Miss Buncle Married

by D. E. Stevenson

  “I just watch them, I suppose,” said Barbara. “I don’t really know I’m watching them, but I suppose I must. People are so funny, aren’t they? I mean they’re so interesting—and all different. They’re all so busy living their own lives (if you know what I mean), and they’re all so certain that they’re frightfully important. And the queer thing is that the very busy, serious ones are much the funniest.”

  “Yes,” said Arthur, wondering, a little, whether he came into the very busy, serious, and, therefore, funniest category.

  “Tell me more,” Barbara adjured him, settling herself comfortably upon the pillows.

  “The plot is excellent,” continued Arthur obediently. “The plot is really very neat indeed. I was particularly struck with the way you have blended fact with fiction.”

  “I don’t quite understand.”

  “I mean the whole book is cohesive,” Arthur explained. “If I didn’t happen to know that part of the book is fact and part fiction I should never have guessed it for a moment. Take a historical novel,” continued Arthur, trying to make his point clear, “take a historical novel as an example of what I mean. A historical novel is very difficult to write, not only because the atmosphere is difficult to achieve, and the small details of costume and manners are so apt to trip an author into anachronisms; but, also, and principally, because he has to blend fiction with fact. In nearly all historical novels you can see exactly where fact and fiction join—like a badly sewn seam—the book is very apt to be patchy. You can place your finger on the different patches and say: this is history, and this is imagination. Even Scott, an acknowledged master of the historical novel, is guilty of this patchiness in places.”

  Barbara followed this with interest. “But my book isn’t a historical novel,” she pointed out.

  “It is,” said Arthur. “It really is, Barbara. It’s a modern historical novel (don’t you see) because a lot of it is fact. And that’s why I said I admired the way you have blended fact with fiction. It all dovetails beautifully. Nobody could say: ‘this is fact, and this is fiction,’ unless they happened to know—as I do—where the one ends and the other begins.”

  Barbara saw exactly what he meant, but she still could not see how it applied to her book. Her book was all fact. She had voyaged into the future, of course, when she had described the death of Lady Savage Brette and the reading of her will, and the beautiful finale where Bob and Jennifer fell upon each other’s necks, but that had been easy. It had needed no imagination—or very little—to envisage that ending to her tale.

  “It all dovetails beautifully,” said Arthur. “The true parts about the Wandlebury people, and the imaginative parts about the will. You can never say you haven’t got an imagination again,” he added in his “smiling voice.”

  Barbara was silent. She was in rather a quandary. She saw now exactly what Arthur meant. She hated to deceive Arthur, but, if she was to keep her promise to Mr. Tyler, she must let Arthur continue in his delusion. She must let him think she had made up all that about the will—about Mrs. Nun seeing it by mistake, and all that. She felt very uncomfortable about it because she was naturally extremely truthful—but I can’t break my promise, she thought, at least not until Lady Chevis Cobbe dies and the will is read. Then, of course, everybody will know, and I can tell Arthur all about it. Meantime (thought Barbara) I must just let him think I’ve got an imagination. It was sailing under false colors, and Barbara disliked it, but there was absolutely no help for it as far as she could see.

  Arthur noticed her silence. He rolled over in bed and gazed at her in astonishment. “You don’t mean to tell me it’s true?” he inquired incredulously. “All that part about the will—you don’t mean to tell me you actually saw the will?”

  “No,” said Barbara firmly. “No, Arthur.”

  It’s not a lie, she thought, because, of course, I didn’t mean to tell him. (This Jesuitical quibble was unlike Barbara’s straightforward nature, but she was in a hole, and there was no other way out.)

  Barbara’s denial convinced Arthur at once, for habitually truthful people are always believed when they prevaricate, just as habitually untruthful people are often disbelieved when they tell the truth. Arthur was satisfied with Barbara’s “No” because she had never lied to him, and also, of course, because he was prejudiced beforehand. All that about Mrs. Nun seeing the will at the lawyer’s office was much more like fiction than fact. Things like that didn’t happen in the ordinary everyday world which Mr. Abbott inhabited.

