“I believe it has come and that you’re going to take it and make the
very most of it. And I’ll back you for all I’m worth, Nancy my dear.”
She thanked me with a gratitude that was disproportionate, and then
asked if I thought that anybody had guessed.
“Because, of course, nothing whatever is settled yet, and in any case,
his sister comes first.”
Nancy looked terribly apprehensive, and I could think of nothing
whatever that would be at once convincing and reassuring, as to
Claire’s reception of the tidings. So, on the principle of the
counterirritant, I asked when she was going to tell her father.
Mrs. Fazackerly’s small face actually and literally became quite pale.
“Chris is going to tell him for me,” she murmured, in a conscience-
stricken whisper. “He says he doesn’t mind. He and Captain Patch are
the only two people I know who are not a little bit overwhelmed by
dear Father’s personality.”
At her mention of Captain Patch, we both glanced round at the little
knoll, at the foot of which he and Mrs. Harter had been sitting, but
the two figures had disappeared. At the same moment the bridge players
rose and came towards us, and the servants apparently sprang out of the
earth and began to collect the cards and markers and pencils and put
them away.
Mrs. Leeds said, “What’s that young man, Patch, done to Mrs. Harter? I
asked her on purpose to keep Hector amused, and she’s behavin’ like a
flapper havin’ her first flirtation. It’s indecent, considerin’ all we
know about the woman.”
“Do tell us what you know about her,” Claire suggested. “I think her
manners are atrocious, myself, and she is victimizing unfortunate
Captain Patch, who used to be quite a nice boy.”
Claire spoke very lightly indeed, and yet one could sense the
bitterness that prompted the words. It was not only personal dislike of
Mrs. Harter--although that certainly existed--it was also resentment
at the central place that Mrs. Harter occupied in an emotional
adventure. On a certain plane, Claire’s perceptions and intuitions
are exceptionally acute, and I think she knew very well that greater
forces were at work than she herself could have coped with, and the
knowledge made her angry. No one likes to feel inadequate, and, after
all, Claire’s speciality was the emotions.
“Do tell us what you know about Mrs. Harter,” she repeated.
“Oh, it doesn’t amount to anythin’ desperate,” said good-natured Mrs.
Leeds. “She was pretty hot stuff out there and her husband carried on
in rather an alarmin’ way, that’s all, when she went a bit too far.
Ghastly little man, Harter--the men all barred him, absolutely.”
“Why?”
“He wasn’t supposed to be straight, or something--_I_ don’t know,” said
Mrs. Leeds casually. “Never could imagine why the woman didn’t do a
bunk, myself. One or two of the men were mad about her--God knows why.
But nobody had a good word for Harter. He did some very dirty trick
over a deal in polo ponies, I believe, but it was kept pretty dark,
and anyway, we weren’t there very long. The men all said that Mrs.
Harter was straight, whatever they meant by that, but I never heard
of anyone havin’ a good word to say for Harter. I must say he was an
objectionable-lookin’ little bounder, if ever there was one. No one
could imagine why on earth she’d ever married him.”
“Perhaps she wanted to get away from the plumber’s shop, and thought
that the only opportunity,” Claire suggested. “I suppose, from what you
say, that she must be attractive to men--of a certain sort--but she
isn’t in the least good-looking.”
Mrs. Leeds laughed loudly. I think it crossed her mind vaguely, with
no sort of understanding, that Claire was in some way jealous of Mrs.
Harter, and it amused her.
“It isn’t what _I_ say,” she remarked. “It’s what we could see for
ourselves. That red-headed youth is perfectly besotted. I quite agree
with you that she’s no beauty, but she’s got _him_ on a string all
right.”
“It’s a great pity,” said Claire emphatically. “Captain Patch is a nice
young man, really.”
Quite suddenly Mrs. Kendal woke up. She looked round upon us with
rather a blank eye for a moment, but instinct, or her subconscious
self, must have prompted her as to what we had been talking about, for
she joined in almost automatically.
“Captain Patch--yes, indeed. That woman ought to know better. Why, she
must be old enough to be his mother.”
“No.”
That was Mary Ambrey, who is always reasonable, and seldom emphatic.
“Really, Mrs. Kendal, she isn’t. Not by about eighteen years. Captain
Patch looks very young, I quite agree, but as a matter of fact, he’s
quite old enough to take care of himself.”
