by Francis Iles
“You were telling me only the other day what a wonderful show you have this year, weren’t you?” she hurried on, having intercepted a disapproving glance from her husband’s fish-like but expressive eye. Of course, she remembered now; Hessary had said he wanted a few words with Mrs. Bickleigh privately; this would be an excellent opportunity, before the others arrived. “Yes, I shall be most interested. You’ve got some quite new kinds this year, haven’t you, Dr. Bickleigh? Let me see—”
“And perhaps you’d like to take the opportunity too, Miss Wapsworthy, while my husband is free to show them to you properly?” Mrs. Bickleigh cut ruthlessly across Mrs. Torr’s garrulity. “I know how interested you are. And you too, Miss Peavy.”
Miss Wapsworthy, a tall, thin lady who wore a straw hat trimmed with very red roses on the extreme apex of her head, intimated that she would be glad to make use of such an opportunity, as indeed in social duty bound, though she somehow managed to preserve an air of her own independence in her agreement. Miss Peavy, on the other hand, was frankly intimidated, and looked it.
“Very well, Edmund,” said Mrs. Bickleigh, with finality.
The quartette moved off.
In the rose-garden the little doctor pointed out with pride his new Margaret McGredies and Mrs. van Rossems. Roses were his hobby, and his infectious enthusiasm triumphed over Mrs. Torr’s new shoes.
On the court, the third game being still in progress, Benjie Torr had not yet lost his temper. His lanky form, in interesting contrast to Harford Ridgeway’s solid stolidity on the other side of the net, was still twisting actively if ineffectually, and had not yet begun to droop in the bitterness of defeat. Nor had the errors of Ivy, who managed to combine on a tennis-court a most pleasingly artless grace of movement with complete ineptitude at the game itself, so that she was both a joy and a grief to watch, had time so far to produce their usual exasperating effect on him. Ivy, in consequence, was playing a good deal better than she would be towards the end of the set.
Seated in state under the umbrella-top of the bathing-tent, Mrs. Bickleigh and the Rev. Hessary Torr were discussing the subject on which he had desired the two minutes of Mrs. Bickleigh’s private conversation. “Really, this young woman whom we are to meet this afternoon . . . chrrrm-hrrrm . . . Miss Cranmere . . . It must be nearly four o’clock already.”
“She’s unpardonably late,” said Mrs. Bickleigh resentfully, though several others besides Miss Cranmere had not yet appeared. The only fresh arrival since the set had begun was young Denny Bourne, down from Oxford the day before and very correct in an old Etonian blazer and shining flannels, who was helping Dr. Bickleigh retrieve the balls which Benjie, growing more wild with every minute as the iron of defeat seared deeper into his soul, was now despatching into the gooseberry-bushes with the despondent regularity of a machine-gun.
“One would really have thought on this occasion at least she would have taken the trouble to be punctual.” Considering, added Mr. Torr’s tones, that she must have know that I was to be here.
“You haven’t met her yet?”
“No,” said Mr. Torr, in his gravest voice. “I thought it better to give her a little more time to settle in before calling.” He shook his massive head. “But if rumour is correct, I fear—yes, I fear that she must be a very odd young woman.”
“She doesn’t appear to be related to the Hampshire Cranmeres,” snapped Mrs. Bickleigh, as if that in itself were very odd. “I’ve never heard of any others.”
But Mr. Torr was not to be headed off the main track. “You really did gather that she intends to live at The Hall quite alone? Except, of course, for the servants. Yes, I feared so. A most equivocal position. Most equivocal. Chrrrm-hrrrm.”
“I agree with you, Mr. Torr. It’s not a thing one cares about at all, in this neighbourhood.”
“She is quite young, I understand?”
“Quite. She can’t be a day over twenty-two. I sounded her— tactfully, of course (I felt it my duty to all of us to do that much)—and I gathered that she has been an orphan for some years. Evidently she has just come into control of her own money, and it’s turned her head.”
“Very sad,” clucked Mr. Torr. “Ve-ry sad.”
“Someone will have to speak to her,” pronounced Mrs. Bickleigh. “Not obviously (there’s no need to be unkind; doubtless it’s nothing but thoughtlessness); but just to let her see what one feels.”
