MRS. POTTEN'S CARELESSNESS
There is little left in Christ Church of the simplicity and piety of the
Age of Faith. It was rebuilt when the fine spiritual romanticism of our
architectural adolescence had coarsened into a prosperous and prosaic
middle age.
The western facade of the College is fine, but it is ostentatious for
its purpose, and when one passes under Tom Tower and enters the
quadrangle there is something dreary in the terraces that were intended
to be cloistered and the mean windows of the ground floor that were
intended to be hidden.
"It is like Harding," said Bingham to himself, as he strolled in with a
parcel under his arm. "He is always mistaking Mrs. Grundy for the Holy
Ghost. But Harding has his uses," he went on thinking, "and so has Tom
Quod--it makes one thankful that Wolsey died before he had time to
finish ruining the cathedral."
An elderly canon of Christ Church, with a fine profile and dignified
manner, stopped Bingham and demanded to know what he was carrying under
his arm.
"Nothing for the wounded," said Bingham. "I've bought a green
table-cloth and a pair of bedroom slippers for myself. I've just come
from a Sale in which some Oxford ladies are interested. One of the many
good works with which we are going strong nowadays."
The Canon turned and walked with Bingham. "Do you know Boreham?" he
asked rather abruptly.
Bingham said he did.
"I met him a moment ago. He is taking some lady over the college. I met
him at Middleton's, I think, not so long ago."
"He's a connection of Middleton's," said Bingham.
"Oh," said the Canon, "is he? A remarkable person. He gave me his views
on Eugenics, I remember."
"He would be likely to give you his views," said Bingham. "Did he want
to know yours?"
The Canon laughed. "He pleaded so passionately in favour of our
preserving the leaven of disease in our racial heredity, so as to insure
originality and genius, that I was tempted to indulge in the logical
fallacy: 'A dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter,'" and the Canon
laughed again.
"His father was a first-rate old rapid," said Bingham, "who ended in an
asylum, I believe. His aunt keeps cats; this I know as a fact. His
brother, Lord Boreham, as everybody knows, has been divorced twice. What
matter? The good old scrap-heap has produced Bernard Boreham; what more
do you want?"
Bingham's remarks were uttered with even more than his usual suavity of
tone because he was annoyed. He had come to the Sale, he had bought the
green table-cloth and the shoes, ostensibly as an act of patriotism, but
really in order to meet Mrs. Dashwood. He had planned to take her over
Christ Church and show her everything, and now Boreham, who had also
planned the same thing, had turned up more punctually, had taken her
off, and was at this moment going in and out, banging doors and giving
erroneous information, along with much talk about himself and his ideas
for the improvement of mankind.
The two men walked very slowly along. Bingham was in no hurry. The Canon
also was in no hurry. In these gloomy days he was glad of a few minutes'
distraction in the company of Bingham, whom nothing depressed. They
walked so slowly that Lady Dashwood and Mrs. Potten, who had just
entered the quadrangle, attended by Miss Scott laden with parcels, came
up to them, bowed and passed them on their way to the rooms of one of
the Fellows who had begged them to deposit their parcels and rest, if
they wished to.
The two men went on talking, though their eyes watched the three ladies,
who were looking for the rooms where they were going to deposit their
purchases. Bingham took out his watch. It was half-past three. The
ladies had found the right entrance, and disappeared. Then Lady
Dashwood's face was to be seen for a moment at a window. Simultaneously
Harding appeared from under Tom Tower.
He came up and spoke to the two men, and while he did so Bingham
observed Miss Scott suddenly appear and make straight for them, holding
something in her hand.
"Bravo! What a sprint," murmured Bingham, as Gwendolen reached them
rather breathless.
"Oh, Mr. Harding," she panted, "Lady Dashwood saw you coming and thought
you wouldn't know where she and Mrs. Potten were. Have you got the
Buckinghamshire collar?"
Bingham burst into subdued laughter.
"My wife sent me over with it," said Harding, who could not see anything
amusing in the incident. "She said Lady Dashwood had got Mrs. Potten
here. That's all right," and he gravely drew from his sleeve a piece of
mauve paper, carefully rolled up, on which was stitched the collar in
question.
