i cannot tell whether the reader is a person of swift decisions or one of the newer race of doubters; if he be the latter he will the better understand how lady harman did in the next two days make up her mind definitely and conclusively to two entirely opposed lines of action. she decided that her relations with mr. brumley, innocent as they were, must cease in the interests of the hostels and her struggle with mrs. pembrose, and she decided with quite equal certainty that her husband's sudden veto upon these relations was an intolerable tyranny that must be resisted with passionate indignation. also she was surprised to find how difficult it was now to think of parting from mr. brumley. she made her way to these precarious conclusions and on from whichever it was to the other through a jungle of conflicting considerations and feelings. when she thought of mrs. pembrose and more particularly of the probable share of mrs. pembrose in her husband's objection to mr. brumley her indignation kindled. she perceived mrs. pembrose as a purely evil personality, as a spirit of espionage, distrust, calculated treachery and malignant intervention, as all that is evil in rule and officialism, and a vast wave of responsibility for all those difficult and feeble and likeable young women who elbowed and giggled and misunderstood and blundered and tried to live happily under the commanding stresses of mrs. pembrose's austerity carried her away. she had her duty to do to them and it overrode every other duty. if a certain separation from mr. brumley's assiduous aid was demanded, was it too great a sacrifice? and no sooner was that settled than the whole question reopened with her indignant demand why anyone at any price had the right to prohibit a friendship that she had so conscientiously kept innocent. if she gave way to this outrageous restriction to-day, what fresh limitations might not sir isaac impose to-morrow? and now, she was so embarrassed in her struggle by his health. she could not go to him and have things out with him, she could not directly defy him, because that might mean a suffocating seizure for him....
it was entirely illogical, no doubt, but extremely natural for lady harman to decide that she must communicate her decision, whichever one it was, to mr. brumley in a personal interview. she wrote to him and arranged to meet and talk to him in kew gardens, and with a feeling of discretion went thither not in the automobile but in a taxi-cab. and so delicately now were her two irrevocable decisions balanced in her mind that twice on her way to kew she swayed over from one to the other.
arrived at the gardens she found herself quite disinclined to begin the announcement of either decision. she was quite exceptionally glad to see mr. brumley; he was dressed in a new suit of lighter brown that became him very well indeed, the day was warm and bright, a day of scyllas and daffodils and snow-upon-the-mountains and green-powdered trees and frank sunshine,—and the warmth of her feelings for her friend merged indistinguishably with the springtime stir and glow. they walked across the bright turf together in a state of unjustifiable happiness, purring little admirations at the ingenious elegance of creation at its best as gardeners set it out for our edification, and the whole tenor of lady harman's mind was to make this occasion an escape from the particular business that had brought her thither.
"we'll look for daffodils away there towards the river under the trees," said mr. brumley, and it seemed preposterous not to enjoy those daffodils at least before she broached the great issue between an irresistible force and an immoveable post, that occupied her mental background.
mr. brumley was quite at his best that afternoon. he was happy, gay and deferential; he made her realize by his every tone and movement that if he had his choice of the whole world that afternoon and all its inhabitants and everything, there was no other place in which he would be, no other companion, no other occupation than this he had. he talked of spring and flowers, quoted poets and added the treasures of a well-stored mind to the amenities of the day. "it's good to take a holiday at times," he said, and after that it was more difficult than ever to talk about the trouble of the hostels.
she was able to do this at last while they were having tea in the little pavilion near the pagoda. it was the old pavilion, the one that miss alimony's suffragettes were afterwards to burn down in order to demonstrate the relentless logic of women. they did it in the same eventful week when miss alimony was, she declared, so nearly carried off by white slave traders (disguised as nurses but, fortunately for her, smelling of brandy) from the brixton temperance bazaar. but in those simpler days the pavilion still existed; it was tended by agreeable waiters whose evening dress was mitigated by cheerful little straw hats, and an enormous multitude of valiant and smutty cockney sparrows chirped and squeaked and begged and fluttered and fought, venturing to the very tables and feet of the visitors. and here, a little sobered from their first elation by much walking about and the presence of jam and watercress, mr. brumley and lady harman could think again of the work they were doing for the reconstitution of society upon collective lines.
