Bewildering Cares

by Peck,Winifred

  “Isn’t this an awful room!” Ida says with a tolerant laugh. “But Mother won’t have a thing altered, not even those frightful Marcus Stone and Alma Tadema prints, or those awful vases of prehistoric bulrushes in the corners. I do hope I’ll never be sentimental about my junk, Mrs. Lacely!” I don’t suppose she will, and I have a sneaking fear that my old things will also seem junk to her. Anyhow, she could never conceivably unite our two drawing-rooms.

  Mrs. Weekes was looking stouter than ever but quite benevolent, in an elephant-grey crêpe dress, very bountiful above the waist and very tight behind. She was wearing a small high hat on the top of her white coiffure, because in her early married life you always did wear a hat for lunch; but her short skirt and high heels gave her a faintly coquettish air from the waist downwards. Someone rose from a chair beside the conservatory and advanced towards me, and Mrs. Weekes said, in a voice which was an odd mingling of suspicion and respect, “I believe this is an old friend of yours, Lady Cyrus.”

  Who is it who says that forty years make a great difference in a woman? It was most embarrassing to find my hands seized, and a kiss implanted somewhere on the side of my nose by a tall, lanky stranger, who seemed endearingly shabby but for very red lips, two rows of real pearls, and marvellous brogues, and I had to say, “Why, is it really you?” more than once while I was trying in vain for any connection. And then when the unknown put a monocle to her eye, I suddenly remembered imitation spectacles from a cracker at a Christmas party long ago, and a little girl with drab hair, a long nose and long thin legs, and I finished up triumphantly with, “Is it really you, Serena?” Which of us, I wonder, was the greater liar as we insisted in turns that neither of us had changed in the least, and would have known each other anywhere? As a matter of fact our mutual reminiscences chiefly centred round a tool-shed, a lion-skin rug, ginger-snaps and crackers in her home, and a swing, a musical box and a brown retriever called Jerks, in mine. Since those days Serena (I can’t remember what) has married a soldier, been half round the world, reared six children, and is now only staying two nights in Stampfield as her husband, retired, is inspecting the swill-tubs of our camps, while she casts a gracious eye on our Red Cross activities. We are never likely to meet again, and the only importance Serena can ever have in my life is the fact that she heard of me from some mutual friend of long ago, and when Mrs. Weekes, as President of our Red Cross, was emboldened to ask her to lunch, dangling Archdeacon Pratt before her eyes as a bait, Serena Cyrus replied that she would have loved to, if she hadn’t quite determined to drop in on her old friend, Camilla Lacely. That, I see now, was the reason of the olive-branch thrust down the telephone last night, and Mrs. Weekes hadn’t even the social sense to offer it when she renewed her invitation. Well, well, blessed be snobbery, I thought, as I enjoyed the delicious salmon savoury and racked my brains for one more memory of Serena’s home (or former name). Blessed be “the pestilential snobbery of these provincial bigwigs”, I repeated to myself. Mr. Weekes, dear, sturdy old fellow was still looking suspiciously under his thick white eyebrows at Arthur, and obviously got no snobbish pleasure out of his guest; but I could not help knowing that, as far as Mrs. Weekes was concerned, Serena Cyrus was going to be a greater bond of union for Dick and Ida’s future than any years of parochial activity on my part or Arthur’s. It was on the tip of my tongue to remark what odd people we English are, when Serena went on with the good work by asking (another great effort of memory) after that cousin of mine who succeeded to some property, and though honesty compelled me to admit that Harry was only a second cousin, and that it was a very small place in Perthshire, the effect on Mrs. Weekes made me begin to imagine Ida’s wedding reception at once.

  Mr. Weekes would not have given twopence for this remote connection with the “Birth” which his wife esteems so highly. He was not, indeed, in the least interested in Serena, as he was intent on the conversations of the two parsons. He had hoped, I think, that the Archdeacon would treat Arthur as a schoolboy, and begin on the subject of our Stampfield scandal at once; but our Archdeacon is far too competent an organizer to start on any given subject at the inappropriate moment. Lunch and Diocese come under separate headings in his card-index mind, and he would never deal with the two headings simultaneously. I always wish we knew him a little better, for I believe when once one is under the entries of Pain or Trouble he is most kind and helpful, and one sees the spiritual side which is rather obscured by his passion for Commissions, Committees and Boards in everyday life. He is small, immaculately neat and precise, and his big head contains an absolute mine of information on every conceivable subject, so that many people think him pompous and priggish. Even Arthur said once, in a fit of exasperation, that the Archdeacon would never get into Heaven, as Saint Peter would find his passport in such suspiciously good order, but he is, I believe, invaluable in Convocation, and brisk efficiency is, after all, a very rare virtue.

  When the Archdeacon made it clear, therefore, that he would not deal simultaneously with salmi of chicken and Strang, Mr. Weekes turned his attention to me.

