Mrs. Kendal spoke to Claire, and Claire repeated what she had said to me.
“I have seen them myself, walking about the town,” said Mumma impressively. “They actually went into the butcher’s together. Of course, I suppose she does her own marketing, living in rooms. And I distinctly saw them go into the butcher’s together.”
Claire said that it seemed an unromantic sort of trysting-place.
“It shows how intimate they are, their going like that to the butcher’s together. None of my girls would ever dream of taking a gentleman to do their household shopping,” said Mrs. Kendal with absolute truth. “I should think less of it, in a way, if Captain Patch and Mrs. Harter went to the theatre, or even to the cinematograph, together. But when it comes to their going together to the butcher’s, I ask myself what it all means.”
Mrs. Kendal had not been content only to ask herself what it all meant. She had asked several other people as well, including her four daughters and her son.
“It means,” said Dolly, with her most uncompromisingly sensible expression, “that Mrs. Harter is trying to get up a flirtation with Captain Patch.”
“She’s old enough to be his mother, I should think,” said Aileen.
When the twins had made these scathing statements, I think they felt that the situation had been exhaustively analysed. At any rate, although they thereafter talked round and round the subject with tireless persistency, the sum total of their observations never amounted to more than that Mrs. Harter was trying to get up a flirtation with Captain Patch, and that she was old enough to be his mother.
I did not think it worth while to point out that twenty-eight cannot be the mother of twenty-six.
It was odd, and to me profoundly interesting, to compare the comments which the situation evoked.
Mary Ambrey, of course, made none, and was, I should imagine, almost the only person in Cross Loman of whom that could be said.
Sallie and Martyn, with their strange, passionless habits of dissection, were coldly and impersonally interested.
I remember one exposition of their views. The spirit of it impressed itself upon my consciousness so clearly, that I can almost remember the letter.
“There’ll be a scandal over Patch and the fascinating Mrs. Harter, one of these days,” said Martyn.
“She’s not fascinating,” Sallie asserted.
Her brother raised his eyebrows slightly, and she understood and laughed.
“Flat contradiction is rather uncivilised, I admit. And besides, she probably is fascinating, to some people.”
“She certainly is to Bill Patch.”
“I know. As a matter of fact, there’s more to it than that, I believe. I mean, he’s more than just attracted by her.”
“Really? You once said he was a temperamental romantic, I know. Are you trying to justify that now, by building up a mountain out of a molehill?”
“I am not. Events are simply confirming my previous psychological deductions, that’s all,” said Sallie with bland dignity.
I was glad that Claire was not in the room. Like all egotists, she is driven nearly to frenzy by a display of egotism in anybody else.
“In all this,” said I, “there is one person who is never mentioned. What about Mr. Harter?”
There was a pause. Then Martyn remarked: “Negligible, I should think.”
“Possibly, as a personality. But as a man and a husband, he exists. It is even conceivable that he has feelings.”
“Oh, feelings!” said Sallie and Martyn, more or less together.
The tone of each expressed the utmost contempt.
“Some people might even go so far as to say that he has rights.”
“To a certain extent, so he has,” said Sallie, evidently determined to be broad-minded.
“Presumably she made the usual undertakings when she married him. But from all accounts they’ve each gone their own way, ever since they married. From a sentimental point of view, it can hardly matter what she does now. Perhaps she’s working up for a divorce.”
“If so, it’s bad luck on Patch. He can’t want to marry her.”
But to that Sallie replied thoughtfully— “I’m not so sure.”
“Are they together a great deal?” Martyn queried. “Mrs. Kendal speaks as though they were never to be seen apart, but she bases that upon their having gone into the butcher’s shop at the same time, which she appears to regard as peculiarly incriminating.”
“He takes her for a walk every day, and sees her home whenever they’re at the same parties, but I can’t personally see why he shouldn’t do that,” Sallie declared. “All this gossip and tittle-tattle makes me sick. Whatever they do it’s their own business and nobody else’s.”
