns close up to the net were like assassinations. +Indeed, he was inherently incapable of any vision beyond the express +prohibitions and permissions of the rules of the games he played, or +beyond the laws and institutions under which he lived. His idea of +generosity was the undocumented and unqualified purchase of a person by +payments made in the form of a gift.</p> + +<p>And this being the quality of Sir Isaac’s mind, it followed that his +interpretations of the relationship of marriage were simple and strict. +A woman, he knew, had to be wooed to be won, but when she was won, she +was won. He did not understand wooing after that was settled. There was +the bargain and her surrender. He on his side had to keep her, dress +her, be kind to her, give her the appearances of pride and authority, +and in return he had his rights and his privileges and undefined powers +of control. That you know, by the existing rules, is the reality of +marriage where there are no settlements and no private property of the +wife’s. That is to say, it is the reality of marriage in ninety-nine +cases out of the hundred. And it would have shocked Sir Isaac extremely, +and as a matter of fact it did shock him, for any one to suggest the +slightest revision of so entirely advantageous an arrangement. He was +confident of his good intentions, and resolved to the best of his +ability to make his wife the happiest of living creatures, subject only +to reasonable acquiescences and general good behaviour.</p> + +<p>Never before had he cared for anything so much as he did for her—not +even for the International Bread and Cake Stores. He gloated upon her. +She distracted him from business. He resolved from the outset to +surround her with every luxury and permit her no desire that he had not +already anticipated. Even her mother and Georgina, whom he thought +extremely unnecessary persons, were frequent visitors to his house. His +solicitude for her was so great that she found it difficult even to see +her doctor except in his presence. And he bought her a pearl necklace +that cost six hundred pounds. He was, in fact, one of those complete +husbands who grow rare in these decadent days.</p> + +<p>The social circle to which Sir Isaac introduced his wife was not a very +extensive one. The business misadventures of his father had naturally +deprived his mother of most of her friends; he had made only +acquaintances at school, and his subsequent concentration upon business +had permitted very few intimacies. Renewed prosperity had produced a +certain revival of cousins, but Mrs. Harman, established in a pleasant +house at Highbury, had received their attentions with a well-merited +stiffness. His chief associates were his various business allies, and +these and their wives and families formed the nucleus of the new world +to which Ellen was gradually and temperately introduced. There were a +few local callers, but Putney is now too deeply merged with London for +this practice of the countryside to have any great effect upon a +new-comer’s visiting circle.</p> + +<p>Perhaps Mr. Charterson might claim to be Sir Isaac’s chief friend at the +time of that gentleman’s marriage. Transactions in sugar had brought +them together originally. He was Sir Isaac’s best man, and the new +knight entertained a feeling of something very like admiration for him. +Moreover, Mr. Charterson had very large ears, more particularly was the +left one large, extraordinarily large and projecting upper teeth, which +he sought vainly to hide beneath an extravagant moustache, and a harsh +voice, characteristics that did much to allay the anxieties natural to a +newly married man. Mr. Charterson was moreover adequately married to a +large, attentive, enterprising, swarthy wife, and possessed a splendid +house in Belgravia. Not quite so self-made as Sir Isaac, he was still +sufficiently self-made to take a very keen interest in his own social +advancement and in social advancement generally, and it was through him +that Sir Isaac’s attention had been first directed to those developing +relations with politics that arise as a business grows to greatness. +“I’m for Parliament,” said Charterson. “Sugar’s in politics, and I’m +after it. You’d better come too, Harman. Those chaps up there, they’ll +play jiggery-pokery with sugar if we aren’t careful. And it won’t be +only sugar, Harman!”</p> + +<p>Pressed to expand this latter sentence, he pointed out to his friend +that “any amount of interfering with employment” was in the air—“any +amount.”</p> + +<p>“And besides,” said Mr. Charterson, “men like us have a stake in the +country, Harman. We’re getting biggish people. We ought to do our +share. I don’t see the fun of leaving everything to the landlords and +the lawyers. Men of our sort have got to make ourselves felt. We want a +business government. Of course—one pays. So long as I get a voice in +calling the tune I don’t mind paying the piper a bit. There’s going to +be a lot of interference with trade. All this social legislation. And +there’s what you were saying the other day about these leases....”</p> + +<p>“I’m not much of a talker,” said Harman. “I don’t see myself gassing in +the House.”</p> + +<p>“Oh! I don’t mean going into Parliament,” said Charterson. “That’s for +some of us, perhaps.... But come into the party, make yourself felt.”</p> + +<p>Under Charterson’s stimulation it was that Harman joined the National +Liberal Club, and presently went on to the Climax, and through him he +came to know something of that inner traffic of arrangements and +bargains which does so much to keep a great historical party together +and maintain its vitality. For a time he was largely overshadowed by the +sturdy Radicalism of Charterson, but presently as he understood this +interesting game better, he embarked upon a line of his own. Charterson +wanted a seat, and presently got it; his maiden speech on the Sugar +Bounties won a compliment from Mr. Evesham; and Harman, who would have +piloted a monoplane sooner than address the House, decided to be one of +those silent influences that work outside our national assembly. He came +to the help of an embarrassed Liberal weekly, and then, in a Fleet +Street crisis, undertook the larger share of backing the <i>Old Country +Gazette</i>, that important social and intellectual party organ. His +knighthood followed almost automatically.</p> + +<p>Such political developments introduced a second element into the +intermittent social relations of the Harman household. Before his +knighthood and marriage Sir Isaac had participated in various public +banquets and private parties and little dinners in the vaults of the +House and elsewhere, arising out of his political intentions, and with +the appearance of a Lady Harman there came a certain urgency on the part +of those who maintain in a state of hectic dullness the social +activities of the great Liberal party. Horatio Blenker, Sir Isaac’s +editor, showed a disposition to be socially very helpful, and after Mrs. +Blenker had called in a state of worldly instructiveness, there was a +little dinner at the Blenkers’ to introduce young Lady Harman to the +great political world. It was the first dinner-party of her life, and +she found it dazzling rather than really agreeable.</p> + +<p>She felt very slender and young and rather unclothed about the arms and +neck, in spite of the six hundred pound pearl necklace that had been +given to her just as she stood before the mirror in her white-and-gold +dinner dress ready to start. She had to look down at that dress ever and +again and at her shining arms to remind herself that she wasn’t still in +schoolgirl clothes, and it seemed to her there was not another woman in +the room who was not fairly entitled to send her off to bed at any +moment. She had been a little nervous about the details of the dinner, +but there was nothing strange or difficult but caviare, and in that case +she waited for some one else to begin. The Chartersons were there, which +was very reassuring, and the abundant flowers on the table were a sort +of protection. The man on her right was very nice, gently voluble, and +evidently quite deaf, so that she had merely to make kind respectful +faces at him. He talked to her most of the time, and described the +peasant costumes in Marken and Walcheren. And Mr. Blenker, with a fine +appreciation of Sir Isaac’s watchful temperament and his own magnetism, +spoke to her three times and never looked at her once all through the +entertainment.</p> + +<p>A few weeks later they went to dinner at the Chartersons’, and then she +gave a dinner, which was arranged very skilfully by Sir Isaac and +Snagsby and the cook-housekeeper, with a little outside help, and then +came a big party reception at Lady Barleypound’s, a multitudinous +miscellaneous assembly in which the obviously wealthy rubbed shoulders +with the obviously virtuous and the not quite so obviously clever. It +was a great orgy of standing about and seeing the various Blenkers and +the Cramptons and the Weston Massinghays and the Daytons and Mrs. +Millingham with her quivering lorgnette and her last tame genius and +Lewis, and indeed all the Tapirs and Tadpoles of Liberalism, being +tremendously active and influential and important throughout the +evening. The house struck Ellen as being very splendid, the great +staircase particularly so, and never before had she seen a great +multitude of people in evening dress. Lady Barleypound in the golden +parlour at the head of the stairs shook hands automatically, lest it +would seem in some amiable dream, Mrs. Blapton and a daughter rustled +across the gathering in a hasty vindictive manner and vanished, and a +number of handsome, glittering, dark-eyed, splendidly dressed women kept +together in groups and were tremendously but occultly amused. The +various Blenkers seemed everywhere, Horatio in particular with his large +fluent person and his luminous tenor was like a shop-walker taking +customers to the departments: one felt he was weaving all these +immiscibles together into one great wise Liberal purpose, and that he +deserved quite wonderful things from the party; he even introduced five +or six people to Lady Harman, looking sternly over her head and +restraining his charm as he did so on account of Sir Isaac’s feelings. +The people he brought up to her were not very interesting people, she +thought, but then that was perhaps due to her own dreadful ignorance of +politics.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman ceased even to dip into the vortex of London society after +March, and in June she went with her mother and a skilled nurse to that +beautiful furnished house Sir Isaac had found near Torquay, in +preparation for the birth of their first little daughter.</p> + +<h4>§5</h4> + +<p>It seemed to her husband that it was both unreasonable and ungrateful of +her to become a tearful young woman after their union, and for a phase +of some months she certainly was a tearful young woman, but his mother +made it clear to him that this was quite a correct and permissible phase +for her, as she was, and so he expressed his impatience with temperance, +and presently she was able to pull herself together and begin to +readjust herself to a universe that had seemed for a time almost too +shattered for endurance. She resumed the process of growing up that her +marriage had for a time so vividly interrupted, and if her schooldays +were truncated and the college phase omitted, she had at any rate a very +considerable amount of fundamental experience to replace these now +customary completions.</p> + +<p>Three little girls she brought into the world in the first three years +of her married life, then after a brief interval of indifferent health +she had a fourth girl baby of a physique quite obviously inferior to its +predecessors, and then, after—and perhaps as a consequence of—much +whispered conversation of the two mothers-in-law, protests and tactful +explanation on the part of the elderly and trustworthy family doctor and +remarks of an extraordinary breadth (and made at table too, almost +before the door had closed on Snagsby!) from Ellen’s elder sister, there +came a less reproductive phase....</p> + +<p>But by that time Lady Harman had acquired the habit of reading and the +habit of thinking over what she read, and from that it is an easy step +to thinking over oneself and the circumstances of one’s own life. The +one thing trains for the other.</p> + +<p>Now the chief circumstance in the life of Lady Harman was Sir Isaac. +Indeed as she grew to a clear consciousness of herself and her position, +it seemed to her he was not so much a circumstance as a circumvallation. +There wasn’t a direction in which she could turn without immediately +running up against him. He had taken possession of her extremely. And +from her first resignation to this as an inevitable fact she had come, +she hardly knew how, to a renewed disposition to regard this large and +various universe beyond him and outside of him, with something of the +same slight adventurousness she had felt before he so comprehensively +happened to her. After her first phase of despair she had really done +her best to honour the bargain she had rather unwittingly made and to +love and to devote herself and be a loyal and happy wife to this +clutching, hard-breathing little man who had got her, and it was the +insatiable excesses of his demands quite as much as any outer influence +that made her realize the impossibility of such a concentration.</p> + +<p>His was a supremely acquisitive and possessive character, so that he +insulted her utmost subjugations by an obtrusive suspicion and jealousy, +he was jealous of her childish worship of her dead father, jealous of +her disposition to go to church, jealous of the poet Wordsworth because +she liked to read his sonnets, jealous because she loved great music, +jealous when she wanted to go out; if she seemed passionless and she +seemed more and more passionless he was jealous, and the slightest gleam +of any warmth of temperament filled him with a vile and furious dread of +dishonouring possibilities. And the utmost resolution to believe in him +could not hide from her for ever the fact that his love manifested +itself almost wholly as a parade of ownership and a desire, without +kindliness, without any self-forgetfulness. All his devotion, his +self-abjection, had been the mere qualms of a craving, the flush of +eager courtship. Do as she would to overcome these realizations, forces +within her stronger than herself, primordial forces with the welfare of +all life in their keeping, cried out upon the meanness of his face, the +ugly pointed nose and the thin compressed lips, the weak neck, the +clammy hands, the ungainly nervous gestures, the tuneless whistling +between the clenched teeth. He would not let her forget a single detail. +Whenever she tried to look at any created thing, he thrust himself, like +one of his own open-air advertisements, athwart the attraction.</p> + +<p>As she grew up to an achieved womanhood—and it was even a physical +growing-up, for she added more than an inch of stature after her +marriage—her life became more and more consciously like a fencing match +in which her vision flashed over his head and under his arms and this +side of him and that, while with a toiling industry he fought to +intercept it. And from the complete acceptance of her matrimonial +submission, she passed on by almost insensible degrees towards a +conception of her life as a struggle, that seemed at first entirely +lonely and unsupported, to exist—<i>against</i> him.</p> + +<p>In every novel as in every picture there must be an immense +simplification, and so I tell the story of Lady Harman’s changing +attitude without any of those tangled leapings-forward or harkings-back, +those moods and counter moods and relapses which made up the necessary +course of her mind. But sometimes she was here and sometimes she was +there, sometimes quite back to the beginning an obedient, scrupulously +loyal and up-looking young wife, sometimes a wife concealing the +humiliation of an unhappy choice in a spurious satisfaction and +affection. And mixed up with widening spaces of criticism and +dissatisfaction and hostility there were, you must understand, moments +of real liking for this outrageous little man and streaks of an absurd +maternal tenderness for him. They had been too close together to avoid +that. She had a woman’s affection of ownership too, and disliked to see +him despised or bettered or untidy; even those ridiculous muddy hands +had given her a twinge of solicitude....</p> + +<p>And all the while she was trying to see the universe also, the great +background of their two little lives, and to think what it might mean +for her over and above their too obliterating relationship.</p> + +<h4>§6</h4> + +<p>It would be like counting the bacteria of an infection to trace how +ideas of insubordination came drifting into Sir Isaac’s Paradise. The +epidemic is in the air. There is no Tempter nowadays, no definitive +apple. The disturbing force has grown subtler, blows in now like a +draught, creeps and gathers like the dust,—a disseminated serpent. Sir +Isaac brought home his young, beautiful and rather crumpled and +astonished Eve and by all his standards he was entitled to be happy ever +afterwards. He knew of one danger, but against that he was very +watchful. Never once for six long years did she have a private duologue +with another male. But Mudie and Sir Jesse Boot sent parcels to the +house unchecked, the newspaper drifted in not even censored: the nurses +who guided Ellen through the essential incidents of a feminine career +talked of something called a “movement.” And there was Georgina....</p> + +<p>The thing they wanted they called the Vote, but that demand so hollow, +so eyeless, had all the terrifying effect of a mask. Behind that mask +was a formless invincible discontent with the lot of womanhood. It +wanted,—it was not clear what it wanted, but whatever it wanted, all +the domestic instincts of mankind were against admitting there was +anything it could want. That remarkable agitation had already worked up +to the thunderous pitch, there had been demonstrations at Public +Meetings, scenes in the Ladies’ Gallery and something like rioting in +Parliament Square before ever it occurred to Sir Isaac that this was a +disturbance that touched his home. He had supposed suffragettes were +ladies of all too certain an age with red noses and spectacles and a +masculine style of costume, who wished to be hugged by policemen. He +said as much rather knowingly and wickedly to Charterson. He could not +understand any woman not coveting the privileges of Lady Harman. And +then one day while Georgina and her mother were visiting them, as he was +looking over the letters at the breakfast table according to his custom +before giving them out, he discovered two identical newspaper packets +addressed to his wife and his sister-in-law, and upon them were these +words printed very plainly, “Votes for Women.”</p> + +<p>“Good Lord!” he cried. “What’s this? It oughtn’t to be allowed.” And he +pitched the papers at the wastepaper basket under the sideboard.</p> + +<p>“I’ll thank you,” said Georgina, “not to throw away our <i>Votes for +Women</i>. We subscribe to that.”</p> + +<p>“Eh?” cried Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>“We’re subscribers. Snagsby, just give us those papers.” (A difficult +moment for Snagsby.) He picked up the papers and looked at Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>“Put ’em down there,” said Sir Isaac, waving to the sideboard and then +in an ensuing silence handed two letters of no importance to his +mother-in-law. His face was pale and he was breathless. Snagsby with an +obvious tactfulness retired.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac watched the door close.</p> + +<p>His remark pointedly ignored Georgina.</p> + +<p>“What you been thinking about, Elly,” he asked, “subscribing to <i>that</i> +thing?”</p> + +<p>“I wanted to read it.”</p> + +<p>“But you don’t hold with all that Rubbish——”</p> + +<p>“<i>Rubbish!</i>” said Georgina, helping herself to marmalade.</p> + +<p>“Well, rot then, if you like,” said Sir Isaac, unamiably and panting.</p> + +<p>With that as Snagsby afterwards put it—for the battle raged so fiercely +as to go on even when he presently returned to the room—“the fat was in +the fire.” The Harman breakfast-table was caught up into the Great +Controversy with heat and fury like a tree that is overtaken by a forest +fire. It burnt for weeks, and smouldered still when the first white +heats had abated. I will not record the arguments of either side, they +were abominably bad and you have heard them all time after time; I do +not think that whatever side you have taken in this matter you would +find much to please you in Sir Isaac’s goadings or Georgina’s repartees. +Sir Isaac would ask if women were prepared to go as soldiers and +Georgina would enquire how many years of service he had done or horrify +her mother by manifest allusion to the agonies and dangers of +maternity,—things like that. It gave a new interest to breakfast for +Snagsby; and the peculiarly lady-like qualities of Mrs. Sawbridge, a +gift for silent, pallid stiffness, a disposition, tactful but +unsuccessful, to “change the subject,” an air of being about to leave +the room in disdain, had never shone with such baleful splendour. Our +interest here is rather with the effect of these remarkable disputes, +which echoed in Sir Isaac’s private talk long after Georgina had gone +again, upon Lady Harman. He could not leave this topic of feminine +emancipation alone, once it had been set going, and though Ellen would +always preface her remarks by, “Of course Georgina goes too far,” he +worried her slowly into a series of definite insurgent positions. Sir +Isaac’s attacks on Georgina certainly brought out a good deal of +absurdity in her positions, and Georgina at times left Sir Isaac without +a leg to stand on, and the net result of their disputes as of most human +controversies was not conviction for the hearer but release. Her mind +escaped between them, and went exploring for itself through the great +gaps they had made in the simple obedient assumptions of her girlhood. +That question originally put in Paradise, “Why shouldn’t we?” came into +her mind and stayed there. It is a question that marks a definite stage +in the departure from innocence. Things that had seemed opaque and +immutable appeared translucent and questionable. She began to read more +and more in order to learn things and get a light upon things, and less +and less to pass the time. Ideas came to her that seemed at first +strange altogether and then grotesquely justifiable and then crept to a +sort of acceptance by familiarity. And a disturbing intermittent sense +of a general responsibility increased and increased in her.</p> + +<p>You will understand this sense of responsibility which was growing up in +Lady Harman’s mind if you have felt it yourself, but if you have not +then you may find it a little difficult to understand. You see it comes, +when it comes at all, out of a phase of disillusionment. All children, I +suppose, begin by taking for granted the rightness of things in general, +the soundness of accepted standards, and many people are at least so +happy that they never really grow out of this assumption. They go to the +grave with an unbroken confidence that somewhere behind all the +immediate injustices and disorders of life, behind the antics of +politics, the rigidities of institutions, the pressure of custom and the +vagaries of law, there is wisdom and purpose and adequate provision, +they never lose that faith in the human household they acquired amongst +the directed securities of home. But for more of us and more there comes +a dissolution of these assurances; there comes illumination as the day +comes into a candle-lit uncurtained room. The warm lights that once +rounded off our world so completely are betrayed for what they are, +smoky and guttering candles. Beyond what once seemed a casket of dutiful +security is now a limitless and indifferent universe. Ours is the wisdom +or there is no wisdom; ours is the decision or there is no decision. +That burthen is upon each of us in the measure of our capacity. The +talent has been given us and we may not bury it.</p> + +<h4>§7</h4> + +<p>And as we reckon up the disturbing influences that were stirring Lady +Harman out of that life of acquiescences to which women are perhaps +even more naturally disposed than men, we may pick out the conversation +of Susan Burnet as something a little apart from the others, as +something with a peculiar barbed pointedness of its own that was yet in +other respects very representative of a multitude of nudges and nips and +pricks and indications that life was giving Lady Harman’s awaking mind. +Susan Burnet was a woman who came to renovate and generally do up the +Putney curtains and furniture and loose covers every spring; she was +Mrs. Crumble’s discovery, she was sturdy and short and she had open blue +eyes and an engaging simplicity of manner that attracted Lady Harman +from the outset. She was stuck away in one of the spare bedrooms and +there she was available for any one, so long, she explained, as they +didn’t fluster her when she was cutting out, with a flow of conversation +that not even a mouth full of pins seemed to interrupt. And Lady Harman +would go and watch Susan Burnet by the hour together and think what an +enviably independent young woman she was, and listen with interest and +something between horror and admiration to the various impressions of +life she had gathered during a hardy and adventurous career.</p> + +<p>Their early conversations were about Susan Burnet’s business and the +general condition of things in that world of upholsterers’ young women +in which Susan had lived until she perceived the possibilities of a +“connexion,” and set up for herself. And the condition of things in that +world, as Susan described it, brought home to Lady Harman just how +sheltered and limited her own upbringing had been. “It isn’t right,” +said Susan, “the way they send girls out with fellers into empty houses. +Naturally the men get persecuting them. They don’t seem hardly able to +help it, some of them, and I will say this for them, that a lot of the +girls go more than half way with them, leading them on. Still there’s a +sort of man won’t leave you alone. One I used to be sent out with and a +married man too he was, Oh!—he used to give me a time. Why I’ve bit his +hands before now, bit hard, before he’d leave go of me. It’s my opinion +the married men are worse than the single. Bolder they are. I pushed him +over a scuttle once and he hit his head against a bookcase. I was fair +frightened of him. ‘You little devil,’ he says; ‘I’ll be even with you +yet....’ Oh! I’ve been called worse things than that.... Of course a +respectable girl gets through with it, but it’s trying and to some it’s +a sort of temptation....”</p> + +<p>“I should have thought,” reflected Lady Harman, “you could have told +someone.”</p> + +<p>“It’s queer,” said Susan; “but it never seemed to me the sort of thing a +girl ought to go telling. It’s a kind of private thing. And besides, it +isn’t exactly easy to tell.... I suppose the Firm didn’t want to be +worried by complaints and disputes about that sort of thing. And it +isn’t always easy to say just which of the two is to blame.”</p> + +<p>“But how old are the girls they send out?” asked Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“Some’s as young as seventeen or eighteen. It all depends on the sort of +work that’s wanted to be done....”</p> + +<p>“Of course a lot of them have to marry....”</p> + +<p>This lurid little picture of vivid happenings in unoccupied houses and +particularly of the prim, industrious, capable Susan Burnet, biting +aggressive wrists, stuck in Lady Harman’s imagination. She seemed to be +looking into hitherto unsuspected pits of simple and violent living just +beneath her feet. Susan told some upholsteress love tales, real love +tales, with a warmth and honesty of passion in them that seemed at once +dreadful and fine to Lady Harman’s underfed imagination. Under +encouragement Susan expanded the picture, beyond these mere glimpses of +workshop and piece-work and furtive lust. It appeared that she was +practically the head of her family; there was a mother who had +specialized in ill-health, a sister of defective ability who stayed at +home, a brother in South Africa who was very good and sent home money, +and three younger sisters growing up. And father,—she evaded the +subject of father at first. Then presently Lady Harman had some glimpses +of an earlier phase in Susan Burnet’s life “before any of us were +earning money.” Father appeared as a kindly, ineffectual, insolvent +figure struggling to conduct a baker’s and confectioner’s business in +Walthamstow, mother was already specializing, there were various +brothers and sisters being born and dying. “How many were there of you +altogether?” asked Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“Thirteen there was. Father always used to laugh and say he’d had a fair +baker’s dozen. There was Luke to begin with——”</p> + +<p>Susan began to count on her fingers and recite braces of scriptural +names.</p> + +<p>She could only make up her tale to twelve. She became perplexed. Then +she remembered. “Of course!” she cried: “there was Nicodemus. He was +still-born. I <i>always</i> forget Nicodemus, poor little chap! But he +came—was it sixth or seventh?—seventh after Anna.”</p> + +<p>She gave some glimpses of her father and then there was a collapse of +which she fought shy. Lady Harman was too delicate to press her to talk +of that.</p> + +<p>But one day in the afternoon Susan’s tongue ran.</p> + +<p>She was telling how first she went to work before she was twelve.</p> + +<p>“But I thought the board schools——” said Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“I had to go before the committee,” said Susan. “I had to go before the +committee and ask to be let go to work. There they was, sitting round a +table in a great big room, and they was as kind as anything, one old +gentleman with a great white beard, he was as kind as could be. ‘Don’t +you be frightened, my dear,’ he says. ‘You tell us why you want to go +out working.’ ‘Well,’ I says, ‘<i>somebody’s</i> got to earn something,’ and +that made them laugh in a sort of fatherly way, and after that there +wasn’t any difficulty. You see it was after Father’s Inquest, and +everybody was disposed to be kind to us. ‘Pity they can’t all go +instead of this educational Tommy Rot,’ the old gentleman says. ‘You +learn to work, my dear’—and I did....”</p> + +<p>She paused.</p> + +<p>“Father’s inquest?” said Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>Susan seemed to brace herself to the occasion. “Father,” she said, “was +drowned. I know—I hadn’t told you that before. He was drowned in the +Lea. It’s always been a distress and humiliation to us there had to be +an Inquest. And they threw out things.... It’s why we moved to +Haggerston. It’s the worst that ever happened to us in all our lives. +Far worse. Worse than having the things sold or the children with +scarlet fever and having to burn everything.... I don’t like to talk +about it. I can’t help it but I don’t....</p> + +<p>“I don’t know why I talk to you as I do, Lady Harman, but I don’t seem +to mind talking to you. I don’t suppose I’ve opened my mouth to anyone +about it, not for years—except to one dear friend I’ve got—her who +persuaded me to be a church member. But what I’ve always said and what I +will always say is this, that I don’t believe any evil of Father, I +don’t believe, I won’t ever believe he took his life. I won’t even +believe he was in drink. I don’t know how he got in the river, but I’m +certain it wasn’t so. He was a weak man, was Father, I’ve never denied +he was a weak man. But a harder working man than he was never lived. He +worried, anyone would have worried seeing the worries he had. The shop +wasn’t paying as it was; often we never tasted meat for weeks together, +and then there came one of these Internationals, giving overweight and +underselling....”</p> + +<p>“One of these Internationals?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of them. They’re in the poorer +neighbourhoods chiefly. They sell teas and things mostly now but they +began as bakers’ shops and what they did was to come into a place and +undersell until all the old shops were ruined and shut up. That was what +they tried to do and Father hadn’t no more chance amongst them than a +mouse in a trap.... It was just like being run over. All the trade that +stayed with us after a bit was Bad Debts. You can’t blame people I +suppose for going where they get more and pay less, and it wasn’t till +we’d all gone right away to Haggerston that they altered things and put +the prices up again. Of course Father lost heart and all that. He didn’t +know what to do, he’d sunk all he had in the shop; he just sat and moped +about. Really,—he was pitiful. He wasn’t able to sleep; he used to get +up at nights and go about downstairs. Mother says she found him once +sweeping out the bakehouse at two o’clock in the morning. He got it into +his head that getting up like that would help him. But I don’t believe +and I won’t believe he wouldn’t have seen it through if he could. Not to +my dying day will I believe that....”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman reflected. “But couldn’t he have got work again—as a +baker?”</p> + +<p>“It’s hard after you’ve had a shop. You see all the younger men’ve come +on. They know the new ways. And a man who’s had a shop and failed, he’s +lost heart. And these stores setting up make everything drivinger. They +do things a different way. They make it harder for everyone.”</p> + +<p>Both Lady Harman and Susan Burnet reflected in silence for a few seconds +upon the International Stores. The sewing woman was the first to speak.</p> + +<p>“Things like that,” she said, “didn’t ought to be. One shop didn’t ought +to be allowed to set out to ruin another. It isn’t fair trading, it’s a +sort of murder. It oughtn’t to be allowed. How was father to know?...”</p> + +<p>“There’s got to be competition,” said Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“I don’t call that competition,” said Susan Burnet.</p> + +<p>“But,—I suppose they give people cheaper bread.”</p> + +<p>“They do for a time. Then when they’ve killed you they do what they +like.... Luke—he’s one of those who’ll say anything—well, he used to +say it was a regular Monopoly. But it’s hard on people who’ve set out to +live honest and respectable and bring up a family plain and decent to be +pushed out of the way like that.”</p> + +<p>“I suppose it is,” said Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“What was father to <i>do</i>?” said Susan, and turned to Sir Isaac’s +armchair from which this discourse had distracted her.</p> + +<p>And then suddenly, in a voice thick with rage, she burst out: “And then +Alice must needs go and take their money. That’s what sticks in <i>my</i> +throat.”</p> + +<p>Still on her knees she faced about to Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“Alice goes into one of their Ho’burn branches as a waitress, do what I +could to prevent her. It makes one mad to think of it. Time after time +I’ve said to her, ‘Alice,’ I’ve said, ‘sooner than touch their dirty +money I’d starve in the street.’ And she goes! She says it’s all +nonsense of me to bear a spite. Laughs at me! ‘Alice,’ I told her, ‘it’s +a wonder the spirit of poor father don’t rise up against you.’ And she +laughs. Calls that bearing a spite.... Of course she was little when it +happened. She can’t remember, not as I remember....”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman reflected for a time. “I suppose you don’t know,” she began, +addressing Susan’s industrious back; “you don’t know who—who owns these +International Stores?”</p> + +<p>“I suppose it’s some company,” said Susan. “I don’t see that it lets +them off—being in a company.”</p> + +<h4>§8</h4> + +<p>We have done much in the last few years to destroy the severe +limitations of Victorian delicacy, and all of us, from princesses and +prime-ministers’ wives downward, talk of topics that would have been +considered quite gravely improper in the nineteenth century. +Nevertheless, some topics have, if anything, become more indelicate than +they were, and this is especially true of the discussion of income, of +any discussion that tends, however remotely, to inquire, Who is it at +the base of everything who really pays in blood and muscle and +involuntary submissions for <i>your</i> freedom and magnificence? This, +indeed, is almost the ultimate surviving indecency. So that it was with +considerable private shame and discomfort that Lady Harman pursued even +in her privacy the train of thought that Susan Burnet had set going. It +had been conveyed into her mind long ago, and it had settled down there +and grown into a sort of security, that the International Bread and Cake +Stores were a very important contribution to Progress, and that Sir +Isaac, outside the gates of his home, was a very useful and beneficial +personage, and richly meriting a baronetcy. She hadn’t particularly +analyzed this persuasion, but she supposed him engaged in a kind of +daily repetition, but upon modern scientific lines, of the miracle of +the loaves and fishes, feeding a great multitude that would otherwise +have gone hungry. She knew, too, from the advertisements that flowered +about her path through life, that this bread in question was +exceptionally clean and hygienic; whole front pages of the <i>Daily +Messenger</i>, headed the “Fauna of Small Bakehouses,” and adorned with a +bordering of <i>Blatta orientalis</i>, the common cockroach, had taught her +that, and she knew that Sir Isaac’s passion for purity had also led to +the <i>Old Country Gazette’s</i> spirited and successful campaign for a +non-party measure securing additional bakehouse regulation and +inspection. And her impression had been that the growing and developing +refreshment side of the concern was almost a public charity; Sir Isaac +gave, he said, a larger, heavier scone, a bigger pat of butter, a more +elegant teapot, ham more finely cut and less questionable pork-pies +than any other system of syndicated tea-shops. She supposed that +whenever he sat late at night going over schemes and papers, or when he +went off for days together to Cardiff or Glasgow or Dublin, or such-like +centres, or when he became preoccupied at dinner and whistled +thoughtfully through his teeth, he was planning to increase the amount +or diminish the cost of tea and cocoa-drenched farinaceous food in the +stomachs of that section of our national adolescence which goes out +daily into the streets of our great cities to be fed. And she knew his +vans and catering were indispensable to the British Army upon its +manœuvres....</p> + +<p>Now the smashing up of the Burnet family by the International Stores was +disagreeably not in the picture of these suppositions. And the +remarkable thing is that this one little tragedy wouldn’t for a moment +allow itself to be regarded as an exceptional accident in an otherwise +fair vast development. It remained obstinately a specimen—of the other +side of the great syndication.</p> + +<p>It was just as if she had been doubting subconsciously all along.... In +the silence of the night she lay awake and tried to make herself believe +that the Burnet case was just a unique overlooked disaster, that it +needed only to come to Sir Isaac’s attention to be met by the fullest +reparation....</p> + +<p>After all she did not bring it to Sir Isaac’s attention.</p> + +<p>But one morning, while this phase of new doubts was still lively in her +mind, Sir Isaac told her he was going down to Brighton, and then along +the coast road in a car to Portsmouth, to pay a few surprise visits, +and see how the machine was working. He would be away a night, an +unusual breach in his habits.</p> + +<p>“Are you thinking of any new branches, Isaac?”</p> + +<p>“I may have a look at Arundel.”</p> + +<p>“Isaac.” She paused to frame her question carefully. “I suppose there +are some shops at Arundel now.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve got to see to that.”</p> + +<p>“If you open——I suppose the old shops get hurt. What becomes of the +people if they do get hurt?”</p> + +<p>“That’s <i>their</i> look-out,” said Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>“Isn’t it bad for them?”</p> + +<p>“Progress is Progress, Elly.”</p> + +<p>“It <i>is</i> bad for them. I suppose——Wouldn’t it be sometimes kinder if +you took over the old shop—made a sort of partner of him, or +something?”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac shook his head. “I want younger men,” he said. “You can’t get +a move on the older hands.”</p> + +<p>“But, then, it’s rather bad——I suppose these little men you shut +up,—some of them must have families.”</p> + +<p>“You’re theorizing a bit this morning, Elly,” said Sir Isaac, looking up +over his coffee cup.</p> + +<p>“I’ve been thinking—about these little people.”</p> + +<p>“Someone’s been talking to you about my shops,” said Sir Isaac, and +stuck out an index finger. “If that’s Georgina——”</p> + +<p>“It isn’t Georgina,” said Lady Harman, but she had it very clear in her +mind that she must not say who it was.</p> + +<p>“You can’t make a business without squeezing somebody,” said Sir Isaac. +“It’s easy enough to make a row about any concern that grows a bit. Some +people would like to have every business tied down to a maximum turnover +and so much a year profit. I dare say you’ve been hearing of these +articles in the <i>London Lion</i>. Pretty stuff it is, too. This fuss about +the little shopkeepers; that’s a new racket. I’ve had all that row about +the waitresses before, and the yarn about the Normandy eggs, and all +that, but I don’t see that you need go reading it against me, and +bringing it up at the breakfast-table. A business is a business, it +isn’t a charity, and I’d like to know where you and I would be if we +didn’t run the concern on business lines.... Why, that <i>London Lion</i> +fellow came to me with the first two of those articles before the thing +began. I could have had the whole thing stopped if I liked, if I’d +chosen to take the back page of his beastly cover. That shows the stuff +the whole thing is made of. That shows you. Why!—he’s just a +blackmailer, that’s what he is. Much he cares for my waitresses if he +can get the dibs. Little shopkeepers, indeed! I know ’em! Nice martyrs +they are! There isn’t one wouldn’t <i>skin</i> all the others if he got half +a chance....”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac gave way to an extraordinary fit of nagging anger. He got up +and stood upon the hearthrug to deliver his soul the better. It was an +altogether unexpected and illuminating outbreak. He was flushed with +guilt. The more angry and eloquent he became, the more profoundly +thoughtful grew the attentive lady at the head of his table....</p> + +<p>When at last Sir Isaac had gone off in the car to Victoria, Lady Harman +rang for Snagsby. “Isn’t there a paper,” she asked, “called the <i>London +Lion</i>?”</p> + +<p>“It isn’t one I think your ladyship would like,” said Snagsby, gently +but firmly.</p> + +<p>“I know. But I want to see it. I want copies of all the issues in which +there have been articles upon the International Stores.”</p> + +<p>“They’re thoroughly volgar, me lady,” said Snagsby, with a large +dissuasive smile.</p> + +<p>“I want you to go out into London and get them now.”</p> + +<p>Snagsby hesitated and went. Within five minutes he reappeared with a +handful of buff-covered papers.</p> + +<p>“There ’appened to be copies in the pantry, me lady,” he said. “We can’t +imagine ’ow they got there; someone must have brought them in, but ’ere +they are quite at your service, me lady.” He paused for a discreet +moment. Something indescribably confidential came into his manner. “I +doubt if Sir Isaac will quite like to ’ave them left about, me +lady—after you done with them.”</p> + +<p>She was in a mood of discovery. She sat in the room that was all +furnished in pink (her favourite colour) and read a bitter, malicious, +coarsely written and yet insidiously credible account of her husband’s +business methods. Something within herself seemed to answer, “But didn’t +you know this all along?” That large conviction that her wealth and +position were but the culmination of a great and honourable social +service, a conviction that had been her tacit comfort during much +distasteful loyalty seemed to shrivel and fade. No doubt the writer was +a thwarted blackmailer; even her accustomed mind could distinguish a +twang of some such vicious quality in his sentences; but that did not +alter the realities he exhibited and exaggerated. There was a +description of how Sir Isaac pounced on his managers that was manifestly +derived from a manager he had dismissed. It was dreadfully like him. +Convincingly like him. There was a statement of the wages he paid his +girl assistants and long extracts from his codes of rules and schedules +of fines....</p> + +<p>When she put down the paper she was suddenly afflicted by a vivid vision +of Susan Burnet’s father, losing heart and not knowing what to do. She +had an unreasonable feeling that Susan Burnet’s father must have been a +small, kindly, furry, bunnyish, little man. Of course there had to be +progress and the survival of the fittest. She found herself weighing +what she imagined Susan Burnet’s father to be like, against the ferrety +face, stooping shoulders and scheming whistle of Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>There were times now when she saw her husband with an extreme +distinctness.</p> + +<h4>§9</h4> + +<p>As this cold and bracing realization that all was not right with her +position, with Sir Isaac’s business procedure and the world generally, +took possession of Lady Harman’s thoughts there came also with it and +arising out of it quite a series of new moods and dispositions. At times +she was very full of the desire “to do something,” something that would, +as it were, satisfy and assuage this growing uneasiness of +responsibility in her mind. At times her consuming wish was not to +assuage but escape from this urgency. It worried her and made her feel +helpless, and she wanted beyond anything else to get back to that +child’s world where all experiences are adventurous and everything is +finally right. She felt, I think, that it was a little unfair to her +that this something within her should be calling upon her to take all +sorts of things gravely—hadn’t she been a good wife and brought four +children into the world...?</p> + +<p>I am setting down here as clearly as possible what wasn’t by any means +clear in Lady Harman’s mind. I am giving you side by side phases that +never came side by side in her thoughts but which followed and ousted +and obliterated one another. She had moods of triviality. She had moods +of magnificence. She had moods of intense secret hostility to her urgent +little husband, and moods of genial tolerance for everything there was +in her life. She had moods, and don’t we all have moods?—of scepticism +and cynicism, much profounder than the conventions and limitations of +novel-writing permit us to tell here. And for hardly any of these moods +had she terms and recognitions....</p> + +<p>It isn’t a natural thing to keep on worrying about the morality of +one’s material prosperity. These are proclivities superinduced by modern +conditions of the conscience. There is a natural resistance in every +healthy human being to such distressful heart-searchings. Strong +instincts battled in Lady Harman against this intermittent sense of +responsibility that was beginning to worry her. An immense lot of her +was for simply running away from these troublesome considerations, for +covering herself up from them, for distraction.</p> + +<p>And about this time she happened upon “Elizabeth and her German Garden,” +and was very greatly delighted and stimulated by that little sister of +Montaigne. She was charmed by the book’s fresh gaiety, by its gallant +resolve to set off all the good things there are in this world, the +sunshine and flowers and laughter, against the limitations and +thwartings and disappointments of life. For a time it seemed to her that +these brave consolations were solutions, and she was stirred by an +imitative passion. How stupid had she not been to let life and Sir Isaac +overcome her! She felt that she must make herself like Elizabeth, +exactly like Elizabeth; she tried forthwith, and a certain difficulty +she found, a certain deadness, she ascribed to the square modernity of +her house and something in the Putney air. The house was too large, it +dominated the garden and controlled her. She felt she must get away to +some place that was chiefly exterior, in the sunshine, far from towns +and struggling, straining, angry and despairing humanity, from +syndicated shops and all the embarrassing challenges of life. Somehow +there it would be possible to keep Sir Isaac at arm’s length; and the +ghost of Susan Burnet’s father could be left behind to haunt the square +rooms of the London house. And there she would live, horticultural, +bookish, whimsical, witty, defiant, happily careless.</p> + +<p>And it was this particular conception of evasion that had set her +careering about the countryside in her car, looking for conceivable +houses of refuge from this dark novelty of social and personal care, and +that had driven her into the low long room of Black Strand and the +presence of Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>Of what ensued and the appearance and influence of Lady Beach-Mandarin +and how it led among other things to a lunch invitation from that lady +the reader has already been informed.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06" id="chap06"></a>CHAPTER THE SIXTH</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Adventurous Afternoon</span></p> + +<h4>§1</h4> + +<p>You will perhaps remember that before I fell into this extensive +digression about Lady Harman’s upbringing, we had got to the entry of +Mrs. Sawbridge into the house bearing a plunder of Sir Isaac’s best +roses. She interrupted a conversation of some importance. Those roses at +this point are still unwithered and fragrant, and moreover they are +arranged according to Mrs. Sawbridge’s ideas of elegance about Sir +Isaac’s home.... And Sir Isaac, when that conversation could be renewed, +categorically forbade Lady Harman to go to Lady Beach-Mandarin’s lunch +and Lady Harman went to Lady Beach-Mandarin’s lunch.</p> + +<p>She had some peculiar difficulties in getting to that lunch.</p> + +<p>It is necessary to tell certain particulars. They are particulars that +will distress the delicacy of Mrs. Sawbridge unspeakably if ever she +chances to read this book. But a story has to be told. You see Sir Isaac +Harman had never considered it advisable to give his wife a private +allowance. Whatever she wished to have, he maintained, she could have. +The bill would afterwards be paid by his cheque on the first day of the +month following the receipt of the bill. He found a generous pleasure in +writing these cheques, and Lady Harman was magnificently housed, fed and +adorned. Moreover, whenever she chose to ask for money he gave her +money, usually double of what she demanded,—and often a kiss or so into +the bargain. But after he had forbidden her to go to Lady +Beach-Mandarin’s so grave an estrangement ensued that she could not ask +him for money. A door closed between them. And the crisis had come at an +unfortunate moment. She possessed the sum of five shillings and +eightpence.</p> + +<p>She perceived quite early that this shortness of money would greatly +embarrass the rebellion she contemplated. She was exceptionally ignorant +of most worldly things, but she knew there was never yet a campaign +without a war chest. She felt entitled to money....</p> + +<p>She planned several times to make a demand for replenishment with a +haughty dignity; the haughty dignity was easy enough to achieve, but the +demand was not. A sensitive dread of her mother’s sympathetic curiosity +barred all thoughts of borrowing in that direction,—she and her mother +“never discussed money matters.” She did not want to get Georgina into +further trouble. And besides, Georgina was in Devonshire.</p> + +<p>Even to get to Lady Beach-Mandarin’s became difficult under these +circumstances. She knew that Clarence, though he would take her into the +country quite freely, had been instructed, on account of Sir Isaac’s +expressed dread of any accident happening to her while alone, not to +plunge with her into the vortex of London traffic. Only under direct +orders from Sir Isaac would Clarence take her down Putney Hill; though +she might go up and away—to anywhere. She knew nothing of pawnshops or +any associated methods of getting cash advances, and the possibility of +using the telephone to hire an automobile never occurred to her. But she +was fully resolved to go. She had one advantage in the fact that Sir +Isaac didn’t know the precise date of the disputed engagement. When that +arrived she spent a restless morning and dressed herself at last with +great care. She instructed Peters, her maid, who participated in these +preparations with a mild astonishment, that she was going out to lunch, +asked her to inform Mrs. Sawbridge of the fact and, outwardly serene, +made a bolt for it down the staircase and across the hall. The great +butler appeared; she had never observed how like a large note of +interrogation his forward contours could be.</p> + +<p>“I shall be out to lunch, Snagsby,” she said, and went past him into the +sunshine.</p> + +<p>She left a discreetly astonished Snagsby behind her.</p> + +<p>(“Now where are we going out to lunch?” said Snagsby presently to +Peters.</p> + +<p>“I’ve never known her so particular with her clothes,” said the maid.</p> + +<p>“Never before—not in the same way; it’s something new and special to +this affair,” Snagsby reflected, “I wonder now if Sir Isaac....”</p> + +<p>“One can’t help observing things,” said the maid, after a pause. “Mute +though we be.”)</p> + +<p>Lady Harman had the whole five and eightpence with her. She had managed +to keep it intact in her jewel case, declaring she had no change when +any small demands were made on her.</p> + +<p>With an exhilaration so great that she wanted sorely to laugh aloud she +walked out through her big open gates and into the general publicity of +Putney Hill. Why had she not done as much years ago? How long she had +been, working up to this obvious thing! She hadn’t been out in such +complete possession of herself since she had been a schoolgirl. She held +up a beautifully gloved hand to a private motor-car going downhill and +then to an engaged taxi going up, and then with a slightly dashed +feeling, picked up her skirt and walked observantly downhill. Her reason +dispelled a transitory impression that these two vehicles were on Sir +Isaac’s side against her.</p> + +<p>There was quite a nice taxi on the rank at the bottom of the hill. The +driver, a pleasant-looking young man in a white cap, seemed to have been +waiting for her in particular; he met her timid invitation halfway and +came across the road to her and jumped down and opened the door. He took +her instructions as though they were after his own heart, and right in +front of her as she sat was a kind of tin cornucopia full of artificial +flowers that seemed like a particular attention to her. His fare was two +and eightpence and she gave him four shillings. He seemed quite +gratified by her largesse, his manner implied he had always thought as +much of her, from first to last their relations had been those of sunny +contentment, and it was only as she ascended the steps of Lady +Beach-Mandarin’s portico, that it occurred to her that she now had +insufficient money for an automobile to take her home. But there were +railways and buses and all sorts of possibilities; the day was an +adventure; and she entered the drawing-room with a brow that was +beautifully unruffled. She wanted to laugh still; it animated her eyes +and lips with the pleasantest little stir you can imagine.</p> + +<p>“A-a-a-a-a-h!” cried Lady Beach-Mandarin in a high note, and threw +out—it had an effect of being quite a number of arms—as though she was +one of those brass Indian goddesses one sees.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman felt taken in at once to all that capacious bosom involved +and contained....</p> + +<h4>§2</h4> + +<p>It was quite an amusing lunch. But any lunch would have been amusing to +Lady Harman in the excitement of her first act of deliberate +disobedience. She had never been out to lunch alone in all her life +before; she experienced a kind of scared happiness, she felt like +someone at Lourdes who has just thrown away crutches. She was seated +between a pink young man with an eyeglass whose place was labelled +“Bertie Trevor” and who was otherwise unexplained, and Mr. Brumley. She +was quite glad to see Mr. Brumley again, and no doubt her eyes showed +it. She had hoped to see him. Miss Sharsper was sitting nearly opposite +to her, a real live novelist pecking observations out of life as a hen +pecks seeds amidst scenery, and next beyond was a large-headed +inattentive fluffy person who was Mr. Keystone the well-known critic. +And there was Agatha Alimony under a rustling vast hat of green-black +cock’s feathers next to Sir Markham Crosby, with whom she had been +having an abusive controversy in the <i>Times</i> and to whom quite +elaborately she wouldn’t speak, and there was Lady Viping with her +lorgnette and Adolphus Blenker, Horatio’s younger and if possible more +gentlemanly brother—Horatio of the <i>Old Country Gazette</i> that is—sole +reminder that there was such a person as Sir Isaac in the world. Lady +Beach-Mandarin’s mother and the Swiss governess and the tall but +retarded daughter, Phyllis, completed the party. The reception was +lively and cheering; Lady Beach-Mandarin enfolded her guests in +generosities and kept them all astir like a sea-swell under a squadron, +and she introduced Lady Harman to Miss Alimony by public proclamation +right across the room because there were two lavish tables of +bric-à-brac, a marble bust of old Beach-Mandarin and most of the rest of +the party in the way. And at the table conversation was like throwing +bread, you never knew whom you might hit or who might hit you. (But Lady +Beach-Mandarin produced an effect of throwing whole loaves.) Bertie +Trevor was one of those dancing young men who talk to a woman as though +they were giving a dog biscuits, and mostly it was Mr. Brumley who did +such talking as reached Lady Harman’s ear.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley was in very good form that day. He had contrived to remind +her of all their Black Strand talk while they were still eating <i>Petites +Bouchées à la Reine</i>. “Have you found that work yet?” he asked and +carried her mind to the core of her situation. Then they were snatched +up into a general discussion of Bazaars. Sir Markham spoke of a great +bazaar that was to be held on behalf of one of the many Shakespear +Theatre movements that were then so prevalent. Was Lady Beach-Mandarin +implicated? Was anyone? He told of novel features in contemplation. He +generalized about bazaars and, with an air of having forgotten the +presence of Miss Alimony, glanced at the Suffrage Bazaar—it was a +season of bazaars. He thought poorly of the Suffrage Bazaar. The hostess +intervened promptly with anecdotes of her own cynical daring as a +Bazaar-seller, Miss Sharsper offered fragments of a reminiscence about +signing one of her own books for a Bookstall, Blenker told a well-known +Bazaar anecdote brightly and well, and the impending skirmish was +averted.</p> + +<p>While the Bazaar talk still whacked to and fro about the table Mr. +Brumley got at Lady Harman’s ear again. “Rather tantalizing these +meetings at table,” he said. “It’s like trying to talk while you swim in +a rough sea....”</p> + +<p>Then Lady Beach-Mandarin intervened with demands for support for her own +particular Bazaar project and they were eating salad before there was a +chance of another word between them. “I must confess that when I want to +talk to people I like to get them alone,” said Mr. Brumley, and gave +form to thoughts that were already on the verge of crystallization in +her own mind. She had been recalling that she had liked his voice +before, noting something very kindly and thoughtful and brotherly about +his right profile and thinking how much an hour’s talk with him would +help to clear up her ideas.</p> + +<p>“But it’s so difficult to get one alone,” said Lady Harman, and suddenly +an idea of the utmost daring and impropriety flashed into her mind. She +was on the verge of speaking it forthwith and then didn’t, she met +something in his eye that answered her own and then Lady Beach-Mandarin +was foaming over them like a dam-burst over an American town.</p> + +<p>“What do <i>you</i> think, Mr. Brumley?” demanded Lady Beach-Mandarin.</p> + +<p>“?”</p> + +<p>“About Sir Markham’s newspaper symposium. They asked him what allowance +he gave his wife. Sent a prepaid reply telegram.”</p> + +<p>“But he hasn’t got a wife!”</p> + +<p>“They don’t stick at a little thing like that,” said Sir Markham grimly.</p> + +<p>“I think a husband and wife ought to have everything in common like the +early Christians,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin. “<i>We</i> always did,” and so +got the discussion afloat again off the sandbank of Mr. Brumley’s +inattention.</p> + +<p>It was quite a good discussion and Lady Harman contributed an +exceptionally alert and intelligent silence. Sir Markham distrusted Lady +Beach-Mandarin’s communism and thought that anyhow it wouldn’t do for a +financier or business man. He favoured an allowance. “So did Sir +Joshua,” said the widow Viping. This roused Agatha Alimony. “Allowance +indeed!” she cried. “Is a wife to be on no better footing than a +daughter? The whole question of a wife’s financial autonomy needs +reconsidering....”</p> + +<p>Adolphus Blenker became learned and lucid upon Pin-money and dowry and +the customs of savage tribes, and Mr. Brumley helped with +corroboration....</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley managed to say just one other thing to Lady Harman before +the lunch was over. It struck her for a moment as being irrelevant. “The +gardens at Hampton Court,” he said, “are delightful just now. Have you +seen them? Autumnal fires. All the September perennials lifting their +spears in their last great chorus. It’s the <i>Götterdämmerung</i> of the +year.”</p> + +<p>She was going out of the room before she appreciated his possible +intention.</p> + +<p>Lady Beach-Mandarin delegated Sir Markham to preside over the men’s +cigars and bounced and slapped her four ladies upstairs to the +drawing-room. Her mother disappeared and so did Phyllis and the +governess. Lady Harman heard a large aside to Lady Viping: “Isn’t she +perfectly lovely?” glanced to discover the lorgnette in appreciative +action, and then found herself drifting into a secluded window-seat and +a duologue with Miss Agatha Alimony. Miss Alimony was one of that large +and increasing number of dusky, grey-eyed ladies who go through life +with an air of darkly incomprehensible significance. She led off Lady +Harman as though she took her away to reveal unheard-of mysteries and +her voice was a contralto undertone that she emphasized in some +inexplicable way by the magnetic use of her eyes. Her hat of cock’s +feathers which rustled like familiar spirits greatly augmented the +profundity of her effect. As she spoke she glanced guardedly at the +other ladies at the end of the room and from first to last she seemed +undecided in her own mind whether she was a conspirator or a prophetess. +She had heard of Lady Harman before, she had been longing impatiently to +talk to her all through the lunch. “You are just what we want,” said +Agatha. “What who want?” asked Lady Harman, struggling against the +hypnotic influence of her interlocutor. “<i>We</i>,” said Miss Agatha, “the +Cause. The G.S.W.S.</p> + +<p>“We want just such people as you,” she repeated, and began in panting +rhetorical sentences to urge the militant cause.</p> + +<p>For her it was manifestly a struggle against “the Men.” Miss Alimony had +no doubts of her sex. It had nothing to learn, nothing to be forgiven, +it was compact of obscured and persecuted marvels, it needed only +revelation. “They know Nothing,” she said of the antagonist males, +bringing deep notes out of the melodious caverns of her voice; “they +know <i>Nothing</i> of the Deeper Secrets of Woman’s Nature.” Her discourse +of a general feminine insurrection fell in very closely with the spirit +of Lady Harman’s private revolt. “We want the Vote,” said Agatha, “and +we want the Vote because the Vote means Autonomy. And then——”</p> + +<p>She paused voluminously. She had already used that word “Autonomy” at +the lunch table and it came to her hearer to supply a long-felt want. +Now she poured meanings into it, and Lady Harman with each addition +realized more clearly that it was still a roomy sack for more. “A woman +should be absolute mistress of herself,” said Miss Alimony, “absolute +mistress of her person. She should be free to develop——”</p> + +<p>Germinating phrases these were in Lady Harman’s ear.</p> + +<p>She wanted to know about the Suffrage movement from someone less +generously impatient than Georgina, for Georgina always lost her temper +about it and to put it fairly <i>ranted</i>, this at any rate was serene and +confident, and she asked tentative ill-formed questions and felt her way +among Miss Alimony’s profundities. She had her doubts, her instinctive +doubts about this campaign of violence, she doubted its wisdom, she +doubted its rightness, and she perceived, but she found it difficult to +express her perception, that Miss Alimony wasn’t so much answering her +objections as trying to swamp her with exalted emotion. And if there was +any flaw whatever in her attention to Miss Alimony’s stirring talk, it +was because she was keeping a little look-out in the tail of her eye +for the reappearance of the men, and more particularly for the +reappearance of Mr. Brumley with whom she had a peculiar feeling of +uncompleted relations. And at last the men came and she caught his +glance and saw that her feeling was reciprocated.</p> + +<p>She was presently torn from Agatha, who gasped with pain at the parting +and pursued her with a sedulous gaze as a doctor might watch an injected +patient, she parted with Lady Beach-Mandarin with a vast splash of +enthusiasm and mutual invitations, and Lady Viping came and pressed her +to come to dinner and rapped her elbow with her lorgnette to emphasize +her invitation. And Lady Harman after a still moment for reflection +athwart which the word Autonomy flickered, accepted this invitation +also.</p> + +<h4>§3</h4> + +<p>Mr. Brumley hovered for a few moments in the hall conversing with Lady +Beach-Mandarin’s butler, whom he had known for some years and helped +about a small investment, and who was now being abjectly polite and +grateful to him for his attention. It gave Mr. Brumley a nice feudal +feeling to establish and maintain such relationships. The furry-eyed boy +fumbled with the sticks and umbrellas in the background and wondered if +he too would ever climb to these levels of respectful gilt-tipped +friendliness. Mr. Brumley hovered the more readily because he knew Lady +Harman was with the looking-glass in the little parlour behind the +dining-room on her way to the outer world. At last she emerged. It was +instantly manifest to Mr. Brumley that she had expected to find him +there. She smiled frankly at him, with the faintest admission of +complicity in her smile.</p> + +<p>“Taxi, milady?” said the butler.</p> + +<p>She seemed to reflect. “No, I will walk.” She hesitated over a glove +button. “Mr. Brumley, is there a Tube station near here?”</p> + +<p>“Not two minutes. But can’t I perhaps take you in a taxi?”</p> + +<p>“I’d rather walk.”</p> + +<p>“I will show you——”</p> + +<p>He found himself most agreeably walking off with her.</p> + +<p>Still more agreeable things were to follow for Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>She appeared to meditate upon a sudden idea. She disregarded some +conversational opening of his that he forgot in the instant. “Mr. +Brumley,” she said, “I didn’t intend to go directly home.”</p> + +<p>“I’m altogether at your service,” said Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“At least,” said Lady Harman with that careful truthfulness of hers, “it +occurred to me during lunch that I wouldn’t go directly home.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley reined in an imagination that threatened to bolt with him.</p> + +<p>“I want,” said Lady Harman, “to go to Kensington Gardens, I think. This +can’t be far from Kensington Gardens—and I want to sit there on a green +chair and—meditate—and afterwards I want to find a tube railway or +something that will take me back to Putney. There is really no need for +me to go directly home.... It’s very stupid of me but I don’t know my +way about London as a rational creature should do. So will you take me +and put me in a green chair and—tell me how afterwards I can find the +Tube and get home? Do you mind?”</p> + +<p>“All my time, so long as you want it, is at your service,” said Mr. +Brumley with convincing earnestness. “And it’s not five minutes to the +gardens. And afterwards a taxi-cab——”</p> + +<p>“No,” said Lady Harman mindful of her one-and-eightpence, “I prefer a +tube. But that we can talk about later. You’re sure, Mr. Brumley, I’m +not invading your time?”</p> + +<p>“I wish you could see into my mind,” said Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>She became almost barefaced. “It is so true,” she said, “that at lunch +one can’t really talk to anyone. And I’ve so wanted to talk to you. Ever +since we met before.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley conveyed an unfeigned delight.</p> + +<p>“Since then,” said Lady Harman, “I’ve read your <i>Euphemia</i> books.” Then +after a little unskilful pause, “again.” Then she blushed and added, “I +<i>had</i> read one of them, you know, before.”</p> + +<p>“Exactly,” he said with an infinite helpfulness.</p> + +<p>“And you seem so sympathetic, so understanding. I feel that all sorts of +things that are muddled in my mind would come clear if I could have a +really Good Talk. To you....”</p> + +<p>They were now through the gates approaching the Albert Memorial. Mr. +Brumley was filled with an idea so desirable that it made him fear to +suggest it.</p> + +<p>“Of course we can talk very comfortably here,” he said, “under these +great trees. But I do so wish——Have you seen those great borders at +Hampton Court? The whole place is glowing, and in such sunshine as +this——A taxi—will take us there under the hour. If you are free until +half-past five.”</p> + +<p><i>Why shouldn’t she?</i></p> + +<p>The proposal seemed so outrageous to all the world of Lady Harman that +in her present mood she felt it was her duty in the cause of womanhood +to nerve herself and accept it....</p> + +<p>“I mustn’t be later than half-past five.”</p> + +<p>“We could snatch a glimpse of it all and be back before then.”</p> + +<p>“In that case——It would be very agreeable.”</p> + +<p>(<i>Why shouldn’t she?</i> It would no doubt make Sir Isaac furiously +angry—if he heard of it. But it was the sort of thing other women of +her class did; didn’t all the novels testify? She had a perfect +right——</p> + +<p>And besides, Mr. Brumley was so entirely harmless.)</p> + +<h4>§4</h4> + +<p>It had been Lady Harman’s clear intention to have a luminous and +illuminating discussion of the peculiar difficulties and perplexities of +her position with Mr. Brumley. Since their first encounter this idea +had grown up in her mind. She was one of those women who turn +instinctively to men and away from women for counsel. There was to her +perception something wise and kindly and reassuring in him; she felt +that he had lived and suffered and understood and that he was ready to +help other people to live; his heart she knew from his published works +was buried with his dead Euphemia, and he seemed as near a thing to a +brother and a friend as she was ever likely to meet. She wanted to tell +him all this and then to broach her teeming and tangled difficulties, +about her own permissible freedoms, about her social responsibilities, +about Sir Isaac’s business. But now as their taxi dodged through the +traffic of Kensington High Street and went on its way past Olympia and +so out westwards, she found it extremely difficult to fix her mind upon +the large propositions with which it had been her intention to open. Do +as she would to feel that this was a momentous occasion, she could not +suppress, she could not ignore an obstinate and entirely undignified +persuasion that she was having a tremendous lark. The passing vehicles, +various motors, omnibuses, vans, carriages, the thronging pedestrians, +the shops and houses, were all so distractingly interesting that at last +she had to put it fairly to herself whether she hadn’t better resign +herself to the sensations of the present and reserve that sustained +discussion for an interval she foresaw as inevitable on some comfortable +seat under great trees at Hampton Court. You cannot talk well and +penetratingly about fundamental things when you are in a not too +well-hung taxi which is racing to get ahead of a vast red +motor-omnibus....</p> + +<p>With a certain discretion Mr. Brumley had instructed the chauffeur to +cross the river not at Putney but at Hammersmith, and so they went by +Barnes station and up a still almost rural lane into Richmond Park, and +there suddenly they were among big trees and bracken and red deer and it +might have been a hundred miles from London streets. Mr. Brumley +directed the driver to make a detour that gave them quite all the best +of the park.</p> + +<p>The mind of Mr. Brumley was also agreeably excited and dispersed on this +occasion. It was an occasion of which he had been dreaming very +frequently of late, he had invented quite remarkable dialogues during +those dreams, and now he too was conversationally inadequate and with a +similar feeling of unexpected adventure. He was now no more ready to go +to the roots of things than Lady Harman. He talked on the way down +chiefly of the route they were following, of the changes in the London +traffic due to motor traction and of the charm and amenity of Richmond +Park. And it was only after they had arrived at Hampton Court and +dismissed the taxi and spent some time upon the borders, that they came +at last to a seat under a grove beside a long piece of water bearing +water lilies, and sat down and made a beginning with the Good Talk. Then +indeed she tried to gather together the heads of her perplexity and Mr. +Brumley did his best to do justice to confidence she reposed in him....</p> + +<p>It wasn’t at all the conversation he had dreamt of; it was halting, it +was inconclusive, it was full of a vague dissatisfaction.</p> + +<p>The roots of this dissatisfaction lay perhaps more than anything else in +her inattention to him—how shall I say it?—as <i>Him</i>. Hints have been +conveyed to the reader already that for Mr. Brumley the universe was +largely a setting, a tangle, a maze, a quest enshrining at the heart of +it and adumbrating everywhere, a mystical Her, and his experience of +this world had pointed him very definitely to the conclusion that for +that large other half of mankind which is woman, the quality of things +was reciprocal and centred, for all the appearances and pretences of +other interests, in—Him. And he was disposed to believe that the other +things in life, not merely the pomp and glories but the faiths and +ambitions and devotions, were all demonstrably little more than posings +and dressings of this great duality. A large part of his own interests +and of the interests of the women he knew best, was the sustained and in +some cases recurrent discovery and elaboration of lights and glimpses of +Him or Her as the case might be, in various definite individuals; and it +was a surprise to him, it perplexed him to find that this lovely person, +so beautifully equipped for those mutual researches which constituted, +he felt, the heart of life, was yet completely in her manner unaware of +this primary sincerity and looking quite simply, as it were, over him +and through him at such things as the ethics of the baking, +confectionery and refreshment trade and the limits of individual +responsibility in these matters. The conclusion that she was +“unawakened” was inevitable.</p> + +<p>The dream of “awakening” this Sleeping Beauty associated itself in a +logical sequence with his interpretations. I do not say that such +thoughts were clear in Mr. Brumley’s mind, they were not, but into this +shape the forms of his thoughts fell. Such things dimly felt below the +clear level of consciousness were in him. And they gave his attempt to +take up and answer the question that perplexed her, something of the +quality of an attempt to clothe and serve hidden purposes. It could not +but be evident to him that the effort of Lady Harman to free herself a +little from her husband’s circumvallation and to disentangle herself a +little from the realities of his commercial life, might lead to such a +liberation as would leave her like a nascent element ready to recombine. +And it was entirely in the vein of this drift of thought in him that he +should resolve upon an assiduous proximity against that moment of +release and awakening....