But I doubt if anyone else would have added, as Nancy did, “And I’m so
sorry for _her_.”
“Why?” said Christopher, who was beside her as usual. He was one of the
people who did not admire Mrs. Harter.
“Well, she is married, isn’t she?” Mrs. Fazackerly suggested. “I
suppose things may be rather difficult, perhaps, when Mr. Harter comes
to England.”
One could not help remembering that Mrs. Fazackerly had the best of
reasons for understanding how difficult things could be made by the
return of a husband, even although the late Mr. Fazackerly had had no
serious grievances to provoke his habits of violence.
“I know nothing about Mr. Harter,” said Christopher, “but if he’s
coming here, mark my words, there’ll be trouble.”
Mrs. Fazackerly may or may not have marked Christopher’s
words--probably she did--but it was quite evident enough without them
that the arrival of Harter in Cross Loman would precipitate a crisis.
“Is he coming here?” I asked.
Mrs. Fazackerly nodded.
“When?” I said, and Christopher Ambrey at the same moment said, “Why?”
“Very soon. And he’s coming because--” Nancy paused and then said in a
slightly awe-stricken way: “She’s written and asked him to come.”
“Did she tell you so?”
“Captain Patch did.”
“And did he tell you why she did anything so astonishing?”
“Not exactly. I got an impression, though.” She hesitated.
“I think I’ll tell you. I think, in a way, he rather wanted me to tell
people--especially if anyone is talking about them.”
“Everyone is talking about them,” I assured her. “Please add to the
number.”
All the same, I knew that what she wanted to say was, by comparison
with the tittle-tattle that was going on, something serious.
“Diamond Harter has written to her husband and asked him to come here.
She is very unhappily married--everyone knows that--and I think she is
going to try and put an end to it.”
“Put an end to it?”
“A separation, I suppose, or--or a divorce, perhaps.”
“And where, exactly, does Bill Patch come in?”
“I should have thought that was obvious,” muttered Christopher.
“That’s exactly where you’re mistaken, my dear fellow. There’s nothing
obvious about any of it. Neither of them are obvious people, and I
distrust profoundly the combination of an obvious situation and two
such unobvious protagonists. It is quite impossible to predict what
their reactions may be.”
I felt rather like Sallie as I spoke, and I also knew that Christopher,
by instinct, dislikes and distrusts the use of polysyllabic words.
He looked at me rather disgustedly, but did not say anything.
Nancy Fazackerly went on.
“Of course, it’s impossible not to see that she and Captain Patch
are--are always together. But really and truly I believe she’s
written--or they both have--to Mr. Harter.”
“To tell him that they’re making themselves the talk of Cross Loman?
How considerate!”
“It seems rather a brave sort of thing to have done,” Nancy said
wistfully.
Her own strong point is not moral courage.
“Of course, she’s older than he is, and besides, she’s married already,
and--and there are other things as well. But I can’t help being very
sorry for her. And I am fond of him.”
I thought Christopher Ambrey looked rather anxious, at that, and that
I had better give him the opportunity of going into the question of
the exact degree of fondness that Captain Patch had inspired in Mrs.
Fazackerly. So I left them together.
Their love affair was progressing very, very slowly, and I did not even
then feel sure that it was destined to a successful fulfilment.
Claire, I knew, would use all her influence to prevent it, which seemed
to render it rather more likely to happen, but old Carey was capable of
working seriously upon his daughter’s feelings to the extent of making
her think it her duty to remain with him.
There was no doubt that Christopher, hitherto singularly
unsusceptible, was attracted by her. He always turned over the pages of
her music for her at rehearsals, and once he had given her a bunch of
lilies of the valley.
There were pauses in his courtship, during which he evidently thought
over the next stage before embarking upon it, but on the whole the
affair was going forward.
Nancy Fazackerly was looking prettier than I had ever seen her. She had
one or two new frocks that summer, too, as though she thought it was
worth while to look her best.
“Nancy Fazackerly doesn’t look like a widow,” Mrs. Kendal said, about
this time. Her tone was not exactly disparaging, although neither was
it enthusiastic. But her wide, opaque gaze rested quite blandly upon
Nancy as she spoke.
“What does a widow look like?”
