for the next few years it was to be a matter of recurrent heart-searching for lady harman whether she had been profoundly wise or extremely foolish in tearing up that card of projected rules. at the time it seemed the most natural and obvious little action imaginable; it was long before she realized just how symbolical and determining a few movements of the hand and wrist can be. it fixed her line not so much for herself as for others. it put her definitely, much more definitely than her convictions warranted, on the side of freedom against discipline. for indeed her convictions like most of our convictions kept along a tortuous watershed between these two. it is only a few rare extravagant spirits who are wholly for the warp or wholly for the woof of human affairs.
the girls applauded and loved her. at one stroke she had acquired the terrible liability of partisans. they made her their champion and sanction; she was responsible for an endless succession of difficulties that flowered out of their interpretations of her act. these hostels that had seemed passing out of her control, suddenly turned back upon her and took possession of her.
and they were never simple difficulties. right and wrong refused to unravel for her; each side of every issue seemed to be so often in suicidal competition with its antagonist for the inferior case. if the forces of order and discipline showed themselves perennially harsh and narrow, it did not blind her perplexed eyes to the fact that the girls were frequently extremely naughty. she wished very often, she did so wish—they wouldn't be. they set out with a kind of eagerness for conflict.
their very loyalty to her expressed itself not so much in any sustained attempt to make the hostels successful as in cheering inconveniently, in embarrassing declarations of a preference, in an ingenious and systematic rudeness to anyone suspected of imperfect devotion to her. the first comers into the hostels were much more like the swelling inrush of a tide than, as mrs. pembrose would have preferred, like something laid on through a pipe, and when this lady wanted to go on with the old rules until sir isaac had approved of the new, the new arrivals went into the cutting-out room and manifested. lady harman had to be telephoned for to allay the manifestation.
and then arose questions of deportment, trivial in themselves, but of the gravest moment for the welfare of the hostels. there was a phrase about "noisy or improper conduct" in the revised rules. few people would suspect a corridor, ten feet wide and two hundred feet long, as a temptation to impropriety, but mrs. pembrose found it was so. the effect of the corridors upon undisciplined girls quite unaccustomed to corridors was for a time most undesirable. for example they were moved to run along them violently. they ran races along them, when they overtook they jostled, when they were overtaken they squealed. the average velocity in the corridors of the lady occupants of the bloomsbury hostel during the first fortnight of its existence was seven miles an hour. was that violence? was that impropriety? the building was all steel construction, but one heard even in the head matron's room. and then there was the effect of the rows and rows of windows opening out upon the square. the square had some pleasant old trees and it was attractive to look down into their upper branches, where the sparrows mobbed and chattered perpetually, and over them at the chimneys and turrets and sky signs of the london world. the girls looked. so far they were certainly within their rights. but they did not look modestly, they did not look discreetly. they looked out of wide-open windows, they even sat perilously and protrudingly on the window sills conversing across the façade from window to window, attracting attention, and once to mrs. pembrose's certain knowledge a man in the street joined in. it was on a sunday morning, too, a bloomsbury sunday morning!
but graver things were to rouse the preventive prohibitionist in the soul of mrs. pembrose. there was the visiting of one another's rooms and cubicles. most of these young people had never possessed or dreamt of possessing a pretty and presentable apartment to themselves, and the first effect of this was to produce a decorative outbreak, a vigorous framing of photographs and hammering of nails ("dust-gathering litter."—mrs. pembrose) and then—visiting. they visited at all hours and in all costumes; they sat in groups of three or four, one on the chair and the rest on the bed conversing into late hours,—entirely uncensored conversations too often accompanied by laughter. when mrs. pembrose took this to lady harman she found her extraordinarily blind to the conceivable evils of this free intercourse. "but lady harman!" said mrs. pembrose, with a note of horror, "some of them—kiss each other!"
"but if they're fond of each other," said lady harman. "i'm sure i don't see——"
and when the floor matrons were instructed to make little surprise visits up and down the corridors the girls who occupied rooms took to locking their doors—and lady harman seemed inclined to sustain their right to do that. the floor matrons did what they could to exercise authority, one or two were former department manageresses, two were ex-elementary teachers, crowded out by younger and more certificated rivals, one, and the most trustworthy one, mrs. pembrose found, was an ex-wardress from holloway. the natural result of these secret talkings and conferrings in the rooms became apparent presently in some mild ragging and in the concoction of petty campaigns of annoyance designed to soften the manners of the more authoritative floor matrons. here again were perplexing difficulties. if a particular floor matron has a clear commanding note in her voice, is it or is it not "violent and improper" to say "haw!" in clear commanding tones whenever you suppose her to be within earshot? as for the door-locking mrs. pembrose settled that by carrying off all the keys.
complaints and incidents drifted towards definite scenes and "situations." both sides in this continuing conflict of dispositions were so definite, so intolerant, to the mind of the lady with the perplexed dark eyes who mediated. her reason was so much with the matrons; her sympathies so much with the girls. she did not like the assured brevity of mrs. pembrose's judgments and decisions; she had an instinctive perception of the truth that all compact judgments upon human beings are unjust judgments. the human spirit is but poorly adapted either to rule or to be ruled, and the honesty of all the efforts of mrs. pembrose and her staffs—for soon the hostels at sydenham and west kensington were open—were marred not merely by arrogance but by an irritability, a real hostility to complexities and difficulties and resisters and troublesome characters. and it did not help the staff to a triumphant achievement of its duties that the girls had an exaggerated perception that lady harman's heart was on their side.
and presently the phrase "weeding out" crept into the talk of mrs. pembrose. some of the girls were being marked as ringleaders, foci of mischief, characters it was desirable to "get rid of." confronted with it lady harman perceived she was absolutely opposed to this idea of getting rid of anyone—unless it was mrs. pembrose. she liked her various people; she had no desire for a whittled success with a picked remnant of subdued and deferential employees. she put that to mr. brumley and mr. brumley was indignant and eloquent in his concurrence. a certain mary trunk, a dark young woman with a belief that it became her to have a sweet disorder in her hair, and a large blond girl named lucy baxandall seemed to be the chief among the bad influences of the bloomsbury hostel, and they took it upon themselves to appeal to lady harman against mrs. pembrose. they couldn't, they complained, "do a thing right for her...."
so the tangle grew.
presently lady harman had to go to the riviera with sir isaac and when she came back mary trunk and lucy baxandall had vanished from both the international hostel and the international stores. she tried to find out why, and she was confronted by inadequate replies and enigmatical silences. "they decided to go," said mrs. pembrose, and dropped "fortunately" after that statement. she disavowed any exact knowledge of their motives. but she feared the worst. susan burnet was uninforming. whatever had happened had failed to reach alice burnet's ears. lady harman could not very well hold a commission of enquiry into the matter, but she had an uneasy sense of a hidden campaign of dislodgement. and about the corridors and cubicles and club rooms there was she thought a difference, a discretion, a flavour of subjugation....
