one day in lent—it was nearly three years after the opening of the first hostel—she went to saint paul's.
she was in a mood of great discouragement; the struggle between mrs. pembrose and the bloomsbury girls had suddenly reopened in an acute form and sir isaac, who was sickening again after a period of better health, had become strangely restless and irritable and hostile to her. he had thwarted her unusually and taken the side of the matrons in a conflict in which susan burnet's sister alice was now distinguished as the chief of the malcontents. the new trouble seemed to lady harman to be traceable in one direction to that ardent unionist, miss babs wheeler, under the spell of whose round-faced, blue-eyed, distraught personality alice had altogether fallen. miss babs wheeler was fighting for the union; she herself lived at highbury with her mother, and alice was her chosen instrument in the hostels. the union had always been a little against the lady-like instincts of many of the waitresses; they felt strikes were vulgar and impaired their social standing, and this feeling had been greatly strengthened by irruptions of large contingents of shop assistants from various department stores. the bloomsbury hostel in particular now accommodated a hundred refined and elegant hands—they ought rather to be called figures—from the great oxford street costume house of eustace and mills, young people with a tall sweeping movement and an elevation of chin that had become nearly instinctive, and a silent yet evident intention to find the international girls "low" at the slightest provocation. it is only too easy for poor humanity under the irritation of that tacit superiority to respond with just the provocation anticipated. what one must regretfully speak of as the vulgar section of the international girls had already put itself in the wrong by a number of aggressive acts before the case came to lady harman's attention. mrs. pembrose seized the occasion for weeding on a courageous scale, and miss alice burnet and three of her dearest friends were invited to vacate their rooms "pending redecoration".
with only too much plausibility the threatened young women interpreted this as an expulsion, and declined to remove their boxes and personal belongings. miss babs wheeler thereupon entered the bloomsbury hostel, and in the teeth of three express prohibitions from mrs. pembrose, went a little up the staircase and addressed a confused meeting in the central hall. there was loud and continuous cheering for lady harman at intervals during this incident. thereupon mrs. pembrose demanded sweeping dismissals, not only from the hostels but the shops as an alternative to her resignation, and lady harman found herself more perplexed than ever....
georgina sawbridge had contrived to mingle herself in an entirely characteristic way in these troubles by listening for a brief period to an abstract of her sister's perplexities, then demanding to be made director-general of the whole affair, refusing to believe this simple step impossible and retiring in great dudgeon to begin a series of letters of even more than sisterly bitterness. and mr. brumley when consulted had become dangerously sentimental. under these circumstances lady harman's visit to saint paul's had much of the quality of a flight.
it was with an unwonted sense of refuge that she came from the sombre stress and roar of london without into the large hushed spaces of the cathedral. the door closed behind her—and all things changed. here was meaning, coherence, unity. here instead of a pelting confusion of movements and motives was a quiet concentration upon the little focus of light about the choir, the gentle complete dominance of a voice intoning. she slipped along the aisle and into the nave and made her way to a seat. how good this was! outside she had felt large, awkwardly responsible, accessible to missiles, a distressed conspicuous thing; within this living peace she suddenly became no more than one of a tranquil hushed community of small black-clad lenten people; she found a chair and knelt and felt she vanished even from her own consciousness....
how beautiful was this place! she looked up presently at the great shadowy arcs far above her, so easy, so gracious that it seemed they had not so much been built by men as shaped by circling flights of angels. the service, a little clustering advance of voices unsustained by any organ, mingled in her mind with the many-pointed glow of candles. and then into this great dome of worship and beauty, like a bed of voices breaking into flower, like a springtime breeze of sound, came allegri's miserere....
her spirit clung to this mood of refuge. it seemed as though the disorderly, pugnacious, misunderstanding universe had opened and shown her luminous mysteries. she had a sense of penetration. all that conflict, that jar of purposes and motives, was merely superficial; she had left it behind her. for a time she had no sense of effort in keeping hold of this, only of attainment, she drifted happily upon the sweet sustaining sounds, and then—then the music ceased. she came back into herself. close to her a seated man stirred and sighed. she tried to get back her hold upon that revelation but it had gone. inexorably, opaque, impenetrable doors closed softly on her moment of vision....
all about her was the stir of departure.
she walked out slowly into the cold march daylight, to the leaden greys, the hurrying black shapes, the chaotic afternoon traffic of london. she paused on the steps, still but half reawakened. a passing omnibus obtruded the familiar inscription, "international stores for staminal bread."
she turned like one who remembers, to where her chauffeur stood waiting.
