The little house with the white-framed windows looked at her with a sleepy wakefulness from under its blinds, and made no sign. Beyond the corner was a glimpse of lawn, a rank of delphiniums, and the sound of a wheel-barrow.
"Clarence!" the lady called again.
Clarence, with an air of exceeding his duties, decided6 to hear, descended8 slowly, and came to the door.
"Very likely—if you were to look for a bell, Clarence...."
Clarence regarded the porch with a hostile air, made no secret that he thought it a fool of a porch, seemed on the point of disobedience, and submitted. His gestures suggested a belief that he would next be asked to boil eggs or do the boots. He found a bell and rang it with the needless violence of a man who has no special knowledge of ringing bells. How was he to know? he was a chauffeur. The bell did not so much ring as explode and swamp the place. Sounds of ringing came from all the windows, and even out of the chimneys. It seemed as if once set ringing that bell would never cease....
Clarence went to the bonnet9 of his machine, and presented his stooping back in a defensive10 manner against anyone who might come out. He wasn't a footman, anyhow. He'd rung that bell all right, and now he must see to his engine.
"He's rung so loud!" said the lady weakly—apparently11 to God.
The door behind the neat white pillars opened, and a little red-nosed woman, in a cap she had evidently put on without a proper glass, appeared. She surveyed the car and its occupant with disfavour over her also very oblique12 spectacles.
The lady waved a pink paper to her, a house-agent's order to view. "Is this Black Strands13?" she shouted.
The little woman advanced slowly with her eyes fixed14 malevolently15 on the pink paper. She seemed to be stalking it.
"This is Black Strands?" repeated the tall lady. "I should be so sorry if I disturbed you—if it isn't; ringing the bell like that—and all. You can't think——"
"This is Black Strand," said the little old woman with a note of deep reproach, and suddenly ceased to look over her glasses and looked through them. She looked no kindlier through them, and her eye seemed much larger. She was now regarding the lady in the car, though with a sustained alertness towards the pink paper. "I suppose," she said, "you've come to see over the place?"
"If it doesn't disturb anyone; if it is quite convenient——"
"Mr. Brumley is hout," said the little old woman. "And if you got an order to view, you got an order to view."
"If you think I might."
The lady stood up in the car, a tall and graceful16 figure of doubt and desire and glossy17 black fur. "I'm sure it looks a very charming house."
"It's clean," said the little old woman, "from top to toe. Look as you may."
"I'm sure it is," said the tall lady, and put aside her great fur coat from her lithe18, slender, red-clad body. (She was permitted by a sudden civility of Clarence's to descend7.) "Why! the windows," she said, pausing on the step, "are like crystal."
"These very 'ands," said the little old woman, and glanced up at the windows the lady had praised. The little old woman's initial sternness wrinkled and softened19 as the skin of a windfall does after a day or so upon the ground. She half turned in the doorway20 and made a sudden vergerlike gesture. "We enter," she said, "by the 'all.... Them's Mr. Brumley's 'ats and sticks. Every 'at or cap 'as a stick, and every stick 'as a 'at or cap, and on the 'all table is the gloves corresponding. On the right is the door leading to the kitching, on the left is the large droring-room which Mr. Brumley 'as took as 'is study." Her voice fell to lowlier things. "The other door beyond is a small lavatory21 'aving a basing for washing 'ands."
"It's a perfectly22 delightful23 hall," said the lady. "So low and wide-looking. And everything so bright—and lovely. Those long, Italian pictures! And how charming that broad outlook upon the garden beyond!"
"You'll think it charminger when you see the garding," said the little old woman. "It was Mrs. Brumley's especial delight. Much of it—with 'er own 'ands."