"Here's the money," said Gwen, holding out a folded paper.
Harding took the paper.
"Thirty shillings," said Gwen. "Is that right?"
"Yes, thirty shillings," said Harding. "The price is marked on the
paper."
"Extraordinarily cheap at the price," remarked Bingham. "There is no
other collar equal to it in Buckinghamshire."
The Canon turned and walked off, wondering in his mind who the very
pretty, smartly dressed girl was. Harding unfolded the paper. It was a
pound note and inside was not one but two new ten-shilling notes--only
stuck together.
"You've given me too much, one pound and two tens," he said, and he
separated the two notes and gave one back to Gwen. "You're a bit too
generous, Miss Scott," he said.
Gwen took the note, dimpling and smiling and Harding wrote "paid" in
pencil on the mauve paper.
"Here's your receipt," he said, handing her the paper, "the collar and
all," and he turned away and went back to the sale room, with the money
in his pocket.
Meanwhile Gwendolen did not run, she walked back very deliberately. She
had the collar in one hand and the ten-shilling note in the other. She
heard the two men turn and walk towards the gate. The old gentleman with
a gown on, by which she meant the Canon, had disappeared. The quadrangle
was empty. Gwen was thinking, thinking.
It wasn't she who was generous, it was Mrs. Potten, at least not
generous but casual. She was probably casual because, although she was
supposed to be stingy, a ten-shilling note made really no difference to
her. It was too bad that some women had so much money and some so
little. It was especially unjust that an old plain woman like Mrs.
Potten could have hundreds of frocks if she wanted to, and that young
pretty women often couldn't. It was very, very unjust and stupid. Why
she, Gwen, hadn't enough money even to buy a wretched umbrella. It
looked exactly as if it was going to rain later on, and yet there was
no umbrella she could borrow. The umbrella she had borrowed before, had
disappeared from the stand: it must have been left by somebody and been
returned. You can't borrow an umbrella that isn't there. It was all very
well for her mother to say "borrow" an umbrella, but suppose there
wasn't an umbrella! The idea flashed into Gwen's mind that an umbrella
could be bought for ten shillings. It wouldn't be a smart umbrella, but
it would be an umbrella. Then she remembered very vividly how, a year
ago, she was in a railway carriage with her mother and there was one
woman there sitting in a corner at the other end. This woman fidgeted
with her purse a great deal, and when she got out, a sovereign was lying
on the floor just where her feet had been. Gwen remembered her mother
moving swiftly, picking it up, and putting the coin into her own purse,
remarking, "If people are so careless they deserve to lose things," and
Gwen felt that the remark was keenly just, and made several little
things "right" that other people had said were wrong. Now, as she
thought this over, she said to herself that it was only a week ago she
had lost that umbrella: somebody must have got that umbrella and had
been using it for a week, and she didn't blame them; beside the handle
had got rather bashed. Another dozen steps towards the rooms made her
feel very, very sure she didn't blame them, and--Mrs. Potten deserved to
lose her ten-shilling note. Now she had reached the doorway, an idea,
that was a natural development of the previous idea, came to her very
definitely. She slipped the note into the right-hand pocket of her coat
just as she stood on the threshold of the doorway, and then she ran up
the stone stairs. No one was looking out of the window. She had noticed
that as she came along. Now, she would see if Mrs. Potten was really
careless enough not to know that she had given away two ten-shilling
notes instead of one.
Gwendolen walked into the sitting-room. There were Mrs. Potten and Lady
Dashwood sitting together and talking, as if they intended remaining
there for ever.
"Here's your collar, Mrs. Potten," said Gwen, coming in with the
prettiest flush on her face, from the haste with which she had mounted
the stairs.
She handed the roll of mauve paper and stood looking at Mrs. Potten.
Now, she would find out whether Mrs. Potten knew she had flung away her
precious ten-shilling note or not. If she was so stingy why was she so
careless? She was very, very short-sighted, of course, but still that
was no excuse.
"Thanks, my dear," said Mrs. Potten. "I doubt if it is really as nice as
the one we saw that was sold. Thirty shillings--the receipt is on the
paper. It's the first time I've ever had a receipt at a bazaar or sale.
