“Can you imagine Mumma, for instance, on a jury, admitting ‘extenuating
circumstances’? ‘A crime is crime,’ she would probably say, and as she
would say it not less than fourteen times, she would end in hypnotizing
all the other eleven into agreeing with her. People like that ought
really never to be allowed to have any say in any question affecting
their fellow-creatures, but unfortunately there’s generally a sort of
spurious worth and solidity about them that compels attention.”
“I remember,” said Mary, “that once at Dheera Dhoon we were talking
about a man who had become a Catholic, and someone said that it would
be very difficult and require a good deal of moral courage to take a
step of that sort. And Mrs. Kendal answered, ‘How can there be any
courage in deliberately going from the true to the false? Nothing of
the kind.’ And one felt that she would never, by any possibility, see
it in any other light.”
I made Mary promise that she would come and help me at the meeting in
the library that afternoon. Sallie and Martyn were to be there, of
course, and the authors of the production; and we felt that it was
probable that one or two of the Kendals might appear in order to inform
us that they couldn’t act.
“What about Mrs. Harter?”
“Oh, no. You see, she won’t be actually in the play, anyhow. They only
want her to sing before the curtain goes up and then again at the end.”
“Do you know that they are all coming here this evening to sing? Sallie
invited them that time they went to Nancy Fazackerly’s. Mrs. Harter,
too.”
“I’m glad.”
So I was. What Nancy had told me of Diamond Harter made me feel sorry
for her, in spite of her aggressive airs. I wanted her to go to
Mary Ambrey’s house, in the atmosphere of sanity, and kindness, and
serenity, that belongs to Mary.
When I got home, I found Claire entertaining Lady Annabel Bending.
I felt sure that she had come to hear about the dance that we proposed
to give. The invitations had only just been sent out, but in Cross
Loman we are never long in ignorance of one another’s arrangements.
Miss Emma Applebee, before now, has darted out of her shop and inquired
of me solicitously how her Ladyship’s cold is, when I myself had only
been made aware of its existence about an hour earlier.
Lady Annabel was inclined to be rather grave, although courteous, about
our entertainment. Did we realize quite what we were undertaking,
especially--if she might say so--with an invalid in the house?
She glanced at me.
I have reason to believe that Lady Annabel speaks of me behind my back
as “our afflicted friend, Sir Miles Flower.”
“I have done so much--so very much--entertaining myself, and
necessarily on such an enormous scale, that I perhaps realize better
than most people what it all means. When I heard what you were
contemplating, I felt that it would be friendly to come round at once
and offer you the benefit of my experience.”
“Thank you,” said Claire.
Her eyes were so large and scornful and her voice held so satirical an
intonation that I interposed.
“Claire’s young cousins are very anxious to get up some theatricals and
to take advantage of having that young fellow here--Patch--to do some
writing for them. They’re working up something musical.”
“Delightful, indeed,” said Lady Annabel in a severe and melancholy
voice. “And is there much musical talent hereabouts?”
“Sallie Ambrey sings rather nicely, and Mrs. Fazackerly is really
musical--she is adapting Captain Patch’s libretto--and then there are
one or two others.”
“Let me warn you--” began Lady Annabel.
She suddenly glanced to the right and to the left of our not very large
drawing-room as though we might be suspected of having concealed one of
the servants behind a bookcase.
Then she sank her always low voice to a pitch that was all but a
whisper and most impressive.
“You understand that I am speaking in the utmost confidence? It must
never go beyond the walls of this room”--we all three instinctively
gazed with deep distrust at the walls--“I’m not thinking of myself,
but of what it might do for the Rector if it got round that I had said
anything about one of his people--you understand what I mean--in the
Rector’s position--”
Of course I said at once that I quite understood what she meant,
although one couldn’t help feeling that this was one of the moments
when Lady Annabel was perhaps confusing the Rector with “H. E.,” the
late Sir Hannabuss Tallboys. (We have all learned to think of him as
“H. E.”)
Claire did not join in my protestations. I judged from her expression
that she was, once more, living upon the edge of a volcano.
“Absolutely between ourselves, I should very strongly advise you not to
let anyone suggest that the young woman whom I most mistakenly allowed
to sing at the concert the other night--Mrs. Harter--should be asked to
perform. I should think it most inadvisable.”
“May I ask why?”
Lady Annabel looked distressed.
“You do understand that I am speaking entirely unofficially?”
Not only did we understand, but, personally, I really did not see how
she could speak in any other way.
“Then,” said Lady Annabel, “the fact is that I have, since the concert,
heard one or two things about her. Naturally, I have links all over
the Empire, as I may say, and this Mrs. Harter, as you know, has just
come from the Near East. It seems that she and her husband are on most
unhappy terms--no doubt there are faults on both sides; in fact, my
correspondent said as much--but she has made herself quite notorious
in a place where everyone in the European colony is of course watched
and commented upon. And I noticed at the concert the other evening
that there was a tendency to bring her into notice, simply, I suppose,
because Cross Loman thinks it a fine thing for Ellison the plumber’s
daughter to have married a man socially above her--Mr. Harter is a
solicitor--and to have lived abroad. If they only knew what I know as
to the sort of people one is obliged to receive out there!”
Lady Annabel Bending is not a spiteful woman. She would just as
readily, I am sure, have come to the Manor House in order to sing the
praises of Mrs. Harter as to disparage her. All that she ever wants is
still to be as important as she believes herself to have been in her
colonial service days.
Her admonitions clinched the question of Mrs. Harter’s inclusion in the
theatricals. Claire sent a note to Mrs. Fazackerly that afternoon, I
believe, to the effect that Mrs. Harter must by all means be asked to
sing, and if possible to act as well.
And if Nancy Fazackerly was at all taken aback by so rapid and complete
a _volte-face_, she was far too tactful ever to give any signs of it.
Lady Annabel was not offended when Claire made her intentions
evident. She is never offended; she only becomes more remote and her
graciousness less smiling.
“I shall speak to the Rector about your invitation as soon as I
can, and hope to send you an answer to-morrow. You know what the
correspondence of a man in his position is. Pray don’t get up, Sir
Miles. Good-by--_Good_-by. So very glad--it all sounds charming. I
hope--we _both_ hope--that it will be the very greatest success. But
I’m sure it will be. Good-by again.”
I rather think that she bowed, in an absent-minded way, to the footman
who opened the hall door for her.
