Claire and I are not lively people, but we both wanted to make
Christopher enjoy himself, although I think Claire resented his
Philistine forms of enjoyment a good deal.
Both he and Captain Patch went often to play tennis with the Kendals at
Dheera Dhoon.
“He couldn’t, surely,” Claire said to me, desperately, upon this
subject.
I know what she meant. Christopher’s possible--or, more probably,
impossible--marriage, was always one of Claire’s deepest
preoccupations. And she has always been victim to an intensive system
under which her hopes and her fears alike leap to gigantic proportions
within a few seconds of their conception.
I had no doubt that she had already endowed Christopher and one of the
Kendals--probably Dolly, the one she dislikes the most--with a family
of which all the members would have inherited the Kendal temperament,
which Claire finds a singularly unattractive one.
“I don’t think he could,” I assured her.
She gazed at me out of her enormous, tragical eyes.
“I am living upon the edge of a volcano, Miles.” And as, I suppose, my
silence appeared to her to be an inadequate rejoinder--as indeed it
was--she added, with violent emphasis, the word: “_Literally_.”
Poor Claire!
The Kendals, than whom no young women in this world have ever been more
devoid of a dangerous fascination, continued to exercise their harmless
hospitality, and in return, Christopher begged us to let him ask them
to the Manor House.
They played tennis moderately well, but I found that all of them looked
upon it as a matter of course that they should take it in turns to sit
by my wheel chair for five or ten minutes and talk to me very brightly
and conscientiously.
I think they looked upon this exercise as something which cheered up
that poor Sir Miles Flower, and no doubt, had they been Boy Scouts, it
would have been counted as the One Good Deed, or Kind Act, or whatever
it is that Boy Scouts are presumed to perform daily.
The Kendals, in reality, are a pre-war survival.
“Nothing ever happens to us” might be taken as their motto.
They frequently proclaim this negative state of affairs in the tones of
aggressive resignation peculiar to themselves, rather as though they
resented this absence of drama in their lives, and yet regarded it as a
mark of superiority.
During the war, Blanche Kendal, the eldest daughter, stayed at home “To
help Mumma,” and Amy, whom Mumma has decreed to be delicate, was not
allowed to do anything except what her Mother called “cheering up poor
Puppa in the evenings--that must be your war work, darling.”
Dolly and Aileen, after an inordinate number of family conclaves--the
Kendals are nothing, if not tribal--had, in 1915, been permitted to
go daily to the County Hospital, where they had zealously washed
dishes and listened enviously to the talk of girls much younger than
themselves, who worked in the wards as nurses or masseuses.
Alfred, whom neither parent would have dreamed of trying to coerce, did
not succeed in passing as fit for foreign service, and had to content
himself with Salisbury Plain.
It follows that the Kendals, although they would no doubt repudiate the
suggestion indignantly, have, for all practical purposes, completely
forgotten all about the war.
Where Puppa previously condemned and denounced the Radicals, he now
condemns and denounces the Labor Party; and when, as sometimes happens,
he loses his temper for no appreciable reason, Mumma explains the lapse
by saying, “Poor Puppa is so worried about this _wicked_ Income Tax”
instead of, as in former days, “Poor Puppa is so worried about this
nonsensical Servants’ Insurance Bill.”
Mumma herself never loses her temper, but, even as she, once upon
a time, allowed herself to speak of the Suffragettes as unsexed,
hysterical idiots, so she now condemns as wicked, irreligious,
and immoral, the increased scope of the Divorce Laws and the new
independence of Domestic Servants. Since the thirtieth birthday of the
twins, Mrs. Kendal has allowed herself more latitude in mentioning such
subjects in their presence. She quite believes, and often proclaims,
that she has the complete confidence of all her children.
Dolly and Aileen are affectionately regarded by the whole family as
being the emancipated members of it.
“No one ever allowed us to read the books they read,” Blanche told me,
after Mumma had actually left a library copy of “Women Napoleon Loved”
lying about the drawing-room, without troubling to shroud it in a brown
paper cover.
