Produced by Al Haines
PATRICIA BRENT, SPINSTER
BY
HERBERT JENKINS
HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED
3 YORK STREET, LONDON S.W.1
1918
A
HERBERT
JENKINS'
BOOK
_Fifteenth printing completing 153,658 copies_
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
PURNELL AND SONS, PAULTON (SOMERSET) AND LONDON
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. PATRICIA'S INDISCRETION
II. THE BONSOR-TRIGGS' MENAGE
III. THE ADVENTURE AT THE QUADRANT GRILL-ROOM
IV. THE MADNESS OF LORD PETER BOWEN
V. PATRICIA'S REVENGE
VI. THE INTERVENTION OF AUNT ADELAIDE
VII. LORD PETER PROMISES A SOLUTION
VIII. LORD PETER'S S.O.S.
IX. LADY TANAGRA TAKES A HAND
X. MISS BRENT'S STRATEGY
XI. THE DEFECTION OF MR. TRIGGS
XII. A BOMBSHELL
XIII. A TACTICAL BLUNDER
XIV. GALVIN HOUSE MEETS A LORD
XV. MR. TRIGGS TAKES TEA IN KENSINGTON GARDENS
XVI. PATRICIA'S INCONSTANCY
XVII. LADY PEGGY MAKES A FRIEND
XVIII. THE AIR RAID
XIX. GALVIN HOUSE AFTER THE RAID
XX. A RACE WITH SPINSTERHOOD
XXI. THE GREATEST INDISCRETION
WHAT THIS STORY IS ABOUT
Patricia Brent is a "paying guest" at the Galvin House Residential
Hotel. One day she overhears two of her fellow "guests" pitying her
because she "never has a nice young man to take her out."
In a thoughtless moment of anger she announced that on the following
night she is dining at the Quadrant with her fiance. When in due
course she enters the grill-room, she finds some of Galvin Houseites
there to watch her. Rendered reckless by the thought of the
humiliation of being found out, she goes up to a young staff-officer,
and asks him to help her by "playing up."
This is how she meets Lt.-Col. Lord Peter Bowen, D.S.O. The story is a
comedy concerned with the complications that ensue from Patricia's
thoughtless act.
PATRICIA BRENT, SPINSTER
CHAPTER I
PATRICIA'S INDISCRETION
"She never has anyone to take her out, and goes nowhere, and yet she
can't be more than twenty-seven, and really she's not bad-looking."
"It's not looks that attract men," there was a note of finality in the
voice; "it's something else." The speaker snapped off her words in a
tone that marked extreme disapproval.
"What else?" enquired the other voice.
"Oh, it's--well, it's something not quite nice," replied the other
voice darkly, "the French call it being _tres femme_. However, she
hasn't got it."
"Well, I feel very sorry for her and her loneliness. I am sure she
would be much happier if she had a nice young man of her own class to
take her about."
Patricia Brent listened with flaming cheeks. She felt as if someone
had struck her. She recognised herself as the object of the speakers'
comments. She could not laugh at the words, because they were true.
She _was_ lonely, she had no men friends to take her about, and yet,
and yet----
"Twenty-seven," she muttered indignantly, "and I was only twenty-four
last November."
She identified the two speakers as Miss Elizabeth Wangle and Mrs.
Mosscrop-Smythe.
Miss Wangle was the great-niece of a bishop, and to have a bishop in
heaven is a great social asset on earth. This ecclesiastical
distinction seemed to give her the right of leadership at the Galvin
House Residential Hotel. Whenever a new boarder arrived, the
unfortunate bishop was disinterred and brandished before his eyes.
One facetious young man in the "commercial line" had dubbed her "the
body-snatcher," and, being inordinately proud of his _jeu d'esprit_, he
had worn it threadbare, and Miss Wangle had got to know of it. The
result was the sudden departure of the wit. Miss Wangle had intimated
to Mrs. Craske-Morton, the proprietress, that if he remained she would
go. Mrs. Craske-Morton considered that Miss Wangle gave tone to Galvin
House.
Miss Wangle was acid of speech and barren of pity. Scandal and "the
dear bishop" were her chief preoccupations. She regularly read _The
Morning Post_, which she bought, and _The Times_, which she borrowed.
In her attitude towards royalty she was a Jacobite, and of the
aristocracy she knew no wrong.
Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe was Miss Wangle's toady; but she wrapped her venom
in Christian charity, thus making herself the more dangerous of the two.