Again I mentioned Mr. Harter’s name, and it met with as little acclamation as before.
“He’d better come to England, if he doesn’t like his wife to have friendships.”
“Do you suppose she writes and tells him about them?” asked Sallie ironically.
“One has links, as Lady Annabel would say. He’s probably heard all about it, and rather worse than all, from some officious soul who thinks he ought to know. After all, Mrs. Harter was Diamond Ellison, the plumber’s daughter, and pretty well known, at least by name, to everybody here, let alone that she’s the sort that always does get talked about.”
“She interests me a good deal, as a psychological study,” said Sallie. “But as a matter of fact, I don’t consider that she’s behaving well.”
“You mean that what she’s doing — getting herself talked about with Patch, while her husband is abroad — is anti-social?” Martyn suggested.
“Yes, exactly. I’ve no feelings, personally, as to the rights or wrongs of anything, from an ethical point of view, but I do bar the sort of thing that can only be called anti-social.”
They are both perfectly satisfied once they have found a label, and affixed it, to any situation.
I should like to see Martyn or Sallie — but especially Sallie — in love. There are times when I believe that she is quite incapable of it. She would pin down and analyse every symptom of her condition, and then discuss it exhaustively, and very likely write a book about it. Perhaps passion could survive all this. I am not prepared to say that it could not, for I am conscious that the understanding of one generation cannot project itself into that of another, whatever Claire may say about the experience of a lifetime, which in reality has nothing whatever to do with it.
Once upon a time, Martyn Ambrey did bring a very young girl, with shingled hair and most beautiful slim ankles, to stay with his mother for a week-end. They were out on his motor-bicycle all Sunday, and that evening — when the girl was out of the room — Martyn said casually to Mary and Sallie —
“Lois has plenty of brains, but I didn’t realise how conventional her upbringing has made her. She’d insist upon having her children baptised.”
On Monday morning he took her away again on the carrier of his motor-bicycle, and that — so far as I know — was the end of it.
Mary said that Lois, from start to finish, remained as demure as a Victorian schoolgirl. They have their own standards no doubt. Mary says so, and leaves it at that. But Claire says, in one and the same breath, that the Lois and Martyn type do not know the meaning of reality, and are incapable of recognising it when they meet it, and that their attitude of detachment is all a pose.
Perhaps she envies them their undoubted immunity from the perpetual emotional turmoil in which her own life has been spent.
But on the other hand, there was bitter and passionate envy in her condemnation of Mrs. Harter.
I could understand that, in a way. Claire, like many another woman who is more or less incapable of self-command, holds the theory that this lack of discipline constitutes a special and peculiar claim upon Providence. Only a supreme call, they hold, can bring forth the supreme response of which they feel themselves to be capable. Failing that, it is impossible that they should fulfil them
selves. They go through life with a sense of frustration.
Claire has far too much perception not to appraise an atmospheric value very quickly. She new quite well that Bill Patch and Mrs. Harter were not engaged upon the odious pastime, so odiously described by Dolly Kendal, of “getting up a flirtation Bill Patch himself, quite unconsciously, made on see that. He did not very often speak Mrs. Harter’s name, but when he did, it was like an electric spark in the room.
“What will happen?” Nancy Fazackerly murmured to me once, so vaguely that I half wondered if she knew that she was speaking aloud.
“You think something will happen? Sometimes these things die of themselves, you know.”
“Sometimes. But this won’t. I can’t bear to think of it — you know, one gets very fond of Bill.”
I knew.
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 awestricken 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 un-obvious 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 Bul-bul 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.
IX
IT was an unusually eventful summer in Cross Loman.
The only large house in the neighbourhood 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 honour 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 a
t intervals raised her voice and said very clearly and distinctly —
“To your right as you go in. The door is open...”
Most of us at Cross Loman know 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 organised, and we went into the drawingroom 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 labour, 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.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 246