Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “But you’ve already done a great deal; more than anybody. You’ve done a lot for her,” said Captain Patch.

  Nancy wished that she could have said she liked Mrs. Harter. But, at the moment, she did not feel that she liked Mrs. Harter at all, and apparently some unwonted scruple prevented her from saying that she did.

  “Oh Bill, don’t do anything to mess up your life,” she besought him. “You’re so young. It’s so awful to make a mistake right at the beginning.”

  She was thinking of her own mistake, no doubt.

  “What sort of mistake do you mean, exactly?” said Bill in his literal way. “Do you mean taking her away from Harter? You see, he says that he wouldn’t divorce her, even if we did.”

  “A great many people, even nowadays, don’t approve of divorced people re-marrying. Wouldn’t your own family mind?”

  “I’m afraid so. My father would be very sorry, I’m afraid.”

  “Wouldn’t that stop you from doing it?”

  “Well, no, I can’t honestly say that it would. He’s had his life, and run it his own way, and now I must manage mine for myself. It’s a thing about which one has a right to judge for oneself, really and truly.”

  It seemed to Mrs. Fazackerly — I think quite correctly — that she could do nothing. It was so obvious that Bill Patch saw his own gleam, and that he meant to follow it, whatever his inability to make anybody else share his vision.

  That Nancy did not share it was superabundantly evident.

  She said something, feebly, about the cost to Mrs. Harter of a cap thrown over the windmill, and Bill implied, without actually saying so, that the question of reputation was one upon which Mrs. Harter had for some years been devoid of qualms. Mrs. Fazackerly says that she remembered, then, Leeds and his story about the cocktails, and several other stories of his, too, and she felt that Bill was probably right. But after all, qualms were not, altogether, to be relegated to nothingness.

  Captain Patch, with his strange air of a wistful candour that sought her sympathy even while accepting her condemnation, told Mrs. Fazackerly that he fully realised something which he described, in the idiom of his generation, as the “unsportingness” of taking away another man’s wife.

  “What will you do, then?” again asked Mrs. Fazackerly. “You’re quite right, of course, Bill — it is unsporting, as you call it, and I don’t believe, really, in all the things you see in books about one’s highest duty being to oneself, and it’s wicked to live with people when you’ve stopped loving them, and all that sort of thing.”

  “I don’t know what books you’re thinking of,” said Bill, presumably speaking as an author. “They can’t be worth much, if that’s the sort of advice they give you.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Nancy meekly. “And I knew you didn’t really hold those views yourself, and that’s why I — I can’t understand what’s going to happen next.”

  “Well, I don’t know that myself,” said Captain Patch. “You see, I’d been pretty sure that Harter would agree to the divorce. And now it seems that he won’t.”

  “I cannot imagine why you ever thought that he would.”

  “If he has no objection to the thing on principle — and he hasn’t — and he knows it would make two people happy, and leave him, except for legal freedom, very much where he was before, I can’t see why he won’t,” said Bill obstinately.

  “You’ve seen him?”

  “Oh yes. I’ve been talking to him for more than an hour.”

  “And she was there, too?”

  “Some of the time, she was. They are very unhappy together, and have been all the time. I think, anyway, that Diamond will leave him now.”

  Mrs. Fazackerly looked at his young, unhappy face and pitied him profoundly.

  “All the same,” she said bravely, “it isn’t fair, really and truly it isn’t, to shirk one’s obligations. I know it’s dreadful to be with a man one doesn’t like — Oh, Bill, I do know it — but she did promise, when she married him.”

  Bill didn’t exactly acquiesce, but he looked at her with understanding, sorrowful eyes, and Nancy felt that he, too, knew perplexity.

  Their conversation was not in the least conclusive. They talked round the subject, at least Mrs. Fazackerly did, and Bill Patch thanked her several times for caring, and for letting him tell her about it. He repeated, again, that in spite of everything, he was extraordinarily happy. Nancy Fazackerly assured me afterwards that she had no difficulty in believing him, when he said that.