The rectory possesses only a small governess cart and pony, and Lady
Annabel is driven out by the gardener’s boy. But she always, by means
of smiles and bows, and small waves of the hand, makes a kind of royal
progress for herself. It is her boast that she never forgets a face,
and in consequence a great number of the tradespeople in Cross Loman
are gratified by the marks of recognition lavishly showered upon them
from the rectory pony carriage.
I was told afterwards by Miss Applebee, who saw it happen, that on that
particular day Lady Annabel was nearly run down by General Kendal’s new
motor car, which he was slowly driving up Fore Street.
Mumma was at her usual post of observation, beside him, and no doubt
she had said, “There’s the rectory pony cart coming towards you,
dear--I should sound the horn, if I were you.” But perhaps she said
it too soon, or repeated it so often that poor Puppa’s senses became
rather dazed and he ceased to take in the meaning of the words. At
all events, he appeared to drive the car deliberately, and very, very
slowly, straight at Lady Annabel.
But she never flinched at all, even when the gardener’s boy almost--but
not quite--drove her into the gutter in order to avoid a collision.
And when she subsequently mentioned the incident to Mary Ambrey, Lady
Annabel said that she did not wish any official notice to be taken of
it. Her manner distinctly gave Mary the impression that General Kendal
had narrowly escaped excommunication at the hands of the Rector.
_Chapter Six_
Mrs. Harter did not come to discuss the play with the others that
afternoon, but Captain Patch went straight from the meeting to the
house in Queen Street and told her about it, and made her promise to
sing the “Bulbul Ameer” song.
Again I shall have to fall back upon what, in reality, can only be
guess-work, based upon what was afterward told me by Mary Ambrey.
It was their second meeting, and it clinched matters, so far as Bill
Patch was concerned. Mrs. Harter may have known, too--probably she
did--but she held complexities in her nature that would make her
surrender a less simple and less instantaneous affair than his.
I can imagine that, realizing as she certainly did, the strength of
the extraordinary thing that was coming, inevitably, to overwhelm them
both, she may have hesitated for a moment--not from doubt or fear, but
simply in order to gauge, in one breathless instant, the smashing force
of the storm before it should break.
He went to see her, and they walked out of the narrow Queen Street
house and up Loman Hill to the crossroads there. She told him about her
life.
I have put together what I heard in the time, later on, when we were
all talking about her, and the little that she said to Mary in their
one interview, and the facts that afterward Nancy Fazackerly gave me.
And, knowing her turns of phraseology, which remained characteristic of
her class and of the defiant streak that ran all through her, I have
made out my own version of what she said.
She had been an ambitious girl. Cross Loman had not liked her and
she had not liked Cross Loman. Although she was not beautiful, she
possessed very powerful sex magnetism and had love affairs from her
schooldays onward. But the hard, practical vein that had come to her
direct from Ellison, the successful tradesman, never failed her. She
never lost her head. She despised her country-town lovers, even while
she flaunted their admiration in the face of all Cross Loman.
But she knew very well that only marriage could give her her chance.
Mr. Harter (I am sure that she spoke of him as “Mr. Harter” throughout)
was the uncle of one of her school friends. Diamond Ellison went to
stay with this girl at her home in one of the London suburbs, and the
solicitor--twenty years her senior--came to the house and fell under
one of the brief, incomprehensible spells that young women of a certain
type sometimes exercise over men no longer in their first youth.
He misjudged her from first to last, probably misled by the boldness of
her mere physical outlines and the mixture of contempt and familiarity
in her manner towards men. His first proposals were received by her
with no sense of shock--she was both too experienced in men and too
ruthlessly cynical for that--but with utter disdain.
“You can ask me to marry you--or you can clear out,” said Diamond
Ellison.
He married her.
In the East, she had all the success that she had expected and intended
to have. The women never liked her, but she knew herself to be
essentially a man’s woman, and she was indifferent then and always to
the opinions of her surroundings. The men fell in love with her, and
Harter was furiously jealous.
On her own showing, Harter had everything to complain of in his wife.
She did not pretend to care for him, she flirted with other men, she
was notorious, even judged by the lax standards of the East, and she
replied to his incessant, nagging remonstrances with sulky, curt
indifference. The only thing that he could never charge her with was
extravagance, for she was far too practical a woman to squander money,
and perhaps also too proud, since she had not a penny of her own. (Mrs.
Ellison was dead, and she had long ago quarreled with old Ellison, who
gave her nothing at all.)
Harter threatened to send her home, and she replied that she would not
go. Nor did she.
A far stronger man than Harter would have found it impossible to
get the better of her. A combination of recklessness and absolute
determination made her very nearly impervious.
She even took her pleasures sulkily and without enthusiasm, although
she never missed an entertainment or an expedition.
They had no child, of course.
Harter got her back to England at last, after nearly five years of it,
by pretending to book his passage as well, and then backing out of it
at the last minute.
She despised him all the more for the subterfuge. She herself was never
anything but absolutely direct.
She told Patch that she would not have come home even then, but that
she was ill, and it is very certain that only a woman of iron physique
and resolute will could have stood the climate, and the racket of her
days and nights, for that length of time.
As it was, she’d been a month in a London nursing home before she came
to Cross Loman. It was in the nursing home, I imagine, that Diamond
Harter took stock of life. She’d been in that home for weeks and not
a soul had been to see her. There was no one to come. Her father had
retired from business and lived by himself at Torquay. They hadn’t even
corresponded for years.
I have heard Mrs. Harter’s speaking voice--a voice stronger and more
abrupt than that of most women--and her tones ring in my ears now,
sometimes, so that I think I can distinguish the very words that she
may have used on the day that she and Bill Patch went up Loman Hill
together. But there must have been an intonation in her voice then that
neither I, nor anyone else, ever heard there.
She told him that she’d never been in love. Men had stirred her senses,
and one or two of them had excited her half-resentful admiration. She
had a most acute power of distinguishing _nuances_ of breeding, and in
the East she came into contact with a class of man of very different
caliber from that of Harter.
Not once, in all her twenty-eight years, had she even wished to
establish a permanent link between herself and a fellow creature.
And Bill Patch, who liked everybody and who was everybody’s friend,
listened to her.
I suppose it was just that element in Bill Patch that made a writer
of him, which enabled him to understand. Something rather beyond the
apprehension of most of us, to whom he was simply a good-tempered,
red-headed boy with an unexpected brain power. Only Sallie, justifying
her determination to specialize in psychology, had seen rather further
than other people when she said that Captain Patch was a temperamental
romantic, capable of a _grande passion_.