And Amy pointed out, quite unresentfully, that she and Blanche had
always been made to dress alike, at the twins’ age. This was when Dolly
boldly appeared in a tailor-made shirt with pink stripes, although
Aileen had not yet discarded her winter “everyday” cream-colored
flannel.
Variegated sweaters and low-necked silk jumpers, such as Sallie Ambrey
wears, Mumma has pronounced to be in bad style.
Dolly, who was my informant upon this point, seemed to think that I
might get a false impression of Mumma and her ideals from it, for she
added at once:
“Not that Mumma is in the least narrow-minded about things of
that sort, or indeed of any sort. Long before the days of women’s
suffrage--although of course she disapproved utterly of the militant
ones--Mumma always said that she saw no harm whatever in a woman having
a vote, so long as she could find a good wise man to tell her how to
use it.”
I could only feel thankful that neither Sallie nor Martyn was present
to hear this remarkable testimony to Mumma’s catholicity of outlook.
It was the summer that Christopher Ambrey spent at the Manor House with
us, that Puppa acquired a motor car.
The girls were not allowed to drive it. Two of them sat on the back of
the car, poised upon the extreme edge of the seat, while Mumma sat in
front and Puppa drove. Christopher once told me that it took General
Kendal five-and-twenty minutes to drive from “Dheera Dhoon” to Miss
Applebee’s shop--a distance of perhaps half a mile. Mumma, sitting
beside him, and diffusing a general sense of tension, adopted the role
of look-out.
“I should bear a little to the right here, Puppa--you remember the bad
place in the road? Not too much, dear....”
Sometimes she cast a worried look behind them, and discerned something
on the sky line almost invisible to less anxious eyes.
“Something coming, Puppa.... No, not just yet, dear, but I thought I’d
warn you, as it will want to pass us. I suppose they will sound their
horn before they get quite close up. Girls, there’s a car coming up
behind us.”
Poor General Kendal gripped the wheel tighter and tighter--until,
Christopher said, the veins sprang out on the backs of his hands--and
drove slower and slower.
“A cart coming _towards_ you, Puppa ... take care, the road is so
narrow here ... it’s coming towards us--it’s just a little way in
front, isn’t it? Don’t get fussed, dear.”
I have never been out in the General’s car myself, but I believe that
he has never become a really confident driver, and that to this day
Mumma sits beside him and keeps up a running fire of warnings.
As for the Kendal girls, they go almost everywhere on their bicycles.
They say that having too many people in the car always makes poor Puppa
so nervous.
_Chapter Four_
It was Nancy Fazackerly herself who subsequently told me all about
her musical evening. She very often comes to see me, and, unlike the
Kendals, never causes me to see myself in the unpleasant light of
something accomplished, something done, for the good of somebody else’s
soul.
The party, it is perhaps needless to say, was invited to come in after
supper.
“So many people prefer to dine quietly at home,” said Mrs. Fazackerly.
Captain Patch, one of the few people with whom old Carey--Mrs.
Fazackerly’s father--had not had time to quarrel--put him into a good
humor in the morning by presenting him with a small work entitled
“Poison Crimes of the Past.”
Old Carey’s hobby is criminology.
“All full of old friends!” said Mrs. Fazackerly delightedly. “Palmer,
I’m sure I remember him--and Pritchard? I’ve often heard you speak of
Pritchard, I’m sure, Father.”
She tries very hard, I know, to be interested in these rather sinister
celebrities, but old Carey never meets his daughter halfway.
“Pritchard was a bungler of the first water,” he witheringly replied.
“That servant of yours has no sense, Nancy; she hasn’t filled the tea
caddy.”
“I ought to have done it myself. I never let her touch the China tea,
you know.”
“This isn’t China tea.”
“Oh, Father, it is indeed. I had it specially down from the Stores,
only a week ago.”
“Then why did you tell me yesterday, when we were talking about the
weekly books, that you hadn’t had anything from the Stores for six
months?”
Old Carey is always laying traps for his daughter, and she is always
falling into them.
“Did I say that? I suppose I forgot about the tea,” she said valiantly.
“You are the worst housekeeper in England, I believe,” was her parent’s
dispassionate retort.