At Galvin House none dare gainsay these two in their pronouncements.
They were disliked; but more feared than hated. During the Zeppelin
scare Mr. Bolton, who was the humorist of Galvin House, had fixed a
notice to the drawing-room door, which read: "Zeppelin commanders are
requested to confine their attentions to rooms 8 and 18." Rooms 8 and
18 were those occupied by Miss Wangle and Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe. There
had been a great fuss about this harmless and rather feeble joke; but
fortunately for Mr. Bolton, he had taken care to pin his jest on the
door when no one was looking, and he took the additional precaution of
being foremost in his denunciation of the bad taste shown by the person
responsible for the jest.
Patricia Brent was coming downstairs in response to the dinner-gong,
when, through the partly open door of the lounge, she overheard the
amiable remarks concerning herself. She passed quietly into the
dining-room and took her seat at the table in silence, mechanically
acknowledging the greetings of her fellow-guests.
At Galvin House the word "guest" was insisted upon. Mrs.
Craske-Morton, in announcing the advent of a new arrival, reached the
pinnacle of refinement. "We have another guest coming," she would say,
"a most interesting man," or "a very cultured woman," as the case might
be. When the man arrived without his interest, or the woman without
her culture, no one was disappointed; for no one had expected anything.
The conventions had been observed and that was all that mattered.
Dinner at Galvin House was rather a dismal affair. The separate tables
heresy, advocated by a progressive-minded guest, had been once and for
all discouraged by Miss Wangle, who announced that if separate tables
were introduced she, for one, would not stay.
"I remember the dear bishop once saying to me," she remarked, "'My
dear, if people can't say what they have to say at a large table and in
the hearing of others, then let it for ever remain unsaid.'"
"But if someone's dress is awry, or their hair is not on straight,
would you announce the fact to the whole table?" Patricia had
questioned with an innocence that was a little overdone.
Miss Wangle had glared; for she wore the most obvious auburn wig, which
failed to convince anyone, and served only to enhance the pallor of her
sharp features.
In consequence of the table arrangements, conversation during
meal-times was general--and dull. Mr. Bolton joked, Miss Wangle poured
vinegar on oily waters, Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe "dripped with the oil of
forbearance." Mr. Cordal ate noisily, Miss Sikkum simpered and Mrs.
Craske-Morton strove to appear a real hostess entertaining real guests
without the damning prefix "paying."
The remaining guests, there were usually round about twenty-five,
looked as they felt they ought to look, and never failed to show a
befitting reverence for Miss Wangle's ecclesiastical relic; for it was
Miss Wangle who issued the social birth certificates at Galvin House.
That evening Patricia was silent. Mr. Bolton endeavoured to draw her
out, but failed. As a rule she was the first to laugh at his jokes in
order "to encourage the poor little man," as she expressed it; "for a
man who is fat and bald and a bachelor and thinks he's a humorist wants
all the pity that the world can lavish upon him."
Patricia glanced round the table, from Miss Wangle, lean as a winter
wolf, to Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe, fair, chubby and faded, and on to Mr.
Cordal, lantern-jawed and ravenous. "Were they not all lonely--the
left of God?" Patricia asked herself; and yet two of these solitary
souls had dared to pity her, Patricia Brent. At least she had
something they did not possess--youth.
The more she thought of the words that had drifted to her through the
half-closed door of the lounge, the more humiliating they appeared.
Her day had been particularly trying and she was tired. She was in a
mood to see a cyclone in a zephyr, and in a ripple a gigantic wave.
She looked about her once more. What a fate to be cast among such
people!
The table appointments seemed more than usually irritating that
evening. The base metal that peeped slyly through the silver of the
forks and spoons, the tapering knives, victims of much cleaning, with
their yellow handles, the salt-cellars, the mustard, browning with
three days' age (mustard was replenished on Sundays only), the anaemic
ferns in "artistic" pots, every defect seemed emphasized.
How she hated it; but most of all the many-shaped and multi-coloured
napkin-rings, at Galvin House known as "serviette-rings." Variety was
necessary to ensure each guest's personal interest in one particular
napkin. Did they ever get mixed? Patricia shuddered at the thought.
At the end of the week, a "serviette" had become a sort of gastronomic
diary. By Saturday evening (new "serviettes" were served out on Sunday
at luncheon) the square of grey-white fabric had many things recorded
upon it; but above all, like a monarch dominating his subjects, was the
ineradicable aroma of Monday's kipper.