He listened to Diamond Harter and came, I suppose, as near to perfect
comprehension of her as one soul can ever come to perfect comprehension
of another. That is to say that he not only understood what her words
told him, but that he saw far beyond them to the Diamond Harter that
she might have been, and that--almost unknown to herself--she must,
sometimes, have dimly felt a wish to be.
Whatever else there is to say about Mrs. Harter, it is indisputable
that she possessed a character of unusual strength and that there were
in her latent possibilities almost frightful in their intensity.
Bill Patch saw straight past everything, accepted everything, and
somehow made her see that he understood and that he accepted. He was
passionately in love with her--but that day on Loman Hill he did not
speak a word of love to her. There were no preliminary explanations or
tentative confidences between them. The whole thing was too vital for
that.
At the top of Loman Hill, at the crossroads, is a beech tree, on which
lovers have carved their initials for generations. It stands beside a
low hedge in which is set a rickety five-barred gate. It was at that
gate that they must have stood, as everyone stands, gazing at the blue
haze that lies over the hills beyond and at the square, red sandstone
tower of Cross Loman church below them.
I have stood at the crossroads on Loman Hill many and many a time and
looked over the five-barred gate, at the tower of St. Andrew’s, and
when I went there last, I thought of those two who must have stood
there together--Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch.
She was a tall woman, and her shoulders and his were nearly on a level;
and his red head topped hers only by a matter of a quarter of an inch.
I never saw Bill Patch wear a cap or a hat. Her clothes were rather
distinctive, and she wore them well. She had a figure for tailor-made
suits, and they were nearly always dark in color, and she wore with
them a white silk shirt, open at the throat. Her hats were always
severe--dark velours, of the plainest possible contour. Mary says that
she knew her style, and stuck to it.
It was characteristic of her to keep her hands thrust into her coat
pockets, and I always fancy that it was so that she leaned against the
rickety gate, her shoulders as erect as Bill’s were slouched.
He was so short-sighted that he never took off his glasses, and through
those queer, thick lenses he must have looked at her, as he listened.
His eyes always had that friendly smile in them, and that odd, pathetic
look that had reminded me of a Clumber spaniel. It was his mouth that
betrayed him, with the sensitive line of lip that was visible only
when he was not laughing. _That_ gave one Bill Patch, the writer and
dreamer--Sallie’s potential romantic.
They stood at the crossways for a very long while, and, after a time,
in silence. Bill Patch knew, absolutely for certain, that he loved her,
and that they belonged to one another. The supreme importance of it,
in his eyes, made everything else of so little account that he did not
even wonder what would happen.
Mrs. Harter was different. She had never waited as Bill, quite
unconsciously, had waited. The thing had come upon her unawares, and
part of her--the part that had made her marry Harter, and then flirt
with other men--had absolutely denied the existence of the one supreme
reality.
But the capacity for recognizing it had been there all the time,
smothered under her cheap cynicism, her ruthless ambition, and the
streak in her of sheer, iron hardness.
She had to recognize it, when it came, and to surrender to it.
And so she was frightened, or at least overwhelmed, at first. Bill’s
intuition told him that, and he gave her time.
He told her that he’d been very happy all his life, even during the
war. His mother had died when he was too little to remember her, and
his father had married again. He was friends with his stepmother. She
and his father had two jolly little kids.
He had heaps of friends. A good many of them had gone west in the war.
His writing, Bill Patch said, was a frightfully real thing in its way,
but it actually only took a bit of him to do it--he looked on it as a
sort of trick. He thought perhaps his subconscious self did most of it,
and that was why he could write so easily, and didn’t mind old Carey
chatting about poisoners all the time, or people talking in the room,
or anything. He knew it was a form of self-expression, for some people,
but it wasn’t for him. He didn’t, in fact, think he needed a form of
self-expression. He had always, he said again, been very happy.
And all the time he had known that he was waiting for something, and
that it was something very great. But he hadn’t known at all what it
would be.
Sometimes I have wondered what Mrs. Harter made of it all, as she
listened to him. He was so much younger than she, in experience, and in
knowledge, and most of all in spirit. Mrs. Harter was, one might say,
temperamentally sophisticated, and Bill Patch, who was two years her
junior, was most essentially childlike. It is the only adjective I can
think of that comes anywhere near to describing that quality in him
that had made him, all his life, always happy.
There had never been any woman at all, “to count” he said. He had gone
straight from school into the Army, and he hadn’t thought about girls
much, although he greatly admired the pretty ones.
Always he came back to it again--he’d had that queer feeling of waiting
for something. He didn’t mean _someone_--a person--no, it was more like
a job, something that only he could do. It sounded odd, Bill admitted,
but there it was. Something to do, in a way, with God. Yes, he believed
in God.
And Mrs. Harter, who didn’t, and who never had, didn’t say a word.
It was Bill Patch who said at last that they ought to go. One supposes
that no single one of all the men whom Mrs. Harter had known would have
been sufficiently lacking in the technique of that sort of situation,
to propose putting an end to it. She wouldn’t have given them the
chance, probably saying it herself, with her most disconcerting air of
suddenly finding their company not at all worth her while.
But when Bill Patch said that it was late, and that he ought to take
her home again, Mrs. Harter acquiesced, simply. They must have taken
a last look over the five-barred gate at the evening sky, against
which the red church tower always stands out with peculiar, clear-cut
precision of outline, before they turned away, and went down the long
slope of Loman Hill, which lies between high banks where the green
almost meets overhead.
Bill asked her about her singing, and she said that she’d learned at
school, and taken a few lessons just before she married. She used to
sing a good deal, in Cairo, because the men she knew liked it. Did
he understand, she asked him, that she was the sort of person who
sang only for that sort of reason? Once, at a party in a man’s rooms,
they’d put her right up on the top of the piano, and she’d sung
there, and they’d said it was worth a double brandy-and-soda. Men were
always wanting to stand her drinks, and she took them, partly out of
devilment, and partly because her husband hated it. She’d got a strong
enough head for anything.
I can quite imagine her facing Bill, as she told him that, her mouth
hard and rather mocking, and perhaps in her eyes the dawn of a hope
that she strove to believe was an incredulous one.
And Bill said that had nothing at all to do with it. He didn’t specify
what _it_ was, that it had nothing to do with--but that was the last
time Diamond Harter ever thought it necessary to point out to him the
things about herself, by which the rest of the world judged her.
