This Freedom Part 32

He got up and began to set about his departure. She went with him into the hall and she called up the stairs, "Children, father's going." They came bounding down. He joked and played with them. He loved this custom, now long established. She brushed his hat, also a rite she knew he loved. He kissed her with particular affection.

"Yes, you go up to Field's and give old Sturgiss and old Field my love. You'll almost have forgotten the way there. I say, it's funny, isn't it, how time changes things and how it goes? We couldn't have imaged this once, and here it is the most established thing in the world. Do you know, it's almost exactly a year since you chucked it?"

"Chucked it!" The light expression smote her. O manlike man that thus could phrase divorce that from her heart's engrossment had cut her life asunder!

In the afternoon she set out upon her intention. It meant nothing, her visit, she a.s.sured herself. It had no purpose beyond the exchange of courtesies. But when she was leaving the house she paused. Should she go? She went down the steps and through the gate, then paused again. She returned to the house. She had an idea. She would take the children with her. She called them, and while they gleefully dressed for the outing she repeated to herself the word in which the idea of taking them with her had come to her.

"A bodyguard!" she said.

The note of laughter she gave at the word had a tremulous sound.

Tremulous would well have described her manner when they were at Field's. She was asking herself as they went towards the City what it was that she wanted to hear--that Field's was doing very well without her? That her department was not doing very well without her? Which?

She would not let her mind affirm which it was that she desired.

It appeared, when they arrived, that it was neither, nor anything at all to do with the Bank. Her first words to the partners were of smiling apology at bringing to precincts sacred to business, "a herd of children." That was a natural introduction of herself; it was an unusual thing to do. But not natural the way in which she maintained the subject of the children. It seemed that she had come to talk of nothing else. Tremulous she was; talking, of the children, with the incessant eagerness, and with the nervous eagerness, of one either clamant to establish a case or frightened of a break in the conversation lest a break should cause appearance of a subject most desperately to be avoided.

Her bodyguard!

Mr. Field and Mr. Sturgiss were delighted to see her and expressed themselves delighted to see the children. There was plenty in the bank, coffers and strong-rooms and all sorts of exciting things, said Mr. Field, that would amuse the small people, and when tea was done they should be taken around to see them. In an inner holy of holies, behind the partners' parlour, a very exciting tea was made.

A clerk was sent out for a parcel of pastries and returned with an enormous bag, and there was no tablecloth, nor no proper tea-table, and the children, much excited, were immensely entertained.

Easy, while they were there, to make them the conversation's centre.

But the meal ended and then became most evident her anxiety to keep the chatter on the children. They became impatient to be off on the promised exploration. She delayed it. Twice the clerk who was to conduct the tour was about to be summoned. By a new gathering of general attention, she stopped his coming. When at last he came she said she would be of the party. The partners did not want that. The children did not want it. "Mother, it will be much more exciting by ourselves." She insisted. She was aware for the first and only time in her life of a feeling of nerves, of not being quite in control of herself, of making of her insistence rather more than should be made.

"Well, stay," said Mr. Sturgiss, "at least for a minute's chat before you join them."

That was not possible, unless she was going to become hysterical, to resist. The children trooped away. Her bodyguard!

She turned aside and it is to be remembered for her that, her face concealed from the partners, she gave the tiniest despairing gesture with her hands.

When, with the children, she was returning home, she was trying to determine whether, while it was in suspense, she had or had not desired to hear of the partners that which she had heard from them.

They had talked with her generally of the business. They had talked particularly of the work of her department of the business. There was approaching all the time the thing that sooner or later they must say. She was trembling all the time to know how she would receive it. In whichever of its two ways it came would she be glad or would she be sorry? She simply did not know. She suddenly herself projected the point. She could not endure any longer its delay. "And Miss Farmer," she said. "How's Miss Farmer doing?"

Miss Farmer, formerly one of her a.s.sistants, had on her resignation taken her place.