Mumma is not apt at definitions, and she only replied that a widow
generally _looked_ like a widow, and that Nancy Fazackerly didn’t.
“So much the better,” said I.
“She is very young,” Mumma said tolerantly. “And I believe it is a
positive fact that her first husband was in the habit of throwing
plates at her head.”
She paused for a moment, and then, as far as Mumma’s large face can
express anything, it expressed confusion.
“When I say her first husband,” she incredibly remarked, “I mean to say
her late husband.”
I really thought that I had better not hear this at all, and so I
turned the conversation abruptly to “The Bulbul Ameer.”
It was very easy to do this, since everyone who knew anything at all
about the play, and many who did not, appeared to hold very strong
views about the manner of its production and to be eager to advocate
them.
Mumma was no exception.
Bill Patch and Nancy, however, were the joint authors of the piece, and
so the conversation gradually veered round to personalities again.
Mrs. Kendal said that it was a great pity about Captain Patch and that
she had always thought him a nice young fellow, before.
I declined, tacitly, to unravel these implications, and on the whole I
was relieved when she worked her way back to the Nancy Fazackerly theme
once more.
Everybody’s inflections, if not their words, were friendly and hopeful
when they talked about Nancy Fazackerly and Christopher Ambrey. Almost
equally universal were the characteristics of the words and inflections
applied to Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch.
These were either condemnatory or regretful--and sometimes both.
_Chapter Nine_
It was an unusually eventful summer in Cross Loman.
The only large house in the neighborhood which is ever let, Grainges,
was taken for three months by a wealthy fellow of the name of Leeds and
his wife. Lady Annabel Bending was quite excited and said that they
had “known H. E. in his Zanzibar days.” It was one of those links of
which we had so often heard her speak, and she naturally called upon
them at once. Then there was a tea party in their honor at the rectory,
and Lady Annabel stood on the steps smiling and said a few appropriate
words to each guest as she shook hands and at intervals raised her
voice and said very clearly and distinctly:
“To your right as you go in. The door is open....”
Most of Cross Loman knows the inside of the rectory pretty well, and
it is not a very large house, so that Lady Annabel’s directions were
not really exactly necessary, but it was all very masterly and well
organized, and we went into the drawing-room and avoided the dining
room, which was the only other room opening out of the hall.
After that, Leeds and Mrs. Leeds were invited to various small social
functions, and then, in return, they gave a monster picnic. It was,
as entertainments not infrequently are, the occasion for one or two
_contretemps_. Mrs. Leeds, a kindly, noisy, unperceiving creature, at
the last moment extended an invitation to Mrs. Harter, whom it seemed
that they had met in Cairo, when their yacht was coaling at Port Said.
I was present at Grainges when Mrs. Leeds announced this to Lady
Annabel.
“So very amusin’ to meet a well-known face unexpectedly,” she
said jovially. “And Mrs. Harter was almost _too_ well-known, in
Cairo--ha-ha! Any amount of scandal was talked about her, I believe--so
interestin’, scandal, I always think.”
Lady Annabel looked pale and said in a very low voice that Mrs. Harter
was the daughter of the local plumber, she believed.
“Really?” said Mrs. Leeds. “I wish I’d asked her to bring her
father--he could have had a look at the range.”
We all met at Grainges, from whence a fleet of cars was to carry us to
Berry Down. Leeds had two cars and his wife one, and the servants,
besides a mountain of hampers, preceded us in a Ford lorry.
“It is almost like the East again to see this sort of thing. Native
labor, you know....” Lady Annabel murmured to me rather wistfully.
However, she ceased to be wistful, and became austere instead, when she
heard about Mrs. Harter.
Captain Patch brought her and they arrived on foot. Mrs. Leeds happened
to be out of the room, giving final orders to one of the chauffeurs,
and there was a moment’s awkwardness.
We were all assembled in the big drawing-room and Lady Annabel, for
whom we waited instinctively, made no move at all.
Alfred Kendal said, “Hullo, Patch!” rather feebly and Mrs. Harter stood
by the door, waiting.
I looked at Claire. She had flushed a little and was obviously
undecided what line to take. And then Mary Ambrey got up and walked
down the length of the room and shook hands with her and said very
clearly:
“How do you do, Mrs. Harter? Mrs. Leeds has just gone out to see about
the car, I believe. She’ll be back in a second or two. How brave of you
to walk, in this heat!”
