THE BONSOR-TRIGGS' MENAGE
The next morning Patricia awakened with a feeling that something had
occurred in her life. For a time she lay pondering as to what it could
be. Suddenly memory came with a flash, and she smiled. That night she
was dining out! As suddenly as it had come the smile faded from her
lips and eyes, and she mentally apostrophised herself as a little idiot
for what she had done. Then, remembering Miss Wangle's remark and the
expression on Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe's face, the lines of her mouth
hardened, and there was a determined air about the tilt of her chin.
She smiled again.
"Patricia Brent! No, that won't do," she broke off. Then springing
out of bed she went over to the mirror, adjusted the dainty boudoir cap
upon her head and, bowing elaborately to her reflection, said,
"Patricia Brent, I invite you to dine with me this evening at the
Quadrant Grill-room. I hope you'll be able to come. How delightful.
We shall have a most charming time." Then she sat on the edge of the
bed and pondered.
Of course she would have to come back radiantly happy, girls who have
been out with their fiance's always return radiantly happy. "That will
mean two _cremes de menthes_ instead of one, that's another shilling,
perhaps two," she murmured. Then she must have a good dinner or else
the _creme de menthe_ would get into her head, that would mean about
seven shillings more. "Oh! Patricia, Patricia," she wailed, "you have
let yourself in for an expense of at least ten shillings, the point
being is a major in the British Army worth an expenditure of ten
shillings? We shall----"
She was interrupted by the maid knocking at the door to inform her that
it was her turn for the bath-room.
As Patricia walked across the Park that morning on her way to Eaton
Square, where the politician lived who employed her as private
secretary whilst he was in the process of rising, she pondered over her
last night's announcement. She was convinced that she had acted
foolishly, and in a way that would probably involve her in not only
expense, but some trouble and inconvenience.
At the breakfast-table the conversation had been entirely devoted to
herself, her fiance, and the coming dinner together. Miss Wangle, Mrs.
Mosscrop-Smythe, and Miss Sikkum, supported by Mrs. Craske-Morton, had
returned to the charge time after time. Patricia had taken refuge in
her habitual breakfast silence and, finding that they could draw
nothing from her her fellow-guests had proceeded to discuss the matter
among themselves. It was with a feeling of relief that Patricia rose
from the table.
There was an east wind blowing, and Patricia had always felt that an
east wind made her a materialist. This morning she was depressed;
there was in her heart a feeling that fate had not been altogether kind
to her. Her childhood had been spent in a small town on the East Coast
under the care of her father's sister who, when Mrs. Brent died, had
come to keep house for Mr. John Brent and take care of his
five-year-old daughter. In her aunt Patricia found a woman soured by
life. What it was that had soured her Patricia could never gather; but
Aunt Adelaide was for ever emphasizing the fact that men were beasts.
Later Patricia saw in her aunt a disappointed woman. She could
remember as a child examining with great care her aunt's hard features
and angular body, and wondering if she had ever been pretty, and if
anyone had kissed her because they wanted to and not because it was
expected of them.
The lack of sympathy between aunt and niece had driven Patricia more
and more to seek her father's companionship. He was a silent man,
little given to emotion or demonstration of affection. He loved
Patricia, but lacked the faculty of conveying to her the knowledge of
his love.
As she walked across the Park Patricia came to the conclusion that, for
some reason or other, love, or the outward visible signs of love, had
been denied her. Warm-hearted, impetuous, spontaneous, she had been
chilled by the self-repression of her father, and the lack of affection
of her aunt. She had been schooled to regard God as the God of
punishment rather than the God of love. One of her most terrifying
recollections was that of the Sundays spent under the paternal roof.
To her father, religion counted for nothing; but to her aunt it counted
for everything in the world; the hereafter was to be the compensation
for renunciation in this world. Miss Brent's attitude towards prayer
was that of one who regards it as a means by which she is able to
convey to the Almighty what she expects of Him in the next world as a
reward for what she has done, or rather not done, in this.