3
as her motor car, with a swift smoothness, carried her along the embankment towards the lattice bar of charing cross bridge and the remoter towers of the houses of parliament, grey now and unsubstantial against the bright western sky, her mind came back slowly to her particular issues in life. but they were no longer the big exasperatingly important things that had seemed to hold her life by a hundred painful hooks before she went into the cathedral. they were small still under this dome of evening, small even by the measure of the grey buildings to the right of her and the warm lit river to her left, by the measure of the clustering dark barges, the teeming trams, the streaming crowds of people, the note of the human process that sounds so loud there. she felt small even to herself, for the touch of beauty saves us from our own personalities, makes gods of us to our own littleness. she passed under the railway bridge at charing cross, watched the square cluster of westminster's pinnacles rise above her until they were out of sight overhead, ran up the little incline and round into parliament square, and was presently out on the riverside embankment again with the great chimneys of chelsea smoking athwart the evening gold. and thence with a sudden effect of skies shut and curtains drawn she came by devious ways to the fulham road and the crowding traffic of putney bridge and putney high street and so home.
snagsby, assisted by a new under-butler, a lean white-faced young man with red hair, received her ceremoniously and hovered serviceably about her. on the hall table lay three or four visiting cards of no importance, some circulars and two letters. she threw the circulars into the basket placed for them and opened her first letter. it was from georgina; it was on several sheets and it began, "i still cannot believe that you refuse to give me the opportunity the director-generalship of your hostels means to me. it is not as if you yourself had either the time or the abilities necessary for them yourself; you haven't, and there is something almost dog-in-the-manger-ish to my mind in the way in which you will not give me my chance, the chance i have always been longing for——"
at this point lady harman put down this letter for subsequent perusal and took its companion, which was addressed in an unfamiliar hand. it was from alice burnet and it was written in that sprawling hand and diffused style natural to a not very well educated person with a complicated story to tell in a state of unusual emotion. but the gist was in the first few sentences which announced that alice had been evicted from the hostel. "i found my things on the pavement," wrote alice.
lady harman became aware of snagsby still hovering at hand.
"mrs. pembrose, my lady, came here this afternoon," he said, when he had secured her attention.
"came here."
"she asked for you, my lady, and when i told her you were not at 'ome, she asked if she might see sir isaac."
"and did she?"
"sir isaac saw her, my lady. they 'ad tea in the study."
"i wish i had been at home to see her," said lady harman, after a brief interval of reflection.
she took her two letters and turned to the staircase. they were still in her hand when presently she came into her husband's study. "i don't want a light," he said, as she put out her hand to the electric switch. his voice had a note of discontent, but he was sitting in the armchair against the window so that she could not see his features.
"how are you feeling this afternoon?" she asked.
"i'm feeling all right," he answered testily. he seemed to dislike inquiries after his health almost as much as he disliked neglect.
she came and stood by him and looked out from the dusk of the room into the garden darkening under a red-barred sky. "there is fresh trouble between mrs. pembrose and the girls," she said.
"she's been telling me about it."
"she's been here?"
"pretty nearly an hour," said sir isaac.
lady harman tried to imagine that hour's interview on the spur of the moment and failed. she came to her immediate business. "i think," she said, "that she has been—high-handed...."
"you would," said sir isaac after an interval.
his tone was hostile, so hostile that it startled her.
"don't you?"
he shook his head. "my idees and your idees—or anyhow the idees you've got hold of—somewhere—somehow——i don't know where you get your idees. we haven't got the same idees, anyhow. you got to keep order in these places—anyhow...."
she perceived that she was in face of a prepared position. "i don't think," she threw out, "that she does keep order. she represses—and irritates. she gets an idea that certain girls are against her...."
"and you get an idea she's against certain girls...."
"practically she expels them. she has in fact just turned one out into the street."
"you got to expel 'em. you got to. you can't run these places on sugar and water. there's a sort of girl, a sort of man, who makes trouble. there's a sort makes strikes, makes mischief, gets up grievances. you got to get rid of 'em somehow. you got to be practical somewhere. you can't go running these places on a lot of littry idees and all that. it's no good."
the phrase "littry idees" held lady harman's attention for a moment. but she could not follow it up to its implications, because she wanted to get on with the issue she had in hand.
"i want to be consulted about these expulsions. girl after girl has been sent away——"
sir isaac's silhouette was obstinate.
