Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  It was the summer that Christopher Ambrey spent at the Manor House with us, that Puppa acquired a motor car.

  The girls were not allowed to drive it. Two of them sat on the back of the car, poised upon the extreme edge of the seat, while Mumma sat in front and Puppa drove. Christopher told me once that it took General Kendal five-and-twenty minutes to drive from Dheera Dhoon to Miss Applebee’s shop — a distance of perhaps half a mile. Mumma, sitting beside him, and diffusing a general sense of tension, adopted the role of look-out.

  “I should bear a little to the right here, Puppa — you remember the bad place in the road? Not too much, dear...”

  Sometimes she cast a worried look behind them, and discerned something on the sky-line almost invisible to less anxious eyes.

  “Something coming, Puppa... No, not just yet, dear, but I thought I’d warn you, as it will want to pass us. I suppose they will sound their horn before they get quite close up. Girls, there’s a car coming up behind us.”

  Poor General Kendal gripped the wheel tighter and tighter — until, Christopher said, the veins sprang out on the backs of his hands — and drove slower and slower.

  “A cart coming towards you, Puppa... take care, the road is so narrow here... it’s coming towards us — it’s just a little way in front, isn’t it? Don’t get fussed, dear.”

  I have never been out in the General’s car myself, but I believe that he has never become a really confident driver, and that to this day Mumma sits beside him and keeps up a running fire of warnings.

  As for the Kendal girls, they go almost everywhere on their bicycles. They say that too many people in the car always make poor Puppa so nervous. —

  IV

  IT was Nancy Fazackerly herself who subsequently told me all about her musical evening. She very often comes to see me, and, unlike the Kendals, never causes me to see myself in the unpleasant light of “something accomplished, something done,” for the good of somebody else’s soul.

  The party, it is perhaps needless to say, was invited to come in after supper.

  “So many people prefer to dine quietly at home,” said Mrs. Fazackerly.

  Captain Patch, one of the few people with whom old Carey — Mrs. Fazackerly’s father — had not had time to quarrel — put him into a good humour in the morning by presenting him with a small work entitled Poison Crimes of the Nineteenth Century.

  Old Carey’s hobby is criminology.

  “All full of old friends!” said Mrs. Fazackerly delightedly. “Palmer, I’m sure I remember him — and Pritchard? I’ve often heard you speak of Pritchard, I’m sure, Father.”

  She tries very hard, I know, to be interested in these rather sinister celebrities, but old Carey never meets his daughter half way.

  “Pritchard was a bungler of the first water,” he witheringly replied. “That servant of yours has no sense, Nancy, she hasn’t filled the tea-caddy.”

  “I ought to have done it myself. I never let her have the China tea, you know.”

  “This isn’t China tea.”

  “Oh, Father, it is indeed. I had it specially down from the Stores, only a week ago.”

  “Then why did you tell me yesterday, when we were talking about the weekly books, that you hadn’t had anything from the Stores for six months?”

  Old Carey is always laying traps for his daughter, and she is always falling into them.

  “Did I say that? I suppose I forgot about the tea,” she said valiantly.

  “You are the worst housekeeper in England, I believe,” was her parent’s dispassionate retort.

  Captain Patch broke in with some inquiry about the little book on poison cases. Unlike Mrs. Fazackerly, he never confused the Mannings with the Seddons, and he always appeared to be genuinely interested in the records of their activities.

  Mrs. Fazackerly looked at him gratefully. She had a strong feeling of friendliness for red-headed Captain Patch. He was always so ready to put kindly interpretations upon everything, and she sometimes felt that there was a good deal in her life, both past and present, that positively craved for kindly interpretations.

  Mrs. Fazackerly sometimes sighed with relief, as she woke in the morning to the remembrance of her paying guest’s presence. She reflected that she had never before known such an easy summer.

  The money from Captain Patch was paid into her account regularly and he not only gave no trouble, but was the only person to whom her father, for many years, had taken a liking. Since Captain Patch had been at the Cottage, talking and joking, and above all, always ready to listen, Mrs. Fazackerly’s father had found fault with her less often, and had made fewer demands upon her.

