by Hugh Walpole
Mrs. Comber knew that this term had been worse than usual, because she had arrived already, although it was only just past halfterm, at the condition of saying nothing to Freddie when he spoke to her — she called it submission, but she never arrived at it until she was nearly at the limits of her endurance. And now this news of Isabel suddenly made the world bright again; she loved Isabel better than anyone in the world except Freddie and the children; and her love was of the purely unselfish kind, so that joy at Isabel’s happiness far outweighed her own discomforts. She was really most tremendously glad, glad with all her size and volubility and color.
Isabel talked to her in her bedroom — it was of course also Freddie’s, but he had left no impression on it whatever, whereas she, by a series of touches — the light green wall-paper and the hard black of the shining looking-glass, the silver things, and the china things (not very many, but all made the most of), — had made it her own unmistakably, so that everything shouted Mrs. Comber with a war of welcome. It was indeed, in spite of the light green paper, a noisy impression, and one had always the feeling that things — the china, the silver, and the chairs — jumped when one wasn’t in, charged, as it were, with the electricity of Mrs. Comber’s temperament and the color of her dresses.
But of course Isabel knew it all well enough, and she didn’t in the least mind the stridency of it — in fact it all rather suited the sense of battle that there was in the air, so that the things seemed to say that they knew that there was a row on, and that they jolly well liked it. Freddie had been cross at dinner, and so, in so far as it was at all his room, the impression would not have been pleasant; but he just, one felt, slipped into bed and out of it, and there was an end of his being there.
Mrs. Comber, taking a few things off, putting a bright new dressing-gown on, and smiling from ear to ear, watched Isabel with burning eyes.
“Oh! my dear!... No, just come and sit on the bed beside me and have these things off, and I’ve been much too busy to write about that skirt of mine that I told you I would, and there it is hanging up to shame me! Well! I’m just too glad, you dear!” Here she hugged and kissed and patted her hand. “And he is such a nice young man, although Freddie doesn’t like him, you know, over the football or something, although I’m sure I never know what men’s reasons are for disliking one another, and Freddie’s especially; but I liked him ever since he dined here that night, although I didn’t really see much of him because, you know, he played Bridge at the other table and I was much too worried!” She drew a breath, and then added quite simply, like a child, and in that way of hers that was so perfectly fascinating: “My dear, I love you, and I want you to be happy, and I think you will — and I want you to love me.”
Isabel could only, for answer, fling her arms about her and hold her very tight indeed, and she felt in that little confession that there was more pathos than any one human being could realize and that life was terribly hard for some people.
“Of course, it is wonderful,” she said at last, looking with her clear, beautiful eyes straight in front of her. “One never knew how wonderful until it actually came. Love is more than the finest writer has ever said and not, I suspect, quite so much as the humblest lover has ever thought it — and that’s pessimistic of me, I suppose,” she added laughing; “but it only means that I’m up to all the surprises and ready for them.”
“You’ll find it exactly whatever you make it,” Mrs. Comber said slowly. “I don’t think the other party has really very much to do with it. You never lose what you give, my dear; but, as a matter of fact he’s the very nicest and trustiest young man, and no one could ever be a brute to you, whatever kind of brutes they were to anyone else — and I wish I’d remembered about that skirt.”
The silence of the room and house, the peace of the night outside, came about Isabel like a comfortable cloak, so that she believed that everything was most splendidly right.
“And now, my dear,” said Mrs. Comber, “tell me what this is that I hear about your young man and Mr. Perrin, because I only heard the veriest words from Freddie, and I was just talking to Jane at the time about not breathing when she’s handing round the things, because she’s always doing it, and she’ll have to go if she doesn’t learn.”
Isabel looked grave.
“It seems the silliest affair,” she said; “and yet it’s a great pity, because it may make a lot of trouble, I’m afraid. But that’s why we announced our engagement to-day, because it’ll be, it appears, a case of taking sides.”
