the imprisonment of lady harman at black strand lasted just one day short of a fortnight.
for all that time except for such interludes as the urgent needs of the strike demanded, sir isaac devoted himself to the siege. he did all he could to make her realize how restrainedly he used the powers the law vests in a husband, how little he forced upon her the facts of marital authority and wifely duty. at times he sulked, at times he affected a cold dignity, and at times a virile anger swayed him at her unsubmissive silences. he gave her little peace in that struggle, a struggle that came to the edge of physical conflict. there were moments when it seemed to her that nothing remained but that good old-fashioned connubial institution, the tussle for the upper hand, when with a feminine horror she felt violence shouldering her shoulder or contracting ready to grip her wrist. against violence she doubted her strength, was filled with a desolating sense of yielding nerve and domitable muscle. but just short of violence sir isaac's spirit failed him. he would glower and bluster, half threaten, and retreat. it might come to that at last but at present it had not come to that.
she could not understand why she had neither message nor sign from susan burnet, but she hid that anxiety and disappointment under her general dignity.
she spent as much time with the children as she could, and until sir isaac locked up the piano she played, and was surprised to find far more in chopin than she had ever suspected in the days when she had acquired a passable dexterity of execution. she found, indeed, the most curious things in chopin, emotional phrases, that stirred and perplexed and yet pleased her....
the weather was very fine and open that year. a golden sunshine from october passed on into november and lady harman spent many of these days amidst the pretty things the builder from aleham had been too hurried to desecrate, dump, burn upon, and flatten into indistinguishable mire, after the established custom of builders in gardens since the world began. she would sit in the rockery where she had sat with mr. brumley and recall that momentous conversation, and she would wander up the pine-wood slopes behind, and she would spend long musing intervals among euphemia's perennials, thinking sometimes, and sometimes not so much thinking as feeling the warm tendernesses of nature and the perplexing difficulties of human life. with an amused amazement lady harman reflected as she walked about the pretty borders and the little patches of lawn and orchard that in this very place she was to have realized an imitation of the immortal "elizabeth" and have been wise, witty, gay, defiant, gallant and entirely successful with her "man of wrath." evidently there was some temperamental difference, or something in her situation, that altered the values of the affair. it was clearly a different sort of man for one thing. she didn't feel a bit gay, and her profound and deepening indignation with the alternative to this stagnation was tainted by a sense of weakness and incapacity.
she came very near surrender several times. there were afternoons of belated ripened warmth, a kind of summer that had been long in the bottle, with a certain lassitude in the air and a blue haze among the trees, that made her feel the folly of all resistances to fate. why, after all, shouldn't she take life as she found it, that is to say, as sir isaac was prepared to give it to her? he wasn't really so bad, she told herself. the children—their noses were certainly a little sharp, but there might be worse children. the next might take after herself more. who was she to turn upon her appointed life and declare it wasn't good enough? whatever happened the world was still full of generous and beautiful things, trees, flowers, sunset and sunrise, music and mist and morning dew.... and as for this matter of the sweated workers, the harshness of the business, the ungracious competition, suppose if instead of fighting her husband with her weak powers, she persuaded him. she tried to imagine just exactly how he might be persuaded....
she looked up and discovered with an extraordinary amazement mr. brumley with eager gestures and a flushed and excited visage hurrying towards her across the croquet lawn.
6
lady viping's dinner-party had been kept waiting exactly thirty-five minutes for lady harman. sir isaac, with a certain excess of zeal, had intercepted the hasty note his wife had written to account for her probable absence. the party was to have centred entirely upon lady harman, it consisted either of people who knew her already, or of people who were to have been specially privileged to know her, and lady viping telephoned twice to putney before she abandoned hope. "it's disconnected," she said, returning in despair from her second struggle with the great public service. "they can't get a reply."
"it's that little wretch," said lady beach-mandarin. "he hasn't let her come. i know him."
"it's like losing a front tooth," said lady viping, surveying her table as she entered the dining-room.
"but surely—she would have written," said mr. brumley, troubled and disappointed, regarding an aching gap to the left of his chair, a gap upon which a pathetic little card bearing lady harman's name still lay obliquely.
naturally the talk tended to centre upon the harmans. and naturally lady beach-mandarin was very bold and outspoken and called sir isaac quite a number of vivid things. she also aired her views of the marriage of the future, which involved a very stringent treatment of husbands indeed. "half his property and half his income," said lady beach-mandarin, "paid into her separate banking account."
"but," protested mr. brumley, "would men marry under those conditions?"
"men will marry anyhow," said lady beach-mandarin, "under any conditions."
"exactly sir joshua's opinion," said lady viping.
all the ladies at the table concurred and only one cheerful bachelor barrister dissented. the other men became gloomy and betrayed a distaste for this general question. even mr. brumley felt a curious faint terror and had for a moment a glimpse of the possibilities that might lie behind the vote. lady beach-mandarin went bouncing back to the particular instance. at present, she said, witness lady harman, women were slaves, pampered slaves if you will, but slaves. as things were now there was nothing to keep a man from locking up his wife, opening all her letters, dressing her in sack-cloth, separating her from her children. most men, of course, didn't do such things, they were amenable to public opinion, but sir isaac was a jealous little ogre. he was a gnome who had carried off a princess....
she threw out projects for assailing the ogre. she would descend to-morrow morning upon the putney house, a living flamboyant writ of habeas corpus. mr. brumley, who had been putting two and two together, was abruptly moved to tell of the sale of black strand. "they may be there," he said.
