The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman Part 17

CHAPTER THE SIXTH

THE ADVENTUROUS AFTERNOON

--1

You will perhaps remember that before I fell into this extensive digression about Lady Harman's upbringing, we had got to the entry of Mrs. Sawbridge into the house bearing a plunder of Sir Isaac's best roses. She interrupted a conversation of some importance. Those roses at this point are still unwithered and fragrant, and moreover they are arranged according to Mrs. Sawbridge's ideas of elegance about Sir Isaac's home.... And Sir Isaac, when that conversation could be renewed, categorically forbade Lady Harman to go to Lady Beach-Mandarin's lunch and Lady Harman went to Lady Beach-Mandarin's lunch.

She had some peculiar difficulties in getting to that lunch.

It is necessary to tell certain particulars. They are particulars that will distress the delicacy of Mrs. Sawbridge unspeakably if ever she chances to read this book. But a story has to be told. You see Sir Isaac Harman had never considered it advisable to give his wife a private allowance. Whatever she wished to have, he maintained, she could have.

The bill would afterwards be paid by his cheque on the first day of the month following the receipt of the bill. He found a generous pleasure in writing these cheques, and Lady Harman was magnificently housed, fed and adorned. Moreover, whenever she chose to ask for money he gave her money, usually double of what she demanded,--and often a kiss or so into the bargain. But after he had forbidden her to go to Lady Beach-Mandarin's so grave an estrangement ensued that she could not ask him for money. A door closed between them. And the crisis had come at an unfortunate moment. She possessed the sum of five shillings and eightpence.

She perceived quite early that this shortness of money would greatly embarra.s.s the rebellion she contemplated. She was exceptionally ignorant of most worldly things, but she knew there was never yet a campaign without a war chest. She felt ent.i.tled to money....

She planned several times to make a demand for replenishment with a haughty dignity; the haughty dignity was easy enough to achieve, but the demand was not. A sensitive dread of her mother's sympathetic curiosity barred all thoughts of borrowing in that direction,--she and her mother "never discussed money matters." She did not want to get Georgina into further trouble. And besides, Georgina was in Devonshire.

Even to get to Lady Beach-Mandarin's became difficult under these circ.u.mstances. She knew that Clarence, though he would take her into the country quite freely, had been instructed, on account of Sir Isaac's expressed dread of any accident happening to her while alone, not to plunge with her into the vortex of London traffic. Only under direct orders from Sir Isaac would Clarence take her down Putney Hill; though she might go up and away--to anywhere. She knew nothing of p.a.w.nshops or any a.s.sociated methods of getting cash advances, and the possibility of using the telephone to hire an automobile never occurred to her. But she was fully resolved to go. She had one advantage in the fact that Sir Isaac didn't know the precise date of the disputed engagement. When that arrived she spent a restless morning and dressed herself at last with great care. She instructed Peters, her maid, who partic.i.p.ated in these preparations with a mild astonishment, that she was going out to lunch, asked her to inform Mrs. Sawbridge of the fact and, outwardly serene, made a bolt for it down the staircase and across the hall. The great butler appeared; she had never observed how like a large note of interrogation his forward contours could be.

"I shall be out to lunch, Snagsby," she said, and went past him into the sunshine.

She left a discreetly astonished Snagsby behind her.

("Now where are we going out to lunch?" said Snagsby presently to Peters.

"I've never known her so particular with her clothes," said the maid.

"Never before--not in the same way; it's something new and special to this affair," Snagsby reflected, "I wonder now if Sir Isaac...."

"One can't help observing things," said the maid, after a pause. "Mute though we be.")

Lady Harman had the whole five and eightpence with her. She had managed to keep it intact in her jewel case, declaring she had no change when any small demands were made on her.

With an exhilaration so great that she wanted sorely to laugh aloud she walked out through her big open gates and into the general publicity of Putney Hill. Why had she not done as much years ago? How long she had been, working up to this obvious thing! She hadn't been out in such complete possession of herself since she had been a schoolgirl. She held up a beautifully gloved hand to a private motor-car going downhill and then to an engaged taxi going up, and then with a slightly dashed feeling, picked up her skirt and walked observantly downhill. Her reason dispelled a transitory impression that these two vehicles were on Sir Isaac's side against her.

There was quite a nice taxi on the rank at the bottom of the hill. The driver, a pleasant-looking young man in a white cap, seemed to have been waiting for her in particular; he met her timid invitation halfway and came across the road to her and jumped down and opened the door. He took her instructions as though they were after his own heart, and right in front of her as she sat was a kind of tin cornucopia full of artificial flowers that seemed like a particular attention to her. His fare was two and eightpence and she gave him four shillings. He seemed quite gratified by her largesse, his manner implied he had always thought as much of her, from first to last their relations had been those of sunny contentment, and it was only as she ascended the steps of Lady Beach-Mandarin's portico, that it occurred to her that she now had insufficient money for an automobile to take her home. But there were railways and buses and all sorts of possibilities; the day was an adventure; and she entered the drawing-room with a brow that was beautifully unruffled. She wanted to laugh still; it animated her eyes and lips with the pleasantest little stir you can imagine.