Patricia had once asked, in a childish moment of speculation, "But,
Aunt Adelaide, suppose God doesn't make us happy in the next world,
what shall we do then?"
"Oh! yes He will," was her aunt's reply, uttered with such grimness
that Patricia, though only six years of age, had been satisfied that
not even God would dare to disappoint Aunt Adelaide.
Patricia had been a lonely child. She had come to distrust spontaneity
and, in consequence, became shy and self-conscious, with the inevitable
result that other children, the few who were in Aunt Adelaide's opinion
fit for her to associate with, made it obvious that she was one by
herself. Patricia had fallen back on her father's library, where she
had read many books that would have caused her aunt agonies of stormy
anguish, had she known.
Patricia early learnt the necessity for dissimulation. She always
carefully selected two books, one that she could ostensibly be reading
if her aunt happened to come into the library, and the other that she
herself wanted to read, and of which she knew her aunt would strongly
disapprove.
Miss Brent regarded boarding-schools as "hotbeds of vice," and in
consequence Patricia was educated at home, educated in a way that she
would never have been at any school; for Miss Brent was thorough in
everything she undertook. The one thing for which Patricia had to be
grateful to her aunt was her general knowledge, and the sane methods
adopted with her education. But for this she would not have been in
the position to accept a secretaryship to a politician.
When Patricia was twenty-one her father had died, and she inherited
from her mother an annuity of a hundred pounds a year. Her aunt had
suggested that they should live together; but Patricia had announced
her intention of working, and with the money that she realised from the
sale of her father's effects, particularly his library, she came to
London and underwent a course of training in shorthand, typewriting,
and general secretarial work. This was in March, 1914. Before she was
ready to undertake a post, the war broke out upon Europe like a
cataclysm, and a few months later Patricia had obtained a post as
private secretary to Mr. Arthur Bonsor, M.P.
Mr. Bonsor was the victim of marriage. Destiny had ordained that he
should spend his life in golf and gardening, or in breeding earless
rabbits and stingless bees. He was bucolic and passive. Mrs. Bonsor,
however, after a slight altercation with Destiny, had decided that Mr.
Bonsor was to become a rising politician. Thus it came about that,
pushed on from behind by Mrs. Bonsor and led by Patricia, whose general
knowledge was of the greatest possible assistance to him, Mr. Bonsor
was in the elaborate process of rising at the time when Patricia
determined to have a fiance.
Mr. Bonsor was a small, fair-haired man, prematurely bald, an
indifferent speaker; but excellent in committee. Instinctively he was
gentle and kind. Mrs. Bonsor disliked Patricia and Patricia was
indifferent to Mrs. Bonsor. Mrs. Bonsor, however, recognised that in
Patricia her husband had a remarkably good secretary, one whom it would
be difficult to replace.
Mrs. Bonsor's attitude to everyone who was not in a superior position
to herself was one of patronage. Patricia she looked upon as an upper
servant, although she never dare show it. Patricia, on the other hand,
showed very clearly that she had no intention of being treated other
than as an equal by Mrs. Bonsor, and the result was a sort of armed
neutrality. They seldom met; when by chance they encountered each
other in the house Mrs. Bonsor would say, "Good morning, Miss Brent; I
hope you walked across the Park." Patricia would reply, "Yes, most
enjoyable; I invariably walk across the Park when I have time"; and
with a forced smile Mrs. Bonsor would say, "That is very wise of you."
Never did Mrs. Bonsor speak to Patricia without enquiring if she had
walked across the Park. One day Patricia anticipated Mrs. Bonsor's
inevitable question by announcing, "I walked across the Park this
morning, Mrs. Bonsor, it was most delightful," and Mrs. Bonsor had
glared at her, but, remembering Patricia's value to her husband, had
made a non-committal reply and passed on. Henceforth, Mrs. Bonsor
dropped all reference to the Park.
On the first day of Patricia's entry into the Bonsor household, Mrs.
Bonsor had remarked, "Of course you will stay to lunch," and Patricia
had thanked her and said she would. But when she found that her
luncheon was served on a tray in the library, where Mr. Bonsor did his
work, she had decided that henceforth exercise in the middle of the day
was necessary for her, and she lunched out.