It was very like Mary, and more like her still to do it with perfect
calm, and the most absolute naturalness.
I doubt if she even knew that we all drew a breath of intense relief,
as she stood there, talking quietly, till Mrs. Leeds came dashing in at
one of the French windows.
“That was rather finely done,” I heard Martyn murmuring in my ear, with
his insufferable accent of patronizing approval. Claire heard him, too,
and I saw that she was vexed.
She had missed an opportunity of making what, from her, would have been
a very beautiful gesture.
The last guests to arrive were General and Mrs. Kendal with two of the
girls. Puppa is the most punctual of men, but he admits that he cannot
always estimate the time that it will take to drive anywhere in the
new car. I suppose that it depends upon the number and promptitude of
Mumma’s warning outbursts on the road.
As they entered, our host made his appearance. Leeds, what with his
wealth, and a fine presence, and one of the loudest voices that I have
ever heard in my life, is only to be described as an overwhelming man.
He was very hearty and enthusiastic, and welcomed us all, especially
Mrs. Harter, to whom he immediately shouted:
“Last time we met, someone bet you wouldn’t drink six cocktails in
succession, and you did it. By Jove, I’ve never forgotten it! Lounge of
Shepherd’s Hotel, wasn’t it? Never saw a more sporting collection in my
life, than we had that evening. You ought to have been there.”
I think that he uttered the last clause in an indiscriminate sort of
way to all of us, perhaps conscious that his audience was not, so to
speak, altogether with him. But it was a little unfortunate that the
people immediately facing him happened to be Lady Annabel and Mrs.
Kendal. It was so extraordinarily evident to the rest of us that they
did not at all feel that they ought to have been there, on the occasion
of Mrs. Harter’s rather singular achievement.
Leeds, however, alternates between a childlike touchiness and an
egotistical obtuseness, and this time he was obtuse.
He went on talking to Mrs. Harter about Cairo, and the people there
whom he had known, and whom he took it for granted that she had known
also. Later on, I learned that the weakness of Mr. Leeds was to
have known everybody. He is a young-looking man for his years, and
people are always astonished, in a gratifying way, when he claims
acquaintance with the celebrities of forty years ago.
He is exactly the kind of man to whom one would expect Mrs. Harter’s
type to make a strong appeal, and he addressed his conversation almost
exclusively to her.
When Mrs. Leeds said, “How are we all goin’?” there was the usual
pause, followed by the usual demonstrations.
“Will you come in the Mercedes with me, Lady Annabel, and Sir Miles?
Hector,” said Mrs. Leeds to her husband, “will you take Lady Flower in
the two-seater?”
She did not make her suggestions with any assurance, and Lady Annabel,
while acquiescing graciously as to the place allotted to her, seemed
faintly amused. She said afterward that these things require a great
deal of experience--which indeed is quite true--and that personally she
had always instructed the A. D. C.s beforehand, and left nothing to
chance.
“I can seat three people,” said General Kendal. “Not more. The springs,
you know--and the hill up to Berry Down is a stiff pull.”
“You’d better let me sit in front with you, Puppa,” Mrs. Kendal said
firmly. “Then I can keep my eyes open. If one hasn’t been driving very
long,” she explained to the rest of us, “one is liable to get fussed.
I always say to my husband, at critical moments, ‘Don’t get fussed,
dear. Whatever you do, keep your head, and don’t allow yourself to get
fussed.’”
“But this won’t do at all--we must separate relations!” cried Leeds.
“We can’t all go about in family groups, like the Ark, or whatever it
was. Might as well stay at home as do that.”
“I certainly think there’s more sense in staying at home and eating
one’s food in comfort, than dragging it out of doors and eating it
under the most miserable conditions imaginable, for no conceivable
reason--” said General Kendal suddenly and strongly.
Everyone looked a little disconcerted, and Dolly Kendal said in a
determined tone that picnics were great fun, if one took the rough with
the smooth and didn’t _mind_ things.
“Why not let’s walk--some of us?” Bill Patch suggested. “It’s not more
than a mile or so, through the woods.”
“No need to walk. There are plenty of conveyances,” said Leeds, in
rather an offended way.
