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 embarra.s.sed. "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.

--3

He sat at his lunch alone next day at one of the little tables men choose when they shun company. But to the right of him was the table of the politicians, Adolphus Blenker and Pope of the East Purblow Experiment, and Sir Piper Nicolls, and Munk, the editor of the _Daily Rectification_, sage men all and deep in those mysterious manipulations and wire-pullings by which the liberal party organization was even then preparing for itself unusual distrust and dislike, and Horatio Blenker was tenoring away after his manner about a case of right and conscience, "Blenking like Winking" was how a silent member had put it once to Brumley in a gust of hostile criticism. "Practically if she marries again, she is a pauper," struck on Brumley"s ears.

"Of course," said Mr. Brumley, and stopped eating.

"I don"t know if you remember the particulars of the Astor case," began Munk....

Never had Mr. Brumley come so frankly to eavesdropping. But he heard no more of Lady Harman. Munk had to quote the rights and wrongs of various American wills, and then Mr. Pope seized his opportunity. "At East Purblow," he went on, "in quite a number of instances we had to envisage this problem of the widow----"

Mr. Brumley pushed back his plate and strolled towards the desk.

It was exactly what he might have expected, what indeed had been at the back of his mind all along, and on the whole he was glad. Naturally she hesitated; naturally she wanted time to think, and as naturally it was impossible for her to tell him what it was she was thinking about.

They would marry. They must marry. Love has claims supreme over all other claims and he felt no doubt that for her his comparative poverty of two thousand a year would mean infinitely more happiness than she had ever known or could know with Sir Isaac"s wealth. She was reluctant, of course, to become dependent upon him until he made it clear to her what infinite pleasure it would be for him to supply her needs. Should he write to her forthwith? He outlined a letter in his mind, a very fine and generous letter, good phrases came, and then he reflected that it would be difficult to explain to her just how he had learnt of her peculiar situation. It would be far more seemly to wait either for a public announcement or for some intimation from her.

And then he began to realize that this meant the end of all their work at the Hostels. In his first satisfaction at escaping that possible great motor-car and all the superfluities of Sir Isaac"s acc.u.mulation, he had forgotten that side of the business....

When one came to think it over, the Hostels did complicate the problem.

It was ingenious of Sir Isaac....

It was infernally ingenious of Sir Isaac....

He could not remain in the club for fear that somebody might presently come talking to him and interrupt his train of thought. He went out into the streets.

These Hostels upset everything.

What he had supposed to be a way of escape was really the mouth of a net.

Whichever way they turned Sir Isaac crippled them....

--4

Mr. Brumley grew so angry that presently even the strangers in the street annoyed him. He turned his face homeward. He hated dilemmas; he wanted always to deny them, to thrust them aside, to take impossible third courses.

"For three years," shouted Mr. Brumley, free at last in his study to give way to his rage, "for three years I"ve been making her care for these things. And then--and then--they turn against me!"

A violent, incredibly undignified wrath against the dead man seized him.

He threw books about the room. He cried out vile insults and mingled words of an unfortunate commonness with others of extreme rarity. He wanted to go off to Kensal Green and hammer at the grave there and tell the departed knight exactly what he thought of him. Then presently he became calmer, he lit a pipe, picked up the books from the floor, and meditated revenges upon Sir Isaac"s memory. I deplore my task of recording these ungracious moments in Mr. Brumley"s love history. I deplore the ease with which men pa.s.s from loving and serving women to an almost canine fight for them. It is the ugliest essential of romance.

There is indeed much in the human heart that I deplore. But Mr. Brumley was exasperated by disappointment. He was sore, he was raw. Driven by an intolerable desire to explore every possibility of the situation, full indeed of an unholy vindictiveness, he went off next morning with strange questions to Maxwell Hartington.

He put the case as a general case.

"Lady Harman?" said Maxwell Hartington.

"No, not particularly Lady Harman. A general principle. What are people--what are women tied up in such a way to do?"

Precedents were quoted and possibilities weighed. Mr. Brumley was flushed, vague but persistent.

"Suppose," he said, "that they love each other pa.s.sionately--and their work, whatever it may be, almost as pa.s.sionately. Is there no way----?"

"He"ll have a _dum casta_ clause right enough," said Maxwell Hartington.

"_Dum----? Dum casta!_ But, oh! anyhow that"s out of the question--absolutely," said Mr. Brumley.

"Of course," said Maxwell Hartington, leaning back in his chair and rubbing the ball of his thumb into one eye. "Of course--n.o.body ever enforces these _dum casta_ clauses. There isn"t anyone to enforce them.

Ever."--He paused and then went on, speaking apparently to the array of black tin boxes in the dingy fixtures before him. "Who"s going to watch you? That"s what I always ask in these cases. Unless the lady goes and does things right under the noses of these trustees they aren"t going to bother. Even Sir Isaac I suppose hasn"t provided funds for a private detective. Eh? You said something?"

"Nothing," said Mr. Brumley.

"Well, why should they start a perfectly rotten action like that,"

continued Maxwell Hartington, now addressing himself very earnestly to his client, "when they"ve only got to keep quiet and do their job and be comfortable. In these matters, Brumley, as in most matters affecting the relations of men and women, people can do absolutely what they like nowadays, absolutely, unless there"s someone about ready to make a row.

Then they can"t do anything. It hardly matters if they don"t do anything. A row"s a row and d.a.m.ned disgraceful. If there isn"t a row, nothing"s disgraceful. Of course all these laws and regulations and inst.i.tutions and arrangements are just ways of putting people at the mercy of blackmailers and jealous and violent persons. One"s only got to be a lawyer for a bit to realize that. Still that"s not _our_ business.

That"s psychology. If there aren"t any jealous and violent persons about, well, then no ordinary decent person is going to worry what you do. No decent person ever does. So far as I can gather the only barbarian in this case is the testator--now in Kensal Green. With additional precautions I suppose in the way of an artistic but thoroughly ma.s.sive monument presently to be added----"

"He"d--turn in his grave."

"Let him. No trustees are obliged to take action on _that_. I don"t suppose they"d know if he did. I"ve never known a trustee bother yet about post-mortem movements of any sort. If they did, we"d all be having Prayers for the Dead. Fancy having to consider the subsequent reflections of the testator!"

"Well anyhow," said Mr. Brumley, after a little pause, "such a breach, such a proceeding is out of the question--absolutely out of the question. It"s unthinkable."

"Then why did you come here to ask me about it?" demanded Maxwell Hartington, beginning to rub the other eye in an audible and unpleasant manner.

--5

When at last Mr. Brumley was face to face with Lady Harman again, a vast mephitic disorderly creation of antic.i.p.ations, intentions, resolves, suspicions, provisional hypotheses, urgencies, vindications, and wild and whirling stuff generally vanished out of his mind. There beside the raised seat in the midst of the little rock garden where they had talked together five years before, she stood waiting for him, this tall simple woman he had always adored since their first encounter, a little strange and shy now in her dead black uniform of widowhood, but with her honest eyes greeting him, her friendly hands held out to him. He would have kissed them but for the restraining presence of Snagsby who had brought him to her; as it was it seemed to him that the phantom of a kiss pa.s.sed like a breath between them. He held her hands for a moment and relinquished them.