one is reminded of those houses into which the white ants have eaten their way; outwardly still fair and solid, they crumble at the touch of a hand. and now you will begin to understand those changes of bearing that so perplexed lady harman, that sudden insurgence of flushed half-furtive passion in the garden, through the thin pretences of a liberal friendship. his hollow honour had been gripped and had given way.
he had begun so well. at first lady harman had occupied his mind in the properest way. she was another man's wife and sacred—according to all honourable standards, and what he wanted was merely to see more of her, talk to her, interest her in himself, share whatever was available outside her connubial obligations,—and think as little of sir isaac as possible.
how quickly the imaginative temperament of mr. brumley enlarged that to include a critical hostility to sir isaac, we have already recorded. lady harman was no longer simply a charming, suppressed young wife, crying out for attentive development; she became an ill-treated beautiful woman—misunderstood. still scrupulously respecting his own standards, mr. brumley embarked upon the dangerous business of inventing just how sir isaac might be outraging them, and once his imagination had started to hunt in that field, it speedily brought in enough matter for a fine state of moral indignation, a white heat of not altogether justifiable chivalry. assisted by lady beach-mandarin mr. brumley had soon converted the little millionaire into a matrimonial ogre to keep an anxious lover very painfully awake at nights. because by that time and quite insensibly he had become an anxious lover—with all the gaps in the thread of realities that would have made him that, quite generously filled up from the world of reverie.
moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. it is the peculiar snare of the perplexed orthodox, and soon mr. brumley was in a state of nearly unendurable moral indignation with sir isaac for a hundred exaggerations of what he was and of what conceivably he might have done to his silent yet manifestly unsuitably mated wife. and now that romantic streak which is as i have said the first certain symptom of decay in a system of moral assumptions began to show itself in mr. brumley's thoughts and conversation. "a marriage like that," said mr. brumley to lady beach-mandarin, "isn't a marriage. it flouts the true ideal of marriage. it's slavery—following a kidnapping...."
but this is a wide step from the happy optimism of the cambridge days. what becomes of the sanctity of marriage and the institution of the family when respectable gentlemen talk of something called "true marriage," as non-existent in relation to a lady who is already the mother of four children? i record this lapsing of mr. brumley into romanticism without either sympathy or mitigation. the children, it presently became apparent, were not "true" children. "forced upon her," said mr. brumley. "it makes one ill to think of it!" it certainly very nearly made him ill. and as if these exercises in distinction had inflamed his conscience mr. brumley wrote two articles in the hebdomadal denouncing impure literature, decadence, immorality, various recent scandalous instances, and the suffragettes, declaring that woman's place was the home and that "in a pure and exalted monogamy lies the sole unitary basis for a civilized state." the most remarkable thing about this article is an omission. that sir isaac's monogamy with any other instances that might be akin to it was not pure and exalted, and that it needed—shall we call it readjustment? is a view that in this article mr. brumley conspicuously doesn't display. it's as if for a moment, pen in hand, he had eddied back to his old absolute positions....
in a very little while mr. brumley and lady beach-mandarin had almost persuaded each other that sir isaac was applying physical torture to his proudly silent wife, and mr. brumley was no longer dreaming and glancing at but steadily facing the possibility of a pure-minded and handsomely done elopement to "free" lady harman, that would be followed in due course by a marriage, a "true marriage" on a level of understanding far above any ordinary respectable wedding, amidst universal sympathy and admiration and the presence of all the very best people. in these anticipations he did rather remarkably overlook the absence of any sign of participation on the part of lady harman in his own impassioned personal feelings, and he overlooked still more remarkably as possible objections to his line of conduct, millicent, florence, annette and baby. these omissions no doubt simplified but also greatly falsified his outlook.
this proposal that all the best people shall applaud the higher rightness that was to be revealed in his projected elopement, is in the very essence of the romantic attitude. all other people are still to remain under the law. there is to be nothing revolutionary. but with exceptional persons under exceptional conditions——
mr. brumley stated his case over and over again to his utmost satisfaction, and always at great moral altitudes and with a kind of transcendent orthodoxy. the more difficult any aspect of the affair appeared from the orthodox standpoint the more valiantly mr. brumley soared; if it came to his living with lady harman for a time before they could be properly married amidst picturesque foreign scenery in a little casa by the side of a stream, then the water in that stream was to be quite the purest water conceivable and the scenery and associations as morally faultless as a view that had passed the exacting requirements of mr. john ruskin. and mr. brumley was very clear in his mind that what he proposed to do was entirely different in quality even if it was similar in form from anything that anyone else had ever done who had ever before made a scandal or appeared in the divorce court. this is always the way in such cases—always. the scandal was to be a noble scandal, a proud scandal, one of those instances of heroical love that turn aside misdemeanours—admittedly misdemeanours—into edifying marvels.
this was the state of mind to which mr. brumley had attained when he made his ineffectual raid upon black strand, and you will remark about it, if you are interested in the changes in people's ideas that are going on to-day, that although he was prepared to make the most extensive glosses in this particular instance upon the commonly accepted rules of what is right and proper, he was not for a moment prepared to accord the terrible gift of an independent responsibility to lady harman. in that direction lay regions that mr. brumley had still to explore. lady harman he considered was married wrongly and disastrously and this he held to be essentially the fault of sir isaac—with perhaps some slight blame attaching to lady harman's mother. the only path of escape he could conceive as yet for lady harman lay through the chivalry of some other man. that a woman could possibly rebel against one man without the sympathy and moral maintenance of another was still outside the range of mr. brumley's understanding. it is still outside the range of most men's understandings—and of a great many women's. if he generalized at all from these persuasions it was in the direction that in the interest of "true marriage" there should be greater facilities for divorce and also a kind of respectable-ization of divorce. then these "false marriages" might be rectified without suffering. the reasons for divorce he felt should be extended to include things not generally reprehensible, and chivalrous people coming into court should be protected from the indelicate publicity of free reporting....