_Chapter Seven_
Most of us, no doubt--except, I must once more add, the Kendals--hover
between two planes of consciousness: the inner life and the outer
existence. The predominant values of either remain fairly well defined,
and vary very little.
But for Captain Patch, that summer, the inner life and the outer one
must have mingled strangely.
In the mornings, he listened to old Carey’s chatter of Crippen, and
Mrs. Maybrick, and all the other figures in his rather _macabre_
gallery of celebrities, and he gardened with Mrs. Fazackerly, and
they worked at the “Bulbul Ameer” show together. Very often, in
the afternoons, there were rehearsals, sometimes there were tennis
parties. Very often, though not always, he and Mrs. Harter met at the
latter. She was invited to quite a lot of places, partly thanks to
Nancy Fazackerly’s efforts, and partly because she played a hard game
of tennis quite extraordinarily well. Bill Patch always saw her home
afterwards, quite openly. And every evening they were out together,
often going very far afield, for she was a good walker. Once Martyn
Ambrey met them, and it was after that, when someone spoke of “that
Mrs. Harter,” that he said to Mary:
“Do you remember our saying she had such a defiant face, and you said
she looked unhappy?”
“Yes. The night she sang ‘The Bluebells of Scotland’ at the concert.”
“And cousin Claire said she was hard.”
“Did she?”
“Of course, cousin Claire is almost always wrong.”
“You only mean that you and she generally hold different opinions.”
Martyn laughed, but after a minute he said reflectively: “That woman
hard? I wonder what we were all thinking about.”
It is not Mary Ambrey’s way to ask questions, and Martyn did not
elucidate. He only looked as though he were seeing again something
that might have struck him that afternoon, and repeated, with a rather
derisive inflection in his cocksure young voice, “_That_ woman hard?”
The “Bulbul Ameer” play was gradually being built up, under the usual
frightful difficulties, by a number of people who were all determined
to help.
The Kendals faithfully attended every rehearsal _en bloc_, although
only Alfred and Amy were to take parts, Amy being alleged by Mumma to
be possessed of a voice.
“Not a great deal of Ear perhaps--not one of them has an ear, I’m
afraid--but Amy certainly has a Voice. I’ve said from the days when
they were all little tots together, that Amy certainly had a voice.
Don’t you remember, girls, my telling you long ago that Amy was the
only one with a voice?”
The Kendals, of course, remembered quite well. They never fail Mumma.
Amy and the Voice were admitted into the cast and that, as Bill Patch
said, was all right. But it didn’t entitle Alfred Kendal to come out in
the new, and insufferable, guise in which he presently appeared.
(“I do think that amateur theatricals bring out all that is worst in
human nature,” Sallie thoughtfully remarked to me once.)
“Ahlfred,” as his family persist in calling him, was at home for a
few weeks. During the hours of rehearsal, from regarding him as a
pleasant, if unexciting, fellow creature, we all came to look upon him
as something that could only have been sent to try us.
It was disappointing when Amy read the words of the opening chorus for
the first time, that her only comment should be:
“Well, I suppose if we’ve got to make fools of ourselves, it can’t
be helped, and once we’re worked up to it, I daresay it won’t be so
bad”--but it was positively infuriating when Alfred, in an instructive
voice, began to make a number of suggestions all beginning with “Why
not.”
“Why not alter this a bit, here, Patch--you see what I mean? You say
‘The Muscovite Maiden comes on from the O. P. side.’ Now, why not have
her come on from the other side?”
“Why?”
“Well, wouldn’t it be effective? And why not bring in an allusion to
the moon, in that final song? Always a success, the moon, in a show
like this. Why not arrange an effect of some sort with a moderator lamp
behind the scene? I’ve seen wonders done with a moderator lamp.”
“Fancy, a moderator lamp!” said Mrs. Kendal.
“I think, as it’s supposed to be early morning in the first scene, that
perhaps the moon would be out of place,” Nancy Fazackerly suggested
apologetically.
And Alfred, with something of his mother’s singular powers of
reiteration, said, “Why not make it the evening instead?”
“I think we ought to get on a bit. We’ll take the Muscovite maiden’s
song. Sallie!” I called.
She sang it well, and the lyric was rather a pretty one.
“What about encores?” Alfred Kendal enquired, looking alertly round him.
“We haven’t quite got to that yet.”
“I say, why not have one of the verses of the _real_ ‘Bulbul Ameer’
song brought in each time as an encore? I call that a piece of sheer
inspiration, don’t you?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” said Bill Patch grinning; and was further,
and unnecessarily, supported by Christopher Ambrey, who said that
personally, and speaking quite dispassionately, he called it a piece of
sheer senselessness. The “Bulbul Ameer” song was already being given
at the beginning, and at the end, and played at all sorts of critical
moments throughout the piece, and surely there was no need to hear it
more than forty-eight times in one evening?
“Do you really mean that one song is to be played forty-eight times?”
said Mumma. “Fancy! forty-eight times! Do you hear that, Puppa? Why, we
shall all know it quite well.”
General Kendal gave no assent to this proposition, reasonable though it
was. He had been fidgeting for some time.
“I say, Patch, do you remember a pair of boots of mine?”
“Hessian boots,” put in Mumma, helpfully.
“That’s right, Hessian boots. It’s not of the slightest consequence, of
course, but you don’t often see those Hessian boots about, nowadays.
How would it be to give them some sort of prominence? Just draw the
attention of the audience to them, in some way, if you know what I
mean. I should think it could be worked in, somehow.”
“Why not make an allusion to Puss-in-Boots--something of that kind? All
those old stories come more or less out of the Arabian Nights, don’t
they, and this is supposed to take place in the East?”
“If you’re going to have Puss-in-Boots, you may as well have Dick
Whittington,” said Dolly Kendal brightly, and quite as though she was
making a relevant and reasonable observation.
“I don’t somehow quite _see_ Puss-in-Boots, or even Dick Whittington,
in the piece,” said Nancy Fazackerly--but she said it with so much
hesitation, in her fear of hurting anybody’s feelings, that one quite
felt they might very well have been there all the time, without our
having been clever enough to recognize them.
“Why not little Bo-Peep, while we’re about it?” Sallie asked
sardonically. “Do let’s get on, instead of wasting time like this.”
I saw Mrs. Fazackerly gaze at her with fearful admiration. Perhaps
Claire saw it too--and she does not ever think that admiration, of any
kind, is good for Sallie.