Mr. Bonsor had married beneath him. His father, a land-poor squire in
the north of England, had impressed upon all his sons that money was
essential as a matrimonial asset, and Mr. Bonsor, not having sufficient
individuality to starve for love, had determined to follow the parental
decree. How he met Miss Triggs, the daughter of the prosperous
Streatham builder and contractor, Samuel Triggs, nobody knew, but his
father had congratulated him very cordially about having contrived to
marry her. Miss Triggs's friends to a woman were of the firm
conviction that it was Miss Triggs who had married Mr. Bonsor.
"'Ettie's so ambitious." remarked her father soon after the wedding,
"that it's almost a relief to get 'er married."
Mr. Bonsor was scarcely back from his honeymoon before he was in full
possession of the fact that Mrs. Bonsor had determined that he should
become famous. She had read how helpful many great men's wives had
been in their career, and she determined to be the power behind the
indeterminate Arthur Bonsor. Poor Mr. Bonsor, who desired nothing
better than a peaceable life and had looked forward to a future of ease
and prosperity when he married Miss Triggs, discovered when too late
that he had married not so much Miss Triggs, as an abstract sense of
ambition. Domestic peace was to be purchased only by an attitude of
entire submission to Mrs. Bonsor's schemes. He was not without brains,
but he lacked that impetus necessary to "getting on." Mrs. Bonsor, who
was not lacking in shrewdness, observed this and determined that she
herself would be the impetus.
Mr. Bonsor came to dread meal-times, that is meal-times _tete-a-tete_.
During these symposiums he was subjected to an elaborate
cross-examination as to what he was doing to achieve greatness. Mrs.
Bonsor insisted upon his being present at every important function to
which he could gain admittance, particularly the funerals of the
illustrious great. Egged on by her he became an inveterate writer of
letters to the newspapers, particularly _The Times_. Sometimes his
letters appeared, which caused Mrs. Bonsor intense gratification: but
editors soon became shy of a man who bombarded them with letters upon
every conceivable subject, from the submarine menace to the question of
"should women wear last year's frocks?"
Mr. Triggs had once described his daughter very happily: "'Ettie's one
of them that ain't content with pressing a bell, but she must keep 'er
thumb on the bell-push." That was Mrs. Bonsor all over; she lacked
restraint, both physical and artistic, and she conceived that if you
only make noise enough people will, sooner or later, begin to take
notice.
Within three years of his marriage, Mr. Bonsor entered the House of
Commons. He had first of all fought in a Radical constituency and been
badly beaten; but the second time he had, by some curious juggling of
chance, been successful in an almost equally strong Radical division,
much to the delight of Mrs. Bonsor. The success had been largely due
to her idea of flooding the constituency with pretty girl-canvassers;
but she had been very careful to keep a watchful eye on Mr. Bonsor.
One of her reasons for engaging Patricia, for really Mrs. Bonsor was
responsible for the engagement, had been that she had decided that
Patricia was indifferent to men, and she decided that Mr. Bonsor might
safely be trusted with Patricia Brent for long periods of secretarial
communion.
Mr. Bonsor, although not lacking in susceptibility, was entirely devoid
of that courage which subjugates the feminine heart. Once he had
permitted his hand to rest upon Patricia's; but he never forgot the
look she gave him and, for weeks after, he felt a most awful dog, and
wondered if Patricia would tell Mrs. Bonsor.
When she married, Mrs. Bonsor saw that it would be necessary to drop
her family, that is as far as practicable. It could not be done
entirely, because her father was responsible for the allowance which
made it possible for the Bonsors to live in Eaton Square. The old man
was not lacking in shrewdness, and he had no intention of being thrown
overboard by his ambitious daughter. It occasionally happened that Mr.
Triggs would descend upon the Bonsor household and, although Mrs.