Captain Patch broke in with some inquiry about the little book on
poison cases. Unlike Mrs. Fazackerly, he never confused the Mannings
with the Seddons, and he always appeared to be genuinely interested in
the records of their activities.
Mrs. Fazackerly looked at him gratefully. She had a strong feeling
of friendliness for red-headed Captain Patch. He was always so ready
to put kindly interpretations upon everything, and she sometimes felt
that there was a good deal in her life, both past and present, that
positively craved for kindly interpretations.
Mrs. Fazackerly told me that sometimes she sighed with relief, as she
woke in the morning to the remembrance of her paying guest’s presence.
She had never before known such an easy summer.
The money from Captain Patch was paid into her account regularly and he
not only gave no trouble, but was the only person to whom her father,
for many years, had taken a liking. Since Captain Patch had been at the
Cottage talking and joking, and above all, always ready to listen, Mrs.
Fazackerly’s father had found fault with her less often and had made
fewer demands upon her.
“It would be nice to have a little fun,” Mrs. Fazackerly may have
thought to herself, wistfully, from time to time.
“The fish is here please ’m. He would like to speak to you.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Fazackerly, startled. “The fish. Very well; thank you,
Bessie. I will come and speak to the fish at once.”
She turned towards the house again, recapitulating mentally the points
to which she had already decided that the attention of “the fish” must
be drawn.
After that, she certainly had no more time in which to think about
improbable accessions of happiness to herself. Old Carey, whether or
not at the suggestion of Captain Patch, announced his intention of
spending the afternoon and evening at the Club.
“You can be ready to take me there at three o’clock,” he told his
daughter, to whom belonged the privilege of pushing the heavy wheeled
chair in which he took his exercise.
“I wish you’d let me do that, sir,” said Captain Patch. “I really want
a job this afternoon.”
He nearly always found some good reason for relieving his hostess of
this fatigue duty.
That evening, she put on the only evening dress that she possessed, a
black crêpe-de-chine one embroidered with silver crescents, and looked
long and critically at her reflection in the glass.
She powdered her small, straight, impertinent-looking nose, admired her
really beautiful teeth, and wished, as she had often wished before,
that her complexion had been anything but the creamy, freckled pallor
of a _blonde cendrée_. Just before going downstairs, she allowed
herself the comfort and pleasure of inspecting, with a hand mirror,
the reflection of her back hair.
As she went down, she was still smiling at the thought of that soft and
fluffy twist of thick, pale gold hair.
Nancy Fazackerly told me that she very often thought of her hair
resolutely, when other people displayed new and charming clothes, such
as she herself had never possessed.
Sallie Ambrey’s frock that night was one that Mrs. Fazackerly had not
seen before, a straight, slim, green-and-gold little frock, with no
sleeves at all.
“It’s lovely,” said Nancy frankly.
“Christopher is so old-fashioned that he’s been objecting to it as
indecent,” said the girl with perfect unconcern.
“So it is,” Christopher asserted.
“Surely decency and indecency are out of date, nowadays,” Martyn
suggested. “Like talking of people being shocked. I believe it was
quite usual to be shocked, some years ago, but one never hears of its
happening now.”
“Nancy,” said Sallie, “will your Mrs. Harter be shocked? She looked
rather as though she might be, at the concert.”
“No, she won’t,” Mrs. Fazackerly asserted positively. “And she’s not
my Mrs. Harter. I know very little of her, except that she hasn’t many
friends.”
“Is she amusing?”
It might have been truthfully asserted that no one, on that first
evening, found Mrs. Harter exactly amusing. It was, indeed, very
difficult to make her utter a word, from what I was told.
She sat on the edge of an armchair, wearing the same black dress that
she had worn at the concert, and twisting her wedding ring round and
round on her finger. Her dark face wore a look of resentful shyness,
her voice was low and abrupt, and all her replies were monosyllables.
She did not originate any remark at all.
Her evident sense of constraint began to affect everybody in the room.
Sallie, who believes in letting people alone, leaned back on the sofa
and smoked a cigarette and said very little. Martyn looked at Mrs.
