The compensatory reaction followed, as it always does.
“Even if the quality of which you speak were really there, in the link between those two people — and I’m inclined, too, to think that it was there — haven’t you ever wondered what would have become of them — of their love itself, if Bill had lived? Everything was against them — everything was there to divide them — difference of age, class, traditions, outlook. Those things are bound to count, in the long run. Can you see Bill and Diamond Harter together in twenty — even in ten years’ time?”
“I don’t think they’d have been together,” said Mary quietly. “As it happened, the thing was arbitrarily settled for them — but if Bill had lived, they would have had to make a decision, and I don’t think they’d have decided to go away together. Bill said once — not to me, to Nancy — that he knew it would be an — unsporting — thing to do.”
I think she saw, although I said nothing, that, to my captiousness, the word came as something of an anti-climax. It suggested bathos.
As she so often does, Mary replied to my unspoken comment.
“That’s the idiom of Bill’s generation, isn’t it? An earlier one spoke of ‘honour,’ and one earlier still of the Ten Commandments. I can’t imagine Bill or Mrs. Harter taking the Commandments, as such, very seriously — can you? The form in which that ideal has been cast is out of date. But the ideal is still there. Personally, I think they would have subscribed to it — in their own way.”
“Translated into the terms of the football field,” said I coldly.
“If you like,” Mary agreed, unruffled. “Although Bill doesn’t suggest that particular association to my mind, in the very least.”
Nor to mine — as she well knew.
“What has happened to Mrs. Harter?” I asked, not caring to pursue the other issue just then.
“I don’t know. She’s quite clever enough to have found a job, and kept it, if she wanted to.”
“If — yes. But what about all the years since her marriage — Egypt, and the dances, and the cocktails, and the men who fell in love with her — you remember the stories that fellow Leeds told us?”
“She won’t go back to that. Bill spoilt all that for her, you know. And anyway, she has no money now, has she?”
“Harter?”
“She isn’t going to see him again.”
“She’s deserted him?”
“If you care to put it like that, yes. I suppose one can say: he’s been sent to prison, and when he comes out he’ll not find his wife. She’s deserted him. But on the other hand, she would also have ‘deserted’ him, if he hadn’t been sent to prison at all. It isn’t because he’s gone to prison that she’s left him. I don’t know why I tell you these things in so many words, Miles. You know them as well as I do, really.”
I did, of course. Perhaps, like Claire, I understood more about Mrs. Harter than I actually wanted to understand.
She remains, to me, entirely unforgettable. I think of her when I go down Queen Street, past the hideous bow-window, set in yellow bricks, at which she sat and watched for Bill Patch. I think of both of them when I go up Loman Hill, and turn round at the cross roads to look over the gate under the big beech tree. Again and again I find myself wondering where she is now, and whether she will some day come back to Cross Loman.
Mary says that she never will.
No one has heard from her, no one knows whether she is alive or dead. The charitable Lady Annabel once murmured a suggestion to the effect that “that infamous woman” would, no doubt, have changed her name, discarding the one which she had covered “with enduring shame.”
I disagree with Lady Annabel, first and last. I cannot imagine Mrs. Harter changing her name, even though it belongs to her husband, and I do not consider that she has “covered it with enduring shame.” These phrases...
The personality of Diamond Harter outweighs them all, and leaves one confronted only with a sense of stark tragedy.
And that, to my mind, remains the last word in the case. Tragedy, one of the rarest things in the world, came into our midst, and came through the only two people capable of tragedy. Most of us, as a matter of fact, did not even recognise it. The Leeds saw a scandal agreeably shocking and terrible, the Kendals saw folly, and impropriety, and the sad, sad death of one of the few young men of their acquaintance, Lady Annabel saw outraged laws and well-merited retribution, Sallie and Martyn Ambrey saw themselves seeing a very interesting psychological study — and so on.
The affair of Captain Patch and Mrs. Harter was all those things, was fitted by all those labels. But they miss the essence of it, as labels always do.
