§2
It was only by insensible degrees that doubt crept into Mr. Brumley’s assurances. He did not observe at once that none of the brief letters she wrote him responded to his second, the impassioned outbreak in pencil. And it seemed only in keeping with the modest reserves of womanhood that she should be restrained—she always had been restrained.
She asked him not to see her at once when she returned to England; she wanted, she said, “to see how things are,” and that fell in very well with a certain delicacy in himself. The unburied body of Sir Isaac—it was now provisionally embalmed—was, through some inexplicable subtlety in his mind, a far greater barrier than the living man had ever been, and he wanted it out of the way. And everything settled. Then, indeed, they might meet.
Meanwhile he had a curious little private conflict of his own. He was trying not to think, day and night he was trying not to think, that Lady Harman was now a very rich woman. Yet some portions of his brain, and he had never suspected himself of such lawless regions, persisted in the most vulgar and outrageous suggestions, suggestions that made his soul blush; schemes, for example, of splendid foreign travel, of hotel staffs bowing, of a yacht in the Mediterranean, of motor cars, of a palatial flat in London, of a box at the opera, of artists patronized, of—most horrible!—a baronetcy.... The more authentic parts of Mr. Brumley cowered from and sought to escape these squalid dreams of magnificences. It shocked and terrified him to find such things could come out in him. He was like some pest-stricken patient, amazedly contemplating his first symptom. His better part denied, repudiated. Of course he would never touch, never even propose—or hint.... It was an aspect he had never once contemplated before Sir Isaac died. He could on his honour, and after searching his heart, say that. Yet in Pall Mall one afternoon, suddenly, he caught himself with a thought in his head so gross, so smug, that he uttered a faint cry and quickened his steps.... Benevolent stepfather!
These distresses begot a hope. Perhaps, after all, probably, there would be some settlement.... She might not be rich, not so very rich.... She might be tied up....
He perceived in that lay his hope of salvation. Otherwise—oh, pitiful soul!—things were possible in him; he saw only too clearly what dreadful things were possible.
If only she were disinherited, if only he might take her, stripped of all these possessions that even in such glancing anticipations begot——this horrid indigestion of the imagination!
But then,——the Hostels?...
There he stumbled against an invincible riddle!
There was something dreadful about the way in which these considerations blotted out the essential fact of separations abolished, barriers lowered, the way to an honourable love made plain and open....
The day of the funeral came at last, and Mr. Brumley tried not to think of it, paternally, at Margate. He fled from Sir Isaac’s ultimate withdrawal. Blenker’s obituary notice in the Old Country Gazette was a masterpiece of tactful eulogy, ostentatiously loyal, yet extremely not unmindful of the widowed proprietor, and of all the possible changes of ownership looming ahead. Mr. Brumley, reading it in the Londonward train, was greatly reminded of the Hostels. That was a riddle he didn’t begin to solve. Of course, it was imperative the Hostels should continue—imperative. Now they might run them together, openly, side by side. But then, with such temptations to hitherto inconceivable vulgarities. And again, insidiously, those visions returned of two figures, manifestly opulent, grouped about a big motor car or standing together under a large subservient archway....
There was a long letter from her at his flat, a long and amazing letter. It was so folded that his eye first caught the writing on the third page: “never marry again. It is so clear that our work needs all my time and all my means.” His eyebrows rose, his expression became consternation; his hands trembled a little as he turned the letter over to read it through. It was a deliberate letter. It began—
“Dear Mr. Brumley, I could never have imagined how much there is to do after we are dead, and before we can be buried.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Brumley; “but what does this mean?”
“There are so many surprises——”
“It isn’t clear.”
“In ourselves and the things about us.”
“Of course, he would have made some complicated settlement. I might have known.”
“It is the strangest thing in the world to be a widow, much stranger than anyone could ever have supposed, to have no one to control one, no one to think of as coming before one, no one to answer to, to be free to plan one’s life for oneself——”
He stood with the letter in his hand after he had read it through, perplexed.
“I can’t stand this,” he said. “I want to know.”
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 embarrassed. “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.