“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.)
§4
It had been Lady Harman’s clear intention to have a luminous and illuminating discussion of the peculiar difficulties and perplexities of her position with Mr. Brumley. Since their first encounter this idea had grown up in her mind. She was one of those women who turn instinctively to men and away from women for counsel. There was to her perception something wise and kindly and reassuring in him; she felt that he had lived and suffered and understood and that he was ready to help other people to live; his heart she knew from his published works was buried with his dead Euphemia, and he seemed as near a thing to a brother and a friend as she was ever likely to meet. She wanted to tell him all this and then to broach her teeming and tangled difficulties, about her own permissible freedoms, about her social responsibilities, about Sir Isaac’s business. But now as their taxi dodged through the traffic of Kensington High Street and went on its way past Olympia and so out westwards, she found it extremely difficult to fix her mind upon the large propositions with which it had been her intention to open. Do as she would to feel that this was a momentous occasion, she could not suppress, she could not ignore an obstinate and entirely undignified persuasion that she was having a tremendous lark. The passing vehicles, various motors, omnibuses, vans, carriages, the thronging pedestrians, the shops and houses, were all so distractingly interesting that at last she had to put it fairly to herself whether she hadn’t better resign herself to the sensations of the present and reserve that sustained discussion for an interval she foresaw as inevitable on some comfortable seat under great trees at Hampton Court. You cannot talk well and penetratingly about fundamental things when you are in a not too well-hung taxi which is racing to get ahead of a vast red motor-omnibus....