The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman. H. G. Wells
border.
"How far," he asked, "is it from the nearest railway station?..."
Mr. Brumley gave details.
"Four miles. And an infrequent service? Nothing in any way suburban? Better to motor into Guildford and get the Express. H'm.... And what sort of people do we get about here?"
Mr. Brumley sketched.
"Mildly horsey. That's not bad. No officers about?... Nothing nearer than Aldershot.... That's eleven miles, is it? H'm. I suppose there aren't any literary people about here, musicians or that kind of thing, no advanced people of that sort?"
"Not when I've gone," said Mr. Brumley, with the faintest flavour of humour.
Sir Isaac stared at him for a moment with eyes vacantly thoughtful.
"It mightn't be so bad," said Sir Isaac, and whistled a little between his teeth.
Mr. Brumley was suddenly minded to take his visitor to see the view and the effect of his board upon it. But he spoke merely of the view and left Sir Isaac to discover the board or not as he thought fit. As they ascended among the trees, the visitor was manifestly seized by some strange emotion, his face became very white, he gasped and blew for breath, he felt for his face with a nervous hand.
"Four thousand," he said suddenly. "An outside price."
"A minimum," said Mr. Brumley, with a slight quickening of the pulse.
"You won't get three eight," gasped Sir Isaac.
"Not a business man, but my agent tells me——" panted Mr. Brumley.
"Three eight," said Sir Isaac.
"We're just coming to the view," said Mr. Brumley. "Just coming to the view."
"Practically got to rebuild the house," said Sir Isaac.
"There!" said Mr. Brumley, and waved an arm widely.
Sir Isaac regarded the prospect with a dissatisfied face. His pallor had given place to a shiny, flushed appearance, his nose, his ears, and his cheeks were pink. He blew his face out, and seemed to be studying the landscape for defects. "This might be built over at any time," he complained.
Mr. Brumley was reassuring.
For a brief interval Sir Isaac's eyes explored the countryside vaguely, then his expression seemed to concentrate and run together to a point. "H'm," he said.
"That board," he remarked, "quite wrong there."
"Well!" said Mr. Brumley, too surprised for coherent speech.
"Quite," said Sir Isaac Harman. "Don't you see what's the matter?"
Mr. Brumley refrained from an eloquent response.
"They ought to be," Sir Isaac went on, "white and a sort of green. Like the County Council notices on Hampstead Heath. So as to blend.... You see, an ad. that hits too hard is worse than no ad. at all. It leaves a dislike.... Advertisements ought to blend. It ought to seem as though all this view were saying it. Not just that board. Now suppose we had a shade of very light brown, a kind of light khaki——"
He turned a speculative eye on Mr. Brumley as if he sought for the effect of this latter suggestion on him.
"If the whole board was invisible——" said Mr. Brumley.
Sir Isaac considered it. "Just the letters showing," he said. "No,—that would be going too far in the other direction."
He made a faint sucking noise with his lips and teeth as he surveyed the landscape and weighed this important matter....
"Queer how one gets ideas," he said at last, turning away. "It was my wife told me about that board."
He stopped to survey the house from the exact point of view his wife had taken nine days before. "I wouldn't give this place a second thought," said Sir Isaac, "if it wasn't for Lady Harman."
He confided. "She wants a week-end cottage. But I don't see why it should be a week-end cottage. I don't see why it shouldn't be made into a nice little country house. Compact, of course. By using up that barn."
He inhaled three bars of a tune. "London," he explained, "doesn't suit Lady Harman."
"Health?" asked Mr. Brumley, all alert.
"It isn't her health exactly," Sir Isaac dropped out. "You see—she's a young woman. She gets ideas."
"You know," he continued, "I'd like to have a look at that barn again. If we develop that—and a sort of corridor across where the shrubs are—and ran out offices...."
§5
Mr. Brumley's mind was still vigorously struggling with the flaming implications of Sir Isaac's remark that Lady Harman "got ideas," and Sir Isaac was gently whistling his way towards an offer of three thousand nine hundred when they came down out of the pines into the path along the edge of the herbaceous border. And then Mr. Brumley became aware of an effect away between the white-stemmed trees towards the house as if the Cambridge boat-race crew was indulging in a vigorous scrimmage. Drawing nearer this resolved itself into the fluent contours of Lady Beach-Mandarin, dressed in sky-blue and with a black summer straw hat larger than ever and trimmed effusively with marguerites.
"Here," said Sir Isaac, "can't I get off? You've got a friend."
"You must have some tea," said Mr. Brumley, who wanted to suggest that they should agree to Sir Isaac's figure of three thousand eight hundred, but not as pounds but guineas. It seemed to him a suggestion that might prove insidiously attractive. "It's a charming lady, my friend Lady Beach-Mandarin. She'll be delighted——"
"I don't think I can," said Sir Isaac. "Not in the habit—social occasions."
His face expressed a panic terror of this gallant full-rigged lady ahead of them.
"But you see now," said Mr. Brumley, with a detaining grip, "it's unavoidable."
And the next moment Sir Isaac was mumbling his appreciations of the introduction.
I must admit that Lady Beach-Mandarin was almost as much to meet as one can meet in a single human being, a broad abundant billowing personality with a taste for brims, streamers, pennants, panniers, loose sleeves, sweeping gestures, top notes and the like that made her altogether less like a woman than an occasion of public rejoicing. Even her large blue eyes projected, her chin and brows and nose all seemed racing up to the front of her as if excited by the clarion notes of her abundant voice, and the pinkness of her complexion was as exuberant as her manners. Exuberance—it was her word. She had evidently been a big, bouncing, bright gaminesque girl at fifteen, and very amusing and very much admired; she had liked the rôle and she had not so much grown older as suffered enlargement—a very considerable enlargement.
"Ah!" she cried, "and so I've caught you at home, Mr. Brumley! And, poor dear, you're at my mercy." And she shook both his hands with both of hers.
That was before Mr. Brumley introduced Sir Isaac, a thing he did so soon as he could get one of his hands loose and wave a surviving digit or so at that gentleman.
"You see, Sir Isaac," she said, taking him in, in the most generous way; "I and Mr. Brumley are old friends. We knew each other of yore. We have our jokes."
Sir Isaac seemed to feel the need of speech but got no further than a useful all-round noise.
"And one of them is that when I want him to do the least little thing for me he hides away! Always. By a sort of instinct. It's such a Small thing, Sir Isaac."
Sir Isaac was understood to say vaguely that they always did. But he had become very indistinct.
"Aren't I always at your service?" protested Mr. Brumley with a responsive playfulness. "And I don't even know what it is you want."
Lady Beach-Mandarin, addressing