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.

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.

She discovered suddenly that she did not like him at all and that she

wanted to go home.

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.

Then you see her cab returned suddenly and she got in at once and left

him stranded.

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.

§6

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?...

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....

And then she felt an odd little doubt whether her innocence was quite

so manifest as she supposed?

That doubt grew to uncomfortable proportions.

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?

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.”

Beyond Snagsby in the hall she came upon a lost-looking round-eyed

Florence.

“Daddy’s ill again,” said Florence.

“You run to the nursery,” said Lady Harman.

“I thought I might help,” said Florence. “I don’t want to play with the

others.”

“No, run away to the nursery.”

“I want to see the ossygen let out,” said Florence petulantly to her

mother’s unsympathetic back. “I _never_ see the ossygen let out.

Mum—my!...”

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

_your_ foolery.”

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.

“If he’s fanciful,” said Almsworth. “If in any way your presence

irritates him——”

“Let her stay,” said Sir Isaac. “It—pleases her....”

Almsworth’s colleague entered with the long-desired oxygen cylinder.

§7

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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....

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.

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.

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.

And after all that was recognized she remained indisposed to give up

Mr. Brumley.

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—_every_ opportunity.”

“It seems so hard to drive these girls out,” repeated Lady Harman.

“They’re such human creatures.”

“You have to think of the ones who remain. You must—think of the

Institution as a Whole.”

“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.

“You see,” she went on, rather to herself than to Mrs. Pembrose, “we

shall be away now for a long time.”

Mrs. Pembrose betrayed no excesses of grief.

“It’s no good for me to interfere and then leave everything....”

“That way spells utter disorganization,” said Mrs. Pembrose.

“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.”

“She’s had her choice and warning after warning.”

“I daresay she’s—stiff. Oh!—she’s difficult. But—being expelled is

bitter.”

“I’ve not _expelled_ her—technically.”

“She thinks she’s expelled....”

“You’d rather perhaps, Lady Harman, that _I_ was expelled.”

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.

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.

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.

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....

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.

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.

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....

“Hysterical,” whispered Mrs. Pembrose at last and was greatly

comforted.

“Childish,” said Mrs. Pembrose sipping further consolation for an

unwonted spiritual discomfort.

“Besides,” said Mrs. Pembrose, “what else can one do?”

§8

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.

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....

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.

“Chust as it was now,” the young doctor said, his imagination touched

for a moment by mere unscientific things....

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.

She came down to find her world revolutionized.

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.

He was holding that letter now a little crumpled in his hand.

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.

She clung to her dignity though she felt suddenly weak within. “That

letter,” she said, “was addressed to me.”

There was a gleam of derision in his eyes.

“Look at it!” he said, and flung it towards her.

“My private letter!”

“Look at it!” he repeated.

“What right have you to open my letter?”

“Friendship!” he said. “Harmless friendship! Look what your—friend

says!”

“Whatever there was in my letter——”

“Oh!” cried Sir Isaac. “Don’t come _that_ 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——”

He hesitated and then hurled a strange word at her.

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.

She darted to the French window that opened into the dining-room from

the balcony. “Doctor Greve!” she cried. “Doctor Greve!”

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.

He shouted some direction in German as he ran past her. By an

inspiration she guessed he wanted the nurse.

Miss Summersley Satchell appeared in the doorway and became helpful.

Then everyone in the house seemed to be converging upon the balcony.

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.

It was twilight and the lights were on. She stood under one of them and

read with two moths circling about her....

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.”

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?

§9

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.

Next morning he seemed still stronger. He was restless and at last

demanded Lady Harman again.

This time the young doctor transmitted the message.

She came to him forthwith and found him, white-faced and

unfamiliar-looking, his hands gripping the quilt and his eyes burning

with hatred.

“You thought I’d forgotten,” was his greeting.

“Don’t argue,” signalled the doctor from the end of Sir Isaac’s bed.

“I’ve been thinking it out,” said Sir Isaac. “When you were thinking I

was too ill to think.... I know better now.”

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.”

“What do you mean to do?”

“Never you mind, my lady, never you mind. You send for old Crappen.”

She waited for a moment. “Is that all you want me to do?”

“I’m going to make it all right about those Hostels. Don’t you fear.