  For a long while now, she had never dared to think either of the past or of the future, of happiness or of unhappiness. She had put away the few relics of her short and miserable married life, and turned all her energies to the management of her father’s tiny household and to keeping out of debt.

  “It would be nice to have a little fun,” Mrs. Fazackerly may have thought to herself, wistfully, from time to time.

  “The fish is here, please ‘m, and would like to speak to you.”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Fazackerly, startled. “The fish. Very well, thank you, Bessie. I will come and speak to the fish at once.”

  She turned towards the house again, recapitulating mentally the points to which she had already decided that the attention of “the fish” must be drawn.

  After that she certainly had no more time in which to think about improbable accessions of happiness to herself. Old Carey, whether or not at the suggestion of Captain Patch, announced his intention of spending the afternoon and evening at the Club.

  “You can be ready to take me there at three o’clock,” he told his daughter, to whom belonged the privilege of pushing the heavy wheeled chair in which he took his exercise.

  “I wish you’d let me do that, sir,” said Captain Patch. “I really want a job this afternoon.”

  He nearly always found some good reason for relieving his hostess of this fatigue-duty.

  That evening, she put on the only evening dress that she possessed, a black crepe-de-chine one, embroidered with silver crescents, and looked long and critically at her reflection in the glass.

  “Not more than twenty-eight or twenty-nine, by this light,” she decided, “and a nice figure, though really I could have done with another three inches.”

  She powdered her small, straight, impertinent-looking nose, admired her really beautiful teeth, and wished, as she had often wished before, that her complexion had been anything but the creamy, freckled pallor, of a blonde cendree. Just before going downstairs, she allowed herself the comfort and pleasure of inspecting, with a hand mirror, the reflection of her back hair.

  As she went down, she was still smiling at the thought of that soft and fluffy twist of thick, pale-gold hair.

  Nancy Fazackerly told me that she very often thought of her hair resolutely, when other people displayed new and charming clothes, such as she herself had never possessed.

  Sallie Ambrey’s frock that night was one that Mrs. Fazackerly had not seen before, a straight, slim, green-and-gold little frock, with no sleeves at all.

  “It’s lovely,” said Mrs. Fazackerly frankly.

  “Christopher is so old-fashioned that he’s been objecting to it as indecent,” said the girl with perfect unconcern.

  “So it is,” Christopher asserted.

  “Surely decency and indecency are out of date, now-a-days,” Martyn suggested. “Like talking of people being shocked. I believe it was quite usual to be shocked, some years ago, but one never hears of its happening now.”

  “Nancy,” said Sallie, “will your Mrs. Harter be shocked? She looked rather as though she might be, at the concert.”

  “No, she won’t,” Mrs. Fazackerly asserted positively. “And she’s not my Mrs. Harter. I know very little of her, except that she hasn’t many friends.”

  “Is she amusing?”

  It might hav
e been truthfully asserted that no one, on that first evening, found Mrs. Harter exactly amusing. It was, indeed, very difficult to make her utter a word, from what I was told.

  She sat on the edge of an armchair, wearing the same black dress that she had worn at the concert and twisting her wedding ring round and round on her finger. Her dark face wore a look of resentful shyness, her voice was low and abrupt, and all her replies were monosyllables. She did not originate any remarks at all.

  Her evident sense of constraint began to affect everybody in the room.

  Sallie, who believed in letting people alone, leant back on the sofa and smoked a cigarette and said very little. Martyn looked at Mrs. Harter, his thin, clever face more and more sharply critical.

  Then Christopher Ambrey and Captain Patch broke the silence simultaneously.

  “Did you see the—”

  “Have you been to—”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “I beg your pardon. Go on.”

  “Oh no, it wasn’t anything.”

  “Please say what you were going to say “Please—”

  Sallie Ambrey laughed, but the others were all in painful earnest.

