Perhaps abruptly — perhaps tactlessly — who could say? At all events, Mrs. Montague and Mrs. Hamilton negatived the suggestion with almost equal curtness. And Cyril said that he really must go.
“I hope we shall meet again,” he added to Mrs. Hamilton. “Are you likely to be in town, next week?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Hamilton promptly.
“We might fix up something,” said Cyril, and his glance swept Mrs. Montague and Miss Glanfield into the scheme with equal benevolence.
“I haven’t got a spare day for weeks and weeks,” said Mrs. Montague violently. “Or night either.”
After that Cyril did not prolong his farewells. The front door had scarcely been slammed behind him by his hostess, before she had swung round again, and a scene had burst into being.
It was a scene that surpassed all those other scenes so unenthusiastically witnessed by Miss Glanfield.
She cowered beside the piano, listening with a kind of unwilling fascination to accusations and epithets that she had hitherto only met with in print — and had then, she realized with surprise, mentally mis-pronounced.
This time, Mrs. Hamilton broke down first, and the word hurled at her by Mrs. Montague as she left the room, caused Miss Glanfield to leave it with her — although her previous acquaintance with the word had been in the pages of Scripture.
“I shall leave her house to-morrow,” cried Ruby hysterically, in the hall.
Miss Glanfield was only shocked that she could say “To-morrow” instead of “To-night.”
In spite of the past, in spite of all that had hitherto astonished her in the relationship between Mrs. Montague and Mrs. Hamilton, Miss Glanfield once again said: “This is the End.”
And once again, it wasn’t the end.
“Sara, simply, isn’t responsible for what she says, when she once loses her temper,” Mrs. Hamilton declared, still staying in Sara’s house, a week later. “Simply, one must ignore it. Just as though she wasn’t responsible. In fact, she isn’t responsible, when she gets like that!”
This she repeated a good many times, although meeting with small response with Miss Glanfield. Mrs. Montague only said:
“I suppose I lost my temper, rather. I do, sometimes. All our family is like that. Just flare up, and then it’s all over, you know. Though Ruby is enough to provoke a saint, putting on that baby-eyed nonsense, at her age. It would really be a kindness to tell her what a fool she makes of herself, going on like that.”
“You did tell her,” Miss Glanfield pointed out. “Did I? Yes, I suppose I did. Well, after all, I shouldn’t be bothered, if I didn’t, actually, rather like the old thing. I will say for myself that, whatever else I am, I’m a good friend.”
A good friend Mrs. Montague continued to be, and as such Mrs. Hamilton apparently accepted her.
Nothing now, thought Miss Glanfield, could break up this extraordinary friendship. It had survived every test.
The following summer Sara went so far as to invite Ruby’s daughter, Marjorie, to stay with her for a month at the sea, on the usual more-guest-than-paying basis.
She had with her a niece of her own, to help keep Marjorie Hamilton company, and she referred vaguely to “friends” in the same hotel. Concerning the number and sex of the friends, Miss Glanfield made no inquiry.
Summer holidays had long been over, and Miss Glanfield was, indeed, on a Christmas shopping expedition, when she unexpectedly met Mrs. Hamilton at the Army and Navy Stores. They exclaimed, exchanged a few platitudinous observations as to the coincidence of meeting, and the desirability of shopping early, and then Miss Glanfield suggested coffee.
“Excellent. We shall have time for a chat. Let’s go up now. Where is the lift?”
The lift was found, and conveyed them to the restaurant.
“Now do tell me all your news,” Mrs. Hamilton said, just as Miss Glanfield exclaimed, “And how is the East?”
They found a great deal to say to one another, but presently Miss Glanfield became conscious of an ominous reticence on the part of her companion.
The name of Sara Montague loomed between them, unspoken.
It became more and more impossible to converse naturally.
At last Miss Glanfield took the bull by the horns.
“Have you seen anything of Sara since you got home?” she demanded in a loud, unnatural voice.
“Sara?” echoed Mrs. Hamilton, in a voice even more loud and unnatural. “Do you mean Sara Montague?”