“I don’t want to interrupt,” she began smoothly, and I got ready to
be interrupted at once. “But you do the whole thing so well, Sallie
darling, that it’s a shame it shouldn’t be absolutely perfect.”
Claire has not yet discovered that, to Sallie’s generation, tact is as
objectionable as plain speaking is to her own.
“I want you to see how a _real_ Eastern maiden, which is what you’re
supposed to be, would move. You walk like a European. Now look at me.”
Of course, that was all she wanted. We looked at her.
Claire has a beautiful figure, and she moves very well. But I do
not know that she has any particular claim to expert knowledge
about Eastern women. However, there she was, in her own house, and
of course everybody looked at her while she gravely walked up and
down--everybody, that is to say, except Sallie, who was ostentatiously
lighting a cigarette.
“You see what I mean?” said Claire, but she was wise enough not to say
it to Sallie, who quite obviously neither wished nor intended to see.
Of course it was Mrs. Fazackerly who murmured, “Oh yes--how well you do
it!” and then Claire sat down again, her insistent egoism satisfied for
the moment.
“I should like to go through the whole of the first scene again,” said
Bill Patch, looking harassed.
“We haven’t settled anything yet about Puppa’s Hessian boots,” one of
the Kendals reproachfully observed.
“They come in later. Ivan Petruski Skivah will wear them. That’s
Martyn. And I _should_ like to know, if possible, whether you can
undertake Abdul the Bulbul Ameer, Major Ambrey?”
“Dear me, haven’t you settled that yet?” Mrs. Kendal asked, in amicable
surprise. “I should have thought the parts would have been settled long
ago. We seem to be getting on very _slowly_, don’t we?”
I agreed with her and called upon Christopher to make up his mind. To
my surprise, he did not utter the uncompromising refusal that I had
expected. He only said that if Patch would take his oath not to ask him
to sing anything by himself, or speak a single line, or do anything of
that sort, he’d think about it.
“But Abdul is the chief character in the piece. I can’t very well make
him deaf and dumb,” expostulated the author.
“Well, then, some other chap had better take it on. I should only make
a mull of it.”
I heard Nancy Fazackerly softly protesting at this, and Christopher
crossed over to the piano, where she had been patiently sitting all the
afternoon.
“I’ll turn over the pages for you,” he suggested, and he remained
standing behind her head, looking down at the pale gold knot of her
hair and saying “Now?” anxiously at short intervals.
The tune of “Abdul the Bulbul Ameer” rattled through the room again
and again, and Martyn and Sallie and Alfred and Amy all sang it,
and General Kendal boomed his usual accompaniment of some rather
indeterminate monosyllable repeated over and over again. All the
rehearsals seem to me now to have been very much alike.
Bill Patch was always gay and light-hearted and more or less
distracted, and Mrs. Fazackerly was always good-tempered and
obliging--and almost always untruthful, when appealed to on any
question of conflicting opinions.
Sallie Ambrey was always competent, and her acting was very clever. So
was Martyn’s. Eventually, they made Bill Patch play the villain’s part
himself, after Christopher Ambrey had declined it.
“I’d rather turn over the pages for the orchestra,” said Christopher,
and the orchestra smiled at him gratefully in the person of Mrs.
Fazackerly.
The Kendals almost always came to the rehearsals. I think Puppa had
some idea that his presence inspired the whole thing with a spirit of
military discipline. At any rate, he said, “Come, come, come,” every
now and then when Bill or I had stopped the rehearsal in order to
confer with one another.
And Mumma, I feel sure, enjoyed watching Amy and Alfred on the stage
and Blanche and Dolly and Aileen among the audience.
Claire was there, of course. From time to time she interrupted
everything, in order to show somebody how to do something. Most of
them were very patient with her, and Patch, in all simplicity, always
thanked her. I daresay that the others didn’t see it as I did. I find
it difficult to be fair to Claire. Mary Ambrey, I noticed, used to
find a seat near her and used to listen while Claire explained in an
undertone that, funnily enough, she had a great deal of the actress in
her and other things like that. So long as one person was exclusively
occupied with her, Claire was fairly safe not to make one of her
general appeals.
Mary Ambrey was to prompt, and during the first few rehearsals she had
nothing to do and could attend to Claire.
“Why not do without prompting altogether?” said Alfred Kendal. “We can
always gag a bit, if necessary. Topical allusions--that sort of thing.”
“_I_ couldn’t,” said his sister Amy firmly. “I’m sure you’d better have
a prompter.”
Mumma supported Amy. “Some of you are sure to get stage fright and to
break down on the night, and that’s when the prompter is useful. When
someone gets stage fright, you know, and breaks down.”
Captain Patch asked me afterwards if it was absolutely necessary for
General and Mrs. Kendal to attend every rehearsal. He said that Mrs.
Kendal was breaking his nerve. And the General thought, and spoke, of
nothing but his Hessian boots. Bill put in a song about them on purpose
to please him and Martyn--Ivan Petruski Skivah--sang it.
Mrs. Harter did not attend any of the early rehearsals. She had nothing
to do with the play, really, and was only to sing “The Bulbul Ameer”
before the curtain went up and again at the end of the play. I think
Nancy Fazackerly had made Bill understand that Claire would not welcome
Mrs. Harter to the rehearsals.
One day old Mr. Carey came. He made us all rather nervous, and his
daughter, at the piano, lost her head completely.
“Father is such a personality,” I heard her murmuring to Christopher--a
phrase which she generally reserved for those who had no personal
experience of her father’s peculiarities.
That was after old Carey had criticized a bit of dialogue which he
attributed to his daughter’s authorship and which afterwards turned out
to have been written by Bill Patch quite independently.
“I know nothing whatever about writing,” said Carey, who, like many
other people, appeared to think this in itself a reason for offering an
opinion on the subject. “In fact, I’m willing to admit that it seems to
me a damned waste of time for any full-grown person to sit and scribble
a lot of nonsense about something that never happened, and never could
have happened, for other full-grown persons to learn by heart and
gabble off like a lot of board-school children. However, that’s as it
may be. What you young people don’t realize is that there are things
going on all around you every day that would beat the plot of any
story, or any play, hollow.”
When old Carey had said this, he looked round him triumphantly, as
though he had just made a new and valuable contribution to the subject
of literature.
He also said that anyone could write, if only they had the time, and
that reading novels was only fit for women, and that generally he
had enough to do reading the _Times_ every day, with an occasional
detective story if he had nothing better to do.
Mrs. Fazackerly looked unhappy, but Bill Patch was impervious to it all.