Harter, his young expressive face more and more sharply critical.
Then Christopher Ambrey and Captain Patch broke the silence
simultaneously.
“Did you see the--”
“Have you been to--”
“I beg your pardon.”
“I beg your pardon. Go on.”
“Oh no, it wasn’t anything.”
“Please say what you were going to say--”
“Please--”
Sallie Ambrey laughed, but the others were all in painful earnest.
“It really isn’t worth saying,” Captain Patch truthfully remarked. “I
was only going to ask if anyone had seen the eclipse yesterday. There
was supposed to be an eclipse, I believe.”
No one seemed to have known or cared about this phenomenon, and after
it had been briefly dismissed from life, there was another silence.
“How is Mr. Carey?”
“He’s had some quite good days, lately, and he’s really wonderful,
considering.”
“Hullo, a moth!”
“How still it is, to-night, isn’t it?”
“Mrs. Harter, do you sing a great deal?”
It was all very disconnected, and spasmodic and embarrassing. Mrs.
Fazackerly felt that never would these six people unite in singing “My
old Kentucky Home” and “Swanee River” as she had intended them to do.
The presence of Mrs. Harter, and her ungracious self-consciousness,
were making havoc of the party.
It was red-headed Captain Patch who saved the situation. He boldly
went over to the piano and threw it open.
“Mrs. Harter, we’ve wanted to hear ‘The Bluebells of Scotland’ again
ever since the concert. May we all join in the chorus?”
Without waiting for any reply, he began to play, with one finger, and
the others thankfully took up the well-known air.
After that there was no more constraint, and Captain Patch made Mrs.
Fazackerly take his place as accompanist and stood behind the rest
of the group, and eventually went away and returned carrying a laden
coffee-tray.
Presently there was a great deal of cigarette smoke in the room, and a
great deal of talk and laughter.
Mrs. Harter looked quite different.
“Thank goodness, it’s going to be a success after all,” Mrs. Fazackerly
thought. She had an absurd feeling that the rescuing of her party from
failure was a good omen for the future.
It was past twelve o’clock when the Ambreys went home in Christopher’s
small car, and Captain Patch escorted Mrs. Harter to the narrow house
in Queen Street where she was living in rooms.
“Good-by. Let’s do it again soon,” cried Sallie. “Why don’t we all
meet this day week at our house and sing some more?”
“Let’s,” said Christopher.
“Mrs. Harter, can you?”
“Thanks very much.”
“About half-past eight then, all of us. I’ll look up some part-songs
and things. Good-night.”
The car moved away.
* * * * *
Captain Patch escorted Mrs. Harter to the house in Queen Street....
Nancy Fazackerly told me the fact when she gave me the account of the
party. And I have wondered so often what took place in the course of
that short walk--the first time that those two people were ever alone
together, after the evening of music and talk and laughter--that I have
come to evolve a sort of imaginary conversation. It is based, like
almost all my conception of Mrs. Harter’s personality, on conjecture,
on the judgments of Mary Ambrey, who alone, of all those who watched
the events of that summer, combined clear vision with pitifulness--and
on what I saw of Bill Patch.
I don’t know--no one ever will know--what passed between them as they
went up the still, moonlit street and across the little open square
of the market place, their footsteps sounding very clearly in the
absolute quiet of the night-time.
But I have sometimes fancied that I could reconstruct the lines of that
conversation--and, for what it is worth, I shall put down what they may
have said, as though I knew that they really did say it. Certainly,
Diamond Harter dropped her guard that night. I am sure of that. Perhaps
it was something as follows--but perhaps not.
“Were you long in the East?”
“Nearly five years. This is the first time I’ve been home. Cross Loman
hasn’t changed much.”
“You must be glad of that, I should think.”
“Why?” said Mrs. Harter sharply. “I think it’s a horrid little country
town, and the people in it mostly snobs.”
“Why do you think that? I’ve found them all so kind and friendly.”
