§6
It had been Lady Harman’s original intention to come home before four, to have tea with her mother and to inform her husband when he returned from the city of her entirely dignified and correct disobedience to his absurd prohibitions. Then he would have bullied at a disadvantage, she would have announced her intention of dining with Lady Viping and making the various calls and expeditions for which she had arranged and all would have gone well. But you see how far accident and a spirit of enterprise may take a lady from so worthy a plan, and when at last she returned to the Victorian baronial home in Putney it was very nearly eight and the house blazed with crisis from pantry to nursery. Even the elder three little girls, who were accustomed to be kissed goodnight by their “boofer muvver,” were still awake and—catching the subtle influence of the atmosphere of dismay about them—in tears. The very under-housemaids were saying: “Where ever can her ladyship ’ave got to?”
Sir Isaac had come home that day at an unusually early hour and with a peculiar pinched expression that filled even Snagsby with apprehensive alertness. Sir Isaac had in fact returned in a state of quite unwonted venom. He had come home early because he wished to vent it upon Ellen, and her absence filled him with something of that sensation one has when one puts out a foot for the floor and instead a step drops one down—it seems abysmally.
“But where’s she gone, Snagsby?”
“Her ladyship said to lunch, Sir Isaac,” said Snagsby.
“Good gracious! Where?”
“Her ladyship didn’t say, Sir Isaac.”
“But where? Where the devil——?”
“I have—’ave no means whatever of knowing, Sir Isaac.”
He had a defensive inspiration.
“Perhaps Mrs. Sawbridge, Sir Isaac....”
Mrs. Sawbridge was enjoying the sunshine upon the lawn. She sat in the most comfortable garden chair, held a white sunshade overhead, had the last new novel by Mrs. Humphry Ward upon her lap, and was engaged in trying not to wonder where her daughter might be. She beheld with a distinct blenching of the spirit Sir Isaac advancing towards her. She wondered more than ever where Ellen might be.
“Here!” cried her son-in-law. “Where’s Ellen gone?”
Mrs. Sawbridge with an affected off-handedness was sure she hadn’t the faintest idea.
“Then you ought to have,” said Isaac. “She ought to be at home.”
Mrs. Sawbridge’s only reply was to bridle slightly.
“Where’s she got to? Where’s she gone? Haven’t you any idea at all?”
“I was not favoured by Ellen’s confidence,” said Mrs. Sawbridge.
“But you ought to know,” cried Sir Isaac. “She’s your daughter. Don’t you know anything of either of your daughters. I suppose you don’t care where they are, either of them, or what mischief they’re up to. Here’s a man—comes home early to his tea—and no wife! After hearing all I’ve done at the club.”
Mrs. Sawbridge stood up in order to be more dignified than a seated position permitted.
“It is scarcely my business, Sir Isaac,” she said, “to know of the movements of your wife.”
“Nor Georgina’s apparently either. Good God! I’d have given a hundred pounds that this shouldn’t have happened!”
“If you must speak to me, Sir Isaac, will you please kindly refrain from—from the deity——”
“Oh! shut it!” said Sir Isaac, blazing up to violent rudeness. “Why! Don’t you know, haven’t you an idea? The infernal foolery! Those tickets. She got those women——Look here, if you go walking away with your nose in the air before I’ve done——Look here! Mrs. Sawbridge, you listen to me——Georgina. I’m speaking of Georgina.”
The lady was walking now swiftly and stiffly towards the house, her face very pale and drawn, and Sir Isaac hurrying beside her in a white fury of expostulation. “I tell you,” he cried, “Georgina——”
There was something maddeningly incurious about her. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t even pause to hear what Georgina had done and what he had to say about it. A person so wrapped up in her personal and private dignity makes a man want to throw stones. Perhaps she knew of Georgina’s misdeeds. Perhaps she sympathized....
A sense of the house windows checked his pursuit of her ear. “Then go,” he said to her retreating back. “Go! I don’t care if you go for good. I don’t care if you go altogether. If you hadn’t had the upbringing of these two girls——”
She was manifestly out of earshot and in full yet almost queenly flight for the house. He wanted to say things about her. To someone. He was already saying things to the garden generally. What does one marry a wife for? His mind came round to Ellen again. Where had she got to? Even if she had gone out to lunch, it was time she was back. He went to his study and rang for Snagsby.
“Lady Harman back yet?” he asked grimly.
“No, Sir Isaac.”
“Why isn’t she back?”
Snagsby did his best. “Perhaps, Sir Isaac, her ladyship has experienced—’as hexperienced a naxident.”
Sir Isaac stared at that idea for a moment. Then he thought, ‘Someone would have telephoned,’ “No,” he said, “she’s out. That’s where she is. And I suppose I can wait here, as well as I can until she chooses to come home. Degenerate foolish nonsense!...”
He whistled between his teeth like an escape of steam. Snagsby, after the due pause of attentiveness, bowed respectfully and withdrew....
He had barely time to give a brief outline of the interview to the pantry before a violent ringing summoned him again. Sir Isaac wished to speak to Peters, Lady Harman’s maid. He wanted to know where Lady Harman had gone; this being impossible, he wanted to know where Lady Harman had seemed to be going.
“Her Ladyship seemed to be going out to lunch, Sir Isaac,” said Peters, her meek face irradiated by helpful intelligence.
“Oh get out!” said Sir Isaac. “Get out!”
“Yes, Sir Isaac,” said Peters and obeyed....
“He’s in a rare bait about her,” said Peters to Snagsby downstairs.
“I’m inclined to think her ladyship will catch it pretty hot,” said Snagsby.
“He can’t know anything,” said Peters.
“What about?” asked Snagsby.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Peters. “Don’t ask me about her....”
About ten minutes later Sir Isaac was heard to break a little china figure of the goddess Kwannon, that had stood upon his study mantel-shelf. The fragments were found afterwards in the fireplace....
The desire for self-expression may become overwhelming. After Sir Isaac had talked to himself about Georgina and Lady Harman for some time in his study, he was seized with a great longing to pour some of this spirited stuff into the entirely unsympathetic ear of Mrs. Sawbridge. So he went about the house and garden looking for her, and being at last obliged to enquire about her, learnt from a scared defensive housemaid whom he cornered suddenly in the conservatory, that she had retired to her own room. He went and rapped at her door but after one muffled “Who’s that?” he could get no further response.
“I want to tell you about Georgina,” he said.
He tried the handle but the discreet lady within had turned the key upon her dignity.
“I want,” he shouted, “to tell you about Georgina.... GEORGINA! Oh damn!”
Silence.
Tea awaited him downstairs. He hovered about the drawing-room, making noises between his teeth.
“Snagsby,” said Sir Isaac, “just tell Mrs. Sawbridge I shall be obliged if she will come down to tea.”
“Mrs. Sawbridge ’as a ’eadache, Sir Isaac,” said Mr. Snagsby with extreme blandness. “She asked me to acquaint you. She ’as ordered tea in ’er own apartment.”
For a moment Sir Isaac was baffled. Then he had an inspiration. “Just get me the Times, Snagsby,” he said.
He took the paper and unfolded it until a particular paragraph was thrown into extreme prominence. This he lined about with his fountain pen and wrote above it with a quivering hand, “These women’s tickets were got by Georgina under false pretences from me.” He handed the paper thus prepared back to Snagsby. “Just take this paper to Mrs. Sawbridge,” he said, “and ask her what she thinks of it?”
But Mrs. Sawbridge tacitly declined this proposal for a correspondence viâ Snagsby.