This Freedom Part 26

said Harry.

Almost the very words herself had been about to use!

"Why so had I to me!" she cried.

They both laughed. "Tell on," said Harry.

"No, you. Yours first."

"Toss you," cried Harry; and spun a coin and lost and went ahead: "Well, mine doesn't exactly shake the foundations of the world with excitement because I refused it. It was to go out to defend in a big murder case in Singapore!"

She exclaimed, "In Singapore!"

"Yes, Singapore. Why do you say it like that?"

She did not answer.

The prisoner, Harry went on, was a wealthy trader, immensely wealthy, and immensely detested, it appeared, by the European settlement; had native blood in his veins; was charged with poisoning an Englishman with whose wife he was supposed to have been carrying on an amour.

"A wretched, unsavoury business," said Harry, and went on to say that, though the fee offered was extraordinarily handsome, he had declined the proposal. It was doubtful he would actually make more money over it than in his normal round at home, more than that it went against the grain to be defending a man of native origins who had pretty obviously seduced a white woman if not murdered her husband. "No, no ticket to Singapore for me, thanks," said Harry.

Rosalie turned to him with a sudden, direct interest. "Harry, suppose you had accepted, how long would you have been away?"

"Not less than six months in all. Certainly not less. That's another point against--"

"Yes, against the idea, because in any case you don't want to go.

But suppose the circ.u.mstances had been different; suppose it was a case that for various reasons very much attracted you; would you have gone?"

Harry said indifferently, "Oh, no doubt, no doubt."

"Although it would have taken you from home six months--or more?

You'd not have minded that?"

He laughed delightedly. "Ah, ha! I was beginning to wonder what you were driving at. You're a regular lawyer, Rosalie; you led me on and then caught me out properly."

His amus.e.m.e.nt was not reflected by her. She said with a certain insistence, "But you wouldn't have minded?"

He laughed again. "The judge ruled that the question was admissible and must be answered. Well, minded--I'd have minded, of course, very much in a way. I'm a home bird. I'd have hated being away the best part of a year. But there you are. If the call was strong enough, there you are; it would have been business."

She indrew a long breath. "That's it. It would have been business."

There was then a pause.

Harry, who had been talking lightly, then said slowly, "Rosalie, is there something behind this?"

She turned towards him with a very nice smile. "Harry, I've been doing a very shocking thing. I've been making you commit yourself."

"Commit myself?"

She nodded. "Been taking down your statement without warning you that it may be used in evidence against you."

He said gravely, "Somehow I don't like this."

She told him, "Ah, stupid me! I'm making a small thing seem big.

Listen, Harry. It was curious to me this about you and Singapore--"

"Yes, I noticed that. Why?"

"Because there's an idea of my going out to Singapore."

He was astounded. She might have said to Mars. "You? To Singapore?"

"To the East generally. To Bombay, to Rangoon, to Singapore. For about a year."

He was all aback. "For about a year? Rosalie, I can't--Why on earth--?"

She did not like this. The great scheme! Her special mission! It necessitated.... Here was the necessity at which she had checked but confidently ridden on, and Harry was pulled right up by it. His astonishment was not comfortable to her. Was there to be a check then? He said again, "You? A year? But, Rosalie, what on earth--"

She p.r.o.nounced a single word, his own word:

"Business."

He was standing before her on the hearthrug. He made a turn and at once turned back. "Are you thinking of this seriously?"

"Most seriously."

"Of going?"

"Of going. It's business."

"For a year?"

"Harry, yes."

He began to fill his pipe with very slow movements of his fingers, his eyes bent down upon her. "And you called this--just now--a small thing?"

She said with a sudden eagerness, "Harry, it's a very big thing for me, for Field's. I meant a small thing in the sense not to be made a fuss about."

He made very slowly a negative movement with his head. "I don't see it like that."

"Let me tell you, Harry."

She told him how the great possibilities of the department she had established in the bank rested on the personal touch established between herself and the clients. The scheme was that those possibilities should be developed to their fullest extent. While she was in London that personal touch could be established with clients by dozens. If she visited the branches in the East, at Bombay, at Rangoon, at Singapore, it was by hundreds that the touch could be established. That was it. Field's customers would talk to her, and when she was returned they would talk of her, and would tell others of her, as one met, not during the jolly freedom of leave when the impulse was to feel that, after all, nothing mattered much, but met out there when they were in the yoke and the harness of the thing,--met as one fresh out from home in their particular interests and shortly, charged with their special interests, returning home. That was it! A novel mission, a valuable mission, her mission. About a year. To start in about six weeks. "There, Harry, that's the plan."

"And you are going?"

"I have agreed to go."

He said slowly, "It astonishes me."