Miss Farmer, replied Mr. Sturgiss, was estimable but--he opened his hands and made with them a deprecatory gesture. "She's not you. How could she be you, or any one be you? We could replace Miss Farmer.

What's the good? It's you we've got to replace. We can't replace you."

Her heart had bounded.

CHAPTER II

That happened in the Christmas holidays, in January. In February was Doda's eleventh birthday. The child had friends rather older than herself, neighbours, who for a year had been boarders at a school in Surrey. She was desperately eager to join them there and it was a promise from Rosalie that she should go when she was twelve, earlier if she were good. On this eleventh birthday, which brought birthday letters from the neighbours at the school and thus again brought up the subject, "Oh, haven't I been good?" cried Doda at the birthday breakfast. "Oh, do let me go next term, mother. Father, do say I may." Her eagerness for school had been much fostered by Huggo's holiday stories of school life; and Huggo, as Doda now adduced, was leaving his preparatory and starting at Tidborough next term; couldn't she, oh, couldn't she make also her start then?

Harry said, "O grown-up woman of enormous years, think of your sorrowing parents. How will you like to leave your weeping mother, Doda? How will you like to leave your heart-broken old father?"

"Oh, I'd love to!" cried Doda.

The ingenuousness of it made her parents laugh.

"She'll have her way, won't she?" said Harry, when Doda, conscious, by that laugh, of tolerance, had danced out of the room.

"I think she'd better," said Rosalie.

The school was very well known to Rosalie. It was exclusive and expensive; was limited to seventy girls, of whom twenty, under the age of thirteen, were received in the adapted Dower House of the ancient estate which was its home; and the last word in modernity was, in every point of administration, its first word. It had been established only eight years. The motto of its founders and of its lady princ.i.p.al was "Not traditions--precedents!"

The subject came up again between Rosalie and Harry that evening and it was decided that Doda should be placed there after the next holidays, at the opening of the summer term. Harry declared himself, "in my bones" as he expressed it, against boarding schools for girls, "But that's my old fogeyism," said he. "It's the modern idea that girls should have the same training and the same chances in life as their brothers, and there's no getting away from the right of it."

Rosalie said in a low voice, "To what end?"

He did not hear her. She had got out from the acc.u.mulation of papers of her business life prospectuses and booklets of the school and he was amusedly browsing over the refinements and advantages therein, not by traditions but by precedents, set forth. "Mice and Mumps, Rosalie," said he, "they not only do riding as a regular thing but 'parents are permitted, if they wish, to stable a pupil's own pony (see page 26).' Oh, thanks, thanks! 'Mr. Harry Occleve, barrister-at-law, availing himself of your gracious permission on page twenty-six, is sending down for his daughter a coach and four with 'ostlers, grooms, coachmen, and outriders complete.' Ha!"

She was just watching him.

He said after an interval: "Yes, there's a lot of sound stuff here, Rosalie. It's convincing. Not that any one needs convincing on the point less than you and I." He quoted again. "'And advance them towards an independent and a womanly womanhood.' And it talks further back about how 'Idle women' will soon be recognised as great a term of reproach as 'an idle man.' It's sound. I like this booklet here that each girl's given, 'To the Girl of the Future.'

It tells them all about an independent career, makes no fancy picture of it, tells 'em everything. Did you read that?"

"A long time ago. It probably doesn't tell them one thing."

"What?"

"That they can always--chuck it."

He looked up quickly. "Hull-o!"

She gave him no response to his expressed surprise and he laughed and said, "D'you know, Rosalie, I don't believe I've ever before heard you use slang."

"You taught me that bit, Harry."

"Oh, I sling it about. When did I?"

"One day last holidays when it was just on a year since I'd left Field's. Just a year, you said, since I'd--chucked it. O Harry--"

There was a quality in her voice that might, from what she saw upon his face, have been a tocsin's roll. His face was as a place of a.s.sembly into which, as it might be a people alarmed, there came crowding in emotions.

He said, "What's up?"

She said, "O Harry, you look out for yourself!"

There was much movement in his face. "Look out for myself?"