Very business-like; Mr Harding, of course. One can see the handwriting
isn't a woman's!" So saying Mrs. Potten, who had been peering hard at
the collar and the paper, passed it to Lady Dashwood to look at.
"Charming!" said Lady Dashwood.
Now Lady Dashwood knew Mrs. Potten's soul. Mrs. Potten had come into
Oxford at no expense of her own. Mr. Boreham had driven her. She had
also, so Lady Dashwood divined, the intention of helping the Sale as
much as possible, by her moral approbation. Nothing pleased Mrs. Potten
that she saw on the modest undecked tables. Then she had praised a
shilling pincushion, had bought it with much ceremony, and put it into
her bag. "There, I mustn't go and lose this," she had said as she
clicked the fastening of her bag. Then she had praised a Buckinghamshire
collar which was marked "Sold," and in an unwary moment had told Lady
Dashwood that she would have bought that; that was exactly what she
wanted, only it was unfortunately sold. But Lady Dashwood, who was
business-like even in grief, had been equal to the occasion. "I know
there is another one very like it," she had said in a slightly bullying
voice; and when Mrs. Potten moved off as if she had not realised her
luck, murmuring something about having to be somewhere almost
immediately, Lady Dashwood had swiftly arranged with Mrs. Harding that
the other collar, which was somewhere in reserve and was being searched
for, should be sent after them.
This was why Lady Dashwood had conveyed the reluctant Mrs. Potten into
the quadrangle, and had made her climb the stairs with her into these
rooms and wait.
So here was Mrs. Potten, with her collar, trying to believe that she was
not annoyed at having been deprived of thirty shillings in such an
astute way by her dear friend.
"Am I wanted any more?" asked Gwen, looking from one lady to the other.
She took the collar from Lady Dashwood and returned it to Mrs. Potten.
Mrs. Potten opened her bag disclosing the shilling pincushion (which now
she need not have bought) and placed the collar within. Then she shut
the bag with a snap, and looked so innocent that Gwendolen almost
laughed.
No, Gwen was not wanted any more. She turned and went. Mrs. Potten
deserved to lose money! "Yes, she did, and in any case," thought Gwen,
"at any moment I can say, 'Oh yes, I quite forgot I had the note. How
stupid, how awfully stupid,' etc."
So she went down the stairs and out into the terrace.
A few steps away she saw Mr. Bingham, coming back again. This time
alone.
As soon as Gwen had gone Mrs. Potten remarked, "Now I must be going!"
and then sat on, as people do.
"Very pretty girl, Gwendolen Scott," she added.
"Very pretty," said Lady Dashwood.
"Lady Belinda wrote to me a day or two ago, asking me if Gwen could come
on to me from you on Monday."
"Oh!" said Lady Dashwood, but she uttered the exclamation wearily.
"I have written and told her that I'm afraid I can't," said Mrs. Potten.
"Can't!"
Lady Dashwood looked away as if the subject was ended.
"If I have the child, it will mean that the mother will insist on coming
to fetch her away or something." Here Mrs. Potten fidgeted with her bag.
"And I really scarcely know Lady Belinda. It was the husband we used to
know, old General Scott, poor dear silly old man!"
Lady Dashwood received the remark in silence.
"I can't do with some of these modern women," continued Mrs. Potten.
"There are women whose names I could tell you that I would not trust
with a tin halfpenny. My dear, I've seen with my own eyes at a hotel
restaurant a well-dressed woman sweep up the tip left for the waiter by
the person who had just gone, I saw that the waiters saw it, but they
daren't do anything. I saw a friend of mine speaking to her afterwards!
Knew her! Quite respectable! Fancy the audacity of it!"
Lady Dashwood now rested her head on the back of her chair and allowed
Mrs. Potten to talk on.
"I'm afraid there's nothing of the Good Samaritan in me," said Mrs.
Potten, in a self-satisfied tone. "I can't undertake the responsibility
of a girl who is billeted out by her mother--instead of being given a
decent home. I think you're simply angelic to have had her for so long,
Lena."
Lady Dashwood's silence only excited Mrs. Potten's curiosity. "Most
girls now seem to be doing something or other," she said. "Why, one
even sees young women students wheeling convalescent soldiers about
Oxford. I don't believe there is a woman or girl in Oxford who isn't
doing something for the war."