</p> + +<p>I do not do Mr. Brumley as the human lover justice if I lead you to +suppose that he plotted thus clearly and calculatingly. Yet all this was +in his mind. All this was in Mr. Brumley, but it wasn’t Mr. Brumley. +Presented with it as a portrait of his mind, he would have denied it +indignantly—and, knowing it was there, have grown a little flushed in +his denials. Quite equally in his mind was a simple desire to please +her, to do what she wished, to help her because she wanted help. And a +quite keen desire to be clean and honest about her and everything +connected with her, for his own sake as well as for her sake—for the +sake of the relationship....</p> + +<p>So you have Mr. Brumley on the green seat under the great trees at +Hampton Court, in his neat London clothes, his quite becoming silk-hat, +above his neatly handsome and intelligent profile, with his gloves in +his hand and one arm over the seat back, going now very earnestly and +thoughtfully into the question of the social benefit of the +International Bread and Cake Stores and whether it was possible for her +to “do anything” to repair any wrongs that might have arisen out of that +organization, and you will understand why there is a little flush in his +cheek and why his sentences are a trifle disconnected and tentative and +why his eye wanders now to the soft raven tresses about Lady Harman’s +ear, now to the sweet movement of her speaking lips and now to the +gracious droop of her pose as she sits forward, elbow upon crossed knee +and chin on glove, and jabs her parasol at the ground in her +unaccustomed efforts to explain and discuss the difficulties of her +position.</p> + +<p>And you will understand too why it is that he doesn’t deal with the +question before him so simply and impartially as he seems to do. +Obscuring this extremely interesting problem of a woman growing to +man-like sense of responsibility in her social consequences, is the +dramatic proclivity that makes him see all this merely as something +which must necessarily weaken Lady Harman’s loyalty and qualify her +submission to Sir Isaac, that makes him want to utilize it and develop +it in that direction....</p> + +<h4>§5</h4> + +<p>Moreover so complex is the thought of man, there was also another stream +of mental activity flowing in the darker recesses of Mr. Brumley’s mind. +Unobtrusively he was trying to count the money in his pockets and make +certain estimates.</p> + +<p>It had been his intention to replenish his sovereign purse that +afternoon at his club and he was only reminded of this abandoned plan +when he paid off his taxi at the gates of Hampton Court. The fare was +nine and tenpence and the only piece of gold he had was a +half-sovereign. But there was a handful of loose silver in his trouser +pocket and so the fare and tip were manageable. “Will you be going back, +sir?” asked the driver.</p> + +<p>And Mr. Brumley reflected too briefly and committed a fatal error. “No,” +he said with his mind upon that loose silver. “We shall go back by +train.”</p> + +<p>Now it is the custom with taxi-cabs that take people to such outlying +and remote places as Hampton Court, to be paid off and to wait loyally +until their original passengers return. Thereby the little machine is +restrained from ticking out twopences which should go in the main to the +absent proprietor, and a feeling of mutuality is established between the +driver and his fare. But of course this cab being released presently +found another passenger and went away....</p> + +<p>I have written in vain if I have not conveyed to you that Mr. Brumley +was a gentleman of great and cultivated delicacy, that he liked the +seemly and handsome side of things and dreaded the appearance of any +flaw upon his prosperity as only a man trained in an English public +school can do. It was intolerable to think of any hitch in this happy +excursion which was to establish he knew not what confidence between +himself and Lady Harman. From first to last he felt it had to go with an +air—and what was the first class fare from Hampton Court to +Putney—which latter station he believed was on the line from Hampton +Court to London—and could one possibly pretend it was unnecessary to +have tea? And so while Lady Harman talked about her husband’s +business—“our business” she called it—and shrank from ever saying +anything more about the more intimate question she had most in mind, the +limits to a wife’s obedience, Mr. Brumley listened with these financial +solicitudes showing through his expression and giving it a quality of +intensity that she found remarkably reassuring. And once or twice they +made him miss points in her remarks that forced him back upon that very +inferior substitute for the apt answer, a judicious “Um.”</p> + +<p>(It would be quite impossible to go without tea, he decided. He himself +wanted tea quite badly. He would think better when he had had some +tea....)</p> + +<p>The crisis came at tea. They had tea at the inn upon the green that +struck Mr. Brumley as being most likely to be cheap and which he +pretended to choose for some trivial charm about the windows. And it +wasn’t cheap, and when at last Mr. Brumley was faced by the little slip +of the bill and could draw his money from his pocket and look at it, he +knew the worst and the worst was worse than he had expected. The bill +was five shillings (Should he dispute it? Too ugly altogether, a dispute +with a probably ironical waiter!) and the money in his hand amounted to +four shillings and sixpence.</p> + +<p>He acted surprise with the waiter’s eye upon him. (Should he ask for +credit? They might be frightfully disagreeable in such a cockney resort +as this.) “Tut, tut,” said Mr. Brumley, and then—a little late for +it—resorted to and discovered the emptiness of his sovereign purse. He +realized that this was out of the picture at this stage, felt his ears +and nose and cheeks grow hot and pink. The waiter’s colleague across the +room became interested in the proceedings.</p> + +<p>“I had no idea,” said Mr. Brumley, which was a premeditated falsehood.</p> + +<p>“Is anything the matter?” asked Lady Harman with a sisterly interest.</p> + +<p>“My dear Lady Harman, I find myself——Ridiculous position. Might I +borrow half a sovereign?”</p> + +<p>He felt sure that the two waiters exchanged glances. He looked at +them,—a mistake again—and got hotter.</p> + +<p>“Oh!” said Lady Harman and regarded him with frank amusement in her +eyes. The thing struck her at first in the light of a joke. “I’ve only +got one-and-eightpence. I didn’t expect——”</p> + +<p>She blushed as beautifully as ever. Then she produced a small but +plutocratic-looking purse and handed it to him.</p> + +<p>“Most remarkable—inconvenient,” said Mr. Brumley, opening the precious +thing and extracting a shilling. “That will do,” he said and dismissed +the waiter with a tip of sixpence. Then with the open purse still in his +hand, he spent much of his remaining strength trying to look amused and +unembarrassed, feeling all the time that with his flushed face and in +view of all the circumstances of the case he must be really looking very +silly and fluffy.</p> + +<p>“It’s really most inconvenient,” he remarked.</p> + +<p>“I never thought of the—of this. It was silly of me,” said Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“Oh no! Oh dear no! The silliness I can assure you is all mine. I can’t +tell you how entirely apologetic——Ridiculous fix. And after I had +persuaded you to come here.”</p> + +<p>“Still we were able to pay,” she consoled him.</p> + +<p>“But you have to get home!”</p> + +<p>She hadn’t so far thought of that. It brought Sir Isaac suddenly into +the picture. “By half-past five,” she said with just the faintest +flavour of interrogation.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to five.</p> + +<p>“Waiter,” he said, “how do the trains run from here to Putney?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t <i>think</i>, sir, that we have any trains from here to Putney——”</p> + +<p>An A.B.C. Railway Guide was found and Mr. Brumley learnt for the first +time that Putney and Hampton Court are upon two distinct and separate +and, as far as he could judge by the time-table, mutually hostile +branches of the South Western Railway, and that at the earliest they +could not get to Putney before six o’clock.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley was extremely disconcerted. He perceived that he ought to +have kept his taxi. It amounted almost to a debt of honour to deliver +this lady secure and untarnished at her house within the next hour. But +this reflection did not in the least degree assist him to carry it out +and as a matter of fact Mr. Brumley became flurried and did not carry it +out. He was not used to being without money, it unnerved him, and he +gave way to a kind of hectic <i>savoir faire</i>. He demanded a taxi of the +waiter. He tried to evolve a taxi by will power alone. He went out with +Lady Harman and back towards the gates of Hampton Court to look for +taxis. Then it occurred to him that they might be losing the 5.25 up. So +they hurried over the bridge of the station.</p> + +<p>He had a vague notion that he would be able to get tickets on credit at +the booking office if he presented his visiting card. But the clerk in +charge seemed to find something uncongenial in his proposal. He did not +seem to like what he saw of Mr. Brumley through his little square window +and Mr. Brumley found something slighting and unpleasant in his manner. +It was one of those little temperamental jars which happen to men of +delicate sensibilities and Mr. Brumley tried to be reassuringly +overbearing in his manner and then lost his temper and was threatening +and so wasted precious moments what time Lady Harman waited on the +platform, with a certain shadow of doubt falling upon her confidence in +him, and watched the five-twenty-five gather itself together and start +Londonward. Mr. Brumley came out of the ticket office resolved to travel +without tickets and carry things through with a high hand just as it +became impossible to do so by that train, and then I regret to say he +returned for some further haughty passages with the ticket clerk upon +the duty of public servants to point out such oversights as his, that +led to repartee and did nothing to help Lady Harman on her homeward way.</p> + +<p>Then he discovered a current time-table and learnt that now even were +all the ticket difficulties over-ridden he could not get Lady Harman to +Putney before twenty minutes past seven, so completely is the South +Western Railway not organized for conveying people from Hampton Court to +Putney. He explained this as well as he could to Lady Harman, and then +led her out of the station in another last desperate search for a taxi.</p> + +<p>“We can always come back for that next train,” he said. “It doesn’t go +for half an hour.”</p> + +<p>“I cannot blame myself sufficiently,” he said for the eighth or ninth +time....</p> + +<p>It was already well past a quarter to six before Mr. Brumley bethought +himself of the London County Council tramcars that run from the palace +gates. Along these an ample four-pennyworth was surely possible and at +the end would be taxis——There <i>must</i> be taxis. The tram took +them—but oh! how slowly it seemed!—to Hammersmith by a devious route +through interminable roads and streets, and long before they reached +that spot twilight had passed into darkness, and all the streets and +shops were flowering into light and the sense of night and lateness was +very strong. After they were seated in the tram a certain interval of +silence came between them and then Lady Harman laughed and Mr. Brumley +laughed—there was no longer any need for him to be energetic and +fussy—and they began to have that feeling of adventurous amusement +which comes on the further side of desperation. But beneath the +temporary elation Lady Harman was a prey to grave anxieties and Mr. +Brumley could not help thinking he had made a tremendous ass of himself +in that ticket clerk dispute....</p> + +<p>At Hammersmith they got out, two quite penniless travellers, and after +some anxious moments found a taxi. It took them to Putney Hill. Lady +Harman descended at the outer gates of her home and walked up the drive +in the darkness while Mr. Brumley went on to his club and solvency +again. It was five minutes past eight when he entered the hall of his +club....</p> + +<h4>§6</h4> + +<p>It had been Lady Harman’s original intention to come home before four, +to have tea with her mother and to inform her husband when he returned +from the city of her entirely dignified and correct disobedience to his +absurd prohibitions. Then he would have bullied at a disadvantage, she +would have announced her intention of dining with Lady Viping and making +the various calls and expeditions for which she had arranged and all +would have gone well. But you see how far accident and a spirit of +enterprise may take a lady from so worthy a plan, and when at last she +returned to the Victorian baronial home in Putney it was very nearly +eight and the house blazed with crisis from pantry to nursery. Even the +elder three little girls, who were accustomed to be kissed goodnight by +their “boofer muvver,” were still awake and—catching the subtle +influence of the atmosphere of dismay about them—in tears. The very +under-housemaids were saying: “Where <i>ever</i> can her ladyship ’ave got +to?”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac had come home that day at an unusually early hour and with a +peculiar pinched expression that filled even Snagsby with apprehensive +alertness. Sir Isaac had in fact returned in a state of quite unwonted +venom. He had come home early because he wished to vent it upon Ellen, +and her absence filled him with something of that sensation one has when +one puts out a foot for the floor and instead a step drops one down—it +seems abysmally.</p> + +<p>“But where’s she gone, Snagsby?”</p> + +<p>“Her ladyship <i>said</i> to lunch, Sir Isaac,” said Snagsby.</p> + +<p>“Good gracious! Where?”</p> + +<p>“Her ladyship didn’t <i>say</i>, Sir Isaac.”</p> + +<p>“But where? Where the devil——?”</p> + +<p>“I have—’ave no means whatever of knowing, Sir Isaac.”</p> + +<p>He had a defensive inspiration.</p> + +<p>“Perhaps Mrs. Sawbridge, Sir Isaac....”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Sawbridge was enjoying the sunshine upon the lawn. She sat in the +most comfortable garden chair, held a white sunshade overhead, had the +last new novel by Mrs. Humphry Ward upon her lap, and was engaged in +trying not to wonder where her daughter might be. She beheld with a +distinct blenching of the spirit Sir Isaac advancing towards her. She +wondered more than ever where Ellen might be.</p> + +<p>“Here!” cried her son-in-law. “Where’s Ellen gone?”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Sawbridge with an affected off-handedness was sure she hadn’t the +faintest idea.</p> + +<p>“Then you <i>ought</i> to have,” said Isaac. “She ought to be at home.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Sawbridge’s only reply was to bridle slightly.</p> + +<p>“Where’s she got to? Where’s she gone? Haven’t you any idea at all?”</p> + +<p>“I was not favoured by Ellen’s confidence,” said Mrs. Sawbridge.</p> + +<p>“But you <i>ought</i> to know,” cried Sir Isaac. “She’s your daughter. Don’t +you know anything of <i>either</i> of your daughters. I suppose you don’t +care where they are, either of them, or what mischief they’re up to. +Here’s a man—comes home early to his tea—and no wife! After hearing +all I’ve done at the club.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Sawbridge stood up in order to be more dignified than a seated +position permitted.</p> + +<p>“It is scarcely my business, Sir Isaac,” she said, “to know of the +movements of your wife.”</p> + +<p>“Nor Georgina’s apparently either. Good God! I’d have given a hundred +pounds that this shouldn’t have happened!”</p> + +<p>“If you must speak to me, Sir Isaac, will you please kindly refrain +from—from the deity——”</p> + +<p>“Oh! shut it!” said Sir Isaac, blazing up to violent rudeness. “Why! +Don’t you know, haven’t you an idea? The infernal foolery! Those +tickets. She got those women——Look here, if you go walking away with +your nose in the air before I’ve done——Look here! Mrs. Sawbridge, you +listen to me——Georgina. I’m speaking of Georgina.”</p> + +<p>The lady was walking now swiftly and stiffly towards the house, her face +very pale and drawn, and Sir Isaac hurrying beside her in a white fury +of expostulation. “I tell you,” he cried, “Georgina——”</p> + +<p>There was something maddeningly incurious about her. He couldn’t +understand why she didn’t even pause to hear what Georgina had done and +what he had to say about it. A person so wrapped up in her personal and +private dignity makes a man want to throw stones. Perhaps she knew of +Georgina’s misdeeds. Perhaps she sympathized....</p> + +<p>A sense of the house windows checked his pursuit of her ear. “Then go,” +he said to her retreating back. “<i>Go!</i> I don’t care if you go for good. +I don’t care if you go altogether. If <i>you</i> hadn’t had the upbringing of +these two girls——”</p> + +<p>She was manifestly out of earshot and in full yet almost queenly flight +for the house. He wanted to say things about her. <i>To</i> someone. He was +already saying things to the garden generally. What does one marry a +wife for? His mind came round to Ellen again. Where had she got to? Even +if she had gone out to lunch, it was time she was back. He went to his +study and rang for Snagsby.</p> + +<p>“Lady Harman back yet?” he asked grimly.</p> + +<p>“No, Sir Isaac.”</p> + +<p>“Why isn’t she back?”</p> + +<p>Snagsby did his best. “Perhaps, Sir Isaac, her ladyship has +experienced—’as hexperienced a naxident.”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac stared at that idea for a moment. Then he thought, ‘Someone +would have telephoned,’ “No,” he said, “she’s out. That’s where she is. +And I suppose I can wait here, as well as I can until she chooses to +come home. Degenerate foolish nonsense!...”</p> + +<p>He whistled between his teeth like an escape of steam. Snagsby, after +the due pause of attentiveness, bowed respectfully and withdrew....</p> + +<p>He had barely time to give a brief outline of the interview to the +pantry before a violent ringing summoned him again. Sir Isaac wished to +speak to Peters, Lady Harman’s maid. He wanted to know where Lady Harman +had gone; this being impossible, he wanted to know where Lady Harman had +seemed to be going.</p> + +<p>“Her Ladyship <i>seemed</i> to be going out to lunch, Sir Isaac,” said +Peters, her meek face irradiated by helpful intelligence.</p> + +<p>“Oh <i>get</i> out!” said Sir Isaac. “<i>Get</i> out!”</p> + +<p>“Yes, Sir Isaac,” said Peters and obeyed....</p> + +<p>“He’s in a rare bait about her,” said Peters to Snagsby downstairs.</p> + +<p>“I’m inclined to think her ladyship will catch it pretty hot,” said +Snagsby.</p> + +<p>“He can’t <i>know</i> anything,” said Peters.</p> + +<p>“What about?” asked Snagsby.</p> + +<p>“Oh, <i>I</i> don’t know,” said Peters. “Don’t ask <i>me</i> about her....”</p> + +<p>About ten minutes later Sir Isaac was heard to break a little china +figure of the goddess Kwannon, that had stood upon his study +mantel-shelf. The fragments were found afterwards in the fireplace....</p> + +<p>The desire for self-expression may become overwhelming. After Sir Isaac +had talked to himself about Georgina and Lady Harman for some time in +his study, he was seized with a great longing to pour some of this +spirited stuff into the entirely unsympathetic ear of Mrs. Sawbridge. So +he went about the house and garden looking for her, and being at last +obliged to enquire about her, learnt from a scared defensive housemaid +whom he cornered suddenly in the conservatory, that she had retired to +her own room. He went and rapped at her door but after one muffled +“Who’s that?” he could get no further response.</p> + +<p>“I want to tell you about Georgina,” he said.</p> + +<p>He tried the handle but the discreet lady within had turned the key upon +her dignity.</p> + +<p>“I want,” he shouted, “to tell you about Georgina.... GEORGINA! Oh +<i>damn</i>!”</p> + +<p>Silence.</p> + +<p>Tea awaited him downstairs. He hovered about the drawing-room, making +noises between his teeth.</p> + +<p>“Snagsby,” said Sir Isaac, “just tell Mrs. Sawbridge I shall be obliged +if she will come down to tea.”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Sawbridge ’as a ’<i>ead</i>ache, Sir Isaac,” said Mr. Snagsby with +extreme blandness. “She asked me to acquaint you. She ’as ordered tea in +’er own apartment.”</p> + +<p>For a moment Sir Isaac was baffled. Then he had an inspiration. “Just +get me the <i>Times</i>, Snagsby,” he said.</p> + +<p>He took the paper and unfolded it until a particular paragraph was +thrown into extreme prominence. This he lined about with his fountain +pen and wrote above it with a quivering hand, “These women’s tickets +were got by Georgina under false pretences from me.” He handed the paper +thus prepared back to Snagsby. “Just take this paper to Mrs. Sawbridge,” +he said, “and ask her what she thinks of it?”</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Sawbridge tacitly declined this proposal for a correspondence +<i>viâ</i> Snagsby.</p> + +<h4>§7</h4> + +<p>There was no excuse for Georgina.</p> + +<p>Georgina had obtained tickets from Sir Isaac for the great party +reception at Barleypound House, under the shallow pretext that she +wanted them for “two spinsters from the country,” for whose good +behaviour she would answer, and she had handed them over to that +organization of disorder which swayed her mind. The historical outrage +upon Mr. Blapton was the consequence.</p> + +<p>Two desperate and misguided emissaries had gone to the great reception, +dressed and behaving as much as possible like helpful Liberal women; +they had made their way towards the brilliant group of leading Liberals +of which Mr. Blapton was the centre, assuming an almost Whig-like +expression and bearing to mask the fires within, and had then suddenly +accosted him. It was one of those great occasions when the rank and file +of the popular party is privileged to look upon Court dress. The +ministers and great people had come on from Buckingham Palace in their +lace and legs. Scarlet and feathers, splendid trains and mysterious +ribbons and stars, gave an agreeable intimation of all that it means to +be in office to the dazzled wives and daughters of the party stalwarts +and fired the ambition of innumerable earnest but earnestly competitive +young men. It opened the eyes of the Labour leaders to the higher +possibilities of Parliament. And then suddenly came a stir, a rush, a +cry of “Tear off his epaulettes!” and outrage was afoot. And two quite +nice-looking young women!</p> + +<p>It is unhappily not necessary to describe the scene that followed. Mr. +Blapton made a brave fight for his epaulettes, fighting chiefly with +his cocked hat, which was bent double in the struggle. Mrs. Blapton +gave all the assistance true womanliness could offer and, in fact, she +boxed the ears of one of his assailants very soundly. The intruders were +rescued in an extremely torn and draggled condition from the indignant +statesmen who had fallen upon them by tardy but decisive police....</p> + +<p>Such scenes sprinkle the recent history of England with green and purple +patches and the interest of this particular one for us is only because +of Georgina’s share in it. That was brought home to Sir Isaac, very +suddenly and disagreeably, while he was lunching at the Climax Club with +Sir Robert Charterson. A man named Gobbin, an art critic or something of +that sort, one of those flimsy literary people who mar the solid worth +of so many great clubs, a man with a lot of hair and the sort of loose +tie that so often seems to be less of a tie than a detachment from all +decent restraints, told him. Charterson was holding forth upon the +outrage.</p> + +<p>“That won’t suit Sir Isaac, Sir Robert,” said Gobbin presuming on his +proximity.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac tried to give him a sort of look one gives to an +unsatisfactory clerk.</p> + +<p>“They went there with Sir Isaac’s tickets,” said Gobbin.</p> + +<p>“They <i>never</i>——!”</p> + +<p>“Horatio Blenker was looking for you in the hall. Haven’t you seen him? +After all the care they took. The poor man’s almost in tears.”</p> + +<p>“They never had tickets of mine!” cried Sir Isaac stoutly and +indignantly.</p> + +<p>And then the thought of Georgina came like a blow upon his heart....</p> + +<p>In his flurry he went on denying....</p> + +<p>The subsequent conversation in the smoking-room was as red-eared and +disagreeable for Sir Isaac as any conversation could be. “But how +<i>could</i> such a thing have happened?” he asked in a voice that sounded +bleached to him. “How could such a thing have come about?” Their eyes +were dreadful. Did they guess? Could they guess? Conscience within him +was going up and down shouting out, “Georgina, your sister-in-law, +Georgina,” so loudly that he felt the whole smoking-room must be hearing +it....</p> + +<h4>§8</h4> + +<p>As Lady Harman came up through the darkness of the drive to her home, +she was already regretting very deeply that she had not been content to +talk to Mr. Brumley in Kensington Gardens instead of accepting his +picturesque suggestion of Hampton Court. There was an unpleasant +waif-like feeling about this return. She was reminded of pictures +published in the interests of Doctor Barnardo’s philanthropies,—Dr. +Barnardo her favourite hero in real life,—in which wistful little +outcasts creep longingly towards brightly lit but otherwise respectable +homes. It wasn’t at all the sort of feeling she would have chosen if she +had had a choice of feelings. She was tired and dusty and as she came +into the hall the bright light was blinding. Snagsby took her wrap. “Sir +Isaac, me lady, ’as been enquiring for your ladyship,” he communicated.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac appeared on the staircase.</p> + +<p>“Good gracious, Elly!” he shouted. “Where you been?”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman decided against an immediate reply. “I shall be ready for +dinner in half an hour,” she told Snagsby and went past him to the +stairs.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac awaited her. “Where you been?” he repeated as she came up to +him.</p> + +<p>A housemaid on the staircase and the second nursemaid on the nursery +landing above shared Sir Isaac’s eagerness to hear her answer. But they +did not hear her answer, for Lady Harman with a movement that was all +too reminiscent of her mother’s in the garden, swept past him towards +the door of her own room. He followed her and shut the door on the +thwarted listeners.</p> + +<p>“Here!” he said, with a connubial absence of restraint. “Where the devil +you been? What the deuce do you think you’ve been getting up to?”</p> + +<p>She had been calculating her answers since the moment she had realized +that she was to return home at a disadvantage. (It is not my business to +blame her for a certain disingenuousness; it is my business simply to +record it.) “I went out to lunch at Lady Beach-Mandarin’s,” she said. “I +told you I meant to.”</p> + +<p>“Lunch!” he cried. “Why, it’s eight!”</p> + +<p>“I met—some people. I met Agatha Alimony. I have a perfect right to go +out to lunch——”</p> + +<p>“You met a nice crew I’ll bet. But that don’t account for your being out +to eight, does it? With all the confounded household doing as it +pleases!”</p> + +<p>“I went on—to see the borders at Hampton Court.”</p> + +<p>“With <i>her</i>?”</p> + +<p>“<i>Yes</i>,” said Lady Harman....</p> + +<p>It wasn’t what she had meant to happen. It was an inglorious declension +from her contemplated pose of dignified assertion. She was impelled to +do her utmost to get away from this lie she had uttered at once, to +eliminate Agatha from the argument by an emphatic generalization. “I’ve +a perfect right,” she said, suddenly nearly breathless, “to go to +Hampton Court with anyone I please, talk about anything I like and stay +there as long as I think fit.”</p> + +<p>He squeezed his thin lips together for a silent moment and then +retorted. “You’ve got nothing of the sort, nothing of the sort. You’ve +got to do your duty like everybody else in the world, and your duty is +to be in this house controlling it—and not gossiping about London just +where any silly fancy takes you.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t think that <i>is</i> my duty,” said Lady Harman after a slight pause +to collect her forces.</p> + +<p>“Of <i>course</i> it’s your duty. You know it’s your duty. You know perfectly +well. It’s only these rotten, silly, degenerate, decadent fools who’ve +got ideas into you——” The sentence staggered under its load of +adjectives like a camel under the last straw and collapsed. “<i>See?</i>” he +said.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman knitted her brows.</p> + +<p>“I do my duty,” she began.</p> + +<p>But Sir Isaac was now resolved upon eloquence. His mind was full with +the accumulations of an extremely long and bitter afternoon and urgent +to discharge. He began to answer her and then a passion of rage flooded +him. Suddenly he wanted to shout and use abusive expressions and it +seemed to him there was nothing to prevent his shouting and using +abusive expressions. So he did. “Call this your duty,” he said, “gadding +about with some infernal old suffragette——”</p> + +<p>He paused to gather force. He had never quite let himself go to his wife +before; he had never before quite let himself go to anyone. He had +always been in every crisis just a little too timid to let himself go. +But a wife is privileged. He sought strength and found it in words from +which he had hitherto abstained. It was not a discourse to which print +could do justice; it flickered from issue to issue. He touched upon +Georgina, upon the stiffness of Mrs. Sawbridge’s manner, upon the +neurotic weakness of Georgina’s unmarried state, upon the general decay +of feminine virtue in the community, upon the laxity of modern +literature, upon the dependent state of Lady Harman, upon the unfairness +of their relations which gave her every luxury while he spent his days +in arduous toil, upon the shame and annoyance in the eyes of his +servants that her unexplained absence had caused him.</p> + +<p>He emphasized his speech by gestures. He thrust out one rather large +ill-shaped hand at her with two vibrating fingers extended. His ears +became red, his nose red, his eyes seemed red and all about these points +his face was wrathful white. His hair rose up into stiff scared +listening ends. He had his rights, he had some <i>little</i> claim to +consideration surely, he might be just nobody but he wasn’t going to +stand this much anyhow. He gave her fair warning. What was she, what did +she know of the world into which she wanted to rush? He lapsed into +views of Lady Beach-Mandarin—unfavourable views. I wish Lady +Beach-Mandarin could have heard him....</p> + +<p>Ever and again Lady Harman sought to speak. This incessant voice +confused and baffled her; she had a just attentive mind at bottom and +down there was a most weakening feeling that there must indeed be some +misdeed in her to evoke so impassioned a storm. She had a curious and +disconcerting sense of responsibility for his dancing exasperation, she +felt she was to blame for it, just as years ago she had felt she was to +blame for his tears when he had urged her so desperately to marry him. +Some irrational instinct made her want to allay him. It is the supreme +feminine weakness, that wish to allay. But she was also clinging +desperately to her resolution to proclaim her other forthcoming +engagements. Her will hung on to that as a man hangs on to a mountain +path in a thunderburst. She stood gripping her dressing-table and ever +and again trying to speak. But whenever she did so Sir Isaac lifted a +hand and cried almost threateningly: “You hear me out, Elly! You hear me +out!” and went on a little faster....</p> + +<p>(Limburger in his curious “<i>Sexuelle Unterschiede der Seele</i>,” points +out as a probably universal distinction between the sexes that when a +man scolds a woman, if only he scolds loudly enough and long enough, +conviction of sin is aroused, while in the reverse case the result is +merely a murderous impulse. This he further says is not understood by +women, who hope by scolding to produce the similar effect upon men that +they themselves would experience. The passage is illustrated by figures +of ducking stools and followed by some carefully analyzed statistics of +connubial crime in Berlin in the years 1901-2. But in this matter let +the student compare the achievement of Paulina in <i>The Winter’s Tale</i> +and reflect upon his own life. And moreover it is difficult to estimate +how far the twinges of conscience that Lady Harman was feeling were not +due to an entirely different cause, the falsification of her position by +the lie she had just told Sir Isaac.)</p> + +<p>And presently upon this noisy scene in the great pink bedroom, with Sir +Isaac walking about and standing and turning and gesticulating and Lady +Harman clinging on to her dressing-table, and painfully divided between +her new connections, her sense of guilty deception and the deep +instinctive responsibilities of a woman’s nature, came, like one of +those rows of dots that are now so frequent and so helpful in the art of +fiction, the surging, deep, assuaging note of Snagsby’s gong: Booooooom. +Boom. Boooooom....</p> + +<p>“Damn it!” cried Sir Isaac, smiting at the air with both fists clenched +and speaking as though this was Ellen’s crowning misdeed, “and we aren’t +even dressed for dinner!”</p> + +<h4>§9</h4> + +<p>Dinner had something of the stiffness of court ceremonial.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Sawbridge, perhaps erring on the side of discretion, had consumed a +little soup and a wing of chicken in her own room. Sir Isaac was down +first and his wife found him grimly astride before the great dining-room +fire awaiting her. She had had her dark hair dressed with extreme +simplicity and had slipped on a blue velvet tea-gown, but she had been +delayed by a visit to the nursery, where the children were now flushed +and uneasily asleep.</p> + +<p>Husband and wife took their places at the genuine Sheraton +dining-table—one of the very best pieces Sir Isaac had ever picked +up—and were waited on with a hushed, scared dexterity by Snagsby and +the footman.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman and her husband exchanged no remarks during the meal; Sir +Isaac was a little noisy with his soup as became a man who controls +honest indignation, and once he complained briefly in a slightly hoarse +voice to Snagsby about the state of one of the rolls. Between the +courses he leant back in his chair and made faint sounds with his teeth. +These were the only breach of the velvety quiet. Lady Harman was +surprised to discover herself hungry, but she ate with thoughtful +dignity and gave her mind to the attempted digestion of the confusing +interview she had just been through.</p> + +<p>It was a very indigestible interview.</p> + +<p>On the whole her heart hardened again. With nourishment and silence her +spirit recovered a little from its abasement, and her resolution to +assert her freedom to go hither and thither and think as she chose +renewed itself. She tried to plan some way of making her declaration so +that she would not again be overwhelmed by a torrent of response. Should +she speak to him at the end of dinner? Should she speak to him while +Snagsby was in the room? But he might behave badly even with Snagsby in +the room and she could not bear to think of him behaving badly to her in +the presence of Snagsby. She glanced at him over the genuine old silver +bowl of roses in the middle of the table—all the roses were good <i>new</i> +sorts—and tried to estimate how he might behave under various methods +of declaration.</p> + +<p>The dinner followed its appointed ritual to the dessert. Came the wine +and Snagsby placed the cigars and a little silver lamp beside his +master.</p> + +<p>She rose slowly with a speech upon her lips. Sir Isaac remained seated +looking up at her with a mitigated fury in his little red-brown eyes.</p> + +<p>The speech receded from her lips again.</p> + +<p>“I think,” she said after a strained pause, “I will go and see how +mother is now.”</p> + +<p>“She’s only shamming,” said Sir Isaac belatedly to her back as she went +out of the room.</p> + +<p>She found her mother in a wrap before her fire and made her dutiful +enquiries.</p> + +<p>“It’s only quite a <i>slight</i> headache,” Mrs. Sawbridge confessed. “But +Isaac was so upset about Georgina and about”—she flinched—“about—everything, +that I thought it better to be out of the way.”</p> + +<p>“What exactly has Georgina done?”</p> + +<p>“It’s in the paper, dear. On the table there.”</p> + +<p>Ellen studied the <i>Times</i>.</p> + +<p>“Georgina got them the tickets,” Mrs. Sawbridge explained. “I wish she +hadn’t. It was so—so unnecessary of her.”</p> + +<p>There was a little pause as Lady Harman read. She put down the paper and +asked her mother if she could do anything for her.</p> + +<p>“I—I suppose it’s all Right, dear, now?” Mrs. Sawbridge asked.</p> + +<p>“Quite,” said her daughter. “You’re sure I can do nothing for you, +mummy?”</p> + +<p>“I’m kept so in the dark about things.”</p> + +<p>“It’s quite all right now, mummy.”</p> + +<p>“He went on—dreadfully.”</p> + +<p>“It was annoying—of Georgina.”</p> + +<p>“It makes my position so difficult. I do wish he wouldn’t want to speak +to me—about all these things.... Georgina treats me like a Perfect +Nonentity and then he comes——It’s so inconsiderate. Starting Disputes. +Do you know, dear, I really think—if I were to go for a little time to +Bournemouth——?”</p> + +<p>Her daughter seemed to find something attractive in the idea. She came +to the hearthrug and regarded her mother with maternal eyes.</p> + +<p>“Don’t you <i>worry</i> about things, mummy,” she said.</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Bleckhorn told me of such a nice quiet boarding-house, almost +looking on the sea.... One would be safe from Insult there. You +know——” her voice broke for a moment, “he was Insulting, he <i>meant</i> to +be Insulting. I’m—Upset. I’ve been thinking over it ever since.”</p> + +<h4>§10</h4> + +<p>Lady Harman came out upon the landing. She felt absolutely without +backing in the world. (If only she hadn’t told a lie!) Then with an +effort she directed her course downstairs to the dining-room.</p> + +<p>(The lie had been necessary. It was only a detail. It mustn’t blind her +to the real issue.)</p> + +<p>She entered softly and found her husband standing before the fire +plunged in gloomy thoughts. Upon the marble mantel-shelf behind him was +a little glass; he had been sipping port in spite of the express +prohibition of his doctor and the wine had reddened the veins of his +eyes and variegated the normal pallor of his countenance with little +flushed areas. “Hel-lo,” he said looking up suddenly as she closed the +door behind her.</p> + +<p>For a moment there was something in their two expressions like that on +the faces of men about to box.</p> + +<p>“I want you to understand,” she said, and then; “The way you +behaved——”</p> + +<p>There was an uncontrollable break in her voice. She had a dreadful +feeling that she might be going to cry. She made a great effort to be +cold and clear.</p> + +<p>“I don’t think you have a right—just because I am your wife—to control +every moment of my time. In fact you haven’t. And I have a right to make +engagements.... I want you to know I am going to an afternoon meeting at +Lady Beach-Mandarin’s. Next week. And I have promised to go to Miss +Alimony’s to tea.”</p> + +<p>“Go on,” he encouraged grimly.</p> + +<p>“I am going to Lady Viping’s to dinner, too; she asked me and I +accepted. Later.”</p> + +<p>She stopped.</p> + +<p>He seemed to deliberate. Then suddenly he thrust out a face of pinched +determination.</p> + +<p>“You <i>won’t</i>, my lady,” he said. “You bet your life you won’t. <i>No!</i> So +<i>now</i> then!”</p> + +<p>And then gripping his hands more tightly behind him, he made a step +towards her.</p> + +<p>“You’re losing your bearings, Lady Harman,” he said, speaking with much +intensity in a low earnest voice. “You don’t seem to be remembering +where you are. You come and you tell me you’re going to do this and +that. Don’t you know, Lady Harman, that it’s your wifely duty to obey, +to do as I say, to behave as I wish?” He brought out a lean index finger +to emphasize his remarks. “And I am going to make you do it!” he said.</p> + +<p>“I’ve a perfect right,” she repeated.</p> + +<p>He went on, regardless of her words. “What do you think you can do, Lady +Harman? You’re going to all these places—how? Not in <i>my</i> motor-car, +not with <i>my</i> money. You’ve not a thing that isn’t mine, that <i>I</i> +haven’t given you. And if you’re going to have a lot of friends I +haven’t got, where’re they coming to see you? Not in <i>my</i> house! I’ll +chuck ’em out if I find ’em. I won’t have ’em. I’ll turn ’em out. See?”</p> + +<p>“I’m not a slave.”</p> + +<p>“You’re a wife—and a wife’s got to do what her husband wishes. You +can’t have two heads on a horse. And in <i>this</i> horse—this house I mean, +the head’s—<i>me</i>!”</p> + +<p>“I’m not a slave and I won’t be a slave.”</p> + +<p>“You’re a wife and you’ll stick to the bargain you made when you married +me. I’m ready in reason to give you anything you want—if you do your +duty as a wife should. Why!—I spoil you. But this going about on your +own, this highty-flighty go-as-you-please,—no man on earth who’s worth +calling a man will stand it. I’m not going to begin to stand it.... You +try it on. You try it, Lady Harman.... You’ll come to your senses soon +enough. See? You start trying it on now—straight away. We’ll make an +experiment. We’ll watch how it goes. Only don’t expect me to give you +any money, don’t expect me to help your struggling family, don’t expect +me to alter my arrangements because of you. Let’s keep apart for a bit +and you go your way and I’ll go mine. And we’ll see who’s sick of it +first, we’ll see who wants to cry off.”</p> + +<p>“I came down here,” said Lady Harman, “to give you a reasonable +notice——”</p> + +<p>“And you found <i>I</i> could reason too,” interrupted Sir Isaac in a kind of +miniature shout, “you found I could reason too!”</p> + +<p>“You think——Reason! I <i>won’t</i>,” said Lady Harman, and found herself in +tears. By an enormous effort she recovered something of her dignity and +withdrew. He made no effort to open the door, but stood a little +hunchbacked and with a sense of rhetorical victory surveying her +retreat.</p> + +<h4>§11</h4> + +<p>After Lady Harman’s maid had left her that night, she sat for some time +in a low easy chair before her fire, trying at first to collect together +into one situation all the events of the day and then lapsing into that +state of mind which is not so much thinking as resting in the attitude +of thought. Presently, in a vaguely conceived future, she would go to +bed. She was stunned by the immense dimensions of the row her simple act +of defiance had evoked.</p> + +<p>And then came an incredible incident, so incredible that next day she +still had great difficulty in deciding whether it was an actuality or a +dream. She heard a little very familiar sound. It was the last sound she +would have expected to hear and she turned sharply when she heard it. +The paper-covered door in the wall of her husband’s apartment opened +softly, paused, opened some more and his little undignified head +appeared. His hair was already tumbled from his pillow.</p> + +<p>He regarded her steadfastly for some moments with an expression between +shame and curiosity and smouldering rage, and then allowed his body, +clad now in purple-striped pyjamas, to follow his head into her room. He +advanced guiltily.</p> + +<p>“Elly,” he whispered. “Elly!”</p> + +<p>She caught her dressing-gown about her and stood up.</p> + +<p>“What is it, Isaac?” she asked, feeling curiously abashed at this +invasion.</p> + +<p>“Elly,” he said, still in that furtive undertone. “<i>Make it up!</i>”</p> + +<p>“I want my freedom,” she said, after a little pause.</p> + +<p>“Don’t be <i>silly</i>, Elly,” he whispered in a tone of remonstrance and +advancing slowly towards her. “Make it up. Chuck all these ideas.”</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>“We’ve got to get along together. You can’t go going about just +anywhere. We’ve got—we’ve got to be reasonable.”</p> + +<p>He halted, three paces away from her. His eyes weren’t sorrowful eyes, +or friendly eyes; they were just shiftily eager eyes. “Look here,” he +said. “It’s all nonsense.... Elly, old girl; let’s—let’s make it up.”</p> + +<p>She looked at him and it dawned upon her that she had always imagined +herself to be afraid of him and that indeed she wasn’t. She shook her +head obstinately.</p> + +<p>“It isn’t reasonable,” he said. “Here, we’ve been the happiest of +people——Anything in reason I’ll let you have.” He paused with an +effect of making an offer.</p> + +<p>“I want my autonomy,” she said.</p> + +<p>“Autonomy!” he echoed. “Autonomy! What’s autonomy? Autonomy!”</p> + +<p>This strange word seemed first to hold him in distressful suspense and +then to infuriate him.</p> + +<p>“I come in here to make it up,” he said, with a voice charged with +griefs, “after all you’ve done, and you go and you talk of autonomy!”</p> + +<p>His feelings passed beyond words. An extremity of viciousness flashed +into his face. He gave vent to a snarl of exasperation, “Ya-ap!” he +said, he raised his clenched fists and seemed on the verge of assault, +and then with a gesture between fury and despair, he wheeled about and +the purple-striped pyjamas danced in passionate retreat from her room.</p> + +<p>“Autonomy!...”</p> + +<p>A slam, a noise of assaulted furniture, and then silence.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman stood for some moments regarding the paper-covered door that +had closed behind him. Then she bared her white forearm and pinched +it—hard.</p> + +<p>It wasn’t a dream! This thing had happened.</p> + +<h4>§12</h4> + +<p>At a quarter to three in the morning, Lady Harman was surprised to find +herself wide awake. It was exactly a quarter to three when she touched +the stud of the ingenious little silver apparatus upon the table beside +her bed which reflected a luminous clock-face upon the ceiling. And her +mind was no longer resting in the attitude of thought but +extraordinarily active. It was active, but as she presently began to +realize it was not progressing. It was spinning violently round and +round the frenzied figure of a little man in purple-striped pyjamas +retreating from her presence, whirling away from her like something +blown before a gale. That seemed to her to symbolize the completeness of +the breach the day had made between her husband and herself.</p> + +<p>She felt as a statesman might feel who had inadvertently—while +conducting some trivial negotiations—declared war.</p> + +<p>She was profoundly alarmed. She perceived ahead of her abundant +possibilities of disagreeable things. And she wasn’t by any means as +convinced of the righteousness of her cause as a happy warrior should +be. She had a natural disposition towards truthfulness and it worried +her mind that while she was struggling to assert her right to these +common social freedoms she should be tacitly admitting a kind of justice +in her husband’s objections by concealing the fact that her afternoon’s +companion was a man. She tried not to recognize the existence of a +doubt, but deep down in her mind there did indeed lurk a weakening +uncertainty about the right of a woman to free conversation with any man +but her own. Her reason disowned that uncertainty with scorn. But it +wouldn’t go away for all her reason. She went about in her mind doing +her utmost to cut that doubt dead....</p> + +<p>She tried to go back to the beginning and think it all out. And as she +was not used to thinking things out, the effort took the form of an +imaginary explanation to Mr. Brumley of the difficulties of her +position. She framed phrases. “You see, Mr. Brumley,” she imagined +herself to be saying, “I want to do my duty as a wife, I have to do my +duty as a wife. But it’s so hard to say just where duty leaves off and +being a mere slave begins. I cannot believe that <i>blind</i> obedience is +any woman’s duty. A woman needs—autonomy.” Then her mind went off for a +time to a wrestle with the exact meaning of autonomy, an issue that had +not arisen hitherto in her mind.... And as she planned out such +elucidations, there grew more and more distinct in her mind a kind of +idealized Mr. Brumley, very grave, very attentive, wonderfully +understanding, saying illuminating helpful tonic things, that made +everything clear, everything almost easy. She wanted someone of that +quality so badly. The night would have been unendurable if she could not +have imagined Mr. Brumley of that quality. And imagining him of that +quality her heart yearned for him. She felt that she had been terribly +inexpressive that afternoon, she had shirked points, misstated points, +and yet he had been marvellously understanding. Ever and again his words +had seemed to pierce right through what she had been saying to what she +had been thinking. And she recalled with peculiar comfort a kind of +abstracted calculating look that had come at times into his eyes, as +though his thoughts were going ever so much deeper and ever so much +further than her blundering questionings could possibly have taken them. +He weighed every word, he had a guarded way of saying “Um....”</p> + +<p>Her thoughts came back to the dancing little figure in purple-striped +pyjamas. She had a scared sense of irrevocable breaches. What would he +do to-morrow? What should she do to-morrow? Would he speak to her at +breakfast or should she speak first to him?... She wished she had some +money. If she could have foreseen all this she would have got some money +before she began....</p> + +<p>So her mind went on round and round and the dawn was breaking before she +slept again.</p> + +<h4>§13</h4> + +<p>Mr. Brumley, also, slept little that night. He was wakefully mournful, +recalling each ungraceful incident of the afternoon’s failure in turn +and more particularly his dispute with the ticket clerk, and thinking +over all the things he might have done—if only he hadn’t done the +things he had done. He had made an atrocious mess of things. He felt he +had hopelessly shattered the fair fabric of impressions of him that Lady +Harman had been building up, that image of a wise humane capable man to +whom a woman would gladly turn; he had been flurried, he had been +incompetent, he had been ridiculously incompetent, and it seemed to him +that life was a string of desolating inadequacies and that he would +never smile again.</p> + +<p>The probable reception of Lady Harman by her husband never came within +his imaginative scope. Nor did the problems of social responsibility +that Lady Harman had been trying to put to him exercise him very +greatly. The personal disillusionment was too strong for that.</p> + +<p>About half-past four a faint ray of comfort came with the consideration +that after all a certain practical incapacity is part of the ensemble of +a literary artist, and then he found himself wondering what flowers of +wisdom Montaigne might not have culled from such a day’s experience; he +began an imitative essay in his head and he fell asleep upon this at +last at about ten minutes past five in the morning.</p> + +<p>There were better things than this in the composition of Mr. Brumley, we +shall have to go deep into these reserves before we have done with him, +but when he had so recently barked the shins of his self-esteem they had +no chance at all.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07" id="chap07"></a>CHAPTER THE SEVENTH</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Lady Harman learns about Herself</span></p> + +<h4>§1</h4> + +<p>So it was that the great and long incubated quarrel between Lady Harman +and her husband broke into active hostilities.</p> + +<p>In spite of my ill-concealed bias in favour of Lady Harman I have to +confess that she began this conflict rashly, planlessly, with no +equipment and no definite end. Particularly I would emphasize that she +had no definite end. She had wanted merely to establish a right to go +out by herself occasionally, exercise a certain choice of friends, take +on in fact the privileges of a grown-up person, and in asserting that +she had never anticipated that the participation of the household would +be invoked, or that a general breach might open between herself and her +husband. It had seemed just a definite little point at issue, but at Sir +Isaac’s angry touch a dozen other matters that had seemed safely remote, +matters she had never yet quite properly thought about, had been drawn +into controversy. It was not only that he drew in things from outside; +he evoked things within herself. She discovered she was disposed to +fight not simply to establish certain liberties for herself but +also—which had certainly not been in her mind before—to keep her +husband away from herself. Something latent in the situation had +surprised her with this effect. It had arisen out of the quarrel like a +sharpshooter out of an ambuscade. Her right to go out alone had now only +the value of a mere pretext for far more extensive independence. The +ultimate extent of these independences, she still dared not contemplate.</p> + +<p>She was more than a little scared. She wasn’t prepared for so wide a +revision of her life as this involved. She wasn’t at all sure of the +rightfulness of her position. Her conception of the marriage contract at +that time was liberal towards her husband. After all, didn’t she owe +obedience? Didn’t she owe him a subordinate’s co-operation? Didn’t she +in fact owe him the whole marriage service contract? When she thought of +the figure of him in his purple-striped pyjamas dancing in a paroxysm of +exasperation, that sense of responsibility which was one of her innate +characteristics reproached her. She had a curious persuasion that she +must be dreadfully to blame for provoking so ridiculous, so extravagant +an outbreak....</p> + +<h4>§2</h4> + +<p>She heard him getting up tumultuously and when she came down,—after a +brief interview with her mother who was still keeping her room,—she +found him sitting at the breakfast-table eating toast and marmalade in +a greedy malignant manner. The tentative propitiations of his proposal +to make things up had entirely disappeared, he was evidently in a far +profounder rage with her than he had been overnight. Snagsby too, that +seemly domestic barometer, looked extraordinarily hushed and grave. She +made a greeting-like noise and Sir Isaac scrunched “morning” up amongst +a crowded fierce mouthful of toast. She helped herself to tea and bacon +and looking up presently discovered his eye fixed upon her with an +expression of ferocious hatred....</p> + +<p>He went off in the big car, she supposed to London, about ten and she +helped her mother to pack and depart by a train a little after midday. +She made a clumsy excuse for not giving that crisp little trifle of +financial assistance she was accustomed to, and Mrs. Sawbridge was +anxiously tactful about the disappointment. They paid a visit of +inspection and farewell to the nursery before the departure. Then Lady +Harman was left until lunch to resume her meditation upon this +unprecedented breach that had opened between her husband and herself. +She was presently moved to write a little note to Lady Beach-Mandarin +expressing her intention of attending a meeting of the Social Friends +and asking whether the date was the following Wednesday or Thursday. She +found three penny stamps in the bureau at which she wrote and this +served to remind her of her penniless condition. She spent some time +thinking out the possible consequences of that. How after all was she +going to do things, with not a penny in the world to do them with?</p> + +<p>Lady Harman was not only instinctively truthful but also almost morbidly +honourable. In other words, she was simple-minded. The idea of a +community of goods between husband and wife had never established itself +in her mind, she took all Sir Isaac’s presents in the spirit in which he +gave them, presents she felt they were on trust, and so it was that with +a six-hundred pound pearl necklace, a diamond tiara, bracelets, lockets, +rings, chains and pendants of the most costly kind—there had been a +particularly beautiful bracelet when Millicent was born, a necklace on +account of Florence, a fan painted by Charles Conder for Annette and a +richly splendid set of old Spanish jewellery—yellow sapphires set in +gold—to express Sir Isaac’s gratitude for the baby—with all sorts of +purses, bags, boxes, trinkets and garments, with a bedroom and +morning-room rich in admirable loot, and with endless tradespeople +willing to give her credit it didn’t for some time occur to her that +there was any possible means of getting pocket-money except by direct +demand from Sir Isaac. She surveyed her balance of two penny stamps and +even about these she felt a certain lack of negotiable facility.</p> + +<p>She thought indeed that she might perhaps borrow money, but there again +her paralyzing honesty made her recoil from the prospect of uncertain +repayment. And besides, from whom could she borrow?...</p> + +<p>It was on the evening of the second day that a chance remark from +Peters turned her mind to the extensive possibilities of liquidation +that lay close at hand. She was discussing her dinner dress with Peters, +she wanted something very plain and high and unattractive, and Peters, +who disapproved of this tendency and was all for female wiles and +propitiations, fell into an admiration of the pearl necklace. She +thought perhaps by so doing she might induce Lady Harman to wear it, and +if she wore it Sir Isaac might be a little propitiated, and if Sir Isaac +was a little propitiated it would be much more comfortable for Snagsby +and herself and everyone. She was reminded of a story of a lady who sold +one and substituted imitation pearls, no one the wiser, and she told +this to her mistress out of sheer garrulousness. “But if no one found +out,” said Lady Harman, “how do you know?”</p> + +<p>“Not till her death, me lady,” said Peters, brushing, “when all things +are revealed. Her husband, they say, made it a present of to another +lady and the other lady, me lady, had it valued....”</p> + +<p>Once the idea had got into Lady Harman’s head it stayed there very +obstinately. She surveyed the things on the table before her with a +slightly lifted eyebrow. At first she thought the idea of disposing of +them an entirely dishonourable idea, and if she couldn’t get it out of +her head again at least she made it stand in a corner. And while it +stood in a corner she began putting a price for the first time in her +life first upon this coruscating object and then that. Then somehow she +found herself thinking more and more whether among all these glittering +possessions there wasn’t something that she might fairly regard as +absolutely her own. There were for example her engagement ring and, +still more debateable, certain other pre-nuptial trinkets Sir Isaac had +given her. Then there were things given her on her successive birthdays. +A birthday present of all presents is surely one’s very own? But selling +is an extreme exercise of ownership. Since those early schooldays when +she had carried on an unprofitable traffic in stamps she had never sold +anything—unless we are to reckon that for once and for all she had sold +herself.</p> + +<p>Concurrently with these insidious speculations Lady Harman found herself +trying to imagine how one sold jewels. She tried to sound Peters by +taking up the story of the necklace again. But Peters was uninforming. +“But where,” asked Lady Harman, “could such a thing be done?”</p> + +<p>“There are places, me lady,” said Peters.</p> + +<p>“But where?”</p> + +<p>“In the West End, me lady. The West End is full of places—for things of +that sort. There’s scarcely anything you can’t do there, me lady—if +only you know how.”</p> + +<p>That was really all that Peters could impart.</p> + +<p>“How <i>does</i> one sell jewels?” Lady Harman became so interested in this +side of her perplexities that she did a little lose sight of those +subtler problems of integrity that had at first engaged her. Do +jewellers buy jewels as well as sell them? And then it came into her +head that there were such things as pawnshops. By the time she had +thought about pawnshops and tried to imagine one, her original complete +veto upon any idea of selling had got lost to sight altogether. Instead +there was a growing conviction that if ever she sold anything it would +be a certain sapphire and diamond ring which she didn’t like and never +wore that Sir Isaac had given her as a birthday present two years ago. +But of course she would never dream of selling anything; at the utmost +she need but pawn. She reflected and decided that on the whole it would +be wiser not to ask Peters how one pawned. It occurred to her to consult +the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i> on the subject, but though she learnt that +the Chinese pawnshops must not charge more than three per cent. per +annum, that King Edward the Third pawned his jewels in 1338 and that +Father Bernardino di Feltre who set up pawnshops in Assisi and Padua and +Pavia was afterward canonized, she failed to get any very clear idea of +the exact ritual of the process. And then suddenly she remembered that +she knew a finished expert in pawnshop work in the person of Susan +Burnet. Susan could tell her everything. She found some curtains in the +study that needed replacement, consulted Mrs. Crumble and, with a view +to economizing her own resources, made that lady send off an urgent +letter to Susan bidding her come forthwith.</p> + +<h4>§3</h4> + +<p>It has been said that Fate is a plagiarist. Lady Harman’s Fate at any +rate at this juncture behaved like a benevolent plagiarist who was also +a little old-fashioned. This phase of speechless hostility was +complicated by the fact that two of the children fell ill, or at least +seemed for a couple of days to be falling ill. By all the rules of +British sentiment, this ought to have brought about a headlong +reconciliation at the tumbled bedside. It did nothing of the sort; it +merely wove fresh perplexities into the tangled skein of her thoughts.</p> + +<p>On the day after her participation in that forbidden lunch Millicent, +her eldest daughter, was discovered with a temperature of a hundred and +one, and then Annette, the third, followed suit with a hundred. This +carried Lady Harman post haste to the nursery, where to an unprecedented +degree she took command. Latterly she had begun to mistrust the physique +of her children and to doubt whether the trained efficiency of Mrs. +Harblow the nurse wasn’t becoming a little blunted at the edges by +continual use. And the tremendous quarrel she had afoot made her keenly +resolved not to let anything go wrong in the nursery and less disposed +than she usually was to leave things to her husband’s servants. She +interviewed the doctor herself, arranged for the isolation of the two +flushed and cross little girls, saw to the toys and amusements which she +discovered had become a little flattened and disused by the servants’ +imperatives of tidying up and putting away, and spent the greater part +of the next two days between the night and day nurseries.</p> + +<p>She was a little surprised to find how readily she did this and how +easily the once entirely authoritative Mrs. Harblow submitted. It was +much the same surprise that growing young people feel when they reach +some shelf that has hitherto been inaccessible. The crisis soon passed. +At his first visit the doctor was a little doubtful whether the Harman +nursery wasn’t under the sway of measles, which were then raging in a +particularly virulent form in London; the next day he inclined to the +view that the trouble was merely a feverish cold, and before night this +second view was justified by the disappearance of the “temperatures” and +a complete return to normal conditions.</p> + +<p>But as for that hushed reconciliation in the fevered presence of the +almost sacrificial offspring, it didn’t happen. Sir Isaac merely thrust +aside the stiff silences behind which he masked his rage to remark: +“This is what happens when wimmen go gadding about!”</p> + +<p>That much and glaring eyes and compressed lips and emphasizing fingers +and then he had gone again.</p> + +<p>Indeed rather than healing their widening breach this crisis did much to +spread it into strange new regions. It brought Lady Harman to the very +verge of realizing how much of instinct and how much of duty held her +the servant of the children she had brought into the world, and how +little there mingled with that any of those factors of pride and +admiration that go to the making of heroic maternal love. She knew what +is expected of a mother, the exalted and lyrical devotion, and it was +with something approaching terror that she perceived that certain things +in these children of hers she <i>hated</i>. It was her business she knew to +love them blindly; she lay awake at night in infinite dismay realizing +she did nothing of the sort. Their weakness held her more than anything +else, the invincible pathos of their little limbs in discomfort so that +she was ready to die she felt to give them ease. But so she would have +been held, she was assured, by the little children of anybody if they +had fallen with sufficient helplessness into her care.</p> + +<p>Just how much she didn’t really like her children she presently realized +when in the feeble irascibility of their sickness they fell quarrelling. +They became—horrid. Millicent and Annette being imprisoned in their +beds it seemed good to Florence when she came back from the morning’s +walk, to annex and hide a selection of their best toys. She didn’t take +them and play with them, she hid them with an industrious earnestness in +a box window-seat that was regarded as peculiarly hers, staggering with +armfuls across the nursery floor. Then Millicent by some equally +mysterious agency divined what was afoot and set up a clamour for a +valued set of doll’s furniture, which immediately provoked a similar +outcry from little Annette for her Teddy Bear. Followed woe and uproar. +The invalids insisted upon having every single toy they possessed +brought in and put upon their beds; Florence was first disingenuous and +then surrendered her loot with passionate howlings. The Teddy Bear was +rescued from Baby after a violent struggle in which one furry hind leg +was nearly twisted off. It jars upon the philoprogenitive sentiment of +our time to tell of these things and still more to record that all four, +stirred by possessive passion to the profoundest depths of their beings, +betrayed to an unprecedented degree in their little sharp noses, their +flushed faces, their earnest eyes, their dutiful likeness to Sir Isaac. +He peeped from under Millicent’s daintily knitted brows and gestured +with Florence’s dimpled fists. It was as if God had tried to make him +into four cherubim and as if in spite of everything he was working +through.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman toiled to pacify these disorders, gently, attentively, and +with a faint dismay in her dark eyes. She bribed and entreated and +marvelled at mental textures so unlike her own. Baby was squared with a +brand new Teddy Bear, a rare sort, a white one, which Snagsby went and +purchased in the Putney High Street and brought home in his arms, +conferring such a lustre upon the deed that the lower orders, the very +street-boys, watched him with reverence as he passed. Annette went to +sleep amidst a discomfort of small treasures and woke stormily when Mrs. +Harblow tried to remove some of the spikier ones. And Lady Harman went +back to her large pink bedroom and meditated for a long time upon these +things and tried to remember whether in her own less crowded childhood +with Georgina, either of them had been quite so inhumanly hard and +grasping as these feverish little mites in her nursery. She tried to +think she had been, she tried to think that all children were such +little distressed lumps of embittered individuality, and she did what +she could to overcome the queer feeling that this particular clutch of +offspring had been foisted upon her and weren’t at all the children she +could now imagine and desire,—gentle children, sweet-spirited +children....</p> + +<h4>§4</h4> + +<p>Susan Burnet arrived in a gusty mood and brought new matter for Lady +Harman’s ever broadening consideration of the wifely position. Susan, +led by a newspaper placard, had discovered Sir Isaac’s relations to the +International Bread and Cake Stores.</p> + +<p>“At first I thought I wouldn’t come,” said Susan. “I really did. I +couldn’t hardly believe it. And then I thought, ‘it isn’t <i>her</i>. It +can’t be <i>her</i>!’ But I’d never have dreamt before that I could have been +brought to set foot in the house of the man who drove poor father to +ruin and despair.... You’ve been so kind to me....”</p> + +<p>Susan’s simple right-down mind stopped for a moment with something very +like a sob, baffled by the contradictions of the situation.</p> + +<p>“So I came,” she said, with a forced bright smile.</p> + +<p>“I’m glad you came,” said Lady Harman. “I wanted to see you. And you +know, Susan, I know very little—very little indeed—of Sir Isaac’s +business.”</p> + +<p>“I quite believe it, my lady. I’ve never for one moment thought +<i>you</i>——I don’t know how to say it, my lady.”</p> + +<p>“And indeed I’m not,” said Lady Harman, taking it as said.</p> + +<p>“I knew you weren’t,” said Susan, relieved to be so understood.</p> + +<p>And the two women looked perplexedly at one another over the neglected +curtains Susan had come to “see to,” and shyness just snatched back Lady +Harman from her impulse to give Susan a sisterly kiss. Nevertheless +Susan who was full of wise intuitions felt that kiss that was never +given, and in the remote world of unacted deeds returned it with +effusion.</p> + +<p>“But it’s hard,” said Susan, “to find one’s own second sister mixed up +in a strike, and that’s what it’s come to last week. They’ve struck, all +the International waitresses have struck, and last night in Piccadilly +they were standing on the kerb and picketing and her among them. With a +crowd cheering.... And me ready to give my right hand to keep that girl +respectable!”</p> + +<p>And with a volubility that was at once tumultuous and effective, Susan +sketched in the broad outlines of the crisis that threatened the +dividends and popularity of the International Bread and Cake Stores. +The unsatisfied demands of that bright journalistic enterprise, <i>The +London Lion</i>, lay near the roots of the trouble. <i>The London Lion</i> had +stirred it up. But it was only too evident that <i>The London Lion</i> had +merely given a voice and form and cohesion to long smouldering +discontents.</p> + +<p>Susan’s account of the matter had that impartiality which comes from +intellectual incoherence, she hadn’t so much a judgment upon the whole +as a warring mosaic of judgments. It was talking upon Post Impressionist +lines, talking in the manner of Picasso. She had the firmest conviction +that to strike against employment, however ill-paid or badly +conditioned, was a disgraceful combination of folly, ingratitude and +general wickedness, and she had an equally strong persuasion that the +treatment of the employees of the International Bread and Cake Stores +was such as no reasonably spirited person ought to stand. She blamed her +sister extremely and sympathized with her profoundly, and she put it all +down in turn to <i>The London Lion</i>, to Sir Isaac, and to a small +round-faced person called Babs Wheeler, who appeared to be the strike +leader and seemed always to be standing on tables in the branches, or +clambering up to the lions in Trafalgar Square, or being cheered in the +streets.</p> + +<p>But there could be no mistaking the quality of Sir Isaac’s +“International” organization as Susan’s dabs of speech shaped it out. It +was indeed what we all of us see everywhere about us, the work of the +base energetic mind, raw and untrained, in possession of the keen +instruments of civilization, the peasant mind allied and blended with +the Ghetto mind, grasping and acquisitive, clever as a Norman peasant or +a Jew pedlar is clever, and beyond that outrageously stupid and ugly. It +was a new view and yet the old familiar view of her husband, but now she +saw him not as little eager eyes, a sharp nose, gaunt gestures and a +leaden complexion, but as shops and stores and rules and cash registers +and harsh advertisements and a driving merciless hurry to get—to get +anything and everything, money, monopoly, power, prominence, whatever +any other human being seemed to admire or seemed to find desirable, a +lust rather than a living soul. Now that her eyes were at last opened +Lady Harman, who had seen too little heretofore, now saw too much; she +saw all that she had not seen, with an excess of vision, monstrous, +caricatured. Susan had already dabbed in the disaster of Sir Isaac’s +unorganized competitors going to the wall—for charity or the state to +neglect or bandage as it might chance—the figure of that poor little +“Father,” moping hopelessly before his “accident” symbolized that; and +now she gave in vivid splotches of allusion, glimpses of the business +machine that had replaced those shattered enterprises and carried Sir +Isaac to the squalid glory of a Liberal honours list,—the carefully +balanced antagonisms and jealousies of the girls and the manageresses, +those manageresses who had been obliged to invest little bunches of +savings as guarantees and who had to account for every crumb and +particle of food stock that came to the branch, and the hunt for cases +and inefficiency by the inspectors, who had somehow to justify a salary +of two hundred a year, not to mention a percentage of the fines they +inflicted.</p> + +<p>“There’s all that business of the margarine,” said Susan. “Every branch +gets its butter under weight,—the water squeezes out,—and every branch +has over weight margarine. Of course the rules say that mixing’s +forbidden and if they get caught they go, but they got to pay-in for +that butter, and it’s setting a snare for their feet. People who’ve +never thought to cheat, when they get it like that, day after day, they +cheat, my lady.... And the girls get left food for rations. There’s +always trouble, it’s against what the rules say, but they get it. Of +course it’s against the rules, but what can a manageress do?—if the +waste doesn’t fall on them, it falls on her. She’s tied there with her +savings.... Such driving, my lady, it’s against the very spirit of God. +It makes scoffers point. It makes people despise law and order. There’s +Luke, he gets bitterer and bitterer; he says that it’s in the Word we +mustn’t muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn, but these Stores, he +says, they’d muzzle the ox and keep it hungry and make it work a little +machine, he says, whenever it put down its head in the hope of finding a +scrap....”</p> + +<p>So Susan, bright-eyed, flushed and voluble, pleading the cause of that +vague greatness in humanity that would love, that would loiter, that +would think, that would if it could give us art, delight and beauty, +that turns blindly and stumblingly towards joy, towards intervals, +towards the mysterious things of the spirit, against all this sordid +strenuousness, this driving destructive association of hardfisted +peasant soul and Ghetto greed, this fool’s “efficiency,” that rules our +world to-day.</p> + +<p>Then Susan lunged for a time at the waitress life her sister led. “She +has ’er ’ome with us, but some—they haven’t homes.”</p> + +<p>“They make a fuss about all this White Slave Traffic,” said Susan, “but +if ever there were white slaves it’s the girls who work for a living and +keep themselves respectable. And nobody wants to make an example of the +men who get rich out of <i>them</i>....”</p> + +<p>And after some hearsay about the pressure in the bake-houses and the +accidents to the van-men, who worked on a speeding-up system that Sir +Isaac had adopted from an American business specialist, Susan’s mental +discharge poured out into the particulars of the waitresses’ strike and +her sister’s share in that. “She <i>would</i> go into it,” said Susan, “she +let herself be drawn in. I asked her never to take the place. Better +Service, I said, a thousand times. I begged her, I could have begged her +on my bended knees....”</p> + +<p>The immediate cause of the strike it seemed was the exceptional +disagreeableness of one of the London district managers. “He takes +advantage of his position,” repeated Susan with face aflame, and Lady +Harman was already too wise about Susan’s possibilities to urge her +towards particulars....</p> + +<p>Now as Lady Harman listened to all this confused effective picturing of +the great catering business which was the other side of her husband and +which she had taken on trust so long, she had in her heart a quite +unreasonable feeling of shame that she should listen at all, a shyness, +as though she was prying, as though this really did not concern her. She +knew she had to listen and still she felt beyond her proper +jurisdiction. It is against instinct, it is with an enormous reluctance +that women are bringing their quick emotions, their flashing unstable +intelligences, their essential romanticism, their inevitable profound +generosity into the world of politics and business. If only they could +continue believing that all that side of life is grave and wise and +admirably managed for them they would. It is not in a day or a +generation that we shall un-specialize women. It is a wrench nearly as +violent as birth for them to face out into the bleak realization that +the man who goes out for them into business, into affairs, and returns +so comfortably loaded with housings and wrappings and trappings and +toys, isn’t, as a matter of fact, engaged in benign creativeness while +he is getting these desirable things.