“Precisely.” Mr. Torr seemed relieved. “Precisely. That, in fact, is just what I had made up my mind must be done, Mrs. Bickleigh. I am delighted to hear you confirm it. The task is not one I should choose, but one has one’s responsibilities. In my position . . . chrrrm-hrrrm!” Mr. Torr cleared his throat with grave and sober sonority, as befitted a man in his position.
“But do you think it quite a man’s job?” For once Mrs. Bickleigh did not seem so decided. “Wouldn’t it be better if . . . ?”
“My wife, you mean?” Mr. Torr’s tone was unflatteringly dubious.
“Well, I had rather felt that the responsibility might, in a way, be considered mine. After all, one’s upbringing . . . I could hint it to her quite nicely, you see, but without nonsense. I remember that my grandmother once had occasion—Lady Denbury, I mean, not Lady Crewstanton . . .”
Mrs. Bickleigh looked extremely serious. Mr. Torr looked extremely serious too. Their tongues worked busily.
The clacking of them reached Quarnian Torr on the tennis-court as she was about to serve in the final game. To her partner, as he supplied her with balls, she remarked: “Daddy seems to have properly got off with that ghastly woman.”
3
BEFORE MRS. Bickleigh and Mr. Torr could decide who was to voice their displeasure to the unconventional Miss Cranmere everything began to happen at once, as it always does after such peaceful interludes. The set came to an end; the two ladies whom Mrs. Torr had determinedly held in the rose-garden while her reverend lord had his private conversation were at last released, and streaked for the deck-chairs and the shade like two terriers let off the leash; Dennis Bourne and Dr. Bickleigh retrieved the last ball from the gooseberry-bushes and strolled back to the court; and Mr. Chatford arrived, a solicitor who practised in neighbouring Merchester but lived alone, a bachelor, in Wyvern’s Cross.
“Well, how shall we play now?” said Dr. Bickleigh, removing his hat for a moment to apply a handkerchief delicately to his brow, but still amiable even towards Benjie. “Let’s see. Gwynyfryd hasn’t turned up yet, so it looks as if you, Quarnian, and Ivy, will have to play again.” Miss Wapsworthy had passed the age when she could appear on a tennis-court; and, though Miss Peavy did not privately think that she had, it had been borne in upon her that others did.
“Here come the Davys,” said someone, as a couple came into sight round the angle of the house.
“Come along, Mrs. Davy,” called the doctor jovially, waving his racket. “You’re just in time. We want you.”
“Then you can have a men’s four,” said Mrs. Bickleigh, in her decisive tones, just as if her husband had not spoken at all. “Mr. Davy and Dennis against Benjie and Harford.”
“Rather sit out, if don’t mind,” mumbled Benjie sulkily. “Can’t hit a ball to-day. Dr. Bickleigh play instead of me.”
“Nonsense, Benjie,” retorted Mrs. Bickleigh, regardless of maternal feelings. “You only played badly because you were losing.”
“You play, Benjie, my boy,” Dr. Bickleigh smiled, clapping him on the back. “Enjoy yourself while you’re young.”
“I’d rather sit out this time, really, Mrs. Bickleigh,” pleaded Harford Ridgeway, whose solid flesh did look as if it was doing its best to melt. “That set quite exhausted me.”
“Very well, Edmund,” said Mrs. Bickleigh, accepting this excuse. “You can play, then.”
The four men took off their coats, and the others regrouped themselves.
Harford Ridgeway found himself in a deck-chair beside Quarnian Torr, at a safe distance from their elders. He was an en
gineer, with a post in a large firm at Middlesbrough, now in Wyvern’s Cross for part of his holidays.
Quite inevitably the conversation turned in the direction of Mrs. Bickleigh. Harford, a charitable soul, murmured something about the lady not being so bad when you knew her.
Quarnian at once dealt with this suggestion. “My dear Harford, you know perfectly well how she caught poor little Teddy.” She explained the process in detail.
Harford shifted uneasily. Quarnian had a raucous voice.
“And anyhow,” she summed up, “Teddy’s much too sweet for her. He really is rather sweet, isn’t he?”
“Is he? I think he’s an awful little worm.”
“Oh! Well, ask Ivy what she thinks,” observed Miss Torr maliciously. “And, anyhow”—she defended her sex—“most people do like him. He’s awfully popular round here, you know. You’re jealous, that’s all.”
“Jealous? Good Lord, why?”