“You! Yes. That’s different. But you don’t suppose I should have
been asked to-night if I hadn’t happened to sing at the concert the
other day. That Mrs. Fazackerly is a kind little soul, and everyone
knows she’s had a hell of a time. But I’ve not any use for the
Ambreys--especially that girl.”
“I’m sorry you feel like that.”
“I know you all thought I was going to spoil the evening, at first. I
couldn’t help it.” Her voice softened a little in the darkness. “I felt
such a fish out of water.”
“Sometimes I’ve felt like that myself. I used to when I was in the
Army, very often. But one gets over it. People are awfully kind,
really.”
“Martyn Ambrey is all right, and Mrs. Ambrey, that girl’s mother. Do
you know her?”
“I’ve met her.”
“They weren’t living here when I was at home. As for the high and
mighty Lady Flower, you saw what she was like that night at the
concert.”
“Was she especially--anything?”
Mrs. Harter gave a short laugh.
“I don’t know why I’m giving myself away like this, I’m sure. Only you
somehow got things going to-night, just when I was cursing myself for
having been such a fool as to come.”
“I’m glad you did come, and I hope you’ll come to the Ambreys.”
He spoke simply and deliberately, and her reply was equally devoid of
any hint of conventional intention.
“Why?”
“Because you sound so lonely,” said Captain Patch. “I expect you’d
like people better if you saw them more often.”
“One doesn’t generally,” she said with an odd laugh.
“Give it a try, anyhow.”
“I shall. I always found this a dead-alive place, and after the East it
would be duller than ever if one didn’t know people.”
“But you must have plenty of friends if your home is here.”
“I was away at school before I got married, and anyhow, I never was
much of a one to make friends. The people I wanted to know didn’t care
particularly about me, and the ones that did want to make friends I
wasn’t particularly keen on. You see, my people sent me to a school
where there were a set of girls that thought themselves a great deal
better than the tradesmen’s daughters, and that sort. I was with them,
mostly, at school, but after I left it was different. I was supposed to
be going to teach, and one girl wrote and asked if I’d like to come as
governess to her little sister. When we were at school, she’d invited
me to go and stay as a friend, and I’d spent the holidays there. So
I knew what it was like. And I wasn’t going to go back there as the
governess after being a visitor in the house, thank you.”
“What did you do then?”
“Nothing. Stayed at home and did the typing in the office. I hated
Cross Loman.”
“Did you like Egypt?”
“Yes,” said Diamond Harter slowly. “I liked Egypt. I got all the
dancing and the riding and the parties out there that I’d wanted and
hadn’t been able to get down here. Have you ever been to the East?”
“No.”
“It’s all quite different, of course. Everyone knows everyone, in a
way. There aren’t ‘county’ people and other cliques, like there are
here. One got the chance of knowing people whom one wouldn’t even have
met at home.”
“Then,” said Captain Patch, rather doubtfully, “you’ll be glad to go
back there again, I suppose?”
“For some things. This is my door, Captain Patch. Thanks for bringing
me back. I suppose you wouldn’t care to come in and see me one day?”
“I’d like to very much,” said the red-haired young man, with his
friendly smile. “Can’t I come and call on you?”
“I’m always here. Come and have tea with me on Thursday.”
“Yes, I will. Thank you very much.”
Her face in the moonlight looked strangely softened. “Have you got a
latchkey?”
“Yes. Good-night.”
Mrs. Harter held out her hand and he took it for an instant. It was a
strong hand, unusually broad, and capable of transmitting in contact a
faint, magnetic thrill.
“Good-night,” she repeated as she went up the three shallow steps that
led up to the neat, mean little door, with its liver-colored paint and
tarnished brass.
Captain Patch, on the pavement, watched the door open, saw the tall,
square-shouldered figure for a moment against the light that hung in
the narrow entrance, and then heard the slam of the door and saw,
through the ground-glass fan-light, the light go out.
Then he turned down the road again, softly whistling to himself “The
Bluebells of Scotland.”
* * * * *
Sallie Ambrey has not her mother’s intuition, nor, naturally, has she
Mary’s experience. But she has great acumen, and--that rarest and most
invaluable asset--a mind trained from babyhood to clear thinking.