she began to tell him of the conflict between mrs. pembrose and alice burnet that threatened the latter with extinction. she found it more convenient to talk at first as though the strands of decision were still all in her hands; afterwards she could go on to the peculiar complication of the situation through the unexpected weakening of her position in relation to mrs. pembrose. she described the particular of the new trouble, the perplexing issue between the "lady-like," for which as a feminine ideal there was so much to be said on the one hand and the "genial," which was also an admirable quality, on the other. "you see," she said, "it's very rude to cough at people and make noises, but then it's so difficult to explain to the others that it's equally rude to go past people and pretend not to see or hear them. girls of that sort always seem so much more underbred when they are trying to be superior than when they are not; they get so stiff and—exasperating. and this keeping out of the union because it isn't genteel, it's the very essence of the trouble with all these employees. we've discussed that so often. those drapers' girls seem full of such cold, selfish, base, pretentious notions; much more full even than our refreshment girls. and then as if it wasn't all difficult enough comes mrs. pembrose and her wardresses doing all sorts of hard, clumsy things, and one can't tell them just how little they are qualified to judge good behaviour. their one idea of discipline is to speak to people as if they were servants and to be distant and crushing. and long before one can do anything come trouble and tart replies and reports of "gross impertinence" and expulsion. we keep on expelling girls. this is the fourth time girls have had to go. what is to become of them? i know this burnet girl quite well as you know. she's just a human, kindly little woman.... she'll feel disgraced.... how can i let a thing like that occur?"
she spread her hands apart over the tea things.
mr. brumley held his chin in his hand and said "um" and looked judicial, and admired lady harman very much, and tried to grasp the whole trouble and wring out a solution. he made some admirable generalizations about the development of a new social feeling in response to changed conditions, but apart from a remark that mrs. pembrose was all organization and no psychology, and quite the wrong person for her position, he said nothing in the slightest degree contributory to the particular drama under consideration. from that utterance, however, lady harman would no doubt have gone on to the slow, tentative but finally conclusive statement of the new difficulty that had arisen out of her husband's jealousy and to the discussion of the more fundamental decisions it forced upon her, if a peculiar blight had not fallen upon their conversation and robbed it at last of even an appearance of ease.
this blight crept upon their minds.... it began first with mr. brumley.
mr. brumley was rarely free from self-consciousness. whenever he was in a restaurant or any such place of assembly, then whatever he did or whatever he said he had a kind of surplus attention, a quickening of the ears, a wandering of the eyes, to the groups and individuals round about him. and while he had seemed entirely occupied with lady harman, he had nevertheless been aware from the outset that a dingy and inappropriate-looking man in a bowler hat and a ready-made suit of grey, was listening to their conversation from an adjacent table.
this man had entered the pavilion oddly. he had seemed to dodge in and hesitate. then he had chosen his table rather deliberately—and he kept looking, and trying not to seem to look.
that was not all. mr. brumley's expression was overcast by the effort to recall something. he sat elbows on table and leant forward towards lady harman and at the blossom-laden trees outside the pavilion and trifled with two fingers on his lips and spoke between them in a voice that was speculative and confidential and muffled and mysterious. "where have i seen our friend to the left before?"
she had been aware of his distraction for some time.
she glanced at the man and found nothing remarkable in him. she tried to go on with her explanations.
mr. brumley appeared attentive and then he said again: "but where have i seen him?"
and from that point their talk was blighted; the heart seemed to go out of her. mr. brumley she felt was no longer taking in what she was saying. at the time she couldn't in any way share his preoccupation. but what had been difficult before became hopeless and she could no longer feel that even presently she would be able to make him understand the peculiar alternatives before her. they drifted back by the great conservatory and the ornamental water, aripple with ducks and swans, to the gates where his taxi waited.
even then it occurred to her that she ought to tell him something of the new situation. but now their time was running out, she would have to be concise, and what wife could ever say abruptly and offhand that frequent fact, "oh, by the by, my husband is jealous of you"? then she had an impulse to tell him simply, without any explanation at all, that for a time he must not meet her. and while she gathered herself together for that, his preoccupations intervened again.
he stood up in the open taxi-cab and looked back.