“Well, he and Ivy were rather thick at one time. But of course,” added Miss Torr hastily, seeing her companion’s frown, “that’s all over now. Teddy’s got eyes for no one but Gwynyfryd Rattery nowadays.”
“Gwynyfryd?” repeated Harford in surprise. “But she isn’t even here.”
“No, and that’s why Teddy’s looking so glum.”
“Oh, rot, Quarnian,” said young Mr. Ridgeway, with the discomfort of the average male before the almost pathological zest for gossip which the English countryside seems to evoke in certain female breasts. “You’re making this up.”
Miss Tor proceeded, with energy and examples, to rebut this charge.
In the meantime the rest of the party were still waiting, and now with undisguised impatience, for Miss Madeleine Cranmere.
Besides the Davys, a London novelist in search of Devonshire local colour, and his wife, temporary visitors only to Wyvern’s Cross, one person alone was indifferent to Miss Cranmere’s remarkable absence. Dr. Bickleigh did not care in the least whether she ever came or not. He was waiting, with an impatience that had almost reached bursting-point, for Gwynyfryd Rattery.
4
AT TWENTY minutes past four Madeleine Cranmere arrived. She had a reasonable explanation. Her car had refused to start, and the combined attempts of her two gardeners and herself, none of whom knew the least thing about dealing with refractory cars, had produced no impression on it until a quarter of an hour ago; then, intimidated apparently by the growing wrath of the head gardener, the car had been cowed into starting as mysteriously as it had before refused.
Miss Cranmere recounted this story with such seriousness, and accompanied it with such a reiteration of earnest apologies, not only to her hostess, but to the other people who really mattered, such as Miss Wapsworthy and Mr. Torr, that the unfavourable feeling which her non-arrival had caused was not only wiped out, but actually gave place to a positively favourable one. Even Mr. Torr, who had been disposed to be quite stiff, found his disapproval thawing before the melting appeal of Miss Cranmere’s enormous grey eyes, which mutely implored his forgiveness at any rate. She had then undergone the ordeal of introduction to a dozen complete strangers, all ready to be more than critical, with a grave appreciation of the seriousness of the occasion which impressed everyone.
“Miss Cranmere,” confided Mr. Davy to Miss Peavy, “is evidently one of those fortunate people who can make every stranger feel that he or she is the person they’ve been longing in secret all their lives to meet.”
“Oh, yes, I do agree,” elaborately mouthed Miss Peavy, though the subject of their conversation was at least thirty yards away. “I think she’ll be a great asset to us. I think she’s so nice.”
Miss Wapsworthy, the third member of the trio, sniffed. It was well known that Adela Peavy was foolish enough to think everyone nice at first sight. But even Miss Wapsworthy did not sniff with quite so much conviction as usual.
The men’s four being now over, Mrs. Bickleigh gave the word for tea, and they all trooped into the house together, to crowd with exaggerated cheerfulness into the not very large drawing-room. As they went, Mr. Torr managed to confide to his hostess that Miss Cranmere was very different from what he had expected; very different indeed; quite a sensible young woman; none of the modern flightiness that he had feared; an old-fashioned type of a gairl, such as it was a pleasure nowadays to see. Mrs. Bickleigh went so far as to agree that if any gairl could live alone at The Hall without disgracing the neighbourhood, it really did seem as if Miss Cranmere might be the one.
Gradually people sorted themselves out in the drawing-room. Extra chairs had been brought in from the dining-room, but even then some of the men had to stand. Dapper in his blue coat and white flannels, Dr. Bickleigh was very active. “Edmund!” called his wife if he lingered to exchange more than a bare word with anyone before all were supplied with tea, and back he would dart to collect from the tray in front of her two more cups. The other men were doing their share too, but Dr. Bickleigh carried more cups than any two put together.
“Dr. Bickleigh!” Mrs. Torr shook an arch finger at him across the room. “I’ve hardly had a word with you all the afternoon. You must come and tell me all the news, you really must. The doctor always knows so much more about what’s going on in the parish than the vicar, doesn’t he?” This was a somewhat unfortunate remark, for Mr. Torr was notoriously the last person ever to know what was going on under his own nose or within his own circle of duties. The Rev. Hessary Torr was inclined to take himself rather more seriously than his duties.