You and your Hostels! You shan’t _touch_ those hostels ever again.

Ever. Mrs. Pembrose go! Why! You ain’t worthy to touch the heel of her

shoe! Mrs. Pembrose!”

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.

He found it seemed great satisfaction in the sound and taste of it. He

repeated it thrice. “Zut,” cried the doctor, “Sssh!”

Then Sir Isaac intimated his sense that calm was imperative. “You send

for Crappen,” he said with a quiet earnestness.

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.

“Do you want him at once?” she asked. “Shall I telegraph?”

“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.”

He became suddenly still. But his eyes were active with hate.

She glanced at the doctor, then moved to the door.

“I will send a telegram,” she said, and left him still malignant.

She closed the door softly and walked down the long cool passage

towards her own room....

§10

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.

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.

She sat down at the writing-table the hotel management had improvised

for her.

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?

She drew the telegram form towards her.

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.

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.

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.

But it was hard to give up the hostels. She had been foolish of course,

but she had not let them make her feel _real_. And she wasn’t real. She

was a wife—just _this_....

She sighed and bestirred herself and began to write.

Then abruptly she stopped writing.

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, _her_ man, ready with service and devotion....

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....

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!

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....

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 _herself_. 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?...

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....

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 _wife_. What else in honour was there but to be a

wife up to the hilt?...

She finished writing her telegram.

§11

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.

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——”

Oh! what words are there for “taken worse”?

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.

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.

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!”

“Gone?”

“In one instant.”

“Dead?”

“So. In one instant.”

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.

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.

“It iss chust the air in his throat,” the doctor said. “He went—_so!_

In one instant as I was helping him.”

He waited to see some symptom of feminine weakness. There was a quality

in his bearing—as though this event did him credit.

“But—Isaac!”

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.

“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?”

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 _really_ det.”

“But—like _that_!” cried Lady Harman.

“Like that,” repeated the doctor.

She went three steps nearer and stopped, open-eyed, wonder-struck, her

lips compressed.

§12

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 _that_!

Death!

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.

He might have cried: “Here I am dead! And it’s _you_, damn you—it’s

_you_!”

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.

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....

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....

Does one send to the papers? How does one send to the papers?

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....

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.

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....

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.

“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.

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.

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....

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.

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.

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....

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....

She would have to keep that friendship....

But the glorious thing was freedom, to live untrammelled....

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.

Far away out of the darknesses a man with a clear strong voice was

singing to a tinkling accompaniment.

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.

§13

When she was in her room again she began to think of Sir Isaac and more

particularly of that last fixed stare of his....

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.

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.

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.

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.

And had he ever had his desire or his hope, or felt the intensities of

life?

There was this beauty she had been discovering in the last few years,

this mystery of love,—all that had been hidden from him.

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.

The shadow of sorrow for him came to her at last.

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....

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.

Could anyone else have helped him? If perhaps someone had loved him

more than she had ever pretended to do——

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.... _Alien_,—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....

How good it was to have a friend! How good it was to have even one

single friend!...

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....

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....

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....

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.

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

Love and a Serious Lady

§1

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.”

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.

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!

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——”

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.

He had anticipated a wild elation, and for a while he was only sensible

of change, a profound change....

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.

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.

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.

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....”

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.

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.

“_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._”

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.

§2

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.

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.

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!

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....

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.

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!

But then,——the Hostels?...

There he stumbled against an invincible riddle!

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....

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 _Old Country Gazette_ 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....

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: “_never marry again. It is so clear that our work needs all

my time and all my means._” 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—

“_Dear Mr. Brumley, I could never have imagined how much there is to do

after we are dead, and before we can be buried._”

“Yes,” said Mr. Brumley; “but what does this _mean_?”

“_There are so many surprises_——”

“It isn’t clear.”

“_In ourselves and the things about us._”

“Of course, he would have made some complicated settlement. I might

have known.”

“_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_——”

He stood with the letter in his hand after he had read it through,

perplexed.

“I can’t stand this,” he said. “I want to know.”

He went to his desk and wrote:—

“_My Dear, I want you to marry me._”

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, _In the

Cage_. 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.

The messenger boy got back from Putney that evening about half-past

eight. He brought a reply in pencil.