“Well, who’ll go in the second car?” cried Mrs. Leeds. “Let me
see--Miss Kendal, Captain Patch, Major Ambrey--and what about you, Mrs.
Fazackerly?”
“I should love to,” said Mrs. Fazackerly.
“That leaves the other Miss Kendal, and Mrs. Harter and Mrs. Kendal,
oh, and Mrs. Ambrey--”
She began to look rather helpless again.
“My two-seater is here,” suggested Christopher.
“Oh, but do let some of us walk. It would be so nice to walk,” Sallie
declared.
Nearly everybody in the room then began to explain how very much he, or
she, would prefer to walk to Berry Down. It was a voluble contest in
unselfish determination. Then, just as it seemed that Mrs. Leeds was
reconciled to the idea of letting some of her guests start on foot,
Leeds reduced the whole thing to chaos again by suddenly announcing
that he would take Mrs. Harter in his small runabout.
“You are taking Lady Flower, dear,” said poor Mrs. Leeds. “We’ve got
muddled.”
We had indeed.
In the end, things were settled contrary to the wishes of almost
everybody. Bill Patch and Sallie and Alfred Kendal went off on foot,
Christopher, with a face of thunder, declared himself delighted to take
Aileen Kendal in his two-seater, and the rest of us were somehow packed
into the big cars, all except Martyn, who insisted upon going off on
his own motor bicycle and taking Mrs. Harter on the carrier.
Mr. Leeds and Claire, mutually dissatisfied, went in our host’s
runabout.
I do not know exactly what they said to one another, of course, but I
do know that Claire is not in the least interested in the celebrities
that other people have met. Even the ones that she has met herself
appeal to her from only one point of view, which is what she thinks
that they thought about her. At all events, when they arrived at the
particular clump of Scotch firs indicated, Claire looked utterly
exhausted, and Leeds made straight for Mrs. Harter and threw himself
down on the dry, heathery turf at her feet and asked for a drink.
It was, actually, only the second time that I had seen Mrs. Harter. She
looked better than she had looked in evening dress, wearing a thin dark
tweed and a purple felt hat properly rammed down over her black hair.
(The Kendals had large straw hats, the backs of which almost touched
their shoulder blades.)
Our host’s voice boomed on without ceasing and I caught the words
“cocktails,” “Cairo” and “moonlight” a good many times, but from Mrs.
Harter I hardly heard a syllable. She sat and smoked cigarettes, and
every now and then she looked across the gorse and heather and bracken
to the path along which the walkers would come.
The interval during which we waited for them was mostly passed in
discussion as to whether we should wait or not. I remember that Mrs.
Kendal kept on saying, “I should have thought they would have been here
by this time. I should have thought so,” and that each time she said
it, one or other of us replied, intelligently, that _we_ should have
thought so, too.
Then Mrs. Leeds wanted us to begin lunch, and we said, “Oh no, we’d
better wait,” and then one by one capitulated, and said, “Well, perhaps
we’d better not wait.” And by that time the habit of uncertainty that I
had already discerned in Mrs. Leeds had got the better of her again and
she said, “Oh well, perhaps we’d better give them a few minutes’ law.”
At last we saw approaching the emerald-green handkerchief that Sallie
wore knotted round her head, and they came up to us.
Captain Patch went and sat beside Diamond Harter without pause or
hesitation, and I very much doubt if he even saw the look of astonished
resentment turned upon him by Mr. Leeds.
The rest of us saw it, however, including Mrs. Leeds, who had not been
among us long enough to realize fully the inner subtleties of the
_affaire_ Harter, and remarked with a loud laugh that Hector would be
simply furious with that red-headed young man. Hector had, as she put
it, made all the running with Mrs. Harter last time they met, on board
the yacht.
Nobody made very much response, and it was a relief on every account
when we at last began luncheon.
But luncheon was not without its perilous moments, either.
Mr. and Mrs. Leeds are the sort of people who provide cocktails at a
picnic, and these of course revived the reminiscences of Mrs. Harter’s
feats in Cairo. Even Leeds, however, must have seen that he was not
being a success. Mrs. Harter’s face showed that plainly enough, and
even more expressive was the way in which she presently turned her back
on him and left him to Sallie, who was sitting on his other side. With
Sallie, Leeds had only too much scope.