</p> + +<h4>§5</h4> + +<p>Lady Harman’s mind was so greatly exercised by Susan Burnet’s voluminous +confidences that it was only when she returned to her own morning room +that she recalled the pawning problem. She went back to Sir Isaac’s +study and found Susan with all her measurements taken and on the very +edge of departure.</p> + +<p>“Oh Susan!” she said.</p> + +<p>She found the matter a little difficult to broach. Susan remained in an +attitude of respectful expectation.</p> + +<p>“I wanted to ask you,” said Lady Harman and then broke off to shut the +door. Susan’s interest increased.</p> + +<p>“You know, Susan,” said Lady Harman with an air of talking about +commonplace things, “Sir Isaac is very rich and—of course—very +generous.... But sometimes one feels, one wants a little money of one’s +own.”</p> + +<p>“I think I can understand that, my lady,” said Susan.</p> + +<p>“I knew you would,” said Lady Harman and then with a brightness that was +slightly forced, “I can’t always get money of my own. It’s +difficult—sometimes.”</p> + +<p>And then blushing vividly: “I’ve got lots of <i>things</i>.... Susan, have +you ever pawned anything?”</p> + +<p>And so she broached it.</p> + +<p>“Not since I got fairly into work,” said Susan; “I wouldn’t have it. But +when I was little we were always pawning things. Why! we’ve pawned +kettles!...”</p> + +<p>She flashed three reminiscences.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Lady Harman produced a little glittering object and held it +between finger and thumb. “If I went into a pawnshop near here,” she +said, “it would seem so odd.... This ring, Susan, must be worth thirty +or forty pounds. And it seems so silly when I have it that I should +really be wanting money....”</p> + +<p>Susan displayed a peculiar reluctance to handle the ring. “I’ve never,” +she said, “pawned anything valuable—not valuable like that. +Suppose—suppose they wanted to know how I had come by it.”</p> + +<p>“It’s more than Alice earns in a year,” she said. “It’s——” she eyed +the glittering treasure; “it’s a queer thing for me to have.”</p> + +<p>A certain embarrassment arose between them. Lady Harman’s need of money +became more apparent. “I’ll do it for you,” said Susan, “indeed I’ll do +it. But——There’s one thing——”</p> + +<p>Her face flushed hotly. “It isn’t that I want to make difficulties. But +people in our position—we aren’t like people in your position. It’s +awkward sometimes to explain things. You’ve got a good character, but +people don’t know it. You can’t be too careful. It isn’t +sufficient—just to be honest. If I take that——If you were just to +give me a little note—in your handwriting—on your paper—just asking +me——I don’t suppose I need show it to anyone....”</p> + +<p>“I’ll write the note,” said Lady Harman. A new set of uncomfortable +ideas was dawning upon her. “But Susan——You don’t mean that anyone, +anyone who’s really honest—might get into trouble?”</p> + +<p>“You can’t be too careful,” said Susan, manifestly resolved not to give +our highly civilized state half a chance with her.</p> + +<h4>§6</h4> + +<p>The problem of Sir Isaac and just what he was doing and what he thought +he was doing and what he meant to do increased in importance in Lady +Harman’s mind as the days passed by. He had an air of being malignantly +up to something and she could not imagine what this something could be. +He spoke to her very little but he looked at her a great deal. He had +more and more of the quality of a premeditated imminent explosion....</p> + +<p>One morning she was standing quite still in the drawing-room thinking +over this now almost oppressive problem of why the situation did not +develop further with him, when she became aware of a thin flat unusual +book upon the small side table near the great armchair at the side of +the fire. He had been reading that overnight and it lay obliquely—it +might almost have been left out for her.</p> + +<p>She picked it up. It was <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i> in that excellent +folio edition of Henley’s which makes each play a comfortable thin book +apart. A curiosity to learn what it was had drawn her husband to +English Literature made her turn over the pages. <i>The Taming of the +Shrew</i> was a play she knew very slightly. For the Harmans, though deeply +implicated like most other rich and striving people in plans for +honouring the immortal William, like most other people found scanty +leisure to read him.</p> + +<p>As she turned over the pages a pencil mark caught her eye. Thence words +were underlined and further accentuated by a deeply scored line in the +margin.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“But for my bonny Kate, she must with me.<br /> +Nay; look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor fret;<br /> +I will be master of what is mine own:<br /> +She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,<br /> +She is my household stuff, my field, my barn,<br /> +My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing:<br /> +And here she stands, touch her whoever dare;<br /> +I’ll bring mine action on the proudest He,<br /> +That stops my way in Padua.” +</p> + +<p>With a slightly heightened colour, Lady Harman read on and presently +found another page slashed with Sir Isaac’s approval....</p> + +<p>Her face became thoughtful. Did he mean to attempt—Petruchio? He could +never dare. There were servants, there were the people one met, the +world.... He would never dare....</p> + +<p>What a strange play it was! Shakespear of course was wonderfully wise, +the crown of English wisdom, the culminating English mind,—or else one +might almost find something a little stupid and clumsy.... Did women +nowadays really feel like these Elizabethan wives who talked—like +girls, very forward girls indeed, but girls of sixteen?...</p> + +<p>She read the culminating speech of Katherine and now she had so +forgotten Sir Isaac she scarcely noted the pencil line that endorsed the +immortal words.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Thy husband is thy Lord, thy Life, thy Keeper,<br /> +Thy Head, thy Sovereign; one who cares for thee,<br /> +And for thy maintenance commits his body<br /> +To painful labour both by sea and land,<br /> +To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,<br /> +While thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;<br /> +And craves no other tribute at thy hands<br /> +But love, fair looks, and true obedience;<br /> +Too little payment for so great a debt.<br /> +Such duty as the Subject owes the Prince,<br /> +Even such a woman oweth to her husband;<br /> +And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,<br /> +And not obedient to his honest will,<br /> +What is she but a foul contending Rebel<br /> +And graceless traitor to her loving Lord?<br /> +I am ashamed that women are so simple<br /> +To offer war, where they should kneel for peace;</p> + +<p class="poem"> +My mind has been as big as one of yours,<br /> +My heat as great; my reason, haply, more,<br /> +To bandy word for word and frown for frown.<br /> +But now I see our lances are but straws;<br /> +Our strength is weak, our weakness past compare,<br /> +Seeming that most which we indeed least are....” +</p> + +<p>She wasn’t indignant. Something in these lines took hold of her +protesting imagination.</p> + +<p>She knew that so she could have spoken of a man.</p> + +<p>But that man,—she apprehended him as vaguely as an Anglican bishop +apprehends God. He was obscured altogether by shadows; he had only one +known characteristic, that he was totally unlike Sir Isaac. And the play +was false she felt in giving this speech to a broken woman. Such things +are not said by broken women. Broken women do no more than cheat and +lie. But so a woman might speak out of her unconquered wilfulness, as a +queen might give her lover a kingdom out of the fullness of her heart.</p> + +<h4>§7</h4> + +<p>The evening after his wife had had this glimpse into Sir Isaac’s mental +processes he telephoned that Charterson and Horatio Blenker were coming +home to dinner with him. Neither Lady Charterson nor Mrs. Blenker were +to be present; it was to be a business conversation and not a social +occasion, and Lady Harman he desired should wear her black and gold with +just a touch of crimson in her hair. Charterson wanted a word or two +with the flexible Horatio on sugar at the London docks, and Sir Isaac +had some vague ideas that a turn might be given to the public judgment +upon the waitresses’ strike, by a couple of Horatio’s thoughtful yet +gentlemanly articles. And in addition Charterson seemed to have +something else upon his mind; he did not tell as much to Sir Isaac but +he was weighing the possibilities of securing a controlling share in +the <i>Daily Spirit</i>, which simply didn’t know at present where it was +upon the sugar business, and of installing Horatio’s brother, Adolphus, +as its editor. He wanted to form some idea from Horatio of what Adolphus +might expect before he approached Adolphus.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman wore the touch of crimson in her hair as her husband had +desired, and the table was decorated simply with a big silver bowl of +crimson roses. A slight shade of apprehension in Sir Isaac’s face +changed to approval at the sight of her obedience. After all perhaps she +was beginning to see the commonsense of her position.</p> + +<p>Charterson struck her as looking larger, but then whenever she saw him +he struck her as looking larger. He enveloped her hand in a large +amiable paw for a minute and asked after the children with gusto. The +large teeth beneath his discursive moustache gave him the effect of a +perennial smile to which his asymmetrical ears added a touch of waggery. +He always betrayed a fatherly feeling towards her as became a man who +was married to a handsome wife old enough to be her mother. Even when he +asked about the children he did it with something of the amused +knowingness of assured seniority, as if indeed he knew all sorts of +things about the children that she couldn’t as yet even begin to +imagine. And though he confined his serious conversation to the two +other men, he would ever and again show himself mindful of her and throw +her some friendly enquiry, some quizzically puzzling remark. Blenker as +usual treated her as if she were an only very indistinctly visible +presence to whom an effusive yet inattentive politeness was due. He was +clearly nervous almost to the pitch of jumpiness. He knew he was to be +spoken to about the sugar business directly he saw Charterson, and he +hated being spoken to about the sugar business. He had his code of +honour. Of course one had to make concessions to one’s proprietors, but +he could not help feeling that if only they would consent to see his +really quite obvious gentlemanliness more clearly it would be better for +the paper, better for the party, better for them, far better for +himself. He wasn’t altogether a fool about that sugar; he knew how +things lay. They ought to trust him more. His nervousness betrayed +itself in many little ways. He crumbled his bread constantly until, +thanks to Snagsby’s assiduous replacement, he had made quite a pile of +crumbs, he dropped his glasses in the soup—a fine occasion for +Snagsby’s <i>sang-froid</i>—and he forgot not to use a fish knife with the +fish as Lady Grove directs and tried when he discovered his error to +replace it furtively on the table cloth. Moreover he kept on patting the +glasses on his nose—after Snagsby had whisked his soup plate away, +rescued, wiped and returned them to him—until that feature glowed +modestly at such excesses of attention, and the soup and sauces and +things bothered his fine blond moustache unusually. So that Mr. Blenker +what with the glasses, the napkin, the food and the things seemed as +restless as a young sparrow. Lady Harman did her duties as hostess in +the quiet key of her sombre dress, and until the conversation drew her +out into unexpected questionings she answered rather than talked, and +she did not look at her husband once throughout the meal.</p> + +<p>At first the talk was very largely Charterson. He had no intention of +coming to business with Blenker until Lady Harman had given place to the +port and the man’s nerves were steadier. He spoke of this and that in +the large discursive way men use in clubs, and it was past the fish +before the conversation settled down upon the topic of business +organization and Sir Isaac, a little warmed by champagne, came out of +the uneasily apprehensive taciturnity into which he had fallen in the +presence of his wife. Horatio Blenker was keenly interested in the +idealization of commercial syndication, he had been greatly stirred by a +book of Mr. Gerald Stanley Lee’s called <i>Inspired Millionaires</i> which +set out to show just what magnificent airs rich men might give +themselves, and he had done his best to catch its tone and to find +<i>Inspired Millionaires</i> in Sir Isaac and Charterson and to bring it to +their notice and to the notice of the readers of the <i>Old Country +Gazette</i>. He felt that if only Sir Isaac and Charterson would see +getting rich as a Great Creative Act it would raise their tone and his +tone and the tone of the <i>Old Country Gazette</i> tremendously. It wouldn’t +of course materially alter the methods or policy of the paper but it +would make them all feel nobler, and Blenker was of that finer clay that +does honestly want to feel nobler. He hated pessimism and all that +criticism and self-examination that makes weak men pessimistic, he +wanted to help weak men and be helped himself, he was all for that +school of optimism that would have each dunghill was a well-upholstered +throne, and his nervous, starry contributions to the talk were like +patches of water ranunculuses trying to flower in the overflow of a +sewer.</p> + +<p>Because you know it is idle to pretend that the talk of Charterson and +Sir Isaac wasn’t a heavy flow of base ideas; they hadn’t even the wit to +sham very much about their social significance. They cared no more for +the growth, the stamina, the spirit of the people whose lives they +dominated than a rat cares for the stability of the house it gnaws. They +<i>wanted</i> a broken-spirited people. They were in such relations wilfully +and offensively stupid, and I do not see why we people who read and +write books should pay this stupidity merely because it is prevalent +even the mild tribute of an ironical civility. Charterson talked of the +gathering trouble that might lead to a strike of the transport workers +in London docks, and what he had to say, he said,—he repeated it +several times—was, “<i>Let</i> them strike. We’re ready. The sooner they +strike the better. Devonport’s a Man and this time we’ll <i>beat</i> ’em....”</p> + +<p>He expanded generally on strikes. “It’s a question practically whether +we are to manage our own businesses or whether we’re to have them +managed for us. <i>Managed</i> I say!...”</p> + +<p>“They know nothing of course of the details of organization,” said +Blenker, shining with intelligence and looking quickly first to the +right and then to the left. “Nothing.”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac broke out into confirmatory matter. There was an idea in his +head that this talk might open his wife’s eyes to some sense of the +magnitude of his commercial life, to the wonder of its scale and +quality. He compared notes with Charterson upon a speeding-up system for +delivery vans invented by an American specialist and it made Blenker +flush with admiration and turn as if for sympathy to Lady Harman to +realize how a modification in a tailboard might mean a yearly saving in +wages of many thousand pounds. “The sort of thing they don’t +understand,” he said. And then Sir Isaac told of some of his own little +devices. He had recently taken to having the returns of percentage +increase and decrease from his various districts printed on postcards +and circulated monthly among the district managers, postcards endorsed +with such stimulating comments in red type as “Well done Cardiff!” or +“What ails Portsmouth?”—the results had been amazingly good; “neck and +neck work,” he said, “everywhere”—and thence they passed to the +question of confidential reports and surprise inspectors. Thereby they +came to the rights and wrongs of the waitress strike.</p> + +<p>And then it was that Lady Harman began to take a share in the +conversation.</p> + +<p>She interjected a question. “Yes,” she said suddenly and her +interruption was so unexpected that all three men turned their eyes to +her. “But how much do the girls get a week?”</p> + +<p>“I thought,” she said to some confused explanations by Blenker and +Charterson, “that gratuities were forbidden.”</p> + +<p>Blenker further explained that most of the girls of the class Sir Isaac +was careful to employ lived at home. Their income was “supplementary.”</p> + +<p>“But what happens to the others who don’t live at home, Mr. Blenker?” +she asked.</p> + +<p>“Very small minority,” said Mr. Blenker reassuring himself about his +glasses.</p> + +<p>“But what do they do?”</p> + +<p>Charterson couldn’t imagine whether she was going on in this way out of +sheer ignorance or not.</p> + +<p>“Sometimes their fines make big unexpected holes in their week’s pay,” +she said.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac made some indistinct remark about “utter nonsense.”</p> + +<p>“It seems to me to be driving them straight upon the streets.”</p> + +<p>The phrase was Susan’s. Its full significance wasn’t at that time very +clear to Lady Harman and it was only when she had uttered it that she +realized from Horatio Blenker’s convulsive start just what a blow she +had delivered at that table. His glasses came off again. He caught them +and thrust them back, he seemed to be holding his nose on, holding his +face on, preserving those carefully arranged features of himself from +hideous revelations; his free hand made weak movements with his dinner +napkin. He seemed to be holding it in reserve against the ultimate +failure of his face. Charterson surveyed her through an immense pause +open-mouthed; then he turned his large now frozen amiability upon his +host. “These are Awful questions,” he gasped, “rather beyond Us don’t +you think?” and then magnificently; “Harman, things are looking pretty +Queer in the Far East again. I’m told there are chances—of +revolution—even in Pekin....”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman became aware of Snagsby’s arm and his steady well-trained +breathing beside her as, tenderly almost but with a regretful +disapproval, he removed her plate....</p> + +<h4>§8</h4> + +<p>If Lady Harman had failed to remark at the time the deep impression her +words had made upon her hearers, she would have learnt it later from the +extraordinary wrath in which Sir Isaac, as soon as his guests had +departed, visited her. He was so angry he broke the seal of silence he +had set upon his lips. He came raging into the pink bedroom through the +paper-covered door as if they were back upon their old intimate footing. +He brought a flavour of cigars and manly refreshment with him, his +shirt front was a little splashed and crumpled and his white face was +variegated with flushed patches.</p> + +<p>“What ever d’you mean,” he cried, “by making a fool of me in front of +those fellers?... What’s my business got to do with you?”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman was too unready for a reply.</p> + +<p>“I ask you what’s my business got to do with you? It’s <i>my</i> affair, <i>my</i> +side. You got no more right to go shoving your spoke into that +than—anything. See? What do <i>you</i> know of the rights and wrongs of +business? How can <i>you</i> tell what’s right and what isn’t right? And the +things you came out with—the things you came out with! Why +Charterson—after you’d gone Charterson said, she doesn’t know, she +can’t know what she’s talking about! A decent woman! a <i>lady</i>! talking +of driving girls on the street. You ought to be ashamed of yourself! You +aren’t fit to show your face.... It’s these damned papers and pamphlets, +all this blear-eyed stuff, these decadent novels and things putting +narsty thoughts, <i>narsty dirty</i> thoughts into decent women’s heads. It +ought to be rammed back down their throats, it ought to be put a stop +to!”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac suddenly gave way to woe. “What have I <i>done</i>?” he cried, +“what have I done? Here’s everything going so well! We might be the +happiest of couples! We’re rich, we got everything we want.... And then +you go harbouring these ideas, fooling about with rotten people, taking +up with Socialism——Yes, I tell you—Socialism!”</p> + +<p>His moment of pathos ended. “NO?” he shouted in an enormous voice.</p> + +<p>He became white and grim. He emphasized his next words with a shaken +finger.</p> + +<p>“It’s got to end, my lady. It’s going to end sooner than you expect. +That’s all!...”</p> + +<p>He paused at the papered door. He had a popular craving for a vivid +curtain and this he felt was just a little too mild.</p> + +<p>“It’s going to end,” he repeated and then with great violence, with +almost alcoholic violence, with the round eyes and shouting voice and +shaken fist and blaspheming violence of a sordid, thrifty peasant +enraged, “it’s going to end a Damned Sight sooner than you expect.”</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08" id="chap08"></a>CHAPTER THE EIGHTH</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Sir Isaac as Petruchio</span></p> + +<h4>§1</h4> + +<p>Twice had Sir Isaac come near to betraying the rapid and extensive +preparations for the subjugation of his wife, that he hid behind his +silences. He hoped that their estrangement might be healed by a certain +display of strength and decision. He still refused to let himself +believe that all this trouble that had arisen between them, this sullen +insistence upon unbecoming freedoms of intercourse and movement, this +questioning spirit and a gaucherie of manner that might almost be +mistaken for an aversion from his person, were due to any essential evil +in her nature; he clung almost passionately to the alternative that she +was the victim of those gathering forces of discontent, of that +interpretation which can only be described as decadent and that veracity +which can only be called immodest, that darken the intellectual skies of +our time, a sweet thing he held her still though touched by corruption, +a prey to “idees,” “idees” imparted from the poisoned mind of her +sister, imbibed from the carelessly edited columns of newspapers, from +all too laxly censored plays, from “blear-eyed” bookshow he thanked the +Archbishop of York for that clever expressive epithet!—from the +careless talk of rashly admitted guests, from the very atmosphere of +London. And it had grown clearer and clearer to him that his duty to +himself and the world and her was to remove her to a purer, simpler air, +beyond the range of these infections, to isolate her and tranquillize +her and so win her back again to that acquiescence, that entirely +hopeless submissiveness that had made her so sweet and dear a companion +for him in the earlier years of their married life. Long before Lady +Beach-Mandarin’s crucial luncheon, his deliberate foreseeing mind had +been planning such a retreat. Black Strand even at his first visit had +appeared to him in the light of a great opportunity, and the crisis of +their quarrel did but release that same torrential energy which had +carried him to a position of Napoleonic predominance in the world of +baking, light catering and confectionery, into the channels of a scheme +already very definitely formed in his mind.</p> + +<p>His first proceeding after the long hours of sleepless passion that had +followed his wife’s Hampton Court escapade, had been to place himself in +communication with Mr. Brumley. He learnt at Mr. Brumley’s club that +that gentleman had slept there overnight and had started but a quarter +of an hour before, back to Black Strand. Sir Isaac in hot pursuit and +gathering force and assistance in mid flight reached Black Strand by +midday.</p> + +<p>It was with a certain twinge of the conscience that Mr. Brumley +perceived his visitor, but it speedily became clear that Sir Isaac had +no knowledge of the guilty circumstances of the day before. He had come +to buy Black Strand—incontinently, that was all. He was going, it +became clear at once, to buy it with all its fittings and furnishings as +it stood, lock, stock and barrel. Mr. Brumley, concealing that wild +elation, that sense of a joyous rebirth, that only the liquidation of +nearly all one’s possessions can give, was firm but not excessive. Sir +Isaac haggled as a wave breaks and then gave in and presently they were +making a memorandum upon the pretty writing-desk beneath the traditional +rose Euphemia had established there when Mr. Brumley was young and +already successful.</p> + +<p>This done, and it was done in less than fifteen minutes, Sir Isaac +produced a rather crumpled young architect from the motor-car as a +conjurer might produce a rabbit from a hat, a builder from Aleham +appeared astonishingly in a dog-cart—he had been summoned by +telegram—and Sir Isaac began there and then to discuss alterations, +enlargements and, more particularly, with a view to his nursery +requirements, the conversion of the empty barn into a nursery wing and +its connexion with the house by a corridor across the shrubbery.</p> + +<p>“It will take you three months,” said the builder from Aleham. “And the +worst time of the year coming.”</p> + +<p>“It won’t take three weeks—if I have to bring down a young army from +London to do it,” said Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>“But such a thing as plastering——”</p> + +<p>“We won’t have plastering.”</p> + +<p>“There’s canvas and paper, of course,” said the young architect.</p> + +<p>“There’s canvas and paper,” said Sir Isaac. “And those new patent +building units, so far as the corridor goes. I’ve seen the ads.”</p> + +<p>“We can whitewash ’em. They won’t show much,” said the young architect.</p> + +<p>“Oh if you do things in <i>that</i> way,” said the builder from Aleham with +bitter resignation....</p> + +<h4>§2</h4> + +<p>The morning dawned at last when the surprise was ripe. It was four days +after Susan’s visit, and she was due again on the morrow with the money +that would enable her employer to go to Lady Viping’s now imminent +dinner. Lady Harman had had to cut the Social Friends’ meeting +altogether, but the day before the surprise Agatha Alimony had come to +tea in her jobbed car, and they had gone together to the committee +meeting of the Shakespear Dinner Society. Sir Isaac had ignored that +defiance, and it was an unusually confident and quite unsuspicious woman +who descended in a warm October sunshine to the surprise. In the +breakfast-room she discovered an awe-stricken Snagsby standing with his +plate-basket before her husband, and her husband wearing strange unusual +tweeds and gaiters,—buttoned gaiters, and standing a-straddle,—unusually +a-straddle, on the hearthrug.</p> + +<p>“That’s enough, Snagsby,” said Sir Isaac, at her entrance. “Bring it +all.”</p> + +<p>She met Snagsby’s eye, and it was portentous.</p> + +<p>Latterly Snagsby’s eye had lost the assurance of his former days. She +had noted it before, she noted it now more than ever; as though he was +losing confidence, as though he was beginning to doubt, as though the +world he had once seemed to rule grew insecure beneath his feet. For a +moment she met his eye; it might have been a warning he conveyed, it +might have been an appeal for sympathy, and then he had gone. She looked +at the table. Sir Isaac had breakfasted acutely.</p> + +<p>In silence, among the wreckage and with a certain wonder growing, Lady +Harman attended to her needs.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac cleared his throat.</p> + +<p>She became aware that he had spoken. “What did you say, Isaac?” she +asked, looking up. He seemed to have widened his straddle almost +dangerously, and he spoke with a certain conscious forcefulness.</p> + +<p>“We’re going to move out of this house, Elly,” he said. “We’re going +down into the country right away.”</p> + +<p>She sat back in her chair and regarded his pinched and determined +visage.</p> + +<p>“What do you mean?” she asked.</p> + +<p>“I’ve bought that house of Brumley’s,—Black Strand. We’re going to move +down there—<i>now</i>. I’ve told the servants.... When you’ve done your +breakfast, you’d better get Peters to pack your things. The big car’s +going to be ready at half-past ten.”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman reflected.</p> + +<p>“To-morrow evening,” she said, “I was going out to dinner at Lady +Viping’s.”</p> + +<p>“Not my affair—seemingly,” said Sir Isaac with irony. “Well, the car’s +going to be ready at half-past ten.”</p> + +<p>“But that dinner——!”</p> + +<p>“We’ll think about it when the time comes.”</p> + +<p>Husband and wife regarded each other.</p> + +<p>“I’ve had about enough of London,” said Sir Isaac. “So we’re going to +shift the scenery. See?”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman felt that one might adduce good arguments against this +course if only one knew of them.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac had a bright idea. He rang.</p> + +<p>“Snagsby,” he said, “just tell Peters to pack up Lady Harman’s +things....”</p> + +<p>“<i>Well!</i>” said Lady Harman, as the door closed on Snagsby. Her mind was +full of confused protest, but she had again that entirely feminine and +demoralizing conviction that if she tried to express it she would weep +or stumble into some such emotional disaster. If now she went upstairs +and told Peters <i>not</i> to pack——!</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac walked slowly to the window, and stood for a time staring out +into the garden.</p> + +<p>Extraordinary bumpings began overhead in Sir Isaac’s room. No doubt +somebody was packing something....</p> + +<p>Lady Harman realized with a deepening humiliation that she dared not +dispute before the servants, and that he could. “But the children——” +she said at last.</p> + +<p>“I’ve told Mrs. Harblow,” he said, over his shoulder. “Told her it was a +bit of a surprise.” He turned, with a momentary lapse into something +like humour. “You see,” he said, “it <i>is</i> a bit of a surprise.”</p> + +<p>“But what are you going to do with this house?”</p> + +<p>“Lock it all up for a bit.... I don’t see any sense in living where we +aren’t happy. Perhaps down there we shall manage better....”</p> + +<p>It emerged from the confusion of Lady Harman’s mind that perhaps she had +better go to the nursery, and see how things were getting on there. Sir +Isaac watched her departure with a slightly dubious eye, made little +noises with his teeth for a time, and then went towards the telephone.</p> + +<p>In the hall she found two strange young men in green aprons assisting +the under-butler to remove the hats and overcoats and such-like personal +material into a motor-van outside. She heard two of the housemaids +scurrying upstairs. “’Arf an hour,” said one, “isn’t what I call a +proper time to pack a box in.”</p> + +<p>In the nursery the children were disputing furiously what toys were to +be taken into the country.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman was a very greatly astonished woman. The surprise had been +entirely successful.</p> + +<h4>§3</h4> + +<p>It has been said, I think, by Limburger, in his already cited work, that +nothing so excites and prevails with woman as rapid and extensive +violence, sparing and yet centring upon herself, and certainly it has to +be recorded that, so far from being merely indignant, and otherwise a +helplessly pathetic spectacle, Lady Harman found, though perhaps she did +not go quite so far as to admit to herself that she found, this vehement +flight from the social, moral, and intellectual contaminations of London +an experience not merely stimulating but entertaining. It lifted her +delicate eyebrows. Something, it may have been a sense of her own +comparative immobility amid this sudden extraordinary bustle of her +home, put it into her head that so it was long ago that Lot must have +bundled together his removable domesticities.</p> + +<p>She made one attempt at protest. “Isaac,” she said, “isn’t all this +rather ridiculous——”</p> + +<p>“Don’t speak to me!” he answered, waving her off. “Don’t speak to me! +You should have spoken before, Elly. <i>Now</i>,—things are happening.”</p> + +<p>The image of Black Strand as, after all, a very pleasant place indeed +returned to her. She adjudicated upon the nursery difficulties, and then +went in a dreamlike state of mind to preside over her own more personal +packing. She found Peters exercising all that indecisive helplessness +which is characteristic of ladies’ maids the whole world over.</p> + +<p>It was from Peters she learnt that the entire household, men and maids +together, was to be hurled into Surrey. “Aren’t they all rather +surprised?” asked Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“Yes, m’m,” said Peters on her knees, “but of course if the drains is +wrong the sooner we all go the better.”</p> + +<p>(So that was what he had told them.)</p> + +<p>A vibration and a noise of purring machinery outside drew the lady to +the window, and she discovered that at least four of the large +motor-vans from the International Stores were to co-operate in the trek. +There they were waiting, massive and uniform. And then she saw Snagsby +in his alpaca jacket <i>running</i> towards the house from the gates. Of +course he was running only very slightly indeed, but still he was +running, and the expression of distress upon his face convinced her that +he was being urged to unusual and indeed unsuitable tasks under the +immediate personal supervision of Sir Isaac.... Then from round the +corner appeared the under butler or at least the legs of him going very +fast, under a pile of shirt boxes and things belonging to Sir Isaac. He +dumped them into the nearest van and heaved a deep sigh and returned +houseward after a remorseful glance at the windows.</p> + +<p>A violent outcry from baby, who, with more than her customary violence +was making her customary morning protest against being clad, recalled +Lady Harman from the contemplation of these exterior activities....</p> + +<p>The journey to Black Strand was not accomplished without misadventure; +there was a puncture near Farnham, and as Clarence with a leisurely +assurance entertained himself with the Stepney, they were passed first +by the second car with the nursery contingent, which went by in a shrill +chorus, crying, “<i>We-e-e</i> shall get there first, <i>We-e-e</i> shall get +there first,” and then by a large hired car all agog with housemaids and +Mrs. Crumble and with Snagsby, as round and distressed as the full moon, +and the under butler, cramped and keen beside the driver. There followed +the leading International Stores car, and then the Stepney was on and +they could hasten in pursuit....</p> + +<p>And at last they came to Black Strand, and when they saw Black Strand it +seemed to Lady Harman that the place had blown out a huge inflamed red +cheek and lost its pleasant balance altogether. “<i>Oh!</i>” she cried.</p> + +<p>It was the old barn flushed by the strain of adaptation to a new use, +its comfortable old wall ruptured by half a dozen brilliant new windows, +a light red chimney stack at one end. From it a vividly artistic +corridor ran to the house and the rest of the shrubbery was all trampled +and littered with sheds, bricks, poles and material generally. Black +Strand had left the hands of the dilettante school and was in the grip +of those vigorous moulding forces that are shaping our civilization +to-day.</p> + +<p>The jasmine wig over the porch had suffered a strenuous clipping; the +door might have just come out of prison. In the hall the Carpaccio +copies still glowed, but there were dust sheets over most of the +furniture and a plumber was moving his things out with that eleventh +hour reluctance so characteristic of plumbers. Mrs. Rabbit, a little +tearful, and dressed for departure very respectably in black was giving +the youngest and least experienced housemaid a faithful history of Mr. +Brumley’s earlier period. “’Appy we all was,” said Mrs. Rabbit, “as +Birds in a Nest.”</p> + +<p>Through the windows two of the Putney gardeners were busy replacing Mr. +Brumley’s doubtful roses by recognized sorts, the <i>right</i> sorts....</p> + +<p>“I’ve been doing all I can to make it ready for you,” said Sir Isaac at +his wife’s ear, bringing a curious reminiscence of the first home-coming +to Putney into her mind.</p> + +<h4>§4</h4> + +<p>“And now,” said Sir Isaac with evident premeditation and a certain +deliberate amiability, “now we got down here, now we got away a bit from +all those London things with nobody to cut in between us, me and you can +have a bit of a talk, Elly, and see what it’s all about.”</p> + +<p>They had lunched together in the little hall-dining room,—the children +had had a noisily cheerful picnic in the kitchen with Mrs. Harblow, and +now Lady Harman was standing at the window surveying the ravages of rose +replacement.</p> + +<p>She turned towards him. “Yes,” she said. “I think—I think we can’t go +on like this.”</p> + +<p>“<i>I</i> can’t,” said Sir Isaac, “anyhow.”</p> + +<p>He too came and stared at the rose planting.</p> + +<p>“If we were to go up there—among the pine woods”—he pointed with his +head at the dark background of Euphemia’s herbaceous borders—“we +shouldn’t hear quite so much of this hammering....”</p> + +<p>Husband and wife walked slowly in the afternoon sunlight across the +still beautiful garden. Each was gravely aware of an embarrassed +incapacity for the task they had set themselves. They were going to talk +things over. Never in their lives had they really talked to each other +clearly and honestly about anything. Indeed it is scarcely too much to +say that neither had ever talked about anything to anyone. She was too +young, her mind was now growing up in her and feeling its way to +conscious expression, and he had never before wanted to express himself. +He did now want to express himself. For behind his rant and fury Sir +Isaac had been thinking very hard indeed during the last three weeks +about his life and her life and their relations; he had never thought so +much about anything except his business economics. So far he had either +joked at her, talked “silly” to her, made, as they say, “remarks,” or +vociferated. That had been the sum of their mental intercourse, as +indeed it is the sum of the intercourse of most married couples. His +attempt to state his case to her had so far always flared into +rhetorical outbreaks. But he was discontented with these rhetorical +outbreaks. His dispositions to fall into them made him rather like a +nervous sepia that cannot keep its ink sac quiet while it is sitting for +its portrait. In the earnestness of his attempt at self-display he +vanished in his own outpourings.</p> + +<p>He wanted now to reason with her simply and persuasively. He wanted to +say quietly impressive and convincing things in a low tone of voice and +make her abandon every possible view except his view. He walked now +slowly meditating the task before him, making a faint thoughtful noise +with his teeth, his head sunken in the collar of the motor overcoat he +wore because of a slight cold he had caught. And he had to be careful +about colds because of his constitutional defect. She too felt she had +much to say. Much too she had in her mind that she couldn’t say, because +this strange quarrel had opened unanticipated things for her; she had +found and considered repugnances in her nature she had never dared to +glance at hitherto....</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac began rather haltingly when they had reached a sandy, +ant-infested path that ran slantingly up among the trees. He affected a +certain perplexity. He said he did not understand what it was his wife +was “after,” what she “thought she was doing” in “making all this +trouble”; he wanted to know just what it was she wanted, how she thought +they ought to live, just what she considered his rights were as her +husband and just what she considered were her duties as his wife—if, +that is, she considered she had any duties. To these enquiries Lady +Harman made no very definite reply; their estrangement instead of +clearing her mind had on the whole perplexed it more, by making her +realize the height and depth and extent of her possible separation from +him. She replied therefore with an unsatisfactory vagueness; she said +she wanted to feel that she possessed herself, that she was no longer a +child, that she thought she had a right to read what she chose, see what +people she liked, go out a little by herself, have a certain +independence—she hesitated, “have a certain definite allowance of my +own.”</p> + +<p>“Have I ever refused you money?” cried Sir Isaac protesting.</p> + +<p>“It isn’t that,” said Lady Harman; “it’s the feeling——”</p> + +<p>“The feeling of being able to—defy—anything I say,” said Sir Isaac +with a note of bitterness. “As if I didn’t understand!”</p> + +<p>It was beyond Lady Harman’s powers to express just how that wasn’t the +precise statement of the case.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac, reverting to his tone of almost elaborate reasonableness, +expanded his view that it was impossible for husband and wife to have +two different sets of friends;—let alone every other consideration, he +explained, it wasn’t convenient for them not to be about together, and +as for reading or thinking what she chose he had never made any +objection to anything unless it was “decadent rot” that any decent man +would object to his womanfolk seeing, rot she couldn’t understand the +drift of—fortunately. Blear-eyed humbug.... He checked himself on the +verge of an almost archiepiscopal outbreak in order to be patiently +reasonable again. He was prepared to concede that it would be very nice +if Lady Harman could be a good wife and also an entirely independent +person, very nice, but the point was—his tone verged on the +ironical—that she couldn’t be two entirely different people at the same +time.</p> + +<p>“But you have your friends,” she said, “you go away alone——”</p> + +<p>“That’s different,” said Sir Isaac with a momentary note of annoyance. +“It’s business. It isn’t that I want to.”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman had a feeling that they were neither of them gaining any +ground. She blamed herself for her lack of lucidity. She began again, +taking up the matter at a fresh point. She said that her life at present +wasn’t full, that it was only half a life, that it was just home and +marriage and nothing else; he had his business, he went out into the +world, he had politics and—“all sorts of things”; she hadn’t these +interests; she had nothing in the place of them——</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac closed this opening rather abruptly by telling her that she +should count herself lucky she hadn’t, and again the conversation was +suspended for a time.</p> + +<p>“But I want to know about these things,” she said.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac took that musingly.</p> + +<p>“There’s things go on,” she said; “outside home. There’s social work, +there’s interests——Am I never to take any part—in that?”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac still reflected.</p> + +<p>“There’s one thing,” he said at last, “I want to know. We’d better have +it out—<i>now</i>.”</p> + +<p>But he hesitated for a time.</p> + +<p>“Elly!” he blundered, “you aren’t—you aren’t getting somehow—not fond +of me?”</p> + +<p>She made no immediate reply.</p> + +<p>“Look here!” he said in an altered voice. “Elly! there isn’t something +below all this? There isn’t something been going on that I don’t know?”</p> + +<p>Her eyes with a certain terror in their depths questioned him.</p> + +<p>“Something,” he said, and his face was deadly white—“<i>Some other man, +Elly?</i>”</p> + +<p>She was suddenly crimson, a flaming indignation.</p> + +<p>“Isaac!” she said, “what do you <i>mean</i>? How can you <i>ask</i> me such a +thing?”</p> + +<p>“If it’s that!” said Sir Isaac, his face suddenly full of malignant +force, “I’ll——But I’d <i>kill</i> you....”</p> + +<p>“If it isn’t that,” he went on searching his mind; “why should a woman +get restless? Why should she want to go away from her husband, go +meeting other people, go gadding about? If a woman’s satisfied, she’s +satisfied. She doesn’t harbour fancies.... All this grumbling and +unrest. Natural for your sister, but why should you? You’ve got +everything a woman needs, husband, children, a perfectly splendid home, +clothes, good jewels and plenty of them, respect! Why should you want to +go out after things? It’s mere spoilt-childishness. Of course you want +to wander out—and if there isn’t a man——”</p> + +<p>He caught her wrist suddenly. “There isn’t a man?” he demanded.</p> + +<p>“Isaac!” she protested in horror.</p> + +<p>“Then there’ll be one. You think I’m a fool, you think I don’t know +anything all these literary and society people know. I <i>do</i> know. I know +that a man and a woman have got to stick together, and if you go +straying—you may think you’re straying after the moon or social work or +anything—but there’s a strange man waiting round the corner for every +woman and a strange woman for every man. Think <i>I</i>’ve had no +temptations?... Oh! I <i>know</i>, I <i>know</i>. What’s life or anything but +that? and it’s just because we’ve not gone on having more children, just +because we listened to all those fools who said you were overdoing it, +that all this fretting and grumbling began. We’ve got on to the wrong +track, Elly, and we’ve got to get back to plain wholesome ways of +living. See? That’s what I’ve come down here for and what I mean to do. +We’ve got to save ourselves. I’ve been too—too modern and all that. I’m +going to be a husband as a husband should. I’m going to protect you from +these idees—protect you from your own self.... And that’s about where +we stand, Elly, as I make it out.”</p> + +<p>He paused with the effect of having delivered himself of long +premeditated things.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman essayed to speak. But she found that directly she set +herself to speak she sobbed and began weeping. She choked for a moment. +Then she determined she would go on, and if she must cry, she must cry. +She couldn’t let a disposition to tears seal her in silence for ever.</p> + +<p>“It isn’t,” she said, “what I expected—of life. It isn’t——”</p> + +<p>“It’s what life is,” Sir Isaac cut in.</p> + +<p>“When I think,” she sobbed, “of what I’ve lost——”</p> + +<p>“<i>Lost!</i>” cried Sir Isaac. “Lost! Oh come now, Elly, I like that. +What!—<i>lost</i>. Hang it! You got to look facts in the face. You can’t +deny——Marrying like this,—you made a jolly good thing of it.”</p> + +<p>“But the beautiful things, the noble things!”</p> + +<p>“<i>What’s</i> beautiful?” cried Sir Isaac in protesting scorn. “<i>What’s</i> +noble? ROT! Doing your duty if you like and being sensible, that’s noble +and beautiful, but not fretting about and running yourself into danger. +You’ve got to have a sense of humour, Elly, in this life——” He created +a quotation. “As you make your bed—so shall you lie.”</p> + +<p>For an interval neither of them spoke. They crested the hill, and came +into view of that advertisement board she had first seen in Mr. +Brumley’s company. She halted, and he went a step further and halted +too. He recalled his ideas about the board. He had meant to have them +all altered but other things had driven it from his mind....</p> + +<p>“Then you mean to imprison me here,” said Lady Harman to his back. He +turned about.</p> + +<p>“It isn’t much like a prison. I’m asking you to stay here—and be what a +wife <i>should</i> be.”</p> + +<p>“I’m to have no money.”</p> + +<p>“That’s—that depends entirely on yourself. You know that well enough.”</p> + +<p>She looked at him gravely.</p> + +<p>“I won’t stand it,” she said at last with a gentle deliberation.</p> + +<p>She spoke so softly that he doubted his hearing. “<i>What?</i>” he asked +sharply.</p> + +<p>“I won’t stand it,” she repeated. “No.”</p> + +<p>“But—what can you do?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know,” she said, after a moment of grave consideration.</p> + +<p>For some moments his mind hunted among possibilities.</p> + +<p>“It’s me that’s standing it,” he said. He came closely up to her. He +seemed on the verge of rhetoric. He pressed his thin white lips +together. “Standing it! when we might be so happy,” he snapped, and +shrugged his shoulders and turned with an expression of mournful +resolution towards the house again. She followed slowly.</p> + +<p>He felt that he had done all that a patient and reasonable husband could +do. <i>Now</i>—things must take their course.</p> + +<h4>§5</h4> + +<p>The imprisonment of Lady Harman at Black Strand lasted just one day +short of a fortnight.</p> + +<p>For all that time except for such interludes as the urgent needs of the +strike demanded, Sir Isaac devoted himself to the siege. He did all he +could to make her realize how restrainedly he used the powers the law +vests in a husband, how little he forced upon her the facts of marital +authority and wifely duty. At times he sulked, at times he affected a +cold dignity, and at times a virile anger swayed him at her unsubmissive +silences. He gave her little peace in that struggle, a struggle that +came to the edge of physical conflict. There were moments when it seemed +to her that nothing remained but that good old-fashioned connubial +institution, the tussle for the upper hand, when with a feminine horror +she felt violence shouldering her shoulder or contracting ready to grip +her wrist. Against violence she doubted her strength, was filled with a +desolating sense of yielding nerve and domitable muscle. But just short +of violence Sir Isaac’s spirit failed him. He would glower and bluster, +half threaten, and retreat. It might come to that at last but at present +it had not come to that.</p> + +<p>She could not understand why she had neither message nor sign from Susan +Burnet, but she hid that anxiety and disappointment under her general +dignity.</p> + +<p>She spent as much time with the children as she could, and until Sir +Isaac locked up the piano she played, and was surprised to find far more +in Chopin than she had ever suspected in the days when she had acquired +a passable dexterity of execution. She found, indeed, the most curious +things in Chopin, emotional phrases, that stirred and perplexed and yet +pleased her....</p> + +<p>The weather was very fine and open that year. A golden sunshine from +October passed on into November and Lady Harman spent many of these days +amidst the pretty things the builder from Aleham had been too hurried to +desecrate, dump, burn upon, and flatten into indistinguishable mire, +after the established custom of builders in gardens since the world +began. She would sit in the rockery where she had sat with Mr. Brumley +and recall that momentous conversation, and she would wander up the +pine-wood slopes behind, and she would spend long musing intervals among +Euphemia’s perennials, thinking sometimes, and sometimes not so much +thinking as feeling the warm tendernesses of nature and the perplexing +difficulties of human life. With an amused amazement Lady Harman +reflected as she walked about the pretty borders and the little patches +of lawn and orchard that in this very place she was to have realized an +imitation of the immortal “Elizabeth” and have been wise, witty, gay, +defiant, gallant and entirely successful with her “Man of Wrath.” +Evidently there was some temperamental difference, or something in her +situation, that altered the values of the affair. It was clearly a +different sort of man for one thing. She didn’t feel a bit gay, and her +profound and deepening indignation with the alternative to this +stagnation was tainted by a sense of weakness and incapacity.</p> + +<p>She came very near surrender several times. There were afternoons of +belated ripened warmth, a kind of summer that had been long in the +bottle, with a certain lassitude in the air and a blue haze among the +trees, that made her feel the folly of all resistances to fate. Why, +after all, shouldn’t she take life as she found it, that is to say, as +Sir Isaac was prepared to give it to her? He wasn’t really so bad, she +told herself. The children—their noses were certainly a little sharp, +but there might be worse children. The next might take after herself +more. Who was she to turn upon her appointed life and declare it wasn’t +good enough? Whatever happened the world was still full of generous and +beautiful things, trees, flowers, sunset and sunrise, music and mist and +morning dew.... And as for this matter of the sweated workers, the +harshness of the business, the ungracious competition, suppose if +instead of fighting her husband with her weak powers, she persuaded him. +She tried to imagine just exactly how he might be persuaded....</p> + +<p>She looked up and discovered with an extraordinary amazement Mr. Brumley +with eager gestures and a flushed and excited visage hurrying towards +her across the croquet lawn.</p> + +<h4>§6</h4> + +<p>Lady Viping’s dinner-party had been kept waiting exactly thirty-five +minutes for Lady Harman. Sir Isaac, with a certain excess of zeal, had +intercepted the hasty note his wife had written to account for her +probable absence. The party was to have centred entirely upon Lady +Harman, it consisted either of people who knew her already, or of people +who were to have been specially privileged to know her, and Lady Viping +telephoned twice to Putney before she abandoned hope. “It’s +disconnected,” she said, returning in despair from her second struggle +with the great public service. “They can’t get a reply.”</p> + +<p>“It’s that little wretch,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin. “He hasn’t let her +come. <i>I</i> know him.”</p> + +<p>“It’s like losing a front tooth,” said Lady Viping, surveying her table +as she entered the dining-room.</p> + +<p>“But surely—she would have written,” said Mr. Brumley, troubled and +disappointed, regarding an aching gap to the left of his chair, a gap +upon which a pathetic little card bearing Lady Harman’s name still lay +obliquely.</p> + +<p>Naturally the talk tended to centre upon the Harmans. And naturally Lady +Beach-Mandarin was very bold and outspoken and called Sir Isaac quite a +number of vivid things. She also aired her views of the marriage of the +future, which involved a very stringent treatment of husbands indeed. +“Half his property and half his income,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin, +“paid into her separate banking account.”</p> + +<p>“But,” protested Mr. Brumley, “would men marry under those conditions?”</p> + +<p>“Men will marry anyhow,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin, “under <i>any</i> +conditions.”</p> + +<p>“Exactly Sir Joshua’s opinion,” said Lady Viping.</p> + +<p>All the ladies at the table concurred and only one cheerful bachelor +barrister dissented. The other men became gloomy and betrayed a distaste +for this general question. Even Mr. Brumley felt a curious faint terror +and had for a moment a glimpse of the possibilities that might lie +behind the Vote. Lady Beach-Mandarin went bouncing back to the +particular instance. At present, she said, witness Lady Harman, women +were slaves, pampered slaves if you will, but slaves. As things were now +there was nothing to keep a man from locking up his wife, opening all +her letters, dressing her in sack-cloth, separating her from her +children. Most men, of course, didn’t do such things, they were amenable +to public opinion, but Sir Isaac was a jealous little Ogre. He was a +gnome who had carried off a princess....</p> + +<p>She threw out projects for assailing the Ogre. She would descend +to-morrow morning upon the Putney house, a living flamboyant writ of +Habeas Corpus. Mr. Brumley, who had been putting two and two together, +was abruptly moved to tell of the sale of Black Strand. “They may be +there,” he said.</p> + +<p>“He’s carried her off,” cried Lady Beach-Mandarin on a top note. “It +might be the eighteenth century for all he cares. But if it’s Black +Strand,—I’ll go to Black Strand....”</p> + +<p>But she had to talk about it for a week before she actually made her +raid, and then, with an instinctive need for an audience, she took with +her a certain Miss Garradice, one of those mute, emotional nervous +spinsters who drift detachedly, with quick sudden movements, glittering +eyeglasses, and a pent-up imminent look, about our social system. There +is something about this type of womanhood—it is hard to say—almost as +though they were the bottled souls of departed buccaneers grown somehow +virginal. She came with Lady Beach-Mandarin quietly, almost humorously, +and yet it was as if the pirate glittered dimly visible through the +polished glass of her erect exterior.</p> + +<p>“Here we are!” said Lady Beach-Mandarin, staring astonished at the once +familiar porch. “Now for it!”</p> + +<p>She descended and assailed the bell herself and Miss Garradice stood +beside her with the light of combat in her eyes and glasses and cheeks.</p> + +<p>“Shall I offer to take her for a drive!”</p> + +<p>“<i>Let’s</i>,” said Miss Garradice in an enthusiastic whisper. “<i>Right away! +For ever.</i>”</p> + +<p>“<i>I will</i>,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin, and nodded desperately.</p> + +<p>She was on the point of ringing again when Snagsby appeared.</p> + +<p>He stood with a large obstructiveness in the doorway. “Lady ’Arman, my +lady” he said with a well-trained deliberation, “is not a Tome.”</p> + +<p>“Not at home!” queried Lady Beach-Mandarin.</p> + +<p>“Not a Tome, my lady,” repeated Snagsby invincibly.</p> + +<p>“But—when will she be at home?”</p> + +<p>“I can’t say, my lady.”</p> + +<p>“Is Sir Isaac——?”</p> + +<p>“Sir Isaac, my lady, is not a Tome. Nobody is a Tome, my lady.”</p> + +<p>“But we’ve come from London!” said Lady Beach-Mandarin.</p> + +<p>“I’m very sorry, my lady.”</p> + +<p>“You see, I want my friend to see this house and garden.”</p> + +<p>Snagsby was visibly disconcerted. “I ’ave no instructions, my lady,” he +tried.</p> + +<p>“Oh, but Lady Harman would never object——”</p> + +<p>Snagsby’s confusion increased. He seemed to be wanting to keep his face +to the visitors and at the same time glance over his shoulder. “I will,” +he considered, “I will enquire, my lady.” He backed a little, and seemed +inclined to close the door upon them. Lady Beach-Mandarin was too quick +for him. She got herself well into the open doorway. “And of whom are +you going to enquire?”</p> + +<p>A large distress betrayed itself in Snagsby’s eye. “The ’ousekeeper,” he +attempted. “It falls to the ’ousekeeper, my lady.”</p> + +<p>Lady Beach-Mandarin turned her face to Miss Garradice, shining in +support. “Stuff and nonsense,” she said, “of course we shall come in.” +And with a wonderful movement that was at once powerful and perfectly +lady-like this intrepid woman—“butted” is not the word—collided +herself with Snagsby and hurled him backward into the hall. Miss +Garradice followed closely behind and at once extended herself in open +order on Lady Beach-Mandarin’s right. “Go and enquire,” said Lady +Beach-Mandarin with a sweeping gesture of her arm. “Go and enquire.”</p> + +<p>For a moment Snagsby surveyed the invasion with horror and then fled +precipitately into the recesses of the house.</p> + +<p>“Of <i>course</i> they’re at home!” said Lady Beach-Mandarin. “Fancy +that—that—that <i>navigable</i>—trying to shut the door on us!”</p> + +<p>For a moment the two brightly excited ladies surveyed each other and +then Lady Beach-Mandarin, with a quickness of movement wonderful in one +so abundant, began to open first one and then another of the various +doors that opened into the long hall-living room. At a peculiar little +cry from Miss Garradice she turned from a contemplation of the long low +study in which so much of the Euphemia books had been written, to +discover Sir Isaac behind her, closely followed by an agonized Snagsby.</p> + +<p>“A-a-a-a-h!” she cried, with both hands extended, “and so you’ve come +in, Sir Isaac! That’s perfectly delightful. This is my friend Miss +Garradice, who’s <i>dying</i> to see anything you’ve left of poor Euphemia’s +garden. And <i>how</i> is dear Lady Harman?”</p> + +<p>For some crucial moments Sir Isaac was unable to speak and regarded his +visitors with an expression that was unpretendingly criminal.</p> + +<p>Then he found speech. “You can’t,” he said. “It—can’t be managed.” He +shook his head; his lips were whitely compressed.</p> + +<p>“But all the way from London, Sir Isaac!”</p> + +<p>“Lady Harman’s ill,” lied Sir Isaac. “She mustn’t be disturbed. +Everything has to be kept quiet. See? Not even shouting. Not even +ordinarily raised voices. A voice like yours—might kill her. That’s why +Snagsby here said we were not at home. We aren’t at home—not to +anyone.”</p> + +<p>Lady Beach-Mandarin was baffled.</p> + +<p>“Snagsby,” said Sir Isaac, “open that door.”</p> + +<p>“But can’t I see her—just for a moment?”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac’s malignity had softened a little at the prospect of victory. +“Absolutely impossible,” he said. “Everything disturbs her, every tiny +thing. You——You’d be certain to.”</p> + +<p>Lady Beach-Mandarin looked at her companion and it was manifest that she +was at the end of her resources. Miss Garradice after the fashion of +highly strung spinsters suddenly felt disappointed in her leader. It +wasn’t, her silence intimated, for her to offer suggestions.</p> + +<p>The ladies were defeated. When at last that stiff interval ended their +dresses rustled doorward, and Sir Isaac broke out into the civilities of +a victor....</p> + +<p>It was only when they were a mile away from Black Strand that fluent +speech returned to Lady Beach-Mandarin. “The little—Crippen,” she said. +“He’s got her locked up in some cellar.... Horrid little face he has! He +looked like a rat at bay.”</p> + +<p>“I think perhaps if we’d done <i>differently</i>,” said Miss Garradice in a +tone of critical irresponsibility.</p> + +<p>“I’ll write to her. That’s what I’ll do,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin +contemplating her next step. “I’m really—concerned. And didn’t you +feel—something sinister. That butler-man’s expression—a kind of round +horror.”</p> + +<p>That very evening she told it all—it was almost the trial trip of the +story—to Mr. Brumley....</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac watched their departure furtively from the study window and +then ran out to the garden. He went right through into the pine woods +beyond and presently, far away up the slopes, he saw his wife loitering +down towards him, a gracious white tallness touched by a ray of +sunlight—and without a suspicion of how nearly rescue had come to her.</p> + +<h4>§7</h4> + +<p>So you see under what excitement Mr. Brumley came down to Black Strand.</p> + +<p>Luck was with him at first and he forced the defence with ridiculous +ease.</p> + +<p>“Lady Harman, sir, is not a Tome,” said Snagsby.</p> + +<p>“Ah!” said Mr. Brumley, with all the assurance of a former proprietor, +“then I’ll just have a look round the garden,” and was through the green +door in the wall and round the barn end before Snagsby’s mind could +function. That unfortunate man went as far as the green door in pursuit +and then with a gesture of despair retreated to the pantry and began +cleaning all his silver to calm his agonized spirit. He could pretend +perhaps that Mr. Brumley had never rung at the front door at all. If +not——</p> + +<p>Moreover Mr. Brumley had the good fortune to find Lady Harman quite +unattended and pensive upon the little seat that Euphemia had placed for +the better seeing of her herbaceous borders.</p> + +<p>“Lady Harman!” he said rather breathlessly, taking both her hands with +an unwonted assurance and then sitting down beside her, “I am so glad to +see you. I came down to see you—to see if I couldn’t be of any service +to you.”</p> + +<p>“It’s so kind of you to come,” she said, and her dark eyes said as much +or more. She glanced round and he too glanced round for Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>“You see,” he said. “I don’t know.... I don’t want to be impertinent.... +But I feel—if I can be of any service to you.... I feel perhaps you +want help here. I don’t want to seem to be taking advantage of a +situation. Or making unwarrantable assumptions. But I want to assure +you—I would willingly die—if only I could do anything.... Ever since I +first saw you.”</p> + +<p>He said all this in a distracted way, with his eyes going about the +garden for the possible apparition of Sir Isaac, and all the time his +sense of possible observers made him assume an attitude as though he was +engaged in the smallest of small talk. Her colour quickened at the +import of his words, and emotion, very rich and abundant emotion, its +various factors not altogether untouched perhaps by the spirit of +laughter, lit her eyes. She doubted a little what he was saying and yet +she had anticipated that somehow, some day, in quite other +circumstances, Mr. Brumley might break into some such strain.</p> + +<p>“You see,” he went on with a quality of appeal in his eyes, “there’s so +little time to say things—without possible interruption. I feel you are +in difficulties and I want to make you understand——We——Every +beautiful woman, I suppose, has a sort of right to a certain sort of +man. I want to tell you—I’m not really presuming to make love to +you—but I want to tell you I am altogether yours, altogether at your +service. I’ve had sleepless nights. All this time I’ve been thinking +about you. I’m quite clear, I haven’t a doubt, I’ll do anything for you, +without reward, without return, I’ll be your devoted brother, anything, +if only you’ll make use of me....”</p> + +<p>Her colour quickened. She looked around and still no one appeared. “It’s +so kind of you to come like this,” she said. “You say things—But I +<i>have</i> felt that you wanted to be brotherly....”</p> + +<p>“Whatever I <i>can</i> be,” assured Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“My situation here,” she said, her dark frankness of gaze meeting his +troubled eyes. “It’s so strange and difficult. I don’t know what to do. +I don’t know—what I <i>want</i> to do....”</p> + +<p>“In London,” said Mr. Brumley, “they think—they say—you have been +taken off—brought down here—to a sort of captivity.”</p> + +<p>“I <i>have</i>,” admitted Lady Harman with a note of recalled astonishment in +her voice.</p> + +<p>“If I can help you to escape——!”</p> + +<p>“But where can I escape?”</p> + +<p>And one must admit that it is a little difficult to indicate a correct +refuge for a lady who finds her home intolerable. Of course there was +Mrs. Sawbridge, but Lady Harman felt that her mother’s disposition to +lock herself into her bedroom at the slightest provocation made her a +weak support for a defensive fight, and in addition that boarding-house +at Bournemouth did not attract her. Yet what other wall in all the world +was there for Lady Harman to set her back against? During the last few +days Mr. Brumley’s mind had been busy with the details of impassioned +elopements conducted in the most exalted spirit, but now in the actual +presence of the lady these projects did in the most remarkable manner +vanish.</p> + +<p>“Couldn’t you,” he said at last, “go somewhere?” And then with an air of +being meticulously explicit, “I mean, isn’t there somewhere, where you +might safely go?”</p> + +<p>(And in his dreams he had been crossing high passes with her; he had +halted suddenly and stayed her mule. In his dream because he was a man +of letters and a poet it was always a mule, never a <i>train de luxe</i>. +“Look,” he had said, “below there,—<i>Italy!</i>—the country you have never +seen before.”)</p> + +<p>“There’s nowhere,” she answered.</p> + +<p>“Now <i>where</i>?” asked Mr. Brumley, “and how?” with the tone and something +of the gesture of one who racks his mind. “If you only trust yourself to +me——Oh! Lady Harman, if I dared ask it——”</p> + +<p>He became aware of Sir Isaac walking across the lawn towards them....</p> + +<p>The two men greeted each other with a reasonable cordiality. “I wanted +to see how you were getting on down here,” said Mr. Brumley, “and +whether there was anything I could do for you.”</p> + +<p>“We’re getting on all right,” said Sir Isaac with no manifest glow of +gratitude.</p> + +<p>“You’ve altered the old barn—tremendously.”</p> + +<p>“Come and see it,” said Sir Isaac. “It’s a wing.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley remained seated. “It was the first thing that struck me, +Lady Harman. This evidence of Sir Isaac’s energy.”</p> + +<p>“Come and look over it,” Sir Isaac persisted.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley and Lady Harman rose together.</p> + +<p>“One’s enough to show him that,” said Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>“I was telling Lady Harman how much we missed her at Lady Viping’s, Sir +Isaac.”</p> + +<p>“It was on account of the drains,” Sir Isaac explained. “You can’t—it’s +foolhardy to stay a day when the drains are wrong, dinners or no +dinners.”</p> + +<p>“You know <i>I</i> was extremely sorry not to come to Lady Viping’s. I hope +you’ll tell her. I wrote.”</p> + +<p>But Mr. Brumley didn’t remember clearly enough to make any use of that.</p> + +<p>“Everybody naturally <i>is</i> sorry on an occasion of that sort,” said Sir +Isaac. “But you come and see what we’ve done in that barn. In three +weeks. They couldn’t have got it together in three months ten years ago. +It’s—system.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley still tried to cling to Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“Have you been interested in this building?” he asked.</p> + +<p>“I still don’t understand the system of the corridor,” she said, rising +a little belatedly to the occasion. “I <i>will</i> come.”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac regarded her for a moment with a dubious expression and then +began to explain the new method of building with large prepared units +and shaped pieces of reinforced concrete instead of separate bricks that +Messrs. Prothero & Cuthbertson had organized and which had enabled him +to create this artistic corridor so simply. It was a rather +uncomfortable three-cornered conversation. Sir Isaac addressed his +exposition exclusively to Mr. Brumley and Mr. Brumley made repeated +ineffectual attempts to bring Lady Harman, and Lady Harman made repeated +ineffectual attempts to bring herself, into a position in the +conversation.</p> + +<p>Their eyes met, the glow of Mr. Brumley’s declarations remained with +them, but neither dared risk any phrase that might arouse Sir Isaac’s +suspicions or escape his acuteness. And when they had gone through the +new additions pretty thoroughly—the plumbers were still busy with the +barn bathroom—Sir Isaac asked Mr. Brumley if there was anything more he +would like to see. In the slight pause that ensued Lady Harman suggested +tea. But tea gave them no opportunity of resuming their interrupted +conversation, and as Sir Isaac’s invincible determination to shadow his +visitor until he was well off the premises became more and more +unmistakable,—he made it quite ungraciously unmistakable,—Mr. +Brumley’s inventiveness failed. One thing came to him suddenly, but it +led to nothing of any service to him.</p> + +<p>“But I heard you were dangerously ill, Lady Harman!” he cried. “Lady +Beach-Mandarin called here——”</p> + +<p>“But when?” asked Lady Harman, astonished over the tea-things.</p> + +<p>“But you <i>know</i> she called!” said Mr. Brumley and looked in affected +reproach at Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>“I’ve not been ill at all!”</p> + +<p>“Sir Isaac told her.”</p> + +<p>“Told her I was ill!”</p> + +<p>“Dangerously ill. That you couldn’t bear to be disturbed.”</p> + +<p>“But <i>when</i>, Mr. Brumley?”</p> + +<p>“Three days ago.”</p> + +<p>They both looked at Sir Isaac who was sitting on the music stool and +eating a piece of tea-cake with a preoccupied air. He swallowed and then +spoke thoughtfully—in a tone of detached observation. Nothing but a +slight reddening of the eyes betrayed any unusual feeling in him.</p> + +<p>“It’s my opinion,” he said, “that that old lady—Lady Beach-Mandarin I +mean—doesn’t know what she’s saying half the time. She says—oh! +remarkable things. Saying <i>that</i> for example!”</p> + +<p>“But did she call on me?”</p> + +<p>“She called. I’m surprised you didn’t hear. And she was all in a flurry +for going on.... Did you come down, Mr. Brumley, to see if Lady Harman +was ill?”</p> + +<p>“That weighed with me.”</p> + +<p>“Well,—you see she isn’t,” said Sir Isaac and brushed a stray crumb +from his coat....</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley was at last impelled gateward and Sir Isaac saw him as far +as the high-road.</p> + +<p>“Good-bye!” cried Mr. Brumley with excessive amiability.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac with soundless lips made a good-bye like gesture.</p> + +<p>“And now,” said Sir Isaac to himself with extreme bitterness, “now to +see about getting a dog.”</p> + +<p>“Bull mastiff?” said Sir Isaac developing his idea as he went back to +Lady Harman. “Or perhaps a Thoroughly Vicious collie?”</p> + +<p>“How did that chap get in?” he demanded. “What had he got to say to +you?”</p> + +<p>“He came in—to look at the garden,” said Lady Harman. “And of course he +wanted to know if I had been well—because of Lady Viping’s party. And I +suppose because of what you told Lady Beach-Mandarin.”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac grunted doubtfully. He thought of Snagsby and of all the +instructions he had given Snagsby. He turned about and went off swiftly +and earnestly to find Snagsby....</p> + +<p>Snagsby lied. But Sir Isaac was able to tell from the agitated way in +which he was cleaning his perfectly clean silver at that unseasonable +hour that the wretched man was lying.</p> + +<h4>§8</h4> + +<p>Quite a number of words came to the lips of Mr. Brumley as he went +unwillingly along the pleasant country road that led from Black Strand +to the railway station. But the word he ultimately said showed how +strongly the habits of the gentlemanly <i>littérateur</i> prevailed in him. +It was the one inevitable word for his mood,—“Baffled!”</p> + +<p>Close upon its utterance came the weak irritation of the impotent man. +“What the <i>devil</i>?” cried Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>Some critical spirit within him asked him urgently why he was going to +the station, what he thought he was doing, what he thought he had done, +and what he thought he was going to do. To all of which questions Mr. +Brumley perceived he had no adequate reply.</p> + +<p>Earlier in the day he had been inspired by a vague yet splendid dream of +large masterful liberations achieved. He had intended to be very +disinterested, very noble, very firm, and so far as Sir Isaac was +concerned, a trifle overbearing. You know now what he said and did. “Of +course if we could have talked for a little longer,” he said. From the +stormy dissatisfaction of his retreat this one small idea crystallized, +that he had not talked enough without disturbance to Lady Harman. The +thing he had to do was to talk to her some more. To go on with what he +had been saying. That thought arrested his steps. On that hypothesis +there was no reason whatever why he should go on to the station and +London. Instead——He stopped short, saw a convenient gate ahead, went +to it, seated himself upon its topmost rail and attempted a calm survey +of the situation. He had somehow to continue that conversation with Lady +Harman.</p> + +<p>Was it impossible to do that by going back to the front door of Black +Strand? His instinct was against that course. He knew that if he went +back now openly he would see nobody but Sir Isaac or his butler. He must +therefore not go back openly. He must go round now and into the +pine-woods at the back of Black Strand; thence he must watch the garden +and find his opportunity of speaking to the imprisoned lady. There was +something at once attractively romantic and repellently youthful about +this course of action. Mr. Brumley looked at his watch, then he surveyed +the blue clear sky overhead, with just one warm tinted wisp of cloud. It +would be dark in an hour and it was probable that Lady Harman had +already gone indoors for the day. Might it be possible after dark to +approach the house? No one surely knew the garden so well as he.</p> + +<p>Of course this sort of thing is always going on in romances; in the +stories of that last great survivor of the Stevensonian tradition, H.B. +Marriot Watson, the heroes are always creeping through woods, tapping at +windows, and scaling house-walls, but Mr. Brumley as he sat on his gate +became very sensible of his own extreme inexperience in such +adventures. And yet anything seemed in his present mood better than +going back to London.</p> + +<p>Suppose he tried his luck!