“Certainly I do,” said Miss Glanfield, roused by so preposterous an inquiry.
“Well, my dear, I should have thought you might have known, but perhaps you haven’t seen her?”
“Not since — let me see — it must have been last June, just before your girl went to stay with her at Dinard.”
Mrs. Hamilton gave one of those short, searing laughs that Miss Glanfield had heard before.
“Yes. Poor Marjorie!”
“Didn’t she enjoy herself?”
“Oh, I dare say she enjoyed herself all right,” Mrs. Hamilton retorted. Then she suddenly burst forth into volubility.
“The fact is, Sara and I have parted brass rags — and I’m only surprised that you haven’t heard about it from her.”
“I haven’t seen her since June, and she never writes letters.”
“Oh, doesn’t she? Well, she wrote one too many, to me. Of course, I know you’re by way of being her friend — and Heaven knows she needs one decent friend in her life, but I think even you will admit that Sara’s gone rather too far, this time.”
In the opinion of Miss Glanfield, Sara had gone a very great deal too far many times already, and so, for that matter, had Ruby Hamilton.
She felt her eyes dilated in horrified anticipation.
“Tell me,” she murmured.
“Yes, in justice to myself, Miss Glanfield, I shall tell you. Sara, of course, will give you her own version later on, but we all know what poor Sara’s standard of truthfulness is, and anyway, I’ve still got her letter, and if that isn’t proof, I don’t know what is.”
“Proof!” said Miss Glanfield distractedly, her mind a frightful jumble of legal threats, newspaper reports and public scandals. “Has it come to that?”
“It’s come,” said Mrs. Hamilton solemnly, “to the parting of the ways. I don’t deny that Sara and I have been friends, for some years, now — but it’s over. Absolutely. I’d have forgiven her anything else, but her behaviour about Marjorie’s visit is something I can never overlook.”
“What happened?” Miss Glanfield asked faintly.
“Well, of course it’s a long story. She offered to have Marjorie — knowing I couldn’t be home myself for the holidays — and we arranged the whole thing, and she was to let me know Marjorie’s expenses. Anything reasonable, I said, for God knows I don’t grudge the poor child anything. In fact, I wrote and said she was to have all the fun she could, and hang the expense. Of course, Sara scored by it, in a way, because she could always take seats for the theatre, or go to the pictures, and charge it up to Marjorie’s account. I expected that, knowing Sara. But what I didn’t expect was this.”
Mrs. Hamilton drew a long breath.
“Sara — actually — charged me for two pieces of toilet soap. It seems that they didn’t provide any at the hotel, and she got two fourpenny tablets, and there they were in the accounts: Soap for Marjorie: eightpence. Can you beat it?”
“Did you — ?”
“No, I did not,” said Mrs. Hamilton. “I wrote and told her that I really didn’t see why I should pay for soap, when she must already have made a huge profit out of the child. And she wrote back a perfectly furious letter, practically accusing me of meanness towards my own child. I haven’t paid, and I never will pay.”
“I’m sorry,” said Miss Glanfield, “that this has happened.”
“So am I,” Mrs. Hamilton replied, “but there are some things that no one can be expected to stand. And charging for two fourpenny tablets of soap is one of them. After t
his, I shall never speak to Sara Montague again.”
And, so far as Miss Glanfield knew, she never did. The breaking-point had been reached.
WE’RE ALL ALIKE AT HEART
MRS. RYDALL sat at her writing-table, and answered letters.
From time to time she glanced out of the open French window.
It was the beginning of summer.
“Lovely — quite lovely,” thought Mrs. Rydall absent-mindedly, and went busily on, about the accounts of the Flower Show, and the Junior League speaker, and her new dress that had been sent home too tight under the arms.
This was a misfortune that was apt to overtake Mrs. Rydall. She knew her bust measurement to the fraction of an inch, but always she drew herself in when the tape was put round her, and pretended to herself and to the dressmaker that she was slim.
A blackbird sang from the lilac bush, that was just flowering, and the little lawn was enamelled with daisies — and also, indeed, with dandelions, decorative but unorthodox — and there were red and yellow wallflowers, and daffodils, and forget-me-nots, in the four oblong flower-beds of the “Brockenhurst” garden.