  “No, I thought not,” he agreed. “And that’s what I meant—don’t you see—when I said you had blended fact and fiction so well. Because, of course, I realize that a great deal of the book is fact. All the characters are real people, and the clerk showing you over the house, and the Musical Evening, and the Marvells’ dinner party and all that.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Barbara who was thankful that the conversation had taken a safer turn.

  “The people really are good,” continued Arthur, chuckling a little. “They really are splendid—so real, I couldn’t quite make out how you had got their names. I meant to ask you about that. Why has Mr. Marvell become Mr. Colin Rhodes, for instance?”

  “Well, you see it was the names that got me into trouble before,” Barbara explained. “So this time I didn’t alter the names. I didn’t think of their real names at all when I was choosing names for them. I just thought of what they were like, or of what they happened to be doing when I saw them. Mr. Marvell was easy—he’s the biggest person I’ve ever seen, so I thought of the Colossus of Rhodes.”

  Arthur chortled happily.

  “And Lady Chevis Cobbe was easy, too, because of her Musical Evening. ‘Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,’” explained Barbara seriously. “I just changed it a tiny bit and called her Lady Savage Brette. It sounded rather grand, I thought.”

  “Excellent,” agreed Arthur, “go on, Barbara.”

  “Well then, there was Mrs. Thane. She was planting bulbs one day when I went to see her, so I called her Mrs. Philpotts. And Mr. Tyler was Mr. Reade because he kept on giving me papers to read and telling me to read them.”

  Arthur was enjoying himself immensely. “Why did you call Wandlebury ‘Church End’?” he inquired.

  “It was really Search End,” she told him. “Because my search ended when I found Wandlebury, but I thought Church End looked better.”

  “And what about Mrs. Dance? Why did you call her Sittingbourne?”

  “Oh, that really was rather funny,” said Barbara, giggling a little at the recollection of the manner in which she had named the vicar’s wife. “That really was rather funny. You see, the day she called we had to sit on the stairs—there was nowhere else to sit—and it was frightfully hard and uncomfortable—I felt exactly as if my spine was coming through—and, all the time, I was longing for her to go, because I had such lots of things I wanted to do—I could hardly bear it—”

  “Sittingbourne,” said Arthur, laughing heartily.

  “Yes,” agreed Barbara, “it just sort of came to me.”

  “It was an inspiration,” said Arthur (when he could speak).

  “It’s the only kind of inspiration I ever get,” Barbara told him. “I mean I have to have something to help me. I never get an inspiration straight out of the blue. I’ve got to have a kind of jumping-board before I can jump at all—if you know what I mean—otherwise my feet remain fixed to the ground. Other authors,” she continued, rather enviously, “other authors seem to be able to jump off the ground of their own accord. I mean they can imagine things without any help, but I’m not like that.”

  “I like the name,” said Arthur, trying to change the subject and take her mind off her disability. “I like the name of the book very much indeed. It goes very well with The Pen Is Mightier— and is quite in the ‘John Smith’ tradition. You will make a lo
t of money out of the book, Barbara.”

  “But it mustn’t be published!” cried Barbara, sitting bolt-upright in bed and gazing at him with horror-stricken eyes. “I never meant it to be published, Arthur.”

  “Not published!” exclaimed her publisher in amazement.

  “No, no, no—how could you think it, Arthur?”

  “But why—”

  “Because we should have to leave Wandlebury—and I couldn’t—I simply couldn’t. You don’t want to leave here, do you?”

  “No, of course not, but—”

  “We should have to,” Barbara assured him. “We should have to leave The Archway House, and it would break my heart.”

  “But why did you—”

  “Because I had to,” said Barbara earnestly. “Because I couldn’t help it. I had to write the book because it was all inside me, simply bursting to come out, but I never meant it to be published—not for one moment.”

  “Why were you so anxious for me to like it, then?” inquired Arthur, in a bewildered voice. He had never yet met an author who did not want his—or her—book to be published.

