after lady harman's maid had left her that night, she sat for some time in a low easy chair before her fire, trying at first to collect together into one situation all the events of the day and then lapsing into that state of mind which is not so much thinking as resting in the attitude of thought. presently, in a vaguely conceived future, she would go to bed. she was stunned by the immense dimensions of the row her simple act of defiance had evoked.
and then came an incredible incident, so incredible that next day she still had great difficulty in deciding whether it was an actuality or a dream. she heard a little very familiar sound. it was the last sound she would have expected to hear and she turned sharply when she heard it. the paper-covered door in the wall of her husband's apartment opened softly, paused, opened some more and his little undignified head appeared. his hair was already tumbled from his pillow.
he regarded her steadfastly for some moments with an expression between shame and curiosity and smouldering rage, and then allowed his body, clad now in purple-striped pyjamas, to follow his head into her room. he advanced guiltily.
"elly," he whispered. "elly!"
she caught her dressing-gown about her and stood up.
"what is it, isaac?" she asked, feeling curiously abashed at this invasion.
"elly," he said, still in that furtive undertone. "make it up!"
"i want my freedom," she said, after a little pause.
"don't be silly, elly," he whispered in a tone of remonstrance and advancing slowly towards her. "make it up. chuck all these ideas."
she shook her head.
"we've got to get along together. you can't go going about just anywhere. we've got—we've got to be reasonable."
he halted, three paces away from her. his eyes weren't sorrowful eyes, or friendly eyes; they were just shiftily eager eyes. "look here," he said. "it's all nonsense.... elly, old girl; let's—let's make it up."
she looked at him and it dawned upon her that she had always imagined herself to be afraid of him and that indeed she wasn't. she shook her head obstinately.
"it isn't reasonable," he said. "here, we've been the happiest of people——anything in reason i'll let you have." he paused with an effect of making an offer.
"i want my autonomy," she said.
"autonomy!" he echoed. "autonomy! what's autonomy? autonomy!"
this strange word seemed first to hold him in distressful suspense and then to infuriate him.
"i come in here to make it up," he said, with a voice charged with griefs, "after all you've done, and you go and you talk of autonomy!"
his feelings passed beyond words. an extremity of viciousness flashed into his face. he gave vent to a snarl of exasperation, "ya-ap!" he said, he raised his clenched fists and seemed on the verge of assault, and then with a gesture between fury and despair, he wheeled about and the purple-striped pyjamas danced in passionate retreat from her room.
"autonomy!..."
a slam, a noise of assaulted furniture, and then silence.
lady harman stood for some moments regarding the paper-covered door that had closed behind him. then she bared her white forearm and pinched it—hard.
it wasn't a dream! this thing had happened.
12
at a quarter to three in the morning, lady harman was surprised to find herself wide awake. it was exactly a quarter to three when she touched the stud of the ingenious little silver apparatus upon the table beside her bed which reflected a luminous clock-face upon the ceiling. and her mind was no longer resting in the attitude of thought but extraordinarily active. it was active, but as she presently began to realize it was not progressing. it was spinning violently round and round the frenzied figure of a little man in purple-striped pyjamas retreating from her presence, whirling away from her like something blown before a gale. that seemed to her to symbolize the completeness of the breach the day had made between her husband and herself.
she felt as a statesman might feel who had inadvertently—while conducting some trivial negotiations—declared war.
she was profoundly alarmed. she perceived ahead of her abundant possibilities of disagreeable things. and she wasn't by any means as convinced of the righteousness of her cause as a happy warrior should be. she had a natural disposition towards truthfulness and it worried her mind that while she was struggling to assert her right to these common social freedoms she should be tacitly admitting a kind of justice in her husband's objections by concealing the fact that her afternoon's companion was a man. she tried not to recognize the existence of a doubt, but deep down in her mind there did indeed lurk a weakening uncertainty about the right of a woman to free conversation with any man but her own. her reason disowned that uncertainty with scorn. but it wouldn't go away for all her reason. she went about in her mind doing her utmost to cut that doubt dead....
she tried to go back to the beginning and think it all out. and as she was not used to thinking things out, the effort took the form of an imaginary explanation to mr. brumley of the difficulties of her position. she framed phrases. "you see, mr. brumley," she imagined herself to be saying, "i want to do my duty as a wife, i have to do my duty as a wife. but it's so hard to say just where duty leaves off and being a mere slave begins. i cannot believe that blind obedience is any woman's duty. a woman needs—autonomy." then her mind went off for a time to a wrestle with the exact meaning of autonomy, an issue that had not arisen hitherto in her mind.... and as she planned out such elucidations, there grew more and more distinct in her mind a kind of idealized mr. brumley, very grave, very attentive, wonderfully understanding, saying illuminating helpful tonic things, that made everything clear, everything almost easy. she wanted someone of that quality so badly. the night would have been unendurable if she could not have imagined mr. brumley of that quality. and imagining him of that quality her heart yearned for him. she felt that she had been terribly inexpressive that afternoon, she had shirked points, misstated points, and yet he had been marvellously understanding. ever and again his words had seemed to pierce right through what she had been saying to what she had been thinking. and she recalled with peculiar comfort a kind of abstracted calculating look that had come at times into his eyes, as though his thoughts were going ever so much deeper and ever so much further than her blundering questionings could possibly have taken them. he weighed every word, he had a guarded way of saying "um...."
her thoughts came back to the dancing little figure in purple-striped pyjamas. she had a scared sense of irrevocable breaches. what would he do to-morrow? what should she do to-morrow? would he speak to her at breakfast or should she speak first to him?... she wished she had some money. if she could have foreseen all this she would have got some money before she began....
so her mind went on round and round and the dawn was breaking before she slept again.
13
mr. brumley, also, slept little that night. he was wakefully mournful, recalling each ungraceful incident of the afternoon's failure in turn and more particularly his dispute with the ticket clerk, and thinking over all the things he might have done—if only he hadn't done the things he had done. he had made an atrocious mess of things. he felt he had hopelessly shattered the fair fabric of impressions of him that lady harman had been building up, that image of a wise humane capable man to whom a woman would gladly turn; he had been flurried, he had been incompetent, he had been ridiculously incompetent, and it seemed to him that life was a string of desolating inadequacies and that he would never smile again.
the probable reception of lady harman by her husband never came within his imaginative scope. nor did the problems of social responsibility that lady harman had been trying to put to him exercise him very greatly. the personal disillusionment was too strong for that.
about half-past four a faint ray of comfort came with the consideration that after all a certain practical incapacity is part of the ensemble of a literary artist, and then he found himself wondering what flowers of wisdom montaigne might not have culled from such a day's experience; he began an imitative essay in his head and he fell asleep upon this at last at about ten minutes past five in the morning.
there were better things than this in the composition of mr. brumley, we shall have to go deep into these reserves before we have done with him, but when he had so recently barked the shins of his self-esteem they had no chance at all.