"We now enter the droring-room," she proceeded, and flinging open the door to the right was received with an indistinct cry suggestive of the words, "Oh, damn it!" The stout24 medium-sized gentleman in an artistic25 green-grey Norfolk suit, from whom the cry proceeded, was kneeling on the floor close to the wide-open window, and he was engaged in lacing up a boot. He had a round, ruddy, rather handsome, amiable26 face with a sort of bang of brown hair coming over one temple, and a large silk bow under his chin and a little towards one ear, such as artists and artistic men of letters affect. His profile was regular and fine, his eyes expressive27, his mouth, a very passable mouth. His features expressed at first only the naïve horror of a shy man unveiled.
Intelligent appreciation supervened.
There was a crowded moment of rapid mutual28 inspection29. The lady's attitude was that of the enthusiastic house-explorer arrested in full flight, falling swiftly towards apology and retreat. (It was a frightfully attractive room, too, full of the brightest colour, and with a big white cast of a statue—a Venus!—in the window.) She backed over the threshold again.
"I thought you was out by that window, sir," said the little old woman intimately, and was nearly shutting the door between them and all the beginnings of this story.
But the voice of the gentleman arrested and wedged open the closing door.
"I——Are you looking at the house?" he said. "I say! Just a moment, Mrs. Rabbit."
He came down the length of the room with a slight flicking31 noise due to the scandalized excitement of his abandoned laces. The lady was reminded of her not so very distant schooldays, when it would have been considered a suitable answer to such a question as his to reply, "No, I am walking down Piccadilly on my hands." But instead she waved that pink paper again. "The agents," she said. "Recommended—specially. So sorry if I intrude32. I ought, I know, to have written first; but I came on an impulse."
By this time the gentleman in the artistic tie, who had also the artistic eye for such matters, had discovered that the lady was young, delightfully33 slender, either pretty or beautiful, he could scarcely tell which, and very, very well dressed. "I am glad," he said, with remarkable34 decision, "that I was not out. I will show you the house."
"'Ow can you, sir?" intervened the little old woman.
"Oh! show a house! Why not?"
"The kitchings—you don't understand the range, sir—it's beyond you. And upstairs. You can't show a lady upstairs."
The gentleman reflected upon these difficulties.
"Well, I'm going to show her all I can show her anyhow. And after that, Mrs. Rabbit, you shall come in. You needn't wait."
"I'm thinking," said Mrs. Rabbit, folding stiff little arms and regarding him sternly. "You won't be much good after tea, you know, if you don't get your afternoon's exercise."
"Rendez-vous in the kitchen, Mrs. Rabbit," said Mr. Brumley, firmly, and Mrs. Rabbit after a moment of mute struggle disappeared discontentedly.
"I do not want to be the least bit a bother," said the lady. "I'm intruding35, I know, without the least bit of notice. I do hope I'm not disturbing you——" she seemed to make an effort to stop at that, and failed and added—"the least bit. Do please tell me if I am."
"Not at all," said Mr. Brumley. "I hate my afternoon's walk as a prisoner hates the treadmill36."
"She's such a nice old creature."
"She's been a mother—and several aunts—to us ever since my wife died. She was the first servant we ever had."
"All this house," he explained to his visitor's questioning eyes, "was my wife's creation. It was a little featureless agent's house on the edge of these pine-woods. She saw something in the shape of the rooms—and that central hall. We've enlarged it of course. Twice. This was two rooms, that is why there is a step down in the centre."
"That window and window-seat——"
"That was her addition," said Mr. Brumley. "All this room is—replete—with her personality." He hesitated, and explained further. "When we prepared this house—we expected to be better off—than we subsequently became—and she could let herself go. Much is from Holland and Italy."
"And that beautiful old writing-desk with the little single rose in a glass!"
"She put it there. She even in a sense put the flower there. It is renewed of course. By Mrs. Rabbit. She trained Mrs. Rabbit."
He sighed slightly, apparently at some thought of Mrs. Rabbit.
"You—you write——" the lady stopped, and then diverted a question that she perhaps considered too blunt, "there?"
"Largely. I am—a sort of author. Perhaps you know my books. Not very important books—but people sometimes read them."