  Christopher Ambrey came to supper at Loman Cottage that evening. I suppose it was partly that which helped to fix it all so definitely in Mrs. Fazackerly’s mind. Anyhow, she apparently remembered it all very clearly.

  Dear father — again I quote Nancy — was passing through rather a difficult phase that evening. This was her euphemism for the senseless and utterly impracticable moods that at intervals caused old Carey to embark upon interminable arguments, that led nowhere at all, with anybody whom he could find to argue with him.

  He had never succeeded very well in this amiable enterprise with Captain Patch, because Patch had a facility — which very often goes with the power of writing — for seeing a great many sides to every question. Sooner or later, and it was generally sooner — he was certain to concede the tenability of his antagonist’s position, however much he might disagree personally with his views.

  But Christopher Ambrey could quite safely be counted upon to do nothing so baffling. He has not yet reached the stage of perceiving that nobody has ever yet been convinced of anything by argument, neither did he realise that he was doing poor Nancy a considerable dis-service by taking part in one of the long, battledore-and-shuttlecock dialogues started by old Carey in pure contradictoriness.

  The old man had been talking crime, as he usually did, and some reference was made to a point of international law.

  Nancy said “Father, how interesting” — not being in the least interested, but, as usual, only anxious to please.

  “You’re a little bit out there, sir, if I may say so,” Christopher began. “I think the way they work it is like this—”

  After that they were at it hammer and tongs, Christopher very polite and deferential to begin with, prefacing his reiteration of facts with a small, civil laugh, but gradually adopting the low, stubborn monotone of an unimaginative man who knows that he is right.

  Carey, who was wrong, and also knew it, became very angry and said “Look here, d’you mean to tell me—” and then put forward long, involved, and hypothetical cases, and interrupted violently when Christopher tried to deal with them in reply.

  Bill Patch caught Nancy’s eye, and did everything he could, but when an argument has once got beyond a certain stage, it sometimes seems as though nothing short of those unspecified catastrophes known as the Act of God, could ever bring them to an end.

  All through the evening they went on, and Nancy’s efforts to change the conversation were utterly ignored, and Bill’s gallant attempts at funniness were met with a glare of contempt from Christopher and a disgusted ejaculation or two from his host.

  Nancy Fazackerly, however, never forgot that Bill had tried. Like so many people who have been very badly treated by fate, she is touchingly grateful when she meets with kindness.

  She knew that Bill Patch was pre-occupied — as well he might be — with his own affairs, and that it was on her account that he had produced those intrinsically feeble, and entirely unsuccessful, jests and flippancies. And although Bill failed conspicuously in his object, Nancy’s gratitude went out to him.

  It was no doubt an unpleasant evening. Bill did not go out, as he usually did, and Mrs. Fazackerly could only presume that the Harter menage was being left to the further discussion of their infelicitous relations.

  Her father and Christopher Ambrey continued to try and talk one another down, having long since forgotten the original point at issue, and at eleven o’clock Mrs. Fazackerly, in despair, went to bed.


  All this I heard from Nancy, and she certainly made me visualise it clearly enough — the conversation with Bill Patch on the circular bench under the pink may-tree, and the pity and affection that he inspired in her so strongly, despite the fact that, in her gentle judgment, he was altogether wrong.

  She saw him, theoretically, as a person who was undecided between right and wrong, but when he was actually there, talking to her, I believe that Nancy felt vaguely that his perplexity was not exactly of that sort. It was at once more subtle, and less acute. She did not believe that he was either selfish, or sensual, or irreligious.

  “Even if he ran away with Mrs. Harter, I shouldn’t think him any of those things,” Mrs. Fazackerly told herself, but it rather amazed her to realise that, all the same.

  For all her superficial glibness in the art of fibbing, Nancy Fazackerly, as I have said before, is fundamentally sincere, and her view of Bill Patch has always interested me.

  Almost everybody else saw him as the victim of an unscrupulous woman.

  That was the view held by Mrs. Leeds — who knew nothing whatever about it; by Leeds — who may well have been biased, owing to his non-success with Mrs. Harter at the picnic — and by the Kendals.