“More shame for him,” declared Mumma, not at all viciously, but with
that effortless, relentless implacability of hers that always makes one
think of a tank in action.
“I don’t expect they realize that the way they go about together isn’t
very good form,” said Blanchie Kendal brightly and kindly. She is the
one whom Mumma often speaks of as “our family peacemaker,” but I doubt
if Mrs. Kendal thought it quite fitting that she should peacemake on
the subject of Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch.
“That will do, dear,” she said, and Blanchie desisted from her
charitable attempts at once.
The Kendals are all of them rather large young women, but when Mumma
says, “That will do,” like that, they seem to shrink into a temporary
invisibility.
“I think,” said Mrs. Kendal further, “that we shall have to make a
move. Will you see if you can find Puppa and the others, Blanchie? I am
afraid we ought to make a move.”
“So ought we,” said Claire, and in spite of hospitable protests from
Leeds and Mrs. Leeds, people began to prepare for departure.
Claire, perhaps with a recollection of her tête-à-tête journey with
Leeds in his runabout, at once offered to take Mary and her children
back to the Manor House if they would spend the evening with us, and
Mary agreed.
Christopher had already put Mrs. Fazackerly into his two-seater, and
Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch were nowhere to be seen.
I really felt sorry for Leeds, as I saw the blank expression with which
he offered to drive Lady Annabel Bending home.
“What a bounder that fellow is!” young Martyn observed pleasantly as
the car moved away.
“You’ve eaten his salt,” Claire said gravely. She looked very austere
and high-minded as she said it, but that was probably for the benefit
of Martyn--who seemed in no way impressed--and I saw every reason to
fear that another volcano was claiming Claire’s inward attention.
I knew she would say nothing in front of Sallie and Martyn, but as
soon as we got home they dashed upstairs in search of some property
connected with the play, and Claire and Mary and I remained together.
Then poor Claire’s features relaxed into an expression of desperation.
These histrionic transformations in her are largely instinctive, I
believe. She herself is never, for an instant, out of her own line of
vision.
“It has come.”
It was useless to ask what had come. I knew and Mary knew.
“Has Christopher said anything to you?” I asked.
“No. Has he to you?”
Claire’s question came like a rapier point, and I was thankful to be
able to say no in reply to it.
“He is going to marry that little third-rate creature.” Claire spoke
with concentrated bitterness.
Claire, theoretically, is a democrat. She is also the champion of
individual freedom, and she believes in the right of every man or woman
to marry for love.
Neither Mary nor I was tactless enough to remind her of all this. In
fact, we said very little. The Claire type of mind cannot be approached
by arguments, being almost as wholly devoid of sustained reasoning
powers as is a young child. It was inevitable that Claire should be
jealous of the woman with whom her brother fell in love, and the
obviousness of poor Mrs. Fazackerly’s shortcomings made things simpler,
in a way. It provided Claire with a more or less legitimate outlet for
her irrational sense of grievance.
“I should never utter one word--I should thank God upon my knees--if
Christopher had found somebody with whom he could go through life in
utter and absolute sympathy--the perfect companion--” said Claire
emotionally, and quite genuinely unaware that her aspirations on
Christopher’s behalf were far beyond any that he would ever entertain
for himself.
I remember, word for word, a curious little interlude that came in,
there, the outcome of that outburst of poor Claire’s.
“The perfect companion of whom you speak has no existence, at least on
this plane,” I said, foolishly enough.
Mary Ambrey looked at me and smiled. “Miles!” She said my name almost
exactly in the half-affectionate, half-amused way in which a mother
admonishes a child when the child is trying to “show off” before
strangers. She wasn’t in the least taken in by my cheap cynicism, and
she wouldn’t allow me to be taken in by it, either.
Dear, beautiful Mary Ambrey! I never, like people in a novel, wonder
whether she has ever guessed. With her fine, clear intelligence, of
course she has guessed--long, long ago.
We had a bad quarter of an hour with Claire. Mary, of course, was far
more successful with her than I was, because she did not exhaust
herself and infuriate Claire by reasoning with her. She just let her
talk--and talk--and talk.
By the time that Sallie came in Claire had got to the stage of knowing
that she was repeating herself and of being secretly glad of an
interruption.
“We were going to have the dress rehearsal next week,” Sallie said.
“Which day, Cousin Miles?”
So we were once more absorbed into the atmosphere of the theatricals.