Bonsor did her best to suppress him, that is without in any way showing
she was ashamed of her parent, he managed to make Patricia's
acquaintance and, from that time, made a practice of enquiring for and
having a chat with her.
Mrs. Bonsor was grateful to providence for having removed her mother
previous to her marriage. Mrs. Triggs had been a homely soul, with a
marked inclination to be "friendly." She overflowed with good-humour,
and was a woman who would always talk in an omnibus, or join a wedding
crowd and compare notes with those about her. She addressed Mr. Triggs
as "Pa," which caused her daughter a mental anguish of which Mrs.
Triggs was entirely unaware. It was not until Miss Triggs was almost
out of her teens that her mother was persuaded to cease calling her
"Girlie."
In Mrs. Bonsor the reforming spirit was deeply ingrained; but she had
long since despaired of being able to influence her father's taste in
dress. She groaned in spirit each time she saw him, for his sartorial
ideas were not those of Mayfair. He leaned towards checks, rather loud
checks, trousers that were tight about the calf, and a coat that was a
sporting conception of the morning coat, with a large flapped pocket on
either side. He invariably wore a red tie and an enormous watch-chain
across his prosperous-looking figure. His hat was a high felt, an
affair that seemed to have set out in life with the ambition of being a
top hat, but losing heart had compromised.
If Mrs. Bonsor dreaded her father's visits, Patricia welcomed them.
She was genuinely fond of the old man. Mr. Triggs radiated happiness
from the top of his shiny bald head, with its fringe of sandy-grey
hair, to his square-toed boots that invariably emitted little squeaks
of joy. He wore a fringe of whiskers round his chubby face, otherwise
he was clean-shaven, holding that beards were "messy" things. He had
what Patricia called "crinkly" eyes, that is to say each time he smiled
there seemed to radiate from them hundreds of little lines.
He always addressed Patricia as "me dear," and not infrequently brought
her a box of chocolates, to the scandal of Mrs. Bonsor, who had once
expostulated with him that that was not the way to treat her husband's
secretary.
"Tut, tut, 'Ettie," had been Mr. Triggs's response. "She's a fine gal.
If I was a bit younger I shouldn't be surprised if there was a second
Mrs. Triggs."
"Father!" Mrs. Bonsor had expostulated in horror. "Remember that she
is Arthur's secretary."
Mr. Triggs had almost choked with laughter; mirth invariably seemed to
interfere with his respiration and ended in violent and wheezy
coughings and gaspings. Had Mrs. Bonsor known that he repeated the
conversation to Patricia, she would have been mortified almost to the
point of discharging her husband's secretary.
"You see, me dear," Mr. Triggs had once said to Patricia, "'Ettie's so
busy bothering about aitches that she's got time for nothing else. She
ain't exactly proud of her old father," he had added shrewdly, "but she
finds 'is brass a bit useful." Mr. Triggs was under no delusion as to
his daughter's attitude towards him.
One day he had asked Patricia rather suddenly, "Why don't you get
married, me dear?"
Patricia had started and looked up at him quickly. "Married, me, Mr.
Triggs? Oh! I suppose for one thing nobody wants me, and for another
I'm not in love."
Mr. Triggs had pondered a little over this.
"That's right, me dear!" he said at length. "Never you marry except
you feel you can't 'elp it, then you'll know it's the right one. Don't
you marry a chap because he's got a lot of brass. You marry for the
same reason that me and my missis married, because we felt we couldn't
do without each other," and the old man's voice grew husky. "You
wouldn't believe it, me dear, 'ow I miss 'er, though she's been dead
eight years next May."
Patricia had been deeply touched and, not knowing what to say, had
stretched out her hand to the old man, who took and held it for a
moment in his. As she drew her hand away she felt a tear splash upon
it, and it was not her own.
"Ever hear that song 'My Old Dutch'?" he asked after a lengthy silence.
Patricia nodded.
"I used to sing it to 'er--God bless my soul! what an old fool I'm
gettin', talkin' to you in this way. Now I must be gettin' off. Lor!
what would 'Ettie say if she knew?"
But Mrs. Bonsor did not know.