He sat down beside the old man and listened to him quite earnestly, and
presently I heard old Carey, evidently intending a concession, inquire
whether authors thought of their plots first and their characters
afterwards or their characters first and their plots afterwards.
I have often wondered whether there is any writer in the world who has
escaped that inquiry.
“I have often thought that I should like to write a book,” said
Mrs. Kendal in a tolerant way. “I’m sure if I put down some of the
things that have happened to me in my life, they would make a most
extraordinary tale, and probably no one would believe that they had
really happened.”
I fancied that Amy and Alfred Kendal cast rather a nervous glance at
their parent at these implications, but the General remained entirely
unmoved, and I found that, instead of listening, he was offering, in a
rather uncertain manner, to drive Mrs. Fazackerly and Sallie into the
town to choose material for the costumes that were to be worn in the
play.
“What is the use of having a car if we cannot help our friends out of a
difficulty?” said Mumma, with her large, kind smile. “Let us all go in
this afternoon--you and I, Puppa, and Nancy and Sallie. The girls can
keep Ahlfred company at home.”
If Mrs. Kendal is obliged to go out anywhere without her family, she
always arranges some occupation for the absent members of it. I think
it gives her a sense of security.
“The car holds four very comfortably, but more than four are bad for
the springs, I believe. One has to think about the springs, especially
in a new car. Springs are so important,” said Mumma.
“If my tin Lizzie can be of any use, I’ll drive anyone anywhere,” said
Christopher Ambrey eagerly. “And in Lizzie’s case there’s no need to
consider the springs, as there aren’t any to speak of. Look here, I
suggest that if you and General Kendal can really find room for Sallie,
I should drive Mrs. Fazackerly in, and--and then you can take, say,
Patch. I’m sure Patch ought to be there to settle about the clothes and
things--or Martyn. I should think Martyn ought to go, if anyone does,
to make sure you get the right things for those boots.”
“We’re only going to buy materials--not clothes,” said Sallie. “But,
still, I daresay that Martyn could be quite useful.”
“I think Bill had better go,” Martyn firmly declared.
“I can’t. It’s awfully good of you, Mrs. Kendal, but my partner will do
all that far better than I could.”
He smiled at Mrs. Fazackerly, who was smiling back at him happily,
when the unexpected sound of old Carey’s voice suddenly and completely
extinguished the brightness in her face.
“Nancy can go with you, Mrs. Kendal, as you’re kind enough to propose
it, and there are one or two things I want done in the town. Nancy can
see to them.”
Sallie’s clear, intelligent gaze went from one to the other of them.
She sees a great deal, but she has not yet learned how to look as
though she didn’t see it.
“If Martyn and I may go with you, Mrs. Kendal, we’ll sit in the back
of the car and rehearse to one another. (Yes, Martyn, we must--time is
frightfully short, and you know how woolly you are about your words.)
And then Chris can take Nancy, and we can all meet somewhere for tea.
What time, Mrs. Kendal?”
Sallie is always so confident, and decisive, and resolute, that she
can carry things off with a high hand. Old Carey subsided again and
Mrs. Kendal said, some seven or eight times, that as they always had
tiffin early at Dheera Dhoon--“a reminiscence of our Indian days, I’m
afraid--” she thought that they had better start at two o’clock.
“Besides,” said Captain Patch to me, aside, “I believe it takes the
General nearly an hour to do the ten miles.”
At the last minute, the whole thing was nearly wrecked by General
Kendal, who suddenly observed: “Then I am to have the pleasure of
driving you, Mrs. Fazackerly? I hope that you will not feel nervous. I
am something of a tyro still, but I believe I am a careful driver.”
“Thank you--not a bit--but--”
“I think Sallie goes with you, General,” said Christopher.
And I saw Claire look round at the tone in which he said it.
Then the rehearsal broke up. Sallie and Martyn disappeared, but Mary
Ambrey stayed and had lunch with us.
As soon as the servants had left the dining room, Claire wrung her
hands together and looked despairing.
“Did you notice Christopher?” she asked in husky misery. “Surely,
surely he couldn’t?”
Of course, both Mary and I knew what she meant. We had heard her say
the same thing so often.
“He only offered to take her in the two-seater. There really need not
be any very great significance in that,” I pointed out, although I knew
very well that, to Claire’s type of mind, events are of two kinds only:
the intensely significant and the completely non-existent.
“I thought you wanted Christopher to get married,” said Mary calmly.
Claire nearly screamed.
“Why shouldn’t he marry Nancy Fazackerly? Not that I think he wants to
marry her just because he offers to take her for a drive--but supposing
he did, Claire--I can’t see why you shouldn’t be pleased.”
“A woman whose husband used to throw plates at her head!” said Claire.
“Have you forgotten that?”
“Mary cannot very well have forgotten it,” said I, “as no one ever
allows it to rest in peace. If I’ve heard that story once, I’ve heard
it a thousand times. And I fail to see, Claire, why the fact that
Fazackerly had an unbridled temper should be supposed to detract from
the desirability of his widow.”
I really did believe that Christopher was attracted by Nancy
Fazackerly, and although I did not--as I believe women do--immediately
begin to think about choosing them a wedding present, it had certainly
crossed my mind that it would be a pleasant thing to see little Nancy
happy. As for Christopher, I knew perfectly well that any nice woman,
especially if she liked gardening and children, would make _him_ happy.
Claire, however, credited him with all her own exigencies.
“Nancy Fazackerly is all very well in her own way, perhaps, but she
isn’t the sort of woman I expect my brother to marry, Miles. It may not
be her fault--I daresay it isn’t--but she has some very odd ideas. I
shall never forget how she talked about taking in a paying guest, and
whether he was to have second helpings or not.”
“I imagine that Christopher could regulate the number of helpings that
he required, at his own dinner table, for himself.”
“You know, Claire,” said Mary Ambrey, “if Nancy was away from her
father, she would be quite different. It’s only his endless naggings
about expense that has infected her. You know how adaptable she is.”
“I know that she is the most untruthful woman of my acquaintance,”
returned Claire vehemently.
“That must have been the plates,” I affirmed positively. “I am
convinced that Nancy would not tell so many fibs as she undoubtedly
does tell if she could be brought to forget the outrageous Fazackerly
and his plate-throwing. Don’t you agree with me, Mary?”
“Yes, I do. And in any case, Claire, you know we really are taking a
good deal for granted. At one time you were afraid it might be Aileen
Kendal.”