I am constantly reminded, odiously, and against every aesthetic canon, of a homely French saying: “A bon chat, bon rat.
I know of no dignified equivalent, that can convey that implication. —
We translate life in terms of our own inner values and Bill and Mrs. Harter were capable of tragedy, and it came to them, and most of us condemned them, and some of us only pitied.
It is over, and yet it will never be over It continues to live, in the personality of Diamond Harter, and, indeed, in the personalities of us all.
MESSALINA OF THE SUBURBS
Dedicated to one of Delafield’s closest friends, ‘Rose’ (Dr Margaret Posthuma), this short novel is based on a famous real life case, in which Edith Thompson was convicted and hanged in 1923 as an accomplice of her lover Bywaters, who attacked and killed Thompson’s husband Percy. Their case became a cause célèbre during the 1920’s. Although Thompson was certainly shocked and astonished by the attack, her letters to Bywaters describe her repeated attempts to poison her husband. The novel originally appeared with seven lesser known short stories.
Frederick Bywaters, Edith Thompson, and Percy Thompson in July 1921
CONTENTS
BOOK I. MESSALINA OF THE SUBURBS
PART I
PART II
BOOK II. SEVEN SHORT STORIES
THE BOND OF UNION
LOST IN TRANSMISSION
TIME WORKS WONDERS!
THE GALLANT LITTLE LADY:
THE HOTEL CHILD
IMPASSE
THE APPEAL
BOOK I. MESSALINA OF THE SUBURBS
DEDICATED
TO
M. P. P.
My Dear Margaret,
We have so often agreed that causes are more interesting than the most dramatic results, that I feel you are the right person to receive the dedication of my story about Elsie Palmer, in which I have tried to reconstruct the psychological developments that led, by inexorable degrees, to the catastrophe of murder. These things are never “bolts from the blue” in reality, but merely sensational accessories to the real issue, which lies on that more subtle plane of thought where only personalities are deserving of dissection.
For what it is worth, I offer you an impression of Elsie Palmer’s personality.
E. M. D.
August, 1923.
PART I
I
“Elsie, I’ve told you before, I won’t have you going with boys.”
“I don’t, mother.”
“Yes, you do. And don’t contradict. Surely to goodness you’re aware by this time that it’s the height of bad manners to contradict. I’ve taken trouble enough to try and make a lady of you, I’m sure, and now all you can do is to contradict your mother, and spend your time walking the streets with boys.”
“Mother, I never.”
“Now don’t tell lies about it, Elsie. Mother knows perfectly well when you’re telling a lie, and you don’t take her in by crocodile tears either, my lady. Don’t let me have to speak to you again about the same thing, that’s all.”
Elsie began to cry, automatically and without conviction. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do, miss. I mean Johnnie Osborne, and Johnnie Osborne’s brother, and Stanley Begg and the rest of them. Now, no more of it, Elsie. Go and give the gurl a han
d with washing up the tea-things, and hurry up.”
Elsie went away, glad that it was so soon over. Sometimes mother went on for ages. Thank the Lord she was busy to-day, with two new paying guests coming in. As she went past the drawing-room door Elsie looked in.
“Hallo, little girl!”
“Hallo, Mr. Roberts! Can’t stay, I’ve to go and help the girl wash up or something.”
“You’ve been crying!”
“I haven’t, then!” She went further into the room and let him see the downward droop of her pouting mouth and her wet eyelashes. She had not cried hard enough to make her nose turn red.
“I say, what a shame! What have they been doing to you?”
“Oh, nothing. Mother’s on the warpath, that’s all. It isn’t anything.”
“How rotten of her! Fancy scolding you! I thought you were always good, Elsie.”
“And who said you might call me Elsie, if you’ll kindly answer me that, Mister Impertinence?”
She shook her short, bobbing curls at him and laughed, suddenly good-tempered.
“You witch! Elsie, shall you miss me a tiny bit when I’m gone?”