  “It really isn’t worth saying,” Captain Patch truthfully remarked. “I was only going to ask if anyone had seen the eclipse yesterday. There was supposed to be an eclipse, I believe.”

  No one seemed to have known or cared about this phenomenon, and after it had been briefly dismissed from life, there was another silence.

  “How is Mr. Carey?”

  “He’s had some quite good days, lately, and he’s really wonderful, considering.”

  “Hullo, a moth!”

  “How still it is, to-night, isn’t it?”

  “Mrs. Harter, do you sing a great deal?”

  It was all very disconnected, and spasmodic, and embarrassing. Mrs. Fazackerly felt that never would these six people unite in singing “My Old Kentucky Home” and “Swanee River,” as she had intended them to do. The presence of Mrs. Harter, and her ungracious self-consciousness, were making havoc of the party.

  It was red-headed Captain Patch who saved the situation. He boldly went over to the piano and threw it open.

  “Mrs. Harter, we’ve wanted to hear ‘The Bluebells of Scotland’ again ever since the concert. May we all join in the chorus?”

  Without waiting for any reply, he began to play with one finger on the keys, and the others thankfully took up the well-known air.

  After that there was no more constraint, and Captain Patch made Mrs. Fazackerly take his place as accompanist and stood behind the rest of the group, and eventually went away and returned carrying a laden coffee-tray.

  Presently there was a great deal of cigarette smoke in the room, and a great deal of talk and laughter.

  Mrs. Harter looked quite different.

  “Thank goodness, it’s going to be a success after all,” Mrs. Fazackerly thought. She had an absurd feeling that the rescuing of her party from failure, was a good omen for the future.

  It was past twelve o’clock when the Ambreys went home in Christopher’s small car, and Captain Patch escorted Mrs. Harter to the narrow house in Queen Street, where she was living in rooms.

  “Good-bye. Let’s do it again soon,” cried Sallie. “Why don’t we all meet this day week at our house and sing some more?”

  “Let’s,” said Christopher.

  “Mrs. Harter, can you?”

  “Thanks very much.”

  “About half-past eight then, all of us. I’ll look up some part - songs and things. Goodnight.”

  The car moved away.

  Captain Patch escorted Mrs. Harter to the house in Queen Street...

  Nancy Fazackerly told me the fact, when she gave me her account of the party. And I have wondered so often what took place in the course of that short walk — the first time that those two people were ever alone together, after the evening of music and talk and laughter — that I have come to evolve a sort of imaginary conversation. It is based, like almost all my conception of Mrs. Harter’s personality, on conjecture, on the judgments of Mary Ambrey, who, alone of all those who watched the events of that summer, combined clear vision with pitifulness — and on what I saw of Bill Patch.

  I don’t know — no one ever will know — what passed between them as they went up the still, moonlit street and across the little open square of the Market Place, their footsteps sounding very clearly in the absolute quiet of the night-time.

  But I have sometimes fancied that I could reconstruct the lines of that conversation — and for what it is worth, I shall put down what they may have said, as though I knew that they really did say it. Certainly, Diamond Harter dropped her guard that night. I am sure of that. Perhaps it was something as follows — but perhaps not.

  “Were you long in the East?”

  “Nearly five years. This is the first time I’ve been home. Cross Loman hasn’t changed much.”

  “You must be glad of that, I should think.”

  “Why?” said Mrs. Harter sharply. “I think it’s a horrid little country town, and the people in it mostly snobs.”

  “Why do you think that? I’ve found them all so kind and friendly.”

  “You! Yes. That’s different. But you don’t suppose I should have been asked to-night if I hadn’t happened to sing at the concert the other day. That Mrs. Fazackerly is a kind little soul, and everyone knows she’s had a hell of a time. But I’ve not any use for the Ambreys — especially that girl.”

  “I’m sorry you feel like that.”

  “I know you all thought I was going to spoil the evening, at first. I couldn’t help it. Her voice softened a little in the darkness. “I felt such a fish out of water.”