“Never,” said Claire, with a total disregard for accuracy that would
have done ample credit to Mrs. Fazackerly herself.
Christopher brought Nancy back to the Manor that afternoon for a very
late tea.
He was in excellent spirits, and they told us about their afternoon’s
shopping.
“We got in long before the others. The General positively crawls in
that Standard of his. And Patch did turn up, after all. We met him with
Mrs. Harter.”
“That Mrs. Harter?” said Claire.
“We all of us got the things together, and we decided that Mrs. Harter
ought to wear an Eastern dress, too, for singing ‘The Bulbul Ameer.’
She’s very clever at dressmaking and she and I can easily make the
things ourselves. That’ll save expense,” babbled Nancy.
“Why didn’t you bring Captain Patch back with you? I like Captain
Patch. He and I have so much in common.”
“He and Mrs. Harter were going to have tea together somewhere in the
town.”
Claire drew her brows together for an instant and then raised them, as
though puzzled.
“But how nice of him, to be kind to Mrs. Harter!”
“I think he admires her, if you ask me,” said Christopher easily. “They
came in together by ’bus to-day from Cross Loman.”
Then they began to talk about the play again.
It was then, on that same day, that Mary Ambrey and Claire and I had
begun to ask ourselves if Christopher was falling in love with Nancy
Fazackerly, that the first suggestion was made of anybody’s having
noticed the friendship between Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch.
_Chapter Eight_
After that, the two affairs in one sense ran concurrently, so far as
the outer world was concerned. In that other world, of course, that I
have called the inner life, they were on altogether different planes.
As far as I know, Bill Patch and Mrs. Harter knew no hesitations at
all. The day after that evening when they had gone up Loman Hill he
said to Mrs. Fazackerly that he could not come to the rehearsal and
that he wanted to be out all day. At nine o’clock in the morning he was
at the house in Queen Street, where she was waiting for him.
He saw her, as he crossed the road, sitting at the execrable little
bow window of the dining room, her hands clasped in her lap, quite
obviously looking down the street, waiting. When he reached the three
steps, she got up and opened the front door and said to him, “Let’s
get out of this!” jerking her head backwards at the linoleum floor and
tiled walls of the tiny entrance.
She was wearing her outdoor things, all ready.
As they walked down Queen Street together Mary Ambrey passed them. She
stopped, with some question for Bill about the play. Mrs. Harter stood
by, and after one look at her Mary suddenly remembered Martyn’s words:
“That woman hard? I wonder what we were all thinking about!”
Captain Patch, in a way, was always joyous, and that morning he only
looked younger than ever, but, to Mary’s perceptions, there was
something about them both that almost made her catch her breath.
They looked, she said, somehow _dazed_. Mary never told me or anyone
else about this brief meeting until some time afterwards, but then
she said that, whenever anyone condemned either or both of those two
people who caused so much talk in our small community, she remembered
that morning and the strange impression she received of sheer, dazzling
happiness. Captain Patch told Mary that they were going up to the
moors--some twelve miles away. He never, either then or afterwards,
attempted the slightest concealment of the fact that they went
everywhere together. Neither did Mrs. Harter, but then she was not by
any means on friendly terms with the whole of Cross Loman, as Bill
Patch was, and her manner towards the people whom she did know always
held the same semi-contemptuous reticence.
It was only a very few days later that people began to talk about them.
It began, I have not the slightest doubt, at Dheera Dhoon. The Kendals,
like so many other people who are temperamentally good, take an
impassioned interest in those things and people which they consider
bad. But, as a matter of fact, it was Lady Annabel Bending from whom I
first heard about it.
“That is a nice youth who is staying at the Cottage with old Mr. Carey.
But they tell me that he is running after that very common-looking
woman who sings.”
Lady Annabel never sees things from her bedroom window or hears them
over the counter from Miss Applebee, like the rest of us. She obtains
all her information from a mysterious and unspecified source. “They”
tell her, or she “is informed.”
No doubt this is another relic of the Government House days.
“Mrs. Harter must be a great deal older than he is, surely, and what
can they possibly have in common?”
“Music,” said I feebly.
Not for one instant did I suppose that Bill Patch and Mrs. Harter
walked twelve miles on a hot day in order to talk about music.
Lady Annabel showed me at once that neither did she believe anything so
improbable.
“From what I have heard of Mrs. Harter, Sir Miles, I should think that
music is the last thing to occupy her mind. I think I told you that
a good deal is known about her, though it reached me only through
entirely unofficial channels. But Captain Patch is a very nice young
fellow indeed, and one can’t help feeling it’s a pity that he should be
victimized.”
“Perhaps he isn’t victimized. He may admire her.”
“So much the worse,” said Lady Annabel in her lowest, gentlest and most
inexorable voice. “Surely there are plenty of nice, innocent girls
to choose from without running after a married woman. The Rector’s
position makes it difficult for me to speak about these things, as you
know. But, if you remember, I said some time ago that it was a most
unwise proceeding to invite a person like Mrs. Harter to take part in
your theatricals.”
“She has, up to the present, come to no rehearsals, so the theatricals
can hardly be held responsible for bringing them together.”
Lady Annabel bent her head. I knew, however, and she meant me to know,
that this was mere courtesy on her part--not acquiescence.
She was not the only person to talk about Mrs. Harter and Captain
Patch, of course. It is never only one person who talks; these things
get into the air, no one knows how.
Mrs. Kendal spoke to Claire, and Claire reported what she had said to
me.
“I have seen them myself, walking about the town,” said Mumma
impressively. “They actually went into the butcher’s together. Of
course, I suppose she does her own marketing, living in rooms. And I
distinctly saw them go into the butcher’s together.”
Claire said that it seemed an unromantic sort of trysting place.
“It shows how intimate they are, their going like that to the butcher’s
together. None of my girls would ever dream of taking a gentleman to
do their household shopping,” said Mrs. Kendal with absolute truth. “I
should think less of it, in a way, if Captain Patch and Mrs. Harter
went to the theater, or even to the cinematograph, together. But when
it comes to their going together to the butcher’s, I ask myself what it
all means.”
Mrs. Kendal had not been content only to ask herself what it all
meant. She had asked several other people as well, including her four
daughters and her son.
“It means,” said Dolly, with her most uncompromisingly sensible
expression, “that Mrs. Harter is trying to get up a flirtation with
Captain Patch.”
“She’s old enough to be his mother, I should think,” said Aileen.