“Oh, you’re going, are you?” She pretended to consider. “Let me see, there’s a single gentleman coming, who’ll have your room, and a married lady and gentleman for the front bedroom. I don’t really suppose, Mr. Roberts, there’ll be time to miss you much, with the house full like that.” She looked innocently up at him.
“Little devil!” he muttered between his teeth, causing her to thrill slightly, although she maintained her pose of artlessness without a visible tremor.
“Who’s the bounder who’s going to have my room after to-night?”
“Mister Roberts!” She affected a high key of indignation. “He isn’t a bounder. You know very well that mother’s awfully particular. She wouldn’t take anyone without he was a perfect gentleman in every way. Now I can’t wait another minute. I should get into an awful row if mother caught me here.”
“What’s the harm? Don’t run away, Elsie. Just tell me this: are you coming to the pictures to-night — for the last evening?”
“Oh, are you going to take me and Geraldine? I don t suppose Geraldine’ll be able to — she’s ill.”
“Can’t we go without her?”
“Mother wouldn’t let me.”
“Well, look here, Elsie — come without telling anyone. Do, just for the lark. I swear I’ll take the greatest care of you.”
“Oh, how could I? Besides, mother’d want to know where I was.”
“Can’t you say you’re going somewhere with that eternal friend of yours — that Irene Tidmarsh girl, or whatever her name is?”
“I’ll thank you to remember you’re speaking of a friend of mine, Mr. Roberts. And the idea of suggesting I should do such a thing as deceive my mother! Why, I’m surprised at you!”
“Don’t rot, Elsie. Say you’ll come. Slip out after supper, and meet me at the bottom of the road. There’s a jolly good programme on at the Palatial.”
“I hope you’ll enjoy the pictures, Mr. Roberts,” said Elsie demurely. She sidled backwards to the door.
“I shall wait for you — eight o’clock sharp.”
“Don’t catch cold waiting,” she mocked.
“Look here, kid—”
“That’s mother! She’ll skin me alive, if I give her half a chance!” She flew out into the hall and down the passage to the kitchen.
The servant Nellie was there, and Elsie’s sister Geraldine.
“Where’ve you been, Elsie?”
“With mother. I didn’t know you were here; I thought you were s’posed to be ill.”
“So I am ill,” returned Geraldine bitterly. “But as you were out, someone had to do some work.”
Elsie looked critically at her sister. Geraldine did look ill, sallow and with black rims round her eyes, but then she had something altogether wrong with her digestion, and often looked like that.
“Bilious again?”
“‘M. I think it was that beastly pudding we had last night. I’ve been awfully sick.”
“Poor wretch!”
Neither of them paid any attention to Nellie Simmons, who went on plunging and clattering greasy spoons and plates about in the water that steamed from a chipped enamel basin.
“Can’t you take this rag, Elsie, and wipe a bit, and let me get upstairs? I’m sure I’m going to be sick again.”
“I suppose I must, then — poor me!”
“Poor you, when you’ve been out since dinner! I should like to know what for. If it was me, now — Oh, Lord, my head!”
“Well, go on upstairs again. Have you tried the new medicine that Ireen’s aunt did the testimonial for?”
“Yes, and I don’t believe it’s a bit better than any of the others. I feel like nothing on earth. I say, where were you all the afternoon?”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” said Elsie, wiping the plates.
“I’m sure I don’t want to know.”
“That’s all right then, we’re both satisfied, because I don’t mean to tell you.”
Geraldine looked angrily at her sister and walked away, her thin plait of dark hair flapping limply between her angular, slouching shoulders.
“What is there for supper to-night, Nellie?” said Elsie presently.
“The ‘am.”
“Oh, goodness, that old ham! Why can’t we ever have anything nice, I should like to know! And I s’pose the cold tart’s got to be finished up, and that beastly cold shape?”
“That’s right,” Nellie said laconically.
“Well, there’ll be no cooking to do, that’s one thing.”