And, personally, I hold that she was absolutely right when she once
called Captain Patch a hopeless and temperamental romantic, capable of
a _grande passion_. One doesn’t associate it, somehow, with red curly
hair, and a slouch, and a very frank smile on a boyish mouth and behind
a pair of strong glasses.
Incongruity, in a way, was the keynote of the whole thing.
Diamond Harter wasn’t in the least beautiful, and certainly not
charming. She was his senior by a year or two and, as Mrs. Kendal said
later on, with her extraordinary gift for emphasizing the unessential:
“Mrs. Harter was not, _in any sense of the word_, a lady.”
One is left wondering how many “senses of the word” exist, and what
they all are.
A few days after the concert, we decided that we would give a dance.
The Ambreys had come up to tea, as they often do on Sundays, and Mrs.
Fazackerly came, and Bill Patch. I remember that Nancy Fazackerly
looked pretty that day, in a hat trimmed with blue daisies and a blue
cotton frock that seemed to be striped with a darker blue.
(Amy Kendal, who walked up later, with Mumma, of course, said to her,
“How smart you look!” in a reproving way. And Christopher Ambrey, to
whom the Kendal manner is not the familiar thing that it is to us,
asked me what that odious woman meant.)
“This is the very place for a dance,” said Sallie, looking round the
hall. “I can’t imagine why no one has thought of it before.”
Sallie is always rather apt to assume that because she has not thought
of a thing herself, nobody else has done so, and this is a trick, among
many others, that exasperates Claire.
“There were dances here before you were born or thought of, my child.
It may seem very strange to you,” said Claire ironically, “but I happen
to have been rather an unusually good dancer.”
Her annoyance was so obvious in her voice and manner--Claire
never attempts to dissemble her feelings--that Nancy Fazackerly
characteristically came to the rescue.
“I love to see you dance, Lady Flower,” she said earnestly. “I believe
you’d even make the new jazz dances look graceful.”
She said it so naturally and sincerely that I felt I was an ungrateful
brute for reflecting that she had probably never in her life seen
Claire dance a step.
Sometimes I think that a long course of being told that she is the
worst housekeeper, or the most inadequate manager, in the world, varied
only by the nerve-shattering experience of plates hurled at her head,
has altogether destroyed Nancy’s capacity for distinguishing fact from
fiction. I am sure that she does not consciously fib. It is simply
that her sense of expediency has completely got the better of her.
Truthful, she undoubtedly is not, but I have always believed in her
sincerity. And we were all secretly grateful to her for restoring
Claire’s good humor.
“I may not have a staff of A. D. C’s., but I have had quite as much
experience in entertaining as Lady Annabel Bending, I imagine,” said
Claire, with some elasticity of statement. “And I should like to do
something of the kind.”
“The difficulty will be to get men,” Mrs. Kendal stated, with all the
Kendal directness. “You know how few men there are anywhere near Cross
Loman. The girls often say that it’s next door to impossible to get a
man for anything round here. Of course, Ahlfred would come down for it,
and perhaps he could bring a friend--that would be two men.”
We tried to look encouraged.
“Let’s make a list of the people you want to invite, Cousin Claire.”
Claire dictated names, and Sallie wrote them down, and we all made
suggestions. The monosyllable “men” must have resounded through the
hall fifty times, in Mumma’s emphatic contralto.
The list approximated to about forty couples when it was done. I said
that I thought we ought to do the thing properly and invite the whole
neighborhood, not merely dancers. “Can’t we have bridge or something
to amuse the older people?” said I, not without a thought to my own
entertainment.
“I know!” cried Martyn. “Let’s have theatricals--ask everybody to come
and see them, and then have a dance afterwards for those who like it.”
Christopher, Mrs. Fazackerly, Sallie, and Captain Patch received the
suggestion with such clamorous enthusiasm that Claire and I exchanged a
glance and a word under cover of it.
“Would you care to, Claire? I’m quite ready, if you are, and it would
amuse Christopher.”
“Yes, it would. We haven’t done anything for a long time, either, and
Cross Loman really has had enough of the Drill Hall entertainments, I
should imagine.”