On this particular evening Galvin House seemed more than ever grey and
depressing. Patricia found herself wondering if God had really made
all these people in His own image. They seemed so petty, so ungodlike.
The way they regarded their food, as it was handed to them, suggested
that they were for ever engaged in a comparison of what they paid with
what they received. Did God make people in His own image and then
leave the rest to them? Was that where free will came in?
"----lonely!"
The word seemed to crash in upon her thoughts with explosive force.
Someone had used it--whom she did not know, or in what relation. It
brought her back to earth and Galvin House. "Lonely," that was at the
root of her depression. She was an object of pity among her
fellow-boarders. It was intolerable! She understood why girls "did
things" to escape from such surroundings and such fox-pity.
Had she been a domestic servant she could have hired a soldier, that is
before the war. Had she been a typist or a shop-girl--well, there were
the park and tubes and things where gallant youth approached fair
maiden. No, she was just a girl who could not do these things, and in
consequence became the pitied of the Miss Wangles and the Mrs.
Mosscrop-Smythes of Bayswater.
She was quite content to be manless, she did not like men, at least not
the sort she had encountered. There were Boltons and Cordals in
plenty. There were the "Haven't-we-met-before?" kind too, the hunters
who seemed cheerfully to get out at the wrong station, or pay twopence
on a bus for a penny fare in order to pursue some face that had
attracted their roving eye.
She sighed involuntarily at the ugliness of it all, this cheapening of
the things worthy of reverence and respect. She looked across at Miss
Sikkum, whose short skirts and floppy hats had involved her in many
unconventional adventures that one glance at her face had corrected as
if by magic. A back view of Miss Sikkum was deceptive.
Suddenly Patricia made a resolve. Had she paused to think she would
have seen the danger; but she was by nature impulsive, and the
conversation she had overheard had angered and humiliated her.
Her resolve synchronised with the arrival of the sweet stage. Turning
to Mrs. Craske-Morton she remarked casually, "I shall not be in to
dinner to-morrow night, Mrs. Morton."
Mrs. Craske-Morton always liked her guests to tell her when they were
not likely to be in to dinner. "It saves the servants laying an extra
cover," she would explain. As a matter of fact it saved Mrs.
Craske-Morton preparing for an extra mouth.
If Patricia had hurled a bomb into the middle of the dining-table, she
could not have attracted to herself more attention than by her simple
remark that she was not dining at Galvin House on the morrow.
Everybody stopped eating to stare at her. Miss Sikkum missed her aim
with a trifle of apple charlotte, and spent the rest of the evening in
endeavouring to remove the stain from a pale blue satin blouse, which
in Brixton is known as "a Paris model." It was Miss Wangle who broke
the silence.
"How interesting," she said. "We shall quite miss you, Miss Brent. I
suppose you are working late."
The whole table waited for Patricia's response with breathless
expectancy.
"No!" she replied nonchalantly.
"I know," said Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe, in her even tones, and wagging an
admonitory finger at her. "You're going to a revue, or a music-hall."
"Or to sow her wild oats," added Mr. Bolton.
Then some devil took possession of Patricia. She would give them
something to talk about for the next month. They should have a shock.
"No," she replied indifferently, attracting to herself the attention of
the whole table by her deliberation. "No, I'm not going to a revue, a
music-hall, or to sow my wild oats. As a matter of fact," she paused.
They literally hung upon her words. "As a matter of fact I am dining
with my fiance."
The effect was electrical. Miss Sikkum stopped dabbing the front of
her Brixton "Paris model." Miss Wangle dropped her pince-nez on the
edge of her plate and broke the right-hand glass. Mr. Cordal, a heavy
man who seldom spoke, but enjoyed his food with noisy gusto, actually
exclaimed, "What?" Almost without exception the others repeated his
exclamation.
"Your fiance?" stuttered Miss Wangle.
"But, dear Miss Brent," said Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe, "you never told us
that you were engaged."
"Didn't I?" enquired Patricia indifferently.
"And you don't wear a ring," interposed Miss Sikkum eagerly.
"I hate badges of servitude," remarked Patricia with a laugh.
"But an engagement ring," insinuated Miss Sikkum with a self-conscious
giggle.
"One is freer without a ring," replied Patricia.
Miss Wangle's jaw dropped.
"Marriages are----" she began.