</p> + +<p>He knew of course the lie of the land about Black Strand very well +indeed and his harmless literary social standing gave him a certain +freedom of trespass. He dropped from his gate on the inner side and +taking a bridle path through a pine-wood was presently out upon the +moorland behind his former home. He struck the high-road that led past +the Staminal Bread Board and was just about to clamber over the barbed +wire on his left and make his way through the trees to the crest that +commanded the Black Strand garden when he perceived a man in a velveteen +coat and gaiters strolling towards him. He decided not to leave the road +until he was free from observation. The man was a stranger, an almost +conventional gamekeeper, and he endorsed Mr. Brumley’s remark upon the +charmingness of the day with guarded want of enthusiasm. Mr. Brumley +went on for some few minutes, then halted, assured himself that the +stranger was well out of sight and returned at once towards the point +where high-roads were to be left and adventure begun. But he was still +some yards away when he became aware of that velveteen-coated figure +approaching again. “Damn!” said Mr. Brumley and slacked his eager paces. +This time he expressed a view that the weather was extremely mild. +“Very,” said the man in velveteen with a certain lack of respect in his +manner.</p> + +<p>It was no good turning back again. Mr. Brumley went on slowly, affected +to botanize, watched the man out of sight and immediately made a dash +for the pine-woods, taking the barbed wire in a manner extremely +detrimental to his left trouser leg. He made his way obliquely up +through the trees to the crest from which he had so often surveyed the +shining ponds of Aleham. There he paused to peer back for that +gamekeeper—whom he supposed in spite of reason to be stalking him—to +recover his breath and to consider his further plans. The sunset was +very fine that night, a great red sun was sinking towards acutely +outlined hill-crests, the lower nearer distances were veiled in lavender +mists and three of the ponds shone like the fragments of a shattered +pink topaz. But Mr. Brumley had no eye for landscape....</p> + +<p>About two hours after nightfall Mr. Brumley reached the railway station. +His trousers and the elbow of his coat bore witness to a second transit +of the barbed-wire fence in the darkness, he had manifestly walked into +a boggy place and had some difficulty in recovering firm ground and he +had also been sliding in a recumbent position down a bank of moist +ferruginous sand. Moreover he had cut the palm of his left hand. There +was a new strange stationmaster who regarded him without that respect to +which he had grown accustomed. He received the information that the +winter train service had been altered and that he would have to wait +forty-five minutes for the next train to London with the resignation of +a man already chastened by misfortune and fatigue. He went into the +waiting-room and after a vain search for the poker—the new +stationmaster evidently kept it in a different place—sat down in front +of an irritatingly dull fire banked up with slack, and nursed his +damaged hand and meditated on his future plans.</p> + +<p>His plans were still exactly in the state in which they had been when +Sir Isaac parted from him at the gate of Black Strand. They remained in +the same state for two whole days. Throughout all that distressing +period his general intention of some magnificent intervention on behalf +of Lady Harman remained unchanged, it produced a number of moving +visions of flights at incredible speeds in (recklessly hired) motor-cars +of colossal power,—most of the purchase money for Black Strand was +still uninvested at his bank—of impassioned interviews with various +people, of a divorce court with a hardened judge congratulating the +manifestly quite formal co-respondent on the moral beauty of his +behaviour, but it evolved no sort of concrete practicable detail upon +which any kind of action might be taken. And during this period of +indecision Mr. Brumley was hunted through London by a feverish unrest. +When he was in his little flat in Pont Street he was urged to go to his +club, when he got to his club he was urged to go anywhere else, he +called on the most improbable people and as soon as possible fled forth +again, he even went to the British Museum and ordered out a lot of books +on matrimonial law. Long before that great machine had disgorged them +for him he absconded and this neglected, this widowed pile of volumes +still standing to his account only came back to his mind in the middle +of the night suddenly and disturbingly while he was trying to remember +the exact words he had used in his brief conversation with Lady +Harman....</p> + +<h4>§9</h4> + +<p>Two days after Mr. Brumley’s visit Susan Burnet reached Black Strand. +She too had been baffled for a while. For some week or more she couldn’t +discover the whereabouts of Lady Harman and lived in the profoundest +perplexity. She had brought back her curtains to the Putney house in a +large but luggable bundle, they were all made and ready to put up, and +she found the place closed and locked, in the charge of a caretaker +whose primary duty it was to answer no questions. It needed several days +of thought and amazement, and a vast amount of “I wonder,” and “I just +would like to know,” before it occurred to Susan that if she wrote to +Lady Harman at the Putney address the letter might be forwarded. And +even then she almost wrecked the entire enterprise by mentioning the +money, and it was by a quite exceptional inspiration that she thought +after all it was wiser not to say that but to state that she had +finished the curtains and done everything (underlined) that Lady Harman +had desired. Sir Isaac read it and tossed it over to his wife. “Make her +send her bill,” he remarked.</p> + +<p>Whereupon Lady Harman set Mrs. Crumble in motion to bring Susan down to +Black Strand. This wasn’t quite easy because as Mrs. Crumble pointed out +they hadn’t the slightest use for Susan’s curtains there, and Lady +Harman had to find the morning light quite intolerable in her +bedroom—she always slept with window wide open and curtains drawn +back—to create a suitable demand for Susan’s services. But at last +Susan came, too humbly invisible for Sir Isaac’s attention, and directly +she found Lady Harman alone in the room with her, she produced a pawn +ticket and twenty pounds. “I ’ad to give all sorts of particulars,” she +said. “It was a job. But I did it....”</p> + +<p>The day was big with opportunity, for Sir Isaac had been unable to +conceal the fact that he had to spend the morning in London. He had gone +up in the big car and his wife was alone, and so, with Susan upstairs +still deftly measuring for totally unnecessary hangings, Lady Harman was +able to add a fur stole and a muff and some gloves to her tweed +gardening costume, walk unchallenged into the garden and from the garden +into the wood and up the hillside and over the crest and down to the +high-road and past that great advertisement of Staminal Bread and so for +four palpitating miles, to the railway station and the outer world.</p> + +<p>She had the good fortune to find a train imminent,—the +twelve-seventeen. She took a first-class ticket for London and got into +a compartment with another woman because she felt it would be safer.</p> + +<h4>§10</h4> + +<p>Lady Harman reached Miss Alimony’s flat at half-past three in the +afternoon. She had lunched rather belatedly and uncomfortably in the +Waterloo Refreshment Room and she had found out that Miss Alimony was at +home through the telephone. “I want to see you urgently,” she said, and +Miss Alimony received her in that spirit. She was hatless but she had a +great cloud of dark fuzzy hair above the grey profundity of her eyes and +she wore an artistic tea-gown that in spite of a certain looseness at +neck and sleeve emphasized the fine lines of her admirable figure. Her +flat was furnished chiefly with books and rich oriental hangings and +vast cushions and great bowls of scented flowers. On the mantel-shelf +was the crystal that amused her lighter moments and above it hung a +circular allegory by Florence Swinstead, very rich in colour, the +Awakening of Woman, in a heavy gold frame. Miss Alimony conducted her +guest to an armchair, knelt flexibly on the hearthrug before her, took +up a small and elegant poker with a brass handle and a spear-shaped +service end of iron and poked the fire.</p> + +<p>The service end came out from the handle and fell into the grate. “It +always does that,” said Miss Alimony charmingly. “But never mind.” She +warmed both hands at the blaze. “Tell me all about it,” she said, +softly.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman felt she would rather have been told all about it. But +perhaps that would follow.</p> + +<p>“You see,” she said, “I find——My married life——”</p> + +<p>She halted. It <i>was</i> very difficult to tell.</p> + +<p>“Everyone,” said Agatha, giving a fine firelit profile, and remaining +gravely thoughtful through a little pause.</p> + +<p>“Do you mind,” she asked abruptly, “if I smoke?”</p> + +<p>When she had completed her effect with a delicately flavoured cigarette, +she encouraged Lady Harman to proceed.</p> + +<p>This Lady Harman did in a manner do. She said her husband left her no +freedom of mind or movement, gave her no possession of herself, wanted +to control her reading and thinking. “He insists——” she said.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Miss Agatha sternly blowing aside her cigarette smoke. “They +all insist.”</p> + +<p>“He insists,” said Lady Harman, “on seeing all my letters, choosing all +my friends. I have no control over my house or my servants, no money +except what he gives me.”</p> + +<p>“In fact you are property.”</p> + +<p>“I’m simply property.”</p> + +<p>“A harem of one. And all <i>that</i> is within the provisions of the law!”</p> + +<p>“How any woman can marry!” said Miss Agatha, after a little interval. “I +sometimes think that is where the true strike of the sex ought to begin. +If none of us married! If we said all of us, ‘No,—definitely—we refuse +this bargain! It is a man-made contract. We have had no voice in it. We +decline.’ Perhaps it will come to that. And I knew that you, you with +that quiet beautiful penetration in your eyes would come to see it like +that. The first task, after the vote is won, will be the revision of +that contract. The very first task of our Women Statesmen....”</p> + +<p>She ceased and revived her smouldering cigarette and mused blinking +through the smoke. She seemed for a time almost lost to the presence of +her guest in a great daydream of womanstatecraft.</p> + +<p>“And so,” she said, “you’ve come, as they all come,—to join us.”</p> + +<p>“<i>Well</i>,” said Lady Harman in a tone that made Agatha turn eyes of +surprise upon her.</p> + +<p>“Of course,” continued Lady Harman, “I suppose—I shall join you; but as +a matter of fact you see, what I’ve done to-day has been to come right +away.... You see I am still in my garden tweeds.... There it was down +there, a sort of stale mate....”</p> + +<p>Agatha sat up on her heels.</p> + +<p>“But my dear!” she said, “you don’t mean you’ve run away?”</p> + +<p>“Yes,—I’ve run away.”</p> + +<p>“But—run away!”</p> + +<p>“I sold a ring and got some money and here I am!”</p> + +<p>“But—what are you going to do?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know. I thought you perhaps—might advise.”</p> + +<p>“But—a man like your husband! He’ll pursue you!”</p> + +<p>“If he knows where I am, he will,” said Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“He’ll make a scandal. My dear! are you wise? Tell me, tell me exactly, +<i>why</i> have you run away? I didn’t understand at all—that you had run +away.”</p> + +<p>“Because,” began Lady Harman and flushed hotly. “It was impossible,” she +said.</p> + +<p>Miss Alimony regarded her deeply. “I wonder,” she said.</p> + +<p>“I feel,” said Lady Harman, “if I stayed, if I gave in——I mean +after—after I had once—rebelled. Then I should just be—a wife—ruled, +ordered——”</p> + +<p>“It wasn’t your place to give in,” said Miss Alimony and added one of +those parliament touches that creep more and more into feminine +phraseology; “I agree to that—<i>nemine contradicente</i>. But—I +<i>wonder</i>....”</p> + +<p>She began a second cigarette and thought in profile again.</p> + +<p>“I think, perhaps, I haven’t explained, clearly, how things are,” said +Lady Harman, and commenced a rather more explicit statement of her case. +She felt she had not conveyed and she wanted to convey to Miss Alimony +that her rebellion was not simply a desire for personal freedom and +autonomy, that she desired these things because she was becoming more +and more aware of large affairs outside her home life in which she ought +to be not simply interested but concerned, that she had been not merely +watching the workings of the business that made her wealthy, but reading +books about socialism, about social welfare that had stirred her +profoundly.... “But he won’t even allow me to know of such things,” she +said....</p> + +<p>Miss Alimony listened a little abstractedly.</p> + +<p>Suddenly she interrupted. “Tell me,” she said, “one thing.... I +confess,” she explained, “I’ve no business to ask. But if I’m to +advise——If my advice is to be worth anything....”</p> + +<p>“Yes?” asked Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“Is there——Is there someone else?”</p> + +<p>“Someone else?” Lady Harman was crimson.</p> + +<p>“On <i>your</i> side!”</p> + +<p>“Someone else on my side?”</p> + +<p>“I mean—someone. A man perhaps? Some man that you care for? More than +you do for your husband?...”</p> + +<p>“<i>I can’t imagine</i>,” whispered Lady Harman, “<i>anything</i>——” And left +her sentence unfinished. Her breath had gone. Her indignation was +profound.</p> + +<p>“Then I can’t understand why you should find it so important to come +away.”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman could offer no elucidation.</p> + +<p>“You see,” said Miss Alimony, with an air of expert knowledge, “our case +against our opponents is just exactly their great case against us. They +say to us when we ask for the Vote, ‘the Woman’s Place is the Home.’ +‘Precisely,’ we answer, ‘the Woman’s Place <i>is</i> the Home. <i>Give</i> us our +Homes!’ Now <i>your</i> place is your home—with your children. That’s where +you have to fight your battle. Running away—for you it’s simply running +away.”</p> + +<p>“But——If I stay I shall be beaten.” Lady Harman surveyed her hostess +with a certain dismay. “Do you understand, Agatha? I <i>can’t</i> go back.”</p> + +<p>“But my dear! What else can you do? What had you thought?”</p> + +<p>“You see,” said Lady Harman, after a little struggle with that childish +quality in her nerves that might, if it wasn’t controlled, make her eyes +brim. “You see, I didn’t expect you quite to take this view. I thought +perhaps you might be disposed——If I could have stayed with you here, +only for a little time, I could have got some work or something——”</p> + +<p>“It’s so dreadful,” said Miss Alimony, sitting far back with the +relaxation of infinite regrets. “It’s dreadful.”</p> + +<p>“Of course if you don’t see it as I do——”</p> + +<p>“I can’t,” said Miss Alimony. “I can’t.”</p> + +<p>She turned suddenly upon her visitor and grasped her knees with her +shapely hands. “Oh let me implore you! Don’t run away. Please for my +sake, for all our sakes, for the sake of Womanhood, don’t run away! Stay +at your post. You mustn’t run away. You must <i>not</i>. If you do, you admit +everything. Everything. You must fight in your home. It’s <i>your</i> home. +That is the great principle you must grasp,—it’s not his. It’s there +your duty lies. And there are your children—<i>your</i> children, your +little ones! Think if you go—there may be a fearful fuss—proceedings. +Lawyers—a search. Very probably he will take all sorts of proceedings. +It will be a Matrimonial Case. How can I be associated with that? We +mustn’t mix up Women’s Freedom with Matrimonial Cases. Impossible! We +<i>dare</i> not! A woman leaving her husband! Think of the weapon it gives +our enemies. If once other things complicate the Vote,—the Vote is +lost. After all our self-denial, after all our sacrifices.... You see! +Don’t you <i>see</i>?...</p> + +<p>“<i>Fight!</i>” she summarized after an eloquent interval.</p> + +<p>“You mean,” said Lady Harman,—“you think I ought to go back.”</p> + +<p>Miss Alimony paused to get her full effect. “<i>Yes</i>,” she said in a +profound whisper and endorsed it, “Oh so much so!—yes.”</p> + +<p>“Now?”</p> + +<p>“Instantly.”</p> + +<p>For an interval neither lady spoke. It was the visitor at last who broke +the tension.</p> + +<p>“Do you think,” she asked in a small voice and with the hesitation of +one whom no refusal can surprise; “you could give me a cup of tea?”</p> + +<p>Miss Alimony rose with a sigh and a slow unfolding rustle. “I forgot,” +she said. “My little maid is out.”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman left alone sat for a time staring at the fire with her eyes +rather wide and her eyebrows raised as though she mutely confided to it +her infinite astonishment. This was the last thing she had expected. She +would have to go to some hotel. Can a woman stay alone at an hotel? Her +heart sank. Inflexible forces seemed to be pointing her back to +home—and Sir Isaac. He would be a very triumphant Sir Isaac, and she’d +not have much heart left in her.... “I <i>won’t</i> go back,” she whispered +to herself. “Whatever happens I <i>won’t</i> go back....”</p> + +<p>Then she became aware of the evening newspaper Miss Alimony had been +reading. The headline, “Suffrage Raid on Regent Street,” caught her eye. +A queer little idea came into her head. It grew with tremendous +rapidity. She put out a hand and took up the paper and read.</p> + +<p>She had plenty of time to read because her hostess not only got the tea +herself but went during that process to her bedroom and put on one of +those hats that have contributed so much to remove the stigma of +dowdiness from the suffrage cause, as an outward and visible sign that +she was presently ceasing to be at home....</p> + +<p>Lady Harman found an odd fact in the report before her. “One of the most +difficult things to buy at the present time in the West End of London,” +it ran, “is a hammer....”</p> + +<p>Then a little further: “The magistrate said it was impossible to make +discriminations in this affair. All the defendants must have a month’s +imprisonment....”</p> + +<p>When Miss Alimony returned Lady Harman put down the paper almost +guiltily.</p> + +<p>Afterwards Miss Alimony recalled that guilty start, and the still more +guilty start that had happened, when presently she went out of the room +again and returned with a lamp, for the winter twilight was upon them. +Afterwards, too, she was to learn what had become of the service end of +her small poker, the little iron club, which she missed almost as soon +as Lady Harman had gone....</p> + +<p>Lady Harman had taken that grubby but convenient little instrument and +hidden it in her muff, and she had gone straight out of Miss Alimony’s +flat to the Post Office at the corner of Jago Street, and there, with +one simple effective impact, had smashed a ground-glass window, the +property of His Majesty King George the Fifth. And having done so, she +had called the attention of a youthful policeman, fresh from Yorkshire, +to her offence, and after a slight struggle with his incredulity and a +visit to the window in question, had escorted him to the South Hampsmith +police-station, and had there made him charge her. And on the way she +explained to him with a newfound lucidity why it was that women should +have votes.</p> + +<p>And all this she did from the moment of percussion onward, in a mood of +exaltation entirely strange to her, but, as she was astonished to find, +by no means disagreeable. She found afterwards that she only remembered +very indistinctly her selection of the window and her preparations for +the fatal blow, but that the effect of the actual breakage remained +extraordinarily vivid upon her memory. She saw with extreme distinctness +both as it was before and after the breakage, first as a rather +irregular grey surface, shining in the oblique light of a street lamp, +and giving pale phantom reflections of things in the street, and then as +it was after her blow. It was all visual impression in her memory; she +could not recollect afterwards if there had been any noise at all. Where +there had been nothing but a milky dinginess a thin-armed, irregular +star had flashed into being, and a large triangular piece at its centre, +after what seemed an interminable indecision, had slid, first covertly +downward, and then fallen forward at her feet and shivered into a +hundred fragments....</p> + +<p>Lady Harman realized that a tremendous thing had been done—irrevocably. +She stared at her achievement open-mouthed. The creative lump of iron +dropped from her hand. She had a momentary doubt whether she had really +wanted to break that window at all; and then she understood that this +business had to be seen through, and seen through with neatness and +dignity; and that wisp of regret vanished absolutely in her +concentration upon these immediate needs.</p> + +<h4>§11</h4> + +<p>Some day, when the arts of the writer and illustrator are more closely +blended than they are to-day, it will be possible to tell of all that +followed this blow, with an approach to its actual effect. Here there +should stand a page showing simply and plainly the lower half of the +window of the Jago Street Post Office, a dark, rather grimy pane, +reflecting the light of a street lamp—and <i>broken</i>. Below the pane +would come a band of evilly painted woodwork, a corner of letter-box, a +foot or so of brickwork, and then the pavement with a dropped lump of +iron. That would be the sole content of this page, and the next page +would be the same, but very slightly fainter, and across it would be +printed a dim sentence or so of explanation. The page following that +would show the same picture again, but now several lines of type would +be visible, and then, as one turned over, the smashed window would fade +a little, and the printed narrative, still darkened and dominated by it, +would nevertheless resume. One would read on how Lady Harman returned to +convince the incredulous young Yorkshireman of her feat, how a man with +a barrow-load of bananas volunteered comments, and how she went in +custody, but with the extremest dignity, to the police-station. Then, +with some difficulty, because that imposed picture would still prevail +over the letterpress, and because it would be in small type, one would +learn how she was bailed out by Lady Beach-Mandarin, who was clearly the +woman she ought to have gone to in the first place, and who gave up a +dinner with a duchess to entertain her, and how Sir Isaac, being too +torn by his feelings to come near her spent the evening in a frantic +attempt to keep the whole business out of the papers. He could not +manage it. The magistrate was friendly next morning, but inelegant in +his friendly expedients; he remanded Lady Harman until her mental +condition could be inquired into, but among her fellow-defendants—there +had been quite an epidemic of window-smashing that evening—Lady Harman +shone pre-eminently sane. She said she had broken this window because +she was assured that nothing would convince people of the great +dissatisfaction of women with their conditions except such desperate +acts, and when she was reminded of her four daughters she said it was +precisely the thought of how they too would grow up to womanhood that +had made her strike her blow. The statements were rather the outcome of +her evening with Lady Beach-Mandarin than her own unaided discoveries, +but she had honestly assimilated them, and she expressed them with a +certain simple dignity.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac made a pathetic appearance before the court, and Lady Harman +was shocked to see how worn he was with distress at her scandalous +behaviour. He looked a broken man. That curious sense of personal +responsibility, which had slumbered throughout the Black Strand +struggle, came back to her in a flood, and she had to grip the edge of +the dock tightly to maintain her self-control. Unaccustomed as he was to +public speaking, Sir Isaac said in a low, sorrow-laden voice, he had +provided himself with a written statement dissociating himself from the +views his wife’s rash action might seem to imply, and expressing his own +opinions upon woman’s suffrage and the relations of the sexes generally, +with especial reference to contemporary literature. He had been writing +it most of the night. He was not, however, permitted to read this, and +he then made an unstudied appeal for the consideration and mercy of the +court. He said Lady Harman had always been a good mother and a faithful +wife; she had been influenced by misleading people and bad books and +publications, the true significance of which she did not understand, and +if only the court would regard this first offence leniently he was +ready to take his wife away and give any guarantee that might be +specified that it should not recur. The magistrate was sympathetic and +kindly, but he pointed out that this window-breaking had to be stamped +out, and that it could only be stamped out by refusing any such +exception as Sir Isaac desired. And so Sir Isaac left the court widowed +for a month, a married man without a wife, and terribly distressed.</p> + +<p>All this and more one might tell in detail, and how she went to her +cell, and the long tedium of her imprisonment, and how deeply Snagsby +felt the disgrace, and how Miss Alimony claimed her as a convert to the +magic of her persuasions, and many such matters—there is no real +restraint upon a novelist fully resolved to be English and Gothic and +unclassical except obscure and inexplicable instincts. But these obscure +and inexplicable instincts are at times imperative, and on this occasion +they insist that here must come a break, a pause, in the presence of +this radiating gap in the Postmaster-General’s glass, and the phenomenon +of this gentle and beautiful lady, the mother of four children, grasping +in her gloved hand, and with a certain amateurishness, a lumpish +poker-end of iron.</p> + +<p>We make the pause by ending the chapter here and by resuming the story +at a fresh point—with an account of various curious phases in the +mental development of Mr. Brumley.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09" id="chap09"></a>CHAPTER THE NINTH</h2> + +<p class="center">MR. BRUMLEY IS TROUBLED BY DIFFICULT IDEAS</p> + +<h4>§1</h4> + +<p>Then as that picture of a post office pane, smashed and with a large +hole knocked clean through it, fades at last upon the reader’s +consciousness, let another and a kindred spectacle replace it. It is the +carefully cleaned and cherished window of Mr. Brumley’s mind, square and +tidy and as it were “frosted” against an excess of light, and in that +also we have now to record the most jagged all and devastating +fractures.</p> + +<p>Little did Mr. Brumley reckon when first he looked up from his laces at +Black Strand, how completely that pretty young woman in the dark furs +was destined to shatter all the assumptions that had served his life.</p> + +<p>But you have already had occasion to remark a change in Mr. Brumley’s +bearing and attitude that carries him far from the kindly and humorous +conservatism of his earlier work. You have shared Lady Harman’s +astonishment at the ardour of his few stolen words in the garden, an +astonishment that not only grew but flowered in the silences of her +captivity, and you know something of the romantic impulses, more at +least than she did, that gave his appearance at the little local railway +station so belated and so disreputable a flavour. In the chilly +ill-flavoured solitude of her prison cell and with a mind quickened by +meagre and distasteful fare, Lady Harman had ample leisure to reflect +upon many things, she had already fully acquainted herself with the +greater proportion of Mr. Brumley’s published works, and she found the +utmost difficulty in reconciling the flushed impassioned quality of his +few words of appeal, with the moral assumptions of his published +opinions. On the whole she was inclined to think that her memory had a +little distorted what he had said. In this however she was mistaken; Mr. +Brumley had really been proposing an elopement and he was now entirely +preoccupied with the idea of rescuing, obtaining and possessing Lady +Harman for himself as soon as the law released her.</p> + +<p>One may doubt whether this extensive change from a humorous conservatism +to a primitive and dangerous romanticism is to be ascribed entirely to +the personal charm, great as it no doubt was, of Lady Harman; rather did +her tall soft dark presence come to release a long accumulating store of +discontent and unrest beneath the polished surfaces of Mr. Brumley’s +mind. Things had been stirring in him for some time; the latter Euphemia +books had lacked much of the freshness of their precursors and he had +found it increasingly hard, he knew not why, to keep up the lightness, +the geniality, the friendly badinage of successful and accepted things, +the sunny disregard of the grim and unamiable aspects of existence, +that were the essential merits of that Optimistic Period of our +literature in which Mr. Brumley had begun his career. With every +justification in the world Mr. Brumley had set out to be an optimist, +even in the <i>Granta</i> his work had been distinguished by its gay yet +steadfast superficiality, and his early success, his rapid popularity, +had done much to turn this early disposition into a professional +attitude. He had determined that for all his life he would write for +comfortable untroubled people in the character of a light-spirited, +comfortable, untroubled person, and that each year should have its book +of connubial humour, its travel in picturesque places, its fun and its +sunshine, like roses budding in succession on a stem. He did his utmost +to conceal from himself the melancholy realization that the third and +the fourth roses were far less wonderful than the first and the second, +and that by continuing the descending series a rose might be attained at +last that was almost unattractive, but he was already beginning to +suspect that he was getting less animated and a little irritable when +Euphemia very gently and gracefully but very firmly and rather +enigmatically died, and after an interval of tender and tenderly +expressed regrets he found himself, in spite of the most strenuous +efforts to keep bright and kindly and optimistic in the best style, dull +and getting duller—he could disguise the thing no longer. And he +weighed more. Six—eight—eleven pounds more. He took a flat in London, +dined and lunched out lightly but frequently, sought the sympathetic +friendship of several charming ladies, and involved himself deeply in +the affairs of the Academic Committee. Indeed he made a quite valiant +struggle to feel that optimism was just where it always had been and +everything all right and very bright with him and with the world about +him. He did not go under without a struggle. But as Max Beerbohm’s +caricature—the 1908 one I mean—brought out all too plainly, there was +in his very animation, something of the alert liveliness of the hunted +man. Do what he would he had a terrible irrational feeling that things, +as yet scarce imagined things, were after him and would have him. Even +as he makes his point, even as he gesticulates airily, with his rather +distinctively North European nose Beerbohmically enlarged and his +sensitive nostril in the air, he seems to be looking at something he +does not want to look at, something conceivably pursuing, out of the +corner of his eye.</p> + +<p>The thing that was assailing Mr. Brumley and making his old established +humour and tenderness seem dull and opaque and giving this new uneasy +quality to his expression was of course precisely the thing that Sir +Isaac meant when he talked about “idees” and their disturbing influence +upon all the once assured tranquillities and predominances of Putney +life. It was criticism breaking bounds.</p> + +<p>As a basis and substance for the tissue of whimsically expressed +happiness and confident appreciation of the good things of life, which +Mr. Brumley had set before himself as his agreeable—and it was to be +hoped popular and profitable—life-task, certain assumptions had been +necessary. They were assumptions he had been very willing to make and +which were being made in the most exemplary way by the writers who were +succeeding all about him at the commencement of his career. And these +assumptions had had such an air then of being quite trustworthy, as +being certain to wash and wear! Already nowadays it is difficult to get +them stated; they have become incredible while still too near to justify +the incredibility that attaches to history. It was assumed, for example, +that in the institutions, customs and culture of the middle Victorian +period, humanity had, so far as the broad lines of things are concerned, +achieved its goal. There were of course still bad men and +women—individually—and classes one had to recognize as “lower,” but +all the main things were right, general ideas were right; the law was +right, institutions were right, Consols and British Railway Debentures +were right and were going to keep right for ever. The Abolition of +Slavery in America had been the last great act which had inaugurated +this millennium. Except for individual instances the tragic intensities +of life were over now and done with; there was no more need for heroes +and martyrs; for the generality of humanity the phase of genial comedy +had begun. There might be improvements and refinements ahead, but +social, political and economic arrangement were now in their main +outlines settled for good and all; nothing better was possible and it +was the agreeable task of the artist and the man of letters to assist +and celebrate this establishment. There was to be much editing of +Shakespear and Charles Lamb, much delightful humour and costume romance, +and an Academy of refined Fine Writers would presently establish +belles-lettres on the reputable official basis, write <i>finis</i> to +creative force and undertake the task of stereotyping the language. +Literature was to have its once terrible ferments reduced to the quality +of a helpful pepsin. Ideas were dead—or domesticated. The last wild +idea, in an impoverished and pitiful condition, had been hunted down and +killed in the mobbing of, “The Woman Who Did.” For a little time the +world did actually watch a phase of English writing that dared nothing, +penetrated nothing, suppressed everything and aspired at most to Charm, +creep like a transitory patch of sunlight across a storm-rent universe. +And vanish....</p> + +<p>At no time was it a perfectly easy task to pretend that the crazy +makeshifts of our legal and political systems, the staggering accidents +of economic relationship, the festering disorder of contemporary +philosophy and religious teaching, the cruel and stupid bed of King Og +that is our last word in sexual adjustment, really constituted a noble +and enduring sanity, and it became less and less so with the acute +disillusionments that arose out of the Boer War. The first decade of the +twentieth century was for the English a decade of badly sprained +optimism. Our Empire was nearly beaten by a handful of farmers amidst +the jeering contempt of the whole world—and we felt it acutely for +several years. We began to question ourselves. Mr. Brumley found his gay +but entirely respectable irresponsibility harder and harder to keep up +as that decade wore on. And close upon the South African trouble came +that extraordinary new discontent of women with a woman’s lot which we +have been observing as it reached and troubled the life of Lady Harman. +Women who had hitherto so passively made the bulk of that reading public +which sustained Mr. Brumley and his kind—they wanted something else!</p> + +<p>And behind and beneath these immediately disconcerting things still more +sinister hintings and questioning were beginning to pluck at +contentment. In 1899 nobody would have dreamt of asking and in 1909 even +Mr. Brumley was asking, “Are things going on much longer?” A hundred +little incidents conspired to suggest that a Christianity that had, to +put it mildly, shirked the Darwinian challenge, had no longer the +palliating influence demanded of a national religion, and that down +there in the deep levels of labour where they built railways to carry +Mr. Brumley’s food and earn him dividends, where they made engines and +instruments and textiles and drains for his little needs, there was a +new, less bounded discontent, a grimmer spirit, something that one tried +in vain to believe was only the work of “agitators,” something that was +to be pacified no longer by the thin pretences of liberalism, something +that might lead ultimately—optimism scarcely dared to ask whither....</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley did his best to resist the influence of these darkening +ideas. He tried to keep it up that everything was going well and that +most of these shadows and complaints were the mischief of a few +incurably restless personalities. He tried to keep it up that to belong +to the working class was a thoroughly jolly thing—for those who were +used to it. He declared that all who wanted to alter our laws or our +ideas about property or our methods of production were envious and base +and all who wanted any change between the sexes, foolish or vicious. He +tried to go on disposing of socialists, agitators, feminists, women’s +suffragists, educationists and every sort of reformer with a +good-humoured contempt. And he found an increasing difficulty in keeping +his contempt sufficiently good-humoured. Instead of laughing down at +folly and failure, he had moments when he felt that he was rather +laughing up—a little wryly—at monstrous things impending. And since +ideas are things of atmosphere and the spirit, insidious wolves of the +soul, they crept up to him and gnawed the insides out of him even as he +posed as their manful antagonist.</p> + +<p>Insensibly Mr. Brumley moved with his times. It is the necessary first +phase in the break-up of any system of unsound assumptions that a number +of its votaries should presently set about padding its cutting corners +and relieving the harsh pressure of its injustices by exuberances of +humour and sentimentality. Mr. Brumley became charitable and +romantic,—orthodox still but charitable and romantic. He was all for +smashing with the generalization, but now in the particular instance he +was more and more for forgiveness. One finds creeping into the later +Euphemia books a Bret-Harte-like doctrine that a great number of bad +women are really good and a persuasion in the ‘Raffles’ key that a large +proportion of criminals are really very picturesque and admirable +fellows. One wonders how far Mr. Brumley’s less ostensible life was +softening in harmony with this exterior change, this tender twilight of +principle. He wouldn’t as yet face the sterner fact that most people who +are condemned by society, whether they are condemned justly or not, are +by the very gregariousness of man’s nature debased, and that a law or +custom that stamps you as bad makes you bad. A great state should have +high and humane and considerate laws nobly planned, nobly administered +and needing none of these shabby little qualifications <i>sotto voce</i>. To +find goodness in the sinner and justification in the outcast is to +condemn the law, but as yet Mr. Brumley’s heart failed where his +intelligence pointed towards that conclusion. He hadn’t the courage to +revise his assumptions about right and wrong to that extent; he just +allowed them to get soft and sloppy. He waded, where there should be +firm ground. He waded toward wallowing. This is a perilous way of living +and the sad little end of Euphemia, flushed and coughing, left him no +doubt in many ways still more exposed to the temptations of the +sentimental byway and the emotional gloss. Happily this is a book about +Lady Harman and not an exhaustive monograph upon Mr. Brumley. We will +at least leave him the refuge of a few shadows.</p> + +<p>Occasionally he would write an important signed review for the +<i>Twentieth Century</i> or the <i>Hebdomadal Review</i>, and on one such occasion +he took in hand several studies of contemporary conditions by various +‘New Witnesses,’ ‘Young Liberals,’ <i>New Age</i> rebels and associated +insurgent authors. He intended to be rather kindly with them, rather +disillusioned, quite sympathetic but essentially conventional and +conservative and sane. He sat at a little desk near the drooping Venus, +under the benediction of Euphemia’s posthumous rose, and turned over the +pages of one of the least familiar of the group. The stuff was written +with a crude force that at times became almost distinguished, but with a +bitterness that he felt he must reprove. And suddenly he came upon a +passionate tirade against the present period. It made him nibble softly +with his lips at the top of his fountain pen as he read.</p> + +<p>“We live,” said the writer, “in a second Byzantine age, in one of those +multitudinous accumulations of secondary interests, of secondary +activities and conventions and colossal intricate insignificances, that +lie like dust heaps in the path of the historian. The true history of +such periods is written in bank books and cheque counterfoils and burnt +to save individual reputations; it sneaks along under a thousand +pretences, it finds its molelike food and safety in the dirt; its outer +forms remain for posterity, a huge débris of unfathomable riddles.”</p> + +<p>“Hm!” said Mr. Brumley. “He slings it out. And what’s this?”</p> + +<p>“A civilization arrested and decayed, waiting through long inglorious +ages of unscheduled crime, unchallenged social injustice, senseless +luxury, mercenary politics and universal vulgarity and weakness, for the +long overdue scavenging of the Turk.”</p> + +<p>“I wonder where the children pick up such language,” whispered Mr. +Brumley with a smile.</p> + +<p>But presently he had pushed the book away and was thinking over this +novel and unpleasant idea that perhaps after all his age didn’t matter +as some ages have mattered and as he had hitherto always supposed it did +matter. Byzantine, with the gold of life stolen and the swans changed to +geese? Of course always there had been a certain qualification upon +heroes, even Cæsar had needed a wreath, but at any rate the age of Cæsar +had mattered. Kings no doubt might be more kingly and the issues of life +plainer and nobler, but this had been true of every age. He tried to +weigh values against values, our past against our present, temperately +and sanely. Our art might perhaps be keener for beauty than it seemed to +be, but still—it flourished. And our science at least was +wonderful—wonderful. There certainly this young detractor of existing +things went astray. What was there in Byzantium to parallel with the +electric light, the electric tram, wireless telegraphy, aseptic surgery? +Of course this about “unchallenged social injustice” was nonsense. Rant. +Why! we were challenging social injustice at every general +election—plainly and openly. And crime! What could the man mean about +unscheduled crime? Mere words! There was of course a good deal of +luxury, but not <i>wicked</i> luxury, and to compare our high-minded and +constructive politics with the mere conflict of unscrupulous adventurers +about that semi-oriental throne! It was nonsense!</p> + +<p>“This young man must be spanked,” said Mr. Brumley and, throwing aside +an open illustrated paper in which a full-length portrait of Sir Edward +Carson faced a picture of the King and Queen in their robes sitting side +by side under a canopy at the Coronation Durbar, he prepared himself to +write in an extremely salutary manner about the follies of the younger +generation, and incidentally to justify his period and his professional +contentment.</p> + +<h4>§2</h4> + +<p>One is reminded of those houses into which the white ants have eaten +their way; outwardly still fair and solid, they crumble at the touch of +a hand. And now you will begin to understand those changes of bearing +that so perplexed Lady Harman, that sudden insurgence of flushed +half-furtive passion in the garden, through the thin pretences of a +liberal friendship. His hollow honour had been gripped and had given +way.</p> + +<p>He had begun so well. At first Lady Harman had occupied his mind in the +properest way. She was another man’s wife and sacred—according to all +honourable standards, and what he wanted was merely to see more of her, +talk to her, interest her in himself, share whatever was available +outside her connubial obligations,—and think as little of Sir Isaac as +possible.</p> + +<p>How quickly the imaginative temperament of Mr. Brumley enlarged that to +include a critical hostility to Sir Isaac, we have already recorded. +Lady Harman was no longer simply a charming, suppressed young wife, +crying out for attentive development; she became an ill-treated +beautiful woman—misunderstood. Still scrupulously respecting his own +standards, Mr. Brumley embarked upon the dangerous business of inventing +just how Sir Isaac might be outraging them, and once his imagination had +started to hunt in that field, it speedily brought in enough matter for +a fine state of moral indignation, a white heat of not altogether +justifiable chivalry. Assisted by Lady Beach-Mandarin Mr. Brumley had +soon converted the little millionaire into a matrimonial ogre to keep an +anxious lover very painfully awake at nights. Because by that time and +quite insensibly he had become an anxious lover—with all the gaps in +the thread of realities that would have made him that, quite generously +filled up from the world of reverie.</p> + +<p>Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. It is the peculiar snare of +the perplexed orthodox, and soon Mr. Brumley was in a state of nearly +unendurable moral indignation with Sir Isaac for a hundred exaggerations +of what he was and of what conceivably he might have done to his silent +yet manifestly unsuitably mated wife. And now that romantic streak which +is as I have said the first certain symptom of decay in a system of +moral assumptions began to show itself in Mr. Brumley’s thoughts and +conversation. “A marriage like that,” said Mr. Brumley to Lady +Beach-Mandarin, “isn’t a marriage. It flouts the True Ideal of Marriage. +It’s slavery—following a kidnapping....”</p> + +<p>But this is a wide step from the happy optimism of the Cambridge days. +What becomes of the sanctity of marriage and the institution of the +family when respectable gentlemen talk of something called “True +Marriage,” as non-existent in relation to a lady who is already the +mother of four children? I record this lapsing of Mr. Brumley into +romanticism without either sympathy or mitigation. The children, it +presently became apparent, were not “true” children. “Forced upon her,” +said Mr. Brumley. “It makes one ill to think of it!” It certainly very +nearly made him ill. And as if these exercises in distinction had +inflamed his conscience Mr. Brumley wrote two articles in the +<i>Hebdomadal</i> denouncing impure literature, decadence, immorality, +various recent scandalous instances, and the suffragettes, declaring +that woman’s place was the home and that “in a pure and exalted monogamy +lies the sole unitary basis for a civilized state.” The most remarkable +thing about this article is an omission. That Sir Isaac’s monogamy with +any other instances that might be akin to it was not pure and exalted, +and that it needed—shall we call it readjustment? is a view that in +this article Mr. Brumley conspicuously doesn’t display. It’s as if for a +moment, pen in hand, he had eddied back to his old absolute +positions....</p> + +<p>In a very little while Mr. Brumley and Lady Beach-Mandarin had almost +persuaded each other that Sir Isaac was applying physical torture to his +proudly silent wife, and Mr. Brumley was no longer dreaming and glancing +at but steadily facing the possibility of a pure-minded and handsomely +done elopement to “free” Lady Harman, that would be followed in due +course by a marriage, a “true marriage” on a level of understanding far +above any ordinary respectable wedding, amidst universal sympathy and +admiration and the presence of all the very best people. In these +anticipations he did rather remarkably overlook the absence of any sign +of participation on the part of Lady Harman in his own impassioned +personal feelings, and he overlooked still more remarkably as possible +objections to his line of conduct, Millicent, Florence, Annette and +Baby. These omissions no doubt simplified but also greatly falsified his +outlook.</p> + +<p>This proposal that all the best people shall applaud the higher +rightness that was to be revealed in his projected elopement, is in the +very essence of the romantic attitude. All other people are still to +remain under the law. There is to be nothing revolutionary. But with +exceptional persons under exceptional conditions——</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley stated his case over and over again to his utmost +satisfaction, and always at great moral altitudes and with a kind of +transcendent orthodoxy. The more difficult any aspect of the affair +appeared from the orthodox standpoint the more valiantly Mr. Brumley +soared; if it came to his living with Lady Harman for a time before they +could be properly married amidst picturesque foreign scenery in a little +<i>casa</i> by the side of a stream, then the water in that stream was to be +quite the purest water conceivable and the scenery and associations as +morally faultless as a view that had passed the exacting requirements of +Mr. John Ruskin. And Mr. Brumley was very clear in his mind that what he +proposed to do was entirely different in quality even if it was similar +in form from anything that anyone else had ever done who had ever before +made a scandal or appeared in the divorce court. This is always the way +in such cases—always. The scandal was to be a noble scandal, a proud +scandal, one of those instances of heroical love that turn aside +misdemeanours—admittedly misdemeanours—into edifying marvels.</p> + +<p>This was the state of mind to which Mr. Brumley had attained when he +made his ineffectual raid upon Black Strand, and you will remark about +it, if you are interested in the changes in people’s ideas that are +going on to-day, that although he was prepared to make the most +extensive glosses in this particular instance upon the commonly accepted +rules of what is right and proper, he was not for a moment prepared to +accord the terrible gift of an independent responsibility to Lady +Harman. In that direction lay regions that Mr. Brumley had still to +explore. Lady Harman he considered was married wrongly and disastrously +and this he held to be essentially the fault of Sir Isaac—with perhaps +some slight blame attaching to Lady Harman’s mother. The only path of +escape he could conceive as yet for Lady Harman lay through the chivalry +of some other man. That a woman could possibly rebel against one man +without the sympathy and moral maintenance of another was still outside +the range of Mr. Brumley’s understanding. It is still outside the range +of most men’s understandings—and of a great many women’s. If he +generalized at all from these persuasions it was in the direction that +in the interest of “true marriage” there should be greater facilities +for divorce and also a kind of respectable-ization of divorce. Then +these “false marriages” might be rectified without suffering. The +reasons for divorce he felt should be extended to include things not +generally reprehensible, and chivalrous people coming into court should +be protected from the indelicate publicity of free reporting....</p> + +<h4>§3</h4> + +<p>Mr. Brumley was still contemplating rather inconclusively the +possibility of a long and intimate talk leading up to and preparing for +an elopement with Lady Harman, when he read of her Jago Street escapade +and of her impending appearance at the South Hampsmith police court. He +was astonished. The more he contemplated the thing the greater became +his astonishment.</p> + +<p>Even at the first impact he realized that the line she had taken wasn’t +quite in the picture with the line he had proposed for her. He +felt—left out. He felt as though a door had slammed between himself and +affairs to which he had supposed himself essential. He could not +understand why she had done this thing instead of coming straight to his +flat and making use of all that chivalrous service she surely knew was +at her disposal. This self-reliance, this direct dealing with the world, +seemed to him, even in the height of his concern, unwomanly, a deeper +injury to his own abandoned assumptions than any he had contemplated. He +felt it needed explanation, and he hurried to secure an elbowed +unsavoury corner in the back of the court in order to hear her defence. +He had to wait through long stuffy spaces of time before she appeared. +There were half a dozen other window smashers,—plain or at least +untidy-looking young women. The magistrate told them they were silly and +the soul of Mr. Brumley acquiesced. One tried to make a speech, and it +was such a poor speech—squeaky....</p> + +<p>When at last Lady Harman entered the box—the strangest place it seemed +for her—he tried to emerge from the jostling crowd about him into +visibility, to catch her eye, to give her the support of his devoted +presence. Twice at least she glanced in his direction but gave no sign +of seeing him. He was surprised that she could look without fear or +detestation, indeed once with a gesture of solicitude, at Sir Isaac. She +was astonishingly serene. There seemed to be just the faintest shadow of +a smile about her lips as the stipendiary explained the impossibility +of giving her anything less than a month. An uneasy object like the +smashed remains of a colossal box of bonbons that was riding out a gale, +down in the middle of the court, turned round at last completely and +revealed itself as the hat of Lady Beach-Mandarin, but though Mr. +Brumley waved his hand he could not even make that lady aware of his +presence. A powerful rude criminal-looking man who stood in front of him +and smelt grossly of stables, would not give him a fair chance of +showing himself, and developed a strong personal hostility to him on +account of his alleged “shoving about.” It would not he felt be of the +slightest help to Lady Harman for him to involve himself in a personal +struggle with a powerful and powerfully flavoured criminal.</p> + +<p>It was all very dreadful.</p> + +<p>After the proceedings were over and Lady Harman had been led away into +captivity, he went out and took a taxi in an agitated distraught manner +to Lady Beach-Mandarin’s house.</p> + +<p>“She meant,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin, “to have a month’s holiday from +him and think things out. And she’s got it.”</p> + +<p>Perhaps that was it. Mr. Brumley could not tell, and he spent some days +in that state of perplexity which, like the weariness that heralds a +cold, marks so often the onset of a new series of ideas....</p> + +<p>Why hadn’t she come to him? Had he after all rather overloaded his +memory of her real self with imaginative accessories? Had she really +understood what he had been saying to her in the garden? Afterwards +when he had met her eyes as he and she went over the new wing with Sir +Isaac she had so manifestly—and, when one came to think of it, so +tranquilly—seemed to understand....</p> + +<p>It was such an extraordinary thing to go smashing a window like +that—when there he was at hand ready to help her. She knew his address? +Did she? For a moment Mr. Brumley cherished that wild surmise. Was that +perhaps it? But surely she could have looked in the Telephone Directory +or Who’s Who....</p> + +<p>But if that was the truth of the matter she would have looked and +behaved differently in court—quite differently. She would have been +looking for him. She would have seen him....</p> + +<p>It was queer too to recall what she had said in court about her +daughters....</p> + +<p>Could it be, he had a frightful qualm, that after all—he wasn’t the +man? How little he knew of her really....</p> + +<p>“This wretched agitation,” said Mr. Brumley, trying to flounder away +anyhow from these disconcerting riddles; “it seems to unbalance them +all.”</p> + +<p>But he found it impossible to believe that Lady Harman was seriously +unbalanced.</p> + +<h4>§4</h4> + +<p>And if Mr. Brumley’s system of romantically distorted moral assumptions +was shattered by Lady Harman’s impersonal blow at a post office window +when all the rules seemed to require her to fly from the oppression of +one man to the chivalry of another, what words can convey the +devastating effect upon him of her conduct after her release? To that +crisis he had been looking forward continually; to record the variety of +his expectations would fill a large volume, but throughout them all +prevailed one general idea, that when she came out of prison her +struggle with her husband would be resumed, and that this would give Mr. +Brumley such extraordinary opportunities of displaying his devotion that +her response, which he was now beginning to suspect might be more +reluctant than his earlier dreams had assumed, was ultimately +inevitable. In all these dreams and meditations that response figured as +the crown. He had to win and possess Lady Harman. The idea had taken +hold of his busy yet rather pointless life, had become his directing +object. He was full of schemes for presently arresting and captivating +her imagination. He was already convinced that she cared for him; he had +to inflame interest and fan liking into the fire of passion. And with a +mind so occupied, Mr. Brumley wrote this and that and went about his +affairs. He spent two days and a night at Margate visiting his son at +his preparatory school, and he found much material for musing in the +question of just how the high romantic affairs ahead of him would affect +this delicately intelligent boy. For a time perhaps he might misjudge +his father.... He spent a week-end with Lady Viping and stayed on until +Wednesday and then he came back to London. His plans were still unformed +when the day came for Lady Harman’s release, and indeed beyond an idea +that he would have her met at the prison gates by an enormous bunch of +snowy-white and crimson chrysanthemums he had nothing really concrete at +all in his mind.</p> + +<p>She had, however, been released stealthily a day before her time, and +this is what she had done. She had asked that—of all improbable +people!—Sir Isaac’s mother should meet her, the biggest car had come to +the prison gates, and she had gone straight down with Mrs. Harman to her +husband—who had taken a chill and was in bed drinking Contrexéville +water—at Black Strand.</p> + +<p>As these facts shaped themselves in answer to the blanched inquiries of +Mr. Brumley his amazement grew. He began to realize that there must have +been a correspondence during her incarceration, that all sorts of things +had been happening while he had been dreaming, and when he went round to +Lady Beach-Mandarin, who was just packing up to be the life and soul of +a winter-sports party at a nice non-Lunnite hotel at Lenzerheide, he +learnt particulars that chilled him to the marrow. “They’ve made it up,” +said Lady Beach-Mandarin.</p> + +<p>“But how?” gasped Mr. Brumley, with his soul in infinite distress. “But +how?”</p> + +<p>“The Ogre, it seems, has come to see that bullying won’t do. He’s given +in tremendously. He’s let her have her way with the waitress strike and +she’s going to have an allowance of her own and all kinds of things. +It’s settled. It’s his mother and that man Charterson talked him over. +You know—his mother came to me—as her friend. For advice. Wanted to +find out what sort of things we might have been putting in her head. She +said so. A curious old thing—vulgar but—<i>wise</i>. I liked her. He’s her +darling—and she just knows what he is.... He doesn’t like it but he’s +taken his dose. The thought of her going to prison again——! He’s let +her do anything rather than that....”</p> + +<p>“And she’s gone to him!”</p> + +<p>“Naturally,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin with what he felt to be deliberate +brutality. Surely she must have understood——</p> + +<p>“But the waitress strike—what has it got to do with the waitress +strike?”</p> + +<p>“She cared—tremendously.”</p> + +<p>“<i>Did</i> she?”</p> + +<p>“Tremendously. And they all go back and the system of inspection is +being altered, and he’s even forgiven Babs Wheeler. It made him ill to +do it but he did.”</p> + +<p>“And she’s gone back to him.”</p> + +<p>“Like Godiva,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin with that sweeping allusiveness +that was part of her complicated charm.</p> + +<h4>§5</h4> + +<p>For three days Mr. Brumley was so staggered by these things that it did +not occur to him that it was quite possible for him to see Lady Harman +for himself and find out just how things stood. He remained in London +with an imagination dazed. And as it was the Christmas season and as +George Edmund in a rather expectant holiday state had now come up from +Margate, Mr. Brumley went in succession to the Hippodrome, to Peter Pan +and to an exhibition at Olympia, assisted at an afternoon display of the +kinemacolor at La Scala Theatre, visited Hamley’s and lunched George +Edmund once at the Criterion and twice at the Climax Club, while +thinking of nothing in all the world but the incalculable strangeness of +women. George Edmund thought him a very passive leadable parent indeed, +less querulous about money matters and altogether much improved. The +glitter and colour of these various entertainments reflected themselves +upon the surface of that deep flood of meditation, hook-armed +wooden-legged pirates, intelligent elephants, ingenious but extremely +expensive toys, flickering processions, comic turns, snatches of popular +music and George Edmund’s way of eating an orange, pictured themselves +on his mind confusedly without in any way deflecting its course. Then on +the fourth day he roused himself, gave George Edmund ten shillings to +get himself a cutlet at the Café Royal and do the cinematographs round +and about the West End, and so released reached Aleham in time for a +temperate lunch. He chartered the Aleham car to take him to Black Strand +and arrived there about a quarter past three, in a great effort to feel +himself a matter-of-course visitor.</p> + +<p>It ought to be possible to record that Mr. Brumley’s mind was full of +the intensest sense of Lady Harman during that journey and of nothing +else, but as a matter of fact his mind was now curiously detached and +reflective, the tensions and expectation of the past month and the +astonishment of the last few days had worked themselves out and left him +as it were the passive instrument of the purpose of his more impassioned +moods. This distressed lover approached Black Strand in a condition of +philosophical lassitude.</p> + +<p>The road from Aleham to Black Strand is a picturesque old English road, +needlessly winding and badly graded, wriggling across a healthy +wilderness with occasional pine-woods. Something in that familiar +landscape—for his life had run through it since first he and Euphemia +on a tandem bicycle and altogether very young had sought their ideal +home in the South of England—set his mind swinging and generalizing. +How freshly youthful he and Euphemia had been when first he came along +that road, how crude, how full of happy expectations of success; it had +been as bright and it was now as completely gone as the sunsets they had +seen together.</p> + +<p>How great a thing life is! How much greater than any single romance, or +any individual affection! Since those days he had grown, he had +succeeded, he had suffered in a reasonable way of course, still he could +recall with a kind of satisfaction tears and deep week-long moods of +hopeless melancholy—and he had changed. And now dominating this +landscape, filling him with new emotions and desires and perplexing +intimations of ignorance and limitations he had never suspected in his +youth, was this second figure of a woman. She was different from +Euphemia. With Euphemia everything had been so simple and easy; until +that slight fading, that fatigue of entire success and satisfaction, of +the concluding years. He and Euphemia had always kept it up that they +had no thought in the world except for one another.... Yet if that had +been true, why hadn’t he died when she did. He hadn’t died—with +remarkable elasticity. Clearly in his case there had been these +unexplored, unsuspected hinterlands of possibility towards which Lady +Harman seemed now to be directing him. It came to him that afternoon as +an entirely fresh thought that there might also have been something in +Euphemia beyond their simple, so charmingly treated relationship. He +began to recall moments when Euphemia had said perplexing little things, +had looked at him with an expression that was unexpected, had +been—difficult....</p> + +<p>I write of Mr. Brumley to tell you things about him and not to explain +him. It may be that the appetite for thorough good talks with people +grows upon one, but at any rate it did occur to Mr. Brumley on his way +to talk to Lady Harman, it occurred to him as a thing distressingly +irrevocable that he could now never have a thorough good talk with +Euphemia about certain neglected things between them. It would have +helped him so much....</p> + +<p>His eyes rested as he thought of these things upon the familiar purple +hill crests, patched that afternoon with the lingering traces of a +recent snowstorm, the heather slopes, the dark mysterious woods, the +patches of vivid green where a damp and marshy meadow or so broke the +moorland surface. To-day in spite of the sun there was a bright +blue-white line of frost to the northward of every hedge and bank, the +trees were dripping down the white edgings of the morning into the +pine-needle mud at their feet; he had seen it so like this before; years +hence he might see it all like this again; all this great breezy +countryside had taken upon itself a quality of endurance, as though it +would still be real and essential in his mind when Lady Harman had +altogether passed again. It would be real when he himself had passed +away, and in other costumes and other vehicles fresh Euphemias and new +crude George Brumleys would come along, feeling in the ultimate bright +new wisdom of youth that it was all for them—a subservient scenery, +when really it was entirely indifferent in its careless permanence to +all their hopes and fancies....</p> + +<h4>§6</h4> + +<p>Mr. Brumley’s thoughts on the permanence of landscape and the mutability +of human affairs were more than a little dashed when he came within +sight of Black Strand and perceived that once cosily beautiful little +home clipped and extended, its shrubbery wrecked and the old barn now +pierced with windows and adorned—for its new chimneys were not working +very well—by several efficient novelties in chimney cowls. Up the +slopes behind Sir Isaac had extended his boundaries, and had been +felling trees and levelling a couple of tennis courts for next summer.</p> + +<p>Something was being done to the porch, and the jasmine had been cleared +away altogether. Mr. Brumley could not quite understand what was in +progress; Sir Isaac he learnt afterwards had found a wonderful bargain +in a real genuine Georgian portal of great dignity and simplicity in +Aleham, and he was going to improve Black Strand by transferring it +thither—with the utmost precaution and every piece numbered—from its +original situation. Mr. Brumley stood among the preparatory débris of +this and rang a quietly resolute electric bell, which was answered no +longer by Mrs. Rabbit but by the ample presence of Snagsby.</p> + +<p>Snagsby in that doorway had something of the preposterous effect of a +very large face beneath a very small hat. He had to Mr. Brumley’s eyes a +restored look, as though his self-confidence had been thoroughly done up +since their last encounter. Bygones were bygones. Mr. Brumley was +admitted as one is admitted to any normal home. He was shown into the +little study-drawing-room with the stepped floor, which had been so +largely the scene of his life with Euphemia, and he was left there for +the better part of a quarter of an hour before his hostess appeared.</p> + +<p>The room had been changed very little. Euphemia’s solitary rose had +gone, and instead there were several bowls of beaten silver scattered +about, each filled with great chrysanthemums from London. Sir Isaac’s +jackdaw acquisitiveness had also overcrowded the corner beyond the +fireplace with a very fine and genuine Queen Anne cabinet; there were a +novel by Elizabeth Robins and two or three feminist and socialist works +lying on the table which would certainly not have been visible, though +they might have been in the house, during the Brumley régime. Otherwise +things were very much as they always had been.</p> + +<p>A room like this, thought Mr. Brumley among much other mental driftage, +is like a heart,—so long as it exists it must be furnished and +tenanted. No matter what has been, however bright and sweet and tender, +the spaces still cry aloud to be filled again. The very essence of life +is its insatiability. How complete all this had seemed in the moment +when first he and Euphemia had arranged it. And indeed how complete life +had seemed altogether at seven-and-twenty. Every year since then he had +been learning—or at any rate unlearning. Until at last he was beginning +to realize he had still everything to learn....</p> + +<p>The door opened and the tall dark figure of Lady Harman stood for a +moment in the doorway before she stepped down into the room.</p> + +<p>She had always the same effect upon him, the effect of being suddenly +remembered. When he was away from her he was always sure that she was a +beautiful woman, and when he saw her again he was always astonished to +see how little he had borne her beauty in mind. For a moment they +regarded one another silently. Then she closed the door behind her and +came towards him.</p> + +<p>All Mr. Brumley’s philosophizing had vanished at the sight of her. His +spirit was reborn within him. He thought of her and of his effect upon +her, vividly, and of nothing else in the world.</p> + +<p>She was paler he thought beneath her dusky hair, a little thinner and +graver....</p> + +<p>There was something in her manner as she advanced towards him that told +him he mattered to her, that his coming there was something that moved +her imagination as well as his own. With an almost impulsive movement +she held out both her hands to him, and with an inspiration as sudden he +took them and kissed them. When he had done so he was ashamed of his +temerity; he looked up to meet in her dark eyes the scared shyness of a +fallow deer. She suddenly remembered to withdraw her hands, and it +became manifest to both of them that the incident must never have +happened. She went to the window, stood almost awkwardly for a moment +looking out of it, then turned. She put her hands on the back of the +chair and stood holding it.</p> + +<p>“I knew you would come to see me,” she said.</p> + +<p>“I’ve been very anxious about you,” he said, and on that their minds +rested through a little silence.</p> + +<p>“You see,” he explained, “I didn’t know what was happening to you. Or +what you were doing.”</p> + +<p>“After asking your advice,” she said.</p> + +<p>“Exactly.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know why I broke that window. Except I think that I wanted to +get away.”</p> + +<p>“But why didn’t you come to me?”</p> + +<p>“I didn’t know where you were. And besides—I didn’t somehow want to +come to you.”</p> + +<p>“But wasn’t it wretched in prison? Wasn’t it miserably cold? I used to +think of you of nights in some wretched ill-aired cell.... You....”</p> + +<p>“It <i>was</i> cold,” she admitted. “But it was very good for me. It was +quiet. The first few days seemed endless; then they began to go by +quickly. Quite quickly at last. And I came to think. In the day there +was a little stool where one sat. I used to sit on that and brood and +try to think things out—all sorts of things I’ve never had the chance +to think about before.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“All this,” she said.</p> + +<p>“And it has brought you back here!” he said, with something of the tone +of one who has a right to enquire, with some flavour too of reproach.</p> + +<p>“You see,” she said after a little pause, “during that time it was +possible to come to understandings. Neither I nor my husband had +understood the other. In that interval it was possible—to explain.</p> + +<p>“Yes. You see, Mr. Brumley, we—we both misunderstood. It was just +because of that and because I had no one who seemed able to advise me +that I turned to you. A novelist always seems so wise in these things. +He seems to know so many lives. One can talk to you as one can scarcely +talk to anyone; you are a sort of doctor—in these matters. And it was +necessary—that my husband should realize that I had grown up and that I +should have time to think just how one’s duty and one’s—freedom have to +be fitted together.... And my husband is ill. He has been ill, rather +short of breath—the doctor thinks it is asthma—for some time, and all +the agitation of this business has upset him and made him worse. He is +upstairs now—asleep. Of course if I had thought I should make him ill I +could never have done any of this. But it’s done now and here I am, Mr. +Brumley, back in my place. With all sorts of things changed. Put +right....”</p> + +<p>“I see,” said Mr. Brumley stupidly.</p> + +<p>Her speech was like the falling of an opaque curtain upon some romantic +spectacle. She stood there, almost defensively behind her chair as she +made it. There was a quality of premeditation in her words, yet +something in her voice and bearing made him feel that she knew just how +it covered up and extinguished his dreams and impulses. He heard her out +and then suddenly his spirit rebelled against her decision. “No!” he +cried.</p> + +<p>She waited for him to go on.</p> + +<p>“You see,” he said, “I thought that it was just that you wanted to get +away——That this life was intolerable——That you were——Forgive me +if I seem to be going beyond—going beyond what I ought to be thinking +about you. Only, why should I pretend? I care, I care for you +tremendously. And it seemed to me that you didn’t love your husband, +that you were enslaved and miserable. I would have done anything to help +you—anything in the world, Lady Harman. I know—it may sound +ridiculous—there have been times when I would have faced death to feel +you were happy and free. I thought all that, I felt all that,—and +then—then you come back here. You seem not to have minded. As though I +had misunderstood....”</p> + +<p>He paused and his face was alive with an unwonted sincerity. His +self-consciousness had for a moment fallen from him.</p> + +<p>“I know,” she said, “it <i>was</i> like that. I knew you cared. That is why I +have so wanted to talk to you. It looked like that....”</p> + +<p>She pressed her lips together in that old familiar hunt for words and +phrases.</p> + +<p>“I didn’t understand, Mr. Brumley, all there was in my husband or all +there was in myself. I just saw his hardness and his—his hardness in +business. It’s become so different now. You see, I forgot he has bad +health. He’s ill; I suppose he was getting ill then. Instead of +explaining himself—he was—excited and—unwise. And now——”</p> + +<p>“Now I suppose he has—explained,” said Mr. Brumley slowly and with +infinite distaste. “Lady Harman, <i>what</i> has he explained?”</p> + +<p>“It isn’t so much that he has explained, Mr. Brumley,” said Lady Harman, +“as that things have explained themselves.”</p> + +<p>“But how, Lady Harman? How?”</p> + +<p>“I mean about my being a mere girl, almost a child when I married him. +Naturally he wanted to take charge of everything and leave nothing to +me. And quite as naturally he didn’t notice that now I am a woman, grown +up altogether. And it’s been necessary to do things. And naturally, Mr. +Brumley, they shocked and upset him. But he sees now so clearly, he +wrote to me, such a fair letter—an unusual letter—quite different from +when he talks—it surprised me, telling me he wanted me to feel free, +that he meant to make me—to arrange things that is, so that I should +feel free and more able to go about as I pleased. It was a <i>generous</i> +letter, Mr. Brumley. Generous about all sorts of affairs that there had +been between us. He said things, quite kind things, not like the things +he has ever said before——”</p> + +<p>She stopped short and then began again.</p> + +<p>“You know, Mr. Brumley, it’s so hard to tell things without telling +other things that somehow are difficult to tell. Yet if I don’t tell you +them, you won’t know them and then you won’t be able to understand in +the least how things are with us.”</p> + +<p>Her eyes appealed to him.</p> + +<p>“Tell me,” he said, “whatever you think fit.”</p> + +<p>“When one has been afraid of anyone and felt they were ever so much +stronger and cruel and hard than one is and one suddenly finds they +aren’t. It alters everything.”</p> + +<p>He nodded, watching her.