“_My dear Friend_,” she wrote. “_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._”

She signed her name “_Ellen_”; always before she had been “E. H.”

“Yes,” cried Mr. Brumley, “but I want to know!”

He fretted for an hour and went to the telephone.

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....

In the end he did not go.

§3

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 _Daily

Rectification_, 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.

“Of course,” said Mr. Brumley, and stopped eating.

“I don’t know if you remember the particulars of the Astor case,” began

Munk....

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——”

Mr. Brumley pushed back his plate and strolled towards the desk.

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.

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.

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....

When one came to think it over, the Hostels did complicate the problem.

It was ingenious of Sir Isaac....

It was infernally ingenious of Sir Isaac....

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.

These Hostels upset everything.

What he had supposed to be a way of escape was really the mouth of a

net.

Whichever way they turned Sir Isaac crippled them....

§4

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.

“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!”

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.

He put the case as a general case.

“Lady Harman?” said Maxwell Hartington.

“No, not particularly Lady Harman. A general principle. What are

people—what are women tied up in such a way to do?”

Precedents were quoted and possibilities weighed. Mr. Brumley was

flushed, vague but persistent.

“Suppose,” he said, “that they love each other passionately—and their

work, whatever it may be, almost as passionately. Is there no way——?”

“He’ll have a _dum casta_ clause right enough,” said Maxwell

Hartington.

“_Dum——? Dum casta!_ But, oh! anyhow that’s out of the

question—absolutely,” said Mr. Brumley.

“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 _dum casta_ 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?”

“Nothing,” said Mr. Brumley.

“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 _our_

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——”

“He’d—turn in his grave.”

“Let him. No trustees are obliged to take action on _that_. 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!”

“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.”

“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.

§5

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.

“It is so good to see you,” he said, and they sat down side by side. “I

am very glad to see you again.”

Then for a little while they sat in silence.

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.

“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,—_it was wonderful!_”

He did not interrupt her and presently she went on again.

“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....”

Her dark eyes looked among the trees and Mr. Brumley watched her

profile.

“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.”

“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....

“But,” said Mr. Brumley, “are you so free?”

“Yes.”

“Altogether?”

“As free now—as a man.”

“But——people are saying in London——. Something about a will——.”

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.”

Mr. Brumley did not stir. He remained regarding her with a mournful

expression.

“I was sure of it then,” she said, “I knew nothing about the will. I

want you to understand that—clearly.”

She said no more. The still pause lengthened. She forced herself to

meet his eyes.

“I thought,” he said after a silent scrutiny, and left her to imagine

what he had thought....

“But,” he urged to her protracted silence, “you _care_?”

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....”

“My dear,” he said, “the marriage you have known——.”

“No,” she said. “No sort of marriage.”

Mr. Brumley heaved a profound sigh.

“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....”

“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....”

“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....”

“I don’t forget a thing,” she answered. “It has been my life as well as

yours. Only——”

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.

§6

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.

“I want you to go on being my friend.”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t?”

“No,—I’ve _hoped_.”

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.”

She was silent for a moment. “Mr. Brumley,” she said, looking up at

him, “have you no thought for our Hostels?”

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?”

She shrank a little from him. “But,” she asked, “haven’t they always

mattered?”

“Yes,” he expostulated; “but these Hostels, these Hostels.... We’ve

started them—isn’t that good enough? We’ve set them going....”

“Do you know,” she asked, “what would happen to the hostels if I were

to marry?”

“They would go on,” he said.

“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....”

Mr. Brumley seemed suddenly shrunken. “He understood too well,” he

said.

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....

§7

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.

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.

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 _Clutch_,

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....”

He disregarded her shy eyes, giving way to his gathered wrath.

“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——”

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.

“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——”

He left that hypothesis uncompleted.

“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——”

He paused, his thread lost for a moment.

“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....”

His voice broke. There were tears in his eyes.

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.

“I can’t,” he said.

He flung off his surrenders as a savage might fling off a garment.

“When I think of his children,” he said.

“When I think of the world filled by his children, the children you

have borne him—and I—forbidden almost to touch your hand!”

And flying into a passion Mr. Brumley shouted “No!”

“Not even to touch your hand!”

“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——”

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.

“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?”