“The Bulbul Ameer,” one could not help feeling, was taking shape as a
play in spite of most of the people who were acting in it. Sallie and
Martyn both had talent and a certain amount of amateur experience,
but Alfred Kendal’s sole qualification appeared to be an unlimited
confidence in something which he spoke of, in a very professional way,
as “gag.”
This had a disastrous effect upon Bill Patch, and both of them took to
appealing to Nancy Fazackerly, as part author of the piece.
Her ingenuity was hard put to it, once or twice, and I was touched when
I noticed that she seemed to be making some endeavors in the direction
of truthfulness.
Claire noticed it, too, I feel certain, and the atmosphere that she
managed to diffuse at rehearsal became less violently hostile than it
had been at first.
Everybody else was frankly interested in Christopher and Nancy, and
waited hopefully for them to announce their engagement.
“Is it official, yet?” Lady Annabel asked me one day, and when I said,
“No,” she assured me that she understood perfectly and that I could
rely upon her absolute discretion. The years that she had spent in the
Colonial Service, Lady Annabel said, had trained her.
Several people came to the dress rehearsal. Mrs. Fazackerly’s father
invited himself, to the unspeakable dismay of almost everybody, and
General and Mrs. Kendal, of course, were not to be denied.
“I think that Amy will be far less nervous if she sees me there,” said
Mrs. Kendal, with her kindest smile. “Ahlfred, now, is not nervous--but
Amy is. I think she may be less nervous if she sees me there. Call it a
mother’s fancy if you like, Sir Miles, but I can’t help thinking that
Amy will be far less nervous if she sees me in the front row. So there
I shall be.”
And there, in fact, she was.
Puppa was there, too, although less preoccupied with Amy and Alfred
than with the pair of Hessian boots that he had lent for the
performance. So long as they were on the stage, he never took his eyes
off them.
“Is everyone here?” I asked Nancy.
“Mrs. Harter is coming. Bill went to fetch her.”
She sighed.
“It is all very queer, don’t you think--I mean the way in which they go
about together. Of course, I’m dreadfully sorry for Bill. I think he’s
terribly in love with her.”
I was inclined to think so, too, and I found it quite impossible not to
watch them both when they arrived together.
It was not the first time that Mrs. Harter had come to a rehearsal--it
might have been the second, or at most the third.
Bill took her straight up to Mary Ambrey after she had received
Claire’s very brief greeting and had bowed stiffly in reply to mine.
“Will you come into the green room, Mrs. Harter? They’re all getting
ready.”
“I’m sorry we’re so late,” said Bill. “It was my fault; I started late
to fetch her. I’ll just see the curtain go up and then cut off and get
into my things. I don’t come on till the middle of the scene.”
He marched off to the piano, where Nancy sat already.
I heard her say, “Shall I begin the overture?” and Patch answer, “Give
her ten minutes to get changed. She says it won’t take her longer than
that.”
Mrs. Harter, of course, had to be on the stage before anybody else, in
order to sing “The Bulbul Ameer.”
Bill and Christopher fussed about with the lights, and tested the
curtain and found that it had stuck, as curtains invariably do stick
at all amateur theatricals, and Alfred Kendal said, “Why not have put
it up properly in the first place?” and finally a step ladder was
produced and Patch went up it and dealt adequately with the curtain. It
all took time and created the right atmosphere of dramatic crisis and
masterly presence of mind, and I hope that nobody except myself heard
my neighbor, old Carey, asking what the devil they were all mucking
about like that for.
When the curtain did go up, officially, as Lady Annabel Bending might
have said, the small stage showed a painted background of palm trees
and blue sea, and Mrs. Harter standing in front of it in her Eastern
dress.
The straight lines of the long veil over her head and the circlet
of coins across her forehead suited her very well, although the
swarthiness of her coloring became almost startlingly evident. Her
bare arms were hung with bracelets and she wore long drop earrings and
a girdle of colored stones. The dress, Claire was at pains to assure
us quietly, was entirely incorrect from the point of view of any known
nationality--but it was very effective, all the same.
Sallie, in almost similar clothes, and Amy Kendal, had had their faces
stained with some brown pigment or other and their brows darkened, but
Mary told me that Mrs. Harter had needed scarcely any make-up at all.
She made no attempt at acting, but simply sang the ridiculous,
mock-pathetic song on which Bill and Nancy had based their play, right
through from beginning to end.