The rose-pink of the lady's cheek deepened by a shade. Within her pretty head, her mind rushed to and fro saying "Brumley? Brumley?" Then she had a saving gleam. "Are you George Brumley?" she asked,—"the George Brumley?"
"My name is George Brumley," he said, with a proud modesty37. "Perhaps you know my little Euphemia books? They are still the most read."
The lady made a faint, dishonest assent38-like noise; and her rose-pink deepened another shade. But her interlocutor was not watching her very closely just then.
"Euphemia was my wife," he said, "at least, my wife gave her to me—a kind of exhalation. This"—his voice fell with a genuine respect for literary associations—"was Euphemia's home."
"I still," he continued, "go on. I go on writing about Euphemia. I have to. In this house. With my tradition.... But it is becoming painful—painful. Curiously39 more painful now than at the beginning. And I want to go. I want at last to make a break. That is why I am letting or selling the house.... There will be no more Euphemia."
His voice fell to silence.
The lady surveyed the long low clear room so cleverly prepared for life, with its white wall, its Dutch clock, its Dutch dresser, its pretty seats about the open fireplace, its cleverly placed bureau, its sun-trap at the garden end; she could feel the rich intention of living in its every arrangement and a sense of uncertainty40 in things struck home to her. She seemed to see a woman, a woman like herself—only very, very much cleverer—flitting about the room and making it. And then this woman had vanished—nowhither. Leaving this gentleman—sadly left—in the care of Mrs. Rabbit.
"And she is dead?" she said with a softness in her dark eyes and a fall in her voice that was quite natural and very pretty.
"She died," said Mr. Brumley, "three years and a half ago." He reflected. "Almost exactly."
He paused and she filled the pause with feeling.
He became suddenly very brave and brisk and businesslike. He led the way back into the hall and made explanations. "It is not so much a hall as a hall living-room. We use that end, except when we go out upon the verandah beyond, as our dining-room. The door to the right is the kitchen."
The lady's attention was caught again by the bright long eventful pictures that had already pleased her. "They are copies of two of Carpaccio's St. George series in Venice," he said. "We bought them together there. But no doubt you've seen the originals. In a little old place with a custodian41 and rather dark. One of those corners—so full of that delightful out-of-the-wayishness which is so characteristic, I think, of Venice. I don't know if you found that in Venice?"
"I've never been abroad," said the lady. "Never. I should love to go. I suppose you and your wife went—ever so much."
He had a transitory wonder that so fine a lady should be untravelled, but his eagerness to display his backgrounds prevented him thinking that out at the time. "Two or three times," he said, "before our little boy came to us. And always returning with something for this place. Look!" he went on, stepped across an exquisite42 little brick court to a lawn of soft emerald and turning back upon the house. "That Dellia Robbia placque we lugged43 all the way back from Florence with us, and that stone bird-bath is from Siena."
"How bright it is!" murmured the lady after a brief still appreciation. "Delightfully bright. As though it would shine even if the sun didn't." And she abandoned herself to the rapture44 of seeing a house and garden that were for once better even than the agent's superlatives. And within her grasp if she chose—within her grasp.
She made the garden melodious45 with soft appreciative46 sounds. She had a small voice for her size but quite a charming one, a little live bird of a voice, bright and sweet. It was a clear unruffled afternoon; even the unseen wheel-barrow had very sensibly ceased to creak and seemed to be somewhere listening....
Only one trivial matter marred47 their easy explorations;—his boots remained unlaced. No propitious48 moment came when he could stoop and lace them. He was not a dexterous49 man with eyelets, and stooping made him grunt50 and his head swim. He hoped these trailing imperfections went unmarked. He tried subtly to lead this charming lady about and at the same time walk a little behind her. She on her part could not determine whether he would be displeased51 or not if she noticed this slight embarrassment52 and asked him to set it right. They were quite long leather laces and they flew about with a sturdy negligence53 of anything but their own offensive contentment, like a gross man who whistles a vulgar tune54 as he goes round some ancient church; flick30, flock, they went, and flip55, flap, enjoying themselves, and sometimes he trod on one and halted in his steps, and sometimes for a moment she felt her foot tether him. But man is the adaptable56 animal and presently they both became more used to these inconveniences and more mechanical in their efforts to avoid them. They treated those laces then exactly as nice people would treat that gross man; a minimum of polite attention and all the rest pointedly57 directed away from him....