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.

§8

He left behind him an exceedingly distressed and astonished lady. She

had stood with her eyes opening wider and wider at this culminating

exhibition.

“But Mr. Brumley!” she had cried at last. “Mr. Brumley!”

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.

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.

“But Mr. Brumley,” she panted unheard. “Mister Brumley!”

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——.

She attempted one last cry to him, but her breath failed her, and she

dropped her pace to a panting walk.

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.

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.

“Oh!” she whispered to herself, and put one hand to her heart and drew

nearer.

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.

She came up to him so lightly as to be noiseless. He did not move, and

for a moment she remained looking at him.

Then she said once more, and very gently—

“Mr. Brumley.”

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.

“Mr. Brumley,” she repeated, and suddenly there were tears of honest

vexation in her voice and eyes. “You _know_ I cannot do without you.”

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.

“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.”

There were signs of a recrudescence of grief, and, inarticulate as

ever, she sank to her knees close beside him.

“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.”

He sat back and she remained kneeling.

“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——.”

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....

But for some moments he could not force himself to speak of this

desire, so great was his fear of a refusal.

“There’s one thing,” he said, and all his being seemed aquiver.

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.”

He stopped, breathless. He could say no more because of the beating of

his heart. And he dared not look at her face....

There was a swift, soft rustling as she moved....

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.

THE END

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better.”—_Argonaut._

“ ... a very good introduction to Socialism. It will attract and

interest those who are not of that faith, and correct those who

are.”—_The Dial._

PUBLISHED BY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 Fifth Avenue

New York

NEW MACMILLAN FICTION

The Mutiny of the Elsinore

By JACK LONDON, Author of “The Sea Wolf,” “The Call of the Wild,” etc.

_With frontispiece in colors by Anton Fischer. Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net._

Everyone who remembers _The Sea Wolf_ with pleasure will enjoy this

vigorous narrative of a voyage from New York around Cape Horn in a

large sailing vessel. _The Mutiny of the Elsinore_ 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 _Elsinore_, 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.

The Three Sisters

By MAY SINCLAIR, Author of “The Divine Fire,” “The Return of the

Prodigal,” etc.

_Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net._

Every reader of _The Divine Fire_, in fact every reader of any of Miss

Sinclair’s books, will at once accord her unlimited praise for her

character work. _The Three Sisters_ 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.

PUBLISHED BY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 Fifth Avenue

New York

NEW MACMILLAN FICTION

The Rise of Jennie Cushing

By MARY S. WATTS, Author of “Nathan Burke,” “Van Cleeve,” etc.

_Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net._

In _Nathan Burke_ 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.

Saturday’s Child

By KATHLEEN NORRIS, Author of “Mother,” “The Treasure,” etc.

_With frontispiece in colors by F. Graham Cootes. Decorated cloth,

12mo. $1.35 net._

“_Friday’s child is loving and giving,

Saturday’s child must work for her living._”

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 _real_ people and because they are actuated by motives which

one is able to understand. _Saturday’s Child_ 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 _Mother_ will gladly accept.

PUBLISHED BY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 Fifth Avenue

New York

NEW MACMILLAN FICTION

Thracian Sea

A Novel by JOHN HELSTON, Author of “Aphrodite,” etc.

_With frontispiece in colors. Decorated cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net._

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.

Faces in the Dawn

A Story by HERMANN HAGEDORN

_With frontispiece in colors. Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net._

A great many people already know Mr. Hagedorn through his verse. _Faces

in the Dawn_ 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.

PUBLISHED BY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 Fifth Avenue

New York

NEW MACMILLAN FICTION

Metzel Changes His Mind

By RACHEL CAPEN SCHAUFFLER, Author of “The Goodly Fellowship.”

_With frontispiece. Decorated cloth, 12mo. $1.25 net._

The many readers who enjoyed _The Goodly Fellowship_ have been eagerly

awaiting something more from the pen of the same author. This is at

last announced. In _Metzel Changes His Mind_, 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 _Metzel Changes His

Mind_ is a love story, but not of the ordinary type.

Landmarks

By E.V. LUCAS, Author of “Over Bemerton’s,” “London Lavender,” etc.

_Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net._

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.

PUBLISHED BY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 Fifth Avenue

New York