  “Because I wanted it to be good,” Barbara told him. “I wanted it to be good, and I wanted you to like it. I should have been frightfully disappointed if you had thought it rubbish.”

  “It is good, and I like it immensely,” said Arthur. “It seems a pity—”

  “No, no, no,” she cried again. “They would recognize themselves, and we should have to leave. And, even if they didn’t, I should always be thinking that they were going to, and I should never have another peaceful moment. You’ve no idea what it was like at Silverstream—the strain nearly wore me out. It was ghastly.”

  “We might alter it a little,” suggested Arthur, whose soul was torn in twain. He saw Barbara’s point of view, and he would have been extremely sorry to leave The Archway House, but all the publisher in him (and, naturally, there was a good deal of the publisher in his makeup) wanted to publish There’s Many a Slip— by John Smith. It was so satisfactory to publish a book that you knew would sell like hotcakes, and there was no doubt that this one would. The other two books had been amazingly successful, and this one was of the same ilk—only better. John Smith’s name alone would sell a couple of editions straight off—no wonder poor Arthur was torn in twain. “Couldn’t we alter it a little, Barbara?” he inquired anxiously.

  “I should be terrified,” said Barbara with a shudder.

  “It seems such a pity,” Arthur pointed out, “and I really think it would be quite safe if we were to alter the people a little and—”

  “But how could we?” inquired the author. “I mean, the people are themselves—how could we alter them?”

  They discussed the matter carefully (argued would be too strong a word), but they could come to no decision. They could not really understand each other’s point of view. This was Barbara’s fault, of course; she was extremely bad at explaining what she felt, and when she felt very deeply about anything, she became even more incoherent and inarticulate than usual. Arthur pointed out that the people in Barbara’s book could be made to look quite different without interfering in the least with the main theme, and that, if this were done, the book could be published with perfect safety. It was quite a reasonable suggestion, and Arthur was rather proud of it, but, to Barbara, the suggestion was impracticable, not to say absurd. Barbara saw the matter from the author’s standpoint, and, although she could not explain it in plain English, she knew that it was impossible to alter the appearance of her characters; for an author does not consciously create his characters, they come to him readymade with all their characteristics firmly fixed, and the author can do nothing with his character but accept or reject him. He cannot change or modify the personality that has arisen without making him unreal. If Arthur had suggested that Barbara, herself, should suddenly become small and blonde with a complexion of milk and roses, the suggestion would have seemed to Barbara no more ridiculous and impossible than his suggestion that she should alter the appearance of the people in her book. She felt all this very strongly indeed, but she could not put it into words.

  “But then they wouldn’t be them,” was all she could manage to say, and even that was a struggle.

  Arthur began to get a little muddled too, for Barbara’s incoherency was frightfully infectious. “You don’t want them to be them,” he told her earnestly.

  “But, if they’re not them, they’re nobody—they’re nothing,” said Barbara in despair.

  “I only meant—” began Arthur.

  “And if I make Colin Rhodes small and—and weedy,” continued Barbara desperately, “if I make him small and weedy-looking—like you said—then he isn’t him, at all, and there’s no point in him, at all, and how is he going to say, ‘How white a woman is, under the moon’?! No small, mean-looking man could say that,” added Barbara with conviction.

  ***

  It happened to be a Saturday, and Arthur took the day off. He had not arranged to play golf so they had the whole day at their disposal, and ample opportunity to discuss There’s Many a Slip—. They discussed it off and on all day long. Arthur continued to toy with the idea of changing the appearance of the characters and publishing the book. He even went to the length of producing a pencil and paper and showing Barbara how easily it could be done. Barbara listened to all he said quite patiently, but she remained unconvinced.

  “I should die if we had to leave The Archway House,” she reiterated.

  “But if we changed the appearance of the characters—”

  “We can’t,” she said. “I know we can’t. It’s difficult to explain, Arthur, but I just know it in my bones.”