"he's carried her off," cried lady beach-mandarin on a top note. "it might be the eighteenth century for all he cares. but if it's black strand,—i'll go to black strand...."
but she had to talk about it for a week before she actually made her raid, and then, with an instinctive need for an audience, she took with her a certain miss garradice, one of those mute, emotional nervous spinsters who drift detachedly, with quick sudden movements, glittering eyeglasses, and a pent-up imminent look, about our social system. there is something about this type of womanhood—it is hard to say—almost as though they were the bottled souls of departed buccaneers grown somehow virginal. she came with lady beach-mandarin quietly, almost humorously, and yet it was as if the pirate glittered dimly visible through the polished glass of her erect exterior.
"here we are!" said lady beach-mandarin, staring astonished at the once familiar porch. "now for it!"
she descended and assailed the bell herself and miss garradice stood beside her with the light of combat in her eyes and glasses and cheeks.
"shall i offer to take her for a drive!"
"let's," said miss garradice in an enthusiastic whisper. "right away! for ever."
"i will," said lady beach-mandarin, and nodded desperately.
she was on the point of ringing again when snagsby appeared.
he stood with a large obstructiveness in the doorway. "lady 'arman, my lady" he said with a well-trained deliberation, "is not a tome."
"not at home!" queried lady beach-mandarin.
"not a tome, my lady," repeated snagsby invincibly.
"but—when will she be at home?"
"i can't say, my lady."
"is sir isaac——?"
"sir isaac, my lady, is not a tome. nobody is a tome, my lady."
"but we've come from london!" said lady beach-mandarin.
"i'm very sorry, my lady."
"you see, i want my friend to see this house and garden."
snagsby was visibly disconcerted. "i 'ave no instructions, my lady," he tried.
"oh, but lady harman would never object——"
snagsby's confusion increased. he seemed to be wanting to keep his face to the visitors and at the same time glance over his shoulder. "i will," he considered, "i will enquire, my lady." he backed a little, and seemed inclined to close the door upon them. lady beach-mandarin was too quick for him. she got herself well into the open doorway. "and of whom are you going to enquire?"
a large distress betrayed itself in snagsby's eye. "the 'ousekeeper," he attempted. "it falls to the 'ousekeeper, my lady."
lady beach-mandarin turned her face to miss garradice, shining in support. "stuff and nonsense," she said, "of course we shall come in." and with a wonderful movement that was at once powerful and perfectly lady-like this intrepid woman—"butted" is not the word—collided herself with snagsby and hurled him backward into the hall. miss garradice followed closely behind and at once extended herself in open order on lady beach-mandarin's right. "go and enquire," said lady beach-mandarin with a sweeping gesture of her arm. "go and enquire."
for a moment snagsby surveyed the invasion with horror and then fled precipitately into the recesses of the house.
"of course they're at home!" said lady beach-mandarin. "fancy that—that—that navigable—trying to shut the door on us!"
for a moment the two brightly excited ladies surveyed each other and then lady beach-mandarin, with a quickness of movement wonderful in one so abundant, began to open first one and then another of the various doors that opened into the long hall-living room. at a peculiar little cry from miss garradice she turned from a contemplation of the long low study in which so much of the euphemia books had been written, to discover sir isaac behind her, closely followed by an agonized snagsby.
"a-a-a-a-h!" she cried, with both hands extended, "and so you've come in, sir isaac! that's perfectly delightful. this is my friend miss garradice, who's dying to see anything you've left of poor euphemia's garden. and how is dear lady harman?"
for some crucial moments sir isaac was unable to speak and regarded his visitors with an expression that was unpretendingly criminal.
then he found speech. "you can't," he said. "it—can't be managed." he shook his head; his lips were whitely compressed.
"but all the way from london, sir isaac!"
"lady harman's ill," lied sir isaac. "she mustn't be disturbed. everything has to be kept quiet. see? not even shouting. not even ordinarily raised voices. a voice like yours—might kill her. that's why snagsby here said we were not at home. we aren't at home—not to anyone."
lady beach-mandarin was baffled.
"snagsby," said sir isaac, "open that door."
"but can't i see her—just for a moment?"
sir isaac's malignity had softened a little at the prospect of victory. "absolutely impossible," he said. "everything disturbs her, every tiny thing. you——you'd be certain to."
lady beach-mandarin looked at her companion and it was manifest that she was at the end of her resources. miss garradice after the fashion of highly strung spinsters suddenly felt disappointed in her leader. it wasn't, her silence intimated, for her to offer suggestions.
the ladies were defeated. when at last that stiff interval ended their dresses rustled doorward, and sir isaac broke out into the civilities of a victor....
it was only when they were a mile away from black strand that fluent speech returned to lady beach-mandarin. "the little—crippen," she said. "he's got her locked up in some cellar.... horrid little face he has! he looked like a rat at bay."
"i think perhaps if we'd done differently," said miss garradice in a tone of critical irresponsibility.
"i'll write to her. that's what i'll do," said lady beach-mandarin contemplating her next step. "i'm really—concerned. and didn't you feel—something sinister. that butler-man's expression—a kind of round horror."
that very evening she told it all—it was almost the trial trip of the story—to mr. brumley....
sir isaac watched their departure furtively from the study window and then ran out to the garden. he went right through into the pine woods beyond and presently, far away up the slopes, he saw his wife loitering down towards him, a gracious white tallness touched by a ray of sunlight—and without a suspicion of how nearly rescue had come to her.
