§3
Mr. Brumley hovered for a few moments in the hall conversing with Lady Beach-Mandarin’s butler, whom he had known for some years and helped about a small investment, and who was now being abjectly polite and grateful to him for his attention. It gave Mr. Brumley a nice feudal feeling to establish and maintain such relationships. The furry-eyed boy fumbled with the sticks and umbrellas in the background and wondered if he too would ever climb to these levels of respectful gilt-tipped friendliness. Mr. Brumley hovered the more readily because he knew Lady Harman was with the looking-glass in the little parlour behind the dining-room on her way to the outer world. At last she emerged. It was instantly manifest to Mr. Brumley that she had expected to find him there. She smiled frankly at him, with the faintest admission of complicity in her smile.
“Taxi, milady?” said the butler.
She seemed to reflect. “No, I will walk.” She hesitated over a glove button. “Mr. Brumley, is there a Tube station near here?”
“Not two minutes. But can’t I perhaps take you in a taxi?”
“I’d rather walk.”
“I will show you——”
He found himself most agreeably walking off with her.
Still more agreeable things were to follow for Mr. Brumley.
She appeared to meditate upon a sudden idea. She disregarded some conversational opening of his that he forgot in the instant. “Mr. Brumley,” she said, “I didn’t intend to go directly home.”
“I’m altogether at your service,” said Mr. Brumley.
“At least,” said Lady Harman with that careful truthfulness of hers, “it occurred to me during lunch that I wouldn’t go directly home.”
Mr. Brumley reined in an imagination that threatened to bolt with him.
“I want,” said Lady Harman, “to go to Kensington Gardens, I think. This can’t be far from Kensington Gardens—and I want to sit there on a green chair and—meditate—and afterwards I want to find a tube railway or something that will take me back to Putney. There is really no need for me to go directly home.... It’s very stupid of me but I don’t know my way about London as a rational creature should do. So will you take me and put me in a green chair and—tell me how afterwards I can find the Tube and get home? Do you mind?”
“All my time, so long as you want it, is at your service,” said Mr. Brumley with convincing earnestness. “And it’s not five minutes to the gardens. And afterwards a taxi-cab——”
“No,” said Lady Harman mindful of her one-and-eightpence, “I prefer a tube. But that we can talk about later. You’re sure, Mr. Brumley, I’m not invading your time?”
“I wish you could see into my mind,” said Mr. Brumley.
She became almost barefaced. “It is so true,” she said, “that at lunch one can’t really talk to anyone. And I’ve so wanted to talk to you. Ever since we met before.”
Mr. Brumley conveyed an unfeigned delight.
“Since then,” said Lady Harman, “I’ve read your Euphemia books.” Then after a little unskilful pause, “again.” Then she blushed and added, “I had read one of them, you know, before.”
“Exactly,” he said with an infinite helpfulness.
“And you seem so sympathetic, so understanding. I feel that all sorts of things that are muddled in my mind would come clear if I could have a really Good Talk. To you....”
They were now through the gates approaching the Albert Memorial. Mr. Brumley was filled with an idea so desirable that it made him fear to suggest it.
“Of course we can talk very comfortably here,” he said, “under these great trees. But I do so wish——Have you seen those great borders at Hampton Court? The whole place is glowing, and in such sunshine as this——A taxi—will take us there under the hour. If you are free until half-past five.”
Why shouldn’t she?
The proposal seemed so outrageous to all the world of Lady Harman that in her present mood she felt it was her duty in the cause of womanhood to nerve herself and accept it....
“I mustn’t be later than half-past five.”
“We could snatch a glimpse of it all and be back before then.”
“In that case——It would be very agreeable.”
(Why shouldn’t she? It would no doubt make Sir Isaac furiously angry—if he heard of it. But it was the sort of thing other women of her class did; didn’t all the novels testify? She had a perfect right——
And besides, Mr. Brumley was so entirely harmless.)