When the twins had made these scathing statements, I think they
felt that the situation had been exhaustively analyzed. At any
rate, although they thereafter talked round and round the subject
with tireless persistency, the sum total of their observations
never amounted to more than that Mrs. Harter was trying to get up a
flirtation with Captain Patch and that she was old enough to be his
mother.
I did not think it worth while to point out that twenty-eight cannot be
the mother of twenty-six.
It was odd, and to me profoundly interesting, to compare the comments
which the situation evoked.
Mary Ambrey, of course, made none, and was, I should imagine, almost
the only person in Cross Loman of whom that could be said.
Sallie and Martyn, with their strange, passionless habits of
dissection, were coldly and impersonally interested.
I remember one exposition of their views. The spirit of it impressed
itself upon my consciousness so clearly that I can almost remember the
letter.
“There’ll be a scandal over Patch and the fascinating Mrs. Harter one
of these days,” said Martyn.
“She’s not fascinating,” Sallie asserted.
Her brother raised his eyebrows slightly, and she understood and
laughed.
“Flat contradiction is rather uncivilized, I admit. And besides, she
probably _is_ fascinating, to some people.”
“She certainly is to Bill Patch.”
“I know. As a matter of fact, there’s more to it than that, I believe.
I mean, he’s more than just attracted by her.”
“Really? You once said he was a temperamental romantic, I know. Are you
trying to justify that now by building up a mountain out of a molehill?”
“I am not. Events are simply confirming my previous psychological
deductions, that’s all,” said Sallie with bland dignity.
I was glad that Claire was not in the room. Like all egotists, she is
driven nearly to frenzy by a display of egotism in anybody else.
“In all this,” said I, “there is one person who is never mentioned.
What about Mr. Harter?”
There was a pause. Then Martyn remarked: “Negligible, I should think.”
“Possibly, as a personality. But as a man and a husband, he exists. It
is even conceivable that he has feelings.”
“Oh, _feelings_!” said Sallie and Martyn, more or less together.
The tone of each expressed the utmost contempt.
“Some people might even go so far as to say that he has rights.”
“To a certain extent, so he has,” said Sallie, evidently determined to
be broad-minded.
“Presumably she made the usual undertakings when she married him. But
from all accounts, they’ve each gone their own way ever since they
married. From a sentimental point of view, it can hardly matter what
she does now. Perhaps she’s working up for a divorce.”
“If so, it’s bad luck on Patch. He can’t want to marry her.”
But to that Sallie replied thoughtfully, “I’m not so sure.”
“Are they together a great deal?” Martyn queried. “Mrs. Kendal speaks
as though they were never to be seen apart, but she bases that upon
their having gone into the butcher’s shop at the same time, which she
appears to regard as peculiarly incriminating.”
“He takes her for a walk every day and sees her home whenever they’re
at the same parties, but I can’t personally see why he shouldn’t do
that,” Sallie declared. “All this gossip and tittle-tattle makes me
sick. Whatever they do it’s their own business and nobody else’s.”
Again I mentioned Mr. Harter’s name, and it met with as little
acclamation as before.
“He’d better come to England if he doesn’t like his wife to have
friendships.”
“Do you suppose she writes and tells him about them?” asked Sallie
ironically.
“One has links, as Lady Annabel would say. He’s probably heard all
about it, and rather more than all, from some officious soul who
thinks he ought to know. After all, Mrs. Harter was Diamond Ellison,
the plumber’s daughter, and pretty well-known, at least by name, to
everybody here, let alone that she’s the sort that always does get
talked about.”
“She interests me a good deal, as a psychological study,” said Sallie.
“But as a matter of fact, I don’t consider that she’s behaving well.”
“You mean that what she’s doing--getting herself talked about with
Patch, while her husband is abroad--is anti-social?” Martyn suggested.
“Yes, exactly. I’ve no feelings, personally, as to the rights or wrongs
of anything, from an ethical point of view, but I do bar the sort of
thing that can only be called anti-social.”
They are both perfectly satisfied once they have found a label, and
affixed it, to any situation.
I should like to see Martyn or Sallie--but especially Sallie--in love.
There are times when I believe that she is quite incapable of it. She
would pin down and analyze every symptom of her condition and then
discuss it exhaustively, and very likely write a book about it. Perhaps
passion could survive all this. I am not prepared to say that it could
not, for I am conscious that the understanding of one generation cannot
project itself into that of another, whatever Claire may say about the
experience of a lifetime, which in reality has nothing whatever to do
with it.
Once upon a time, Martyn Ambrey did bring a very young girl, with
shingled hair and most beautiful slim ankles, to stay with his mother
for a week-end. They went out on his motor bicycle all Sunday, and that
evening--when the girl was out of the room--Martyn said casually to
Mary and Sallie:
“Lois has plenty of brains, but I didn’t realize how conventional
her upbringing has made her. She’d insist upon having her children
baptized.”
On Monday morning he took her away again on the carrier of his motor
bicycle, and that--so far as I know--was the end of it.
Mary said that Lois, from start to finish, remained as demure as a
Victorian school girl. They have their own standards, no doubt. Mary
says so, and leaves it at that. But Claire says, in one and the same
breath, that the Lois and Martyn type do not know the meaning of
reality, and are incapable of recognizing it when they meet it, and
that their attitude of detachment is all a pose.
Perhaps she envies them their undoubted immunity from the perpetual
emotional turmoil in which her own life has been spent.
But, on the other hand, there was bitter and passionate envy in her
condemnation of Mrs. Harter.
I could understand that, in a way. Claire, like many another woman
who is more or less incapable of self-command, holds the theory that
this lack of discipline constitutes a special and peculiar claim upon
Providence. Only a supreme call, they hold, can bring forth the supreme
response of which they feel themselves to be capable. Failing that, it
is impossible that they should fulfil themselves. They go through life
with a sense of frustration.
Claire has far too much perception not to appraise an atmospheric value
very quickly. She knew quite well that Bill Patch and Mrs. Harter were
not engaged upon the odious pastime, so odiously described by Dolly
Kendal, of “getting up a flirtation.”
Bill Patch himself, quite unconsciously, made one see that. He did not
very often speak Mrs. Harter’s name, but when he did, it was like an
electric spark in the room.
“What will happen?” Nancy Fazackerly murmured to me once, so vaguely
that I half wondered if she knew that she was speaking aloud.
“You think something _will_ happen? Sometimes these things die of
themselves, you know.”
“Sometimes. But this won’t. I can’t bear to think of it. You know, one
gets very fond of Bill.”