"A-a-a-a-a-h!" cried Lady Beach-Mandarin in a high note, and threw out--it had an effect of being quite a number of arms--as though she was one of those bra.s.s Indian G.o.ddesses one sees.

Lady Harman felt taken in at once to all that capacious bosom involved and contained....

--2

It was quite an amusing lunch. But any lunch would have been amusing to Lady Harman in the excitement of her first act of deliberate disobedience. She had never been out to lunch alone in all her life before; she experienced a kind of scared happiness, she felt like someone at Lourdes who has just thrown away crutches. She was seated between a pink young man with an eyegla.s.s whose place was labelled "Bertie Trevor" and who was otherwise unexplained, and Mr. Brumley. She was quite glad to see Mr. Brumley again, and no doubt her eyes showed it. She had hoped to see him. Miss Sharsper was sitting nearly opposite to her, a real live novelist pecking observations out of life as a hen pecks seeds amidst scenery, and next beyond was a large-headed inattentive fluffy person who was Mr. Keystone the well-known critic.

And there was Agatha Alimony under a rustling vast hat of green-black c.o.c.k's feathers next to Sir Markham Crosby, with whom she had been having an abusive controversy in the _Times_ and to whom quite elaborately she wouldn't speak, and there was Lady Viping with her lorgnette and Adolphus Blenker, Horatio's younger and if possible more gentlemanly brother--Horatio of the _Old Country Gazette_ that is--sole reminder that there was such a person as Sir Isaac in the world. Lady Beach-Mandarin's mother and the Swiss governess and the tall but r.e.t.a.r.ded daughter, Phyllis, completed the party. The reception was lively and cheering; Lady Beach-Mandarin enfolded her guests in generosities and kept them all astir like a sea-swell under a squadron, and she introduced Lady Harman to Miss Alimony by public proclamation right across the room because there were two lavish tables of bric-a-brac, a marble bust of old Beach-Mandarin and most of the rest of the party in the way. And at the table conversation was like throwing bread, you never knew whom you might hit or who might hit you. (But Lady Beach-Mandarin produced an effect of throwing whole loaves.) Bertie Trevor was one of those dancing young men who talk to a woman as though they were giving a dog biscuits, and mostly it was Mr. Brumley who did such talking as reached Lady Harman's ear.

Mr. Brumley was in very good form that day. He had contrived to remind her of all their Black Strand talk while they were still eating _Pet.i.tes Bouchees a la Reine_. "Have you found that work yet?" he asked and carried her mind to the core of her situation. Then they were s.n.a.t.c.hed up into a general discussion of Bazaars. Sir Markham spoke of a great bazaar that was to be held on behalf of one of the many Shakespear Theatre movements that were then so prevalent. Was Lady Beach-Mandarin implicated? Was anyone? He told of novel features in contemplation. He generalized about bazaars and, with an air of having forgotten the presence of Miss Alimony, glanced at the Suffrage Bazaar--it was a season of bazaars. He thought poorly of the Suffrage Bazaar. The hostess intervened promptly with anecdotes of her own cynical daring as a Bazaar-seller, Miss Sharsper offered fragments of a reminiscence about signing one of her own books for a Bookstall, Blenker told a well-known Bazaar anecdote brightly and well, and the impending skirmish was averted.

While the Bazaar talk still whacked to and fro about the table Mr.

Brumley got at Lady Harman's ear again. "Rather tantalizing these meetings at table," he said. "It's like trying to talk while you swim in a rough sea...."

Then Lady Beach-Mandarin intervened with demands for support for her own particular Bazaar project and they were eating salad before there was a chance of another word between them. "I must confess that when I want to talk to people I like to get them alone," said Mr. Brumley, and gave form to thoughts that were already on the verge of crystallization in her own mind. She had been recalling that she had liked his voice before, noting something very kindly and thoughtful and brotherly about his right profile and thinking how much an hour's talk with him would help to clear up her ideas.

"But it's so difficult to get one alone," said Lady Harman, and suddenly an idea of the utmost daring and impropriety flashed into her mind. She was on the verge of speaking it forthwith and then didn't, she met something in his eye that answered her own and then Lady Beach-Mandarin was foaming over them like a dam-burst over an American town.

"What do _you_ think, Mr. Brumley?" demanded Lady Beach-Mandarin.

"About Sir Markham's newspaper symposium. They asked him what allowance he gave his wife. Sent a prepaid reply telegram."

"But he hasn't got a wife!"

"They don't stick at a little thing like that," said Sir Markham grimly.

"I think a husband and wife ought to have everything in common like the early Christians," said Lady Beach-Mandarin. "_We_ always did," and so got the discussion afloat again off the sandbank of Mr. Brumley's inattention.

It was quite a good discussion and Lady Harman contributed an exceptionally alert and intelligent silence. Sir Markham distrusted Lady Beach-Mandarin's communism and thought that anyhow it wouldn't do for a financier or business man. He favoured an allowance. "So did Sir Joshua," said the widow Viping. This roused Agatha Alimony. "Allowance indeed!" she cried. "Is a wife to be on no better footing than a daughter? The whole question of a wife's financial autonomy needs reconsidering...."

