§5
When at last Mr. Brumley was face to face with Lady Harman again, a vast mephitic disorderly creation of anticipations, intentions, resolves, suspicions, provisional hypotheses, urgencies, vindications, and wild and whirling stuff generally vanished out of his mind. There beside the raised seat in the midst of the little rock garden where they had talked together five years before, she stood waiting for him, this tall simple woman he had always adored since their first encounter, a little strange and shy now in her dead black uniform of widowhood, but with her honest eyes greeting him, her friendly hands held out to him. He would have kissed them but for the restraining presence of Snagsby who had brought him to her; as it was it seemed to him that the phantom of a kiss passed like a breath between them. He held her hands for a moment and relinquished them.
“It is so good to see you,” he said, and they sat down side by side. “I am very glad to see you again.”
Then for a little while they sat in silence.
Mr. Brumley had imagined and rehearsed this meeting in many different moods. Now, he found none of his premeditated phrases served him, and it was the lady who undertook the difficult opening.
“I could not see you before,” she began. “I did not want to see anyone.” She sought to explain. “I was strange. Even to myself. Suddenly——” She came to the point. “To find oneself free.... Mr. Brumley,—it was wonderful!”
He did not interrupt her and presently she went on again.
“You see,” she said, “I have become a human being——owning myself. I had never thought what this change would be to me.... It has been——. It has been—like being born, when one hadn’t realized before that one wasn’t born.... Now—now I can act. I can do this and that. I used to feel as though I was on strings—with somebody able to pull.... There is no one now able to pull at me, no one able to thwart me....”
Her dark eyes looked among the trees and Mr. Brumley watched her profile.
“It has been like falling out of a prison from which one never hoped to escape. I feel like a moth that has just come out of its case,—you know how they come out, wet and weak but—released. For a time I feel I can do nothing but sit in the sun.”
“It’s queer,” she repeated, “how one tries to feel differently from what one really feels, how one tries to feel as one supposes people expect one to feel. At first I hardly dared look at myself.... I thought I ought to be sorrowful and helpless.... I am not in the least sorrowful or helpless....
“But,” said Mr. Brumley, “are you so free?”
“Yes.”
“Altogether?”
“As free now—as a man.”
“But——people are saying in London——. Something about a will——.”
Her lips closed. Her brows and eyes became troubled. She seemed to gather herself together for an effort and spoke at length, without looking at him. “Mr. Brumley,” she said, “before I knew anything of the will——. On the very evening when Isaac died——. I knew——I would never marry again. Never.”
Mr. Brumley did not stir. He remained regarding her with a mournful expression.
“I was sure of it then,” she said, “I knew nothing about the will. I want you to understand that—clearly.”
She said no more. The still pause lengthened. She forced herself to meet his eyes.
“I thought,” he said after a silent scrutiny, and left her to imagine what he had thought....
“But,” he urged to her protracted silence, “you care?”
She turned her face away. She looked at the hand lying idle upon her crape-covered knee. “You are my dearest friend,” she said very softly. “You are almost my only friend. But——. I can never go into marriage any more....”
“My dear,” he said, “the marriage you have known——.”
“No,” she said. “No sort of marriage.”
Mr. Brumley heaved a profound sigh.
“Before I had been a widow twenty-four hours, I began to realize that I was an escaped woman. It wasn’t the particular marriage.... It was any marriage.... All we women are tied. Most of us are willing to be tied perhaps, but only as people are willing to be tied to life-belts in a wreck—from fear from drowning. And now, I am just one of the free women, like the women who can earn large incomes, or the women who happen to own property. I’ve paid my penalties and my service is over.... I knew, of course, that you would ask me this. It isn’t that I don’t care for you, that I don’t love your company and your help—and the love and the kindness....”
“Only,” he said, “although it is the one thing I desire, although it is the one return you can make me——. But whatever I have done—I have done willingly....”
“My dear!” cried Mr. Brumley, breaking out abruptly at a fresh point, “I want you to marry me. I want you to be mine, to be my dear close companion, the care of my life, the beauty in my life.... I can’t frame sentences, my dear. You know, you know.... Since first I saw you, talked to you in this very garden....”
“I don’t forget a thing,” she answered. “It has been my life as well as yours. Only——”
The grip of her hand tightened on the back of their seat. She seemed to be examining her thumb intently. Her voice sank to a whisper. “I won’t marry you,” she said.