Herbert Wells - The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman

Then Susan lunged for a time at the waitress life her sister led. "She has 'er 'ome with us, but some—they haven't homes."

"They make a fuss about all this White Slave Traffic," said Susan, "but if ever there were white slaves it's the girls who work for a living and keep themselves respectable. And nobody wants to make an example of the men who get rich out of them ...."

And after some hearsay about the pressure in the bake-houses and the accidents to the van-men, who worked on a speeding-up system that Sir Isaac had adopted from an American business specialist, Susan's mental discharge poured out into the particulars of the waitresses' strike and her sister's share in that. "She would go into it," said Susan, "she let herself be drawn in. I asked her never to take the place. Better Service, I said, a thousand times. I begged her, I could have begged her on my bended knees...."

The immediate cause of the strike it seemed was the exceptional disagreeableness of one of the London district managers. "He takes advantage of his position," repeated Susan with face aflame, and Lady Harman was already too wise about Susan's possibilities to urge her towards particulars....

Now as Lady Harman listened to all this confused effective picturing of the great catering business which was the other side of her husband and which she had taken on trust so long, she had in her heart a quite unreasonable feeling of shame that she should listen at all, a shyness, as though she was prying, as though this really did not concern her. She knew she had to listen and still she felt beyond her proper jurisdiction. It is against instinct, it is with an enormous reluctance that women are bringing their quick emotions, their flashing unstable intelligences, their essential romanticism, their inevitable profound generosity into the world of politics and business. If only they could continue believing that all that side of life is grave and wise and admirably managed for them they would. It is not in a day or a generation that we shall un-specialize women. It is a wrench nearly as violent as birth for them to face out into the bleak realization that the man who goes out for them into business, into affairs, and returns so comfortably loaded with housings and wrappings and trappings and toys, isn't, as a matter of fact, engaged in benign creativeness while he is getting these desirable things.

Lady Harman's mind was so greatly exercised by Susan Burnet's voluminous confidences that it was only when she returned to her own morning room that she recalled the pawning problem. She went back to Sir Isaac's study and found Susan with all her measurements taken and on the very edge of departure.

"Oh Susan!" she said.

She found the matter a little difficult to broach. Susan remained in an attitude of respectful expectation.

"I wanted to ask you," said Lady Harman and then broke off to shut the door. Susan's interest increased.

"You know, Susan," said Lady Harman with an air of talking about commonplace things, "Sir Isaac is very rich and—of course—very generous.... But sometimes one feels, one wants a little money of one's own."

"I think I can understand that, my lady," said Susan.

"I knew you would," said Lady Harman and then with a brightness that was slightly forced, "I can't always get money of my own. It's difficult—sometimes."

And then blushing vividly: "I've got lots of things .... Susan, have you ever pawned anything?"

And so she broached it.

"Not since I got fairly into work," said Susan; "I wouldn't have it. But when I was little we were always pawning things. Why! we've pawned kettles!..."

She flashed three reminiscences.

Meanwhile Lady Harman produced a little glittering object and held it between finger and thumb. "If I went into a pawnshop near here," she said, "it would seem so odd.... This ring, Susan, must be worth thirty or forty pounds. And it seems so silly when I have it that I should really be wanting money...."

Susan displayed a peculiar reluctance to handle the ring. "I've never," she said, "pawned anything valuable—not valuable like that. Suppose—suppose they wanted to know how I had come by it."

"It's more than Alice earns in a year," she said. "It's——" she eyed the glittering treasure; "it's a queer thing for me to have."

A certain embarrassment arose between them. Lady Harman's need of money became more apparent. "I'll do it for you," said Susan, "indeed I'll do it. But——There's one thing——"

Her face flushed hotly. "It isn't that I want to make difficulties. But people in our position—we aren't like people in your position. It's awkward sometimes to explain things. You've got a good character, but people don't know it. You can't be too careful. It isn't sufficient—just to be honest. If I take that——If you were just to give me a little note—in your handwriting—on your paper—just asking me——I don't suppose I need show it to anyone...."

"I'll write the note," said Lady Harman. A new set of uncomfortable ideas was dawning upon her. "But Susan——You don't mean that anyone, anyone who's really honest—might get into trouble?"

"You can't be too careful," said Susan, manifestly resolved not to give our highly civilized state half a chance with her.

The problem of Sir Isaac and just what he was doing and what he thought he was doing and what he meant to do increased in importance in Lady Harman's mind as the days passed by. He had an air of being malignantly up to something and she could not imagine what this something could be. He spoke to her very little but he looked at her a great deal. He had more and more of the quality of a premeditated imminent explosion....

One morning she was standing quite still in the drawing-room thinking over this now almost oppressive problem of why the situation did not develop further with him, when she became aware of a thin flat unusual book upon the small side table near the great armchair at the side of the fire. He had been reading that overnight and it lay obliquely—it might almost have been left out for her.

She picked it up. It was The Taming of the Shrew in that excellent folio edition of Henley's which makes each play a comfortable thin book apart. A curiosity to learn what it was had drawn her husband to English Literature made her turn over the pages. The Taming of the Shrew was a play she knew very slightly. For the Harmans, though deeply implicated like most other rich and striving people in plans for honouring the immortal William, like most other people found scanty leisure to read him.

As she turned over the pages a pencil mark caught her eye. Thence words were underlined and further accentuated by a deeply scored line in the margin.

With a slightly heightened colour, Lady Harman read on and presently found another page slashed with Sir Isaac's approval....

Her face became thoughtful. Did he mean to attempt—Petruchio? He could never dare. There were servants, there were the people one met, the world.... He would never dare....

What a strange play it was! Shakespear of course was wonderfully wise, the crown of English wisdom, the culminating English mind,—or else one might almost find something a little stupid and clumsy.... Did women nowadays really feel like these Elizabethan wives who talked—like girls, very forward girls indeed, but girls of sixteen?...