Lady Beach-Mandarin always had her luncheons2 in a family way at a large round table so that nobody could get out of her range, and she insisted upon conversation being general, except for her mother who was impenetrably deaf and the Swiss governess of her only daughter Phyllis who was incomprehensible in any European tongue. The mother was incalculably old and had been a friend of Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset; she maintained an intermittent3 monologue4 about the private lives of those great figures; nobody paid the slightest attention to her but one felt she enriched the table with an undertow of literary associations. A small dark stealthy butler and a convulsive boy with hair (apparently) taking the place of eyes waited. On this occasion Lady Beach-Mandarin had gathered together two cousins, maiden6 ladies from Perth, wearing valiant7 hats, Toomer the wit and censor8, and Miss Sharsper the novelist (whom Toomer detested), a gentleman named Roper whom she had invited under a misapprehension that he was the Arctic Roper, and Mr. Brumley. She had tried Mr. Roper with questions about penguins9, seals, cold and darkness, icebergs10 and glaciers11, Captain Scott, Doctor Cook and the shape of the earth, and all in vain, and feeling at last that something was wrong, she demanded abruptly12 whether Mr. Brumley had sold his house.
"I'm selling it," said Mr. Brumley, "by almost imperceptible degrees."
"He haggles13?"
"Haggles and higgles. He higgles passionately14. He goes white and breaks into a cold perspiration15. He wants me now to include the gardener's tools—in whatever price we agree upon."
"A rich man like that ought to be easy and generous," said Lady Beach-Mandarin.
"Then he wouldn't be a rich man like that," said Mr. Toomer.
"But doesn't it distress16 you highly, Mr. Brumley," one of the Perth ladies asked, "to be leaving Euphemia's Home to strangers? The man may go altering it."
"That—that weighs with me very much," said Mr. Brumley, recalled to his professions. "There—I put my trust in Lady Harman."
"You've seen her again?" asked Lady Beach-Mandarin.
"Yes. She came with him—a few days ago. That couple interests me more and more. So little akin5."
"There's eighteen years between them," said Toomer.
"It's one of those cases," began Mr. Brumley with a note of scientific detachment, "where one is really tempted17 to be ultra-feminist. It's clear, he uses every advantage. He's her owner, her keeper, her obstinate18 insensitive little tyrant19.... And yet there's a sort of effect, as though nothing was decided20.... As if she was only just growing up."
"They've been married six or seven years," said Toomer. "She was just eighteen."
"They went over the house together and whenever she spoke21 he contradicted her with a sort of vicious playfulness. Tried to poke22 clumsy fun at her. Called her 'Lady Harman.' Only it was quite evident that what she said stuck in his mind.... Very queer—interesting people."
"I wouldn't have anyone allowed to marry until they were five-and-twenty," said Lady Beach-Mandarin.
"Sweet seventeen sometimes contrives24 to be very marriageable," said the gentleman named Roper.
"Sweet seventeen must contrive23 to wait," said Lady Beach-Mandarin. "Sweet fourteen has to—and when I was fourteen—I was Ardent25! There's no earthly objection to a little harmless flirtation26 of course. It's the marrying."
"You'd conduce to romance," said Miss Sharsper, "anyhow. Eighteen won't bear restriction27 and everyone would begin by eloping—illegally."
"I'd put them back," said Lady Beach-Mandarin. "Oh! remorselessly."
Mr. Roper, who was more and more manifestly not the Arctic one, remarked that she would "give the girls no end of an
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CHAPTER THE THIRD Lady Harman at Home 2
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