"that chap," he said, "is following us."
5
the effect of this futile interview upon lady harman was remarkable. she took to herself an absurd conviction that this inconclusiveness had been an achievement. confronted by a dilemma, she had chosen neither horn and assumed an attitude of inoffensive defiance. springs in england vary greatly in their character; some are easterly and quarrelsome, some are north-westerly and wetly disastrous, a bleak invasion from the ocean; some are but the broken beginnings of what are not so much years as stretches of meteorological indecision. this particular spring was essentially a south-westerly spring, good and friendly, showery but in the lightest way and so softly reassuring as to be gently hilarious. it was a spring to get into the blood of anyone; it gave lady harman the feeling that mrs. pembrose would certainly be dealt with properly and without unreasonable delay by heaven, and that meanwhile it was well to take the good things of existence as cheerfully as possible. the good things she took were very innocent things. feeling unusually well and enjoying great draughts of spring air and sunshine were the chief. and she took them only for three brief days. she carried the children down to black strand to see her daffodils, and her daffodils surpassed expectation. there was a delirium of blackthorn in the new wild garden she had annexed from the woods and a close carpet of encouraged wild primroses. even the putney garden was full of happy surprises. the afternoon following her visit to black strand was so warm that she had tea with her family in great gaiety on the lawn under the cedar. her offspring were unusually sweet that day, they had new blue cotton sunbonnets, and baby and annette at least succeeded in being pretty. and millicent, under the new swiss governess, had acquired, it seemed quite suddenly, a glib colloquial french that somehow reconciled one to the extreme thinness and shapelessness of her legs.
then an amazing new fact broke into this gleam of irrational contentment, a shattering new fact. she found she was being watched. she discovered that dingy man in the grey suit following her.
the thing came upon her one afternoon. she was starting out for a talk with georgina. she felt so well, so confident of the world that it was intolerable to think of georgina harbouring resentment; she resolved she would go and have things out with her and make it clear just how impossible it was to impose a director-general upon her husband. she became aware of the man in grey as she walked down putney hill.
she recognized him at once. he was at the corner of redfern road and still unaware of her existence. he was leaning against the wall with the habituated pose of one who is frequently obliged to lean against walls for long periods of time, and he was conversing in an elucidatory manner with the elderly crossing-sweeper who still braves the motor-cars at that point. he became aware of her emergence with a start, he ceased to lean and became observant.
he was one of those men whose face suggests the word "muzzle," with an erect combative nose and a forward slant of the body from the rather inturned feet. he wore an observant bowler hat a little too small for him, and there is something about the tail of his jacket—as though he had been docked.
she passed at a stride to the acceptance of mr. brumley's hitherto incredible suspicion. her pulses quickened. it came into her head to see how far this man would go in following her. she went on demurely down the hill leaving him quite unaware that she had seen him.
she was amazed, and after her first belief incredulous again. could isaac be going mad? at the corner she satisfied herself of the grey man's proximity and hailed a taxi-cab. the man in grey came nosing across to listen to her directions and hear where she was going.
"please drive up the hill until i tell you," she said, "slowly"—and had the satisfaction, if one may call it a satisfaction, of seeing the grey man dive towards the taxi-cab rank. then she gave herself up to hasty scheming.
she turned her taxi-cab abruptly when she was certain of being followed, went back into london, turned again and made for westridge's great stores in oxford street. the grey man ticked up two pences in pursuit. all along the brompton road he pursued her with his nose like the jib of a ship.
she was excited and interested, and not nearly so shocked as she ought to have been. it didn't somehow jar as it ought to have jarred with her idea of sir isaac. watched by a detective! this then was the completion of the conditional freedom she had won by smashing that window. she might have known....