"she knows her business," he said.
he seemed to feel the need of a justification. "they shouldn't make trouble."
on that they rested for a little while in silence. she began to realize with a gathering emotion that this matter was far more crucial than she had supposed. she had been thinking only of the reinstatement of alice burnet, she hadn't yet estimated just what that overriding of mrs. pembrose might involve.
"i don't want to have any girl go until i have looked into her case. it's——it's vital."
"she says she can't run the show unless she has some power."
neither spoke for some seconds. she had the feeling of hopeless vexation that might come to a child that has wandered into a trap. "i thought," she began. "these hostels——"
she stopped short.
sir isaac's hand tightened on the arm of his chair. "i started 'em to please you," he said. "i didn't start 'em to please your friends."
she turned her eyes quickly to his grey up-looking face.
"i didn't start them for you and that chap brumley to play about with," he amplified. "and now you know about it, elly."
the thing had found her unprepared. "as if——" she said at last.
"as if!" he mocked.
she stood quite still staring blankly at this unmanageable situation. he was the first to break silence. he lifted one hand and dropped it again with a dead impact on the arm of his chair. "i got the things," he said, "and there they are. anyhow,—they got to be run in a proper way."
she made no immediate answer. she was seeking desperately for phrases that escaped her. "do you think," she began at last. "do you really think——?"
he stared out of the window. he answered in tones of excessive reasonableness: "i didn't start these hostels to be run by you and your—friend." he gave the sentence the quality of an ultimatum, an irreducible minimum.
"he's my friend," she explained, "only—because he does work—for the hostels."
sir isaac seemed for a moment to attempt to consider that. then he relapsed upon his predetermined attitude. "god!" he exclaimed, "but i have been a fool!"
she decided that that must be ignored.
"i care more for those hostels than i care for anything—anything else in the world," she told him. "i want them to work—i want them to succeed.... and then——"
he listened in sceptical silence.
"mr. brumley is nothing to me but a helper. he——how can you imagine, isaac——? i! how can you dare? to suggest——!"
"very well," said sir isaac and reflected and made his old familiar sound with his teeth. "run the hostels without him, elly," he propounded. "then i'll believe."
she perceived that suddenly she was faced by a test or a bargain. in the background of her mind the figure of mr. brumley, as she had seen him last, in brown and with a tie rather to one side, protested vainly. she did what she could for him on the spur of the moment. "but," she said, "he's so helpful. he's so—harmless."
"that's as may be," said sir isaac and breathed heavily.
"how can one suddenly turn on a friend?"
"i don't see that you ever wanted a friend," said sir isaac.
"he's been so good. it isn't reasonable, isaac. when anyone has—slaved."
"i don't say he isn't a good sort of chap," said sir isaac, with that same note of almost superhuman rationality, "only—he isn't going to run my hostels."
"but what do you mean, isaac?"
"i mean you got to choose."
he waited as if he expected her to speak and then went on.
"what it comes to is this, elly, i'm about sick of that chap. i'm sick of him." he paused for a moment because his breath was short. "if you go on with the hostels he's—phew—got to mizzle. then—i don't mind—if you want that girl burnet brought back in triumph.... it'll make mrs. pembrose chuck the whole blessed show, you know, but i say—i don't mind.... only in that case, i don't want to see or hear—or hear about—phew—or hear about your mr. brumley again. and i don't want you to, either.... i'm being pretty reasonable and pretty patient over this, with people—people—talking right and left. still,—there's a limit.... you've been going on—if i didn't know you were an innocent—in a way ... i don't want to talk about that. there you are, elly."
it seemed to her that she had always expected this to happen. but however much she had expected it to happen she was still quite unprepared with any course of action. she wanted with an equal want of limitation to keep both mr. brumley and her hostels.
"but isaac," she said. "what do you suspect? what do you think? this friendship has been going on——how can i end it suddenly?"
"don't you be too innocent, elly. you know and i know perfectly well what there is between men and women. i don't make out i know—anything i don't know. i don't pretend you are anything but straight. only——"
he suddenly gave way to his irritation. his self-control vanished. "damn it!" he cried, and his panting breath quickened; "the thing's got to end. as if i didn't understand! as if i didn't understand!"
she would have protested again but his voice held her. "it's got to end. it's got to end. of course you haven't done anything, of course you don't know anything or think of anything.... only here i am ill.... you wouldn't be sorry if i got worse.... you can wait; you can.... all right! all right! and there you stand, irritating me—arguing. you know—it chokes me.... got to end, i tell you.... got to end...."
he beat at the arms of his chair and then put a hand to his throat.
"go away," he cried to her. "go to hell!"