The garden was full of things that people dream about doing in their gardens and mostly never do. There was a rose garden all blooming in chorus, and with pillar-roses and arches that were not so much growths as overflowing58 cornucopias59 of roses, and a neat orchard60 with shapely trees white-painted to their exact middles, a stone wall bearing clematis and a clothes-line so gay with Mr. Brumley's blue and white flannel61 shirts that it seemed an essential part of the design. And then there was a great border of herbaceous perennials62 backed by delphiniums and monkshood already in flower and budding hollyhocks rising to their duty; a border that reared its blaze of colour against a hill-slope dark with pines. There was no hedge whatever to this delightful garden. It seemed to go straight into the pine-woods; only an invisible netting marked its limits and fended63 off the industrious64 curiosity of the rabbits.
"This strip of wood is ours right up to the crest65," he said, "and from the crest one has a view. One has two views. If you would care——?"
The lady made it clear that she was there to see all she could. She radiated her appetite to see. He carried a fur stole for her over his arm and flicked66 the way up the hill. Flip, flap, flop67. She followed demurely68.
"This is the only view I care to show you now," he said at the crest. "There was a better one beyond there. But—it has been defiled69.... Those hills! I knew you would like them. The space of it! And ... yet——. This view—lacks the shining ponds. There are wonderful distant ponds. After all I must show you the other! But you see there is the high-road, and the high-road has produced an abomination. Along here we go. Now. Don't look down please." His gesture covered the foreground. "Look right over the nearer things into the distance. There!"
The lady regarded the wide view with serene70 appreciation. "I don't see," she said, "that it's in any way ruined. It's perfect."
"You don't see! Ah! you look right over. You look high. I wish I could too. But that screaming board! I wish the man's crusts would choke him."
And indeed quite close at hand, where the road curved about below them, the statement that Staminal Bread, the True Staff of Life, was sold only by the International Bread Shops, was flung out with a vigour71 of yellow and Prussian blue that made the landscape tame.
His finger directed her questioning eye.
"Oh!" said the lady suddenly, as one who is convicted of a stupidity and coloured slightly.
"In the morning of course it is worse. The sun comes directly on to it. Then really and truly it blots72 out everything."
The lady stood quite silent for a little time, with her eyes on the distant ponds. Then he perceived that she was blushing. She turned to her interlocutor as a puzzled pupil might turn to a teacher.
"It really is very good bread," she said. "They make it——Oh! most carefully. With the germ in. And one has to tell people."
Her point of view surprised him. He had expected nothing but a docile73 sympathy. "But to tell people here!" he said.
"Yes, I suppose one oughtn't to tell them here."
"Man does not live by bread alone."
She gave the faintest assent.
"This is the work of one pushful, shoving creature, a man named Harman. Imagine him! Imagine what he must be! Don't you feel his soul defiling74 us?—this summit of a stupendous pile of—dough, thinking of nothing but his miserable75 monstrous76 profits, seeing nothing in the delight of life, the beauty of the world but something that attracts attention, draws eyes, something that gives him his horrible opportunity of getting ahead of all his poor little competitors and inserting—this! It's the quintessence of all that is wrong with the world;—squalid, shameless huckstering!" He flew off at a tangent. "Four or five years ago they made this landscape disease,—a knight77!"
He looked at her for a sympathetic indignation, and then suddenly something snapped in his brain and he understood. There wasn't an instant between absolute innocence78 and absolute knowledge.