"Made in heaven. I know," broke in Patricia, "but you try wearing
Turkish slippers in London, Miss Wangle, and you'll soon want to go
back to the English boots. It's silly to make things in one place to
be worn in another; they never fit."
Mrs. Craske-Morton coughed portentously.
"Really, Miss Brent," she exclaimed.
Whenever conversation seemed likely to take an undesirable turn, or she
foresaw a storm threatening, Mrs. Craske-Morton's "Really, Mr.
So-and-so" invariably guided it back into a safe channel.
"But do they?" persisted Patricia. "Can you, Mrs. Morton, seriously
regard marriage in this country as a success? It's all because
marriages are made in heaven without taking into consideration our
climatic conditions."
Miss Wangle had lost the power of speech. Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe was
staring at Patricia as if she had been something strange and unclean
upon which her eyes had never hitherto lighted. In the eyes of little
Mrs. Hamilton, a delightfully French type of old lady, there was a
gleam of amusement. Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe was the first to recover the
power of speech.
"Is your fiance in the army?"
"Yes," replied Patricia desperately. She had long since thrown over
all caution.
"Oh, tell us his name," giggled Miss Sikkum.
"Brown," said Patricia.
"Is his knapsack number 99?" enquired Mr. Bolton.
"He doesn't wear one," said Patricia, now thoroughly enjoying herself.
"Oh, he's an officer, then," this from Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe.
"Is he a first or a second lieutenant?" enquired Mrs. Craske-Morton.
"Major," responded Patricia laconically.
"What's he in?" was the next question.
"West Loamshires."
"What battalion?" enquired Miss Wangle, who had now regained the power
of speech. "I have a cousin in the Fifth."
"I am sure I can't remember," said Patricia, "I never could remember
numbers."
"Not remember the number of the battalion in which your fiance is?"
There was incredulous disapproval in Miss Wangle's voice.
"No! I'm awfully sorry," replied Patricia, "I suppose it's very horrid
of me; but I'll go upstairs and look it up if you like."
"Oh please don't trouble," said Miss Wangle icily. "I remember the
dear bishop once saying----"
"And I suppose after dinner you'll go to a theatre," interrupted Mrs.
Mosscrop-Smythe, for the first time in the memory of the oldest guest
indifferent to the bishop and what he had said, thought, or done.
"Oh, no, it's war time," said Patricia, "we shall just dine quietly at
the Quadrant Grill-room."
A meaning glance passed between Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe and Miss Wangle.
Why she had fixed upon the Quadrant Grill-room Patricia could not have
said.
"And now," said Patricia, "I must run upstairs and see that my best bib
and tucker are in proper condition to be worn before my fiance. I'll
tell him what you say about the ring. Good night, everybody, if we
don't meet again."
"Patricia Brent," admonished Patricia to her reflection in the
looking-glass, as she brushed her hair that night, "you're a most
unmitigated little liar. You've told those people the wickedest of
wicked lies. You've engaged yourself to an unknown major in the
British Army. You're going to dine with him to-morrow night, and
heaven knows what will be the result of it all. A single lie leads to
so many. Oh, Patricia, Patricia!" she nodded her head admonishingly at
the reflection in the glass. "You're really a very wicked young
woman." Then she burst out laughing. "At least, I have given them
something to talk about, any old how. By now they've probably come to
the conclusion that I'm a most awful rip."
Patricia never confessed it to herself, but she was extremely lonely.
Instinctively shy of strangers, she endeavoured to cover up her
self-consciousness by assuming an attitude of nonchalance, and the
result was that people saw only the artificiality. She had been
brought up in the school of "men are beasts," and she took no trouble
to disguise her indifference to them. With women she was more popular.
If anyone were ill at Galvin House, it was always Patricia Brent who
ministered to them, sat and read to them, and cheered them through
convalescence back to health.
Her acquaintance with men had been almost entirely limited to those she
had found in the various boarding-houses, glorified in the name of
residential hotels, at which she had stayed. Five years previously, on
the death of her father, a lawyer in a small country town, she had come
to London and obtained a post as secretary to a blossoming politician.
There she had made herself invaluable, and there she had stayed,
performing the same tasks day after day, seldom going out, since the
war never at all, and living a life calculated to make an acid spinster
of a Venus or a Juno.
"Oh, bother to-morrow!" said Patricia as she got into bed that night;
"it's a long way off and perhaps something will happen before then,"
and with that she switched off the light.