It wasn’t in the suburbs.
“Living in the country as we do—” Mrs.
Rydall always said, with adamantine firmness.
There were telegraph wires running just outside the front gate, but they had a long way to go before reaching London — more than twenty miles. And beyond the high-road and the telegraph wires there were fields, with elm-trees, and, at present, myriads of golden-dusted buttercups.
Miss Miller would have to take the children for a real country walk, this afternoon.
Appropriately, Miss Miller and the children appeared on the lawn.
They were playing with a ball.
“Miss Miller — Miss Miller!”
Mrs. Rydall’s nursery governess came quickly to the French window.
She was small, and pale, and rather pretty, in a freckled, insignificant sort of way. To-day, in a lilac-coloured cotton frock, without her cheap and ugly little black straw hat, she looked quite nice. Her uncovered hair held the gleams of twenty-one, and her bare arms were shapely.
“Yes, Mrs. Rydall P Oh, isn’t it a lovely day!”
“Really beautiful. Like summer. Well, of course, it is the first of May. I think the children might go for a walk across the fields this afternoon — right down to that place where they found the water-cress.”
“I know. That would be delightful,” dutifully replied Miss Miller, who had to find things delightful when they were suggested by her employer, and had, further, to convey a sense of their delightfulness to the children.
“Very well then, that’s splendid. Oh, dear—”
Little Cyril had fallen down.
Miss Miller flew.
Mrs. Rydall noted her promptitude with approval. The little creature could run, although in the course of her daily avocations she generally crept. Twice Mrs. Rydall had been forced to speak to her about letting the children dawdle on their walks, instead of stepping out briskly. The first time that she had spoken, in November, Miss Miller — then newly arrived — had anxiously replied: “Certainly, Mrs. Rydall.” The second time, just before Easter, she had feebly answered, with a smile that really apologized for the futility of her words, that “it was the cold. The cold devitalized her.”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Rydall had assured her shrinking — employee — kindly — but bracingly.
“Nonsense, you wouldn’t be cold if you took a good strapping walk. Circulation, that’s what it is.”
Actually, the elixir described by Mrs. Rydall as “circulation” appeared to be operating upon Miss Miller to-day, when it was positively hot for the first time that year.
She looked quite pink, as she picked up the bellowing Cyril and adjusted his disorder.
Mrs. Rydall heaved a sigh that was practically a groan.
Circulation, in her case, was also a cause of distress, but from opposite reasons.
She knew too well that, with the approach of the summer, the thick, pink colour of her face would deepen to a veinous violet, against which no amount of powder could avail anything, that the arm-holes of all her dresses would become a source of unceasing anxiety to her, that, on any exertion, her head would swim and her ears experience a strange buzzing sensation, and that every pair of shoes she had in the world would cause her the most exquisite agony, in the putting on, the taking off, and the wearing.
Mrs. Rydall did not feel that she could welcome the summer with any enthusiasm.
The three children and Miss Miller moved away, out of sight of the window — although not out of sound, since the garden was too small for that — and Mrs. Rydall, having duly dealt with the claims of citizenship, turned to social duties, that interested her very much more.
She accepted an invitation to Bridge at “The Laburnums” (in the same road as “Brockenhurst”) only tepidly. She thought that Bridge was smart, and she adored it, but “The Laburnums” was not smart at all, and she knew exactly whom she would meet there — all local people — and that there would be rolled bread-and-butter, and a bought iced walnut cake, and Shrewsbury biscuits, for tea.
Over the next letter, her rather prominent grey-green eyes brightened.
Sir Basil and Lady Brownloe invited Mr and Mrs. Rydall to the marriage of their daughter Adeline, at St. Peter’s, Eaton Square, and afterwards to the reception in Portland Place. Mrs. Rydall felt something approaching ecstasy, as she reflected that the cut-glass salad bowl had been worth it over and over again, incommensurate with its magnificence though her tenuous acquaintance with the Brownloes now was. But years and years ago, she and the future Lady Brownloe had been to the same dancing-classes.