Adolphus Blenker became learned and lucid upon Pin-money and dowry and the customs of savage tribes, and Mr. Brumley helped with corroboration....

Mr. Brumley managed to say just one other thing to Lady Harman before the lunch was over. It struck her for a moment as being irrelevant. "The gardens at Hampton Court," he said, "are delightful just now. Have you seen them? Autumnal fires. All the September perennials lifting their spears in their last great chorus. It's the _Gotterdammerung_ of the year."

She was going out of the room before she appreciated his possible intention.

Lady Beach-Mandarin delegated Sir Markham to preside over the men's cigars and bounced and slapped her four ladies upstairs to the drawing-room. Her mother disappeared and so did Phyllis and the governess. Lady Harman heard a large aside to Lady Viping: "Isn't she perfectly lovely?" glanced to discover the lorgnette in appreciative action, and then found herself drifting into a secluded window-seat and a duologue with Miss Agatha Alimony. Miss Alimony was one of that large and increasing number of dusky, grey-eyed ladies who go through life with an air of darkly incomprehensible significance. She led off Lady Harman as though she took her away to reveal unheard-of mysteries and her voice was a contralto undertone that she emphasized in some inexplicable way by the magnetic use of her eyes. Her hat of c.o.c.k's feathers which rustled like familiar spirits greatly augmented the profundity of her effect. As she spoke she glanced guardedly at the other ladies at the end of the room and from first to last she seemed undecided in her own mind whether she was a conspirator or a prophetess.

She had heard of Lady Harman before, she had been longing impatiently to talk to her all through the lunch. "You are just what we want," said Agatha. "What who want?" asked Lady Harman, struggling against the hypnotic influence of her interlocutor. "_We_," said Miss Agatha, "the Cause. The G.S.W.S.

"We want just such people as you," she repeated, and began in panting rhetorical sentences to urge the militant cause.

For her it was manifestly a struggle against "the Men." Miss Alimony had no doubts of her s.e.x. It had nothing to learn, nothing to be forgiven, it was compact of obscured and persecuted marvels, it needed only revelation. "They know Nothing," she said of the antagonist males, bringing deep notes out of the melodious caverns of her voice; "they know _Nothing_ of the Deeper Secrets of Woman's Nature." Her discourse of a general feminine insurrection fell in very closely with the spirit of Lady Harman's private revolt. "We want the Vote," said Agatha, "and we want the Vote because the Vote means Autonomy. And then----"

She paused voluminously. She had already used that word "Autonomy" at the lunch table and it came to her hearer to supply a long-felt want.

Now she poured meanings into it, and Lady Harman with each addition realized more clearly that it was still a roomy sack for more. "A woman should be absolute mistress of herself," said Miss Alimony, "absolute mistress of her person. She should be free to develop----"

Germinating phrases these were in Lady Harman's ear.

She wanted to know about the Suffrage movement from someone less generously impatient than Georgina, for Georgina always lost her temper about it and to put it fairly _ranted_, this at any rate was serene and confident, and she asked tentative ill-formed questions and felt her way among Miss Alimony's profundities. She had her doubts, her instinctive doubts about this campaign of violence, she doubted its wisdom, she doubted its rightness, and she perceived, but she found it difficult to express her perception, that Miss Alimony wasn't so much answering her objections as trying to swamp her with exalted emotion. And if there was any flaw whatever in her attention to Miss Alimony's stirring talk, it was because she was keeping a little look-out in the tail of her eye for the reappearance of the men, and more particularly for the reappearance of Mr. Brumley with whom she had a peculiar feeling of uncompleted relations. And at last the men came and she caught his glance and saw that her feeling was reciprocated.

She was presently torn from Agatha, who gasped with pain at the parting and pursued her with a sedulous gaze as a doctor might watch an injected patient, she parted with Lady Beach-Mandarin with a vast splash of enthusiasm and mutual invitations, and Lady Viping came and pressed her to come to dinner and rapped her elbow with her lorgnette to emphasize her invitation. And Lady Harman after a still moment for reflection athwart which the word Autonomy flickered, accepted this invitation also.

--3

Mr. Brumley hovered for a few moments in the hall conversing with Lady Beach-Mandarin's butler, whom he had known for some years and helped about a small investment, and who was now being abjectly polite and grateful to him for his attention. It gave Mr. Brumley a nice feudal feeling to establish and maintain such relationships. The furry-eyed boy fumbled with the sticks and umbrellas in the background and wondered if he too would ever climb to these levels of respectful gilt-tipped friendliness. Mr. Brumley hovered the more readily because he knew Lady Harman was with the looking-gla.s.s in the little parlour behind the dining-room on her way to the outer world. At last she emerged. It was instantly manifest to Mr. Brumley that she had expected to find him there. She smiled frankly at him, with the faintest admission of complicity in her smile.

"Taxi, milady?" said the butler.