On that they rested for a little while in silence. She began to realize with a gathering emotion that this matter was far more crucial than she had supposed. She had been thinking only of the reinstatement of Alice Burnet, she hadn't yet estimated just what that overriding of Mrs.

Pembrose might involve.

"I don't want to have any girl go until I have looked into her case.

It's----It's vital."

"She says she can't run the show unless she has some power."

Neither spoke for some seconds. She had the feeling of hopeless vexation that might come to a child that has wandered into a trap. "I thought,"

she began. "These hostels----"

She stopped short.

Sir Isaac's hand tightened on the arm of his chair. "I started 'em to please you," he said. "I didn't start 'em to please your friends."

She turned her eyes quickly to his grey up-looking face.

"I didn't start them for you and that chap Brumley to play about with,"

he amplified. "And now you know about it, Elly."

The thing had found her unprepared. "As if----" she said at last.

"As if!" he mocked.

She stood quite still staring blankly at this unmanageable situation. He was the first to break silence. He lifted one hand and dropped it again with a dead impact on the arm of his chair. "I got the things," he said, "and there they are. Anyhow,--they got to be run in a proper way."

She made no immediate answer. She was seeking desperately for phrases that escaped her. "Do you think," she began at last. "Do you really think----?"

He stared out of the window. He answered in tones of excessive reasonableness: "I didn't start these hostels to be run by you and your--friend." He gave the sentence the quality of an ultimatum, an irreducible minimum.

"He's my friend," she explained, "only--because he does work--for the hostels."

Sir Isaac seemed for a moment to attempt to consider that. Then he relapsed upon his predetermined att.i.tude. "G.o.d!" he exclaimed, "but I have been a fool!"

She decided that that must be ignored.

"I care more for those hostels than I care for anything--anything else in the world," she told him. "I want them to work--I want them to succeed.... And then----"

He listened in sceptical silence.

"Mr. Brumley is nothing to me but a helper. He----How can you imagine, Isaac----? _I!_ How can you dare? To suggest----!"

"Very well," said Sir Isaac and reflected and made his old familiar sound with his teeth. "Run the hostels without him, Elly," he propounded. "Then I'll believe."

She perceived that suddenly she was faced by a test or a bargain. In the background of her mind the figure of Mr. Brumley, as she had seen him last, in brown and with a tie rather to one side, protested vainly. She did what she could for him on the spur of the moment. "But," she said, "he's so helpful. He's so--harmless."

"That's as may be," said Sir Isaac and breathed heavily.

"How can one suddenly turn on a friend?"

"I don't see that you ever wanted a friend," said Sir Isaac.

"He's been so good. It isn't reasonable, Isaac. When anyone has--_slaved_."

"I don't say he isn't a good sort of chap," said Sir Isaac, with that same note of almost superhuman rationality, "only--he isn't going to run my hostels."

"But what do you mean, Isaac?"

"I mean you got to choose."

He waited as if he expected her to speak and then went on.

"What it comes to is this, Elly, I'm about sick of that chap. I'm sick of him." He paused for a moment because his breath was short. "If you go on with the hostels he's--Phew--got to mizzle. _Then_--I don't mind--if you want that girl Burnet brought back in triumph.... It'll make Mrs.

Pembrose chuck the whole blessed show, you know, but I say--I don't mind.... Only in that case, I don't want to see or hear--or hear about--Phew--or hear about your Mr. Brumley again. And I don't want you to, either.... I'm being pretty reasonable and pretty patient over this, with people--people--talking right and left. Still,--there's a limit....

You've been going on--if I didn't know you were an innocent--in a way ... I don't want to talk about that. There you are, Elly."

It seemed to her that she had always expected this to happen. But however much she had expected it to happen she was still quite unprepared with any course of action. She wanted with an equal want of limitation to keep both Mr. Brumley and her hostels.

"But Isaac," she said. "What do you suspect? What do you think? This friendship has been going on----How can I end it suddenly?"

"Don't you be too innocent, Elly. You know and I know perfectly well what there is between men and women. I don't make out I know--anything I don't know. I don't pretend you are anything but straight. Only----"

He suddenly gave way to his irritation. His self-control vanished. "d.a.m.n it!" he cried, and his panting breath quickened; "the thing's got to end. As if I didn't understand! As if I didn't understand!"

She would have protested again but his voice held her. "It's got to end.

It's got to end. Of course you haven't done anything, of course you don't know anything or think of anything.... Only here I am ill....

_You_ wouldn't be sorry if I got worse.... _You_ can wait; you can....

All right! All right! And there you stand, irritating me--arguing. You know--it chokes me.... Got to end, I tell you.... Got to end...."

He beat at the arms of his chair and then put a hand to his throat.

"Go away," he cried to her. "Go to h.e.l.l!"

--4

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 pa.s.sionate 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 a.s.siduous 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 embarra.s.sed 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.