  Lady Annabel was more impartial, and spoke serenely and regretfully about them both. But even she said “Such a pity — a nice young fellow like that.” Whereas when she referred to Mrs. Harter she simply said “Disgraceful — a woman of her age!”

  Claire’s attitude was rather a curious one. She liked Bill Patch, and she had always been prejudiced against Mrs. Harter, but she was one of the few people who said hardly anything at all about what was going on, and she snubbed Sallie even more severely than usual when Sallie dissected the situation in her habitual cold-blooded, clear-sighted way.

  Martyn Ambrey, who took the line of having discovered from the very first that the personality of Mrs. Harter was one that presaged disaster, was, if possible, more intensely interested than his sister.

  He exploited the whole thing, conversationally, letting off verbal fireworks in display of his own powers of analysis, and evidently hoping for nothing so much as a grand dramatic climax, such as the murder of Harter by Captain Patch, or the suicide of Mrs. Harter.

  “Which, of everything in the world, are about the most unlikely things to happen,” said Sallie scornfully. “Life is nothing but a series of anti-climaxes, one after another.”

  “Anti-climax implies climax,” said Martyn, scoring.

  Their clever flippancies were rather revealing. They would have seen tragedy itself in terms of revue... clever, noisy, flippant, essentially unemotional — everything that, in 1924, was meant by “modern.”

  “Harter will have to come to the show to-morrow night,” Martyn affirmed. “It’ll be frightfully interesting to see them all three together.”

  “I should imagine that he will take his wife away to-morrow morning, if he has any sense of decency,” Claire replied coldly.

  Martyn returned gravely that Harter, he was perfectly certain, had no sense of decency whatever.

  “Besides,” said I, “the word ‘take’ is not one that I should apply to Mrs. Harter — least of all, perhaps, where her husband is concerned.”

  “In any case, she’s bound to sing for us,” Christopher pointed out.

  He was taking the play with intense seriousness, whereas the triangle of Bill, and Mrs. Harter, and Mrs. Harter’s husband, scarcely interested him at all.

  He saw it — when he did see it, that is to say — merely as something rather commonplace, and faintly shocking.

  “Well, I suppose I must give them the opportunity of behaving properly,” said Claire, referring to Mrs. Harter, and she wrote a note and sent it to Queen Street by hand, expressing a perfunctory hope that Mrs. Harter would “bring” her husband to the theatricals and the dance. None of us were exactly surprised, but all of us were perhaps more or less conscious of obscure excitement when Mrs. Harter, in a laconic note, accepted Claire’s invitation on behalf of herself and Mr. Harter.

  XIII

  MARTYN AMBREY, evidently desirous of showing me what a strongly individual view-point he possessed, told me that evening that he felt “Mr. Harter,” as we all called him, in faint mimicry of his wife’s invariable phrase — to be very much more worth seeing than the theatricals themselves.

  I did not tell him that I felt exactly the same. He would probably not have believed me. {DELAFIELD HARTER TEXT}

  By seven o’clock the house was full of people, most of them in a state of great disorder and agitation.

  People were dressing, or even undressing, in every room.

  At last Claire appeared in the hall, in a very beautiful black velvet gown.

  “They’ll be ready by nine o’clock,” she said confidently.

  The curtain was to go up at nine. The performers, all except Mrs. Harter, had dined early at the Manor.

  She and her husband arrived after dinner.

  “Mr and Mrs. Harter.”

  Whatever her gaucheries Mrs. Harter knew how to enter a room — an art that is not a common one, nor — generally — an acquired one. She moved remarkably well.

  Harter followed her.

  The word “nondescript” is the one that first occurs to me, in attempting to describe him, and the next one is “unwholesome.”

  He was a small man, sandy-haired, with a sallow, fretful face, and narrow shoulders. He seemed to walk like a cat — almost, but never quite, on the tips of his toes. When his wife, in her abrupt, graceless fashion said, by way of introduction: “This is Mr. Harter,” he bowed stiffly. Almost at once, Mrs. Harter, obviously constrained, suggested that she ought to go and change her dress, and Claire took her away.