"Yes, but it is the busy women who almost always have time for more
work," said Lady Dashwood.
"Now, I suppose Gwendolen is doing nothing and eating her head off, as
the phrase goes," said Mrs. Potten.
Lady Dashwood was not to be drawn. "Talking of doing something," she
said, to draw Mrs. Potten off the subject, and there was a touch of
weariness in her voice: "I think a Frenchwoman can beat an Englishwoman
any day at 'doing.' I am speaking now of the working classes. I have a
French maid now who does twice the work that any English maid would do.
I picked her up at the beginning of the war. Her husband was killed and
she was stranded with two children. I've put the two children into a
Catholic school in Kent and I have them in the holidays. Well, Louise
makes practically all my things, makes her own clothes and the
children's, and besides that we have made shirts and pyjamas till I
could cut them out blindfolded. She's an object lesson to all maids."
Lady Dashwood was successful, Mrs. Potten's attention was diverted, only
unfortunately the word "maid" stimulated her to draw up an exhaustive
inventory of all the servants she had ever had at Potten End, and she
was doing this in her best Bradshaw style when Lady Dashwood exclaimed
that she had a wire to send off and must go and do it.
"I ought to be going too," said Mrs. Potten, her brain reeling for a
moment at this sudden interruption to her train of thought. She rose
with some indecision, leaving her bag on the floor. Then she stooped and
picked up her bag and left her umbrella; and then at last securing both
bag and umbrella, the two ladies made their way down the stairs and
went back into St. Aldates.
All the time that Mrs. Potten had been running through a list of the
marriages, births, etc., of all her former servants, Lady Dashwood was
contriving a telegram to Lady Belinda Scott. It was difficult to
compose, partly because it had to be both elusive and yet firm, and
partly because Mrs. Potten's voice kept on interrupting any flow of
consecutive thought.
When the two ladies had reached the post-office the wire was completed
in Lady Dashwood's brain.
"Good-bye," said Mrs. Potten, just outside the threshold of the door.
"And if you see Bernard--I believe he means to go to tea at the
Hardings--would you remind him that it is at Eliston's that he has to
pick me up? There are attractions about!" added Mrs. Potten
mysteriously, "and he may forget! Poor Bernard, such a good fellow in
his way, but so wild, and he sometimes talks as if he were almost a
conscientious objector, only he's too old for it to matter. I don't
allow him to argue with me. I can't follow it--and don't want to. But
he's a dear fellow."
Lady Dashwood walked into the post-office. "Thank goodness, I can think
now," she said to herself, as she went to a desk.
The wire ran as follows:--
"Sorry. Saturday quite impossible. Writing."
It was far from cordial, but cordial Lady Dashwood had no intention of
being. She meant to do her duty and no more by Belinda. Duty would be
hard enough. And when she wrote the letter, what should she say?
"If only something would happen, some providential accident," thought
Lady Dashwood, unconscious of the contradiction involved in the terms.
The word "providential" caused her to go on thinking. If there were such
things as ghosts, the "ghost" of the previous night might have been
providentially sent--sent as a warning! But the thought was a foolish
one.
"In any case," she argued, "what is the good of warnings? Did any one
ever take warning? No, not even if one rose from the dead to deliver
it."
She was too tired to walk about and too tired to want to go again into
the Sale room and talk to people. She went back to the rooms, climbed
the stairs slowly and then sat down to wait till it was time to go to
Mrs. Harding's. Perhaps May would soon have finished seeing Christ
Church and come and join her. Her presence was always a comfort.
It was a comfort, perhaps rather a miserable comfort, to Lady Dashwood
because she had begun to suspect that May too was suffering, not
suffering from wounded vanity, for May was almost devoid of vanity, but
from--and here Lady Dashwood leaned back in her chair and closed her
eyes. It was a strange thing that both Jim and May should have allowed
themselves to be martyrised, only May's marriage had been so brief and
had ended so worthily, the shallow young man becoming suddenly compelled
to bear the burden of Empire, and bearing it to the utmost; but Gwen
would meander along, putting all her burdens on other people; and she
would live for ever!