“It always is here,” said Mrs. Comber, “when there’s the slightest opportunity of it.”
“Well, it looks as though there was going to be plenty of opportunity this time,” Isabel said sighing. “It really is too silly. Apparently Archie took Mr. Perrin’s umbrella to preparation in Upper School this morning without asking. They hadn’t been getting on very well before, and when Mr. Perrin asked for his umbrella and Archie said that he’d taken it, there was a regular fight. The worst of it is that there were lots of people there; and now, of course, it is all over the school, and it will never be left alone as it ought to be.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Comber, solemnly, “it will be the opportunity for all sorts of things. We’re all just ripe for it. How perfectly absurd of Mr. Perrin! But then he’s an ass, and I always said so, and now it only proves it, and I wish he’d never come here. Of course you know that I’m with you, my dear; but I’m afraid that Freddie won’t be, because he doesn’t like your Archie, and there’s no getting over it — and on whose side all the others will be there’s no knowing whatever — and indeed I don’t like to think of it all.”
She was so serious about it that Isabel at once became serious too. Her worst suspicions about it all were suddenly confirmed, so that the room, instead of its quiet and peace, was filled with a thousand sharp terrors and crawling fears. She was afraid of Mr. Perrin, she was afraid of the crowd of people, she was afraid of all the ill-feeling that promised soon to overwhelm her. She clutched Mrs. Comber’s arm.
“Oh!” she cried, “will they hate us?”
“They’ll do their best, my dear,” said that lady solemnly, “to hate somebody.”
II.
And they came, comparatively in their multitudes, to tea on the next afternoon.
Tuesday was, as it happened, Mrs. Comber’s day, and the hour’s relief that followed its ending scarcely outweighed the six days’ terror at its horrible approach. Its disagreeable qualities were, of course, in the first place those of any “at home” whatever — the stilted and sterile fact of being there sacrificially for anyone to trample on in the presence of a delighted audience and a glittering tea-table. But in Mrs. Comber’s case there was the additional trouble of “town” and “school” never in the least suiting, although “town” was only a question of local houses like the squire and the clergyman, and they ought to have combined, one would have thought, easily enough.
The society of small provincial towns has been made again and again the jest and mockery of satiric fiction, having, it is considered, in the quality of its conversation a certain tinkling and malicious chatter that is unequaled elsewhere. Far be it from me to describe the conversation of the ladies of Moffatt’s in this way — it was a thing of far deeper and graver import.
The impossibility of escape until the term’s triumphant conclusion made what might, in a wider and finer hemisphere, have been simply malicious conversation that sprang up and disappeared without result, a perpetual battle of death and disaster. No slightest word but had its weightiest result, because everyone was so close upon everyone else that things said rebounded like peas flung against a board.
Mrs. Comber, at her tea-parties, had long ago ceased to consider the safety or danger of anything that she might say. It seemed to her that whatever she said always went wrong, and did the greatest damage that it was possible for any one thing to do; and now she counted her Tuesdays as days of certain disaster, allowing a dozen blunders to a Tu
esday and hoping that she would “get off,” so to speak, on that. But on occasions like the present, when there was really something to talk about, she shuddered at the possible horrors; her line, of course, was strong enough, because it was Isabel first and Isabel last; and if that brought her into conflict with all the other ladies of the establishment, then she couldn’t help it. Had it been merely a question of the Umbrella Riot, as some wit had already phrased it, she knew clearly enough where they were all likely to be; but now that there was Isabel’s engagement as well, she felt that their anger would be stirred by that bright, young lady having made a step forward and having been, in some odd, obscure, feminine way, impertinently pushing.
She wished passionately, as she sat in glorious purple before her silver, tea-things, her little pink cakes, and her vanishingly thin pieces of bread-and-butter, that the “town” would, on this occasion at any rate, put in an appearance, because that would prevent anyone really “getting at” things; but, of course, as it happened, the “town” for once wasn’t there at all, and the battle raged quite splendidly.