</p> + +<p>Her voice fell nearly to a whisper. “Mr. Brumley,” she said, “when I +came back to him—you know he was in bed here—instead of scolding +me—he <i>cried</i>. He cried like a vexed child. He put his face into the +pillow—just misery.... I’d never seen him cry—at least only once—long +ago....”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley looked at her flushed and tender face and it seemed to him +that indeed he could die for her quite easily.</p> + +<p>“I saw how hard I had been,” she said. “In prison I’d thought of that, +I’d thought women mustn’t be hard, whatever happens to them. And when I +saw him like that I knew at once how true that was.... He begged me to +be a good wife to him. No!—he just said, ‘Be a wife to me,’ not even a +good wife—and then he cried....”</p> + +<p>For a moment or so Mr. Brumley didn’t respond. “I see,” he said at last. +“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“And there were the children—such helpless little things. In the prison +I worried about them. I thought of things for them. I’ve come to +feel—they are left too much to nurses and strangers.... And then you +see he has agreed to nearly everything I had wanted. It wasn’t only the +personal things—I was anxious about those silly girls—the strikers. I +didn’t want them to be badly treated. It distressed me to think of them. +I don’t think you know how it distressed me. And he—he gave way upon +all that. He says I may talk to him about the business, about the way we +do our business—the kindness of it I mean. And this is why I am back +here. Where else <i>could</i> I be?”</p> + +<p>“No,” said Mr. Brumley still with the utmost reluctance. “I see. +Only——”</p> + +<p>He paused downcast and she waited for him to speak.</p> + +<p>“Only it isn’t what I expected, Lady Harman. I didn’t think that matters +could be settled by such arrangements. It’s sane, I know, it’s +comfortable and kindly. But I thought—Oh! I thought of different +things, quite different things from all this. I thought of you who are +so beautiful caught in a loveless passionless world. I thought of the +things there might be for you, the beautiful and wonderful things of +which you are deprived.... Never mind what I thought! Never mind! You’ve +made your choice. But I thought that you didn’t love, that you couldn’t +love—this man. It seemed to me that you felt too—that to live as you +are doing—with him—was a profanity. Something—I’d give everything I +have, everything I am, to save you from. Because—because I care.... I +misunderstood you. I suppose you can—do what you are doing.”</p> + +<p>He jumped to his feet as he spoke and walked three paces away and turned +to utter his last sentences. She too stood up.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Brumley,” she said weakly, “I don’t understand. What do you mean? I +have to do what I am doing. He—he is my husband.”</p> + +<p>He made a gesture of impatience. “Do you understand nothing of <i>love</i>?” +he cried.</p> + +<p>She pressed her lips together and remained still and silent, dark +against the casement window.</p> + +<p>There came a sound of tapping from the room above. Three taps and again +three taps.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman made a little gesture as though she would put this sound +aside.</p> + +<p>“Love,” she said at last. “It comes to some people. It happens. It +happens to young people.... But when one is married——”</p> + +<p>Her voice fell almost to a whisper. “One must not think of it,” she +said. “One must think of one’s husband and one’s duty. Life cannot begin +again, Mr. Brumley.”</p> + +<p>The taps were repeated, a little more urgently.</p> + +<p>“That is my husband,” she said.</p> + +<p>She hesitated through a little pause. “Mr. Brumley,” she said, “I want +friendship so badly, I want some one to be my friend. I don’t want to +think of things—disturbing things—things I have lost—things that are +spoilt. <i>That</i>—that which you spoke of; what has it to do with me?”</p> + +<p>She interrupted him as he was about to speak.</p> + +<p>“Be my friend. Don’t talk to me of impossible things. Love! Mr. Brumley, +what has a married woman to do with love? I never think of it. I never +read of it. I want to do my duty. I want to do my duty by him and by my +children and by all the people I am bound to. I want to help people, +weak people, people who suffer. I want to help him to help them. I want +to stop being an idle, useless, spending woman....”</p> + +<p>She made a little gesture of appeal with her hands.</p> + +<p>“Oh!” he sighed, and then, “You know if I can help you——Rather than +distress you——”</p> + +<p>Her manner changed. It became confidential and urgent.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Brumley,” she said, “I must go up to my husband. He will be +impatient. And when I tell him you are here he will want to see you.... +You will come up and see him?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley sought to convey the struggle within him by his pose.</p> + +<p>“I will do what you wish, Lady Harman,” he said, with an almost +theatrical sigh.</p> + +<p>He closed the door after her and was alone in his former study once +more. He walked slowly to his old writing-desk and sat down in his +familiar seat. Presently he heard her footfalls across the room above. +Mr. Brumley’s mind under the stress of the unfamiliar and the unexpected +was now lapsing rapidly towards the theatrical. “My <i>God</i>!” said Mr. +Brumley.</p> + +<p>He addressed that friendly memorable room in tones that mingled +amazement and wrong. “He is her husband!” he said, and then: “The power +of words!” ...</p> + +<h4>§7</h4> + +<p>It seemed to Mr. Brumley’s now entirely disordered mind that Sir Isaac, +propped up with cushions upon a sofa in the upstairs sitting-room, +white-faced, wary and very short of breath, was like Proprietorship +enthroned. Everything about him referred deferentially to him. Even his +wife dropped at once into the position of a beautiful satellite. His +illness, he assured his visitor with a thin-lipped emphasis, was “quite +temporary, quite the sort of thing that might happen to anyone.” He had +had a queer little benumbing of one leg, “just a trifle of nerve fag did +it,” and the slight asthma that came and went in his life had taken +advantage of his condition to come again with a little beyond its usual +aggressiveness. “Elly is going to take me off to Marienbad next week or +the week after,” he said. “I shall have a cure and she’ll have a treat, +and we shall come back as fit as fiddles.” The incidents of the past +month were to be put on a facetious footing it appeared. “It’s a mercy +they didn’t crop her hair,” he said, apropos of nothing and with an air +of dry humour. No further allusion was made to Lady Harman’s +incarceration.</p> + +<p>He was dressed in a lama wool bedroom suit and his resting leg was +covered by a very splendid and beautiful fur rug. All Euphemia’s best +and gayest cushions sustained his back. The furniture had been +completely rearranged for his comfort and convenience. Close to his hand +was a little table with carefully selected remedies and aids and helps +and stimulants, and the latest and best of the light fiction of the day +was tossed about between the table, the couch and the floor. At the foot +of the couch Euphemia’s bedroom writing-table had been placed, and over +this there were scattered traces of the stenographer who had assisted +him to wipe off the day’s correspondence. Three black cylinders and +other appliances in the corner witnessed that his slight difficulty in +breathing could be relieved by oxygen, and his eyes were regaled by a +great abundance of London flowers at every available point in the room. +Of course there were grapes, fabulous looking grapes.</p> + +<p>Everything conspired to give Sir Isaac and his ownership the centre of +the picture. Mr. Brumley had been brought upstairs to him, and the tea +table, with scarcely a reference to anyone else, was arranged by Snagsby +conveniently to his hand. And Sir Isaac himself had a confidence—the +assurance of a man who has been shaken and has recovered. Whatever tears +he had ever shed had served their purpose and were forgotten. “Elly” was +his and the house was his and everything about him was his—he laid his +hand upon her once when she came near him, his possessiveness was so +gross—and the strained suspicion of his last meeting with Mr. Brumley +was replaced now by a sage and wizened triumph over anticipated and +arrested dangers.</p> + +<p>Their party was joined by Sir Isaac’s mother, and the sight of her +sturdy, swarthy, and rather dignified presence flashed the thought into +Mr. Brumley’s mind that Sir Isaac’s father must have been a very blond +and very nosey person indeed. She was homely and practical and +contributed very usefully to a conversation that remained a trifle +fragmentary and faintly uncomfortable to the end.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley avoided as much as he could looking at Lady Harman, because +he knew Sir Isaac was alert for that, but he was acutely aware of her +presence dispensing the tea and moving about the room, being a good +wife. It was his first impression of Lady Harman as a good wife and he +disliked the spectacle extremely. The conversation hovered chiefly about +Marienbad, drifted away and came back again. Mrs. Harman made several +confidences that provoked the betrayal of a strain of irritability in +Sir Isaac’s condition. “We’re all looking forward to this Marienbad +expedition,” she said. “I do hope it will turn out well. Neither of them +have ever been abroad before—and there’s the difficulty of the +languages.”</p> + +<p>“Ow,” snarled Sir Isaac, with a glance at his mother that was almost +vicious and a lapse into Cockney intonations and phrases that witnessed +how her presence recalled his youth, “It’ll <i>go</i> all right, mother. +<i>You</i> needn’t fret.”</p> + +<p>“Of course they’ll have a courier to see to their things, and go train +de luxe and all that,” Mrs. Harman explained with a certain gusto. “But +still it’s an adventure, with him not well, and both as I say more like +children than grown-up people.”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac intervened with a crushing clumsiness to divert this strain of +explanation, with questions about the quality of the soil in the wood +where the ground was to be cleared and levelled for his tennis lawns.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley did his best to behave as a man of the world should. He made +intelligent replies about the sand, he threw out obvious but serviceable +advice upon travel upon the continent of Europe, and he tried not to +think that this was the way of living into which the sweetest, +tenderest, most beautiful woman in the world had been trapped. He +avoided looking at her until he felt it was becoming conspicuous, a +negative stare. Why had she come back again? Fragmentary phrases she had +used downstairs came drifting through his mind. “I never think of it. I +never read of it.” And she so made for beautiful love and a beautiful +life! He recalled Lady Beach-Mandarin’s absurdly apt, absurdly inept, +“like Godiva,” and was suddenly impelled to raise the question of those +strikers.</p> + +<p>“Your trouble with your waitresses is over, Sir Isaac?”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac finished a cup of tea audibly and glanced at his wife. “I +never meant to be hard on them,” he said, putting down his cup. “Never. +The trouble blew up suddenly. One can’t be all over a big business +everywhere all at once, more particularly if one is worried about other +things. As soon as I had time to look into it I put things right. There +was misunderstandings on both sides.”</p> + +<p>He glanced up again at Lady Harman. (She was standing behind Mr. Brumley +so that he could not see her but—did their eyes meet?)</p> + +<p>“As soon as we are back from Marienbad,” Sir Isaac volunteered, “Lady +Harman and I are going into all that business thoroughly.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley concealed his intense aversion for this association under a +tone of intelligent interest. “Into—I don’t quite understand—what +business?”</p> + +<p>“Women employees in London—Hostels—all that kind of thing. Bit more +sensible than suffragetting, eh, Elly?”</p> + +<p>“Very interesting,” said Mr. Brumley with a hollow cordiality, “very.”</p> + +<p>“Done on business lines, mind you,” said Sir Isaac, looking suddenly +very sharp and keen, “done on proper business lines, there’s no end of a +change possible. And it’s a perfectly legitimate outgrowth from such +popular catering as ours. It interests me.”</p> + +<p>He made a little whistling noise with his teeth at the end of this +speech.</p> + +<p>“I didn’t know Lady Harman was disposed to take up such things,” he +said. “Or I’d have gone into them before.”</p> + +<p>“He’s going into them now,” said Mrs. Harman, “heart and soul. Why! we +have to take his temperature over it, to see he doesn’t work himself up +into a fever.” Her manner became reasonable and confidential. She spoke +to Mr. Brumley as if her son was slightly deaf. “It’s better than his +fretting,” she said....</p> + +<h4>§8</h4> + +<p>Mr. Brumley returned to London in a state of extreme mental and +emotional unrest. The sight of Lady Harman had restored all his passion +for her, the all too manifest fact that she was receding beyond his +reach stirred him with unavailing impulses towards some impossible +extremity of effort. She had filled his mind so much that he could not +endure the thought of living without hope of her. But what hope was +there of her? And he was jealous, detestably jealous, so jealous that in +that direction he did not dare to let his mind go. He sawed at the bit +and brought it back, or he would have had to writhe about the carriage. +His thoughts ran furiously all over the place to avoid that pit. And now +he found himself flashing at moments into wild and hopeless rebellion +against the institution of marriage, of which he had hitherto sought +always to be the dignified and smiling champion against the innovator, +the over-critical and the young. He had never rebelled before. He was so +astonished at the violence of his own objection that he lapsed from +defiance to an incredulous examination of his own novel attitude. “It’s +not <i>true</i> marriage I object to,” he told himself. “It’s this marriage +like a rat trap, alluring and scarcely unavoidable, so that in we all +go, and then with no escape—unless you tear yourself to rags. No +escape....”</p> + +<p>It came to him that there was at least one way out for Lady Harman: <i>Sir +Isaac might die!</i> ...</p> + +<p>He pulled himself up presently, astonished and dismayed at the +activities of his own imagination. Among other things he had wondered if +by any chance Lady Harman had ever allowed her mind to travel in this +same post-mortem direction. At times surely the thing must have shone +upon her as a possibility, a hope. From that he had branched off to a +more general speculation. How many people were there in the world, nice +people, kind people, moral and delicate-minded people, to whom the death +of another person means release from that inflexible barrier—possibilities +of secretly desired happiness, the realization of crushed and forbidden +dreams? He had a vision of human society, like the vision of a night +landscape seen suddenly in a lightning flash, as of people caught by +couples in traps and quietly hoping for one another’s deaths. +“Good Heavens!” said Mr. Brumley, “what are we coming to,” and +got up in his railway compartment—he had it to himself—and walked up +and down its narrow limits until a jolt over a point made him suddenly +sit down again. “Most marriages are happy,” said Mr. Brumley, like a man +who has fallen into a river and scrambles back to safety. “One mustn’t +judge by the exceptional cases....</p> + +<p>“Though of course there are—a good many—exceptional cases.” ...</p> + +<p>He folded his arms, crossed his legs, frowned and reasoned with +himself,—resolved to dismiss post-mortem speculations—absolutely.</p> + +<p>He was not going to quarrel with the institution of marriage. That was +going too far. He had never been able to see the beginnings of reason in +sexual anarchy, never. It is against the very order of things. Man is a +marrying animal just as much as he was a fire-making animal; he goes in +pairs like mantel ornaments; it is as natural for him to marry and to +exact and keep good faith—if need be with a savage jealousy, as it is +for him to have lobes to his ears and hair under his armpits. These +things jar with the dream perhaps; the gods on painted ceilings have no +such ties, acting beautifully by their very nature; and here on the +floor of the world one had them and one had to make the best of them.... +Are we making the best of them? Mr. Brumley was off again. That last +thought opened the way to speculative wildernesses, and into these Mr. +Brumley went wandering with a novel desperate enterprise to find a kind +of marriage that would suit him.</p> + +<p>He began to reform the marriage laws. He did his utmost not to think +especially of Lady Harman and himself while he was doing so. He would +just take up the whole question and deal with it in a temperate +reasonable way. It was so necessary to be reasonable and temperate in +these questions—and not to think of death as a solution. Marriages to +begin with were too easy to make and too difficult to break; countless +girls—Lady Harman was only a type—were married long before they could +know the beginnings of their own minds. We wanted to delay +marriage—until the middle twenties, say. Why not? Or if by the +infirmities of humanity one must have marriage before then, there ought +to be some especial opportunity of rescinding it later. (Lady Harman +ought to have been able to rescind her marriage.) What ought to be the +marriageable age in a civilized community? When the mind was settled +into its general system of opinions Mr. Brumley thought, and then +lapsed into a speculation whether the mind didn’t keep changing and +developing all through life; Lady Harman’s was certainly still doing +so.... This pointed to logical consequences of an undesirable sort....</p> + +<p>(Some little mind-slide occurred just at this point and he found himself +thinking that perhaps Sir Isaac might last for years and years, might +even outlive a wife exhausted by nursing. And anyhow to wait for death! +To leave the thing one loved in the embrace of the moribund!)</p> + +<p>He wrenched his thoughts back as quickly as possible to a disinterested +reform of the marriage laws. What had he decided so far? Only for more +deliberation and a riper age in marrying. Surely that should appeal even +to the most orthodox. But that alone would not eliminate mistakes and +deceptions altogether. (Sir Isaac’s skin had a peculiar, unhealthy +look.) There ought in addition to be the widest facilities for divorce +possible. Mr. Brumley tried to draw up a schedule in his head of the +grounds for divorce that a really civilized community would entertain. +But there are practical difficulties. Marriage is not simply a sexual +union, it is an economic one of a peculiarly inseparable sort,—and +there are the children. And jealousy! Of course so far as economics +went, a kind of marriage settlement might meet most of the difficulties, +and as for the children, Mr. Brumley was no longer in that mood of +enthusiastic devotion to children that had made the birth of George +Edmund so tremendous an event. Children, alone, afforded no reason for +indissoluble lifelong union. Face the thing frankly. How long was it +absolutely necessary for people to keep a home together for their +children? The prosperous classes, the best classes in the community, +packed the little creatures off to school at the age of nine or ten. One +might overdo—we were overdoing in our writing nowadays +this—philoprogenitive enthusiasm....</p> + +<p>He found himself thinking of George Meredith’s idea of Ten Year +Marriages....</p> + +<p>His mind recoiled to Sir Isaac’s pillowed-up possession. What flimsy +stuff all this talk of altered marriage was! These things did not even +touch the essentials of the matter. He thought of Sir Isaac’s thin lips +and wary knowing eyes. What possible divorce law could the wit of man +devise that would release a desired woman from that—grip? Marriage was +covetousness made law. As well ask such a man to sell all his goods and +give to the poor as expect the Sir Isaacs of this world to relax the +matrimonial subjugation of the wife. Our social order is built on +jealousy, sustained by jealousy, and those brave schemes we evolve in +our studies for the release of women from ownership,—and for that +matter for the release of men too,—they will not stand the dusty heat +of the market-place for a moment, they wilt under the first fierce +breath of reality. Marriage and property are the twin children of man’s +individualistic nature; only on these terms can he be drawn into +societies....</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley found his little scheme for novelties in marriage and +divorce lying dead and for the most part still-born in his mind; himself +in despair. To set to work to alter marriage in any essential point was, +he realized, as if an ant should start to climb a thousand feet of +cliff. This great institution rose upon his imagination like some +insurmountable sierra, blue and sombre, between himself and the life of +Lady Harman and all that he desired. There might be a certain amount of +tinkering with matrimonial law in the next few years, of petty tinkering +that would abolish a few pretences and give ease to a few amiable +people, but if he were to come back to life a thousand years hence he +felt he would still find the ancient gigantic barrier, crossed perhaps +by a dangerous road, pierced perhaps by a narrow tunnel or so, but in +all its great essentials the same, between himself and Lady Harman. It +wasn’t that it was rational, it wasn’t that it was justifiable, but it +was one with the blood in one’s veins and the rain-cloud in the sky, a +necessity in the nature of present things. Before mankind emerged from +the valley of these restraints—if ever they did emerge—thousands of +generations must follow one another, there must be tens of thousands of +years of struggle and thought and trial, in the teeth of prevalent habit +and opinion—and primordial instincts. A new humanity....</p> + +<p>His heart sank to hopelessness.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile? Meanwhile we had to live our lives.</p> + +<p>He began to see a certain justification for the hidden cults that run +beneath the fair appearances of life, those social secrecies by which +people—how could one put it?—people who do not agree with established +institutions, people, at any rate not merely egoistic and jealous as the +crowd is egoistic and jealous, hide and help one another to mitigate the +inflexible austerities of the great unreason.</p> + +<p>Yes, Mr. Brumley had got to a phrase of that quality for the +undiscriminating imperatives of the fundamental social institution. You +see how a particular situation may undermine the assumptions of a mind +originally devoted to uncritical acceptances. He still insisted it was a +necessary great unreason, absolutely necessary—for the mass of people, +a part of them, a natural expression of them, but he could imagine the +possibility—of ‘understandings.’ ... Mr. Brumley was very vague about +those understandings, those mysteries of the exalted that were to filch +happiness from the destroying grasp of the crude and jealous. He had to +be vague. For secret and noble are ideas like oil and water; you may +fling them together with all the force of your will but in a little +while they will separate again.</p> + +<p>For a time this dream of an impossible secrecy was uppermost in Mr. +Brumley’s meditations. It came into his head with the effect of a +discovery that always among the unclimbable barriers of this supreme +institution there had been,—caves. He had been reading Anatole France +recently and the lady of <i>Le Lys Rouge</i> came into his thoughts. There +was something in common between Lady Harman and the Countess Martin, +they were tall and dark and dignified, and Lady Harman was one of those +rare women who could have carried the magnificent name of Thérèse. And +there in the setting of Paris and Florence was a whole microcosm of +love, real but illicit, carried out as it were secretly and tactfully, +beneath the great shadow of the cliff. But he found it difficult to +imagine Lady Harman in that. Or Sir Isaac playing Count Martin’s +part....</p> + +<p>How different were those Frenchwomen, with their afternoons vacant +except for love, their detachment, their lovers, those secret, +convenient, romantically furnished flats, that compact explicit business +of <i>l’amour</i>! He had indeed some moments of regret that Lady Harman +wouldn’t go into that picture. She was different—if only in her +simplicity. There was something about these others that put them whole +worlds apart from her, who was held so tethered from all furtive +adventure by her filmy tentacles of responsibility, her ties and strands +of relationship, her essential delicacy. That momentary vision of Ellen +as the Countess Martin broke up into absurdities directly he looked at +it fully and steadfastly. From thinking of the two women as similar +types he passed into thinking of them as opposites; Thérèse, hard, +clear, sensuous, secretive, trained by a brilliant tradition in the +technique of connubial betrayal, was the very antithesis of Ellen’s +vague but invincible veracity and openness. Not for nothing had Anatole +France made his heroine the daughter of a grasping financial +adventurer....</p> + +<p>Of course the cave is a part of the mountain....</p> + +<p>His mind drifted away to still more general speculations, and always he +was trying not to see the figure of Sir Isaac, grimly and yet meanly +resolute—in possession. Always too like some open-mouthed yokel at a +fair who knows nothing of the insult chalked upon his back, he +disregarded how he himself coveted and desired and would if he could +have gripped. He forgot his own watchful attention to Euphemia in the +past, nor did he think what he might have been if Lady Harman had been +his wife. It needed the chill veracities of the small hours to bring him +to that. He thought now of crude egotism as having Sir Isaac’s hands and +Sir Isaac’s eyes and Sir Isaac’s position. He forgot any egotism he +himself was betraying.</p> + +<p>All the paths of enlightenment he thought of, led to Lady Harman.</p> + +<h4>§9</h4> + +<p>That evening George Edmund, who had come home with his mind aglitter +with cinematograph impressions, found his father a patient but +inattentive listener. For indeed Mr. Brumley was not listening at all; +he was thinking and thinking. He made noises like “Ah!” and “Um,” at +George Edmund and patted the boy’s shoulder kindly and repeated words +unintelligently, such as, “Red Indians, eh!” or “Came out of the water +backwards! My eye!”</p> + +<p>Sometimes he made what George Edmund regarded as quite footling +comments. Still George Edmund had to tell someone and there was no one +else to tell. So George Edmund went on talking and Mr. Brumley went on +thinking.</p> + +<h4>§10</h4> + +<p>Mr Brumley could not sleep at all until it was nearly five. His +intelligence seemed to be making up at last for years of speculative +restraint. In a world for the most part given up to slumber Mr. Brumley +may be imagined as clambering hand over fist in the silences, feverishly +and wonderfully overtaking his age. In the morning he got up pallid and +he shaved badly, but he was a generation ahead of his own Euphemia +series, and the school of charm and quiet humour and of letting things +slide with a kind of elegant donnishness, had lost him for ever....</p> + +<p>And among all sorts of things that had come to him in that vast gulf of +nocturnal thinking was some vivid self-examination. At last he got to +that. He had been dragged down to very elemental things indeed by the +manifest completeness of Lady Harman’s return to her husband. He had had +at last to look at himself starkly for the male he was, to go beneath +the gentlemanly airs, the refined and elegant virilities of his habitual +poses. Either this thing was unendurable—there were certainly moments +when it came near to being unendurable—or it was not. On the whole and +excepting mere momentary paroxysms it was not, and so he had to +recognize and he did recognize with the greatest amazement that there +could be something else besides sexual attraction and manœuvring and +possession between a beautiful woman and a man like himself. He loved +Lady Harman, he loved her, he now began to realize just how much, and +she could defeat him and reject him as a conceivable lover, turn that +aside as a thing impossible, shame him as the romantic school would +count shame and still command him with her confident eyes and her +friendly extended hands. He admitted he suffered, let us rather say he +claimed to suffer the heated torments of a passionate nature, but he +perceived like fresh air and sunrise coming by blind updrawn and opened +window into a fœtid chamber, that also he loved her with a clean and +bodiless love, was anxious to help her, was anxious now—it was a new +thing—to understand her, to reassure her, to give unrequited what once +he had sought rather to seem to give in view of an imagined exchange.</p> + +<p>He perceived too in these still hours how little he had understood her +hitherto. He had been blinded,—obsessed. He had been seeing her and +himself and the whole world far too much as a display of the eternal +dualism of sex, the incessant pursuit. Now with his sexual imaginings +newly humbled and hopeless, with a realization of her own tremendous +minimization of that fundamental of romance, he began to see all that +there was in her personality and their possible relations outside that. +He saw how gravely and deeply serious was her fine philanthropy, how +honest and simple and impersonal her desire for knowledge and +understandings. There is the brain of her at least, he thought, far out +of Sir Isaac’s reach. She wasn’t abased by her surrenders, their +simplicity exalted her, showed her innocent and himself a flushed and +congested soul. He perceived now with the astonishment of a man newly +awakened just how the great obsession of sex had dominated him—for how +many years? Since his early undergraduate days. Had he anything to put +beside her own fine detachment? Had he ever since his manhood touched +philosophy, touched a social question, thought of anything human, +thought of art, or literature or belief, without a glancing reference of +the whole question to the uses of this eternal hunt? During that time +had he ever talked to a girl or woman with an unembarrassed sincerity? +He stripped his pretences bare; the answer was no. His very refinements +had been no more than indicative fig-leaves. His conservatism and +morality had been a mere dalliance with interests that too brutal a +simplicity might have exhausted prematurely. And indeed hadn’t the whole +period of literature that had produced him been, in its straining purity +and refinement, as it were one glowing, one illuminated fig-leaf, a vast +conspiracy to keep certain matters always in mind by conspicuously +covering them away? But this wonderful woman—it seemed—she hadn’t them +in mind! She shamed him if only by her trustful unsuspiciousness of the +ancient selfish game of Him and Her that he had been so ardently +playing.... He idealized and worshipped this clean blindness. He abased +himself before it.</p> + +<p>“No,” cried Mr. Brumley suddenly in the silence of the night, “I will +rise again. I will rise again by love out of these morasses.... She +shall be my goddess and by virtue of her I will end this incessant +irrational craving for women.... I will be her friend and her faithful +friend.”</p> + +<p>He lay still for a time and then he said in a whisper very humbly: “<i>God +help me</i>.”</p> + +<p>He set himself in those still hours which are so endless and so +profitable to men in their middle years, to think how he might make +himself the perfect lover instead of a mere plotter for desire, and how +he might purge himself from covetousness and possessiveness and learn to +serve.</p> + +<p>And if very speedily his initial sincerity was tinged again with egotism +and if he drowsed at last into a portrait of himself as beautifully and +admirably self-sacrificial, you must not sneer too readily at him, for +so God has made the soul of Mr. Brumley and otherwise it could not do.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10" id="chap10"></a>CHAPTER THE TENTH</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Lady Harman comes out</span></p> + +<h4>§1</h4> + +<p>The treaty between Lady Harman and her husband which was to be her Great +Charter, the constitutional basis of her freedoms throughout the rest of +her married life, had many practical defects. The chief of these was +that it was largely undocumented; it had been made piecemeal, in various +ways, at different times and for the most part indirectly through +diverse intermediaries. Charterson had introduced large vaguenesses by +simply displaying more of his teeth at crucial moments, Mrs. Harman had +conveyed things by hugging and weeping that were afterwards discovered +to be indistinct; Sir Isaac writing from a bed of sickness had +frequently been totally illegible. One cannot therefore detail the +clauses of this agreement or give its provisions with any great +precision; one can simply intimate the kind of understanding that had +had an air of being arrived at. The working interpretations were still +to come.</p> + +<p>Before anything else it was manifestly conceded by Lady Harman that she +would not run away again, and still more manifest that she undertook to +break no more windows or do anything that might lead to a second police +court scandal. And she was to be a true and faithful wife and comfort, +as a wife should be, to Sir Isaac. In return for that consideration and +to ensure its continuance Sir Isaac came great distances from his former +assumption of a matrimonial absolutism. She was to be granted all sorts +of small autonomies,—the word autonomy was carefully avoided throughout +but its spirit was omnipresent.</p> + +<p>She was in particular to have a banking account for her dress and +personal expenditure into which Sir Isaac would cause to be paid a +hundred pounds monthly and it was to be private to herself alone until +he chose to go through the cashed cheques and counterfoils. She was to +be free to come and go as she saw fit, subject to a punctual appearance +at meals, the comfort and dignity of Sir Isaac and such specific +engagements as she might make with him. She might have her own friends, +but there the contract became a little misty; a time was to come when +Sir Isaac was to betray a conviction that the only proper friends that a +woman can have are women. There were also non-corroborated assurances as +to the privacy of her correspondence. The second Rolls-Royce car was to +be entirely at her service, and Clarence was to be immediately +supplemented by a new and more deferential man, and as soon as possible +assisted to another situation and replaced. She was to have a voice in +the further furnishing of Black Strand and in the arrangement of its +garden. She was to read what she chose and think what she liked within +her head without too minute or suspicious an examination by Sir Isaac, +and short of flat contradiction at his own table she was to be free to +express her own opinions in any manner becoming a lady. But more +particularly if she found her ideas infringing upon the management or +influence of the International Bread and Cake Stores, she was to convey +her objections and ideas in the first instance privately and +confidentially to Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>Upon this point he displayed a remarkable and creditable sensitiveness. +His pride in that organization was if possible greater than his original +pride in his wife, and probably nothing in all the jarring of their +relationship had hurt him more than her accessibility to hostile +criticism and the dinner-table conversation with Charterson and Blenker +that had betrayed this fact. He began to talk about it directly she +returned to him. His protestations and explanations were copious and +heart-felt. It was perhaps the chief discovery made by Lady Harman at +this period of reconstruction that her husband’s business side was not +to be explained completely as a highly energetic and elaborate avarice. +He was no doubt acquisitive and retentive and mean-spirited, but these +were merely the ugly aspects of a disposition that involved many other +factors. He was also incurably a schemer. He liked to fit things +together, to dove-tail arrangements, to devise economies, to spread +ingeniously into new fields, he had a love of organization and +contrivance as disinterested as an artist’s love for the possibilities +of his medium. He would rather have made a profit of ten per cent. out +of a subtly planned shop than thirty by an unforeseen accident. He +wouldn’t have cheated to get money for the world. He knew he was better +at figuring out expenditures and receipts than most people and he was as +touchy about his reputation for this kind of cleverness as any poet or +painter for his fame. Now that he had awakened to the idea that his wife +was capable of looking into and possibly even understanding his +business, he was passionately anxious to show her just how wonderfully +he had done it all, and when he perceived she was in her large, +unskilled, helpless way, intensely concerned for all the vast multitude +of incompetent or partially competent young women who floundered about +in badly paid employment in our great cities, he grasped at once at the +opportunity of recovering her lost interest and respect by doing some +brilliant feats of contrivance in that direction. Why shouldn’t he? He +had long observed with a certain envy the admirable advertisement such +firms as Lever and Cadbury and Burroughs & Wellcome gained from their +ostentatiously able and generous treatment of their workpeople, and it +seemed to him conceivable that in the end it might not be at all +detrimental to his prosperity to put his hand to this long neglected +piece of social work. The Babs Wheeler business had been a real injury +in every way to the International Bread and Cake Stores and even if he +didn’t ultimately go to all the lengths his wife seemed to contemplate, +he was resolved at any rate that an affair of that kind should not occur +again. The expedition to Marienbad took with it a secretary who was also +a stenographer. A particularly smart young inspector and Graper, the +staff manager, had brisk four-day holidays once or twice for +consultation purposes; Sir Isaac’s rabbit-like architect was in +attendance for a week and the Harmans returned to Putney with the first +vivid greens of late March,—for the Putney Hill house was to be +reopened and Black Strand reserved now for week-end and summer use—with +plans already drawn out for four residential Hostels in London primarily +for the girl waitresses of the International Stores who might have no +homes or homes at an inconvenient distance, and, secondarily, if any +vacant accommodation remained over, for any other employed young women +of the same class....</p> + +<h4>§2</h4> + +<p>Lady Harman came back to England from the pine-woods and bright order +and regimen and foreign novelty of their Bohemian Kur-Ort, in a state of +renewed perplexity. Already that undocumented Magna Charta was +manifestly not working upon the lines she had anticipated. The glosses +Sir Isaac put upon it were extensive and remarkable and invariably in +the direction of restricting her liberties and resuming controls she had +supposed abandoned.</p> + +<p>Marienbad had done wonders for him; his slight limp had disappeared, his +nervous energy was all restored; except for a certain increase in his +natural irritability and occasional panting fits, he seemed as well as +he had ever been. At the end of their time at the Kur he was even going +for walks. Once he went halfway up the Podhorn on foot. And with every +increment in his strength his aggressiveness increased, his recognition +of her new freedoms was less cordial and her sense of contrition and +responsibility diminished. Moreover, as the scheme of those Hostels, +which had played so large a part in her conception of their +reconciliation, grew more and more definite, she perceived more and more +that it was not certainly that fine and humanizing thing she had +presumed it would be. She began to feel more and more that it might be +merely an extension of Harman methods to cheap boarding-houses for young +people. But faced with a mass of detailed concrete projects and invited +to suggest modifications she was able to realize for the first time how +vague, how ignorant and incompetent her wishes had been, how much she +had to understand and how much she had to discover before she could meet +Sir Isaac with his “I’m doing it all for you, Elly. If you don’t like +it, you tell me what you don’t like and I’ll alter it. But just vague +doubting! One can’t do anything with vague doubting.”</p> + +<p>She felt that once back in England out of this picturesque toylike +German world she would be able to grasp realities again and deal with +these things. She wanted advice, she wanted to hear what people said of +her ideas. She would also, she imagined, begin to avail herself of those +conceded liberties which their isolation together abroad and her +husband’s constant need of her presence had so far prevented her from +tasting. She had an idea that Susan Burnet might prove suggestive about +the Hostels.</p> + +<p>And moreover, if now and then she could have a good talk with someone +understanding and intelligent, someone she could trust, someone who +cared enough for her to think with her and for her....</p> + +<h4>§3</h4> + +<p>We have traced thus far the emergence of Lady Harman from that state of +dutiful subjection and social irresponsibility which was the lot of +woman in the past to that limited, ill-defined and quite unsecured +freedom which is her present condition. And now we have to give an +outline of the ideas of herself and her uses and what she had to do, +which were forming themselves in her mind. She had made a determination +of herself, which carried her along the lines of her natural +predisposition, to duty, to service. There she displayed that acceptance +of responsibility which is so much more often a feminine than a +masculine habit of thinking. But she brought to the achievement of this +determination a discriminating integrity of mind that is more frequently +masculine than feminine. She wanted to know clearly what she was +undertaking and how far its consequences would reach and how it was +related to other things.</p> + +<p>Her confused reading during the last few years and her own observation +and such leakages of fact into her life as the talk of Susan Burnet, had +all contributed to her realization that the world was full of needless +discomfort and hardships and failure, due to great imperfectly +apprehended injustices and maladjustments in the social system, and +recently it had been borne in upon her, upon the barbed point of the +<i>London Lion</i> and the quick tongue of Susan, that if any particular +class of people was more answerable than any other for these evils, it +was the people of leisure and freedom like herself, who had time to +think, and the directing organizing people like her husband, who had +power to change. She was called upon to do something, at times the call +became urgent, and she could not feel any assurance which it was of the +many vague and conflicting suggestions that came drifting to her that +she had to do. Her idea of Hostels for the International waitresses had +been wrung out of her prematurely during her earlier discussions with +her husband. She did not feel that it was anything more than a partial +remedy for a special evil. She wanted something more general than that, +something comprehensive enough to answer completely so wide a question +as “What ought I to be doing with all my life?” In the honest simplicity +of her nature she wanted to find an answer to that. Out of the +confusion of voices about us she hoped to be able to disentangle +directions for her life. Already she had been reading voraciously: while +she was still at Marienbad she had written to Mr. Brumley and he had +sent her books and papers, advanced and radical in many cases, that she +might know, “What are people thinking?”</p> + +<p>Many phrases from her earlier discussions with Sir Isaac stuck in her +mind in a curiously stimulating way and came back to her as she read. +She recalled him, for instance, with his face white and his eyes red and +his flat hand sawing at her, saying: “I dessay I’m all wrong, I dessay I +don’t know anything about anything and all those chaps you read, Bernud +Shaw, and Gosworthy, and all the rest of them are wonderfully clever; +but you tell me, Elly, what they say we’ve got to do! You tell me that. +You go and ask some of those chaps just what they want a man like me to +do.... They’ll ask me to endow a theatre or run a club for novelists or +advertise the lot of them in the windows of my International Stores or +something. And that’s about all it comes to. You go and see if I’m not +right. They grumble and they grumble; I don’t say there’s not a lot to +grumble at, but give me something they’ll back themselves for all +they’re worth as good to get done.... That’s where I don’t agree with +all these idees. They’re Wind, Elly, Weak wind at that.”</p> + +<p>It is distressing to record how difficult it was for Lady Harman to form +even the beginnings of a disproof of that. Her life through all this +second phase of mitigated autonomy was an intermittent pilgrimage in +search of that disproof. She could not believe that things as they were, +this mass of hardships, cruelties, insufficiencies and heartburnings +were the ultimate wisdom and possibility of human life, yet when she +went from them to the projects that would replace or change them she +seemed to pass from things of overwhelming solidity to matters more thin +and flimsy than the twittering of sparrows on the gutter. So soon as she +returned to London she started upon her search for a solution; she +supplemented Mr. Brumley’s hunt for books with her own efforts, she went +to meetings—sometimes Sir Isaac took her, once or twice she was +escorted by Mr. Brumley, and presently her grave interest and her +personal charm had gathered about her a circle of companionable friends. +She tried to talk to people and made great efforts to hear people who +seemed authoritative and wise and leaderlike, talking.</p> + +<p>There were many interruptions to this research, but she persevered. +Quite early she had an illness that ended in a miscarriage, an accident +for which she was by no means inconsolable, and before she had +completely recovered from that Sir Isaac fell ill again, the first of a +series of relapses that necessitated further foreign travel—always in +elaborately comfortable trains with maid, courier, valet, and secretary, +to some warm and indolent southward place. And few people knew how +uncertain her liberties were. Sir Isaac was the victim of an increasing +irritability, at times he had irrational outbursts of distrust that +would culminate in passionate outbreaks and scenes that were truncated +by an almost suffocating breathlessness. On several occasions he was on +the verge of quarrelling violently with her visitors, and he would +suddenly oblige her to break engagements, pour abuse upon her and bring +matters back to the very verge of her first revolt. And then he would +break her down by pitiful appeals. The cylinders of oxygen would be +resorted to, and he would emerge from the crisis, rather rueful, tamed +and quiet for the time.</p> + +<p>He was her chief disturbance. Her children were healthy children and +fell in with the routines of governess and tutor that their wealth +provided. She saw them often, she noted their increasing resemblance to +their father, she did her best to soften the natural secretiveness and +aggressiveness of their manners, she watched their teachers and +intervened whenever the influences about them seemed to her to need +intervention, she dressed them and gave them presents and tried to +believe she loved them, and as Sir Isaac’s illness increased she took a +larger and larger share in the direction of the household....</p> + +<p>Through all these occupations and interruptions and immediacies she went +trying to comprehend and at times almost believing she comprehended +life, and then the whole spectacle of this modern world of which she was +a part would seem to break up again into a multitude of warring and +discordant fragments having no conceivable common aim or solution. +Those moments of unifying faith and confidence, that glowed so bravely +and never endured, were at once tantalizing and sustaining. She could +never believe but that ultimately she would not grasp and +hold—something....</p> + +<p>Many people met her and liked her and sought to know more of her; Lady +Beach-Mandarin and Lady Viping were happy to be her social sponsors, the +Blenkers and the Chartersons met her out and woke up cautiously to this +new possibility; her emergence was rapid in spite of the various delays +and interruptions I have mentioned and she was soon in a position to +realize just how little one meets when one meets a number of people and +how little one hears when one has much conversation. Her mind was +presently crowded with confused impressions of pleasant men evading her +agreeably and making out of her gravities an opportunity for bright +sayings, and of women being vaguely solemn and quite indefinite.</p> + +<p>She went into the circle of movements, was tried over by Mrs. Hubert +Plessington, she questioned this and that promoter of constructive +schemes, and instead of mental meat she was asked to come upon +committees and sounded for subscriptions. On several occasions, escorted +by Mr. Brumley—some instinct made her conceal or minimize his share in +these expeditions to her husband—she went as inconspicuously as +possible to the backs of public meetings in which she understood great +questions were being discussed or great changes inaugurated. Some +public figures she even followed up for a time, distrusting her first +impressions.</p> + +<p>She became familiar with the manners and bearing of our platform class, +with the solemn dummy-like chairman or chairwoman, saying a few words, +the alert secretary or organizer, the prominent figures sitting with an +air of grave responsibility, generously acting an intelligent attention +to others until the moment came for them themselves to deliver. Then +with an ill-concealed relief some would come to the footlights, some +leap up in their places with a tenoring eagerness, some would be +facetious and some speak with neuralgic effort, some were impertinent, +some propitiatory, some dull, but all were—disappointing, +disappointing. God was not in any of them. A platform is no setting for +the shy processes of an honest human mind,—we are all strained to +artificiality in the excessive glare of attention that beats upon us +there. One does not exhibit opinions at a meeting, one acts them, the +very truth must rouge its cheeks and blacken its eyebrows to tell, and +to Lady Harman it was the acting chiefly and the make-up that was +visible. They didn’t grip her, they didn’t lift her, they failed to +convince her even of their own belief in what they supported.</p> + +<h4>§4</h4> + +<p>But occasionally among the multitude of conversations that gave her +nothing, there would come some talk that illuminated and for the time +almost reconciled her to the effort and the loss of time and distraction +her social expeditions involved. One evening at one of Lady Tarvrille’s +carelessly compiled parties she encountered Edgar Wilkins the novelist +and got the most suggestive glimpses of his attitude towards himself and +towards the world of intellectual ferment to which he belonged. She had +been taken down by an amiable but entirely uninteresting permanent +official who when the time came turned his stereotyped talk over to the +other side of him with a quiet mechanical indifference, and she was left +for a little while in silence until Wilkins had disengaged himself.</p> + +<p>He was a flushed man with untidy hair, and he opened at once with an +appeal to her sympathies.</p> + +<p>“Oh! Bother!” he said. “I say,—I’ve eaten that mutton. I didn’t notice. +One eats too much at these affairs. One doesn’t notice at the time and +then afterwards one finds out.”</p> + +<p>She was a little surprised at his gambit and could think of nothing but +a kindly murmur.</p> + +<p>“Detestable thing,” he said; “my body.”</p> + +<p>“But surely not,” she tried and felt as she said it that was a trifle +bold.</p> + +<p>“You’re all right,” he said making her aware he saw her. “But I’ve this +thing that wheezes and fattens at the slightest excuse and—it encumbers +me—bothers me to take exercise.... But I can hardly expect you to be +interested in my troubles, can I?”</p> + +<p>He made an all too manifest attempt to read her name on the slip of card +that lay before her among the flowers and as manifestly succeeded. “We +people who write and paint and all that sort of thing are a breed of +insatiable egotists, Lady Harman. With the least excuse. Don’t you think +so?”</p> + +<p>“Not—not exceptionally,” she said.</p> + +<p>“Exceptionally,” he insisted.</p> + +<p>“It isn’t my impression,” she said. “You’re—franker.”</p> + +<p>“But someone was telling me—you’ve been taking impressions of us +lately. I mean all of us people who go flapping ideas about in the air. +Somebody—was it Lady Beach-Mandarin?—was saying you’d come out looking +for Intellectual Heroes—and found Bernard Shaw.... But what could you +have expected?”</p> + +<p>“I’ve been trying to find out and understand what people are thinking. I +want ideas.”</p> + +<p>“It’s disheartening, isn’t it?”</p> + +<p>“It’s—perplexing sometimes.”</p> + +<p>“You go to meetings, and try to get to the bottom of Movements, and you +want to meet and know the people who write the wonderful things? Get at +the wonderful core of it?”</p> + +<p>“One feels there are things going on.”</p> + +<p>“Great illuminating things.”</p> + +<p>“Well—yes.”</p> + +<p>“And when you see those great Thinkers and Teachers and Guides and Brave +Spirits and High Brows generally——”</p> + +<p>He laughed and stopped just in time on the very verge of taking +pheasant.</p> + +<p>“Oh, take it away,” he cried sharply.</p> + +<p>“We’ve all been through that illusion, Lady Harman,” he went on.</p> + +<p>“But I don’t like to think——Aren’t Great Men after all—great?”</p> + +<p>“In their ways, in their places—Yes. But not if you go up to them and +look at them. Not at the dinner table, not in their beds.... What a time +of disillusionment you must have had!</p> + +<p>“You see, Lady Harman,” he said, leaning back from his empty plate, +inclining himself confidentially to her ear and speaking in a privy +tone; “it’s in the very nature of things that we—if I may put myself +into the list—we ideologists, should be rather exceptionally loose and +untrustworthy and disappointing men. Rotters—to speak plain +contemporary English. If you come to think of it, it has to be so.”</p> + +<p>“But——” she protested.</p> + +<p>He met her eye firmly. “It has to be.”</p> + +<p>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“The very qualities that make literature entertaining, vigorous, +inspiring, revealing, wonderful, beautiful and—all that sort of thing, +make its producers—if you will forgive the word again—rotters.”</p> + +<p>She smiled and lifted her eyebrows protestingly.</p> + +<p>“Sensitive nervous tissue,” he said with a finger up to emphasize his +words. “Quick responsiveness to stimulus, a vivid, almost +uncontrollable, expressiveness; that’s what you want in your literary +man.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Lady Harman following cautiously. “Yes, I suppose it is.”</p> + +<p>“Can you suppose for a moment that these things conduce to self-control, +to reserve, to consistency, to any of the qualities of a trustworthy +man?... Of course you can’t. And so we <i>aren’t</i> trustworthy, we <i>aren’t</i> +consistent. Our virtues are our vices.... <i>My</i> life,” said Mr. Wilkins +still more confidentially, “won’t bear examination. But that’s by the +way. It need not concern us now.”</p> + +<p>“But Mr. Brumley?” she asked on the spur of the moment.</p> + +<p>“I’m not talking of him,” said Wilkins with careless cruelty. “He’s +restrained. I mean the really imaginative people, the people with +vision, the people who let themselves go. You see now why they are +rotten, why they must be rotten. (No! No! take it away. I’m talking.) I +feel so strongly about this, about the natural and necessary +disreputableness of everybody who produces reputable writing—and for +the matter of that, art generally—that I set my face steadily against +all these attempts that keep on cropping up to make Figures of us. We +aren’t Figures, Lady Harman; it isn’t our line. Of all the detestable +aspects of the Victorian period surely that disposition to make Figures +of its artists and literary men was the most detestable. Respectable +Figures—Examples to the young. The suppressions, the coverings up that +had to go on, the white-washing of Dickens,—who was more than a bit of +a rip, you know, the concealment of Thackeray’s mistresses. Did you know +he had mistresses? Oh rather! And so on. It’s like that bust of Jove—or +Bacchus was it?—they pass off as Plato, who probably looked like any +other literary Grub. That’s why I won’t have anything to do with these +Academic developments that my friend Brumley—Do you know him by the +way?—goes in for. He’s the third man down——You <i>do</i> know him. And +he’s giving up the Academic Committee, is he? I’m glad he’s seen it at +last. What <i>is</i> the good of trying to have an Academy and all that, and +put us in uniform and make out we are Somebodies, and respectable enough +to be shaken hands with by George and Mary, when as a matter of fact we +are, by our very nature, a collection of miscellaneous scandals——We +<i>must</i> be. Bacon, Shakespear, Byron, Shelley—all the stars.... No, +Johnson wasn’t a star, he was a character by Boswell.... Oh! great +things come out of us, no doubt, our arts are the vehicles of wonder and +hope, the world is dead without these things we produce, but that’s no +reason why—why the mushroom-bed should follow the mushrooms into the +soup, is it? Perfectly fair image. (No, take it away.)”</p> + +<p>He paused and then jumped in again as she was on the point of speaking.</p> + +<p>“And you see even if our temperaments didn’t lead inevitably to +our—dipping rather, we should still have to—<i>dip</i>. Asking a writer or +a poet to be seemly and Academic and so on, is like asking an eminent +surgeon to be stringently decent. It’s—you see, it’s incompatible. Now +a king or a butler or a family solicitor—if you like.”</p> + +<p>He paused again.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman had been following him with an attentive reluctance.</p> + +<p>“But what are we to do,” she asked, “we people who are puzzled by life, +who want guidance and ideas and—help, if—if all the people we look to +for ideas are——”</p> + +<p>“Bad characters.”</p> + +<p>“Well,—it’s your theory, you know—bad characters?”</p> + +<p>Wilkins answered with the air of one who carefully disentangles a +complex but quite solvable problem. “It doesn’t follow,” he said, “that +because a man is a bad character he’s not to be trusted in matters where +character—as we commonly use the word—doesn’t come in. These +sensitives, these—would you mind if I were to call myself an Æolian +Harp?—these Æolian Harps; they can’t help responding to the winds of +heaven. Well,—listen to them. Don’t follow them, don’t worship them, +don’t even honour them, but listen to them. Don’t let anyone stop them +from saying and painting and writing and singing what they want to. +Freedom, canvas and attention, those are the proper honours for the +artist, the poet and the philosopher. Listen to the noise they make, +watch the stuff they produce, and presently you will find certain +things among the multitude of things that are said and shown and put out +and published, something—light in <i>your</i> darkness—a writer for you, +something for you. Nobody can have a greater contempt for artists and +writers and poets and philosophers than I, oh! a squalid crew they are, +mean, jealous, pugnacious, disgraceful in love, <i>disgraceful</i>—but out +of it all comes the greatest serenest thing, the mind of the world, +Literature. Nasty little midges, yes,—but fireflies—carrying light for +the darkness.”</p> + +<p>His face was suddenly lit by enthusiasm and she wondered that she could +have thought it rather heavy and commonplace. He stopped abruptly and +glanced beyond her at her other neighbour who seemed on the verge of +turning to them again. “If I go on,” he said with a voice suddenly +dropped, “I shall talk loud.”</p> + +<p>“You know,” said Lady Harman, in a halty undertone, “you—you are too +hard upon—upon clever people, but it is true. I mean it is true in a +way....”</p> + +<p>“Go on, I understand exactly what you are saying.”</p> + +<p>“I mean, there <i>are</i> ideas. It’s just that, that is so—so——I mean +they seem never to be just there and always to be present.”</p> + +<p>“Like God. Never in the flesh—now. A spirit everywhere. You think +exactly as I do, Lady Harman. It is just that. This is a great time, so +great that there is no chance for great men. Every chance for great +work. And we’re doing it. There is a wind—blowing out of heaven. And +when beautiful people like yourself come into things——”</p> + +<p>“I try to understand,” she said. “I want to understand. I want—I want +not to miss life.”</p> + +<p>He was on the verge of saying something further and then his eyes +wandered down the table and he stopped short.</p> + +<p>He ended his talk as he had begun it with “Bother! Lady Tarvrille, Lady +Harman, is trying to catch your eye.”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman turned her face to her hostess and answered her smile. +Wilkins caught at his chair and stood up.</p> + +<p>“It would have been jolly to have talked some more,” he said.</p> + +<p>“I hope we shall.”</p> + +<p>“Well!” said Wilkins, with a sudden hardness in his eyes and she was +swept away from him.</p> + +<p>She found no chance of talking to him upstairs, Sir Isaac came for her +early; but she went in hope of another meeting.</p> + +<p>It did not come. For a time that expectation gave dinners and luncheon +parties a quite appreciable attraction. Then she told Agatha Alimony. +“I’ve never met him but that once,” she said.</p> + +<p>“One doesn’t meet him now,” said Agatha, deeply.</p> + +<p>“But why?”</p> + +<p>Deep significance came into Miss Alimony’s eyes. “My dear,” she +whispered, and glanced about them. “Don’t you <i>know</i>?”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman was a radiant innocence.</p> + +<p>And then Miss Alimony began in impressive undertones, with awful +omissions like pits of darkness and with such richly embroidered details +as serious spinsters enjoy, adding, indeed, two quite new things that +came to her mind as the tale unfolded, and, naming no names and giving +no chances of verification or reply, handed on the fearful and at that +time extremely popular story of the awful wickedness of Wilkins the +author.</p> + +<p>Upon reflection Lady Harman perceived that this explained all sorts of +things in their conversation and particularly the flash of hardness at +the end.</p> + +<p>Even then, things must have been hanging over him....</p> + +<h4>§5</h4> + +<p>And while Lady Harman was making these meritorious and industrious +attempts to grasp the significance of life and to get some clear idea of +her social duty, the developments of those Hostels she had started—she +now felt so prematurely—was going on. There were times when she tried +not to think of them, turned her back on them, fled from them, and times +when they and what she ought to do about them and what they ought to be +and what they ought not to be, filled her mind to the exclusion of every +other topic. Rigorously and persistently Sir Isaac insisted they were +hers, asked her counsel, demanded her appreciation, presented as it were +his recurring bill for them.</p> + +<p>Five of them were being built, not four but five. There was to be one, +the largest, in a conspicuous position in Bloomsbury near the British +Museum, one in a conspicuous position looking out upon Parliament Hill, +one conspicuously placed upon the Waterloo Road near St. George’s +Circus, one at Sydenham, and one in the Kensington Road which was +designed to catch the eye of people going to and fro to the various +exhibitions at Olympia.</p> + +<p>In Sir Isaac’s study at Putney there was a huge and rather +splendid-looking morocco portfolio on a stand, and this portfolio bore +in excellent gold lettering the words, International Bread and Cake +Hostels. It was her husband’s peculiar pleasure after dinner to take her +to turn over this with him; he would sit pencil in hand, while she, +poised at his request upon the arm of his chair, would endorse a +multitude of admirable modifications and suggestions. These hostels were +to be done—indeed they were being done—by Sir Isaac’s tame architect, +and the interlacing yellow and mauve tiles, and the Doulton ware +mouldings that were already familiar to the public as the uniform of the +Stores, were to be used upon the façades of the new institutions. They +were to be boldly labelled</p> + +<p> +INTERNATIONAL HOSTELS +</p> + +<p>right across the front.</p> + +<p>The plans revealed in every case a site depth as great as the frontage, +and the utmost ingenuity had been used to utilize as much space as +possible.</p> + +<p>“Every room we get in,” said Sir Isaac, “adds one to the denominator in +the cost;” and carried his wife back to her schooldays. At last she had +found sense in fractions. There was to be a series of convenient and +spacious rooms on the ground floor, a refectory, which might be cleared +and used for meetings—vdances,” said Lady Harman. “Hardly the sort of +thing we want ’em to get up to,” said Sir Isaac—various offices, the +matron’s apartments—“We ought to begin thinking about matrons,” said +Sir Isaac;—a bureau, a reading-room and a library—“We can pick good, +serious stuff for them,” said Sir Isaac, “instead of their filling their +heads with trash”—one or two workrooms with tables for cutting out and +sewing; this last was an idea of Susan Burnet’s. Upstairs there was to +be a beehive of bedrooms, floor above floor, and each floor as low as +the building regulations permitted. There were to be long dormitories +with cubicles at three-and-sixpence a week—make your own beds—and +separate rooms at prices ranging from four-and-sixpence to +seven-and-sixpence. Every three cubicles and every bedroom had lavatory +basins with hot and cold water; there were pull-out drawers under the +beds and a built-in chest of drawers, a hanging cupboard, a +looking-glass and a radiator in each cubicle, and each floor had a +box-room. It was ship-shape.</p> + +<p>“A girl can get this cubicle for three-and-six a week,” said Sir Isaac, +tapping the drawing before him with his pencil. “She can get her +breakfast with a bit of bacon or a sausage for two shillings a week, +and she can get her high tea, with cold meat, good potted salmon, shrimp +paste, jam and cetera, for three-and-six a week. Say her bus fares and +lunch out mean another four shillings. That means she can get along on +about twelve-and-six a week, comfortable, read the papers, have a book +out of the library.... There’s nothing like it to be got now for twice +the money. The sort of thing they have now is one room, dingy, badly +fitted, extra for coals.</p> + +<p>“That’s the answer to your problem, Elly,” he said. “There we are. Every +girl who doesn’t live at home can live here—with a matron to keep her +eye on her.... And properly run, Elly, properly run the thing’s going to +pay two or three per cent,—let alone the advertisement for the Stores.</p> + +<p>“We can easily make these Hostels obligatory on all our girls who don’t +live at their own homes,” he said. “That ought to keep them off the +streets, if anything can. I don’t see how even Miss Babs Wheeler can +have the face to strike against that.</p> + +<p>“And then we can arrange with some of the big firms, drapers’ shops and +all that sort of thing near each hostel, to take over most of our other +cubicle space. A lot of them—overflow.</p> + +<p>“Of course we’ll have to make sure the girls get in at night.” He +reached out for a ground floor plan of the Bloomsbury establishment +which was to be the first built. “If,” he said, “we were to have a sort +of porter’s lodge with a book—and make ’em ring a bell after eleven +say—just here....”</p> + +<p>He took out a silver pencil case and got to work.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman’s expression as she leant over him became thoughtful.</p> + +<p>There were points about this project that gave her the greatest +misgivings; that matron, keeping her eye on the girls, that carefully +selected library, the porter’s bell, these casual allusions to +“discipline” that set her thinking of scraps of the Babs Wheeler +controversy. There was a regularity, an austerity about this project +that chilled her, she hardly knew why. Her own vague intentions had been +an amiable, hospitable, agreeably cheap establishment to which the +homeless feminine employees in London could resort freely and +cheerfully, and it was only very slowly that she perceived that her +husband was by no means convinced of the spontaneity of their coming. He +seemed always glancing at methods for compelling them to come in and +oppressions when that compulsion had succeeded. There had already +hovered over several of these anticipatory evenings, his very manifest +intention to have very carefully planned “Rules.” She felt there lay +ahead of them much possibility for divergence of opinion about these +“Rules.” She foresaw a certain narrowness and hardness. She herself had +made her fight against the characteristics of Sir Isaac and—perhaps she +was lacking in that aristocratic feeling which comes so naturally to +most successful middle-class people in England—she could not believe +that what she had found bad and suffocating for herself could be +agreeable and helpful for her poorer sisters.</p> + +<p>It occurred to her to try the effect of the scheme upon Susan Burnet. +Susan had such a knack of seeing things from unexpected angles. She +contrived certain operations upon the study blinds, and then broached +the business to Susan casually in the course of an enquiry into the +welfare of the Burnet family.</p> + +<p>Susan was evidently prejudiced against the idea.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Susan after various explanations and exhibitions, “but +where’s the home in it?”</p> + +<p>“The whole thing is a home.”</p> + +<p>“Barracks <i>I</i> call it,” said Susan. “Nobody ever felt at home in a room +coloured up like that—and no curtains, nor vallances, nor toilet +covers, nor anywhere where a girl can hang a photograph or anything. +What girl’s going to feel at home in a strange place like that?”</p> + +<p>“They ought to be able to hang up photographs,” said Lady Harman, making +a mental note of it.</p> + +<p>“And of course there’ll be all sorts of Rules.”</p> + +<p>“<i>Some</i> rules.”</p> + +<p>“Homes, real homes don’t have Rules. And I daresay—Fines.”</p> + +<p>“No, there shan’t be any Fines,” said Lady Harman quickly. “I’ll see to +that.”</p> + +<p>“You got to back up rules somehow—once you got ’em,” said Susan. “And +when you get a crowd, and no father and mother, and no proper family +feeling, I suppose there’s got to be Rules.”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman pointed out various advantages of the project.</p> + +<p>“I’m not saying it isn’t cheap and healthy and social,” said Susan, “and +if it isn’t too strict I expect you’ll get plenty of girls to come to +it, but at the best it’s an Institution, Lady Harman. It’s going to be +an Institution. That’s what it’s going to be.”</p> + +<p>She held the front elevation of the Bloomsbury Hostel in her hand and +reflected.</p> + +<p>“Of course for my part, I’d rather lodge with nice struggling believing +Christian people anywhere than go into a place like that. It’s the +feeling of freedom, of being yourself and on your own. Even if the water +wasn’t laid on and I had to fetch it myself.... If girls were paid +properly there wouldn’t be any need of such places, none at all. It’s +the poverty makes ’em what they are.... And after all, somebody’s got to +lose the lodgers if this place gets them. Suppose this sort of thing +grows up all over the place, it’ll just be the story of the little +bakers and little grocers and all those people over again. Why in London +there are thousands of people just keep a home together by letting two +or three rooms or boarding someone—and it stands to reason, they’ll +have to take less or lose the lodgers if this kind of thing’s going to +be done. Nobody isn’t going to build a Hostel for them.”</p> + +<p>“No,” said Lady Harman, “I never thought of them.”</p> + +<p>“Lots of ’em haven’t anything in the world but their bits of furniture +and their lease and there they are stuck and tied. There’s Aunt Hannah, +Father’s sister, she’s like that. Sleeps in the basement and works and +slaves, and often I’ve had to lend her ten shillings to pay the rent +with, through her not being full. This sort of place isn’t going to do +much good to her.”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman surveyed the plan rather blankly. “I suppose it isn’t.”</p> + +<p>“And then if you manage this sort of place easy and attractive, it’s +going to draw girls away from their homes. There’s girls like Alice +who’d do anything to get a bit of extra money to put on their backs and +seem to think of nothing but chattering and laughing and going about. +Such a place like this would be fine fun for Alice; in when she liked +and out when she liked, and none of us to ask her questions. She’d be +just the sort to go, and mother, who’s had the upbringing of her, how’s +she to make up for Alice’s ten shillings what she pays in every week? +There’s lots like Alice. She’s not bad isn’t Alice, she’s a good girl +and a good-hearted girl; I will say that for her, but she’s shallow, say +what you like she’s shallow, she’s got no thought and she’s wild for +pleasure, and sometimes it seems to me that that’s as bad as being bad +for all the good it does to anyone else in the world, and so I tell her. +But of course she hasn’t seen things as I’ve seen them and doesn’t feel +as I do about all these things....”</p> + +<p>Thus Susan.</p> + +<p>Her discourse so puzzled Lady Harman that she bethought herself of Mr. +Brumley and called in his only too readily accorded advice. She asked +him to tea on a day when she knew unofficially that Sir Isaac would be +away, she showed him the plans and sketched their probable development. +Then with that charming confidence of hers in his knowledge and ability +she put her doubts and fears before him. What did he really think of +these places? What did he think of Susan Burnet’s idea of ruined +lodging-house keepers? “I used to think our stores were good things,” +she said. “Is this likely to be a good thing at all?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley said “Um” a great number of times and realized that he was a +humbug. He fenced with her and affected sagacity for a time and suddenly +he threw down his defences and confessed he knew as little of the +business as she did. “But I see it is a complex question and—it’s an +interesting one too. May I enquire into it for you? I think I might be +able to hunt up a few particulars....”</p> + +<p>He went away in a glow of resolution.</p> + +<p>Georgina was about the only intimate who regarded the new development +without misgiving.</p> + +<p>“You think you’re going to do all sorts of things with these Hostels, +Ella,” she said, “but as a matter of fact they’re bound to become just +exactly what we’ve always wanted.”</p> + +<p>“And what may that be?” asked Mrs. Sawbridge over her macramé work.</p> + +<p>“Strongholds for a garrison of suffragettes,” said Georgina with the +light of the Great Insane Movement in her eyes and a ringing note in +her voice. “Fort Chabrols for women.”</p> + +<h4>§6</h4> + +<p>For some months in a negative and occasionally almost negligent fashion +Mr. Brumley had been living up to his impassioned resolve to be an +unselfish lover of Lady Harman. He had been rather at loose ends +intellectually, deprived of his old assumptions and habitual attitudes +and rather chaotic in the matter of his new convictions. He had given +most of his productive hours to the writing of a novel which was to be +an entire departure from the Euphemia tradition. The more he got on with +this, the more clearly he realized that it was essentially +insignificant. When he re-read what he had written he was surprised by +crudities where he had intended sincerities and rhetoric where the +scheme had demanded passion. What was the matter with him? He was +stirred that Lady Harman should send for him, and his inability to deal +with her perplexities deepened his realization of the ignorance and +superficiality he had so long masked even from himself beneath the +tricks and pretensions of a gay scepticism. He went away fully resolved +to grapple with the entire Hostel question, and he put the patched and +tortured manuscript of the new novel aside with a certain satisfaction +to do this.