“We were more or less brought up together, although one rather loses sight, later on—” said Mrs. Rydall, elastically.
But she hadn’t lost sight to the extent of omitting an annual call in Portland Place, and the call had always been faithfully returned. And now this.
“A regular West-end affair!” Mrs. Rydall, in her mind, rehearsed the casual allusions with which she would titillate the minds of “The Laburnums” and “Mon Repos” and “Auchterloney.”
If this weather held, she would wear her new dress, after it had been altered. Better get it packed up at once.
She got up, and something creaked. Something always creaked when Mrs. Rydall moved, but she did not know what it was. She went, quickly and yet heavily, upstairs, and with swift, efficient movements found a cardboard box, and brown paper and string, and packed up the navy-blue crepe-de-chine frock once more. When she had finished, she noticed that she was out of breath.
“It must be the heat,” thought Mrs. Rydall, who did not want to think that it was obesity and tight clothing.
She went downstairs slowly, just as the gong rang.
The smell of boiled mutton and capers filled the hall and the dining-room, and hovered halfway up the stairs.
Miss Miller, Phyllis, Monica, and Cyril all stood behind their chairs round the dining-room table, and when Mrs. Rydall had taken up her stand opposite the boiled mutton, Cyril said grace.
As Mr. Rydall was at work in London all day, his wife had acquired great proficiency in carving, and she unflinchingly distributed ragged pieces of meat, slivers of congealing fat, and solidifying spoonfuls of thin gravy.
The maid handed the boiled potatoes and the caper sauce.
“It’s really almost too hot—” Miss Miller said, and her employer received the perhaps unjust impression that she had originally intended to end the sentence with the words “to eat.”
If so, it was just as well for Miss Miller that she’d changed her mind. Putting it into the children’s heads not to want their dinner. Mrs. Rydall felt almost as much indignation as if the monstrous remark had actually been allowed to come to birth.
It was therefore unfortunate for little Miss Miller that, after suet roll and hot treacle had followed the mutton, she should pursue Mrs. Ryd
all into the drawing-room and ask whether she might have the following afternoon off duty.
“No, Miss Miller, really. I must say ‘No.’ I have a Bridge engagement myself, and you know very well I can’t leave the new girl in charge of the children. Perhaps next week, if it’s really — Do you want to do anything very particular?” asked Mrs. Rydall suspiciously.
“No, oh no. It was just — but of course I quite understand — only being such lovely weather—”
Miss Miller’s incoherence struck Mrs. Rydall as being of a guilty nature. Not guilty of anything in particular, but just guilty.
“As it’s such lovely weather, you can take the children for a picnic tea, to-morrow,” she said temperately. “And next week I will arrange to let you have a free afternoon — if you really want it. But I’m sure you’ll understand that I can’t throw up all my own engagements like that.”
“Of course not, Mrs. Rydall. And thank you very much.”
Mrs. Rydall nodded, with kind finality, and Miss Miller hurried back to her charges.
If she had been the cook, an afternoon, an evening, and if necessary a week, off duty would have been hurriedly conceded to her lightest threat — but the position of a nursery governess is very different to the position of a cook, as Mrs. Rydall and Miss Miller and the cook all very well knew.
Nothing more was heard of Miss Miller’s request and the weather continued to be lovely.
It was so lovely, and so hot, the week of Miss Adeline Brownloe’s wedding, that there could no longer be any doubt in Mrs. Rydall’s mind as to wearing the blue crepe-de-chine, now better adjusted to the shape of her person.
One night after supper she tried it on, and then went down to the drawing-room where her husband sat, and her husband’s nephew, who had come on a motor-bicycle unexpectedly and inconsiderately, and had practically invited himself to spend the week-end at “Brockenhurst.”
“Now,” said Mrs. Rydall, “if you two gentlemen can rouse yourselves from your tobacco for a moment — tell me what you think of this frock.”
“Oh, topping, Aunt Dulcie,” said young Edward Rydall — most casually.
Mr. Rydall, naturally, was in better training.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 555