She waited for him to go on.
"You see," he said, "I thought that it was just that you wanted to get away----That this life was intolerable----That you were----Forgive me if I seem to be going beyond--going beyond what I ought to be thinking about you. Only, why should I pretend? I care, I care for you tremendously. And it seemed to me that you didn"t love your husband, that you were enslaved and miserable. I would have done anything to help you--anything in the world, Lady Harman. I know--it may sound ridiculous--there have been times when I would have faced death to feel you were happy and free. I thought all that, I felt all that,--and then--then you come back here. You seem not to have minded. As though I had misunderstood...."
He paused and his face was alive with an unwonted sincerity. His self-consciousness had for a moment fallen from him.
"I know," she said, "it _was_ like that. I knew you cared. That is why I have so wanted to talk to you. It looked like that...."
She pressed her lips together in that old familiar hunt for words and phrases.
"I didn"t understand, Mr. Brumley, all there was in my husband or all there was in myself. I just saw his hardness and his--his hardness in business. It"s become so different now. You see, I forgot he has bad health. He"s ill; I suppose he was getting ill then. Instead of explaining himself--he was--excited and--unwise. And now----"
"Now I suppose he has--explained," said Mr. Brumley slowly and with infinite distaste. "Lady Harman, _what_ has he explained?"
"It isn"t so much that he has explained, Mr. Brumley," said Lady Harman, "as that things have explained themselves."
"But how, Lady Harman? How?"
"I mean about my being a mere girl, almost a child when I married him.
Naturally he wanted to take charge of everything and leave nothing to me. And quite as naturally he didn"t notice that now I am a woman, grown up altogether. And it"s been necessary to do things. And naturally, Mr.
Brumley, they shocked and upset him. But he sees now so clearly, he wrote to me, such a fair letter--an unusual letter--quite different from when he talks--it surprised me, telling me he wanted me to feel free, that he meant to make me--to arrange things that is, so that I should feel free and more able to go about as I pleased. It was a _generous_ letter, Mr. Brumley. Generous about all sorts of affairs that there had been between us. He said things, quite kind things, not like the things he has ever said before----"
She stopped short and then began again.
"You know, Mr. Brumley, it"s so hard to tell things without telling other things that somehow are difficult to tell. Yet if I don"t tell you them, you won"t know them and then you won"t be able to understand in the least how things are with us."
Her eyes appealed to him.
"Tell me," he said, "whatever you think fit."
"When one has been afraid of anyone and felt they were ever so much stronger and cruel and hard than one is and one suddenly finds they aren"t. It alters everything."
He nodded, watching her.
Her voice fell nearly to a whisper. "Mr. Brumley," she said, "when I came back to him--you know he was in bed here--instead of scolding me--he _cried_. He cried like a vexed child. He put his face into the pillow--just misery.... I"d never seen him cry--at least only once--long ago...."
Mr. Brumley looked at her flushed and tender face and it seemed to him that indeed he could die for her quite easily.
"I saw how hard I had been," she said. "In prison I"d thought of that, I"d thought women mustn"t be hard, whatever happens to them. And when I saw him like that I knew at once how true that was.... He begged me to be a good wife to him. No!--he just said, "Be a wife to me," not even a good wife--and then he cried...."
For a moment or so Mr. Brumley didn"t respond. "I see," he said at last.
"Yes."
"And there were the children--such helpless little things. In the prison I worried about them. I thought of things for them. I"ve come to feel--they are left too much to nurses and strangers.... And then you see he has agreed to nearly everything I had wanted. It wasn"t only the personal things--I was anxious about those silly girls--the strikers. I didn"t want them to be badly treated. It distressed me to think of them.
I don"t think you know how it distressed me. And he--he gave way upon all that. He says I may talk to him about the business, about the way we do our business--the kindness of it I mean. And this is why I am back here. Where else _could_ I be?"
"No," said Mr. Brumley still with the utmost reluctance. "I see.
Only----"
He paused downcast and she waited for him to speak.
"Only it isn"t what I expected, Lady Harman. I didn"t think that matters could be settled by such arrangements. It"s sane, I know, it"s comfortable and kindly. But I thought--Oh! I thought of different things, quite different things from all this. I thought of you who are so beautiful caught in a loveless pa.s.sionless world. I thought of the things there might be for you, the beautiful and wonderful things of which you are deprived.... Never mind what I thought! Never mind! You"ve made your choice. But I thought that you didn"t love, that you couldn"t love--this man. It seemed to me that you felt too--that to live as you are doing--with him--was a profanity. Something--I"d give everything I have, everything I am, to save you from. Because--because I care.... I misunderstood you. I suppose you can--do what you are doing."
He jumped to his feet as he spoke and walked three paces away and turned to utter his last sentences. She too stood up.
"Mr. Brumley," she said weakly, "I don"t understand. What do you mean? I have to do what I am doing. He--he is my husband."
He made a gesture of impatience. "Do you understand nothing of _love_?"
he cried.
She pressed her lips together and remained still and silent, dark against the cas.e.m.e.nt window.
There came a sound of tapping from the room above. Three taps and again three taps.
Lady Harman made a little gesture as though she would put this sound aside.
"Love," she said at last. "It comes to some people. It happens. It happens to young people.... But when one is married----"
Her voice fell almost to a whisper. "One must not think of it," she said. "One must think of one"s husband and one"s duty. Life cannot begin again, Mr. Brumley."
The taps were repeated, a little more urgently.
"That is my husband," she said.
She hesitated through a little pause. "Mr. Brumley," she said, "I want friendship so badly, I want some one to be my friend. I don"t want to think of things--disturbing things--things I have lost--things that are spoilt. _That_--that which you spoke of; what has it to do with me?"
She interrupted him as he was about to speak.
"Be my friend. Don"t talk to me of impossible things. Love! Mr. Brumley, what has a married woman to do with love? I never think of it. I never read of it. I want to do my duty. I want to do my duty by him and by my children and by all the people I am bound to. I want to help people, weak people, people who suffer. I want to help him to help them. I want to stop being an idle, useless, spending woman...."
She made a little gesture of appeal with her hands.
"Oh!" he sighed, and then, "You know if I can help you----Rather than distress you----"
Her manner changed. It became confidential and urgent.
"Mr. Brumley," she said, "I must go up to my husband. He will be impatient. And when I tell him you are here he will want to see you....
You will come up and see him?"
Mr. Brumley sought to convey the struggle within him by his pose.
"I will do what you wish, Lady Harman," he said, with an almost theatrical sigh.
He closed the door after her and was alone in his former study once more. He walked slowly to his old writing-desk and sat down in his familiar seat. Presently he heard her footfalls across the room above.
Mr. Brumley"s mind under the stress of the unfamiliar and the unexpected was now lapsing rapidly towards the theatrical. "My _G.o.d_!" said Mr.
Brumley.
He addressed that friendly memorable room in tones that mingled amazement and wrong. "He is her husband!" he said, and then: "The power of words!" ...