she was astonished and indignant but not nearly so entirely indignant as a noble heroine should have been. she was certainly not nearly so queenly as mrs. sawbridge would have shown herself under such circumstances. it may have been due to some plebeian strain in her father's blood that over and above her proper indignation she was extremely interested. she wanted to know what manner of man it was whose nose was just appearing above the window edge of the taxi-cab behind. in her inexperienced inattention she had never yet thought it was possible that men could be hired to follow women.
she sat a little forward, thinking.
how far would he follow her and was it possible to shake him off? or are such followers so expert that once upon a scent, they are like the indian hunting dog, inevitable. she must see.
she paid off her taxi at westridge's and, with the skill of her sex, observed him by the window reflection, counting the many doors of the establishment. would he try to watch them all? there were also some round the corner. no, he was going to follow her in. she had a sudden desire, an unreasonable desire, perhaps an instinctive desire to see that man among baby-linen. it was in her power for a time to wreathe him with incongruous objects. this was the sort of fancy a woman must control....
he stalked her with an unreal sang-froid. he ambushed behind a display of infants' socks. driven to buy by a saleswoman he appeared to be demanding improbable varieties of infant's socks.
are these watchers and trackers sometimes driven to buying things in shops? if so, strange items must figure in accounts of expenses. if he bought those socks, would they appear in sir isaac's bill? she felt a sudden craving for the sight of sir isaac's private detective account. and as for the articles themselves, what became of them? she knew her husband well enough to feel sure that if he paid for anything he would insist upon having it. but where—where did he keep them?...
but now the man's back was turned; he was no doubt improvising paternity and an extreme fastidiousness in baby's footwear——now for it!—through departments of deepening indelicacy to the lift!
but he had considered that possibility of embarrassment; he got round by some other way, he was just in time to hear the lift gate clash upon a calmly preoccupied lady, who still seemed as unaware of his existence as the sky.
he was running upstairs, when she descended again, without getting out; he stopped at the sight of her shooting past him, their eyes met and there was something appealing in his. he was very moist and his bowler was flagging. he had evidently started out in the morning with misconceptions about the weather. and it was clear he felt he had blundered in coming into westridge's. before she could get a taxi he was on the pavement behind her, hot but pursuing.
she sought in her mind for corner shops, with doors on this street and that. she exercised him upon peter robinson's and debenham and freebody's and then started for the monument. but on her way to the monument she thought of the moving staircase at harrod's. if she went up and down on this, she wanted to know what he would do, would he run up and down the fixed flight? he did. several times. and then she bethought herself of the piccadilly tube; she got in at brompton road and got out at down street and then got in again and went to south kensington and he darted in and out of adjacent carriages and got into lifts by curious retrograde movements, being apparently under the erroneous impression that his back was less characteristic than his face.
by this time he was evidently no longer unaware of her intelligent interest in his movements. it was clear too that he had received a false impression that she wanted to shake him off and that all the sleuth in him was aroused. he was dishevelled and breathing hard and getting a little close and coarse in his pursuit, but he was sticking to it with a puckered intensified resolution. he came up into the south kensington air open-mouthed and sniffing curiously, but invincible.
she discovered suddenly that she did not like him at all and that she wanted to go home.
she took a taxi, and then away in the wilds of the fulham road she had her crowning idea. she stopped the cab at a dingy little furniture shop, paid the driver exorbitantly and instructed him to go right back to south kensington station, buy her an evening paper and return for her. the pursuer drew up thirty yards away, fell into her trap, paid off his cab and feigned to be interested by a small window full of penny toys, cheap chocolate and cocoanut ice. she bought herself a brass door weight, paid for it hastily and posted herself just within the furniture-shop door.
then you see her cab returned suddenly and she got in at once and left him stranded.
he made a desperate effort to get a motor omnibus. she saw him rushing across the traffic gesticulating. then he collided with a boy with a basket on a bicycle—not so far as she could see injuriously, they seemed to leap at once into a crowd and an argument, and then he was hidden from her by a bend in the road.