</p> + +<p>The more he reflected upon the nature of this study he proposed for +himself the more it attracted him. It was some such reality as this he +had been wanting. He could presently doubt whether he would ever go back +to his novel-writing again, or at least to the sort of novel-writing he +had been doing hitherto. To invent stories to save middle-aged +prosperous middle-class people from the distresses of thinking, is +surely no work for a self-respecting man. Stevenson in the very deeps of +that dishonourable traffic had realized as much and likened himself to a +<i>fille de joie</i>, and Haggard, of the same school and period, had +abandoned blood and thunder at the climax of his success for the honest +study of agricultural conditions. The newer successes were turning out +work, less and less conventional and agreeable and more and more +stiffened with facts and sincerities.... He would show Lady Harman that +a certain debonair quality he had always affected, wasn’t incompatible +with a powerful grasp of general conditions.... And she wanted this +done. Suppose he did it in a way that made him necessary to her. Suppose +he did it very well.</p> + +<p>He set to work, and understanding as you do a certain quality of the +chameleon in Mr. Brumley’s moral nature, you will understand that he +worked through a considerable variety of moods. Sometimes he worked with +disinterested passion and sometimes he was greatly sustained by this +thought that here was something that would weave him in with the +gravities of her life and give him perhaps a new inlet to intimacy. And +presently a third thing came to his help, and that was the discovery +that the questions arising out of this attempt to realize the +importance of those Hostels, were in themselves very fascinating +questions for an intelligent person.</p> + +<p>Because before you have done with the business of the modern employé, +you must, if you are an intelligent person, have taken a view of the +whole vast process of social reorganization that began with the +development of factory labour and big towns, and which is even now +scarcely advanced enough for us to see its general trend. For a time Mr. +Brumley did not realize the magnitude of the thing he was looking at; +when he did, theories sprouted in his mind like mushrooms and he babbled +with mental excitement. He came in a state of the utmost lucidity to +explain his theories to Lady Harman, and they struck that lady at the +time as being the most illuminating suggestions she had ever +encountered. They threw an appearance of order, of process, over a world +of trade and employment and competition that had hitherto seemed too +complex and mysterious for any understanding.</p> + +<p>“You see,” said Mr. Brumley—they had met that day in Kensington Gardens +and they were sitting side by side upon green chairs near the frozen +writings of Physical Energy—“You see, if I may lecture a little, +putting the thing as simply as possible, the world has been filling up +new spaces ever since the discovery of America; all the period from then +to about 1870, let us say, was a period of rapid increase of population +in response to new opportunities of living and new fulnesses of life in +every direction. During that time, four hundred years of it roughly, +there was a huge development of family life; to marry and rear a quite +considerable family became the chief business of everybody, celibacy +grew rare, monasteries and nunneries which had abounded vanished like +things dissolving in a flood and even the priests became Protestant +against celibacy and took unto themselves wives and had huge families. +The natural checks upon increase, famine and pestilence, were lifted by +more systematized communication and by scientific discovery; and +altogether and as a consequence the world now has probably three or four +times the human population it ever carried before. Everywhere in that +period the family prevailed again, the prospering multiplying household; +it was a return to the family, to the reproductive social grouping of +early barbaric life, and naturally all the thought of the modern world +which has emerged since the fifteenth century falls into this form. So I +see it, Lady Harman. The generation of our grandfathers in the opening +nineteenth century had two shaping ideas, two forms of thought, the +family and progress, not realizing that that very progress which had +suddenly reopened the doors of opportunity for the family that had +revived the ancient injunction to increase and multiply and replenish +the earth, might presently close that door again and declare the world +was filled. But that is what is happening now. The doors close. That +immense swarming and multiplying of little people is over, and the +forces of social organization have been coming into play now, more and +more for a century and a half, to produce new wholesale ways of doing +things, new great organizations, organizations that invade the +autonomous family more and more, and are perhaps destined ultimately to +destroy it altogether and supersede it. At least it is so I make my +reading of history in these matters.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Lady Harman, with knitted brows, “Yes,” and wondered +privately whether it would be possible to get from that opening to the +matter of her Hostels before it was time for her to return for Sir +Isaac’s tea.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley continued to talk with his eyes fixed as it were upon his +thoughts. “These things, Lady Harman, go on at different paces in +different regions. I will not trouble you with a discussion of that, or +of emigration, of any of the details of the vast proliferation that +preceded the present phase. Suffice it, that now all the tendency is +back towards restraints upon increase, to an increasing celibacy, to a +fall in the birth-rate and in the average size of families, to—to a +release of women from an entire devotion to a numerous offspring, and so +at last to the supersession of those little family units that for four +centuries have made up the substance of social life and determined +nearly all our moral and sentimental attitudes. The autonomy of the +family is being steadily destroyed, and it is being replaced by the +autonomy of the individual in relation to some syndicated economic +effort.”</p> + +<p>“I think,” said Lady Harman slowly, arresting him by a gesture, “if you +could make that about autonomy a little clearer....”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley did. He went on to point out with the lucidity of a +University Extension lecturer what he meant by these singular phrases. +She listened intelligently but with effort. He was much too intent upon +getting the thing expressed to his own satisfaction to notice any +absurdity in his preoccupation with these theories about the population +of the world in the face of her immediate practical difficulties. He +declared that the onset of this new phase in human life, the modern +phase, wherein there was apparently to be no more “proliferating,” but +instead a settling down of population towards a stable equilibrium, +became apparent first with the expropriation of the English peasantry +and the birth of the factory system and machine production. “Since that +time one can trace a steady substitution of wholesale and collective +methods for household and family methods. It has gone far with us now. +Instead of the woman drawing water from a well, the pipes and taps of +the water company. Instead of the home-made rushlight, the electric +lamp. Instead of home-spun, ready-made clothes. Instead of home-brewed, +the brewer’s cask. Instead of home-baked, first the little baker and +then, clean and punctual, the International Bread and Cake Stores. +Instead of the child learning at its mother’s knee, the compulsory +elementary school. Flats take the place of separate houses. Instead of +the little holding, the big farm, and instead of the children working +at home, the factory. Everywhere synthesis. Everywhere the little +independent proprietor gives place to the company and the company to the +trust. You follow all this, Lady Harman?”</p> + +<p>“Go on,” she said, encouraged by that transitory glimpse of the Stores +in his discourse.</p> + +<p>“Now London—and England generally—had its period of expansion and got +on to the beginnings at least of this period of synthesis that is +following it, sooner than any other country in the world; and because it +was the first to reach the new stage it developed the characteristics of +the new stage with a stronger flavour of the old than did such later +growths of civilization as New York or Bombay or Berlin. That is why +London and our British big cities generally are congestions of little +houses, little homes, while the newer great cities run to apartments and +flats. We hadn’t grasped the logical consequences of what we were in for +so completely as the people abroad did who caught it later, and that is +why, as we began to develop our new floating population of mainly +celibate employees and childless people, they had mostly to go into +lodgings, they went into the homes that were intended for families as +accessories to the family, and they were able to go in because the +families were no longer so numerous as they used to be. London is still +largely a city of landladies and lodgings, and in no other part of the +world is there so big a population of lodgers. And this business of your +Hostels is nothing more nor less than the beginning of the end of that. +Just as the great refreshment caterers have mopped up the ancient +multitude of coffee-houses and squalid little special feeding +arrangements of the days of Tittlebat Titmouse and Dick Swiveller, so +now your Hostels are going to mop up the lodging-house system of London. +Of course there are other and kindred movements. Naturally. The +Y.W.C.A., the Y.M.C.A., the London Girls Club Union and so forth are all +doing kindred work.”</p> + +<p>“But what, Mr. Brumley, what is to become of the landladies?” asked Lady +Harman.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley was checked in mid theory.</p> + +<p>“I hadn’t thought of the landladies,” he said, after a short pause.</p> + +<p>“They worry me,” said Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“Um,” said Mr. Brumley, thrown out.</p> + +<p>“Do you know the other day I went into Chelsea, where there are whole +streets of lodgings, and—I suppose it was wrong of me, but I went and +pretended to be looking for rooms for a girl clerk I knew, and I +saw—Oh! no end of rooms. And such poor old women, such dingy, +worked-out, broken old women, with a kind of fearful sharpness, so +eager, so dreadfully eager to get that girl clerk who didn’t exist....”</p> + +<p>She looked at him with an expression of pained enquiry.</p> + +<p>“That,” said Mr. Brumley, “that I think is a question, so to speak, for +the social ambulance. If perhaps I might go on——That particular +difficulty we might consider later. I think I was talking of the general +synthesis.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Lady Harman. “And what is it exactly that is to take the +place of these isolated little homes and these dreary little lodgings? +Here are we, my husband and I, rushing in with this new thing, just as +he rushed in with his stores thirty years ago and overset little bakers +and confectioners and refreshment dealers by the hundred. Some of +them—poor dears—they——I don’t like to think. And it wasn’t a good +thing he made after all,—only a hard sort of thing. He made all those +shops of his—with the girls who strike and say they are sweated and +driven.... And now here we are making a kind of barrack place for people +to live in!”</p> + +<p>She expressed the rest of her ideas with a gesture of the hands.</p> + +<p>“I admit the process has its dangers,” said Mr. Brumley. “It’s like the +supersession of the small holdings by the <i>latifundia</i> in Italy. But +that’s just where our great opportunity comes in. These synthetic phases +have occurred before in the world’s history and their history is a +history of lost opportunities.... But need ours be?”</p> + +<p>She had a feeling as though something had slipped through her fingers.</p> + +<p>“I feel,” she said, “that it is more important to me than anything else +in life, that these Hostels, anyhow, which are springing so rapidly from +a chance suggestion of mine, shouldn’t be lost opportunities.”</p> + +<p>“Exactly,” said Mr. Brumley, with the gesture of one who recovers a +thread. “That is just what I am driving at.”</p> + +<p>The fingers of his extended hand felt in the warm afternoon air for a +moment, and then he said “Ah!” in a tone of recovery while she waited +respectfully for the resumed thread.</p> + +<p>“You see,” he said, “I regard this process of synthesis, this +substitution of wholesale and collective methods for homely and +individual ones as, under existing conditions, inevitable—inevitable. +It’s the phase we live in, it’s to this we have to adapt ourselves. It +is as little under your control or mine as the movement of the sun +through the zodiac. Practically, that is. And what we have to do is not, +I think, to sigh for lost homes and the age of gold and spade husbandry, +and pigs and hens in the home, and so on, but to make this new synthetic +life tolerable for the mass of men and women, hopeful for the mass of +men and women, a thing developing and ascending. That’s where your +Hostels come in, Lady Harman; that’s where they’re so important. They’re +a pioneer movement. If they succeed—and things in Sir Isaac’s hands +have a way of succeeding at any rate to the paying point—then there’ll +be a headlong rush of imitations, imitating your good features, +imitating your bad features, deepening a groove.... You see my point?”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” she said. “It makes me—more afraid than ever.”</p> + +<p>“But hopeful,” said Mr. Brumley, presuming to lay his hand for an +instant on her arm. “It’s big enough to be inspiring.”</p> + +<p>“But I’m afraid,” she said.</p> + +<p>“It’s laying down the lines of a new social life—no less. And what +makes it so strange, so typical, too, of the way social forces work +nowadays, is that your husband, who has all the instinctive insistence +upon every right and restriction of the family relation in his private +life, who is narrowly, passionately <i>for</i> the home in his own case, who +hates all books and discussion that seem to touch it, should in his +business activities be striking this tremendous new blow at the ancient +organization. For that, you see, is what it amounts to.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Lady Harman slowly. “Yes. Of course, he doesn’t know....”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley was silent for a little while. “You see,” he resumed, “at +the worst this new social life may become a sort of slavery in barracks; +at the best—it might become something very wonderful. My mind’s been +busy now for days thinking just how wonderful the new life might be. +Instead of the old bickering, crowded family home, a new home of +comrades....”</p> + +<p>He made another pause, and his thoughts ran off upon a fresh track.</p> + +<p>“In looking up all these things I came upon a queer little literature of +pamphlets and so forth, dealing with the case of the shop assistants. +They have a great grievance in what they call the living-in system. The +employers herd them in dormitories over the shops, and usually feed them +by gaslight in the basements; they fine them and keep an almost +intolerable grip upon them; make them go to bed at half-past ten, make +them go to church on Sundays,—all sorts of petty tyrannies. The +assistants are passionately against this, but they’ve got no power to +strike. Where could they go if they struck? Into the street. Only people +who live out and have homes of their own to sulk in <i>can</i> strike. +Naturally, therefore, as a preliminary to any other improvement in the +shop assistant’s life, these young people want to live out. Practically +that’s an impossible demand at present, because they couldn’t get +lodgings and live out with any decency at all on what it costs their +employers to lodge and feed them <i>in</i>. Well, here you see a curious +possibility for your Hostels. You open the prospect of a living-out +system for shop assistants. But just in the degree in which you choose +to interfere with them, regulate them, bully and deal with them +wholesale through their employers, do you make the new living-out method +approximate to the living-in. <i>That’s</i> a curious side development, isn’t +it?”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman appreciated that.</p> + +<p>“That’s only the beginning of the business. There’s something more these +Hostels might touch....”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley gathered himself together for the new aspect. “There’s +marriage,” he said.</p> + +<p>“One of the most interesting and unsatisfactory aspects of the life of +the employee to-day—and you know the employee is now in the majority in +the adult population—is this. You see, we hold them celibate. We hold +them celibate for a longer and longer period; the average age at +marriage rises steadily; and so long as they remain celibate we are +prepared with some sort of ideas about the future development of their +social life, clubs, hostels, living-in, and so forth. But at present we +haven’t any ideas at all about the adaptation of the natural pairing +instinct to the new state of affairs. Ultimately the employee marries; +they hold out as long as they possibly can, but ultimately they have to. +They have to, even in the face of an economic system that holds out no +prospects of anything but insecurity and an increasing chance of trouble +and disaster to the employee’s family group. What happens is that they +drop back into a distressful, crippled, insecure imitation of the old +family life as one had it in what I might call the multiplying periods +of history. They start a home,—they dream of a cottage, but they drift +to a lodging, and usually it isn’t the best sort of lodging, for +landladies hate wives and the other lodgers detest babies. Often the +young couple doesn’t have babies. You see, they are more intelligent +than peasants, and intelligence and fecundity vary reciprocally,” said +Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“You mean?” interrupted Lady Harman softly.</p> + +<p>“There is a world-wide fall in the birth-rate. People don’t have the +families they did.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Lady Harman. “I understand now.”</p> + +<p>“And the more prosperous or the more sanguine take these suburban little +houses, these hutches that make such places as Hendon nightmares of +monotony, or go into ridiculous jerry-built sham cottages in some Garden +Suburb, where each young wife does her own housework and pretends to +like it. They have a sort of happiness for a time, I suppose; the woman +stops all outside work, the man, very much handicapped, goes on +competing against single men. Then—nothing more happens. Except +difficulties. The world goes dull and grey for them. They look about for +a lodger, perhaps. Have you read Gissing’s <i>Paying Guest</i>?...”</p> + +<p>“I suppose,” said Lady Harman, “I suppose it is like that. One tries not +to think it is so.”</p> + +<p>“One needn’t let oneself believe that dullness is unhappiness,” said Mr. +Brumley. “I don’t want to paint things sadder than they are. But it’s +not a fine life, it’s not a full life, that life in a Neo-Malthusian +suburban hutch.”</p> + +<p>“Neo——?” asked Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“A mere phrase,” said Mr. Brumley hastily. “The extraordinary thing is +that, until you set me looking into these things with your questions, +I’ve always taken this sort of thing for granted, as though it couldn’t +be otherwise. Now I seem to see with a kind of freshness. I’m astounded +at the muddle of it, the waste and aimlessness of it. And here again it +is, Lady Harman, that I think your opportunity comes in. With these +Hostels as they might be projected now, you seem to have the possibility +of a modernized, more collective and civilized family life than the old +close congestion of the single home, and I see no reason at all why you +shouldn’t carry that collective life on to the married stage. As things +are now these little communities don’t go beyond the pairing—and out +they drift to find the homestead they will never possess. What has been +borne in upon me more and more forcibly as I have gone through +your—your nest of problems, is the idea that the new social—association, +that has so extensively replaced the old family group, might be carried on +right through life, that it might work in with all sorts of other +discontents and bad adjustments.... The life of the women in these little +childless or one-or-two-child homes is more unsatisfactory even than +the man’s.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley’s face flushed with enthusiasm and he wagged a finger to +emphasize his words. “Why not make Hostels, Lady Harman, for married +couples? Why not try that experiment so many people have talked about of +the conjoint kitchen and refectory, the conjoint nursery, the collective +social life, so that the children who are single children or at best +children in small families of two or three, may have the advantages of +playfellows, and the young mothers still, if they choose, continue to +have a social existence and go on with their professional or business, +work? That’s the next step your Hostels might take.... Incidentally you +see this opens a way to a life of relative freedom for the woman who is +married.... I don’t know if you have read Mrs. Stetson. Yes, Charlotte +Perkins Gilman Stetson.... Yes, <i>Woman and Economics</i>, that’s the book.</p> + +<p>“I know,” Mr. Brumley went on, “I seem to be opening out your project +like a concertina, but I want you to see just how my thoughts have been +going about all this. I want you to realize I haven’t been idle during +these last few weeks. I know it’s a far cry from what the Hostels are to +all these ideas of what they might begin to be, I know the difficulties +in your way—all sorts of difficulties. But when I think just how you +stand at the very centre of the moulding forces in these changes....”</p> + +<p>He dropped into an eloquent silence.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman looked thoughtfully at the sunlight under the trees.</p> + +<p>“You think,” she said, “that it comes to as much as all this.”</p> + +<p>“More,” said Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“I was frightened before. <i>Now</i>——You make me feel as though someone +had put the wheel of a motor car in my hand, started it and told me to +steer....”</p> + +<h4>§7</h4> + +<p>Lady Harman went home from that talk in a taxi, and on the way she +passed the building operations in Kensington Road. A few weeks ago it +had been a mere dusty field of operation for the house-wreckers; now its +walls were already rising to the second storey. She realized how swiftly +nowadays the search for wisdom can be outstripped by reinforced +concrete.</p> + +<h4>§8</h4> + +<p>It was only by slow degrees and rather in the absence of a more +commanding interest than through any invincible quality in their appeal +to her mind that these Hostels became in the next three years the grave +occupation of Lady Harman’s thoughts and energies. She yielded to them +reluctantly. For a long time she wanted to look over them and past them +and discover something—she did not know what—something high and +domineering to which it would be easy to give herself. It was difficult +to give herself to the Hostels. In that Mr. Brumley, actuated by a +mixture of more or less admirable motives, did his best to assist her. +These Hostels alone he thought could give them something upon which they +could meet, give them a common interest and him a method of service and +companionship. It threw the qualities of duty and justification over +their more or less furtive meetings, their little expeditions together, +their quiet frequent association.</p> + +<p>Together they made studies of the Girls’ Clubs which are scattered about +London, supplementary homes that have in such places as Walworth and +Soho worked small miracles of civilization. These institutions appealed +to a lower social level than the one their Hostels were to touch, but +they had been organized by capable and understanding minds and Lady +Harman found in one or two of their evening dances and in the lunch she +shared one morning with a row of cheerful young factory girls from Soho +just that quality of concrete realization for which her mind hungered. +Then Mr. Brumley took her once or twice for evening walks, just when the +stream of workers is going home; he battled his way with her along the +footpath of Charing Cross Railway Bridge from the Waterloo side, they +swam in the mild evening sunshine of September against a trampling +torrent of bobbing heads, and afterwards they had tea together in one of +the International Stores near the Strand, where Mr. Brumley made an +unsuccessful attempt to draw out the waitress on the subject of Babs +Wheeler and the recent strike. The young woman might have talked freely +to a man alone or freely to Lady Harman alone but the combination of the +two made her shy. The bridge experience led to several other +expeditions, to see home-going on the tube, at the big railway termini, +on the train—and once they followed up the process to Streatham and saw +how the people pour out of the train at last and scatter—until at last +they are just isolated individuals running up steps, diving into +basements. And then it occurred to Mr. Brumley that he knew someone who +would take them over “Gerrard,” that huge telephone exchange, and there +Lady Harman saw how the National Telephone Company, as it was in those +days, had a care for its staff, the pleasant club rooms, the rest room, +and stood in that queer rendez-vous of messages, where the “Hello” girl +sits all day, wearing a strange metallic apparatus over ear and mouth, +watching small lights that wink significantly at her and perpetually +pulling out and slipping in and releasing little flexible strings that +seem to have a resilient volition of their own. They hunted out Mrs. +Barnet and heard her ideas about conjoint homes for spinsters in the +Garden Suburb. And then they went over a Training College for elementary +teachers and visited the Post Office and then came back to more +unobtrusive contemplation, from the customer’s little table, of the +ministering personalities of the International Stores.</p> + +<p>There were times when all these things seen, seemed to fall into an +entirely explicable system under Mr. Brumley’s exposition, when they +seemed to be giving and most generously giving the clearest indications +of what kind of thing the Hostels had to be, and times when this all +vanished again and her mind became confused and perplexed. She tried to +express just what it was she missed to Mr. Brumley. “One doesn’t,” she +said, “see all of them and what one sees isn’t what we have to do with. +I mean we see them dressed up and respectable and busy and then they go +home and the door shuts. It’s the home that we are going to alter and +replace—and what is it like?” Mr. Brumley took her for walks in +Highbury and the newer parts of Hendon and over to Clapham. “I want to +go inside those doors,” she said.</p> + +<p>“That’s just what they won’t let you do,” said Mr. Brumley. “Nobody +visits but relations—and prospective relations, and the only other +social intercourse is over the garden wall. Perhaps I can find +books——”</p> + +<p>He got her novels by Edwin Pugh and Pett Ridge and Frank Swinnerton and +George Gissing. They didn’t seem to be attractive homes. And it seemed +remarkable to her that no woman had ever given the woman’s view of the +small London home from the inside....</p> + +<p>She overcame her own finer scruples and invaded the Burnet household. +Apart from fresh aspects of Susan’s character in the capacity of a +hostess she gained little light from that. She had never felt so +completely outside a home in her life as she did when she was in the +Burnets’ parlour. The very tablecloth on which the tea was spread had an +air of being new and protective of familiar things; the tea was +manifestly quite unlike their customary tea, it was no more intimate +than the confectioner’s shop window from which it mostly came; the whole +room was full of the muffled cries of things hastily covered up and +specially put away. Vivid oblongs on the faded wallpaper betrayed even a +rearrangement of the pictures. Susan’s mother was a little dingy woman, +wearing a very smart new cap to the best of her ability; she had an air +of having been severely shaken up and admonished, and her general +bearing confessed only too plainly how shattered those preparations had +left her. She watched her capable daughter for cues. Susan’s sisters +displayed a disposition to keep their backs against something and at the +earliest opportunity to get into the passage and leave Susan and her +tremendous visitor alone but within earshot. They started convulsively +when they were addressed and insisted on “your ladyship.” Susan had told +them not to but they would. When they supposed themselves to be +unobserved they gave themselves up to the impassioned inspection of Lady +Harman’s costume. Luke had fled into the street, and in spite of various +messages conveyed to him by the youngest sister he refused to enter +until Lady Harman had gone again and was well out of the way. And Susan +was no longer garrulous and at her ease; she had no pins in her mouth +and that perhaps hampered her speech; she presided flushed and +bright-eyed in a state of infectious nervous tension. Her politeness was +awful. Never in all her life had Lady Harman felt her own lack of real +conversational power so acutely. She couldn’t think of a thing that +mightn’t be construed as an impertinence and that didn’t remind her of +district visiting. Yet perhaps she succeeded better than she supposed.</p> + +<p>“What a family you have had!” she said to Mrs. Burnet. “I have four +little girls, and I find them as much as we can manage.”</p> + +<p>“You’re young yet, my ladyship,” said Mrs. Burnet, “and they aren’t +always the blessings they seem to be. It’s the rearing’s the +difficulty.”</p> + +<p>“They’re all such healthy-looking—people.”</p> + +<p>“I wish we could get hold of Luke, my ladyship, and show you <i>’im</i>. He’s +that sturdy. And yet when ’e was a little feller——”</p> + +<p>She was launched for a time on those details that were always so dear to +the mothers of the past order of things. Her little spate of +reminiscences was the only interlude of naturalness in an afternoon of +painfully constrained behaviour....</p> + +<p>Lady Harman returned a trifle shamefacedly from this abortive dip into +realities to Mr. Brumley’s speculative assurance.</p> + +<h4>§9</h4> + +<p>While Lady Harman was slowly accustoming her mind to this idea that the +development of those Hostels was her appointed career in life, so far as +a wife may have a career outside her connubial duties, and while she was +getting insensibly to believe in Mr. Brumley’s theory of their exemplary +social importance, the Hostels themselves with a haste that she felt +constantly was premature, were achieving a concrete existence. They were +developing upon lines that here and there disregarded Mr. Brumley’s +ideas very widely; they gained in practicality what perhaps they lost in +social value, through the entirely indirect relations between Mr. +Brumley on the one hand and Sir Isaac on the other. For Sir Isaac +manifestly did not consider and would have been altogether indisposed to +consider Mr. Brumley as entitled to plan or suggest anything of the +slightest importance in this affair, and whatever of Mr. Brumley reached +that gentleman reached him in a very carefully transmitted form as Lady +Harman’s own unaided idea. Sir Isaac had sound Victorian ideas about the +place of literature in life. If anyone had suggested to him that +literature could supply ideas to practical men he would have had a +choking fit, and he regarded Mr. Brumley’s sedulous attentions to these +hostel schemes with feelings, the kindlier elements of whose admixture +was a belief that ultimately he would write some elegant and respectful +approval of the established undertaking.</p> + +<p>The entire admixture of Sir Isaac’s feelings towards Mr. Brumley was by +no means kindly. He disliked any man to come near Lady Harman, any man +at all; he had a faint uneasiness even about waiters and hotel porters +and the clergy. Of course he had agreed she should have friends of her +own and he couldn’t very well rescind that without something definite to +go upon. But still this persistent follower kept him uneasy. He kept +this uneasiness within bounds by reassuring himself upon the point of +Lady Harman’s virtuous obedience, and so reassured he was able to temper +his distrust with a certain contempt. The man was in love with his wife; +that was manifest enough, and dangled after her.... Let him dangle. What +after all did he get for it?...</p> + +<p>But occasionally he broke through this complacency, betrayed a fitful +ingenious jealousy, interfered so that she missed appointments and had +to break engagements. He was now more and more a being of pathological +moods. The subtle changes of secretion that were hardening his arteries, +tightening his breath and poisoning his blood, reflected themselves upon +his spirit in an uncertainty of temper and exasperating fatigues and led +to startling outbreaks. Then for a time he would readjust himself, +become in his manner reasonable again, become accessible.</p> + +<p>He was the medium through which this vision that was growing up in her +mind of a reorganized social life, had to translate itself, as much as +it could ever translate itself, into reality. He called these hostels +her hostels, made her the approver of all he did, but he kept every +particle of control in his own hands. All her ideas and desires had to +be realized by him. And his attitudes varied with his moods; sometimes +he was keenly interested in the work of organization and then he +terrified her by his bias towards acute economies, sometimes he was +resentful at the burthen of the whole thing, sometimes he seemed to +scent Brumley or at least some moral influence behind her mind and met +her suggestions with a bitter resentment as though any suggestion must +needs be a disloyalty to him. There was a remarkable outbreak upon her +first tentative proposal that the hostel system might ultimately be +extended to married couples.</p> + +<p>He heard her with his lips pressing tighter and tighter together until +they were yellow white and creased with a hundred wicked little +horizontal creases. Then he interrupted her with silent gesticulations. +Then words came.</p> + +<p>“I never did, Elly,” he said. “I never did. Reely—there are times when +you ain’t rational. Married couples who’re assistants in shops and +places!”</p> + +<p>For a little while he sought some adequate expression of his point of +view.</p> + +<p>“Nice thing to go keeping a place for these chaps to have their cheap +bits of skirt in,” he said at last.</p> + +<p>Then further: “If a man wants a girl let him work himself up until he +can keep her. Married couples indeed!”</p> + +<p>He began to expand the possibilities of the case with a quite unusual +vividness. “Double beds in each cubicle, I suppose,” he said, and played +for a time about this fancy.... “Well, to hear such an idea from you of +all people, Elly. I never did.”</p> + +<p>He couldn’t leave it alone. He had to go on to the bitter end with the +vision she had evoked in his mind. He was jealous, passionately jealous, +it was only too manifest, of the possible happinesses of these young +people. He was possessed by that instinctive hatred for the realized +love of others which lies at the base of so much of our moral +legislation. The bare thought—whole corridors of bridal chambers!—made +his face white and his hand quiver. <i>His</i> young men and young women! The +fires of a hundred Vigilance Committees blazed suddenly in his reddened +eyes. He might have been a concentrated society for preventing the rapid +multiplication of the unfit. The idea of facilitating early marriages +was manifestly shameful to him, a disgraceful service to render, a job +for Pandarus. What was she thinking of? Elly of all people! Elly who had +been as innocent as driven snow before Georgina came interfering!</p> + +<p>It ended in a fit of abuse and a panting seizure, and for a day or so he +was too ill to resume the discussion, to do more than indicate a +disgusted aloofness....</p> + +<p>And then it may be the obscure chemicals at work within him changed +their phase of reaction. At any rate he mended, became gentler, was more +loving to his wife than he had been for some time and astonished her by +saying that if she wanted Hostels for married couples, it wasn’t perhaps +so entirely unreasonable. Selected cases, he stipulated, it would have +to be and above a certain age limit, sober people. “It might even be a +check on immorality,” he said, “properly managed....”</p> + +<p>But that was as far as his acquiescence went and Lady Harman was +destined to be a widow before she saw the foundation of any Hostel for +young married couples in London.</p> + +<h4>§10</h4> + +<p>The reinforced concrete rose steadily amidst Lady Harman’s questionings +and Mr. Brumley’s speculations. The Harmans returned from a recuperative +visit to Kissingen, to which Sir Isaac had gone because of a suspicion +that his Marienbad specialist had failed to cure him completely in order +to get him back again, to find the first of the five hostels nearly ripe +for its opening. There had to be a manageress and a staff organized and +neither Lady Harman nor Mr. Brumley were prepared for that sort of +business. A number of abler people however had become aware of the +opportunities of the new development and Mrs. Hubert Plessington, that +busy publicist, got the Harmans to a helpful little dinner, before Lady +Harman had the slightest suspicion of the needs that were now so urgent. +There shone a neat compact widow, a Mrs. Pembrose, who had buried her +husband some eighteen months ago after studying social questions with +him with great éclat for ten happy years, and she had done settlement +work and Girls’ Club work and had perhaps more power of +organization—given a suitable director to provide for her lack of +creativeness, Mrs. Plessington told Sir Isaac, than any other woman in +London. Afterwards Sir Isaac had an opportunity of talking to her; he +discussed the suffrage movement with her and was pleased to find her +views remarkably sympathetic with his own. She was, he declared, a +sensible woman, anxious to hear a man out and capable, it was evident, +of a detachment from feminist particularism rare in her sex at the +present time. Lady Harman had seen less of the lady that evening, she +was chiefly struck by her pallor, by a kind of animated silence about +her, and by the deep impression her capabilities had made on Mr. +Plessington, who had hitherto seemed to her to be altogether too +overworked in admiring his wife to perceive the points of any other +human being. Afterwards Lady Harman was surprised to hear from one or +two quite separate people that Mrs. Pembrose was the only possible +person to act as general director of the new hostels. Lady +Beach-Mandarin was so enthusiastic in the matter that she made a +special call. “You’ve known her a long time?” said Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“Long enough to see what a chance she is!” said Lady Beach-Mandarin.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman perceived equivocation. “Now how long is that really?” she +said.</p> + +<p>“Count not in years, nor yet in moments on a dial,” said Lady +Beach-Mandarin with a fine air of quotation. “I’m thinking of her quiet +strength of character. Mrs. Plessington brought her round to see me the +other afternoon.”</p> + +<p>“Did she talk to you?”</p> + +<p>“I saw, my dear, I saw.”</p> + +<p>A vague aversion from Mrs. Pembrose was in some mysterious way +strengthened in Lady Harman by this extraordinary convergence of +testimony. When Sir Isaac mentioned the lady with a kind of forced +casualness at breakfast as the only conceivable person for the work of +initiation and organization that lay before them, Lady Harman determined +to see more of her. With a quickened subtlety she asked her to tea. “I +have heard so much of your knowledge of social questions and I want you +to advise me about my work,” she wrote, and then scribbled a note to Mr. +Brumley to call and help her judgments.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Pembrose appeared dressed in dove colour with a near bonnetesque +straw hat to match. She had a pale slightly freckled complexion, little +hard blue-grey eyes with that sort of nose which redeems a squarish +shape by a certain delicacy of structure; her chin was long and +protruding and her voice had a wooden resonance and a ghost of a lisp. +Her talk had a false consecutiveness due to the frequent use of the word +“Yes.” Her bearing was erect and her manner guardedly alert.</p> + +<p>From the first she betrayed a conviction that Mr. Brumley was incidental +and unnecessary and that her real interest lay with Sir Isaac. She might +almost have been in possession of special information upon that point.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” she said, “I’m rather specially <i>up</i> in this sort of question. I +worked side by side with my poor Frederick all his life, we were +collaborators, and this question of the urban distributive employee was +one of his special studies. Yes, he would have been tremendously +interested in Sir Isaac’s project.”</p> + +<p>“You know what we are doing?”</p> + +<p>“Every one is interested in Sir Isaac’s enterprise. Naturally. Yes, I +think I have a fairly good idea of what you mean to do. It’s a great +experiment.”</p> + +<p>“You think it is likely to answer?” said Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“In Sir Isaac’s hands it is <i>very</i> likely to answer,” said Mrs. Pembrose +with her eye steadily on Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>There was a little pause. “Yes, now you wrote of difficulties and +drawing upon my experience. Of course just now I’m quite at Sir Isaac’s +disposal.”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman found herself thrust perforce into the rôle of her husband’s +spokeswoman. She asked Mrs. Pembrose if she knew the exact nature of the +experiment they contemplated.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Pembrose hadn’t a doubt she knew. Of course for a long time and +more especially in the Metropolis where the distances were so great and +increasing so rapidly, there had been a gathering feeling not only in +the catering trade, but in very many factory industries, against the +daily journey to employment and home again. It was irksome and wasteful +to everyone concerned, there was a great loss in control, later hours of +beginning, uncertain service. “Yes, my husband calculated the hours lost +in London every week, hours that are neither work nor play, mere +tiresome stuffy journeying. It made an enormous sum. It worked out at +hundreds of working lives per week.” Sir Isaac’s project was to abolish +all that, to bring his staff into line with the drapers and grocers who +kept their assistants on the living-in system....</p> + +<p>“I thought people objected to the living-in system,” said Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“There’s an agitation against it on the part of a small Trade Union of +Shop Assistants,” said Mrs. Pembrose. “But they have no real alternative +to propose.”</p> + +<p>“And this isn’t Living In,” said Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“Yes, I think you’ll find it is,” said Mrs. Pembrose with a nice little +expert smile.</p> + +<p>“Living-in isn’t <i>quite</i> what we want,” said Lady Harman slowly and with +knitted brows, seeking a method of saying just what the difference was +to be.</p> + +<p>“Yes, not perhaps in the strictest sense,” said Mrs. Pembrose giving her +no chance, and went on to make fine distinctions. Strictly speaking, +living-in meant sleeping over the shop and eating underneath it, and +this hostel idea was an affair of a separate house and of occupants who +would be assistants from a number of shops. “Yes, collectivism, if you +like,” said Mrs. Pembrose. But the word collectivism, she assured them, +wouldn’t frighten her, she was a collectivist, a socialist, as her +husband had always been. The day was past when socialist could be used +as a term of reproach. “Yes, instead of the individual employer of +labour, we already begin to have the collective employer of labour, with +a labour bureau—and so on. We share them. We no longer compete for +them. It’s the keynote of the time.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley followed this with a lifted eyebrow. He was still new to +these modern developments of collectivist ideas, this socialism of the +employer.</p> + +<p>The whole thing Mrs. Pembrose declared was a step forward in +civilization, it was a step in the organization and discipline of +labour. Of course the unruly and the insubordinate would cry out. But +the benefits were plain enough, space, light, baths, association, +reasonable recreations, opportunities for improvement——</p> + +<p>“But freedom?” said Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Pembrose inclined her head a little on one side, looked at him this +time and smiled the expert smile again. “If you knew as much as I do of +the difficulties of social work,” she said, “you wouldn’t be very much +in love with freedom.”</p> + +<p>“But—it’s the very substance of the soul!”</p> + +<p>“You must permit me to differ,” said Mrs. Pembrose, and for weeks +afterwards Mr. Brumley was still seeking a proper polite retort to that +difficult counterstroke. It was such a featureless reply. It was like +having your nose punched suddenly by a man without a face.</p> + +<p>They descended to a more particular treatment of the problems ahead. +Mrs. Pembrose quoted certain precedents from the Girls’ Club Union.</p> + +<p>“The people Lady Harman contemplates—entertaining,” said Mr. Brumley, +“are of a slightly more self-respecting type than those young women.”</p> + +<p>“It’s largely veneer,” said Mrs. Pembrose....</p> + +<p>“Detestable little wretch,” said Mr. Brumley when at last she had +departed. He was very uncomfortable. “She’s just the quintessence of all +one fears and dreads about these new developments, she’s perfect—in +that way—self-confident, arrogant, instinctively aggressive, with a +tremendous class contempt. There’s a multitude of such people about who +hate the employed classes, who <i>want</i> to see them broken in and +subjugated. I suppose that kind of thing is in humanity. Every boy’s +school has louts of that kind, who love to torment fags for their own +good, who spring upon a chance smut on the face of a little boy to scrub +him painfully, who have a kind of lust to dominate under the pretence of +improving. I remember——But never mind that now. Keep that woman out +of things or your hostels work for the devil.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Lady Harman. “Certainly she shall not——. No.”</p> + +<p>But there she reckoned without her husband.</p> + +<p>“I’ve settled it,” he said to her at dinner two nights later.</p> + +<p>“What?”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Pembrose.”</p> + +<p>“You’ve not made her——?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I have. And I think we’re very lucky to get her.”</p> + +<p>“But—Isaac! I don’t want her!”</p> + +<p>“You should have told me that before, Elly. I’ve made an agreement.”</p> + +<p>She suddenly wanted to cry. “But——You said I should manage these +Hostels myself.”</p> + +<p>“So you shall, Elly. But we must have somebody. When we go abroad and +all that and for all the sort of business stuff and looking after things +that you can’t do. We’ve <i>got</i> to have her. She’s the only thing going +of her sort.”</p> + +<p>“But—I don’t like her.”</p> + +<p>“Well,” cried Sir Isaac, “why in goodness couldn’t you tell me that +before, Elly? I’ve been and engaged her.”</p> + +<p>She sat pale-faced staring at him with wide open eyes in which tears of +acute disappointment were shining. She did not dare another word because +of her trick of weeping.</p> + +<p>“It’s all right, Elly,” said Sir Isaac. “How touchy you are! Anything +you want about these Hostels of yours, you’ve only got to tell me and +it’s done.”</p> + +<h4>§11</h4> + +<p>Lady Harman was still in a state of amazement at the altered prospects +of her hostels when the day arrived for the formal opening of the first +of these in Bloomsbury. They made a little public ceremony of it in +spite of her reluctance, and Mr. Brumley had to witness things from out +of the general crowd and realize just how completely he wasn’t in it, in +spite of all his efforts. Mrs. Pembrose was modestly conspicuous, like +the unexpected in all human schemes. There were several reporters +present, and Horatio Blenker who was going to make a loyal leader about +it, to be followed by one or two special articles for the <i>Old Country +Gazette</i>.</p> + +<p>Horatio had procured Mrs. Blapton for the opening after some ineffectual +angling for the Princess Adeline, and the thing was done at half-past +three in the afternoon. In the bright early July sunshine outside the +new building there was a crimson carpet down on the pavement and an +awning above it, there was a great display of dog-daisies at the windows +and on the steps leading up to the locked portals, an increasing number +of invited people lurked shyly in the ground-floor rooms ready to come +out by the back way and cluster expectantly when Mrs. Blapton arrived, +Graper the staff manager and two assistants in dazzling silk hats seemed +everywhere, the rabbit-like architect had tried to look doggish in a +huge black silk tie and only looked more like a rabbit than ever, and +there was a steady driftage of small boys and girls, nurses with +perambulators, cab touts, airing grandfathers and similar unemployed +people towards the promise of the awning, the carpet and the flowers. +The square building in all its bravery of Doulton ware and yellow and +mauve tiles and its great gilt inscription</p> + +<p> +INTERNATIONAL HOSTELS +</p> + +<p>above the windows of the second storey seemed typical of all those +modern forces that are now invading and dispelling the ancient +residential peace of Bloomsbury.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Blapton appeared only five minutes late, escorted by Bertie Trevor +and her husband’s spare secretary. Graper became so active at the sight +of her that he seemed more like some beast out of the Apocalypse with +seven hands and ten hats than a normal human being; he marshalled the +significant figures into their places, the door was unlocked without +serious difficulty, and Lady Harman found herself in the main corridor +beside Mr. Trevor and a little behind Mrs. Blapton, engaged in being +shown over the new creation. Sir Isaac (driven by Graper at his elbow) +was in immediate attendance on the great political lady, and Mrs. +Pembrose, already with an air of proprietorship, explained glibly on her +other hand. Close behind Lady Harman came Lady Beach-Mandarin, expanding +like an appreciative gas in a fine endeavour to nestle happily into the +whole big place, and with her were Mrs. Hubert Plessington and Mr. Pope, +one of those odd people who are called publicists because one must call +them something, and who take chairs and political sides and are +vice-presidents of everything and organize philanthropies, write letters +to the papers and cannot let the occasion pass without saying a few +words and generally prevent the institutions of this country from +falling out of human attention. He was a little abstracted in his +manner, every now and then his lips moved as he imagined a fresh turn to +some classic platitude; anyone who knew him might have foretold the +speech into which he presently broke. He did this in the refectory where +there was a convenient step up at the end. Beginning with the customary +confession of incontinence, “could not let the occasion pass,” he +declared that he would not detain them long, but he felt that everyone +there would agree with him that they shared that day in no slight +occasion, no mean enterprise, that here was one of the most promising, +one of the most momentous, nay! he would go further and add with due +deference to them all, one of the most pregnant of social experiments in +modern social work. In the past he had himself—if he might for a moment +allow a personal note to creep into his observations, he himself had not +been unconnected with industrial development.—(Querulous voice, “Who +the devil is that?” and whispered explanations on the part of Horatio +Blenker; “Pope—very good man—East Purblow Experiment—Payment in Kind +instead of Wages—Yes.”)....</p> + +<p>Lady Harman ceased to listen to Mr. Pope’s strained but not unhappy +tenor. She had heard him before, and she had heard his like endlessly. +He was the larger moiety of every public meeting she had ever attended. +She had ceased even to marvel at the dull self-satisfaction that +possessed him. To-day her capacity for marvelling was entirely taken up +by the details of this extraordinary reality which had sprung from her +dream of simple, kindly, beautiful homes for distressed and overworked +young women; nothing in the whole of life had been so amazing since that +lurid occasion when she had been the agonized vehicle for the entry of +Miss Millicent Harman upon this terrestrial scene. It was all so +entirely what she could never have thought possible. A few words from +other speakers followed, Mrs. Blapton, with the young secretary at hand +to prompt, said something, and Sir Isaac was poked forwards to say, +“Thank you very much. It’s all my wife’s doing, really.... Oh dash it! +Thank you very much.” It had the effect of being the last vestige of +some more elaborate piece of eloquence that had suddenly disintegrated +in his mind.</p> + +<p>“And now, Elly,” he said, as their landaulette took them home, “you’re +beginning to have your hostels.”</p> + +<p>“Then they <i>are</i> my hostels?” she asked abruptly.</p> + +<p>“Didn’t I say they were?” The satisfaction of his face was qualified by +that fatigued irritability that nowadays always followed any exertion or +excitement.</p> + +<p>“If I want things done? If I want things altered?”</p> + +<p>“Of course you may, of course you may. What’s the matter with you, +Elly? What’s been putting ideers into your head? You got to have a +directress to the thing; you must have a woman of education who knows a +bit about things to look after the matrons and so on. Very likely she +isn’t everything you want. She’s the only one we could get, and I don’t +see——. Here I go and work hard for a year and more getting these +things together to please you, and then suddenly you don’t like ’em. +There’s a lot of the spoilt child in you, Elly—first and last. There +they are....”</p> + +<p>They were silent for the rest of the journey to Putney, both being +filled with incommunicable things.</p> + +<h4>§12</h4> + +<p>And now Lady Harman began to share the trouble of all those who let +their minds pass out of the circle of their immediate affections with +any other desire save interest and pleasure. Assisted in this unhappy +development by the sedulous suggestions of Mr. Brumley she had begun to +offend against the most sacred law in our sensible British code, she was +beginning to take herself and her hostels seriously, and think that it +mattered how she worked for them and what they became. She tried to give +all the attention her children’s upbringing, her husband’s ailments and +the general demands of her household left free, to this complex, +elusive, puzzling and worrying matter. Instead of thinking that these +hostels were just old hostels and that you start them and put in a Mrs. +Pembrose and feel very benevolent and happy and go away, she had come to +realize partly by dint of her own conscientious thinking and partly +through Mr. Brumley’s strenuous resolve that she should not take Sir +Isaac’s gift horse without the most exhaustive examination of its +quality, that this new work, like most new things in human life, was +capable not only of admirable but of altogether detestable consequences, +and that it rested with her far more than with any other human being to +realize the former and avoid the latter. And directly one has got to +this critical pose towards things, just as one ceases to be content with +things anyhow and to want them precisely somehow, one begins to realize +just how intractable, confused and disingenuous are human affairs. Mr. +Brumley had made himself see and had made her see how inevitable these +big wholesale ways of doing things, these organizations and close social +co-operations, have become unless there is to be a social disintegration +and set back, and he had also brought himself and her to realize how +easily they may develop into a new servitude, how high and difficult is +the way towards methods of association that will ensure freedom and +permit people to live fine individual lives. Every step towards +organization raises a crop of vices peculiar to itself, fresh +developments of the egotism and greed and vanity of those into whose +hands there falls control, fresh instances of that hostile pedantry +which seems so natural to officials and managers, insurgencies and +obstinacies and suspicions on the part of everyone. The poor lady had +supposed that when one’s intentions were obviously benevolent everyone +helped. She only faced the realities of this task that she had not so +much set for herself as had happened to her, after dreadful phases of +disillusionment and dismay.</p> + +<p>“These hostels,” said Mr. Brumley in his most prophetic mood, “can be +made free, fine things—or no—just as all the world of men we are +living in, could be made a free, fine world. And it’s our place to see +they are that. It’s just by being generous and giving ourselves, helping +without enslaving, and giving without exacting gratitude, planning and +protecting with infinite care, that we bring that world nearer.... Since +I’ve known you I’ve come to know such things are possible....”</p> + +<p>The Bloomsbury hostel started upon its career with an embarrassing +difficulty. The young women of the International Stores Refreshment +Departments for whom these institutions were primarily intended +displayed what looked extremely like a concerted indisposition to come +in. They had been circularized and informed that henceforth, to ensure +the “good social tone” of the staff, all girls not living at home with +their parents or close relations would be expected to reside in the new +hostels. There followed an attractive account of the advantages of the +new establishment. In drawing up this circular with the advice of Mrs. +Pembrose, Sir Isaac had overlooked the fact that his management was very +imperfectly informed just where the girls did live, and that after its +issue it was very improbable that it would be possible to find out this +very necessary fact. But the girls seemed to be unaware of this +ignorance at headquarters, Miss Babs Wheeler was beginning to feel a +little bored by good behaviour and crave for those dramatic cessations +at the lunch hour, those speeches, with cheers, from a table top, those +interviews with reporters, those flushed and eager councils of war and +all the rest of that good old crisis feeling that had previously ended +so happily. Mr. Graper came to his proprietor headlong, Mrs. Pembrose +was summoned and together they contemplated the lamentable possibility +of this great social benefit they had done the world being discredited +at the outset by a strike of the proposed beneficiaries. Sir Isaac fell +into a state of vindictiveness and was with difficulty restrained by Mr. +Graper from immediately concluding the negotiations that were pending +with three great Oxford Street firms that would have given over the +hostels to their employees and closed them against the International +girls for ever.</p> + +<p>Even Mrs. Pembrose couldn’t follow Sir Isaac in that, and remarked: “As +I understand it, the whole intention was to provide proper housing for +our own people first and foremost.”</p> + +<p>“And haven’t we provided it, <i>damn</i> them?” said Sir Isaac in white +desperation....</p> + +<p>It was Lady Harman who steered the newly launched institutions through +these first entanglements. It was her first important advantage in the +struggle that had hitherto been going relentlessly against her. She now +displayed her peculiar gift, a gift that indeed is unhappily all too +rare among philanthropists, the gift of not being able to classify the +people with whom she was dealing, but of continuing to regard them as a +multitude of individualized souls as distinct and considerable as +herself. That makes no doubt for slowness and “inefficiency” and +complexity in organization, but it does make for understandings. And +now, through a little talk with Susan Burnet about her sister’s attitude +upon the dispute, she was able to take the whole situation in the flank.</p> + +<p>Like many people who are not easily clear, Lady Harman when she was +clear acted with very considerable decision, which was perhaps none the +less effective because of the large softnesses of her manner.</p> + +<p>She surprised Sir Isaac by coming of her own accord into his study, +where with an altogether novel disfavour he sat contemplating the +detailed plans for the Sydenham Hostel. “I think I’ve found out what the +trouble is,” she said.</p> + +<p>“What trouble?”</p> + +<p>“About my hostel.”</p> + +<p>“How do you know?”</p> + +<p>“I’ve been finding out what the girls are saying.”</p> + +<p>“They’d say anything.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t think they’re clever enough for that,” said Lady Harman after +consideration. She recovered her thread. “You see, Isaac, they’ve been +frightened by the Rules. I didn’t know you had printed a set of Rules.”</p> + +<p>“One must <i>have</i> rules, Elly.”</p> + +<p>“In the background,” she decided. “But you see these Rules—were made +conspicuous. They were printed in two colours on wall cards just exactly +like that list of rules and scale of fines you had to withdraw——”</p> + +<p>“I know,” said Sir Isaac, shortly.</p> + +<p>“It reminded the girls. And that circular that seems to threaten them if +they don’t give up their lodgings and come in. And the way the front is +got up to look just exactly like one of the refreshment-room +branches—it makes them feel it will be un-homelike, and that there will +be a kind of repetition in the evening of all the discipline and +regulations they have to put up with during the day.”</p> + +<p>“Have to put up with!” murmured Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>“I wish that had been thought of sooner. If we had made the places look +a little more ordinary and called them Osborne House or something a +little old-fashioned like that, something with a touch of the Old Queen +about it and all that kind of thing.”</p> + +<p>“We can’t go to the expense of taking down all those big gilt letters +just to please the fancies of Miss Babs Wheeler.”</p> + +<p>“It’s too late now to do that, perhaps. But we could do something, I +think, to remove the suspicions ... I want, Isaac——I think——” She +pulled herself together to announce her determination. “I think if I +were to go to the girls and meet a delegation of them, and just talk to +them plainly about what we mean by this hostel.”</p> + +<p>“<i>You</i> can’t go making speeches.”</p> + +<p>“It would just be talking to them.”</p> + +<p>“It’s such a Come Down,” said Sir Isaac, after a momentary contemplation +of the possibility.</p> + +<p>For some time they talked without getting very far from these positions +they had assumed. At last Sir Isaac shifted back upon his expert. “Can’t +we talk about it to Mrs. Pembrose? She knows more about this sort of +business than we do.”</p> + +<p>“I’m not going to talk to Mrs. Pembrose,” said Lady Harman, after a +little interval. Some unusual quality in her quiet voice made Sir Isaac +lift his eyes to her face for a moment.</p> + +<p>So one Saturday afternoon, Lady Harman had a meeting with a roomful of +recalcitrant girls at the Regent Street Refreshment Branch, which looked +very odd to her with grey cotton wrappers over everything and its blinds +down, and for the first time she came face to face with the people for +whom almost in spite of herself she was working. It was a meeting +summoned by the International Branch of the National Union of Waitresses +and Miss Babs Wheeler and Mr. Graper were so to speak the north and +south poles of the little group upon the improvised platform from which +Lady Harman was to talk to the gathering. She would have liked the +support of Mr. Brumley, but she couldn’t contrive any unostentatious way +of bringing him into the business without putting it upon a footing that +would have involved the appearance of Sir Isaac and Mrs. Pembrose +and—everybody. And essentially it wasn’t to be everybody. It was to be +a little talk.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman rather liked the appearance of Miss Babs Wheeler, and met +more than an answering approval in that insubordinate young woman’s eye. +Miss Wheeler was a minute swaggering person, much akimbo, with a little +round blue-eyed innocent face that shone with delight at the lark of +living. Her three companions who were in the lobby with her to receive +and usher in Lady Harman seemed just as young, but they were relatively +unilluminated except by their manifest devotion to their leader. They +displayed rather than concealed their opinion of her as a “dear” and a +“fair wonder.” And the meeting generally it seemed to her was a +gathering of very human young women, rather restless, then agog to see +her and her clothes, and then somehow allayed by her appearance and +quite amiably attentive to what she had to say. A majority were young +girls dressed with the cheap smartness of the suburbs, the rest were for +the most part older and dingier, and here and there were dotted young +ladies of a remarkable and questionable smartness. In the front row, +full of shy recognitions and a little disguised by an unfamiliar hat was +Susan’s sister Alice.</p> + +<p>As Lady Harman had made up her mind that she was not going to deliver a +speech she felt no diffidence in speaking. She was far too intent on her +message to be embarrassed by any thought of the effect she was +producing. She talked as she might have talked in one of her easier +moods to Mr. Brumley. And as she talked it happened that Miss Babs +Wheeler and quite a number of the other girls present watched her face +and fell in love with her.</p> + +<p>She began with her habitual prelude. “You see,” she said, and stopped +and began again. She wanted to tell them and with a clumsy simplicity +she told them how these Hostels had arisen out of her desire that they +should have something better than the uncomfortable lodgings in which +they lived. They weren’t a business enterprise, but they weren’t any +sort of charity. “And I wanted them to be the sort of place in which you +would feel quite free. I hadn’t any sort of intention of having you +interfered with. I hate being interfered with myself, and I understand +just as well as anyone can that you don’t like it either. I wanted these +Hostels to be the sort of place that you might perhaps after a time +almost manage and run for yourselves. You might have a committee or +something.... Only you know it isn’t always easy to do as one wants. +Things don’t always go in this world as one wants them to +go—particularly if one isn’t clever.” She lost herself for a moment at +that point, and then went on to say she didn’t like the new rules. They +had been drawn up in a hurry and she had only read them after they were +printed. All sorts of things in them——</p> + +<p>She seemed to be losing her theme again, and Mr. Graper handed her the +offending card, a big varnished wall placard, with eyelets and tape +complete. She glanced at it. For example, she said, it wasn’t her idea +to have fines. (Great and long continued applause.) There was something +she had always disliked about fines. (Renewed applause.) But these +rules could easily be torn up. And as she said this and as the meeting +broke into acquiescence again it occurred to her that there was the card +of rules in her hands, and nothing could be simpler than to tear it up +there and then. It resisted her for a moment, she compressed her lips +and then she had it in halves. This tearing was so satisfactory to her +that she tore it again and then again. As she tore it, she had a +pleasant irrational feeling that she was tearing Mrs. Pembrose. Mr. +Graper’s face betrayed his shocked feelings, and the meeting which had +become charged with a strong desire to show how entirely it approved of +her, made a crowning attempt at applause. They hammered umbrellas on the +floor, they clapped hands, they rattled chairs and gave a shrill cheer. +A chair was broken.</p> + +<p>“I wish,” said Lady Harman when that storm had abated, “you’d come and +look at the Hostel. Couldn’t you come next Saturday afternoon? We could +have a stand-up tea and you could see the place and then afterwards your +committee and I—and my husband—could make out a real set of rules....”</p> + +<p>She went on for some little time longer, she appealed to them with all +the strength of her honest purpose to help her to make this possible +good thing a real good thing, not to suspect, not to be hard on +her—“and my husband”—not to make a difficult thing impossible, it was +so easy to do that, and when she finished she was in the happiest +possession of her meeting. They came thronging round her with flushed +faces and bright eyes, they wanted to come near her, wanted to touch +her, wanted to assure her that for her they were quite prepared to live +in any kind of place. For her. “You come and talk to us, Lady Harman,” +said one; “<i>we’ll</i> show you.”</p> + +<p>“Nobody hasn’t told us, Lady Harman, how these Hostels were <i>yours</i>.”</p> + +<p>“You come and talk to us again, Lady Harman.” ...</p> + +<p>They didn’t wait for the following Saturday. On Monday morning Mrs. +Pembrose received thirty-seven applications to take up rooms.</p> + +<h4>§13</h4> + +<p>For the next few years it was to be a matter of recurrent +heart-searching for Lady Harman whether she had been profoundly wise or +extremely foolish in tearing up that card of projected rules. At the +time it seemed the most natural and obvious little action imaginable; it +was long before she realized just how symbolical and determining a few +movements of the hand and wrist can be. It fixed her line not so much +for herself as for others. It put her definitely, much more definitely +than her convictions warranted, on the side of freedom against +discipline. For indeed her convictions like most of our convictions kept +along a tortuous watershed between these two. It is only a few rare +extravagant spirits who are wholly for the warp or wholly for the woof +of human affairs.</p> + +<p>The girls applauded and loved her. At one stroke she had acquired the +terrible liability of partisans. They made her their champion and +sanction; she was responsible for an endless succession of difficulties +that flowered out of their interpretations of her act. These Hostels +that had seemed passing out of her control, suddenly turned back upon +her and took possession of her.</p> + +<p>And they were never simple difficulties. Right and wrong refused to +unravel for her; each side of every issue seemed to be so often in +suicidal competition with its antagonist for the inferior case. If the +forces of order and discipline showed themselves perennially harsh and +narrow, it did not blind her perplexed eyes to the fact that the girls +were frequently extremely naughty. She wished very often, she did so +wish—they wouldn’t be. They set out with a kind of eagerness for +conflict.</p> + +<p>Their very loyalty to her expressed itself not so much in any sustained +attempt to make the hostels successful as in cheering inconveniently, in +embarrassing declarations of a preference, in an ingenious and +systematic rudeness to anyone suspected of imperfect devotion to her. +The first comers into the Hostels were much more like the swelling +inrush of a tide than, as Mrs. Pembrose would have preferred, like +something laid on through a pipe, and when this lady wanted to go on +with the old rules until Sir Isaac had approved of the new, the new +arrivals went into the cutting-out room and manifested. Lady Harman had +to be telephoned for to allay the manifestation.</p> + +<p>And then arose questions of deportment, trivial in themselves, but of +the gravest moment for the welfare of the hostels. There was a phrase +about “noisy or improper conduct” in the revised rules. Few people would +suspect a corridor, ten feet wide and two hundred feet long, as a +temptation to impropriety, but Mrs. Pembrose found it was so. The effect +of the corridors upon undisciplined girls quite unaccustomed to +corridors was for a time most undesirable. For example they were moved +to <i>run</i> along them violently. They ran races along them, when they +overtook they jostled, when they were overtaken they squealed. The +average velocity in the corridors of the lady occupants of the +Bloomsbury Hostel during the first fortnight of its existence was seven +miles an hour. Was that violence? Was that impropriety? The building was +all steel construction, but one <i>heard</i> even in the Head Matron’s room. +And then there was the effect of the rows and rows of windows opening +out upon the square. The square had some pleasant old trees and it was +attractive to look down into their upper branches, where the sparrows +mobbed and chattered perpetually, and over them at the chimneys and +turrets and sky signs of the London world. The girls looked. So far they +were certainly within their rights. But they did not look modestly, they +did not look discreetly. They looked out of wide-open windows, they even +sat perilously and protrudingly on the window sills conversing across +the façade from window to window, attracting attention, and once to Mrs. +Pembrose’s certain knowledge a man in the street joined in. It was on a +Sunday morning, too, a Bloomsbury Sunday morning!</p> + +<p>But graver things were to rouse the preventive prohibitionist in the +soul of Mrs. Pembrose. There was the visiting of one another’s rooms and +cubicles. Most of these young people had never possessed or dreamt of +possessing a pretty and presentable apartment to themselves, and the +first effect of this was to produce a decorative outbreak, a vigorous +framing of photographs and hammering of nails (“dust-gathering +litter.”—<i>Mrs. Pembrose</i>) and then—visiting. They visited at all hours +and in all costumes; they sat in groups of three or four, one on the +chair and the rest on the bed conversing into late hours,—entirely +uncensored conversations too often accompanied by laughter. When Mrs. +Pembrose took this to Lady Harman she found her extraordinarily blind to +the conceivable evils of this free intercourse. “But Lady Harman!” said +Mrs. Pembrose, with a note of horror, “some of them—kiss each other!”</p> + +<p>“But if they’re fond of each other,” said Lady Harman. “I’m sure I don’t +see——”</p> + +<p>And when the floor matrons were instructed to make little surprise +visits up and down the corridors the girls who occupied rooms took to +locking their doors—and Lady Harman seemed inclined to sustain their +right to do that. The floor matrons did what they could to exercise +authority, one or two were former department manageresses, two were +ex-elementary teachers, crowded out by younger and more certificated +rivals, one, and the most trustworthy one, Mrs. Pembrose found, was an +ex-wardress from Holloway. The natural result of these secret talkings +and conferrings in the rooms became apparent presently in some mild +ragging and in the concoction of petty campaigns of annoyance designed +to soften the manners of the more authoritative floor matrons. Here +again were perplexing difficulties. If a particular floor matron has a +clear commanding note in her voice, is it or is it not “violent and +improper” to say “Haw!” in clear commanding tones whenever you suppose +her to be within earshot? As for the door-locking Mrs. Pembrose settled +that by carrying off all the keys.</p> + +<p>Complaints and incidents drifted towards definite scenes and +“situations.” Both sides in this continuing conflict of dispositions +were so definite, so intolerant, to the mind of the lady with the +perplexed dark eyes who mediated. Her reason was so much with the +matrons; her sympathies so much with the girls. She did not like the +assured brevity of Mrs. Pembrose’s judgments and decisions; she had an +instinctive perception of the truth that all compact judgments upon +human beings are unjust judgments. The human spirit is but poorly +adapted either to rule or to be ruled, and the honesty of all the +efforts of Mrs. Pembrose and her staffs—for soon the hostels at +Sydenham and West Kensington were open—were marred not merely by +arrogance but by an irritability, a real hostility to complexities and +difficulties and resisters and troublesome characters. And it did not +help the staff to a triumphant achievement of its duties that the girls +had an exaggerated perception that Lady Harman’s heart was on their +side.