the news of sir isaac's death came quite unexpectedly to mr. brumley. he was at the climax club, and rather bored; he had had some tea and dry toast in the magazine room, and had been through the weeklies, and it was a particularly uninteresting week. then he came down into the hall, looked idly at the latest bulletins upon the board, and read that "sir isaac harman died suddenly this morning at sta. margherita, in ligure, whither he had gone for rest and change."
he went on mechanically reading down the bulletin, leaving something of himself behind him that did not read on. then he returned to that remarkable item and re-read it, and picked up that lost element of his being again.
he had awaited this event for so long, thought of it so often in such a great variety of relationships, dreamt of it, hoped for it, prayed for it, and tried not to think of it, that now it came to him in reality it seemed to have no substance or significance whatever. he had exhausted the fact before it happened. since first he had thought of it there had passed four long years, and in that time he had seen it from every aspect, exhausted every possibility. it had become a theoretical possibility, the basis of continually less confident, continually more unsubstantial day dreams. constantly he had tried not to think of it, tried to assure himself of sir isaac's invalid immortality. and here it was!
the line above it concerned an overdue ship, the line below resumed a speech by mr. lloyd george. "he would challenge the honourable member to repeat his accusations——"
mr. brumley stood quite still before the mauve-coloured print letters for some time, then went slowly across the hall into the breakfast-room, sat down in a chair by the fireplace, and fell into a kind of featureless thinking. sir isaac was dead, his wife was free, and the long waiting that had become a habit was at an end.
he had anticipated a wild elation, and for a while he was only sensible of change, a profound change....
he began to feel glad that he had waited, that she had insisted upon patience, that there had been no disaster, no scandal between them. now everything was clear for them. he had served his apprenticeship. they would be able to marry, and have no quarrel with the world.
he sat with his mind forming images of the prospect before him, images that were at first feeble and vague, and then, though still in a silly way, more concrete and definite. at first they were quite petty anticipations, of how he would have to tell people of his approaching marriage, of how he would break it to george edmund that a new mother impended. he mused for some time upon the details of that. should he take her down to george edmund's school, and let the boy fall in love with her—he would certainly fall in love with her—before anything definite was said, or should he first go down alone and break the news? each method had its own attractive possibilities of drama.
then mr. brumley began to think of the letter he must write lady harman—a difficult letter. one does not rejoice at death. already mr. brumley was beginning to feel a generous pity for the man he had done his utmost not to detest for so long. poor sir isaac had lived like a blind thing in the sunlight, gathering and gathering, when the pride and pleasure of life is to administer and spend.... mr. brumley fell wondering just how she could be feeling now about her dead husband. she might be in a phase of quite real sorrow. probably the last illness had tired and strained her. so that his letter would have to be very fine and tender and soothing, free from all harshness, free from any gladness—yet it would be hard not to let a little of his vast relief peep out. always hitherto, except for one or two such passionate lapses as that which had precipitated the situation at santa margherita, his epistolary manner had been formal, his matter intellectual and philanthropic, for he had always known that no letter was absolutely safe from sir isaac's insatiable research. should he still be formal, still write to "dear lady harman," or suddenly break into a new warmth? half an hour later he was sitting in the writing-room with some few flakes of torn paper on the carpet between his feet and the partially filled wastepaper basket, still meditating upon this difficult issue of the address.
the letter he achieved at last began, "my dear lady," and went on to, "i do not know how to begin this letter—perhaps you will find it almost as difficult to receive...."
in the small hours he woke to one of his habitual revulsions. was that, he asked himself, the sort of letter a lover should write to the beloved on her release, on the sudden long prayed-for opening of a way to her, on the end of her shameful servitude and his humiliations? he began to recall the cold and stilted sentences of that difficult composition. the gentility of it! all his life he had been a prey to gentility, had cast himself free from it, only to relapse again in such fashion as this. would he never be human and passionate and sincere? of course he was glad, and she ought to be glad, that sir isaac, their enemy and their prison, was dead; it was for them to rejoice together. he turned out of bed at last, when he could lie still under these self-accusations no longer, and wrapped himself in his warm dressing-gown and began to write. he wrote in pencil. his fountain-pen was as usual on his night table, but pencil seemed the better medium, and he wrote a warm and glowing love-letter that was brought to an end at last by an almost passionate fit of sneezing. he could find no envelopes in his bedroom davenport, and so he left that honest scrawl under a paper-weight, and went back to bed greatly comforted. he re-read it in the morning with emotion, and some slight misgivings that grew after he had despatched it. he went to lunch at his club contemplating a third letter that should be sane and fine and sweet, and that should rectify the confusing effect of those two previous efforts. he wrote this letter later in the afternoon.
the days seemed very long before the answer to his first letter came to him, and in that interval two more—aspects went to her. her reply was very brief, and written in the large, firm, still girlishly clear hand that distinguished her.
"i was so glad of your letter. my life is so strange here, a kind of hushed life. the nights are extraordinarily beautiful, the moon very large and the little leaves on the trees still and black. we are coming back to england and the funeral will be from our putney house."
that was all, but it gave mr. brumley an impression of her that was exceedingly vivid and close. he thought of her, shadowy and dusky in the moonlight until his soul swam with love for her; he had to get up and walk about; he whispered her name very softly to himself several times; he groaned gently, and at last he went to his little desk and wrote to her his sixth letter—quite a beautiful letter. he told her that he loved her, that he had always loved her since their first moment of meeting, and he tried to express just the wave of tenderness that inundated him at the thought of her away there in italy. once, he said, he had dreamt that he would be the first to take her to italy. perhaps some day they would yet be in italy together.
