Certainly, it is quite inconceivable that in the family circle at
Dheera Dhoon Mumma should ever be thus described, in her own presence,
by her progeny.
“Read the next one,” said Claire, coldly.
The Kendals had each of them selected a member of the royal family for
analysis, and the adjectives that they had chosen bore testimony rather
to a nice sense of loyalty than to either their powers of discernment
or any appreciation of the meaning of words.
Then came the catastrophe that Mary and I, at least, had grimly
foreseen from the start.
Sallie, of course, was responsible. She really has very little sense of
decency.
“Imaginative, Temperamental, Unbalanced, Egotistical, Restless.”
There was a short, deathly silence.
“Did you mean it for Cousin Claire, Sallie?” said Martyn, at last.
One felt it was something that he should even have put it in the form
of a question.
“Yes, but there’s something missing,” Sallie said, bright and
interested and detached. She and her contemporaries dissect themselves
freely, I believe, and they are always bright and interested and
detached. “There were dozens of other things that I wanted to put down,
all just as descriptive.”
“My worst enemy could not call me egotistical,” said Claire, in a
trembling voice. “And it’s neither true nor respectful, Sallie, to say
such a thing. A game is a game, but you show me that I’m foolish to
allow myself to take part in this sort of amusement with you, as though
I were of your own age. You take advantage of it.”
“My mistake, Cousin Claire,” said Sallie, not at all sorry, but
evidently rather amused. “I just put what I really thought. It didn’t
occur to me that you’d mind.”
“Of course I don’t ‘mind,’ my child.” Claire’s voice had become a rapid
staccato. “It makes me smile, that’s all. What do you mean by calling
me ‘unbalanced?’ I suppose there isn’t a woman of my age anywhere to
whom that word is less applicable.”
“Hadn’t we better play at something else?” said Dolly Kendal. “I knew
before we began that if anyone put in real people it wouldn’t be a
success. That sort of thing always ends in somebody being offended.”
“There’s no question of being offended,” said Claire, more offended
than ever.
“Mumma always made the rule, when we were children and used to play
games like Consequences: present company always excepted.”
“I should call that dull. But perhaps it was safe,” Sallie conceded.
“Shall we try the other game? Choose a person, and then each do his or
her portrait, and compare them afterwards.”
The Kendals looked as though they did not think this likely to be a
very great improvement upon Sallie’s last inspiration.
“Do me,” said Sallie, shamelessly.
“I think”--Mary’s gentle voice was unusually determined--“I think we
will adopt Mrs. Kendal’s rule this time.”
“Then let’s do that Mrs. Harter, who goes to tea with Mrs. Fazackerly.
We all know her, don’t we?”
“Only very slightly.”
“All the more interesting.”
“She really has personality,” said Claire, who had been silent, with
compressed lips and a look of pain in her big dark eyes. I think she
felt that no one was looking at her and so gave it up.
“But you’ve never seen Mrs. Harter, have you?” Mary asked me.
“No, but carry on. Who is Mrs. Harter?”
“Old Ellison’s daughter. You remember Ellison, the plumber?”
“Quite well. Is this the girl with the odd Christian name?”
“Diamond--yes. She married young and went out to the East about five
years ago. I don’t think she’s been to Cross Loman since. Now she’s
here for a year, I believe, having left the husband behind. The
children have met her with Nancy Fazackerly and Martyn introduced her
to me.”
“In the old days, of course, you’d have seen her behind a typewriter in
her father’s office?”
“Exactly.”
Mary smiled. The changes that the war has brought about in social
intercourse do not perturb her in the least.
She can afford to accept them.
“Mother,” said Sallie, “have you finished Mrs. Harter?”
“One minute.”
The portraits, when they were read aloud, struck me as forming rather
an interesting comment upon the person who had inspired them. Of the
writers, only the two Kendals were negligible as observers of human
nature.
“Bad-tempered, Determined, Intelligent, Pushing, Handsome.”
That was Martyn’s version.
“Handsome!” ejaculated Sallie. Her own paper began with the word
“Repellent” and went on with “Determined, Ambitious, Straightforward,
Common.”
“I’ve got her down as ‘Common,’ too,” said Claire. “Common,
Self-willed, Good-looking, Obstinate, and Hard.”
“What a pleasing aggregate!” said I. “Mary, what do you make of Mrs.
Harter?”
“Sincere, Unhappy, Reserved, Ill-tempered, Undisciplined.”
“It’s queer,” said Martyn. “We’ve all been impressed by that woman more
or less. And yet we’ve all noticed different things about her.”
“Two people said she was common,” Sallie pointed out.
“I don’t agree.”
“Well,” said Dolly Kendal, “it’s not a very nice thing to say about
anyone, is it?”
This comment did not materially add to the value of the discussion and
met with no rejoinder.
“Mrs. Harter is common,” said Claire, with that air of finality with
which she invests an assertion of her own opinion, particularly when
it is contrary to that held by other people. “But she has personality.
That’s why we’re all discussing her, I suppose--old Ellison’s daughter!”
“She doesn’t look like old Ellison’s daughter,” Martyn observed,
replying, perhaps, rather to the spirit than to the letter of Claire’s
assertion. “It was a stroke of genius on his part to have christened
his daughter Diamond.”
Sallie looked intelligently inquiring.
“Don’t you see how it suits her? The mixture of hardness and of depth,
and the slight tinge of vulgarity that one can’t help associating with
that sort of name--and, of course, the unusualness. By the way, didn’t
anyone put her down as unusual?”
Claire shook her head.
“She may be good-looking, but she’s as hard as nails, I should say--and
she’s common.”