The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman. H. G. Wells

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СКАЧАТЬ out by her manners, which were as modest and silent and inaggressive as the very best can be. Personally he liked opulence, he responded to countless-guinea furs....

      Soon there was a neat little history in his mind that was reasonably near the truth, of a hard-up professional family, fatherless perhaps, of a mercenary marriage at seventeen or so—and this....

      And while Mr. Brumley's observant and speculative faculties were thus active, his voice was busily engaged. With the accumulated artistry of years he was developing his pose. He did it almost subconsciously. He flung out hint and impulsive confidence and casual statement with the careless assurance of the accustomed performer, until by nearly imperceptible degrees that finished picture of the two young lovers, happy, artistic, a little Bohemian and one of them doomed to die, making their home together in an atmosphere of sunny gaiety, came into being in her mind....

      "It must have been beautiful to have begun life like that," she said in a voice that was a sigh, and it flashed joyfully across Mr. Brumley's mind that this wonderful person could envy his Euphemia.

      "Yes," he said, "at least we had our Spring."

      "To be together," said the lady, "and—so beautifully poor...."

      There is a phase in every relationship when one must generalize if one is to go further. A certain practice in this kind of talk with ladies blunted the finer sensibilities of Mr. Brumley. At any rate he was able to produce this sentence without a qualm. "Life," he said, "is sometimes a very extraordinary thing."

      Lady Harman reflected upon this statement and then responded with an air of remembered moments: "Isn't it."

      "One loses the most precious things," said Mr. Brumley, "and one loses them and it seems as though one couldn't go on. And one goes on."

      "And one finds oneself," said Lady Harman, "without all sorts of precious things——" And she stopped, transparently realizing that she was saying too much.

      "There is a sort of vitality about life," said Mr. Brumley, and stopped as if on the verge of profundities.

      "I suppose one hopes," said Lady Harman. "And one doesn't think. And things happen."

      "Things happen," assented Mr. Brumley.

      For a little while their minds rested upon this thought, as chasing butterflies might rest together on a flower.

      "And so I am going to leave this," Mr. Brumley resumed. "I am going up there to London for a time with my boy. Then perhaps we may travel-Germany, Italy, perhaps-in his holidays. It is beginning again, I feel with him. But then even we two must drift apart. I can't deny him a public school sooner or later. His own road...."

      "It will be lonely for you," sympathized the lady. "I have my work," said Mr. Brumley with a sort of valiant sadness.

      "Yes, I suppose your work——"

      She left an eloquent gap.

      "There, of course, one's fortunate," said Mr. Brumley.

      "I wish," said Lady Harman, with a sudden frankness and a little quickening of her colour, "that I had some work. Something—that was my own."

      "But you have——There are social duties. There must be all sorts of things."

      "There are—all sorts of things. I suppose I'm ungrateful. I have my children."

      "You have children, Lady Harman!"

      "I've four."

      He was really astonished, "Your own?"

      She turned her fawn's eyes on his with a sudden wonder at his meaning. "My own!" she said with the faintest tinge of astonished laughter in her voice. "What else could they be?"

      "I thought——I thought you might have step-children."

      "Oh! of course! No! I'm their mother;—all four of them. They're mine as far as that goes. Anyhow."

      And her eye questioned him again for his intentions.

      But his thought ran along its own path. "You see," he said, "there is something about you—so freshly beginning life. So like—Spring."

      "You thought I was too young! I'm nearly six-and-twenty! But all the same,—though they're mine,—still——Why shouldn't a woman have work in the world, Mr. Brumley? In spite of all that."

      "But surely—that's the most beautiful work in the world that anyone could possibly have."

      Lady Harman reflected. She seemed to hesitate on the verge of some answer and not to say it.

      "You see," she said, "it may have been different with you.... When one has a lot of nurses, and not very much authority."

      She coloured deeply and broke back from the impending revelations.

      "No," she said, "I would like some work of my own."

      §3

      At this point their conversation was interrupted by the lady's chauffeur in a manner that struck Mr. Brumley as extraordinary, but which the tall lady evidently regarded as the most natural thing in the world.

      Mr. Clarence appeared walking across the lawn towards them, surveying the charms of as obviously a charming garden as one could have, with the disdain and hostility natural to a chauffeur. He did not so much touch his cap as indicate that it was within reach, and that he could if he pleased touch it. "It's time you were going, my lady," he said. "Sir Isaac will be coming back by the five-twelve, and there'll be a nice to-do if you ain't at home and me at the station and everything in order again."

      Manifestly an abnormal expedition.

      "Must we start at once, Clarence?" asked the lady consulting a bracelet watch. "You surely won't take two hours——"

      "I can give you fifteen minutes more, my lady," said Clarence, "provided I may let her out and take my corners just exactly in my own way."

      "And I must give you tea," said Mr. Brumley, rising to his feet. "And there is the kitchen."

      "And upstairs! I'm afraid, Clarence, for this occasion only you must—what is it?—let her out."

      "And no 'Oh Clarence!' my lady?"

      She ignored that.

      "I'll tell Mrs. Rabbit at once," said Mr. Brumley, and started to run and trod in some complicated way on one of his loose laces and was precipitated down the rockery steps. "Oh!" cried the lady. "Mind!" and clasped her hands.

      He made a sound exactly like the word "damnation" as he fell, but he didn't so much get up as bounce up, apparently in the brightest of tempers, and laughed, held out two earthy hands for sympathy with a mock rueful grimace, and went on, earthy-green at the knees and a little more carefully towards the house. Clarence, having halted to drink deep satisfaction from this disaster, made his way along a nearly parallel path towards the kitchen, leaving his lady to follow as she chose to the house.

      "You'll СКАЧАТЬ