“She wants some soup put on, because of the new people, but I’ve left it all ready. I’m off at six sharp, I can tell you.”
“What’s the hurry, Nellie?” asked Elsie amicably. She saw that Nellie wanted to be asked, and she felt good- humoured because there was no cooking to be done, and she could lay the supper and ring the bell earlier than usual, so as to be able to keep her appointment with Mr. Roberts.
“I’ve got someone waiting for me, I’ave,” Nellie said importantly. “Couldn’t be kept waiting — oh dear, no!” Elsie looked at the ugly, white-faced Cockney woman, whose teeth projected, decayed and broken, and round the corners of whose mouth and nostrils clung clusters of dry pimples, and burst out laughing.
“It’s true!” said Nellie, offended. “And I’m off now.”
She went to dry her chapped hands on the limp and dingy’roller-towel that hung beside the cold-water tap.
Elsie laughed again, partly to tease Nellie Simmons and partly because it really amused her to think that her own projected diversion with Mr. Roberts should be parodied by this grotesque Nellie and some unknown, equally grotesque, companion.
Nellie pulled down her hat and coat from the peg on the kitchen door, put them on and went away, although it was quarter of an hour before her time. She knew well enough that none of them would say anything, Elsie reflected. Girls were too difficult to get hold of, when one took in guests.
As soon as the side door had slammed behind Nellie, Elsie flew into the scullery. A broken piece of looking-glass hung there, where she had nailed it up herself long ago.
She pulled down the thick, dust-coloured wave of hair that fell from a boyish, left-hand parting, until it lay further across her forehead, deepening the natural kink in it with her fingers, and loosening the black ribbon bow that fell over one ear. The soft, flopping curls fell to her shoulders on either side of her full, childish face. She rubbed hard at her cheeks for a moment, without producing very much visible effect on their uniform pale pinkiness, starred all over with tiny golden freckles. The gold was repeated in her eyelashes and pale eyebrows, but Elsie’s eyes, to her eternal regret, were neither blue nor brown. They were something between a dark grey and a light green, and the clear blue whites of them showed for a space between the iris and the lower lid.
Her nose was straight
and short; her wide mouth, habitually pouting, possessed a very full underlip and a short, curving upper one. When she showed her teeth, they were white and even, but rather far apart. The most salient characteristic of her face was that its high cheekbones, and well-rounded cheeks, gave an odd impression of pushing against her underlids, so that her eyes very often looked half shut, and small. Elsie saw this in herself, and it made her furious. She called it “a Japanese doll look.”
She realised that her soft, rounded neck was really beautiful, and was secretly proud of the opulent curves of her figure; but to other girls she pretended that she thought herself too fat, although in point of fact she wore no stays.
She thought with pride that she looked more like eighteen than sixteen years old, although she was not, and knew that she never would be, very tall.
Dragging a black velveteen tam-o’-shanter from her pocket, Elsie pulled it rakishly on over her curls, her fingers quickly and skilfully pouching the worn material so that it sagged over to one side. The hands with which she manipulated the tam-o’-shanter were freckled too, like her face, and of the same uniform soft pink. The fingers were short, planted very far apart, and broad at the base and inclining to curve backwards.
She wiped them on the roller-towel, as Nellie Simmons had done, only far more hurriedly, and then went quietly out at the side door. It opened straight into a small blind alley, and Elsie ran up it, and into the road at a corner of which her home was situated. Turning her back on No. 15, from which she had just emerged, she kept on the same side of the road, hoping to escape observation even if Mrs. Palmer were to look out of the window.
Very soon, however, she was obliged to cross the road, and then she rang the bell of a tall house that was the counterpart of the one she lived in, and indeed of all the other hundred and eighty yellow-and-red brick houses in Hillbourne Terrace.
Ireen Tidmarsh opened the door, a lanky, big-eyed creature, with two prominent front teeth and an immense plait of ugly brown hair. Her arms and legs were thick and shapeless.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 255