mr. brumley was still contemplating rather inconclusively the possibility of a long and intimate talk leading up to and preparing for an elopement with lady harman, when he read of her jago street escapade and of her impending appearance at the south hampsmith police court. he was astonished. the more he contemplated the thing the greater became his astonishment.
even at the first impact he realized that the line she had taken wasn't quite in the picture with the line he had proposed for her. he felt—left out. he felt as though a door had slammed between himself and affairs to which he had supposed himself essential. he could not understand why she had done this thing instead of coming straight to his flat and making use of all that chivalrous service she surely knew was at her disposal. this self-reliance, this direct dealing with the world, seemed to him, even in the height of his concern, unwomanly, a deeper injury to his own abandoned assumptions than any he had contemplated. he felt it needed explanation, and he hurried to secure an elbowed unsavoury corner in the back of the court in order to hear her defence. he had to wait through long stuffy spaces of time before she appeared. there were half a dozen other window smashers,—plain or at least untidy-looking young women. the magistrate told them they were silly and the soul of mr. brumley acquiesced. one tried to make a speech, and it was such a poor speech—squeaky....
when at last lady harman entered the box—the strangest place it seemed for her—he tried to emerge from the jostling crowd about him into visibility, to catch her eye, to give her the support of his devoted presence. twice at least she glanced in his direction but gave no sign of seeing him. he was surprised that she could look without fear or detestation, indeed once with a gesture of solicitude, at sir isaac. she was astonishingly serene. there seemed to be just the faintest shadow of a smile about her lips as the stipendiary explained the impossibility of giving her anything less than a month. an uneasy object like the smashed remains of a colossal box of bonbons that was riding out a gale, down in the middle of the court, turned round at last completely and revealed itself as the hat of lady beach-mandarin, but though mr. brumley waved his hand he could not even make that lady aware of his presence. a powerful rude criminal-looking man who stood in front of him and smelt grossly of stables, would not give him a fair chance of showing himself, and developed a strong personal hostility to him on account of his alleged "shoving about." it would not he felt be of the slightest help to lady harman for him to involve himself in a personal struggle with a powerful and powerfully flavoured criminal.
it was all very dreadful.
after the proceedings were over and lady harman had been led away into captivity, he went out and took a taxi in an agitated distraught manner to lady beach-mandarin's house.
"she meant," said lady beach-mandarin, "to have a month's holiday from him and think things out. and she's got it."
perhaps that was it. mr. brumley could not tell, and he spent some days in that state of perplexity which, like the weariness that heralds a cold, marks so often the onset of a new series of ideas....
why hadn't she come to him? had he after all rather overloaded his memory of her real self with imaginative accessories? had she really understood what he had been saying to her in the garden? afterwards when he had met her eyes as he and she went over the new wing with sir isaac she had so manifestly—and, when one came to think of it, so tranquilly—seemed to understand....
it was such an extraordinary thing to go smashing a window like that—when there he was at hand ready to help her. she knew his address? did she? for a moment mr. brumley cherished that wild surmise. was that perhaps it? but surely she could have looked in the telephone directory or who's who....
but if that was the truth of the matter she would have looked and behaved differently in court—quite differently. she would have been looking for him. she would have seen him....
it was queer too to recall what she had said in court about her daughters....
could it be, he had a frightful qualm, that after all—he wasn't the man? how little he knew of her really....
"this wretched agitation," said mr. brumley, trying to flounder away anyhow from these disconcerting riddles; "it seems to unbalance them all."
but he found it impossible to believe that lady harman was seriously unbalanced.
4
and if mr. brumley's system of romantically distorted moral assumptions was shattered by lady harman's impersonal blow at a post office window when all the rules seemed to require her to fly from the oppression of one man to the chivalry of another, what words can convey the devastating effect upon him of her conduct after her release? to that crisis he had been looking forward continually; to record the variety of his expectations would fill a large volume, but throughout them all prevailed one general idea, that when she came out of prison her struggle with her husband would be resumed, and that this would give mr. brumley such extraordinary opportunities of displaying his devotion that her response, which he was now beginning to suspect might be more reluctant than his earlier dreams had assumed, was ultimately inevitable. in all these dreams and meditations that response figured as the crown. he had to win and possess lady harman. the idea had taken hold of his busy yet rather pointless life, had become his directing object. he was full of schemes for presently arresting and captivating her imagination. he was already convinced that she cared for him; he had to inflame interest and fan liking into the fire of passion. and with a mind so occupied, mr. brumley wrote this and that and went about his affairs. he spent two days and a night at margate visiting his son at his preparatory school, and he found much material for musing in the question of just how the high romantic affairs ahead of him would affect this delicately intelligent boy. for a time perhaps he might misjudge his father.... he spent a week-end with lady viping and stayed on until wednesday and then he came back to london. his plans were still unformed when the day came for lady harman's release, and indeed beyond an idea that he would have her met at the prison gates by an enormous bunch of snowy-white and crimson chrysanthemums he had nothing really concrete at all in his mind.
she had, however, been released stealthily a day before her time, and this is what she had done. she had asked that—of all improbable people!—sir isaac's mother should meet her, the biggest car had come to the prison gates, and she had gone straight down with mrs. harman to her husband—who had taken a chill and was in bed drinking contrexéville water—at black strand.
as these facts shaped themselves in answer to the blanched inquiries of mr. brumley his amazement grew. he began to realize that there must have been a correspondence during her incarceration, that all sorts of things had been happening while he had been dreaming, and when he went round to lady beach-mandarin, who was just packing up to be the life and soul of a winter-sports party at a nice non-lunnite hotel at lenzerheide, he learnt particulars that chilled him to the marrow. "they've made it up," said lady beach-mandarin.
"but how?" gasped mr. brumley, with his soul in infinite distress. "but how?"
"the ogre, it seems, has come to see that bullying won't do. he's given in tremendously. he's let her have her way with the waitress strike and she's going to have an allowance of her own and all kinds of things. it's settled. it's his mother and that man charterson talked him over. you know—his mother came to me—as her friend. for advice. wanted to find out what sort of things we might have been putting in her head. she said so. a curious old thing—vulgar but—wise. i liked her. he's her darling—and she just knows what he is.... he doesn't like it but he's taken his dose. the thought of her going to prison again——! he's let her do anything rather than that...."
"and she's gone to him!"
"naturally," said lady beach-mandarin with what he felt to be deliberate brutality. surely she must have understood——
"but the waitress strike—what has it got to do with the waitress strike?"
"she cared—tremendously."
"did she?"
"tremendously. and they all go back and the system of inspection is being altered, and he's even forgiven babs wheeler. it made him ill to do it but he did."
"and she's gone back to him."
"like godiva," said lady beach-mandarin with that sweeping allusiveness that was part of her complicated charm.