  Arthur was aware that when Barbara knew a thing in her bones it was conclusive. There was absolutely nothing more to be said or done. He pocketed his pencil with a sigh.

  “I’m sorry,” Barbara continued. “I really am most awfully sorry, but it’s no good—no good at all. And anyhow I couldn’t do anything now. I’m absolutely dry. I haven’t got anything more left in me, Arthur.”

  “We’ll put it aside, then,” Arthur suggested. “We’ll leave it in the meantime. Perhaps later on—”

  They compromised on that. Arthur locked up the manuscript in the bottom drawer of his bureau and hung the key on his chain; but he couldn’t lock up his thoughts so easily. He and Barbara went out for a walk together, and still they discussed the book.

  “It seems a pity that I’m the only person who can really appreciate how clever it is,” Arthur said, “other people would enjoy it, of course, but they couldn’t appreciate it without knowing the Wandlebury people.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Barbara, “as long as you like it that’s all that matters. I wrote it for myself and you.”

  “Sam knows the people here,” said Arthur thoughtfully.

  “Sam mustn’t read it!”

  “No, of course not. As a matter of fact I doubt whether anybody could read it until it has been rewritten,” Arthur said, thinking of his struggle to decipher Barbara’s peculiar scrawl. “No, of course not, but what about having Sam down next weekend? He hinted to me that he would like to come, but, of course, it was no good while you were working.”

  “No,” said Barbara.

  “Eh?” inquired Arthur in surprise. “Don’t you want Sam?”

  “Not just now.”

  “Why? He’ll be disappointed. As a matter of fact, I said I would ask you if he could come. I thought you liked Sam.”

  “Yes, I do like him.”

  “Well, why not have him?”

  “Don’t let’s have him,” said Barbara. “Don’t let’s have anybody,” she added with feminine guile, and she pressed Arthur’s arm.

  Arthur fell for this at once—what loving husband wouldn’t have fallen?—and laughed a trifle self-consciously.<
br />
  “Just our two selves, eh?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s OK by me—as Sam would say,” replied Arthur, and he returned the pressure affectionately.

  “You can tell him we’re going to do the spring cleaning,” Barbara said. “I mean if you want an excuse. It’s quite true, of course; we shall have to start quite soon now.”

  “Right—but that’s not the real reason, is it?” inquired Arthur pressing her arm again.

  “No, that’s not the real reason,” replied Barbara truthfully.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “The Best Laid Plans”

  Sam was extremely disappointed when his hints about a visit to The Archway House fell on deaf ears. He couldn’t understand it at all. I’m sure they liked having me, he thought, I’m certain of it. Why on earth won’t they have me anymore? He wrote to Jerry, and received long letters in reply, and that was very nice, of course, but it was not enough. Jerry came up to town once or twice, and Sam gave her tea at the club, but that was not enough, either. They couldn’t talk properly, and Sam felt that Jerry was not really Jerry at all in her town clothes. She was quite different, and so was he; it was frightfully unsatisfactory. Sam wanted to go to Wandlebury; he wanted to see Jerry properly; he wanted to hold her in his arms and kiss her darling mouth.

  “If they don’t ask me soon I shall ask them to have me,” Sam said. “I simply can’t bear not seeing you—”

  “But you’re seeing me now,” Jerry pointed out, smiling at his impatience.

  “Not properly,” growled Sam.

  “Well, I don’t see why you shouldn’t ask them to have you,” said Jerry thoughtfully. “Ask them, Sam.”

  “I will,” said Sam boldly. “I’ve hinted till I’m blue in the face, and Uncle Arthur takes no notice, but I shall ask him straight out on Monday—we’ll know where we are, then.”

  So on Monday Sam walked into his uncle’s sanctum and inquired, with a charming smile, whether he could come to The Archway House for the weekend. “I haven’t been down since Christmas,” he reminded Uncle Arthur, “and it seems ages. I should love to come down for a few days—hope you don’t think it awful cheek of me to suggest it,” he added, with a slightly forced laugh.