2
it was only by insensible degrees that doubt crept into mr. brumley's assurances. he did not observe at once that none of the brief letters she wrote him responded to his second, the impassioned outbreak in pencil. and it seemed only in keeping with the modest reserves of womanhood that she should be restrained—she always had been restrained.
she asked him not to see her at once when she returned to england; she wanted, she said, "to see how things are," and that fell in very well with a certain delicacy in himself. the unburied body of sir isaac—it was now provisionally embalmed—was, through some inexplicable subtlety in his mind, a far greater barrier than the living man had ever been, and he wanted it out of the way. and everything settled. then, indeed, they might meet.
meanwhile he had a curious little private conflict of his own. he was trying not to think, day and night he was trying not to think, that lady harman was now a very rich woman. yet some portions of his brain, and he had never suspected himself of such lawless regions, persisted in the most vulgar and outrageous suggestions, suggestions that made his soul blush; schemes, for example, of splendid foreign travel, of hotel staffs bowing, of a yacht in the mediterranean, of motor cars, of a palatial flat in london, of a box at the opera, of artists patronized, of—most horrible!—a baronetcy.... the more authentic parts of mr. brumley cowered from and sought to escape these squalid dreams of magnificences. it shocked and terrified him to find such things could come out in him. he was like some pest-stricken patient, amazedly contemplating his first symptom. his better part denied, repudiated. of course he would never touch, never even propose—or hint.... it was an aspect he had never once contemplated before sir isaac died. he could on his honour, and after searching his heart, say that. yet in pall mall one afternoon, suddenly, he caught himself with a thought in his head so gross, so smug, that he uttered a faint cry and quickened his steps.... benevolent stepfather!
these distresses begot a hope. perhaps, after all, probably, there would be some settlement.... she might not be rich, not so very rich.... she might be tied up....
he perceived in that lay his hope of salvation. otherwise—oh, pitiful soul!—things were possible in him; he saw only too clearly what dreadful things were possible.
if only she were disinherited, if only he might take her, stripped of all these possessions that even in such glancing anticipations begot——this horrid indigestion of the imagination!
but then,——the hostels?...
there he stumbled against an invincible riddle!
there was something dreadful about the way in which these considerations blotted out the essential fact of separations abolished, barriers lowered, the way to an honourable love made plain and open....
the day of the funeral came at last, and mr. brumley tried not to think of it, paternally, at margate. he fled from sir isaac's ultimate withdrawal. blenker's obituary notice in the old country gazette was a masterpiece of tactful eulogy, ostentatiously loyal, yet extremely not unmindful of the widowed proprietor, and of all the possible changes of ownership looming ahead. mr. brumley, reading it in the londonward train, was greatly reminded of the hostels. that was a riddle he didn't begin to solve. of course, it was imperative the hostels should continue—imperative. now they might run them together, openly, side by side. but then, with such temptations to hitherto inconceivable vulgarities. and again, insidiously, those visions returned of two figures, manifestly opulent, grouped about a big motor car or standing together under a large subservient archway....
there was a long letter from her at his flat, a long and amazing letter. it was so folded that his eye first caught the writing on the third page: "never marry again. it is so clear that our work needs all my time and all my means." his eyebrows rose, his expression became consternation; his hands trembled a little as he turned the letter over to read it through. it was a deliberate letter. it began—
"dear mr. brumley, i could never have imagined how much there is to do after we are dead, and before we can be buried."
"yes," said mr. brumley; "but what does this mean?"
"there are so many surprises——"
"it isn't clear."
"in ourselves and the things about us."
"of course, he would have made some complicated settlement. i might have known."
"it is the strangest thing in the world to be a widow, much stranger than anyone could ever have supposed, to have no one to control one, no one to think of as coming before one, no one to answer to, to be free to plan one's life for oneself——"
he stood with the letter in his hand after he had read it through, perplexed.
"i can't stand this," he said. "i want to know."
he went to his desk and wrote:—
"my dear, i want you to marry me."
what more was to be said? he hesitated with this brief challenge in his hand, was minded to telegraph it and thought of james's novel, in the cage. telegraph operators are only human after all. he determined upon a special messenger and rang up his quarter valet—he shared service in his flat—to despatch it.
the messenger boy got back from putney that evening about half-past eight. he brought a reply in pencil.
"my dear friend," she wrote. "you have been so good to me, so helpful. but i do not think that is possible. forgive me. i want so badly to think and here i cannot think. i have never been able to think here. i am going down to black strand, and in a day or so i will write and we will talk. be patient with me."
she signed her name "ellen"; always before she had been "e.h."
"yes," cried mr. brumley, "but i want to know!"
he fretted for an hour and went to the telephone.
something was wrong with the telephone, it buzzed and went faint, and it would seem that at her end she was embarrassed. "i want to come to you now," he said. "impossible," was the clearest word in her reply. should he go in a state of virile resolution, force her hesitation as a man should? she might be involved there with mrs. harman, with all sorts of relatives and strange people....
in the end he did not go.