“Mother putting her foot in it as usual,” confided Quarnian to young Dennis Bourne, who was offering her a plate of fish-paste sandwiches with perfect deportment. Young Mr. Bourne raised his eyebrows just a quarter of an inch, and let it go at that. As the only son of Sir John Bourne, the local M.F.H., squirearch and general father of the community, Denny had cultivated the art of eyebrow-lifting to a nicety.
“For instance, how is old Mrs. Brent getting on?” Mrs. Torr was asking hastily, as if conscious herself that her last remark was not altogether a happy one.
“Oh, much better this morning,” beamed the little doctor, as he edged through the throng towards her. “In fact, she—”
“Edmund!”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Torr. Rather a busy moment, just now.” He spun round and hurried back to duty.
“Such a nice man,” prattled Mrs. Torr to Mary Davy, whom she had adopted by now as Best Friend for the afternoon. (Mr. Torr had already appropriated Miss Cranmere, whom he was feeding now with earnest intensity on little pink cakes, which she accepted from him as one being vouchsafed manna from a Being.) “Of course, Mrs. Bickleigh is very nice too,” babbled Mrs. Torr, whom that lady frightened half out of her wits and who would willingly walk a mile out of her way in new shoes to avoid her. “Oh, charming. But really, the doctor . . . Well, my dear, I always say that he . . .”
“Will you be like that when you’re married, Denny?” giggled Quarnian. “No, don’t go; I want another of those. I bet you won’t.”
“Like what?” coldly queried Dennis Bourne, sadly conscious that his eyebrows for once had failed. Yet three years ago, at Eton, he had only to raise them less than that and . . . Dennis did not like Quarnian. Nor did he like being called Denny, a shameful relic of his nursery days.
“At your wife’s beck and call every minute.”
“I really can’t tell you, Quarnian.” And Dennis bore his plate of sandwiches away with the slightly abstracted air of a man about to go and talk with someone about something pretty serious.
The two Ridgeways, as usual in a crowd, had gravitated together, where they would stand side by side and say nothing, Harford stolidly, Ivy a little fearfully.
She was a pretty little thing, in a rather indeterminate way, with lots of fair, very soft hair that curled naturally away from her small head, and big, frightened blue eyes; her figure was slight and delicately boned, and she conveyed an impression of startled fragility in almost ludicrous contrast with her brother’s mas
sive stolidity.
From time to time she was unable to resist throwing an occasional appealing glance in the direction where Dr. Bickleigh was talking with Peter Davy, but the former was evidently too busy with his important guest to be able to come over to them. Mr. Chatford, however, attached himself, and began to make somewhat stilted conversation. He was a dark-browed, intensely shaven man, with a highly professional manner even in private life, who spent his time trying to make himself and everyone else forget that he had originally joined the firm, in which he was now the sole partner, as its office-boy. Being now reckoned the best solicitor in his own district of north Devon, he was in a fair way to succeed in this aim.
To this little group in due course added himself Benjie Torr, addressing himself exclusively to Ivy. By imperceptible degrees, so naturally that nobody but Mr. Chatford could have said how it had come about, the quartette, still talking amicably, split into two pairs, having no connection with each other at all; and one of the two pairs was Harford and Benjie, and the other was Ivy and Mr. Chatford. Mr. Chatford was like that.
Dr. Bickleigh was listening to black-spot, talking black-spot, and apparently thinking exclusively in terms of black-spot. No one could have guessed that all the time his ear was cocked towards the front door, listening for the sound of a car or a bell.
Yet, preoccupied though he was, Dr. Bickleigh had not been too much so to throw an observant eye over the newcomer. No new feminine arrival could escape that.
On this occasion he was frankly disappointed. He had expected a pretty girl; Madeleine Cranmere was nothing of the sort. She was not exactly plain, she was just nondescript. Except for her eyes. They really were beautiful. But her mouth was too wide, her face too sallow, her cheek-bones too high for prettiness, and such of her black hair as could be seen under her hat looked positively dank. Her figure was good, fairly tall, slender, and straight, but Dr. Bickleigh was shocked to observe that she dressed quite appallingly. Dress was most important, in Dr. Bickleigh’s opinion, and for a wealthy young girl to appear on an occasion of such importance in a most uninteresting white frock, obviously not new and looking suspiciously home-made, frankly cotton stockings, a hat that was nothing but dowdy, and nondescript shoes, struck him as little less than an outrage. He dismissed Miss Cranmere as impossible, from all points of view.