</p> + +<p>And presently the phrase “weeding out” crept into the talk of Mrs. +Pembrose. Some of the girls were being marked as ringleaders, foci of +mischief, characters it was desirable to “get rid of.” Confronted with +it Lady Harman perceived she was absolutely opposed to this idea of +getting rid of anyone—unless it was Mrs. Pembrose. She liked her +various people; she had no desire for a whittled success with a picked +remnant of subdued and deferential employees. She put that to Mr. +Brumley and Mr. Brumley was indignant and eloquent in his concurrence. A +certain Mary Trunk, a dark young woman with a belief that it became her +to have a sweet disorder in her hair, and a large blonde girl named Lucy +Baxandall seemed to be the chief among the bad influences of the +Bloomsbury hostel, and they took it upon themselves to appeal to Lady +Harman against Mrs. Pembrose. They couldn’t, they complained, “do a +Thing right for her....”</p> + +<p>So the tangle grew.</p> + +<p>Presently Lady Harman had to go to the Riviera with Sir Isaac and when +she came back Mary Trunk and Lucy Baxandall had vanished from both the +International Hostel and the International Stores. She tried to find out +why, and she was confronted by inadequate replies and enigmatical +silences. “They decided to go,” said Mrs. Pembrose, and dropped +“fortunately” after that statement. She disavowed any exact knowledge of +their motives. But she feared the worst. Susan Burnet was uninforming. +Whatever had happened had failed to reach Alice Burnet’s ears. Lady +Harman could not very well hold a commission of enquiry into the matter, +but she had an uneasy sense of a hidden campaign of dislodgement. And +about the corridors and cubicles and club rooms there was she thought a +difference, a discretion, a flavour of subjugation....</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11" id="chap11"></a>CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Last Crisis</span></p> + +<h4>§1</h4> + +<p>It would be quite easy for anyone with the knack of reserve to go on +from this point with a history of Lady Harman that would present her as +practically a pure philanthropist. For from these beginnings she was +destined to proceed to more and more knowledge and understanding and +clear purpose and capable work in this interesting process of collective +regrouping, this process which may even at last justify Mr. Brumley’s +courageous interpretations and prove to be an early experiment in the +beginning of a new social order. Perhaps some day there will be an +official biography, another addition to the inscrutable records of +British public lives, in which all these things will be set out with +tact and dignity. Horatio Blenker or Adolphus Blenker may survive to be +entrusted with this congenial task. She will be represented as a tall +inanimate person pursuing one clear benevolent purpose in life from her +very beginning, and Sir Isaac and her relations with Sir Isaac will be +rescued from reality. The book will be illustrated by a number of +carefully posed photographer’s photographs of her, studies of the Putney +house and perhaps an unappetizing woodcut of her early home at Penge. +The aim of all British biography is to conceal. A great deal of what we +have already told will certainly not figure in any such biography, and +still more certainly will the things we have yet to tell be missing.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman was indeed only by the force of circumstances and +intermittently a pure philanthropist, and it is with the intercalary +passages of less exalted humanity that we are here chiefly concerned. At +times no doubt she did really come near to filling and fitting and +becoming identical with that figure of the pure philanthropist which was +her world-ward face, but for the most part that earnest and dignified +figure concealed more or less extensive spaces of nothingness, while the +errant soul of the woman within strayed into less exalted ways of +thinking.</p> + +<p>There were times when she was almost sure of herself—Mrs. Hubert +Plessington could scarcely have been surer of herself, and times when +the whole magnificent project of constructing a new urban social life +out of those difficult hostels, a collective urban life that should be +liberal and free, broke into grimacing pieces and was the most foolish +of experiments. Her struggles with Mrs. Pembrose thereupon assumed a +quality of mere bickering and she could even doubt whether Mrs. Pembrose +wasn’t justified in her attitude and wiser by her very want of +generosity. She felt then something childish in the whole undertaking +that otherwise escaped her, she was convicted of an absurd +self-importance, she discovered herself an ignorant woman availing +herself of her husband’s power and wealth to attempt presumptuous +experiments. In these moods of disillusionment, her mind went adrift and +was driven to and fro from discontent to discontent; she would find +herself taking soundings and seeking an anchorage upon the strangest, +most unfamiliar shoals. And in her relations and conflicts with her +husband there was a smouldering shame for her submissions to him that +needed only a phase of fatigue to become acute. So long as she believed +in her hostels and her mission that might be endured, but forced back +upon her more personal life its hideousness stood unclothed. Mr. Brumley +could sometimes reassure her by a rhetorical effort upon the score of +her hostels, but most of her more intimate and inner life was not, for +very plain reasons, to be shown to him. He was full of the intention of +generous self-denials, but she had long since come to measure the limits +of his self-denial....</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley was a friend in whom smouldered a love, capable she knew +quite clearly of tormented and tormenting jealousies. It would be +difficult to tell, and she certainly could never have told how far she +knew of this by instinct, how far it came out of rapid intuitions from +things seen and heard. But she understood that she dared not let a +single breath of encouragement, a hint of physical confidence, reach +that banked-up glow. A sentinel discretion in her brain was always on +the watch for that danger, and that restraint, that added deliberate +inexpressiveness, kept them most apart, when most her spirit cried out +for companionship.</p> + +<p>The common quality of all these moods of lassitude was a desolating +loneliness. She had at times a need that almost overwhelmed her to be +intimate, to be comforted and taken up out of the bleak harsh +disappointments and stresses of her customary life. At times after Sir +Isaac had either been too unloving or too loving, or when the girls or +the matrons had achieved some new tangle of mutual unreasonableness, or +when her faith failed, she would lie in the darkness of her own room +with her soul crying out for—how can one put it?—the touch of other +soul-stuff. And perhaps it was the constant drift of Mr. Brumley’s talk, +the little suggestions that fell drop by drop into her mind from his, +that disposed her to believe that this aching sense of solitude in the +void was to be assuaged by love, by some marvel of close exaltation that +one might reach through a lover. She had told Mr. Brumley long ago that +she would never let herself think of love, she still maintained to him +that attitude of resolute aloofness, but almost without noting what she +did, she was tampering now in her solitude with the seals of that locked +chamber. She became secretly curious about love. Perhaps there was +something in it of which she knew nothing. She found herself drawn +towards poetry, found a new attraction in romance; more and more did she +dally with the idea that there was some unknown beauty in the world, +something to which her eyes might presently open, something deeper and +sweeter than any thing she had ever known, close at hand, something to +put all the world into proportion for her.</p> + +<p>In a little while she no longer merely tampered with these seals, for +quite silently the door had opened and she was craning in. This love it +seemed to her might after all be so strange a thing that it goes +unsuspected and yet fills the whole world of a human soul. An odd +grotesque passage in a novel by Wilkins gave her that idea. He compared +love to electricity, of all things in the world; that throbbing life +amidst the atoms that we now draw upon for light, warmth, connexion, the +satisfaction of a thousand wants and the cure of a thousand ills. There +it is and always has been in the life of man, and yet until a century +ago it worked unsuspected, was known only for a disregarded oddity of +amber, a crackling in frost-dry hair and thunder....</p> + +<p>And then she remembered how Mr. Brumley had once broken into a panegyric +of love. “It makes life a different thing. It is like the home-coming of +something lost. All this dispersed perplexing world <i>centres</i>. Think +what true love means; to live always in the mind of another and to have +that other living always in your mind.... Only there can be no +restraints, no reserves, no admission of prior rights. One must feel +<i>safe</i> of one’s welcome and freedoms....”</p> + +<p>Wasn’t it worth the risk of almost any breach of boundaries to get to +such a light as that?...</p> + +<p>She hid these musings from every human being, she was so shy with them, +she hid them almost from herself. Rarely did they have their way with +her and when they did, presently she would accuse herself of slackness +and dismiss them and urge herself to fresh practicalities in her work. +But her work was not always at hand, Sir Isaac’s frequent relapses took +her abroad to places where she found herself in the midst of beautiful +scenery with little to do and little to distract her from these +questionings. Then such thoughts would inundate her.</p> + +<p>This feeling of the unsatisfactoriness of life, of incompleteness and +solitariness, was not of that fixed sort that definitely indicates its +demand. Under its oppression she tried the idea of love, but she also +tried certain other ideas. Very often this vague appeal had the quality +of a person, sometimes a person shrouded in night, a soundless whisper, +the unseen lover who came to Psyche in the darkness. And sometimes that +person became more distinct, less mystic and more companionable. Perhaps +because imaginations have a way of following the line of least +resistance, it took upon itself something of the form, something of the +voice and bearing of Mr. Brumley. She recoiled from her own thoughts +when she discovered herself wondering what manner of lover Mr. Brumley +might make—if suddenly she lowered her defences, freed his suffocating +pleading, took him to herself.</p> + +<p>In my anxiety to draw Mr. Brumley as he was, I have perhaps a little +neglected to show him as Lady Harman saw him. We have employed the +inconsiderate verisimilitude of a novelist repudiating romance in his +portrayal; towards her he kept a better face. He was at least a very +honest lover and there was little disingenuousness in the flow of fine +mental attitudes that met her; the thought and presence of her made him +fine; as soon could he have turned his shady side towards the sun. And +she was very ready and eager to credit him with generous qualities. We +of his club and circle, a little assisted perhaps by Max Beerbohm’s +diabolical index finger, may have found and been not unwilling to find +his face chiefly expressive of a kind of empty alertness; but when it +was turned to her its quite pleasantly modelled features glowed and it +was transfigured. So far as she was concerned, with Sir Isaac as foil, +he was real enough and good enough for her. And by the virtue of that +unlovely contrast even a certain ineffectiveness—became infinite +delicacy....</p> + +<p>The thought of Mr. Brumley in that relation and to that extent of +clearness came but rarely into her consciousness, and when it did it was +almost immediately dismissed again. It was the most fugitive of +proffered consolations. And it is to be remarked that it made its most +successful apparitions when Mr. Brumley was far away, and by some weeks +or months of separation a little blurred and forgotten....</p> + +<p>And sometimes this unrest of her spirit, this unhappiness turned her in +quite another direction as it seemed and she had thoughts of religion. +With a deepened shame she would go seeking into that other, that greater +indelicacy, from which her upbringing had divorced her mind. She would +even secretly pray. Greatly daring she fled on several occasions from +her visitation of the hostels or slipped out of her home, and evading +Mr. Brumley, went once to the Brompton Oratory, once or twice to the +Westminster Cathedral and then having discovered Saint Paul’s, to Saint +Paul’s in search of this nameless need. It was a need that no plain and +ugly little place of worship would satisfy. It was a need that demanded +choir and organ. She went to Saint Paul’s haphazard when her mood and +opportunity chanced together and there in the afternoons she found a +wonder of great music and chanting voices, and she would kneel looking +up into those divine shadows and perfect archings and feel for a time +assuaged, wonderfully assuaged. Sometimes, there, she seemed to be upon +the very verge of grasping that hidden reality which makes all things +plain. Sometimes it seemed to her that this very indulgence was the +hidden reality.</p> + +<p>She could never be sure in her mind whether these secret worshippings +helped or hampered her in her daily living. They helped her to a certain +disregard of annoyances and indignities and so far they were good, but +they also helped towards a more general indifference. She might have +told these last experiences to Mr. Brumley if she had not felt them to +be indescribable. They could not be half told. They had to be told +completely or they were altogether untellable. So she had them hid, and +at once accepted and distrusted the consolation they brought her, and +went on with the duties and philanthropies that she had chosen as her +task in the world.</p> + +<h4>§2</h4> + +<p>One day in Lent—it was nearly three years after the opening of the +first hostel—she went to Saint Paul’s.</p> + +<p>She was in a mood of great discouragement; the struggle between Mrs. +Pembrose and the Bloomsbury girls had suddenly reopened in an acute form +and Sir Isaac, who was sickening again after a period of better health, +had become strangely restless and irritable and hostile to her. He had +thwarted her unusually and taken the side of the matrons in a conflict +in which Susan Burnet’s sister Alice was now distinguished as the chief +of the malcontents. The new trouble seemed to Lady Harman to be +traceable in one direction to that ardent Unionist, Miss Babs Wheeler, +under the spell of whose round-faced, blue-eyed, distraught personality +Alice had altogether fallen. Miss Babs Wheeler was fighting for the +Union; she herself lived at Highbury with her mother, and Alice was her +chosen instrument in the hostels. The Union had always been a little +against the lady-like instincts of many of the waitresses; they felt +strikes were vulgar and impaired their social standing, and this feeling +had been greatly strengthened by irruptions of large contingents of shop +assistants from various department stores. The Bloomsbury Hostel in +particular now accommodated a hundred refined and elegant hands—they +ought rather to be called figures—from the great Oxford Street costume +house of Eustace and Mills, young people with a tall sweeping movement +and an elevation of chin that had become nearly instinctive, and a +silent yet evident intention to find the International girls “low” at +the slightest provocation. It is only too easy for poor humanity under +the irritation of that tacit superiority to respond with just the +provocation anticipated. What one must regretfully speak of as the +vulgar section of the International girls had already put itself in the +wrong by a number of aggressive acts before the case came to Lady +Harman’s attention. Mrs. Pembrose seized the occasion for weeding on a +courageous scale, and Miss Alice Burnet and three of her dearest friends +were invited to vacate their rooms “pending redecoration”.</p> + +<p>With only too much plausibility the threatened young women interpreted +this as an expulsion, and declined to remove their boxes and personal +belongings. Miss Babs Wheeler thereupon entered the Bloomsbury Hostel, +and in the teeth of three express prohibitions from Mrs. Pembrose, went +a little up the staircase and addressed a confused meeting in the +central hall. There was loud and continuous cheering for Lady Harman at +intervals during this incident. Thereupon Mrs. Pembrose demanded +sweeping dismissals, not only from the Hostels but the shops as an +alternative to her resignation, and Lady Harman found herself more +perplexed than ever....</p> + +<p>Georgina Sawbridge had contrived to mingle herself in an entirely +characteristic way in these troubles by listening for a brief period to +an abstract of her sister’s perplexities, then demanding to be made +Director-General of the whole affair, refusing to believe this simple +step impossible and retiring in great dudgeon to begin a series of +letters of even more than sisterly bitterness. And Mr. Brumley when +consulted had become dangerously sentimental. Under these circumstances +Lady Harman’s visit to Saint Paul’s had much of the quality of a flight.</p> + +<p>It was with an unwonted sense of refuge that she came from the sombre +stress and roar of London without into the large hushed spaces of the +cathedral. The door closed behind her—and all things changed. Here was +meaning, coherence, unity. Here instead of a pelting confusion of +movements and motives was a quiet concentration upon the little focus of +light about the choir, the gentle complete dominance of a voice +intoning. She slipped along the aisle and into the nave and made her way +to a seat. How good this was! Outside she had felt large, awkwardly +responsible, accessible to missiles, a distressed conspicuous thing; +within this living peace she suddenly became no more than one of a +tranquil hushed community of small black-clad Lenten people; she found a +chair and knelt and felt she vanished even from her own +consciousness....</p> + +<p>How beautiful was this place! She looked up presently at the great +shadowy arcs far above her, so easy, so gracious that it seemed they had +not so much been built by men as shaped by circling flights of angels. +The service, a little clustering advance of voices unsustained by any +organ, mingled in her mind with the many-pointed glow of candles. And +then into this great dome of worship and beauty, like a bed of voices +breaking into flower, like a springtime breeze of sound, came Allegri’s +Miserere....</p> + +<p>Her spirit clung to this mood of refuge. It seemed as though the +disorderly, pugnacious, misunderstanding universe had opened and shown +her luminous mysteries. She had a sense of penetration. All that +conflict, that jar of purposes and motives, was merely superficial; she +had left it behind her. For a time she had no sense of effort in keeping +hold of this, only of attainment, she drifted happily upon the sweet +sustaining sounds, and then—then the music ceased. She came back into +herself. Close to her a seated man stirred and sighed. She tried to get +back her hold upon that revelation but it had gone. Inexorably, opaque, +impenetrable doors closed softly on her moment of vision....</p> + +<p>All about her was the stir of departure.</p> + +<p>She walked out slowly into the cold March daylight, to the leaden greys, +the hurrying black shapes, the chaotic afternoon traffic of London. She +paused on the steps, still but half reawakened. A passing omnibus +obtruded the familiar inscription, “International Stores for Staminal +Bread.”</p> + +<p>She turned like one who remembers, to where her chauffeur stood waiting.</p> + +<h4>§3</h4> + +<p>As her motor car, with a swift smoothness, carried her along the +Embankment towards the lattice bar of Charing Cross bridge and the +remoter towers of the Houses of Parliament, grey now and unsubstantial +against the bright western sky, her mind came back slowly to her +particular issues in life. But they were no longer the big +exasperatingly important things that had seemed to hold her life by a +hundred painful hooks before she went into the cathedral. They were +small still under this dome of evening, small even by the measure of the +grey buildings to the right of her and the warm lit river to her left, +by the measure of the clustering dark barges, the teeming trams, the +streaming crowds of people, the note of the human process that sounds so +loud there. She felt small even to herself, for the touch of beauty +saves us from our own personalities, makes Gods of us to our own +littleness. She passed under the railway bridge at Charing Cross, +watched the square cluster of Westminster’s pinnacles rise above her +until they were out of sight overhead, ran up the little incline and +round into Parliament Square, and was presently out on the riverside +embankment again with the great chimneys of Chelsea smoking athwart the +evening gold. And thence with a sudden effect of skies shut and curtains +drawn she came by devious ways to the Fulham Road and the crowding +traffic of Putney Bridge and Putney High Street and so home.</p> + +<p>Snagsby, assisted by a new under-butler, a lean white-faced young man +with red hair, received her ceremoniously and hovered serviceably about +her. On the hall table lay three or four visiting cards of no +importance, some circulars and two letters. She threw the circulars +into the basket placed for them and opened her first letter. It was from +Georgina; it was on several sheets and it began, “I still cannot believe +that you refuse to give me the opportunity the director-generalship of +your hostels means to me. It is not as if you yourself had either the +time or the abilities necessary for them yourself; you haven’t, and +there is something almost dog-in-the-manger-ish to my mind in the way in +which you will not give me my chance, the chance I have always been +longing for——”</p> + +<p>At this point Lady Harman put down this letter for subsequent perusal +and took its companion, which was addressed in an unfamiliar hand. It +was from Alice Burnet and it was written in that sprawling hand and +diffused style natural to a not very well educated person with a +complicated story to tell in a state of unusual emotion. But the gist +was in the first few sentences which announced that Alice had been +evicted from the hostel. “I found my things on the pavement,” wrote +Alice.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman became aware of Snagsby still hovering at hand.</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Pembrose, my lady, came here this afternoon,” he said, when he had +secured her attention.</p> + +<p>“Came here.”</p> + +<p>“She asked for you, my lady, and when I told her you were not at ’ome, +she asked if she might see Sir Isaac.”</p> + +<p>“And did she?”</p> + +<p>“Sir Isaac saw her, my lady. They ’ad tea in the study.”</p> + +<p>“I wish I had been at home to see her,” said Lady Harman, after a brief +interval of reflection.</p> + +<p>She took her two letters and turned to the staircase. They were still in +her hand when presently she came into her husband’s study. “I don’t want +a light,” he said, as she put out her hand to the electric switch. His +voice had a note of discontent, but he was sitting in the armchair +against the window so that she could not see his features.</p> + +<p>“How are you feeling this afternoon?” she asked.</p> + +<p>“I’m feeling all right,” he answered testily. He seemed to dislike +inquiries after his health almost as much as he disliked neglect.</p> + +<p>She came and stood by him and looked out from the dusk of the room into +the garden darkening under a red-barred sky. “There is fresh trouble +between Mrs. Pembrose and the girls,” she said.</p> + +<p>“She’s been telling me about it.”</p> + +<p>“She’s been here?”</p> + +<p>“Pretty nearly an hour,” said Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman tried to imagine that hour’s interview on the spur of the +moment and failed. She came to her immediate business. “I think,” she +said, “that she has been—high-handed....”</p> + +<p>“You would,” said Sir Isaac after an interval.</p> + +<p>His tone was hostile, so hostile that it startled her.</p> + +<p>“Don’t you?”</p> + +<p>He shook his head. “My idees and your idees—or anyhow the idees you’ve +got hold of—somewhere—somehow——I don’t know where you <i>get</i> your +idees. We haven’t got the same idees, anyhow. You got to keep order in +these places—anyhow....”</p> + +<p>She perceived that she was in face of a prepared position. “I don’t +think,” she threw out, “that she does keep order. She represses—and +irritates. She gets an idea that certain girls are against her....”</p> + +<p>“And you get an idea she’s against certain girls....”</p> + +<p>“Practically she expels them. She has in fact just turned one out into +the street.”</p> + +<p>“You got to expel ’em. You got to. You can’t run these places on sugar +and water. There’s a sort of girl, a sort of man, who makes trouble. +There’s a sort makes strikes, makes mischief, gets up grievances. You +got to get rid of ’em somehow. You got to be practical somewhere. You +can’t go running these places on a lot of littry idees and all that. +It’s no good.”</p> + +<p>The phrase “littry idees” held Lady Harman’s attention for a moment. But +she could not follow it up to its implications, because she wanted to +get on with the issue she had in hand.</p> + +<p>“I want to be consulted about these expulsions. Girl after girl has been +sent away——”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac’s silhouette was obstinate.</p> + +<p>“She knows her business,” he said.</p> + +<p>He seemed to feel the need of a justification. “They shouldn’t make +trouble.”</p> + +<p>On that they rested for a little while in silence. She began to realize +with a gathering emotion that this matter was far more crucial than she +had supposed. She had been thinking only of the reinstatement of Alice +Burnet, she hadn’t yet estimated just what that overriding of Mrs. +Pembrose might involve.</p> + +<p>“I don’t want to have any girl go until I have looked into her case. +It’s——It’s vital.”</p> + +<p>“She says she can’t run the show unless she has some power.”</p> + +<p>Neither spoke for some seconds. She had the feeling of hopeless vexation +that might come to a child that has wandered into a trap. “I thought,” +she began. “These hostels——”</p> + +<p>She stopped short.</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac’s hand tightened on the arm of his chair. “I started ’em to +please you,” he said. “I didn’t start ’em to please your friends.”</p> + +<p>She turned her eyes quickly to his grey up-looking face.</p> + +<p>“I didn’t start them for you and that chap Brumley to play about with,” +he amplified. “And now you know about it, Elly.”</p> + +<p>The thing had found her unprepared. “As if——” she said at last.</p> + +<p>“As if!” he mocked.</p> + +<p>She stood quite still staring blankly at this unmanageable situation. He +was the first to break silence. He lifted one hand and dropped it again +with a dead impact on the arm of his chair. “I got the things,” he said, +“and there they are. Anyhow,—they got to be run in a proper way.”</p> + +<p>She made no immediate answer. She was seeking desperately for phrases +that escaped her. “Do you think,” she began at last. “Do you really +think——?”</p> + +<p>He stared out of the window. He answered in tones of excessive +reasonableness: “I didn’t start these hostels to be run by you and +your—friend.” He gave the sentence the quality of an ultimatum, an +irreducible minimum.</p> + +<p>“He’s my friend,” she explained, “only—because he does work—for the +hostels.”</p> + +<p>Sir Isaac seemed for a moment to attempt to consider that. Then he +relapsed upon his predetermined attitude. “God!” he exclaimed, “but I +have been a fool!”</p> + +<p>She decided that that must be ignored.</p> + +<p>“I care more for those hostels than I care for anything—anything else +in the world,” she told him. “I want them to work—I want them to +succeed.... And then——”</p> + +<p>He listened in sceptical silence.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Brumley is nothing to me but a helper. He——How can you imagine, +Isaac——? <i>I!</i> How can you dare? To suggest——!”</p> + +<p>“Very well,” said Sir Isaac and reflected and made his old familiar +sound with his teeth. “Run the hostels without him, Elly,” he +propounded. “Then I’ll believe.”</p> + +<p>She perceived that suddenly she was faced by a test or a bargain. In the +background of her mind the figure of Mr. Brumley, as she had seen him +last, in brown and with a tie rather to one side, protested vainly. She +did what she could for him on the spur of the moment. “But,” she said, +“he’s so helpful. He’s so—harmless.”</p> + +<p>“That’s as may be,” said Sir Isaac and breathed heavily.</p> + +<p>“How can one suddenly turn on a friend?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t see that you ever wanted a friend,” said Sir Isaac.</p> + +<p>“He’s been so good. It isn’t reasonable, Isaac. When anyone +has—<i>slaved</i>.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t say he isn’t a good sort of chap,” said Sir Isaac, with that +same note of almost superhuman rationality, “only—he isn’t going to run +my hostels.”</p> + +<p>“But what do you mean, Isaac?”</p> + +<p>“I mean you got to choose.”</p> + +<p>He waited as if he expected her to speak and then went on.</p> + +<p>“What it comes to is this, Elly, I’m about sick of that chap. I’m sick +of him.” He paused for a moment because his breath was short. “If you go +on with the hostels he’s—Phew—got to mizzle. <i>Then</i>—I don’t mind—if +you want that girl Burnet brought back in triumph.... It’ll make Mrs. +Pembrose chuck the whole blessed show, you know, but I say—I don’t +mind.... Only in that case, I don’t want to see or hear—or hear +about—Phew—or hear about your Mr. Brumley again. And I don’t want you +to, either.... I’m being pretty reasonable and pretty patient over this, +with people—people—talking right and left. Still,—there’s a limit.... +You’ve been going on—if I didn’t know you were an innocent—in a way +... I don’t want to talk about that. There you are, Elly.”</p> + +<p>It seemed to her that she had always expected this to happen. But +however much she had expected it to happen she was still quite +unprepared with any course of action. She wanted with an equal want of +limitation to keep both Mr. Brumley and her hostels.</p> + +<p>“But Isaac,” she said. “What do you suspect? What do you think? This +friendship has been going on——How can I end it suddenly?”</p> + +<p>“Don’t you be too innocent, Elly. You know and I know perfectly well +what there is between men and women. I don’t make out I know—anything I +don’t know. I don’t pretend you are anything but straight. Only——”</p> + +<p>He suddenly gave way to his irritation. His self-control vanished. “Damn +it!” he cried, and his panting breath quickened; “the thing’s got to +end. As if I didn’t understand! As if I didn’t understand!”</p> + +<p>She would have protested again but his voice held her. “It’s got to end. +It’s got to end. Of course you haven’t done anything, of course you +don’t know anything or think of anything.... Only here I am ill.... +<i>You</i> wouldn’t be sorry if I got worse.... <i>You</i> can wait; you can.... +All right! All right! And there you stand, irritating me—arguing. You +know—it chokes me.... Got to end, I tell you.... Got to end....”</p> + +<p>He beat at the arms of his chair and then put a hand to his throat.</p> + +<p>“Go away,” he cried to her. “Go to hell!”</p> + +<h4>§4</h4> + +<p>I cannot tell whether the reader is a person of swift decisions or one +of the newer race of doubters; if he be the latter he will the better +understand how Lady Harman did in the next two days make up her mind +definitely and conclusively to two entirely opposed lines of action. She +decided that her relations with Mr. Brumley, innocent as they were, must +cease in the interests of the hostels and her struggle with Mrs. +Pembrose, and she decided with quite equal certainty that her husband’s +sudden veto upon these relations was an intolerable tyranny that must be +resisted with passionate indignation. Also she was surprised to find how +difficult it was now to think of parting from Mr. Brumley. She made her +way to these precarious conclusions and on from whichever it was to the +other through a jungle of conflicting considerations and feelings. When +she thought of Mrs. Pembrose and more particularly of the probable share +of Mrs. Pembrose in her husband’s objection to Mr. Brumley her +indignation kindled. She perceived Mrs. Pembrose as a purely evil +personality, as a spirit of espionage, distrust, calculated treachery +and malignant intervention, as all that is evil in rule and officialism, +and a vast wave of responsibility for all those difficult and feeble and +likeable young women who elbowed and giggled and misunderstood and +blundered and tried to live happily under the commanding stresses of +Mrs. Pembrose’s austerity carried her away. She had her duty to do to +them and it overrode every other duty. If a certain separation from Mr. +Brumley’s assiduous aid was demanded, was it too great a sacrifice? And +no sooner was that settled than the whole question reopened with her +indignant demand why anyone at any price had the right to prohibit a +friendship that she had so conscientiously kept innocent. If she gave +way to this outrageous restriction to-day, what fresh limitations might +not Sir Isaac impose to-morrow? And now, she was so embarrassed in her +struggle by his health. She could not go to him and have things out with +him, she could not directly defy him, because that might mean a +suffocating seizure for him....</p> + +<p>It was entirely illogical, no doubt, but extremely natural for Lady +Harman to decide that she must communicate her decision, whichever one +it was, to Mr. Brumley in a personal interview. She wrote to him and +arranged to meet and talk to him in Kew Gardens, and with a feeling of +discretion went thither not in the automobile but in a taxi-cab. And so +delicately now were her two irrevocable decisions balanced in her mind +that twice on her way to Kew she swayed over from one to the other.</p> + +<p>Arrived at the gardens she found herself quite disinclined to begin the +announcement of either decision. She was quite exceptionally glad to see +Mr. Brumley; he was dressed in a new suit of lighter brown that became +him very well indeed, the day was warm and bright, a day of scyllas and +daffodils and snow-upon-the-mountains and green-powdered trees and frank +sunshine,—and the warmth of her feelings for her friend merged +indistinguishably with the springtime stir and glow. They walked across +the bright turf together in a state of unjustifiable happiness, purring +little admirations at the ingenious elegance of creation at its best as +gardeners set it out for our edification, and the whole tenor of Lady +Harman’s mind was to make this occasion an escape from the particular +business that had brought her thither.</p> + +<p>“We’ll look for daffodils away there towards the river under the trees,” +said Mr. Brumley, and it seemed preposterous not to enjoy those +daffodils at least before she broached the great issue between an +irresistible force and an immoveable post, that occupied her mental +background.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley was quite at his best that afternoon. He was happy, gay and +deferential; he made her realize by his every tone and movement that if +he had his choice of the whole world that afternoon and all its +inhabitants and everything, there was no other place in which he would +be, no other companion, no other occupation than this he had. He talked +of spring and flowers, quoted poets and added the treasures of a +well-stored mind to the amenities of the day. “It’s good to take a +holiday at times,” he said, and after that it was more difficult than +ever to talk about the trouble of the hostels.</p> + +<p>She was able to do this at last while they were having tea in the little +pavilion near the pagoda. It was the old pavilion, the one that Miss +Alimony’s suffragettes were afterwards to burn down in order to +demonstrate the relentless logic of women. They did it in the same +eventful week when Miss Alimony was, she declared, so nearly carried off +by White Slave Traders (disguised as nurses but, fortunately for her, +smelling of brandy) from the Brixton Temperance Bazaar. But in those +simpler days the pavilion still existed; it was tended by agreeable +waiters whose evening dress was mitigated by cheerful little straw hats, +and an enormous multitude of valiant and smutty Cockney sparrows chirped +and squeaked and begged and fluttered and fought, venturing to the very +tables and feet of the visitors. And here, a little sobered from their +first elation by much walking about and the presence of jam and +watercress, Mr. Brumley and Lady Harman could think again of the work +they were doing for the reconstitution of society upon collective lines.</p> + +<p>She began to tell him of the conflict between Mrs. Pembrose and Alice +Burnet that threatened the latter with extinction. She found it more +convenient to talk at first as though the strands of decision were still +all in her hands; afterwards she could go on to the peculiar +complication of the situation through the unexpected weakening of her +position in relation to Mrs. Pembrose. She described the particular of +the new trouble, the perplexing issue between the “lady-like,” for which +as a feminine ideal there was so much to be said on the one hand and +the “genial,” which was also an admirable quality, on the other. “You +see,” she said, “it’s very rude to cough at people and make noises, but +then it’s so difficult to explain to the others that it’s equally rude +to go past people and pretend not to see or hear them. Girls of that +sort always seem so much more underbred when they are trying to be +superior than when they are not; they get so stiff and—exasperating. +And this keeping out of the Union because it isn’t genteel, it’s the +very essence of the trouble with all these employees. We’ve discussed +that so often. Those drapers’ girls seem full of such cold, selfish, +base, pretentious notions; much more full even than our refreshment +girls. And then as if it wasn’t all difficult enough comes Mrs. Pembrose +and her wardresses doing all sorts of hard, clumsy things, and one can’t +tell them just how little they are qualified to judge good behaviour. +Their one idea of discipline is to speak to people as if they were +servants and to be distant and crushing. And long before one can do +anything come trouble and tart replies and reports of “gross +impertinence” and expulsion. We keep on expelling girls. This is the +fourth time girls have had to go. What is to become of them? I know this +Burnet girl quite well as you know. She’s just a human, kindly little +woman.... She’ll feel disgraced.... How can I let a thing like that +occur?”</p> + +<p>She spread her hands apart over the tea things.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley held his chin in his hand and said “Um” and looked judicial, +and admired Lady Harman very much, and tried to grasp the whole trouble +and wring out a solution. He made some admirable generalizations about +the development of a new social feeling in response to changed +conditions, but apart from a remark that Mrs. Pembrose was all +organization and no psychology, and quite the wrong person for her +position, he said nothing in the slightest degree contributory to the +particular drama under consideration. From that utterance, however, Lady +Harman would no doubt have gone on to the slow, tentative but finally +conclusive statement of the new difficulty that had arisen out of her +husband’s jealousy and to the discussion of the more fundamental +decisions it forced upon her, if a peculiar blight had not fallen upon +their conversation and robbed it at last of even an appearance of ease.</p> + +<p>This blight crept upon their minds.... It began first with Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley was rarely free from self-consciousness. Whenever he was in +a restaurant or any such place of assembly, then whatever he did or +whatever he said he had a kind of surplus attention, a quickening of the +ears, a wandering of the eyes, to the groups and individuals round about +him. And while he had seemed entirely occupied with Lady Harman, he had +nevertheless been aware from the outset that a dingy and +inappropriate-looking man in a bowler hat and a ready-made suit of grey, +was listening to their conversation from an adjacent table.</p> + +<p>This man had entered the pavilion oddly. He had seemed to dodge in and +hesitate. Then he had chosen his table rather deliberately—and he kept +looking, and trying not to seem to look.</p> + +<p>That was not all. Mr. Brumley’s expression was overcast by the effort to +recall something. He sat elbows on table and leant forward towards Lady +Harman and at the blossom-laden trees outside the pavilion and trifled +with two fingers on his lips and spoke between them in a voice that was +speculative and confidential and muffled and mysterious. “Where have I +seen our friend to the left before?”</p> + +<p>She had been aware of his distraction for some time.</p> + +<p>She glanced at the man and found nothing remarkable in him. She tried to +go on with her explanations.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley appeared attentive and then he said again: “But where have I +seen him?”</p> + +<p>And from that point their talk was blighted; the heart seemed to go out +of her. Mr. Brumley she felt was no longer taking in what she was +saying. At the time she couldn’t in any way share his preoccupation. But +what had been difficult before became hopeless and she could no longer +feel that even presently she would be able to make him understand the +peculiar alternatives before her. They drifted back by the great +conservatory and the ornamental water, aripple with ducks and swans, to +the gates where his taxi waited.</p> + +<p>Even then it occurred to her that she ought to tell him something of the +new situation. But now their time was running out, she would have to be +concise, and what wife could ever say abruptly and offhand that +frequent fact, “Oh, by the by, my husband is jealous of you”? Then she +had an impulse to tell him simply, without any explanation at all, that +for a time he must not meet her. And while she gathered herself together +for that, his preoccupations intervened again.</p> + +<p>He stood up in the open taxi-cab and looked back.</p> + +<p>“That chap,” he said, “is following us.”</p> + +<h4>§5</h4> + +<p>The effect of this futile interview upon Lady Harman was remarkable. She +took to herself an absurd conviction that this inconclusiveness had been +an achievement. Confronted by a dilemma, she had chosen neither horn and +assumed an attitude of inoffensive defiance. Springs in England vary +greatly in their character; some are easterly and quarrelsome, some are +north-westerly and wetly disastrous, a bleak invasion from the ocean; +some are but the broken beginnings of what are not so much years as +stretches of meteorological indecision. This particular spring was +essentially a south-westerly spring, good and friendly, showery but in +the lightest way and so softly reassuring as to be gently hilarious. It +was a spring to get into the blood of anyone; it gave Lady Harman the +feeling that Mrs. Pembrose would certainly be dealt with properly and +without unreasonable delay by Heaven, and that meanwhile it was well to +take the good things of existence as cheerfully as possible. The good +things she took were very innocent things. Feeling unusually well and +enjoying great draughts of spring air and sunshine were the chief. And +she took them only for three brief days. She carried the children down +to Black Strand to see her daffodils, and her daffodils surpassed +expectation. There was a delirium of blackthorn in the new wild garden +she had annexed from the woods and a close carpet of encouraged wild +primroses. Even the Putney garden was full of happy surprises. The +afternoon following her visit to Black Strand was so warm that she had +tea with her family in great gaiety on the lawn under the cedar. Her +offspring were unusually sweet that day, they had new blue cotton +sunbonnets, and Baby and Annette at least succeeded in being pretty. And +Millicent, under the new Swiss governess, had acquired, it seemed quite +suddenly, a glib colloquial French that somehow reconciled one to the +extreme thinness and shapelessness of her legs.</p> + +<p>Then an amazing new fact broke into this gleam of irrational +contentment, a shattering new fact. She found she was being watched. She +discovered that dingy man in the grey suit following her.</p> + +<p>The thing came upon her one afternoon. She was starting out for a talk +with Georgina. She felt so well, so confident of the world that it was +intolerable to think of Georgina harbouring resentment; she resolved she +would go and have things out with her and make it clear just how +impossible it was to impose a Director-General upon her husband. She +became aware of the man in grey as she walked down Putney Hill.</p> + +<p>She recognized him at once. He was at the corner of Redfern Road and +still unaware of her existence. He was leaning against the wall with the +habituated pose of one who is frequently obliged to lean against walls +for long periods of time, and he was conversing in an elucidatory manner +with the elderly crossing-sweeper who still braves the motor-cars at +that point. He became aware of her emergence with a start, he ceased to +lean and became observant.</p> + +<p>He was one of those men whose face suggests the word “muzzle,” with an +erect combative nose and a forward slant of the body from the rather +inturned feet. He wore an observant bowler hat a little too small for +him, and there is something about the tail of his jacket—as though he +had been docked.</p> + +<p>She passed at a stride to the acceptance of Mr. Brumley’s hitherto +incredible suspicion. Her pulses quickened. It came into her head to see +how far this man would go in following her. She went on demurely down +the hill leaving him quite unaware that she had seen him.</p> + +<p>She was amazed, and after her first belief incredulous again. Could +Isaac be going mad? At the corner she satisfied herself of the grey +man’s proximity and hailed a taxi-cab. The man in grey came nosing +across to listen to her directions and hear where she was going.</p> + +<p>“Please drive up the hill until I tell you,” she said, “slowly”—and had +the satisfaction, if one may call it a satisfaction, of seeing the grey +man dive towards the taxi-cab rank. Then she gave herself up to hasty +scheming.</p> + +<p>She turned her taxi-cab abruptly when she was certain of being followed, +went back into London, turned again and made for Westridge’s great +stores in Oxford Street. The grey man ticked up two pences in pursuit. +All along the Brompton Road he pursued her with his nose like the jib of +a ship.</p> + +<p>She was excited and interested, and not nearly so shocked as she ought +to have been. It didn’t somehow jar as it ought to have jarred with her +idea of Sir Isaac. Watched by a detective! This then was the completion +of the conditional freedom she had won by smashing that window. She +might have known....</p> + +<p>She was astonished and indignant but not nearly so entirely indignant as +a noble heroine should have been. She was certainly not nearly so +queenly as Mrs. Sawbridge would have shown herself under such +circumstances. It may have been due to some plebeian strain in her +father’s blood that over and above her proper indignation she was +extremely interested. She wanted to know what manner of man it was whose +nose was just appearing above the window edge of the taxi-cab behind. In +her inexperienced inattention she had never yet thought it was possible +that men could be hired to follow women.</p> + +<p>She sat a little forward, thinking.</p> + +<p>How far would he follow her and was it possible to shake him off? Or are +such followers so expert that once upon a scent, they are like the +Indian hunting dog, inevitable. She must see.</p> + +<p>She paid off her taxi at Westridge’s and, with the skill of her sex, +observed him by the window reflection, counting the many doors of the +establishment. Would he try to watch them all? There were also some +round the corner. No, he was going to follow her in. She had a sudden +desire, an unreasonable desire, perhaps an instinctive desire to see +that man among baby-linen. It was in her power for a time to wreathe him +with incongruous objects. This was the sort of fancy a woman must +control....</p> + +<p>He stalked her with an unreal sang-froid. He ambushed behind a display +of infants’ socks. Driven to buy by a saleswoman he appeared to be +demanding improbable varieties of infant’s socks.</p> + +<p>Are these watchers and trackers sometimes driven to buying things in +shops? If so, strange items must figure in accounts of expenses. If he +bought those socks, would they appear in Sir Isaac’s bill? She felt a +sudden craving for the sight of Sir Isaac’s Private Detective Account. +And as for the articles themselves, what became of them? She knew her +husband well enough to feel sure that if he paid for anything he would +insist upon having it. But where—where did he keep them?...</p> + +<p>But now the man’s back was turned; he was no doubt improvising paternity +and an extreme fastidiousness in baby’s footwear——Now for +it!—through departments of deepening indelicacy to the lift!</p> + +<p>But he had considered that possibility of embarrassment; he got round by +some other way, he was just in time to hear the lift gate clash upon a +calmly preoccupied lady, who still seemed as unaware of his existence +as the sky.</p> + +<p>He was running upstairs, when she descended again, without getting out; +he stopped at the sight of her shooting past him, their eyes met and +there was something appealing in his. He was very moist and his bowler +was flagging. He had evidently started out in the morning with +misconceptions about the weather. And it was clear he felt he had +blundered in coming into Westridge’s. Before she could get a taxi he was +on the pavement behind her, hot but pursuing.</p> + +<p>She sought in her mind for corner shops, with doors on this street and +that. She exercised him upon Peter Robinson’s and Debenham and +Freebody’s and then started for the monument. But on her way to the +monument she thought of the moving staircase at Harrod’s. If she went up +and down on this, she wanted to know what he would do, would he run up +and down the fixed flight? He did. Several times. And then she bethought +herself of the Piccadilly tube; she got in at Brompton road and got out +at Down Street and then got in again and went to South Kensington and he +darted in and out of adjacent carriages and got into lifts by curious +retrograde movements, being apparently under the erroneous impression +that his back was less characteristic than his face.</p> + +<p>By this time he was evidently no longer unaware of her intelligent +interest in his movements. It was clear too that he had received a false +impression that she wanted to shake him off and that all the sleuth in +him was aroused. He was dishevelled and breathing hard and getting a +little close and coarse in his pursuit, but he was sticking to it with a +puckered intensified resolution. He came up into the South Kensington +air open-mouthed and sniffing curiously, but invincible.</p> + +<p>She discovered suddenly that she did not like him at all and that she +wanted to go home.</p> + +<p>She took a taxi, and then away in the wilds of the Fulham Road she had +her crowning idea. She stopped the cab at a dingy little furniture shop, +paid the driver exorbitantly and instructed him to go right back to +South Kensington station, buy her an evening paper and return for her. +The pursuer drew up thirty yards away, fell into her trap, paid off his +cab and feigned to be interested by a small window full of penny toys, +cheap chocolate and cocoanut ice. She bought herself a brass door +weight, paid for it hastily and posted herself just within the +furniture-shop door.</p> + +<p>Then you see her cab returned suddenly and she got in at once and left +him stranded.</p> + +<p>He made a desperate effort to get a motor omnibus. She saw him rushing +across the traffic gesticulating. Then he collided with a boy with a +basket on a bicycle—not so far as she could see injuriously, they +seemed to leap at once into a crowd and an argument, and then he was +hidden from her by a bend in the road.</p> + +<h4>§6</h4> + +<p>For a little while her mind was full of fragments of speculation about +this man. Was he a married man? Was he very much away from home? What +did he earn? Were there ever disputes about his expenses?...</p> + +<p>She must ask Isaac. For she was determined to go home and challenge her +husband. She felt buoyed up by indignation and the consciousness of +innocence....</p> + +<p>And then she felt an odd little doubt whether her innocence was quite so +manifest as she supposed?</p> + +<p>That doubt grew to uncomfortable proportions.</p> + +<p>For two years she had been meeting Mr. Brumley as confidently as though +they had been invisible beings, and now she had to rack her brains for +just what might be mistaken, what might be misconstrued. There was +nothing, she told herself, nothing, it was all as open as the day, and +still her mind groped about for some forgotten circumstance, something +gone almost out of memory that would bear misinterpretation.... How +should she begin? “Isaac,” she would say, “I am being followed about +London.” Suppose he denied his complicity! How could he deny his +complicity?</p> + +<p>The cab ran in through the gates of her home and stopped at the door. +Snagsby came hurrying down the steps with a face of consternation. “Sir +Isaac, my lady, has come home in a very sad state indeed.”</p> + +<p>Beyond Snagsby in the hall she came upon a lost-looking round-eyed +Florence.</p> + +<p>“Daddy’s ill again,” said Florence.</p> + +<p>“You run to the nursery,” said Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“I thought I might help,” said Florence. “I don’t want to play with the +others.”</p> + +<p>“No, run away to the nursery.”</p> + +<p>“I want to see the ossygen let out,” said Florence petulantly to her +mother’s unsympathetic back. “I <i>never</i> see the ossygen let out. +Mum—my!...”</p> + +<p>Lady Harman found her husband on the couch in his bedroom. He was +propped up in a sitting position with every available cushion and +pillow. His coat and waistcoat and collar had been taken off, and his +shirt and vest torn open. The nearest doctor, Almsworth, was in +attendance, but oxygen had not arrived, and Sir Isaac with an expression +of bitter malignity upon his face was fighting desperately for breath. +If anything his malignity deepened at the sight of his wife. “Damned +climate,” he gasped. “Wouldn’t have come back—except for <i>your</i> +foolery.”</p> + +<p>It seemed to help him to say that. He took a deep inhalation, pressed +his lips tightly together, and nodded at her to confirm his words.</p> + +<p>“If he’s fanciful,” said Almsworth. “If in any way your presence +irritates him——”</p> + +<p>“Let her stay,” said Sir Isaac. “It—pleases her....”</p> + +<p>Almsworth’s colleague entered with the long-desired oxygen cylinder.</p> + +<h4>§7</h4> + +<p>And now every other interest in life was dominated, and every other +issue postponed by the immense urgencies of Sir Isaac’s illness. It had +entered upon a new phase. It was manifest that he could no longer live +in England, that he must go to some warm and kindly climate. There and +with due precautions and observances Almsworth assured Lady Harman he +might survive for many years—“an invalid, of course, but a capable +one.”</p> + +<p>For some time the business of the International Stores had been +preparing itself for this withdrawal. Sir Isaac had been entrusting his +managers with increased responsibility and making things ready for the +flotation of a company that would take the whole network of enterprises +off his hands. Charterson was associated with him in this, and +everything was sufficiently definite to be managed from any continental +resort to which his doctors chose to send him. They chose to send him to +Santa Margherita on the Ligurian coast near Rapallo and Porto Fino.</p> + +<p>It was old Bergener of Marienbad who chose this place. Sir Isaac had +wanted to go to Marienbad, his first resort abroad; he had a lively and +indeed an exaggerated memory of his Kur there; his growing disposition +to distrust had turned him against his London specialist, and he had +caused Lady Harman to send gigantic telegrams of inquiry to old Bergener +before he would be content. But Bergener would not have him at +Marienbad; it wasn’t the place, it was the wrong time of year, there +was the very thing for them at the Regency Hotel at Santa Margherita, an +entire dépendance in a beautiful garden right on the sea, admirably +furnished and adapted in every way to Sir Isaac’s peculiar needs. There, +declared Doctor Bergener, with a proper attendant, due precaution, +occasional oxygen and no excitement he would live indefinitely, that is +to say eight or ten years. And attracted by the eight or ten years, +which was three more than the London specialist offered, Sir Isaac +finally gave in and consented to be taken to Santa Margherita.</p> + +<p>He was to go as soon as possible, and he went in a special train and +with an immense elaboration of attendance and comforts. They took with +them a young doctor their specialist at Marienbad had recommended, a +bright young Bavarian with a perfectly square blonde head, an incurable +frock coat, the manners of the less kindly type of hotel-porter and +luggage which apparently consisted entirely of apparatus, an arsenal of +strange-shaped shining black cases. He joined them in London and went +right through with them. From Genoa at his request they obtained the +services of a trained nurse, an amiable fluent-shaped woman who knew +only Italian and German. For reasons that he declined to give, but which +apparently had something to do with the suffrage agitation, he would +have nothing to do with an English trained nurse. They had also a +stenographer and typist for Sir Isaac’s correspondence, and Lady Harman +had a secretary, a young lady with glasses named Summersly Satchell who +obviously reserved opinions of a harshly intellectual kind and had +previously been in the service of the late Lady Mary Justin. She +established unfriendly relations with the young doctor at an early date +by attempting, he said, to learn German from him. Then there was a maid +for Lady Harman, an assistant maid, and a valet-attendant for Sir Isaac. +The rest of the service in the dépendance was supplied by the hotel +management.</p> + +<p>It took some weeks to assemble this expedition and transport it to its +place of exile. Arrangements had to be made for closing the Putney house +and establishing the children with Mrs. Harman at Black Strand. There +was an exceptional amount of packing up to do, for this time Lady Harman +felt she was not coming back—it might be for years. They were going out +to warmth and sunlight for the rest of Sir Isaac’s life.</p> + +<p>He was entering upon the last phase in the slow disorganization of his +secretions and the progressive hardening of his arterial tissues that +had become his essential history. His appearance had altered much in the +last few months; he had become visibly smaller, his face in particular +had become sharp and little-featured. It was more and more necessary for +him to sit up in order to breathe with comfort, he slept sitting up; and +his senses were affected, he complained of strange tastes in his food, +quarrelled with the cook and had fits of sickness. Sometimes, latterly, +he had complained of strange sounds, like air whistling in water-pipes, +he said, that had no existence outside his ears. Moreover, he was +steadily more irritable and more suspicious and less able to control +himself when angry. A long-hidden vein of vile and abusive language, +hidden, perhaps, since the days of Mr. Gambard’s college at Ealing, came +to the surface....</p> + +<p>For some days after his seizure Lady Harman was glad to find in the +stress of his necessities an excuse for disregarding altogether the +crisis in the hostels and the perplexing problem of her relations to Mr. +Brumley. She wrote two brief notes to the latter gentleman breaking +appointments and pleading pressure of business. Then, at first during +intervals of sleeplessness at night, and presently during the day, the +danger and ugliness of her outlook began to trouble her. She was still, +she perceived, being watched, but whether that was because her husband +had failed to change whatever orders he had given, or because he was +still keeping himself minutely informed of her movements, she could not +tell. She was now constantly with him, and except for small spiteful +outbreaks and occasional intervals of still and silent malignity, he +tolerated and utilized her attentions. It was clear his jealousy of her +rankled, a jealousy that made him even resentful at her health and ready +to complain of any brightness of eye or vigour of movement. They had +drifted far apart from the possibility of any real discussion of the +hostels since that talk in the twilit study. To re-open that now or to +complain of the shadowing pursuer who dogged her steps abroad would +have been to precipitate Mr. Brumley’s dismissal.</p> + +<p>Even at the cost of letting things drift at the hostels for a time she +wished to avoid that question. She would not see him, but she would not +shut the door upon him. So far as the detective was concerned she could +avoid discussion by pretending to be unaware of his existence, and as +for the hostels—the hostels each day were left until the morrow.</p> + +<p>She had learnt many things since the days of her first rebellion, and +she knew now that this matter of the man friend and nothing else in the +world is the central issue in the emancipation of women. The difficulty +of him is latent in every other restriction of which women complain. The +complete emancipation of women will come with complete emancipation of +humanity from jealousy—and no sooner. All other emancipations are shams +until a woman may go about as freely with this man as with that, and +nothing remains for emancipation when she can. In the innocence of her +first revolt this question of friendship had seemed to Lady Harman the +simplest, most reasonable of minor concessions, but that was simply +because Mr. Brumley hadn’t in those days been talking of love to her, +nor she been peeping through that once locked door. Now she perceived +how entirely Sir Isaac was by his standards justified.</p> + +<p>And after all that was recognized she remained indisposed to give up Mr. +Brumley.</p> + +<p>Yet her sense of evil things happening in the hostels was a deepening +distress. It troubled her so much that she took the disagreeable step of +asking Mrs. Pembrose to meet her at the Bloomsbury Hostel and talk out +the expulsions. She found that lady alertly defensive, entrenched behind +expert knowledge and pretension generally. Her little blue eyes seemed +harder than ever, the metallic resonance in her voice more marked, the +lisp stronger. “Of course, Lady Harman, if you were to have some +practical experience of control——” and “Three times I have given these +girls every opportunity—<i>every</i> opportunity.”</p> + +<p>“It seems so hard to drive these girls out,” repeated Lady Harman. +“They’re such human creatures.”</p> + +<p>“You have to think of the ones who remain. You must—think of the +Institution as a Whole.”</p> + +<p>“I wonder,” said Lady Harman, peering down into profundities for a +moment. Below the great truth glimmered and vanished that Institutions +were made for man and not man for Institutions.</p> + +<p>“You see,” she went on, rather to herself than to Mrs. Pembrose, “we +shall be away now for a long time.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Pembrose betrayed no excesses of grief.</p> + +<p>“It’s no good for me to interfere and then leave everything....”</p> + +<p>“That way spells utter disorganization,” said Mrs. Pembrose.</p> + +<p>“But I wish something could be done to lessen the harshness—to save +the pride—of such a girl as Alice Burnet. Practically you tell her she +isn’t fit to associate with—the other girls.”</p> + +<p>“She’s had her choice and warning after warning.”</p> + +<p>“I daresay she’s—stiff. Oh!—she’s difficult. But—being expelled is +bitter.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve not <i>expelled</i> her—technically.”</p> + +<p>“She thinks she’s expelled....”</p> + +<p>“You’d rather perhaps, Lady Harman, that <i>I</i> was expelled.”</p> + +<p>The dark lady lifted her eyes to the little bridling figure in front of +her for a moment and dropped them again. She had had an unspeakable +thought, that Mrs. Pembrose wasn’t a gentlewoman, and that this sort of +thing was a business for the gentle and for nobody else in the world. +“I’m only anxious not to hurt anyone if I can help it,” said Lady +Harman.</p> + +<p>She went on with her attempt to find some way of compromise with Mrs. +Pembrose that should save the spirit of the new malcontents. She was +much too concerned on account of the things that lay ahead of them to +care for her own pride with Mrs. Pembrose. But that good lady had all +the meagre inflexibilities of her class and at last Lady Harman ceased.</p> + +<p>She came out into the great hall of the handsome staircase, ushered by +Mrs. Pembrose as a guest is ushered by a host. She looked at the +spacious proportion of the architecture and thought of the hopes and +imaginations she had allowed to centre upon this place. It was to have +been a glowing home of happy people, and over it all brooded the chill +stillness of rules and regulations and methodical suppressions and +tactful discouragement. It was an Institution, it had the empty +orderliness of an Institution, Mrs. Pembrose had just called it an +Institution, and so Susan Burnet had prophesied it would become five +years or more ago. It was a dream subjugated to reality.</p> + +<p>So it seemed to Lady Harman must all dreams be subjugated to reality, +and the tossing spring greenery of the square, the sunshine, the tumult +of sparrows and the confused sound of distant traffic, framed as it was +in the hard dark outline of the entrance door, was as near as the +promise of joy could ever come to her. “Caught and spoilt,” that seemed +to be the very essential of her life; just as it was of these Hostels, +all the hopes, the imaginings, the sweet large anticipations, the +generosities, and stirring warm desires....</p> + +<p>Perhaps Lady Harman had been a little overworking with her preparations +for exile. Because as these unhappy thoughts passed through her mind she +realized that she was likely to weep. It was extremely undesirable that +Mrs. Pembrose should see her weeping.</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Pembrose did see her weeping, saw her dark eyes swimming with +uncontrollable tears, watched her walk past her and out, without a word +or a gesture of farewell.</p> + +<p>A kind of perplexity came upon the soul of Mrs. Pembrose. She watched +the tall figure descend to her car and enter it and dispose itself +gracefully and depart....</p> + +<p>“Hysterical,” whispered Mrs. Pembrose at last and was greatly comforted.</p> + +<p>“Childish,” said Mrs. Pembrose sipping further consolation for an +unwonted spiritual discomfort.</p> + +<p>“Besides,” said Mrs. Pembrose, “what else can one do?”</p> + +<h4>§8</h4> + +<p>Sir Isaac was greatly fatigued by his long journey to Santa Margherita +in spite of every expensive precaution to relieve him; but as soon as +the effect of that wore off, his recovery under the system Bergener had +prescribed was for a time remarkable. In a little while he was out of +bed again and in an armchair. Then the young doctor began to talk of +drives. They had no car with them, so he went into Genoa and spent an +energetic day securing the sweetest-running automobile he could find and +having it refitted for Sir Isaac’s peculiar needs. In this they made a +number of excursions through the hot beauty of the Italian afternoons, +eastward to Genoa, westward to Sestri and northward towards Montallegro. +Then they went up to the summit of the Monte de Porto Fino and Sir Isaac +descended and walked about and looked at the view and praised Bergener. +After that he was encouraged to visit the gracious old monastery that +overhangs the road to Porto Fino.</p> + +<p>At first Lady Harman did her duty of control and association with an +apathetic resignation. This had to go on—for eight or ten years. Then +her imagination began to stir again. There came a friendly letter from +Mr. Brumley and she answered with a description of the colour of the sea +and the charm and wonder of its tideless shore. The three elder children +wrote queer little letters and she answered them. She went into Rapallo +and got herself a carriageful of Tauchnitz books....</p> + +<p>That visit to the monastery on the Porto Fino road was like a pleasant +little glimpse into the brighter realities of the Middle Ages. The +place, which is used as a home of rest for convalescent Carthusians, +chanced to be quite empty and deserted; the Bavarian rang a jangling +bell again and again and at last gained the attention of an old gardener +working in the vineyard above, an unkempt, unshaven, ungainly creature +dressed in scarce decent rags of brown, who was yet courteous-minded +and, albeit crack-voiced, with his yellow-fanged mouth full of gracious +polysyllables. He hobbled off to get a key and returned through the +still heat of the cobbled yard outside the monastery gates, and took +them into cool airy rooms and showed them clean and simple cells in +shady corridors, and a delightful orangery, and led them to a beautiful +terrace that looked out upon the glowing quivering sea. And he became +very anxious to tell them something about “Francesco”; they could not +understand him until the doctor caught “Battaglia” and “Pavia” and had +an inspiration. Francis the First, he explained in clumsy but +understandable English, slept here, when he was a prisoner of the +Emperor and all was lost but honour. They looked at the slender pillars +and graceful archings about them.</p> + +<p>“Chust as it was now,” the young doctor said, his imagination touched +for a moment by mere unscientific things....</p> + +<p>They returned to their dépendance in a state of mutual contentment, Sir +Isaac scarcely tired, and Lady Harman ran upstairs to change her dusty +dress for a fresher muslin, while he went upon the doctor’s arm to the +balcony where tea was to be served to them.</p> + +<p>She came down to find her world revolutionized.</p> + +<p>On the table in the balcony the letters had been lying convenient to his +chair and he—it may be without troubling to read the address, had +seized the uppermost and torn it open.</p> + +<p>He was holding that letter now a little crumpled in his hand.</p> + +<p>She had walked close up to the table before she realized the change. The +little eyes that met hers were afire with hatred, his lips were white +and pressed together tightly, his nostrils were dilated in his struggle +for breath. “I knew it,” he gasped.</p> + +<p>She clung to her dignity though she felt suddenly weak within. “That +letter,” she said, “was addressed to me.”</p> + +<p>There was a gleam of derision in his eyes.</p> + +<p>“Look at it!” he said, and flung it towards her.</p> + +<p>“My private letter!”</p> + +<p>“Look at it!” he repeated.</p> + +<p>“What right have you to open my letter?”</p> + +<p>“Friendship!” he said. “Harmless friendship! Look what your—friend +says!”</p> + +<p>“Whatever there was in my letter——”</p> + +<p>“Oh!” cried Sir Isaac. “Don’t come <i>that</i> over me! Don’t you try it! +Oooh! phew—” He struggled for breath for a time. “He’s so harmless. +He’s so helpful. He——Read it, you——”</p> + +<p>He hesitated and then hurled a strange word at her.</p> + +<p>She glanced at the letter on the table but made no movement to touch it. +Then she saw that her husband’s face was reddening and that his arm +waved helplessly. His eyes, deprived abruptly of all the fury of +conflict, implored assistance.</p> + +<p>She darted to the French window that opened into the dining-room from +the balcony. “Doctor Greve!” she cried. “Doctor Greve!”</p> + +<p>Behind her the patient was making distressful sounds. “Doctor Greve,” +she screamed, and from above she heard the Bavarian shouting and then +the noise of his coming down the stairs.</p> + +<p>He shouted some direction in German as he ran past her. By an +inspiration she guessed he wanted the nurse.</p> + +<p>Miss Summersley Satchell appeared in the doorway and became helpful.</p> + +<p>Then everyone in the house seemed to be converging upon the balcony.</p> + +<p>It was an hour before Sir Isaac was in bed and sufficiently allayed for +her to go to her own room. Then she thought of Mr. Brumley’s letter, and +recovered it from the table on the balcony where it had been left in the +tumult of her husband’s seizure.</p> + +<p>It was twilight and the lights were on. She stood under one of them and +read with two moths circling about her....</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley had had a mood of impassioned declaration. He had alluded to +his “last moments of happiness at Kew.” He said he would rather kiss the +hem of her garment than be the “lord of any other woman’s life.”</p> + +<p>It was all so understandable—looked at in the proper light. It was all +so impossible to explain. And why had she let it happen? Why had she let +it happen?</p> + +<h4>§9</h4> + +<p>The young doctor was a little puzzled and rather offended by Sir Isaac’s +relapse. He seemed to consider it incorrect and was on the whole +disposed to blame Lady Harman. He might have had such a seizure, the +young doctor said, later, but not now. He would be thrown back for some +weeks, then he would begin to mend again and then whatever he said, +whatever he did, Lady Harman must do nothing to contradict him. For a +whole day Sir Isaac lay inert, in a cold sweat. He consented once to +attempt eating, but sickness overcame him. He seemed so ill that all the +young doctor’s reassurances could not convince Lady Harman that he +would recover. Then suddenly towards evening his arrested vitality was +flowing again, the young doctor ceased to be anxious for his own +assertions, the patient could sit up against a pile of pillows and +breathe and attend to affairs. There was only one affair he really +seemed anxious to attend to. His first thought when he realized his +returning strength was of his wife. But the young doctor would not let +him talk that night.</p> + +<p>Next morning he seemed still stronger. He was restless and at last +demanded Lady Harman again.</p> + +<p>This time the young doctor transmitted the message.</p> + +<p>She came to him forthwith and found him, white-faced and +unfamiliar-looking, his hands gripping the quilt and his eyes burning +with hatred.</p> + +<p>“You thought I’d forgotten,” was his greeting.</p> + +<p>“Don’t argue,” signalled the doctor from the end of Sir Isaac’s bed.</p> + +<p>“I’ve been thinking it out,” said Sir Isaac. “When you were thinking I +was too ill to think.... I know better now.”</p> + +<p>He sucked in his lips and then went on. “You’ve got to send for old +Crappen,” he said. “I’m going to alter things. I had a plan. But that +would have been letting you off too easy. See? So—you send for old +Crappen.”</p> + +<p>“What do you mean to do?”</p> + +<p>“Never you mind, my lady, never you mind. You send for old Crappen.”</p> + +<p>She waited for a moment. “Is that all you want me to do?”</p> + +<p>“I’m going to make it all right about those Hostels. Don’t you fear. You +and your Hostels! You shan’t <i>touch</i> those hostels ever again. Ever. +Mrs. Pembrose go! Why! You ain’t worthy to touch the heel of her shoe! +Mrs. Pembrose!”</p> + +<p>He gathered together all his forces and suddenly expelled with rousing +force the word he had already applied to her on the day of the +intercepted letter.</p> + +<p>He found it seemed great satisfaction in the sound and taste of it. He +repeated it thrice. “Zut,” cried the doctor, “Sssh!”</p> + +<p>Then Sir Isaac intimated his sense that calm was imperative. “You send +for Crappen,” he said with a quiet earnestness.</p> + +<p>She had become now so used to terms of infamy during the last year or +so, so accustomed to forgive them as part of his suffering, that she +seemed not to hear the insult.</p> + +<p>“Do you want him at once?” she asked. “Shall I telegraph?”</p> + +<p>“Want him at once!” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Yes, you +fool—yes. Telegraph. (Phew.) Telegraph.... I mustn’t get angry, you +know. You—telegraph.”</p> + +<p>He became suddenly still. But his eyes were active with hate.</p> + +<p>She glanced at the doctor, then moved to the door.</p> + +<p>“I will send a telegram,” she said, and left him still malignant.</p> + +<p>She closed the door softly and walked down the long cool passage towards +her own room....</p> + +<h4>§10</h4> + +<p>She had to be patient. She had to be patient. This sort of thing had to +go on from crisis to crisis. It might go on for years. She could see no +remedy and no escape.