"You see," she said as responsive as though he had cried out sharply at the horror in his mind, "Sir Isaac is my husband. Naturally ... I ought to have given you my name to begin with. It was silly...."
Mr. Brumley gave one wild glance at the board, but indeed there was not a word to be said in its mitigation. It was the crude advertisement of a crude pretentious79 thing crudely sold. "My dear lady!" he said in his largest style, "I am desolated80! But I have said it! It isn't a pretty board."
A memory of epithets81 pricked82 him. "You must forgive—a certain touch of—rhetoric."
He turned about as if to dismiss the board altogether, but she remained with her brows very faintly knit, surveying the cause of his offence.
"It isn't a pretty board," she said. "I've wondered at times.... It isn't."
"I implore83 you to forget that outbreak—mere petulance—because, I suppose, of a peculiar84 liking85 for that particular view. There are—associations——"
"I've wondered lately," she continued, holding on to her own thoughts, "what people did think of them. And it's curious—to hear——"
For a moment neither spoke86, she surveyed the board and he the tall ease of her pose. And he was thinking she must surely be the most beautiful woman he had ever encountered. The whole country might be covered with boards if it gave us such women as this. He felt the urgent need of some phrase, to pull the situation out of this pit into which it had fallen. He was a little unready, his faculties87 all as it were neglecting his needs and crowding to the windows to stare, and meanwhile she spoke again, with something of the frankness of one who thinks aloud.
"You see," she said, "one doesn't hear. One thinks perhaps——And there it is. When one marries very young one is apt to take so much for granted. And afterwards——"
She was wonderfully expressive in her inexpressiveness, he thought, but found as yet no saving phrase. Her thought continued to drop from her. "One sees them so much that at last one doesn't see them."
She turned away to survey the little house again; it was visible in bright strips between the red-scarred pine stems. She looked at it chin up, with a still approval—but she was the slenderest loveliness, and with such a dignity!—and she spoke at length as though the board had never existed. "It's like a little piece of another world; so bright and so—perfect."
There was the phantom88 of a sigh in her voice.
"I think you'll be charmed by our rockery," he said. "It was one of our particular efforts. Every time we two went abroad we came back with something, stonecrop or Alpine89 or some little bulb from the wayside."
"How can you leave it!"
He was leaving it because it bored him to death. But so intricate is the human mind that it was with perfect sincerity90 he answered: "It will be a tremendous wrench91.... I have to go."
"And you've written most of your books here and lived here!"
The note of sympathy in her voice gave him a sudden suspicion that she imagined his departure due to poverty. Now to be poor as an author is to be unpopular, and he valued his popularity—with the better sort of people. He hastened to explain. "I have to go, because here, you see, here, neither for me nor my little son, is it Life. It's a place of memories, a place of accomplished92 beauty. My son already breaks away,—a preparatory school at Margate. Healthier, better, for us to break altogether I feel, wrench though it may. It's full for us at least—a new tenant93 would be different of course—but for us it's full of associations we can't alter, can't for the life of us change. Nothing you see goes on. And life you know is change—change and going on."
He paused impressively on his generalization94.
"But you will want——You will want to hand it over to—to sympathetic people of course. People," she faltered95, "who will understand."
Mr. Brumley took an immense stride—conversationally. "I am certain there is no one I would more readily see in that house than yourself," he said.
"But——" she protested. "And besides, you don't know me!"
"One knows some things at once, and I am as sure you would—understand—as if I had known you twenty years. It may seem absurd to you, but when I looked up just now and saw you for the first time, I thought—this, this is the tenant. This is her house.... Not a doubt. That is why I did not go for my walk—came round with you."
"You really think you would like us to have that house?" she said. "Still?"
"No one better," said Mr. Brumley.
"After the board?"
"After a hundred boards, I let the house to you...."
"My husband of course will be the tenant," reflected Lady Harman.
She seemed to brighten again by an effort: "I have always wanted something like this, that wasn't gorgeous, that wasn't mean. I can't make things. It isn't every one—can make a place...."
