h
it Lady Harman perceived she was absolutely opposed to this idea of
getting rid of anyone--unless it was Mrs. Pembrose. She liked her
various people; she had no desire for a whittled success with a picked
remnant of subdued and deferential employees. She put that to Mr.
Brumley and Mr. Brumley was indignant and eloquent in his concurrence. A
certain Mary Trunk, a dark young woman with a belief that it became her
to have a sweet disorder in her hair, and a large blond girl named Lucy
Baxandall seemed to be the chief among the bad influences of the
Bloomsbury hostel, and they took it upon themselves to appeal to Lady
Harman against Mrs. Pembrose. They couldn't, they complained, "do a
Thing right for her...."

So the tangle grew.

Presently Lady Harman had to go to the Riviera with Sir Isaac and when
she came back Mary Trunk and Lucy Baxandall had vanished from both the
International Hostel and the International Stores. She tried to find out
why, and she was confronted by inadequate replies and enigmatical
silences. "They decided to go," said Mrs. Pembrose, and dropped
"fortunately" after that statement. She disavowed any exact knowledge of
their motives. But she feared the worst. Susan Burnet was uninforming.
Whatever had happened had failed to reach Alice Burnet's ears. Lady
Harman could not very well hold a commission of enquiry into the matter,
but she had an uneasy sense of a hidden campaign of dislodgement. And
about the corridors and cubicles and club rooms there was she thought a
difference, a discretion, a flavour of subjugation....

CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH

THE LAST CRISIS

Sec.1

It would be quite easy for anyone with the knack of reserve to go on
from this point with a history of Lady Harman that would present her as
practically a pure philanthropist. For from these beginnings she was
destined to proceed to more and more knowledge and understanding and
clear purpose and capable work in this interesting process of collective
regrouping, this process which may even at last justify Mr. Brumley's
courageous interpretations and prove to be an early experiment in the
beginning of a new social order. Perhaps some day there will be an
official biography, another addition to the inscrutable records of
British public lives, in which all these things will be set out with
tact and dignity. Horatio Blenker or Adolphus Blenker may survive to be
entrusted with this congenial task. She will be represented as a t