I had forgotten how very good her voice was. At least, I supposed that
I had. Since the day of the dress rehearsal I have sometimes wondered
whether something new had come into it that had not been there when she
sang “The Bluebells of Scotland” at the concert.
Mrs. Harter looked straight in front of her while she was singing, her
hands behind her back. The silence in the room had a very peculiar
character; it was strangely intent.
Even old Carey, who, after all, was by no means a fool, was perfectly
motionless, and he, like everybody else, was looking at the woman on
the stage.
It was with a perfectly conscious effort that I turned my eyes away
from Mrs. Harter and looked across to where Captain Patch stood.
Bill was leaning against the wall, his back half turned to the stage,
both hands thrust into his pockets. He seemed to be looking fixedly
down at the floor, and he never once raised his eyes or turned round
while the strong sound of Mrs. Harter’s singing vibrated in the room.
There are six verses to the absurd song, and the air is repeated again
and again. For days afterwards we all of us hummed it and sang it at
intervals and execrated it for the persistent way in which it haunted
us.
I can remember every note of it, and no doubt everybody else can,
too, for everybody, now, avoids humming or singing it. Even the least
impressionable people are susceptible to the powers of association
that lie in sound, and the Bulbul Ameer song belongs eternally, so far
as Cross Loman is concerned, to the affair of Mrs. Harter and Captain
Patch.
Mrs. Fazackerly played the final verse slowly and then rattled off the
refrain for the last time with a swing:
“But, of all, the most reckless of life or of limb,
Was Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer--
Was Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer.”
Nancy’s small strong hands crashed out a couple of chords with
astonishing sureness and emphasis.
It was a dress rehearsal, and Bill Patch and I were the only people in
the room who were entitled to speak, just then. I waited for him, but
he only gave me a quick glance and a nod. So I said: “That’s splendid,
Mrs. Harter, thank you very much. Will you go off left, please? Now
then, for the first scene.”
She left the stage and came round to the front. Then Captain Patch left
the wall and walked across the room and went and sat down beside her.
_Chapter Eleven_
When the day preceding that of the show arrived, we had all reached
the stage of believing, with entire conviction, that nothing else in
the world mattered but a successful performance. It is this temporary
but complete absence of sense of proportion that puts life into almost
any undertaking, but more especially into one about which a number of
people are engaged.
On the morning of that day Bill tried to hold a final rehearsal, at
which half of the performers failed to appear, because they were
frantically and irrationally mislaying vital pieces of property in
different parts of the house or dashing off in search of substitutes
for other equally vital pieces of property, alleged by them to have
been mislaid by other members of the cast.
“If Alfred Kendal isn’t taken through his bit of dialogue at least half
a dozen times more, he’ll ruin the whole thing,” said Patch, looking
perfectly distraught. “In fact, he’ll probably do that anyhow. For
Heaven’s sake, someone hear him his words.”
“I will,” said Nancy. “Where is Alfred?”
She snatched up a housemaid’s tray that had been loaded with empty
vases for which Claire, her hands full of flowers, had been vainly
inquiring a few moments earlier. “I’ll take this. Where is Alfred?”
“Always remember, when you’re carrying a loaded tray,” said General
Kendal, “to put the heavy articles in the middle of the tray and not at
the sides.”
“Oh yes, thank you.”
“Let me show you--”
“I’ll leave Alfred to you,” said Bill Patch earnestly, “and if you can
get him to say _height_ and not _heighth_ in the last scene, it’ll make
all the difference.”
“I’ll try, but you know--Oh, General Kendal, thank you very much--yes,
I do quite see. Only I think Lady Flower is in a hurry--”
“Are you looking for Alfred?” said Sallie, dashing past. “He’s trying
on his beard in the dining room. Cousin Claire is looking everywhere
for those drawing-room vases.”
“I know. Thank you so much, Sallie.”
“_This_ fellow is the heaviest, I should say--put him in the middle.
Then these little light bits of glass--”
“Oh thank you, thank you!”
“Wait a minute--that isn’t quite right yet. It always saves time in the
long run,” said the General impressively, “to do things in the _right_
way.”
“Yes, indeed. Shall I take it now? I know Lady Flower is in a hurry.”