There is a colloquialism made use of in the servants’ hall which has
always seemed to me a wonderfully expressive one. Somebody is described
as “playing up” somebody else. It occurred to me very forcibly, while
watching and listening to Sallie and Leeds.
Sallie was shamelessly “playing him up.” She encouraged him with
artless questions, and listened to his loud and generally boastful
replies with innocent and unwavering interest, and all the time I knew,
and Mary Ambrey did, that the horrid little clever thing was storing
up every word of it, and mentally labeling, filing, and indexing him
for future reference.
Sallie will certainly write a novel some day, and all of us will
recognize one another in it.
Leeds told several stories, not very funny ones, but in such stentorian
tones that we were all more or less obliged to listen, and twice Claire
said, “That reminds me of how I once” but Leeds didn’t hear.
Nancy Fazackerly took off her hat, and the sun shone on her beautiful
blonde hair, and she looked very happy and young.
Christopher Ambrey sat next her and looked at her a great deal.
“I wonder if old Chris has asked her, yet,” I heard Martyn say quietly
to one of the Kendals. And she replied in an interested way:
“I should think he’d do it to-day, anyhow. Wouldn’t you?”
“Too many people about.”
“They can go for a walk or something, after lunch.”
“We’ll have a bet on it, if you like,” Martyn suggested, and they
arranged the terms of a very mild wager, with some suppressed giggling
from Aileen.
I thought to myself that if I had been a young man, people like
Martyn and the Kendals would not have been given the opportunity of
exercising their wit upon my love affairs. But as a matter of fact I
knew well enough that if Chris and Nancy really did become engaged,
they would probably be told all about the bet, and would find it quite
amusing.
The servants from Grainges had solemnly laid an enormous tablecloth
over the heather, and weighted the corners of it--not with stones,
nothing so rural--but with plated ice buckets, full of broken ice. We
had lobster, and salmon-mayonnaise, and chicken salad, and galantine,
and an immense variety of cold sweets and pastries, and our plates were
changed by the servants after each course, and our glasses filled with
Moselle, or whisky or lemonade.
One felt ungrateful for feeling that it would have been a relief if
only the salt had been forgotten, or there hadn’t been enough rolls to
go round.
Christopher did, in an honest attempt to make the thing less
magnificent, suggest sharing a salad plate with his neighbor, but Leeds
overheard him, and roared to one of the men servants. As a matter of
fact, Mrs. Kendal was sitting on the missing salad plate, which was
afterwards found embedded deeply into quite hard ground, but of course
the servants produced an extra one without a moment’s hesitation.
However, iced Moselle, whether suitable or not to a picnic on the
moors, was bound to have its effect, and, anyway, Leeds and Mrs.
Leeds undeniably came into the category known to modern slang as
“cheery souls.” So that by the time we were all eating cherries and
strawberries, the picnic had become a very animated and successful
affair.
Claire, while Leeds was telling Sallie that he had been through parts
of China where no other white man had ever been allowed to set foot,
got her opportunity, and gave Alfred Kendal and Mrs. Leeds, and one or
two others, an amusing account of an impromptu charade party of the
previous summer. The point of the story was her own success in a tragic
impersonation, but she brought it in very skilfully. The contrast
between her methods, and those of Leeds, was rather amusing.
Lady Annabel talked to the Kendals. Puppa and Mumma have lived
sufficiently long in the East to understand her point of view.
Most of the younger people present were playing bob-cherry, but
Christopher, with his hat tipped right over his eyes, was talking to
Nancy Fazackerly, and Bill Patch and Mrs. Harter were silent.
He was industriously scraping together a small pile of fir needles and
dry twigs--one of those mechanical occupations that are generally the
sign of complete mental absorption in something else--and she was
lighting and smoking one after another of her interminable cigarettes.
Mary Ambrey had been sitting next to me, but she gave me a little nod
presently, and changed her place, and went to talk to Mrs. Leeds. She
has out-of-date ideas of the courtesy due to a hostess from a guest,
which are not shared by her children. Then Mrs. Leeds added the final
touch to her lavish entertainment, and produced, with the air of a
benevolent conjuror, a couple of tooled-leather boxes containing cards
and bridge markers.
“I thought it’d be a shame to waste the afternoon,” she said simply,
clearing a space for a thin carriage rug to cover the purple heather,
and setting her back against a small, shimmering silver birch.