</p> + +<p>What else was there to do but be patient? It was all amazing unjust, but +to be a married woman she was beginning to understand is to be outside +justice. It is autocracy. She had once imagined otherwise, and most of +her life had been the slow unlearning of that initial error. She had +imagined that the hostels were hers simply because he had put it in that +way. They had never been anything but his, and now it was manifest he +would do what he liked with his own. The law takes no cognizance of the +unwritten terms of a domestic reconciliation.</p> + +<p>She sat down at the writing-table the hotel management had improvised +for her.</p> + +<p>She rested her chin on her hand and tried to think out her position. But +what was there to think out, seeing that nature and law and custom have +conspired together to put women altogether under the power of jealous +and acquisitive men?</p> + +<p>She drew the telegram form towards her.</p> + +<p>She was going to write a telegram that she knew would bring Crappen +headlong—to disinherit her absolutely. And—it suddenly struck her—her +husband had trusted her to write it. She was going to do what he had +trusted her to do.... But it was absurd.</p> + +<p>She sat making patterns of little dots with her pencil point upon the +telegram form, and there was a faint smile of amusement upon her lips.</p> + +<p>It was absurd—and everything was absurd. What more was to be said or +thought about it? This was the lot of woman. She had made her struggle, +rebelled her little bit of rebellion. Most other women no doubt had done +as much. It made no difference in the long run.</p> + +<p>But it was hard to give up the hostels. She had been foolish of course, +but she had not let them make her feel <i>real</i>. And she wasn’t real. She +was a wife—just <i>this</i>....</p> + +<p>She sighed and bestirred herself and began to write.</p> + +<p>Then abruptly she stopped writing.</p> + +<p>For three years her excuse for standing—everything, had been these +hostels. If now the hostels were to be wrenched out of her hands, if at +her husband’s death she was to be stripped of every possession and left +a helpless dependant on her own children, if for all her good behaviour +she was to be insulted by his frantic suspicions so long as he lived and +then disgraced by his posthumous mistrust; was there any reason why she +should go on standing anything any more? Away there in England was Mr. +Brumley, <i>her</i> man, ready with service and devotion....</p> + +<p>It was a profoundly comforting thing to think of him there as hers. He +was hers. He’d given so much and on the whole so well. If at last she +were to go to him....</p> + +<p>Yet when she came to imagine the reality of the step that was in her +mind, it took upon itself a chill and forbidding strangeness. It was +like stepping out of a familiar house into empty space. What could it be +like? To take some odd trunks with her, meet him somewhere, travel, +travel through the evening, travel past nightfall? The bleak strangeness +of that going out never to return!</p> + +<p>Her imagination could give her no figure of Mr. Brumley as intimate, as +habitual. She could as easily imagine his skeleton. He remained in all +this queer speculation something friendly, something incidental, more +than a trifle disembodied, entirely devoted of course in that hovering +way—but hovering....</p> + +<p>And she wanted to be free. It wasn’t Mr. Brumley she wanted; he was but +a means—if indeed he was a means—to an end. The person she wanted, the +person she had always wanted—was <i>herself</i>. Could Mr. Brumley give her +that? Would Mr. Brumley give her that? Was it conceivable he would carry +sacrifice to such a pitch as that?...</p> + +<p>And what nonsense was this dream! Here was her husband needing her. And +the children, whose inherent ungainliness, whose ungracious spirits +demanded a perpetual palliation of culture and instilled deportment. +What honest over-nurse was there for him or helper and guide and friend +for them, if she withdrew? There was something undignified in a flight +for mere happiness. There was something vindictive in flight from mere +insult. To go, because she was disinherited, because her hostels were +shattered,—No! And in short—she couldn’t do it....</p> + +<p>If Sir Isaac wanted to disinherit her he must disinherit her. If he +wanted to go on seizing and reading her letters, then he could. There +was nothing in the whole scheme of things to stop him if he did not want +to stop himself, nothing at all. She was caught. This was the lot of +women. She was a <i>wife</i>. What else in honour was there but to be a wife +up to the hilt?...</p> + +<p>She finished writing her telegram.</p> + +<h4>§11</h4> + +<p>Suddenly came a running in the passage outside, a rap at the door and +the nurse entered, scared, voluble in Italian, but with gestures that +translated her.</p> + +<p>Lady Harman rose, realized the gravity and urgency of the moment and +hurried with her along the passage. “Est-il mauvais?” the poor lady +attempted, “Est-il——”</p> + +<p>Oh! what words are there for “taken worse”?</p> + +<p>The woman attempted English and failed. She resorted to her native +Italian and exclaimed about the “povero signore.” She conveyed a sense +of pitiful extremities. Could it be he was in pain again? What was it? +What was it? Ten minutes ago he had been so grimly angry.</p> + +<p>At the door of the sick room the nurse laid a warning hand on the arm of +Lady Harman and made an apprehensive gesture. They entered almost +noiselessly.</p> + +<p>The Bavarian doctor turned his face from the bed at their entrance. He +was bending over Sir Isaac. He held up one hand as if to arrest them; +his other was engaged with his patient. “No,” he said. His attention +went back to the sick man, and he remained very still in that position, +leaving Lady Harman to note for the first time how broad and flat he was +both between his shoulders and between his ears. Then his face came +round slowly, he relinquished something heavy, stood up, held up a hand. +“Zu spät,” he whispered, as though he too was surprised. He sought in +his mind for English and then found his phrase: “He has gone!”</p> + +<p>“Gone?”</p> + +<p>“In one instant.”</p> + +<p>“Dead?”</p> + +<p>“So. In one instant.”</p> + +<p>On the bed lay Sir Isaac. His hand was thrust out as though he grasped +at some invisible thing. His open eyes stared hard at his wife, and as +she met his eyes he snored noisily in his nose and throat.</p> + +<p>She looked from the doctor to the nurse. It seemed to her that both +these people must be mad. Never had she seen anything less like death. +“But he’s not dead!” she protested, still standing in the middle of the +room.</p> + +<p>“It iss chust the air in his throat,” the doctor said. “He went—<i>so!</i> +In one instant as I was helping him.”</p> + +<p>He waited to see some symptom of feminine weakness. There was a quality +in his bearing—as though this event did him credit.</p> + +<p>“But—Isaac!”</p> + +<p>It was astounding. The noise in his throat ceased. But he still stared +at her. And then the nurse made a kind of assault upon Lady Harman, +caught her—even if she didn’t fall. It was no doubt the proper formula +to collapse. Or to fling oneself upon the deceased. Lady Harman resisted +this assistance, disentangled herself and remained amazed; the nurse a +little disconcerted but still ready behind her.</p> + +<p>“But,” said Lady Harman slowly, not advancing and pointing incredulously +at the unwinking stare that met her own, “is he dead? Is he really dead? +Like that?”</p> + +<p>The doctor’s gesture to the nurse betrayed his sense of the fine quick +scene this want of confidence had ruined. Under no circumstances in life +did English people really seem to know how to behave or what was +expected of them. He answered with something bordering upon irony. +“Madam,” he said, with a slight bow, “he is <i>really</i> det.”</p> + +<p>“But—like <i>that</i>!” cried Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>“Like that,” repeated the doctor.</p> + +<p>She went three steps nearer and stopped, open-eyed, wonder-struck, her +lips compressed.</p> + +<h4>§12</h4> + +<p>For a time astonishment overwhelmed her mind. She did not think of Sir +Isaac, she did not think of herself, her whole being was filled by this +marvel of death and cessation. Like <i>that</i>!</p> + +<p>Death!</p> + +<p>Never before had she seen it. She had expected an extreme dignity, an +almost ceremonial sinking back, a slow ebbing, but this was like a shot +from a bow. It stunned her. And for some time she remained stunned, +while the doctor and her secretary and the hotel people did all that +they deemed seemly on this great occasion. She let them send her into +another room; she watched with detached indifference a post-mortem +consultation in whispers with a doctor from Rapallo. Then came a great +closing of shutters. The nurse and her maid hovered about her, ready to +assist her when the sorrowing began. But she had no sorrow. The long +moments lengthened out, and he was still dead and she was still only +amazement. It seemed part of the extraordinary, the perennial +surprisingness of Sir Isaac that he should end in this way. Dead! She +didn’t feel for some hours that he had in any way ended. He had died +with such emphasis that she felt now that he was capable of anything. +What mightn’t he do next? When she heard movements in the chamber of +death it seemed to her that of all the people there, most probably it +was he who made them. She would not have been amazed if he had suddenly +appeared in the doorway of her room, anger-white and his hand +quiveringly extended, spluttering some complaint.</p> + +<p>He might have cried: “Here I am dead! And it’s <i>you</i>, damn you—it’s +<i>you</i>!”</p> + +<p>It was after distinct efforts, after repeated visits to the room in +which he lay, that she began to realize that death was death, that death +goes on, that there was no more any Sir Isaac, but only a still body he +had left behind, that was being moulded now into a stiff image of peace.</p> + +<p>Then for a time she roused herself to some control of their proceedings. +The doctor came to Lady Harman to ask her about the meals for the day, +the hotel manager was in entanglements of tactful consideration, and +then the nurse came for instructions upon some trivial matter. They had +done what usage prescribes and now, in the absence of other direction, +they appealed to her wishes. She remarked that everyone was going on +tiptoe and speaking in undertones....</p> + +<p>She realized duties. What does one have to do when one’s husband is +dead? People would have to be told. She would begin by sending off +telegrams to various people, to his mother, to her own, to his lawyer. +She remembered she had already written a telegram—that very morning to +Crappen. Should she still let the lawyer come out? He was her lawyer +now. Perhaps he had better come, but instead of that telegram, which +still lay upon the desk, she would wire the news of the death to him....</p> + +<p>Does one send to the papers? How does one send to the papers?</p> + +<p>She took Miss Summersly Satchell who was hovering outside in the +sunshine on the balcony, into her room, and sat pale and businesslike +and very careful about details, while Miss Summersly Satchell offered +practical advice and took notes and wrote telegrams and letters....</p> + +<p>There came a hush over everything as the day crept towards noon, and the +widowed woman sat in her own room with an inactive mind, watching thin +bars of sunlight burn their slow way across the floor. He was dead. It +was going on now more steadfastly than ever. He was keeping dead. He was +dead at last for good and her married life was over, that life that had +always seemed the only possible life, and this stunning incident, this +thing that was like the blinding of eyes or the bursting of eardrums, +was to be the beginning of strange new experiences.</p> + +<p>She was afraid at first at their possible strangeness. And then, you +know, in spite of a weak protesting compunction she began to feel +glad....</p> + +<p>She would not admit to herself that she was glad, that she was anything +but a woman stunned, she maintained her still despondent attitude as +long as she could, but gladness broke upon her soul as the day breaks, +and a sense of release swam up to the horizons of her mind and rose upon +her, flooding every ripple of her being, as the sun rises over water in +a clear sky. Presently she could sit there no longer, she had to stand +up. She walked to the closed Venetians to look out upon the world and +checked herself upon the very verge of flinging them open. He was dead +and it was all over for ever. Of course!—it was all over! Her marriage +was finished and done. Miss Satchell came to summon her to lunch. +Throughout that meal Lady Harman maintained a sombre bearing, and +listened with attention to the young doctor’s comments on the manner of +Sir Isaac’s going. And then,—it was impossible to go back to her room.</p> + +<p>“My head aches,” she said, “I must go down and sit by the sea,” and her +maid, a little shocked, brought her not only her sunshade, but needless +wraps—as though a new-made widow must necessarily be very sensitive to +the air. She would not let her maid come with her, she went down to the +beach alone. She sat on some rocks near the very edge of the transparent +water and fought her gladness for a time and presently yielded to it. He +was dead. One thought filled her mind, for a while so filled her mind, +that no other thought it seemed could follow it, it had an effect of +being final; it so filled her mind that it filled the whole world; the +broad sapphire distances of the sea, the lapping waves amidst the rocks +at her feet, the blazing sun, the dark headland of Porto Fino and a +small sailing boat that hung beyond came all within it like things +enclosed within a golden globe. She forgot all the days of nursing and +discomfort and pity behind her, all the duties and ceremonies before +her, forgot all the details and circumstances of life in this one +luminous realization. She was free at last. She was a free woman.</p> + +<p>Never more would he make a sound or lift a finger against her life, +never more would he contradict her or flout her; never more would he +come peeping through that papered panel between his room and hers, never +more could hateful and humiliating demands be made upon her as his +right; no more strange distresses of the body nor raw discomfort of the +nerves could trouble her—for ever. And no more detectives, no more +suspicions, no more accusations. That last blow he had meant to aim was +frozen before it could strike her. And she would have the Hostels in her +hands, secure and undisputed, she could deal as she liked with Mrs. +Pembrose, take such advisers as she pleased.... She was free.</p> + +<p>She found herself planning the regeneration of those difficult and +disputed hostels, plans that were all coloured by the sun and sky of +Italy. The manacles had gone; her hands were free. She would make this +her supreme occupation. She had learnt her lesson now she felt, she knew +something of the mingling of control and affectionate regard that was +needed to weld the warring uneasy units of her new community. And she +could do it, now as she was and unencumbered, she knew this power was +in her. When everything seemed lost to her, suddenly it was all back in +her hands....</p> + +<p>She discovered the golden serenity of her mind with a sudden +astonishment and horror. She was amazed and shocked that she should be +glad. She struggled against it and sought to subdue her spirit to a +becoming grief. One should be sorrowful at death in any case, one should +be grieved. She tried to think of Sir Isaac with affection, to recall +touching generosities, to remember kind things and tender and sweet +things and she could not do so. Nothing would come back but the white +intensities of his face, nothing but his hatred, his suspicion and his +pitiless mean mastery. From which she was freed.</p> + +<p>She could not feel sorry. She did her utmost to feel sorry; presently +when she went back into the dépendance, she had to check her feet to a +regretful pace; she dreaded the eyes of the hotel visitors she passed in +the garden lest they should detect the liberation of her soul. But the +hotel visitors being English were for the most part too preoccupied with +manifestations of a sympathy that should be at once heart-felt and quite +unobtrusive and altogether in the best possible taste, to have any +attention free for the soul of Lady Harman.</p> + +<p>The sense of her freedom came and went like the sunlight of a day in +spring, though she attempted her utmost to remain overcast. After dinner +that night she was invaded by a vision of the great open years before +her, at first hopeful but growing at last to fear and a wild +restlessness, so that in defiance of possible hotel opinion, she +wandered out into the moonlight and remained for a long time standing by +the boat landing, dreaming, recovering, drinking in the white serenities +of sea and sky. There was no hurry now. She might stay there as long as +she chose. She need account for herself to no one; she was free. She +might go where she pleased, do what she pleased, there was no urgency +any more....</p> + +<p>There was Mr. Brumley. Mr. Brumley made a very little figure at first in +the great prospect before her.... Then he grew larger in her thoughts. +She recalled his devotions, his services, his self-control. It was good +to have one understanding friend in this great limitless world....</p> + +<p>She would have to keep that friendship....</p> + +<p>But the glorious thing was freedom, to live untrammelled....</p> + +<p>Through the stillness a little breeze came stirring, and she awoke out +of her dream and turned and faced the shuttered dépendance. A solitary +dim light was showing on the verandah. All the rest of the building was +a shapeless mass of grey. The long pale front of the hotel seen through +a grove of orange trees was lit now at every other window with people +going to bed. Beyond, a black hillside clambered up to the edge of the +sky.</p> + +<p>Far away out of the darknesses a man with a clear strong voice was +singing to a tinkling accompaniment.</p> + +<p>In the black orange trees swam and drifted a score of fireflies, and +there was a distant clamour of nightingales when presently the unseen +voice had done.</p> + +<h4>§13</h4> + +<p>When she was in her room again she began to think of Sir Isaac and more +particularly of that last fixed stare of his....</p> + +<p>She was impelled to go and see him, to see for herself that he was +peaceful and no longer a figure of astonishment. She went slowly along +the corridor and very softly into his room—it remained, she felt, his +room. They had put candles about him, and the outline of his face, +showing dimly through the linen that veiled it, was like the face of one +who sleeps very peacefully. Very gently she uncovered it.</p> + +<p>He was not simply still, he was immensely still. He was more still and +white than the moonlight outside, remoter than moon or stars.... She +stood surveying him.</p> + +<p>He looked small and pinched and as though he had been very tired. Life +was over for him, altogether over. Never had she seen anything that +seemed so finished. Once, when she was a girl she had thought that death +might be but the opening of a door upon a more generous feast of living +than this cramped world could give, but now she knew, she saw, that +death can be death.</p> + +<p>Life was over. She felt she had never before realized the meaning of +death. That beautiful night outside, and all the beautiful nights and +days that were still to come and all the sweet and wonderful things of +God’s world could be nothing to him now for ever. There was no dream in +him that could ever live again, there was no desire, no hope in him.</p> + +<p>And had he ever had his desire or his hope, or felt the intensities of +life?</p> + +<p>There was this beauty she had been discovering in the last few years, +this mystery of love,—all that had been hidden from him.</p> + +<p>She began to realize something sorrowful and pitiful in his quality, in +his hardness, his narrowness, his bickering suspicions, his malignant +refusals of all things generous and beautiful. He made her feel, as +sometimes the children made her feel, the infinite pity of perversity +and resistance to the bounties and kindliness of life.</p> + +<p>The shadow of sorrow for him came to her at last.</p> + +<p>Yet how obstinate he looked, the little frozen white thing that had been +Sir Isaac Harman! And satisfied, wilfully satisfied; his lips were +compressed and his mouth a little drawn in at the corners as if he would +not betray any other feeling than content with the bargain he had made +with life. She did not touch him; not for the world would she ever touch +that cold waxen thing that had so lately clasped her life, but she stood +for a long time by the side of his quiet, immersed in the wonder of +death....</p> + +<p>He had been such a hard little man, such a pursuing little man, so +unreasonable and difficult a master, and now—he was such a poor +shrunken little man for all his obstinacy! She had never realized before +that he was pitiful.... Had she perhaps feared him too much, disliked +him too much to deal fairly with him? Could she have helped him? Was +there anything she could have done that she had not done? Might she not +at least have saved him his suspicion? Behind his rages, perhaps he had +been wretched.</p> + +<p>Could anyone else have helped him? If perhaps someone had loved him more +than she had ever pretended to do——</p> + +<p>How strange that she should be so intimately in this room—and still so +alien. So alien that she could feel nothing but detached wonder at his +infinite loss.... <i>Alien</i>,—that was what she had always been, a +captured alien in this man’s household,—a girl he had taken. Had he +ever suspected how alien? The true mourner, poor woman! was even now, in +charge of Cook’s couriers and interpreters, coming by express from +London, to see with her own eyes this last still phase of the son she +had borne into the world and watched and sought to serve. She was his +nearest; she indeed was the only near thing there had ever been in his +life. Once at least he must have loved her? And even she had not been +very near. No one had ever been very near his calculating suspicious +heart. Had he ever said or thought any really sweet or tender +thing—even about her? He had been generous to her in money matters, of +course,—but out of a vast abundance....</p> + +<p>How good it was to have a friend! How good it was to have even one +single friend!...</p> + +<p>At the thought of his mother Lady Harman’s mind began to drift slowly +from this stiff culmination of life before her. Presently she replaced +the white cloth upon his face and turned slowly away. Her imagination +had taken up the question of how that poor old lady was to be met, how +she was to be consoled, what was to be said to her....</p> + +<p>She began to plan arrangements. The room ought to be filled with +flowers; Mrs. Harman would expect flowers, large heavy white flowers in +great abundance. That would have to be seen to soon. One might get them +in Rapallo. And afterwards,—they would have to take him to England, and +have a fine great funeral, with every black circumstance his wealth and +his position demanded. Mrs. Harman would need that, and so it must be +done. Cabinet Ministers must follow him, members of Parliament, all +Blenkerdom feeling self-consciously and, as far as possible, deeply, the +Chartersons by way of friends, unfamiliar blood relations, a vast +retinue of employees....</p> + +<p>How could one take him? Would he have to be embalmed? Embalming!—what a +strange complement of death. She averted herself a little more from the +quiet figure on the bed, and could not turn to it again. They might come +here and do all sorts of things to it, mysterious, evil-seeming things +with knives and drugs....</p> + +<p>She must not think of that. She must learn exactly what Mrs. Harman +thought and desired. Her own apathy with regard to her husband had given +way completely now to a desire to anticipate and meet Mrs. Harman’s +every conceivable wish.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap12" id="chap12"></a>CHAPTER THE TWELFTH</h2> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Love and a Serious Lady</span></p> + +<h4>§1</h4> + +<p>The news of Sir Isaac’s death came quite unexpectedly to Mr. Brumley. He +was at the Climax Club, and rather bored; he had had some tea and dry +toast in the magazine room, and had been through the weeklies, and it +was a particularly uninteresting week. Then he came down into the hall, +looked idly at the latest bulletins upon the board, and read that “Sir +Isaac Harman died suddenly this morning at Sta. Margherita, in Ligure, +whither he had gone for rest and change.”</p> + +<p>He went on mechanically reading down the bulletin, leaving something of +himself behind him that did not read on. Then he returned to that +remarkable item and re-read it, and picked up that lost element of his +being again.</p> + +<p>He had awaited this event for so long, thought of it so often in such a +great variety of relationships, dreamt of it, hoped for it, prayed for +it, and tried not to think of it, that now it came to him in reality it +seemed to have no substance or significance whatever. He had exhausted +the fact before it happened. Since first he had thought of it there had +passed four long years, and in that time he had seen it from every +aspect, exhausted every possibility. It had become a theoretical +possibility, the basis of continually less confident, continually more +unsubstantial day dreams. Constantly he had tried not to think of it, +tried to assure himself of Sir Isaac’s invalid immortality. And here it +was!</p> + +<p>The line above it concerned an overdue ship, the line below resumed a +speech by Mr. Lloyd George. “He would challenge the honourable member to +repeat his accusations——”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley stood quite still before the mauve-coloured print letters +for some time, then went slowly across the hall into the breakfast-room, +sat down in a chair by the fireplace, and fell into a kind of +featureless thinking. Sir Isaac was dead, his wife was free, and the +long waiting that had become a habit was at an end.</p> + +<p>He had anticipated a wild elation, and for a while he was only sensible +of change, a profound change....</p> + +<p>He began to feel glad that he had waited, that she had insisted upon +patience, that there had been no disaster, no scandal between them. Now +everything was clear for them. He had served his apprenticeship. They +would be able to marry, and have no quarrel with the world.</p> + +<p>He sat with his mind forming images of the prospect before him, images +that were at first feeble and vague, and then, though still in a silly +way, more concrete and definite. At first they were quite petty +anticipations, of how he would have to tell people of his approaching +marriage, of how he would break it to George Edmund that a new mother +impended. He mused for some time upon the details of that. Should he +take her down to George Edmund’s school, and let the boy fall in love +with her—he would certainly fall in love with her—before anything +definite was said, or should he first go down alone and break the news? +Each method had its own attractive possibilities of drama.</p> + +<p>Then Mr. Brumley began to think of the letter he must write Lady +Harman—a difficult letter. One does not rejoice at death. Already Mr. +Brumley was beginning to feel a generous pity for the man he had done +his utmost not to detest for so long. Poor Sir Isaac had lived like a +blind thing in the sunlight, gathering and gathering, when the pride and +pleasure of life is to administer and spend.... Mr. Brumley fell +wondering just how she could be feeling now about her dead husband. She +might be in a phase of quite real sorrow. Probably the last illness had +tired and strained her. So that his letter would have to be very fine +and tender and soothing, free from all harshness, free from any +gladness—yet it would be hard not to let a little of his vast relief +peep out. Always hitherto, except for one or two such passionate lapses +as that which had precipitated the situation at Santa Margherita, his +epistolary manner had been formal, his matter intellectual and +philanthropic, for he had always known that no letter was absolutely +safe from Sir Isaac’s insatiable research. Should he still be formal, +still write to “Dear Lady Harman,” or suddenly break into a new warmth? +Half an hour later he was sitting in the writing-room with some few +flakes of torn paper on the carpet between his feet and the partially +filled wastepaper basket, still meditating upon this difficult issue of +the address.</p> + +<p>The letter he achieved at last began, “My dear Lady,” and went on to, “I +do not know how to begin this letter—perhaps you will find it almost as +difficult to receive....”</p> + +<p>In the small hours he woke to one of his habitual revulsions. Was that, +he asked himself, the sort of letter a lover should write to the beloved +on her release, on the sudden long prayed-for opening of a way to her, +on the end of her shameful servitude and his humiliations? He began to +recall the cold and stilted sentences of that difficult composition. The +gentility of it! All his life he had been a prey to gentility, had cast +himself free from it, only to relapse again in such fashion as this. +Would he never be human and passionate and sincere? Of course he was +glad, and she ought to be glad, that Sir Isaac, their enemy and their +prison, was dead; it was for them to rejoice together. He turned out of +bed at last, when he could lie still under these self-accusations no +longer, and wrapped himself in his warm dressing-gown and began to +write. He wrote in pencil. His fountain-pen was as usual on his night +table, but pencil seemed the better medium, and he wrote a warm and +glowing love-letter that was brought to an end at last by an almost +passionate fit of sneezing. He could find no envelopes in his bedroom +Davenport, and so he left that honest scrawl under a paper-weight, and +went back to bed greatly comforted. He re-read it in the morning with +emotion, and some slight misgivings that grew after he had despatched +it. He went to lunch at his club contemplating a third letter that +should be sane and fine and sweet, and that should rectify the confusing +effect of those two previous efforts. He wrote this letter later in the +afternoon.</p> + +<p>The days seemed very long before the answer to his first letter came to +him, and in that interval two more—aspects went to her. Her reply was +very brief, and written in the large, firm, still girlishly clear hand +that distinguished her.</p> + +<p>“<i>I was so glad of your letter. My life is so strange here, a kind of +hushed life. The nights are extraordinarily beautiful, the moon very +large and the little leaves on the trees still and black. We are coming +back to England and the funeral will be from our Putney house.</i>”</p> + +<p>That was all, but it gave Mr. Brumley an impression of her that was +exceedingly vivid and close. He thought of her, shadowy and dusky in the +moonlight until his soul swam with love for her; he had to get up and +walk about; he whispered her name very softly to himself several times; +he groaned gently, and at last he went to his little desk and wrote to +her his sixth letter—quite a beautiful letter. He told her that he +loved her, that he had always loved her since their first moment of +meeting, and he tried to express just the wave of tenderness that +inundated him at the thought of her away there in Italy. Once, he said, +he had dreamt that he would be the first to take her to Italy. Perhaps +some day they would yet be in Italy together.</p> + +<h4>§2</h4> + +<p>It was only by insensible degrees that doubt crept into Mr. Brumley’s +assurances. He did not observe at once that none of the brief letters +she wrote him responded to his second, the impassioned outbreak in +pencil. And it seemed only in keeping with the modest reserves of +womanhood that she should be restrained—she always had been restrained.</p> + +<p>She asked him not to see her at once when she returned to England; she +wanted, she said, “to see how things are,” and that fell in very well +with a certain delicacy in himself. The unburied body of Sir Isaac—it +was now provisionally embalmed—was, through some inexplicable subtlety +in his mind, a far greater barrier than the living man had ever been, +and he wanted it out of the way. And everything settled. Then, indeed, +they might meet.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile he had a curious little private conflict of his own. He was +trying not to think, day and night he was trying not to think, that Lady +Harman was now a very rich woman. Yet some portions of his brain, and he +had never suspected himself of such lawless regions, persisted in the +most vulgar and outrageous suggestions, suggestions that made his soul +blush; schemes, for example, of splendid foreign travel, of hotel staffs +bowing, of a yacht in the Mediterranean, of motor cars, of a palatial +flat in London, of a box at the opera, of artists patronized, of—most +horrible!—a baronetcy.... The more authentic parts of Mr. Brumley +cowered from and sought to escape these squalid dreams of magnificences. +It shocked and terrified him to find such things could come out in him. +He was like some pest-stricken patient, amazedly contemplating his first +symptom. His better part denied, repudiated. Of course he would never +touch, never even propose—or hint.... It was an aspect he had never +once contemplated before Sir Isaac died. He could on his honour, and +after searching his heart, say that. Yet in Pall Mall one afternoon, +suddenly, he caught himself with a thought in his head so gross, so +smug, that he uttered a faint cry and quickened his steps.... Benevolent +stepfather!</p> + +<p>These distresses begot a hope. Perhaps, after all, probably, there would +be some settlement.... She might not be rich, not so very rich.... She +might be tied up....</p> + +<p>He perceived in that lay his hope of salvation. Otherwise—oh, pitiful +soul!—things were possible in him; he saw only too clearly what +dreadful things were possible.</p> + +<p>If only she were disinherited, if only he might take her, stripped of +all these possessions that even in such glancing anticipations +begot——this horrid indigestion of the imagination!</p> + +<p>But then,——the Hostels?...</p> + +<p>There he stumbled against an invincible riddle!</p> + +<p>There was something dreadful about the way in which these considerations +blotted out the essential fact of separations abolished, barriers +lowered, the way to an honourable love made plain and open....</p> + +<p>The day of the funeral came at last, and Mr. Brumley tried not to think +of it, paternally, at Margate. He fled from Sir Isaac’s ultimate +withdrawal. Blenker’s obituary notice in the <i>Old Country Gazette</i> was a +masterpiece of tactful eulogy, ostentatiously loyal, yet extremely not +unmindful of the widowed proprietor, and of all the possible changes of +ownership looming ahead. Mr. Brumley, reading it in the Londonward +train, was greatly reminded of the Hostels. That was a riddle he didn’t +begin to solve. Of course, it was imperative the Hostels should +continue—imperative. Now they might run them together, openly, side by +side. But then, with such temptations to hitherto inconceivable +vulgarities. And again, insidiously, those visions returned of two +figures, manifestly opulent, grouped about a big motor car or standing +together under a large subservient archway....</p> + +<p>There was a long letter from her at his flat, a long and amazing letter. +It was so folded that his eye first caught the writing on the third +page: “<i>never marry again. It is so clear that our work needs all my +time and all my means.</i>” His eyebrows rose, his expression became +consternation; his hands trembled a little as he turned the letter over +to read it through. It was a deliberate letter. It began—</p> + +<p>“<i>Dear Mr. Brumley, I could never have imagined how much there is to do +after we are dead, and before we can be buried.</i>”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Mr. Brumley; “but what does this <i>mean</i>?”</p> + +<p>“<i>There are so many surprises</i>——”</p> + +<p>“It isn’t clear.”</p> + +<p>“<i>In ourselves and the things about us.</i>”</p> + +<p>“Of course, he would have made some complicated settlement. I might have +known.”</p> + +<p>“<i>It is the strangest thing in the world to be a widow, much stranger +than anyone could ever have supposed, to have no one to control one, no +one to think of as coming before one, no one to answer to, to be free to +plan one’s life for oneself</i>——”</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>He stood with the letter in his hand after he had read it through, +perplexed.</p> + +<p>“I can’t stand this,” he said. “I want to know.”</p> + +<p>He went to his desk and wrote:—</p> + +<p>“<i>My Dear, I want you to marry me.</i>”</p> + +<p>What more was to be said? He hesitated with this brief challenge in his +hand, was minded to telegraph it and thought of James’s novel, <i>In the +Cage</i>. Telegraph operators are only human after all. He determined upon +a special messenger and rang up his quarter valet—he shared service in +his flat—to despatch it.</p> + +<p>The messenger boy got back from Putney that evening about half-past +eight. He brought a reply in pencil.</p> + +<p>“<i>My dear Friend</i>,” she wrote. “<i>You have been so good to me, so +helpful. But I do not think that is possible. Forgive me. I want so +badly to think and here I cannot think. I have never been able to think +here. I am going down to Black Strand, and in a day or so I will write +and we will talk. Be patient with me.</i>”</p> + +<p>She signed her name “<i>Ellen</i>”; always before she had been “E. H.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” cried Mr. Brumley, “but I want to know!”</p> + +<p>He fretted for an hour and went to the telephone.</p> + +<p>Something was wrong with the telephone, it buzzed and went faint, and it +would seem that at her end she was embarrassed. “I want to come to you +now,” he said. “Impossible,” was the clearest word in her reply. Should +he go in a state of virile resolution, force her hesitation as a man +should? She might be involved there with Mrs. Harman, with all sorts of +relatives and strange people....</p> + +<p>In the end he did not go.</p> + +<h4>§3</h4> + +<p>He sat at his lunch alone next day at one of the little tables men +choose when they shun company. But to the right of him was the table of +the politicians, Adolphus Blenker and Pope of the East Purblow +Experiment, and Sir Piper Nicolls, and Munk, the editor of the <i>Daily +Rectification</i>, sage men all and deep in those mysterious manipulations +and wire-pullings by which the liberal party organization was even then +preparing for itself unusual distrust and dislike, and Horatio Blenker +was tenoring away after his manner about a case of right and conscience, +“Blenking like Winking” was how a silent member had put it once to +Brumley in a gust of hostile criticism. “Practically if she marries +again, she is a pauper,” struck on Brumley’s ears.</p> + +<p>“Of course,” said Mr. Brumley, and stopped eating.</p> + +<p>“I don’t know if you remember the particulars of the Astor case,” began +Munk....</p> + +<p>Never had Mr. Brumley come so frankly to eavesdropping. But he heard no +more of Lady Harman. Munk had to quote the rights and wrongs of various +American wills, and then Mr. Pope seized his opportunity. “At East +Purblow,” he went on, “in quite a number of instances we had to envisage +this problem of the widow——”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley pushed back his plate and strolled towards the desk.</p> + +<p>It was exactly what he might have expected, what indeed had been at the +back of his mind all along, and on the whole he was glad. Naturally she +hesitated; naturally she wanted time to think, and as naturally it was +impossible for her to tell him what it was she was thinking about.</p> + +<p>They would marry. They must marry. Love has claims supreme over all +other claims and he felt no doubt that for her his comparative poverty +of two thousand a year would mean infinitely more happiness than she +had ever known or could know with Sir Isaac’s wealth. She was reluctant, +of course, to become dependent upon him until he made it clear to her +what infinite pleasure it would be for him to supply her needs. Should +he write to her forthwith? He outlined a letter in his mind, a very fine +and generous letter, good phrases came, and then he reflected that it +would be difficult to explain to her just how he had learnt of her +peculiar situation. It would be far more seemly to wait either for a +public announcement or for some intimation from her.</p> + +<p>And then he began to realize that this meant the end of all their work +at the Hostels. In his first satisfaction at escaping that possible +great motor-car and all the superfluities of Sir Isaac’s accumulation, +he had forgotten that side of the business....</p> + +<p>When one came to think it over, the Hostels did complicate the problem. +It was ingenious of Sir Isaac....</p> + +<p>It was infernally ingenious of Sir Isaac....</p> + +<p>He could not remain in the club for fear that somebody might presently +come talking to him and interrupt his train of thought. He went out into +the streets.</p> + +<p>These Hostels upset everything.</p> + +<p>What he had supposed to be a way of escape was really the mouth of a +net.</p> + +<p>Whichever way they turned Sir Isaac crippled them....</p> + +<h4>§4</h4> + +<p>Mr. Brumley grew so angry that presently even the strangers in the +street annoyed him. He turned his face homeward. He hated dilemmas; he +wanted always to deny them, to thrust them aside, to take impossible +third courses.</p> + +<p>“For three years,” shouted Mr. Brumley, free at last in his study to +give way to his rage, “for three years I’ve been making her care for +these things. And then—and then—they turn against me!”</p> + +<p>A violent, incredibly undignified wrath against the dead man seized him. +He threw books about the room. He cried out vile insults and mingled +words of an unfortunate commonness with others of extreme rarity. He +wanted to go off to Kensal Green and hammer at the grave there and tell +the departed knight exactly what he thought of him. Then presently he +became calmer, he lit a pipe, picked up the books from the floor, and +meditated revenges upon Sir Isaac’s memory. I deplore my task of +recording these ungracious moments in Mr. Brumley’s love history. I +deplore the ease with which men pass from loving and serving women to an +almost canine fight for them. It is the ugliest essential of romance. +There is indeed much in the human heart that I deplore. But Mr. Brumley +was exasperated by disappointment. He was sore, he was raw. Driven by an +intolerable desire to explore every possibility of the situation, full +indeed of an unholy vindictiveness, he went off next morning with +strange questions to Maxwell Hartington.</p> + +<p>He put the case as a general case.</p> + +<p>“Lady Harman?” said Maxwell Hartington.</p> + +<p>“No, not particularly Lady Harman. A general principle. What are +people—what are women tied up in such a way to do?”</p> + +<p>Precedents were quoted and possibilities weighed. Mr. Brumley was +flushed, vague but persistent.</p> + +<p>“Suppose,” he said, “that they love each other passionately—and their +work, whatever it may be, almost as passionately. Is there no way——?”</p> + +<p>“He’ll have a <i>dum casta</i> clause right enough,” said Maxwell Hartington.</p> + +<p>“<i>Dum——? Dum casta!</i> But, oh! anyhow that’s out of the +question—absolutely,” said Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“Of course,” said Maxwell Hartington, leaning back in his chair and +rubbing the ball of his thumb into one eye. “Of course—nobody ever +enforces these <i>dum casta</i> clauses. There isn’t anyone to enforce them. +Ever.”—He paused and then went on, speaking apparently to the array of +black tin boxes in the dingy fixtures before him. “Who’s going to watch +you? That’s what I always ask in these cases. Unless the lady goes and +does things right under the noses of these trustees they aren’t going to +bother. Even Sir Isaac I suppose hasn’t provided funds for a private +detective. Eh? You said something?”</p> + +<p>“Nothing,” said Mr. Brumley.</p> + +<p>“Well, why should they start a perfectly rotten action like that,” +continued Maxwell Hartington, now addressing himself very earnestly to +his client, “when they’ve only got to keep quiet and do their job and be +comfortable. In these matters, Brumley, as in most matters affecting the +relations of men and women, people can do absolutely what they like +nowadays, absolutely, unless there’s someone about ready to make a row. +Then they can’t do anything. It hardly matters if they don’t do +anything. A row’s a row and damned disgraceful. If there isn’t a row, +nothing’s disgraceful. Of course all these laws and regulations and +institutions and arrangements are just ways of putting people at the +mercy of blackmailers and jealous and violent persons. One’s only got to +be a lawyer for a bit to realize that. Still that’s not <i>our</i> business. +That’s psychology. If there aren’t any jealous and violent persons +about, well, then no ordinary decent person is going to worry what you +do. No decent person ever does. So far as I can gather the only +barbarian in this case is the testator—now in Kensal Green. With +additional precautions I suppose in the way of an artistic but +thoroughly massive monument presently to be added——”</p> + +<p>“He’d—turn in his grave.”</p> + +<p>“Let him. No trustees are obliged to take action on <i>that</i>. I don’t +suppose they’d know if he did. I’ve never known a trustee bother yet +about post-mortem movements of any sort. If they did, we’d all be having +Prayers for the Dead. Fancy having to consider the subsequent +reflections of the testator!”</p> + +<p>“Well anyhow,” said Mr. Brumley, after a little pause, “such a breach, +such a proceeding is out of the question—absolutely out of the +question. It’s unthinkable.”</p> + +<p>“Then why did you come here to ask me about it?” demanded Maxwell +Hartington, beginning to rub the other eye in an audible and unpleasant +manner.</p> + +<h4>§5</h4> + +<p>When at last Mr. Brumley was face to face with Lady Harman again, a vast +mephitic disorderly creation of anticipations, intentions, resolves, +suspicions, provisional hypotheses, urgencies, vindications, and wild +and whirling stuff generally vanished out of his mind. There beside the +raised seat in the midst of the little rock garden where they had talked +together five years before, she stood waiting for him, this tall simple +woman he had always adored since their first encounter, a little strange +and shy now in her dead black uniform of widowhood, but with her honest +eyes greeting him, her friendly hands held out to him. He would have +kissed them but for the restraining presence of Snagsby who had brought +him to her; as it was it seemed to him that the phantom of a kiss passed +like a breath between them. He held her hands for a moment and +relinquished them.</p> + +<p>“It is so good to see you,” he said, and they sat down side by side. “I +am very glad to see you again.”</p> + +<p>Then for a little while they sat in silence.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley had imagined and rehearsed this meeting in many different +moods. Now, he found none of his premeditated phrases served him, and it +was the lady who undertook the difficult opening.</p> + +<p>“I could not see you before,” she began. “I did not want to see anyone.” +She sought to explain. “I was strange. Even to myself. Suddenly——” She +came to the point. “To find oneself free.... Mr. Brumley,—<i>it was +wonderful!</i>”</p> + +<p>He did not interrupt her and presently she went on again.</p> + +<p>“You see,” she said, “I have become a human being——owning myself. I +had never thought what this change would be to me.... It has been——. +It has been—like being born, when one hadn’t realized before that one +wasn’t born.... Now—now I can act. I can do this and that. I used to +feel as though I was on strings—with somebody able to pull.... There is +no one now able to pull at me, no one able to thwart me....”</p> + +<p>Her dark eyes looked among the trees and Mr. Brumley watched her +profile.</p> + +<p>“It has been like falling out of a prison from which one never hoped to +escape. I feel like a moth that has just come out of its case,—you know +how they come out, wet and weak but—released. For a time I feel I can +do nothing but sit in the sun.”</p> + +<p>“It’s queer,” she repeated, “how one tries to feel differently from what +one really feels, how one tries to feel as one supposes people expect +one to feel. At first I hardly dared look at myself.... I thought I +ought to be sorrowful and helpless.... I am not in the least sorrowful +or helpless....</p> + +<p>“But,” said Mr. Brumley, “are you so free?”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“Altogether?”</p> + +<p>“As free now—as a man.”</p> + +<p>“But——people are saying in London——. Something about a will——.”</p> + +<p>Her lips closed. Her brows and eyes became troubled. She seemed to +gather herself together for an effort and spoke at length, without +looking at him. “Mr. Brumley,” she said, “before I knew anything of the +will——. On the very evening when Isaac died——. I knew——I would +never marry again. Never.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley did not stir. He remained regarding her with a mournful +expression.</p> + +<p>“I was sure of it then,” she said, “I knew nothing about the will. I +want you to understand that—clearly.”</p> + +<p>She said no more. The still pause lengthened. She forced herself to meet +his eyes.</p> + +<p>“I thought,” he said after a silent scrutiny, and left her to imagine +what he had thought....</p> + +<p>“But,” he urged to her protracted silence, “you <i>care</i>?”</p> + +<p>She turned her face away. She looked at the hand lying idle upon her +crape-covered knee. “You are my dearest friend,” she said very softly. +“You are almost my only friend. But——. I can never go into marriage +any more....”</p> + +<p>“My dear,” he said, “the marriage you have known——.”</p> + +<p>“No,” she said. “No sort of marriage.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley heaved a profound sigh.</p> + +<p>“Before I had been a widow twenty-four hours, I began to realize that I +was an escaped woman. It wasn’t the particular marriage.... It was any +marriage.... All we women are tied. Most of us are willing to be tied +perhaps, but only as people are willing to be tied to life-belts in a +wreck—from fear from drowning. And now, I am just one of the free +women, like the women who can earn large incomes, or the women who +happen to own property. I’ve paid my penalties and my service is +over.... I knew, of course, that you would ask me this. It isn’t that I +don’t care for you, that I don’t love your company and your help—and +the love and the kindness....”</p> + +<p>“Only,” he said, “although it is the one thing I desire, although it is +the one return you can make me——. But whatever I have done—I have +done willingly....”</p> + +<p>“My dear!” cried Mr. Brumley, breaking out abruptly at a fresh point, “I +want you to marry me. I want you to be mine, to be my dear close +companion, the care of my life, the beauty in my life.... I can’t frame +sentences, my dear. You know, you know.... Since first I saw you, talked +to you in this very garden....”</p> + +<p>“I don’t forget a thing,” she answered. “It has been my life as well as +yours. Only——”</p> + +<p>The grip of her hand tightened on the back of their seat. She seemed to +be examining her thumb intently. Her voice sank to a whisper. “I won’t +marry you,” she said.</p> + +<h4>§6</h4> + +<p>Mr. Brumley leant back, then he bent forward in a desperate attitude +with his hands and arms thrust between his knees, then suddenly he +recovered, stood up and then knelt with one knee upon the seat. “What +are you going to do with me then?” he asked.</p> + +<p>“I want you to go on being my friend.”</p> + +<p>“I can’t.”</p> + +<p>“You can’t?”</p> + +<p>“No,—I’ve <i>hoped</i>.”</p> + +<p>And then with something almost querulous in his voice, he repeated, “My +dear, I want you to marry me and I want now nothing else in the world.”</p> + +<p>She was silent for a moment. “Mr. Brumley,” she said, looking up at him, +“have you no thought for our Hostels?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley as I have said hated dilemmas. He started to his feet, a man +stung. He stood in front of her and quivered extended hands at her. +“What do such things matter,” he cried, “when a man is in love?”</p> + +<p>She shrank a little from him. “But,” she asked, “haven’t they always +mattered?”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” he expostulated; “but these Hostels, these Hostels.... We’ve +started them—isn’t that good enough? We’ve set them going....”</p> + +<p>“Do you know,” she asked, “what would happen to the hostels if I were to +marry?”</p> + +<p>“They would go on,” he said.</p> + +<p>“They would go to a committee. Named. It would include Mrs. Pembrose.... +Don’t you see what would happen? He understood the case so well....”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brumley seemed suddenly shrunken. “He understood too well,” he said.</p> + +<p>He looked down at her soft eyes, at her drooping gracious form, and it +seemed to him that indeed she was made for love and that it was +unendurable that she should be content to think of friendship and +freedom as the ultimate purposes of her life....</p> + +<h4>§7</h4> + +<p>Presently these two were walking in the pine-woods beyond the garden and +Mr. Brumley was discoursing lamentably of love, this great glory that +was denied them.</p> + +<p>The shade of perplexity deepened in her dark eyes as she listened. Ever +and again she seemed about to speak and then checked herself and let him +talk on.</p> + +<p>He spoke of the closeness of love and the deep excitement of love and +how it filled the soul with pride and the world with wonder, and of the +universal right of men and women to love. He told of his dreams and his +patience, and of the stormy hopes that would not be suppressed when he +heard that Sir Isaac was dead. And as he pictured to himself the lost +delights at which he hinted, as he called back those covert +expectations, he forgot that she had declared herself resolved upon +freedom at any cost, and his rage against Sir Isaac, who had possessed +and wasted all that he would have cherished so tenderly, grew to nearly +uncontrollable proportions. “Here was your life,” he said, “your +beautiful life opening and full—full of such dear seeds of delight and +wonder, calling for love, ready for love, and there came this <i>Clutch</i>, +this Clutch that embodied all the narrow meanness of existence, and +gripped and crumpled you and spoilt you.... For I tell you my dear you +don’t know; you don’t begin to know....”</p> + +<p>He disregarded her shy eyes, giving way to his gathered wrath.</p> + +<p>“And he conquers! This little monster of meanness, he conquers to the +end—his dead hand, his dead desires, out of the grave they hold you! +Always, always, it is Clutch that conquers; the master of life! I was a +fool to dream, a fool to hope. I forgot. I thought only of you and +I—that perhaps you and I——”</p> + +<p>He did not heed her little sound of protest. He went on to a bitter +denunciation of the rule of jealousy in the world, forgetting that the +sufferer under that rule in this case was his own consuming jealousy. +That was life. Life was jealousy. It was all made up of fierce +graspings, fierce suspicions, fierce resentments; men preyed upon one +another even as the beasts they came from; reason made its crushed way +through their conflict, crippled and wounded by their blows at one +another. The best men, the wisest, the best of mankind, the stars of +human wisdom, were but half ineffectual angels carried on the shoulders +and guided by the steps of beasts. One might dream of a better world of +men, of civilizations and wisdom latent in our passion-strained minds, +of calms and courage and great heroical conquests that might come, but +they lay tens of thousands of years away and we had to live, we had to +die, no more than a herd of beasts tormented by gleams of knowledge we +could never possess, of happiness for which we had no soul. He grew more +and more eloquent as these thoughts sprang and grew in his mind.</p> + +<p>“Of course I am absurd,” he cried. “All men are absurd. Man is the +absurd animal. We have parted from primordial motives—lust and hate and +hunger and fear, and from all the tragic greatness of uncontrollable +fate and we, we’ve got nothing to replace them. We are comic—comic! +Ours is the stage of comedy in life’s history, half lit and +blinded,—and we fumble. As absurd as a kitten with its poor little head +in a bag. There’s your soul of man! Mewing. We’re all at it, the poets, +the teachers. How can anyone hope to escape? Why should I escape? What +am I that I should expect to be anything but a thwarted lover, a man +mocked by his own attempts at service? Why should I expect to discover +beauty and think that it won’t be snatched away from me? All my life is +comic—the story of this—this last absurdity could it make anything but +a comic history? and yet within me my heart is weeping tears. The +further one has gone, the deeper one wallows in the comic marsh. I am +one of the newer kind of men, one of those men who cannot sit and hug +their credit and their honour and their possessions and be content. I +have seen the light of better things than that, and because of my +vision, because of my vision and for no other reason I am the most +ridiculous of men. Always I have tried to go out from myself to the +world and give. Those early books of mine, those meretricious books in +which I pretended all was so well with the world,—I did them because I +wanted to give happiness and contentment and to be happy in the giving. +And all the watchers and the grippers, the strong silent men and the +calculating possessors of things, the masters of the world, they grinned +at me. How I lied to please! But I tell you for all their grinning, in +my very prostitution there was a better spirit than theirs in their +successes. If I had to live over again——”</p> + +<p>He left that hypothesis uncompleted.</p> + +<p>“And now,” he said, with a curious contrast between his voice and the +exaltation of his sentiments, “now that I am to be your tormented, your +emasculated lover to the very end of things, emasculated by laws I hate +and customs I hate and vile foresights that I despise——”</p> + +<p>He paused, his thread lost for a moment.</p> + +<p>“Because,” he said, “I’m going to do it. I’m going to do what I can. I’m +going to be as you wish me to be, to help you, to serve you.... If you +can’t come to meet me, I’ll meet you. I can’t help but love you, I +can’t do without you. Never in my life have I subscribed willingly to +the idea of renunciation. I’ve hated renunciation. But if there is no +other course but renunciation, renunciation let it be. I’m bitter about +this, bitter to the bottom of my soul, but at least I’ll have you know I +love you. Anyhow....”</p> + +<p>His voice broke. There were tears in his eyes.</p> + +<p>And on the very crest of these magnificent capitulations his soul +rebelled. He turned about so swiftly that for a sentence or so she did +not realize the nature of his change. Her mind remained glowing with her +distressed acceptance of his magnificent nobility.</p> + +<p>“I can’t,” he said.</p> + +<p>He flung off his surrenders as a savage might fling off a garment.</p> + +<p>“When I think of his children,” he said.</p> + +<p>“When I think of the world filled by his children, the children you have +borne him—and I—forbidden almost to touch your hand!”</p> + +<p>And flying into a passion Mr. Brumley shouted “No!”</p> + +<p>“Not even to touch your hand!”</p> + +<p>“I won’t do it,” he assured her. “I won’t do it. If I cannot be your +lover—I will go away. I will never see you again. I will do +anything—anything, rather than suffer this degradation. I will go +abroad. I will go to strange places. I will aviate. I will kill +myself—or anything, but I won’t endure this. I won’t. You see, you ask +too much, you demand more than flesh and blood can stand. I’ve done my +best to bring myself to it and I can’t. I won’t have that—that——”</p> + +<p>He waved his trembling fingers in the air. He was absolutely unable to +find an epithet pointed enough and bitter enough to stab into the memory +of the departed knight. He thought of him as marble, enthroned at Kensal +Green, with a false dignity, a false serenity, and intolerable triumph. +He wanted something, some monosyllable to expound and strip all that, +some lung-filling sky-splitting monosyllable that one could shout. His +failure increased his exasperation.</p> + +<p>“I won’t have him grinning, at me,” he said at last. “And so, it’s one +thing or the other. There’s no other choice. But I know your choice. I +see your choice. It’s good-bye—and why—why shouldn’t I go now?”</p> + +<p>He waved his arms about. He was pitifully ridiculous. His face puckered +as an ill-treated little boy’s might do. This time it wasn’t just the +pathetic twinge that had broken his voice before; he found himself to +his own amazement on the verge of loud, undignified, childish weeping. +He was weeping passionately and noisily; he was over the edge of it, and +it was too late to snatch himself back. The shame which could not +constrain him, overcame him. A preposterous upward gesture of the hands +expressed his despair. And abruptly this unhappy man of letters turned +from her and fled, the most grief-routed of creatures, whooping and +sobbing along a narrow pathway through the trees.</p> + +<h4>§8</h4> + +<p>He left behind him an exceedingly distressed and astonished lady. She +had stood with her eyes opening wider and wider at this culminating +exhibition.</p> + +<p>“But Mr. Brumley!” she had cried at last. “Mr. Brumley!”</p> + +<p>He did not seem to hear her. And now he was running and stumbling along +very fast through the trees, so that in a few minutes he would be out of +sight. Dismay came with the thought that he might presently go out of +sight altogether.</p> + +<p>For a moment she seemed to hesitate. Then with a swift decision and a +firm large grasp of the hand, she gathered up her black skirts and set +off after him along the narrow path. She ran. She ran lightly, with a +soft rhythmic fluttering of white and black. The long crêpe bands she +wore in Sir Isaac’s honour streamed out behind her.</p> + +<p>“But Mr. Brumley,” she panted unheard. “Mister Brumley!”</p> + +<p>He went from her fast, faster than she could follow, amidst the +sun-dappled pine stems, and as he went he made noises between bellowing +and soliloquy, heedless of any pursuit. All she could hear was a +heart-wringing but inexpressive “Wa, wa, wooh, wa, woo,” that burst from +him ever and again. Through a more open space among the trees she +fancied she was gaining upon him, and then as the pines came together +again and were mingled with young spruces, she perceived that he drew +away from her more and more. And he went round a curve and was hidden, +and then visible again much further off, and then hidden——.</p> + +<p>She attempted one last cry to him, but her breath failed her, and she +dropped her pace to a panting walk.</p> + +<p>Surely he would not go thus into the high road! It was unendurable to +think of him rushing out into the high road—blind with sorrow—it might +be into the very bonnet of a passing automobile.</p> + +<p>She passed beyond the pines and scanned the path ahead as far as the +stile. Then she saw him, lying where he had flung himself, face downward +among the bluebells.</p> + +<p>“Oh!” she whispered to herself, and put one hand to her heart and drew +nearer.</p> + +<p>She was flooded now with that passion of responsibility, with that wild +irrational charity which pours out of the secret depths of a woman’s +stirred being.</p> + +<p>She came up to him so lightly as to be noiseless. He did not move, and +for a moment she remained looking at him.</p> + +<p>Then she said once more, and very gently—</p> + +<p>“Mr. Brumley.”</p> + +<p>He started, listened for a second, turned over, sat up and stared at +her. His face was flushed and his hair extremely ruffled. And a slight +moisture recalled his weeping.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Brumley,” she repeated, and suddenly there were tears of honest +vexation in her voice and eyes. “You <i>know</i> I cannot do without you.”</p> + +<p>He rose to his knees, and never, it seemed to him, had she looked so +beautiful. She was a little out of breath, her dusky hair was +disordered, and there was an unwonted expression in her eyes, a strange +mingling of indignation and tenderness. For a moment they stared +unaffectedly at each other, each making discoveries.</p> + +<p>“Oh!” he sighed at last; “whatever you please, my dear. Whatever you +please. I’m going to do as you wish, if you wish it, and be your friend +and forget all this”—he waved an arm—“loving.”</p> + +<p>There were signs of a recrudescence of grief, and, inarticulate as ever, +she sank to her knees close beside him.</p> + +<p>“Let us sit quietly among these hyacinths,” said Mr. Brumley. “And then +afterwards we will go back to the house and talk ... talk about our +Hostels.”</p> + +<p>He sat back and she remained kneeling.</p> + +<p>“Of course,” he said, “I’m yours—to do just as you will with. And we’ll +work——. I’ve been a bit of a stupid brute. We’ll work. For all those +people. It will be—oh! a big work, quite a big work. Big enough for us +to thank God for. Only——.”</p> + +<p>The sight of her panting lips had filled him with a wild desire, that +set every nerve aquivering, and yet for all that had a kind of +moderation, a reasonableness. It was a sisterly thing he had in mind. He +felt that if this one desire could be satisfied, then honour would be +satisfied, that he would cease grudging Sir Isaac—anything....</p> + +<p>But for some moments he could not force himself to speak of this desire, +so great was his fear of a refusal.</p> + +<p>“There’s one thing,” he said, and all his being seemed aquiver.</p> + +<p>He looked hard at the trampled bluebells about their feet. “Never once,” +he went on, “never once in all these years—have we two +even—once—kissed.... It is such a little thing.... So much.”</p> + +<p>He stopped, breathless. He could say no more because of the beating of +his heart. And he dared not look at her face....</p> + +<p>There was a swift, soft rustling as she moved....</p> + +<p>She crouched down upon him and, taking his shoulder in her hand, upset +him neatly backwards, and, doing nothing by halves, had kissed the +astonished Mr. Brumley full upon his mouth.</p> + +<p class='center' style="margin-bottom: 5em;" >THE END</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>The following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by the +same author, and new fiction.</p> + +<h3>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</h3> + +<p><b>The War in the Air</b></p> + +<p> +<i>Illustrated. 12mo. $1.50 net.</i> +</p> + +<p>“It is not every man who can write a story of the improbable and make it +appear probable, and yet that is what Mr. Wells has done in <i>The War in +the Air</i>.”—<i>The Outlook.</i></p> + +<p>“A more entertaining and original story of the future has probably never +been written.”—<i>Town and Country.</i></p> + +<p>“ ... displays that remarkable ingenuity for which Mr. Wells is now +famous.”—<i>Washington Star.</i></p> + +<p>“Forcible in the extreme.”—<i>Baltimore Sun.</i></p> + +<p>“It is an exciting tale, a novel military history.”—<i>N.Y. Post.</i></p> + +<p><b>New Worlds for Old</b></p> + +<p> +<i>Cloth. 12mo. $1.50 net.</i><br /> +<i>Macmillan Standard Library Edition, 50 cents net.</i> +</p> + +<p>“ ... is a readable, straightaway account of Socialism it is singularly +informing and all in an undidactic way.”—<i>Chicago Evening Post.</i></p> + +<p>“The book impresses us less as a defense of Socialism than as a work of +art. In a literary sense, Mr. Wells has never done anything +better.”—<i>Argonaut.</i></p> + +<p>“ ... a very good introduction to Socialism. It will attract and +interest those who are not of that faith, and correct those who +are.”—<i>The Dial.</i></p> + +<p class="center"> +PUBLISHED BY<br /> +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> +64-66 Fifth Avenue<br /> +New York +</p> + +<hr /> + +<h3>NEW MACMILLAN FICTION</h3> + +<p><b>The Mutiny of the Elsinore</b></p> + +<p>By JACK LONDON, Author of “The Sea Wolf,” “The Call of the Wild,” +etc.</p> + +<p> +<i>With frontispiece in colors by Anton Fischer. Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net.</i> +</p> + +<p>Everyone who remembers <i>The Sea Wolf</i> with pleasure will enjoy this +vigorous narrative of a voyage from New York around Cape Horn in a large +sailing vessel. <i>The Mutiny of the Elsinore</i> is the same kind of tale as +its famous predecessor, and by those who have read it, it is pronounced +even more stirring. Mr. London is here writing of scenes and types of +people with which he is very familiar, the sea and ships and those who +live in ships. In addition to the adventure element, of which there is +an abundance of the usual London kind, a most satisfying kind it is, +too, there is a thread of romance involving a wealthy, tired young man +who takes the trip on the <i>Elsinore</i>, and the captain’s daughter. The +play of incident, on the one hand the ship’s amazing crew and on the +other the lovers, gives a story in which the interest never lags and +which demonstrates anew what a master of his art Mr. London is.</p> + +<p><b>The Three Sisters</b></p> + +<p>By MAY SINCLAIR, Author of “The Divine Fire,” “The Return of the +Prodigal,” etc.</p> + +<p> +<i>Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net.</i> +</p> + +<p>Every reader of <i>The Divine Fire</i>, in fact every reader of any of Miss +Sinclair’s books, will at once accord her unlimited praise for her +character work. <i>The Three Sisters</i> reveals her at her best. It is a +story of temperament, made evident not through tiresome analyses but by +means of a series of dramatic incidents. The sisters of the title +represent three distinct types of womankind. In their reaction under +certain conditions Miss Sinclair is not only telling a story of +tremendous interest but she is really showing a cross section of life.</p> + +<p class="center"> +PUBLISHED BY<br /> +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> +64-66 Fifth Avenue<br /> +New York +</p> + +<hr /> + +<h3>NEW MACMILLAN FICTION</h3> + +<p><b>The Rise of Jennie Cushing</b></p> + +<p>By MARY S. WATTS, Author of “Nathan Burke,” “Van Cleeve,” etc.</p> + +<p> +<i>Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net.</i> +</p> + +<p>In <i>Nathan Burke</i> Mrs. Watts told with great power the story of a man. +In this, her new book, she does much the same thing for a woman. Jennie +Cushing is an exceedingly interesting character, perhaps the most +interesting of any that Mrs. Watts has yet given us. The novel is her +life and little else, but it is a life filled with a variety of +experiences and touching closely many different strata of humankind. +Throughout it all, from the days when as a thirteen-year-old, homeless, +friendless waif, Jennie is sent to a reformatory, to the days when her +beauty is the inspiration of a successful painter, there is in the +narrative an appeal to the emotions, to the sympathy, to the affections, +that cannot be gainsaid.</p> + +<p><b>Saturday’s Child</b></p> + +<p>By KATHLEEN NORRIS, Author of “Mother,” “The Treasure,” etc.</p> + +<p> +<i>With frontispiece in colors by F. Graham Cootes. Decorated cloth,<br /> +12mo. $1.35 net.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Friday’s child is loving and giving,<br /> +Saturday’s child must work for her living.</i>” +</p> + +<p>The title of Mrs. Norris’s new novel at once indicates its theme. It is +the story of a girl who has her own way to make in the world. The +various experiences through which she passes, the various viewpoints +which she holds until she comes finally to realize that service for +others is the only thing that counts, are told with that same intimate +knowledge of character, that healthy optimism and the belief in the +ultimate goodness of mankind that have distinguished all of this +author’s writing. The book is intensely alive with human emotions. The +reader is bound to sympathize with Mrs. Norris’s people because they +seem like <i>real</i> people and because they are actuated by motives which +one is able to understand. <i>Saturday’s Child</i> is Mrs. Norris’s longest +work. Into it has gone the very best of her creative talent. It is a +volume which the many admirers of <i>Mother</i> will gladly accept.</p> + +<p class="center"> +PUBLISHED BY<br /> +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> +64-66 Fifth Avenue<br /> +New York +</p> + +<hr /> + +<h3>NEW MACMILLAN FICTION</h3> + +<p><b>Thracian Sea</b></p> + +<p>A Novel by JOHN HELSTON, Author of “Aphrodite,” etc.</p> + +<p> +<i>With frontispiece in colors. Decorated cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net.</i> +</p> + +<p>Probably no author to-day has written more powerfully or frankly on the +conventions of modern society than John Helston, who, however, has +hitherto confined himself to the medium of verse. In this novel, the +theme of which occasionally touches upon the same problems—problems +involving love, freedom of expression, the right to live one’s life in +one’s own way—he is revealed to be no less a master of the prose form +than of the poetical. While the book is one for mature minds, the skill +with which delicate situations are handled and the reserve everywhere +exhibited remove it from possible criticism even by the most exacting. +The title, it should be explained, refers to a spirited race horse with +the fortunes of which the lives of two of the leading characters are +bound up.</p> + +<p><b>Faces in the Dawn</b></p> + +<p>A Story by HERMANN HAGEDORN</p> + +<p> +<i>With frontispiece in colors. Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net.</i> +</p> + +<p>A great many people already know Mr. Hagedorn through his verse. <i>Faces +in the Dawn</i> will, however, be their introduction to him as a novelist. +The same qualities that have served to raise his poetry above the common +level help to distinguish this story of a German village. The theme of +the book is the transformation that was wrought in the lives of an +irritable, domineering German pastor and his wife through the influence +of a young German girl and her American lover. Sentiment, humor and a +human feeling, all present in just the right measure, warm the heart and +contribute to the enjoyment which the reader derives in following the +experiences of the well drawn characters.</p> + +<p class="center"> +PUBLISHED BY<br /> +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> +64-66 Fifth Avenue<br /> +New York +</p> + +<hr /> + +<h3>NEW MACMILLAN FICTION</h3> + +<p><b>Metzel Changes His Mind</b></p> + +<p>By RACHEL CAPEN SCHAUFFLER, Author of “The Goodly Fellowship.”</p> + +<p> +<i>With frontispiece. Decorated cloth, 12mo. $1.25 net.</i> +</p> + +<p>The many readers who enjoyed <i>The Goodly Fellowship</i> have been eagerly +awaiting something more from the pen of the same author. This is at last +announced. In <i>Metzel Changes His Mind</i>, Miss Schauffler strengthens the +impression made by her first book that she is a writer of marked +originality. Here again she has provided an unusual setting for her +tale. The scene is largely laid in a pathological laboratory, surely a +new background for a romance. It is a background, moreover, which is +used most effectively by Miss Schauffler in the furtherance of her plot. +Her characters, too, are as interesting as their surroundings—a woman +doctor, attractive as well as sensible, a gruff old German doctor, +suspicious of womankind, and a young American. Around these the action +centers, though half a dozen others, vividly sketched, have a hand in +the proceedings. Of course <i>Metzel Changes His Mind</i> is a love story, +but not of the ordinary type.</p> + +<p><b>Landmarks</b></p> + +<p>By E.V. LUCAS, Author of “Over Bemerton’s,” “London Lavender,” etc.</p> + +<p> +<i>Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net.</i> +</p> + +<p>Mr. Lucas’s new story combines a number of the most significant episodes +in the life of the central figure; in other words, those events of his +career from early childhood to the close of the book which have been +most instrumental in building up his character and experience. The +episodes are of every kind, serious, humorous, tender, awakening, +disillusioning, and they are narrated without any padding whatever, each +one beginning as abruptly as in life; although in none of his previous +work has the author been so minute in his social observation and +narration. A descriptive title precedes each episode, as in the +moving-picture; and it was in fact while watching a moving-picture that +Mr. Lucas had the idea of adapting its swift selective methods to +fiction.</p> + +<p class="center"> +PUBLISHED BY<br /> +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> +64-66 Fifth Avenue<br /> +New York +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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