some day, when the arts of the writer and illustrator are more closely blended than they are to-day, it will be possible to tell of all that followed this blow, with an approach to its actual effect. here there should stand a page showing simply and plainly the lower half of the window of the jago street post office, a dark, rather grimy pane, reflecting the light of a street lamp—and broken. below the pane would come a band of evilly painted woodwork, a corner of letter-box, a foot or so of brickwork, and then the pavement with a dropped lump of iron. that would be the sole content of this page, and the next page would be the same, but very slightly fainter, and across it would be printed a dim sentence or so of explanation. the page following that would show the same picture again, but now several lines of type would be visible, and then, as one turned over, the smashed window would fade a little, and the printed narrative, still darkened and dominated by it, would nevertheless resume. one would read on how lady harman returned to convince the incredulous young yorkshireman of her feat, how a man with a barrow-load of bananas volunteered comments, and how she went in custody, but with the extremest dignity, to the police-station. then, with some difficulty, because that imposed picture would still prevail over the letterpress, and because it would be in small type, one would learn how she was bailed out by lady beach-mandarin, who was clearly the woman she ought to have gone to in the first place, and who gave up a dinner with a duchess to entertain her, and how sir isaac, being too torn by his feelings to come near her spent the evening in a frantic attempt to keep the whole business out of the papers. he could not manage it. the magistrate was friendly next morning, but inelegant in his friendly expedients; he remanded lady harman until her mental condition could be inquired into, but among her fellow-defendants—there had been quite an epidemic of window-smashing that evening—lady harman shone pre-eminently sane. she said she had broken this window because she was assured that nothing would convince people of the great dissatisfaction of women with their conditions except such desperate acts, and when she was reminded of her four daughters she said it was precisely the thought of how they too would grow up to womanhood that had made her strike her blow. the statements were rather the outcome of her evening with lady beach-mandarin than her own unaided discoveries, but she had honestly assimilated them, and she expressed them with a certain simple dignity.
sir isaac made a pathetic appearance before the court, and lady harman was shocked to see how worn he was with distress at her scandalous behaviour. he looked a broken man. that curious sense of personal responsibility, which had slumbered throughout the black strand struggle, came back to her in a flood, and she had to grip the edge of the dock tightly to maintain her self-control. unaccustomed as he was to public speaking, sir isaac said in a low, sorrow-laden voice, he had provided himself with a written statement dissociating himself from the views his wife's rash action might seem to imply, and expressing his own opinions upon woman's suffrage and the relations of the sexes generally, with especial reference to contemporary literature. he had been writing it most of the night. he was not, however, permitted to read this, and he then made an unstudied appeal for the consideration and mercy of the court. he said lady harman had always been a good mother and a faithful wife; she had been influenced by misleading people and bad books and publications, the true significance of which she did not understand, and if only the court would regard this first offence leniently he was ready to take his wife away and give any guarantee that might be specified that it should not recur. the magistrate was sympathetic and kindly, but he pointed out that this window-breaking had to be stamped out, and that it could only be stamped out by refusing any such exception as sir isaac desired. and so sir isaac left the court widowed for a month, a married man without a wife, and terribly distressed.
all this and more one might tell in detail, and how she went to her cell, and the long tedium of her imprisonment, and how deeply snagsby felt the disgrace, and how miss alimony claimed her as a convert to the magic of her persuasions, and many such matters—there is no real restraint upon a novelist fully resolved to be english and gothic and unclassical except obscure and inexplicable instincts. but these obscure and inexplicable instincts are at times imperative, and on this occasion they insist that here must come a break, a pause, in the presence of this radiating gap in the postmaster-general's glass, and the phenomenon of this gentle and beautiful lady, the mother of four children, grasping in her gloved hand, and with a certain amateurishness, a lumpish poker-end of iron.
we make the pause by ending the chapter here and by resuming the story at a fresh point—with an account of various curious phases in the mental development of mr. brumley.