The combatants were the two Misses Madder, Mrs. Dormer, and Mrs. Moy-Thompson, and it might seem that these ladies were not numerically enough to do any lastingly serious damage; but it was the bodies that they represented rather than the individuals that they actually were; and poor Mrs. Comber, as she smiled at them and talked at them and wished that the little pink cakes might poison them all, knew exactly the reason of their separate appearances and the danger that they were, severally and individually.
The Misses Madder represented the matrons, and they represented them as securely and confidently as though they had sat in conclave already and drawn up a list of questions to be asked and answers to be given. Mrs. Dormer represented the wives and also, separately, Mrs. Dormer, in so far as her own especial dislike of Mrs. Comber went for everything; Mrs. Moy-Thompson, above all, faded, black, thin, and miserable, represented her lord and master, and was regarded by the other ladies as a spy whose accurate report of the afternoon’s proceedings would send threads spinning from that dark little study for the rest of the term.
The eldest Miss Madder, stout, good-natured, comfortable, had not of herself any malice at all; but her thin, bony sister, exact in her chair, and with eyes looking straight down her nose, influenced her stouter sister to a wonderful extent.
The thin Miss Madder’s remark on receiving her tea, “Well, so Miss Desart’s engaged to Mr. Traill!” showed immediately which of the two pieces of news was considered the most important.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Comber, “and I’m sure it’s delightful. Do have one of those little pink cakes, Mrs. Thompson; they’re quite fresh; and I want you especially to notice that little water-color over there by the screen, because I bought it in Truro last week for simply nothing at Pinner’s, and I believe it’s quite a good one — I’m sure we’re all delighted.”
Mrs. Dormer wasn’t so certain. “They’re a little young,” she said in so chilly a voice that she might have been suddenly transferred, against her will, in the dead of night in the thinnest attire, into the heart of Siberia. “And what’s this I hear from my husband about Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill tumbling about on the floor together this morning — something about an umbrella?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Thompson, moving her chair a little closer, “I heard something this morning about it.”
Mrs. Comber had never before disliked this thin, faded lady so intensely as she did on this afternoon — she seemed to chill the room with her presence; and the consciousness of the trouble that she would bring to various innocent persons in that place by the report of the things that they had said, made of her something inhuman and detached. Mrs. Comber’s only way of easing the situation, “Do have another little pink cake, Mrs. Thompson,” failed altogether on this occasion, and she could only stare at her in a fascinated kind of horror until she realized with a start that she was intended as hostess to give an account of the morning’s proceedings. But she turned to Miss Madder. “You were down there, Miss Madder; tell us all about it.”
Miss Madder was only too ready, having been in the hall at the time and having heard what she called “the first struggle,” and having yielded eventually, rather against her better instincts, to her feminine curiosity — having in fact looked past the shoulders of Mr. Comber and Mr. Birkland and seen the gentlemen struggling on the floor.
“Actually on the floor!” said Mrs. Dormer, still in Siberia.
“Yes, actually on the floor — also all the breakfast things and coffee all over the tablecloth.”
Miss Madder was checked in her enthusiasm by her consciousness of the cold eye of Mrs. Thompson, and the possibility of being dismissed from her position at the end of the term if she said anything she oughtn’t to — also the possibility of an unpleasant conversation with her clever sister afterwards. However, she considered it safe enough to offer it as her opinion that both gentlemen had forgotten themselves, and that Mr. Traill was very much younger than Mr. Perrin, although Mr. Perrin was the harder one to live with — and that it had been a clean tablecloth that morning.
“I call it disgraceful,” was the only light that the younger Miss Madder would throw upon the question.
For a moment there was silence, and then Mrs. Dormer said, “And really about an umbrella?”
“I understand,” said Miss Madder, who was warming to her work and beginning to forget Mrs. Thompson’s eye, “that Mr. Traill borrowed Mr. Perrin’s umbrella without asking permission, and that there was a dispute.”