“Upon my word, that’s a great idea,” said General Kendal, brightening
for the first time since the expedition had started.
“Hector!”
“Hello!” said Leeds, turning half round. “Oh, I see--you want to build
card-houses, do you? Well, Miss Sallie, the end of it was that these
perishers, never having seen anyone like me before, absolutely knuckled
under. Most ridiculous thing you ever saw. Why, they’d have made me
crowned king over them if I’d allowed it. You must let me tell you
the end of the yarn another day--that is, if I haven’t been boring you
stiff.”
As he did not wait to hear Sallie’s answer, one supposes that Leeds was
happily confident as to its nature.
Of course, everybody began to be unselfish again about the bridge, and
those who most obviously wanted to play unanimously offered to resign
their places to those who did not care about it in the least.
But the present new generation, like every other generation, has the
qualities of its defects, and if it is graceless, it is also fearlessly
candid.
Martyn said that he would rather be shot than play bridge, any day of
the week, and Sallie said that she thought cards out of doors would be
a loathsome idea, and Bill Patch thanked Mrs. Leeds very much but he’d
a good deal rather not. Mrs. Fazackerly, however, said that she would
love to play, when she thought herself needed to make up a rubber, and
when she saw that she wasn’t, said that she didn’t really care for
bridge at all, and would honestly prefer not to play.
“You’ll play, Mrs. Harter,” said Leeds in his affirmative way. “I
know you’re a gambler, right enough. D’you remember that night at the
Club when old Patterson’s crew played whisky poker till the small
hours, and by Jove, d’you remember the cards you picked up? I’ve never
forgotten them. Never saw such cards in my life.”
“I always hold good cards,” said Mrs. Harter indifferently.
And of course one of the Kendals rushed in where ordinarily intelligent
human beings, let alone angels, would have thought twice about treading.
“Lucky at cards, unlucky in love,” said Aileen, in the self-satisfied
tone of one who is making a consciously apt observation.
The way in which some among us then looked straight at Bill and Mrs.
Harter was only less indecently obvious than the way in which others
among us at once looked away from them.
And Bill and Mrs. Harter just looked at one another, and if we hadn’t,
all of us, known about them before, that look must have told us. Leeds
was the only person who presumably saw nothing, for he went on to
remind Mrs. Harter how badly screwed poor old Patterson had been that
night in Egypt, and didn’t she remember his falling down the steps
backwards?
“Good gracious!” said Dolly Kendal with all the fearful directness of
the Kendals, “you must have known some funny people out there, Mrs.
Harter.”
“Shall we cut for partners?” said Lady Annabel Bending very gently.
Mrs. Kendal does not play bridge, and she came and sat beside me, no
doubt with the kindest intentions of enlivening me, but after observing
three or four times that the picnic had been very well done, she
gradually closed her eyes and ceased to say it. Mumma’s bulk was partly
between me and the rest of the world, and I saw, as from the shadow
of a great rock, what they were all doing, and it interested me. The
people who were playing cards were almost altogether silent, as good
players always are. Claire looked tense and eager, as she does over
everything. It is nothing to her whether she wins at bridge or not, but
it is everything whether she is thought to excel or not. As a matter of
fact, she plays very well. General Kendal was her partner, and he is a
good player, too.
Lady Annabel was playing with Leeds, and every now and then, at the end
of a hand, his voice bellowed out encouragement or explanation, or even
remonstrance.
“I can’t imagine why you didn’t back me up,” he said once. “A hand that
positively screamed for a redouble--positively screamed for it.”
“I acted to the best of my judgment,” said Lady Annabel. “I thought at
the time, and I still think, that I should not have been justified in
redoubling.”
“But it would have given us the game! Listen to me,” commanded Leeds,
most unnecessarily. “I led the spade....”
He proceeded to play the whole hand all over again, card by card. And
at the end of it all Lady Annabel, drooping in a dignified way over the
scattered packs, said that she did not really think she would have been
justified in redoubling.
I suppose it was that spirit which made her the success that she
undoubtedly was, in the days of H. E. Sir Hannabuss Tallboys.
While that was happening, most of the others had disappeared.