“Did someone say Ahlfred was wanted?” Dolly inquired, also hurrying and
also with her arms full. “Because I heard him say something about going
off on his bicycle to fetch ...” she vanished through the door, and we
only heard faintly the words ... “seems to have forgotten.”
“Oh, stop him!” cried Nancy. “Do go and stop Alfred, somebody. Wait!
I’ll go myself.”
“Do you want Ahlfred?” said Mrs. Kendal. “Because, if so, he is on the
stage. If you want Ahlfred for anything, I can go and find him for you.”
“I thought you wanted to take these vase affairs to Lady Flower,” the
General said rather reproachfully to Mrs. Fazackerly. “If you want
Alfred, I can fetch him for you.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Nancy, quite wildly, and she rushed away with the
tray of vases, and Mrs. Kendal went away, too, and presently reappeared
with Alfred, and then, as Nancy was no longer to be seen, let him go
again, whereupon Nancy came in again by another door and immediately
said:
“But where’s Alfred?”
That sort of thing went on all day long, and running all through my
recollection of the whole, chaotic business is a sort of intermittent
duet between Nancy Fazackerly and Alfred Kendal, when at last they
found themselves on the same spot, at the same moment, and she was
hearing him his part.
“Your cue is--‘color of the sea.’”
“Yes, yes. Just give me my cue, will you?”
“--‘color of the sea.’”
“Yes. Color of the sea. Now, what do I say? Funny thing, it’s on the
very tip of my tongue. _Don’t tell me_--”
“Color of--”
“_Don’t_ tell me.”
“I was only going to give you your cue again ‘Color of the sea’--”
“‘What man can measure the heighth of the mountains? They are--’”
“Didn’t Captain Patch suggest that it really makes the lines run better
to say _height_?”
“I _said_ height.”
“Oh, did you? I’m so sorry. How stupid of me. Let’s start again ...
‘color of the sea.’”
“‘What man can measure the heighth of the mountains?...’”
Bill passed them once or twice, and each time he heard Alfred he
groaned. By and by Martyn Ambrey, as though he had been the first
person to think of it, came up to me and said:
“You know, this sort of thing really won’t do. If this show is to be
any good at all, we ought to pull ourselves together and have a proper
rehearsal.”
“‘The heighth of the mountains,’” came faintly from the far corner of
the hall.
“If you will collect everyone and bring them here, I’ll keep them
together and send for Patch, and we’ll go through the whole thing,” I
said.
“Right you are. I’ll ring the gong and they’ll think it’s lunch.
That’ll bring them.”
“The young are so cynical nowadays,” I heard Sallie murmur.
“Why not be content with the _spirit_ of the thing, supposing the
actual letter fails me?” Alfred Kendal suggested in the distance. “As
a matter of fact, there’s always a certain amount of gag expected at a
show of this kind.”
“I’m sure you’ll get it in a minute,” said Nancy, with her usual
kindly, if unfounded, optimism. “Let’s just run through it again ...
‘color of the sea.’”
They crawled through it again.
Martyn’s performance on the gong actually did bring most people into
the hall and I then announced that a final rehearsal was to take place
at once, and everybody said that it was utterly impossible and adduced
important reasons why they should be somewhere else doing something
quite different.
“Very well, then we’ll call a general rehearsal immediately after
lunch. Three o’clock sharp. Does that suit everybody?”
Almost everybody assented, presumably because they were relieved at
having the thing postponed for an hour or two.
“What about Mrs. Harter?” Martyn suddenly inquired.
She was not present.
“If it’s to be the last rehearsal we ought to do the thing properly and
have her song at the beginning and at the end.”
“I can send her down a note,” said Claire.
“I’ll fetch her on my motor bike,” young Martyn volunteered.
He is not always so ready to put himself out on behalf of other people.
“Does Martyn admire Mrs. Harter?” I had the curiosity to ask his sister
later.
“It’s mostly that he’s so frightfully interested. The whole
psychological situation, you know,” Sallie explained. “I think it’s
interesting, too, but I don’t agree with him altogether that it’s her
personality that makes it so. Bill, in his own way, is quite as well
worth watching as she is.”
“You talk as though it were a cinematograph film being shown for your
express benefit.”
“That’s rather a good simile,” said Sallie condescendingly.
“My dear child, bar joking, I wish you’d tell me something. These two
people, I quite agree with you, are out of the ordinary. Are you wholly
and solely curious, and analytical, and interested--or do you ever feel
sorry for them?”