But it was at once obvious that what interested the ladies was the question of Miss Desart’s engagement to Mr. Traill, and the effect that that had upon the disturbance in question.
“I never quite liked Mr. Traill,” said Mrs. Dormer decisively; “and I cannot say that I altogether congratulate Miss Desart — and I must say that the quarrel of this morning looks a little as though Mr. Traill’s temper was uncertain.”
“Very uncertain indeed, I should think,” said the younger Miss Madder with a sniff.
Mrs. Comber felt their eyes upon her; she knew that they wished to know what she had to say about it all, but she was wise enough to hold her peace.
The other ladies then devoted all their energies upon getting an opinion from Mrs. Comber. During the next quarter of an hour, every lady understanding every other lady, a combined attack was made.
Semi-Chorus a — The question of the umbrella was, of course, a question of order, and, as Mrs. Dormer put it, when a younger master attacks an older one and flings him to the ground, and rubs his hair in the dust and that before a large audience, the whole system of education is in danger; there’s no knowing when things will begin or end, and other masters will be doing dreadful things, and then the prefects, and then other boys, and finally a dreadful picture of the First and Second boys showing what they can do with knives and pistols.
Miss Madder entirely agreed with this, and then enlarged further on the question of property.
Semi-Chorus b — One had one’s things — here she was sure Mrs. Comber would agree — and if one didn’t keep a tight hold of them in these days, one simply did n ‘t know where one would be. Of course one umbrella was a small thing; but, after all, it was aggravating on a wet morning not to find it and then to have no excuse whatever offered to one — anyone would be cross about it. And, after all, with some people if you gave them an inch they took an ell, as the saying was, and if one didn’t show firmness over a small thing like this, it would only lead to people taking other things without asking until one really didn’t know where one was. Of course, it was a pity that Mr. Perrin should have lost his self-control as completely as he appeared to have done, but nevertheless one could quite understand how aggravating it was.
Semi-Chorus a — Mrs. Dormer, continued, keeping order was no light matter, and if those masters who had been in a school for twenty years were to be openly derided before boys and masters, if umbrellas were to be indisc
riminately stolen, and if in fact anything was to be done by anybody at any time whatever without by your leave or for your leave, then one might just as well pack up one’s boxes and go home; and then what would happen, one would like to know, to our schools, our boys, and finally, with an emphatic rattle of cup and saucer, to our country?
Semi-Chorus b — Enlarged the original issue. It was really rather difficult when a young man had been behaving in this way to congratulate the young lady to whom he had just engaged himself. She was of course perfectly charming, but it was a pity that she should, whilst still so young, be forced to countenance disorder and tumult, because with that kind of beginning there was no telling what married life mightn’t develop into.
Semi-Chorus a — Enlarged yet again on this subject and, without mentioning names or being in any way specific, drew a dreadful picture of married lives that had been ruined simply through this question of discipline, and that if the husband were the kind of man who believed in blows and riot and general disturbance, then the wife was in for an exceedingly poor time.
Mrs. Comber had listened to this discussion in perfect silence. It was not her habit to listen to anything in perfect silence, but on the present occasion she continued to enforce in her mind that dark, ominous figure of Mrs. Thompson. Anything that she said would be used against her, and there in the corner, with her thin, white hands folded in her lap, with the black silk of her dress shining in little white lines where the light caught it, was the person who might undo her Freddie entirely. Whatever happened, she must keep silence — she told herself this again and again; but as Mrs. Dormer and Miss Madder continued, she found her anger rising. She fixed her eyes on the sharp, black feathers in Miss Madder’s hat and tried to discuss with herself the general expense of the hat and why Miss Madder always wore things that didn’t suit her, and whether Miss Madder wouldn’t he ever so much better in a nice green grave with daisies and church bells in the distance, but these abstract questions refused to allow themselves to be discussed. She knew as she listened that Isabel, her dear, beloved Isabel, to whom she owed more than anyone in the whole world, was being attacked — cruelly, wickedly attacked.