"Lady Harman"s ill," lied Sir Isaac. "She mustn"t be disturbed.

Everything has to be kept quiet. See? Not even shouting. Not even ordinarily raised voices. A voice like yours--might kill her. That"s why Snagsby here said we were not at home. We aren"t at home--not to anyone."

Lady Beach-Mandarin was baffled.

"Snagsby," said Sir Isaac, "open that door."

"But can"t I see her--just for a moment?"

Sir Isaac"s malignity had softened a little at the prospect of victory.

"Absolutely impossible," he said. "Everything disturbs her, every tiny thing. You----You"d be certain to."

Lady Beach-Mandarin looked at her companion and it was manifest that she was at the end of her resources. Miss Garradice after the fashion of highly strung spinsters suddenly felt disappointed in her leader. It wasn"t, her silence intimated, for her to offer suggestions.

The ladies were defeated. When at last that stiff interval ended their dresses rustled doorward, and Sir Isaac broke out into the civilities of a victor....

It was only when they were a mile away from Black Strand that fluent speech returned to Lady Beach-Mandarin. "The little--Crippen," she said.

"He"s got her locked up in some cellar.... Horrid little face he has! He looked like a rat at bay."

"I think perhaps if we"d done _differently_," said Miss Garradice in a tone of critical irresponsibility.

"I"ll write to her. That"s what I"ll do," said Lady Beach-Mandarin contemplating her next step. "I"m really--concerned. And didn"t you feel--something sinister. That butler-man"s expression--a kind of round horror."

That very evening she told it all--it was almost the trial trip of the story--to Mr. Brumley....

Sir Isaac watched their departure furtively from the study window and then ran out to the garden. He went right through into the pine woods beyond and presently, far away up the slopes, he saw his wife loitering down towards him, a gracious white tallness touched by a ray of sunlight--and without a suspicion of how nearly rescue had come to her.

--7

So you see under what excitement Mr. Brumley came down to Black Strand.

Luck was with him at first and he forced the defence with ridiculous ease.

"Lady Harman, sir, is not a Tome," said Snagsby.

"Ah!" said Mr. Brumley, with all the a.s.surance of a former proprietor, "then I"ll just have a look round the garden," and was through the green door in the wall and round the barn end before Snagsby"s mind could function. That unfortunate man went as far as the green door in pursuit and then with a gesture of despair retreated to the pantry and began cleaning all his silver to calm his agonized spirit. He could pretend perhaps that Mr. Brumley had never rung at the front door at all. If not----

Moreover Mr. Brumley had the good fortune to find Lady Harman quite unattended and pensive upon the little seat that Euphemia had placed for the better seeing of her herbaceous borders.

"Lady Harman!" he said rather breathlessly, taking both her hands with an unwonted a.s.surance and then sitting down beside her, "I am so glad to see you. I came down to see you--to see if I couldn"t be of any service to you."

"It"s so kind of you to come," she said, and her dark eyes said as much or more. She glanced round and he too glanced round for Sir Isaac.

"You see," he said. "I don"t know.... I don"t want to be impertinent....

But I feel--if I can be of any service to you.... I feel perhaps you want help here. I don"t want to seem to be taking advantage of a situation. Or making unwarrantable a.s.sumptions. But I want to a.s.sure you--I would willingly die--if only I could do anything.... Ever since I first saw you."

He said all this in a distracted way, with his eyes going about the garden for the possible apparition of Sir Isaac, and all the time his sense of possible observers made him a.s.sume an att.i.tude as though he was engaged in the smallest of small talk. Her colour quickened at the import of his words, and emotion, very rich and abundant emotion, its various factors not altogether untouched perhaps by the spirit of laughter, lit her eyes. She doubted a little what he was saying and yet she had antic.i.p.ated that somehow, some day, in quite other circ.u.mstances, Mr. Brumley might break into some such strain.

"You see," he went on with a quality of appeal in his eyes, "there"s so little time to say things--without possible interruption. I feel you are in difficulties and I want to make you understand----We----Every beautiful woman, I suppose, has a sort of right to a certain sort of man. I want to tell you--I"m not really presuming to make love to you--but I want to tell you I am altogether yours, altogether at your service. I"ve had sleepless nights. All this time I"ve been thinking about you. I"m quite clear, I haven"t a doubt, I"ll do anything for you, without reward, without return, I"ll be your devoted brother, anything, if only you"ll make use of me...."

Her colour quickened. She looked around and still no one appeared. "It"s so kind of you to come like this," she said. "You say things--But I _have_ felt that you wanted to be brotherly...."

"Whatever I _can_ be," a.s.sured Mr. Brumley.

"My situation here," she said, her dark frankness of gaze meeting his troubled eyes. "It"s so strange and difficult. I don"t know what to do.

I don"t know--what I _want_ to do...."

"In London," said Mr. Brumley, "they think--they say--you have been taken off--brought down here--to a sort of captivity."

"I _have_," admitted Lady Harman with a note of recalled astonishment in her voice.

"If I can help you to escape----!"

"But where can I escape?"

And one must admit that it is a little difficult to indicate a correct refuge for a lady who finds her home intolerable. Of course there was Mrs. Sawbridge, but Lady Harman felt that her mother"s disposition to lock herself into her bedroom at the slightest provocation made her a weak support for a defensive fight, and in addition that boarding-house at Bournemouth did not attract her. Yet what other wall in all the world was there for Lady Harman to set her back against? During the last few days Mr. Brumley"s mind had been busy with the details of impa.s.sioned elopements conducted in the most exalted spirit, but now in the actual presence of the lady these projects did in the most remarkable manner vanish.

"Couldn"t you," he said at last, "go somewhere?" And then with an air of being meticulously explicit, "I mean, isn"t there somewhere, where you might safely go?"

(And in his dreams he had been crossing high pa.s.ses with her; he had halted suddenly and stayed her mule. In his dream because he was a man of letters and a poet it was always a mule, never a _train de luxe_.

"Look," he had said, "below there,--_Italy!_--the country you have never seen before.")

"There"s nowhere," she answered.

"Now _where_?" asked Mr. Brumley, "and how?" with the tone and something of the gesture of one who racks his mind. "If you only trust yourself to me----Oh! Lady Harman, if I dared ask it----"

He became aware of Sir Isaac walking across the lawn towards them....

The two men greeted each other with a reasonable cordiality. "I wanted to see how you were getting on down here," said Mr. Brumley, "and whether there was anything I could do for you."

"We"re getting on all right," said Sir Isaac with no manifest glow of grat.i.tude.

"You"ve altered the old barn--tremendously."

"Come and see it," said Sir Isaac. "It"s a wing."

Mr. Brumley remained seated. "It was the first thing that struck me, Lady Harman. This evidence of Sir Isaac"s energy."

"Come and look over it," Sir Isaac persisted.

Mr. Brumley and Lady Harman rose together.

"One"s enough to show him that," said Sir Isaac.

"I was telling Lady Harman how much we missed her at Lady Viping"s, Sir Isaac."

"It was on account of the drains," Sir Isaac explained. "You can"t--it"s foolhardy to stay a day when the drains are wrong, dinners or no dinners."

"You know _I_ was extremely sorry not to come to Lady Viping"s. I hope you"ll tell her. I wrote."