  “Sometimes I’ve felt like that myself. I used to when I was in the Army, very often. But one gets over it. People are awfully kind, really.”

  “Major Ambrey is all right, and Mrs. Ambrey, that girl’s mother. Do you know her?”

  “I’ve met her.”

  “They weren’t living here when I was at home. As for the high and mighty Lady Flower, you saw what she was like, that night at the concert.

  “Was she especially — anything?”

  Mrs. Harter gave a short laugh.

  “I don’t know why I’m talking like this, I’m sure. Only you somehow got things going to-night, just when I was cursing myself for having been such a fool as to come.”

  “I’m glad you did come, and I hope you’ll come to the Ambreys.”

  He spoke simply and deliberately, and her reply was equally devoid of any hint of conventional intention.

  “Why?”

  “Because you sound so lonely,” said Captain Patch. “I expect you’d like people better if you saw them more often.”

  “One doesn’t generally,” she said with an odd laugh.

  “Give it a try, anyhow.”

  “I shall. I always found this a dead-alive place, and after the East it would be duller than ever, if one didn’t know people.”

  “But you must have plenty of friends, if your home is here.”

  “I was away at school, before I got married, and anyhow, I never was much of a one to make friends. The people I wanted to know, didn’t care particularly about me, and the ones that did want to make friends, I wasn’t particularly keen on. You see, my people sent me to a school where there were a set of girls that thought themselves a great deal better than the tradesmen’s daughters, and that sort. I was with them, mostly, at school, but after I left, it was different. I was supposed to be going to teach, and one girl wrote and asked if I’d like to come as governess to her little sister. When we were at school, she’d invited me to go and stay as a friend, and I’d spent the holidays there. So I knew what it was like. And I wasn’t going to go back there, as the governess, after being a visitor in the house, thank you.”

  “What did you do, then?”

  “Nothing. Stayed at home and did the typing in the office. I hated Cross Loman.”


  “Did you like Egypt?”

  “Yes,” said Diamond Harter slowly. “I liked Egypt. I got all the dancing and the riding and the parties out there that I’d wanted and hadn’t been able to get down here. Have you ever been to the East?”

  “No.”

  “It’s all quite different, of course. Everyone knows everyone, in a way. There aren’t ‘county’ people and other cliques, like there are here. Everybody was asked to shows, for instance. One got the chance of knowing people whom one wouldn’t even have met at home.”

  “Then,” said Captain Patch, rather doubtfully, “you’ll be glad to go back there again, I suppose?”

  “For some things. This is my door, Captain Patch. Thanks for bringing me back. I suppose you wouldn’t care to come in and see me, one lay?”

  “I’d like to very much,” said the red-haired young man, with his friendly smile. “Can’t I come and call on you?”

  “I’m always here. Come and have tea with me on Thursday.”

  “Yes, I will. Thank you very much.”

  Her face in the moonlight looked strangely softened. “Have you got a latch-key?”

  “Yes. Good-night.”

  Mrs. Harter held out her hand and he took it for an instant. It was a strong hand, unusually broad, and capable of transmitting in contact a faint, magnetic thrill.

  “Good-night,” she repeated, as she went up the three shallow steps that led up to the neat, mean little door, with its liver-coloured paint and tarnished brass.

  Captain Patch, on the pavement, watched the door open, saw the tall, square-shouldered figure for a moment against the light that hung in the narrow entrance, and then heard the slam of the door and saw through the ground-glass fanlight the light go out.

  Then he turned down the road again, softly whistling to himself “The Bluebells of Scotland.”

  Sallie Ambrey has not her mother’s intuition, nor, naturally, has she Mary’s experience. But she has great acumen, and — that rarest and most invaluable asset — a mind trained from babyhood to clear thinking.

  And, personally, I hold that she was absolutely right when she once called Captain Patch a hopeless and temperamental romantic, capable of a grande passion. One doesn’t associate it, somehow, with red curly hair, and a slouch, and a very frank smile on a boyish mouth, and behind a pair of strong glasses.