  I gave Harter a drink.

  He was a difficult man to talk with, non-committal, and without humour. It was a relief to him, without a doubt, when Mr and Mrs. Leeds were announced.

  I performed the usual introductions, but Leeds only listens to his own voice, never to that of anybody else.

  He said “How d’ye do,” and in the same breath went on to talk of the play, and ended his sentence with a hearty laugh and the pleasing observation —

  “Amateur theatricals almost always lead to a scandal of some sort, that’s the beauty of them. Somebody runs off with somebody else’s wife — that sort of thing. I’ve seen it happen time and time again—”

  “Mr. Harter, have another drink,” said I, with all the distinctness of utterance at my command. I saw — and no doubt Harter did too — that Leeds jumped at the sound of his name. Then he looked at Mrs. Leeds, then again, hard, at Harter, and finally at me, with comically raised eyebrows. Harter remained entirely impervious.

  “Let me see, you and I met once in Cairo, I believe,” said Mr. Leeds, “when our yacht was at Alexandria.”

  “Yes,” said the little man, with a sort of neutral civility. “I believe that was so.”

  “And your wife—”

  “Oh yes.”

  There was a pause.

  I had an unreasonable, and quite unfounded, premonition that the next thing would be the cocktail story.

  It was a relief when Lady Annabel and the Rector arrived, and then the Kendals, and other people.

  The atmosphere was somehow jerky, almost apprehensive. No conversation seemed to have any continuity, and no movement any very definite purpose.

  The third, and greatest, relief of the evening was when we all adjourned to our places in front of the stage, and waited for the curtain to go up.

  There were a good many people present. Some of the men, amongst them Harter, stood up at the end of the room.

  Mrs. Harter’s song went very well. There was an instant in which I thought, with surprise, that she was nervous. Her eyes searched the audience intently for a moment, seeking to identify someone or something in the fashion that so unmistakably differentiates the amateur from the professional. Lady Annabel, beside me, said not a word, but I saw her eyebrows go up.<
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  However, it wasn’t Bill Patch that Mrs. Harter was looking for — he was behind the scenes, and of course she must have known that. In less than a minute, I saw by her face that she had discovered what she wanted, and she began her song and sang it very well.

  I had enough curiosity to turn round and follow the direction that her glance had taken, and I saw that it must have been her husband, whose situation she had wanted to ascertain.

  His little, sallow face was inexpressive, and I suddenly saw some justification for Martyn’s adjective — reptilian. There was something oddly and inexplicably baleful about the singularly unattractive Mr. Harter, as he leant against the wall and watched his wife on the stage.

  After her song was over, and had been vigorously applauded, she went off the stage, and I did not see her again during the play, but Dolly Kendal, who had a seat at the far end of a row, assured me afterwards that Mrs. Harter sat in the wings, and that Bill Patch came and stood beside her in every interval when he was not on the stage.

  There are always observant people to note these things, and to retail them in conversation.

  Of course the play was a great success. Amateur theatricals always are a great success. Sallie’s performance was quite brilliant and the others were good enough.

  The real success of the evening was achieved by Alfred, who over-acted his part, uttered impromptu soliloquies, cut into other people’s speeches, and played the clown in dumb show throughout a pathetic duet between Sallie and Martyn.

  The audience, as a whole, adored him. He was applauded at every impossible moment, and the servants at the back of the hall screamed with laughter whenever he spoke. Mumma was beaming.

  “I must say, Ahlfred has a great sense of the ridiculous,” she said appreciatively. “I hope we all have, it’s such a help to see the funny side — but Ahlfred especially, from the time he was quite a little fellow, has always been able to keep me in a perfect roar.”

  Finally, the performers all sang “The Bul-bul Ameer,” and Bill and Nancy took a call for “Author,” and then everybody said to everybody else how good it had all been, and the actors came off the stage still in costume, and received compliments and congratulations.