Christopher Ambrey and Mrs. Fazackerly were with Sallie and some of the
Kendals, but already the groups were breaking up into twos and threes.
Only Captain Patch and Mrs. Harter sat quite still, not very far from
where I was, but a good deal removed from the others.
I could just hear the sound of his voice, and hers, as they spoke
together.
_Chapter Ten_
Of course I thought about Mrs. Harter. She compelled one to think about
her, even then. And I liked young Patch, too, and it seemed to me that
he was heading straight for the rocks.
It was a very hot, still afternoon. Even the shadows of the beech trees
were motionless and unflickering.
The servants had taken away the remains of the feast and the motor cars
had been discreetly manœuvered to some invisible point on the horizon.
By far the most sophisticated things within sight were the bridge
players.
Nancy Fazackerly, coming toward me by herself, blended quite agreeably
into the surrounding green, in her pale green linen frock with her
ash-blonde hair uncovered.
I have known her nearly all her life, and, as one of the very few young
women on earth whose society Claire could tolerate, she had spent quite
a lot of time with us since her return to Cross Loman.
Doubts, however, had for some time been assailing me as to the
security of that state of affairs, and something in her face as she sat
down beside me brought all my misgivings into active life.
“I wish,” said Mrs. Fazackerly gently, “that I knew what to do.”
“When a woman says that, it generally means that her mind is made up.”
Nancy laughed, but she said, “Mine isn’t.”
I suppose that if one of the Kendals had been there she would
immediately have inquired, “Has he asked you yet?” I have not, however,
been brought up by Mumma, and so these unflinching methods are beyond
me. Moreover, I did not imagine for a minute that Nancy really wanted
advice, any more than anybody else ever wants it. She only needed
someone to whom she could talk more or less freely.
“You know that my dear father is sometimes a little--peculiar,” she
began in a hesitating way.
“I know--and you know--” said I, “that he treats you disgracefully.
Yes. Let’s come to the point, my dear.”
“Can you imagine that he would ever tolerate the idea of my leaving him
again?”
“If you mean, do I think that he would take it lying down, no, I don’t.
But in your place, I shouldn’t allow him a word in the matter.”
“You are always so brave,” she said wistfully.
“And you are always so cowardly.”
Then I felt rather ashamed of having said that, remembering that, after
all, she had stuck to Fazackerly, from whom most women would probably
have fled at the end of six weeks.
But Nancy only said sadly, “I know I am.”
“Is it Christopher?” I asked, well knowing that it was.
She nodded.
“I know you can’t say you’re glad,” she added hastily.
“But I should be glad, to see you happy.”
“It’s very nice of you.”
We were both thinking of Claire, but our conversation, as is the way of
most conversations, made no mention of that of which we were thinking.
“I cannot imagine what Father would do, all by himself, although he
does say that I am such a bad housekeeper. And it would be quite
impossible to have anything like a joint establishment.”
I nearly said, “God forbid!” as I thought of old Carey, and his
incessant grumbling, and his stinginess, and his criminology.
“Is your father the only reason why you’re hesitating?”
She gave me a most expressive look.
“Except that it seems far, far too good to be true. I thought my life
was quite over, as far as that sort of thing went, and that I was just
one of those unlucky people who’d made a bad mistake. And then to find
_him_--so good and dear and nice, and actually caring for me!”
“I fail to see anything so astounding in that last item.”
Nancy Fazackerly shook her head.
“I know what I’m like--what circumstances have made me,” she said
simply. “Father is a very dominant personality, as you know, and
I’ve never been very brave. Sometimes I wonder that I’ve got any
individuality left at all. And then, being so badly off has made me
calculating, and even mean, in tiny little ways that you probably
wouldn’t even understand if I told you about them. You see, I always
knew that the bills would make Father angry, and the thing I’m most
afraid of in the world is that people should be angry with me. Often
and often I’ve said what isn’t true so as not to disagree with other
people. I daresay you won’t believe me....”
I believed her, on the contrary, without any difficulty at all, and I
was touched by her _naïveté_, and by the pathos of her confession.
“That would be all over if you married Christopher.”
“Yes,” she said. “Of course I suppose everyone, more or less, feels
that if they could be happy they could be good, but if--if anything so
wonderful as that happened to me, it would be the first great chance
that I’d ever had in my life.”