  “Well, well, I’m glad to see your good man can use a knife in Lent, Mrs. Lacely. I’ve no patience with these chaps who starve themselves into a decline just because the Papists do. Your husband isn’t any too stout, you know. Do you ever give him tripe? I always tell you ladies that there’s no need to spend money on luxuries while you can get tripe. Many’s the dish Adela and I had for supper in the old days—you should ask her for the recipe.”

  “I will some time,” I said, earnestly. “I do it with tomato and mushroom sometimes, and we like it.”

  “Splendid, splendid, Mrs. Lacely. I’d no idea you were such a chef. Well, you take my advice and give it to your husband often. Feed the brute, you know. I expect I’ve told you that one. Have you heard the one about Hitler and the Jew?”

  Already this war is beginning the moral deterioration of the last. How well I remember then wishing, when, for once, one was sitting down to a luxurious meal, that one could just eat it and enjoy it without the interruption of conversation! That was how I enjoyed the pêche melba now, with the lady-like laugh always ready, as Dick would say. I was ashamed to think how I was enjoying food in Lent till I remembered how exiguous the Quiet Day meals would be to-morrow! (“It’s little but watercress goes into the old Rectory in Lent,” said Kate, when I told her of my engagement next day, “and not fresh at that.”)

  “How’s Strang?” was the next thing I heard from Mr. Weekes, as I had been listening, askance, to some wholly apocryphal reminiscences of my childhood given by Lady Cyrus to my poor Arthur. (Whatever she says, I never climbed a monkey-puzzler or watched a pig being killed in my life.)

  “A little better, Mrs. Strang said at eleven; but the doctor has sent in another nurse, poor dears.”

  “I call it a judgement,” said Mr. Weekes, explosively. “Look here, gentlemen, shall we have some port and liqueurs in my room? We’ve got something important to talk over, your Ladyship, I fear.”

  Serena must have had too much of the sherry or moselle, for she exclaimed quite coquettishly that it seemed too hard when she had got two such delightful clergymen to amuse her! The three men escaped with such obvious unanimity of relief that I felt their common emotion might soften the whole interview. Really, Stampfield, or the Lacelys at least, were indebted to Serena, and to reward her I asked for the names and ages of her children in detail. Mrs. Weekes and I had only to sit back and listen after that, and when it transpired that her second girl had been to Roedean, and I had exclaimed that you had only to look at Ida Weekes to see what a splendid place it must be, Mrs. Weekes patted my arm just as if we were joint mothers-in-law.

  Altogether I had enjoyed myself, and when I am tempted by improper pride again I shall remind myself how dreadful it would have been if I had haughtily refused Mrs. Weekes’s invitation, and Serena had carried out her threat of dropping in, to find me eating cheese and bread and marge while Kate finished the last bit of rabbit in
the kitchen! But from the moment I had finished coffee I was assailed by certain symptoms which always recur when I have to raise my voice in public, a shaking at the knees, shivers down my spine, and a strong temptation to tears. For the hundredth time I was telling myself how silly it was—as Serena described her third child’s unfortunate habit of stammering—and tried to discover at what point the trouble began. None of us mind making a remark before two, three, four people. Is five the danger-point, or is it just that one doesn’t make only one remark but a lot in a speech? And if so, how many remarks produce these interesting symptoms I was asking myself, dazedly, when we heard Mr. Weekes’ voice, raised evidently in anger, in the lounge hall. A door was banged, and Mr. Weekes and the Archdeacon re-entered the drawing-room, looking so heated that I made my farewells very hurriedly, feeling that in the crisis which might be upon us, if Mr. Weekes were really estranged, not even Serena’s embrace and earnest invitation to me to drop in whenever I happened to be in Forfarshire, would assuage the parochial feud. It might count with Mrs. Weekes, but not, alas, with her sturdy husband.

  Still, I evidently must put that out of my mind as I walked to Miss Boness’s house still utterly at a loss whether to talk about Munich (which I visited thirty years ago) or War-cookery, or Lenten readings. The sight of the coats in the little hall, and the buzz of voices from the dining-room brought on my symptoms so acutely that luckily I couldn’t run away.

  Anyhow, I was grateful for two things; that the meeting was jumbled anyhow about the room, on the chairs and on the floor; and secondly that Miss Boness mercifully did not intend to make any opening remarks. It is really better to plunge into the heart of one’s embarrassment, and the only delay was caused by my own cowardice in pretending to take an overwhelming interest in sphagnum moss and the bags and their uses.

  “And now, ladies, we are all going to have a little treat,” said Miss Boness. “Mrs. Lacely has come to give us a little talk about—about …”

  I looked at the rather heterogeneous groups of women assembled, in despair. Some were pale, plain, lonely souls who probably preferred Miss Boness’s warm rooms to the pathos of days out from shops or service without a boy friend; some had the tired, anxious appearance of those who wait on invalids or elderly mothers; there were some dear, earnest, busy little creatures who were patriotically giving their one free afternoon to war work of any kind; and there was a sprinkling of those socially superior girls who had not managed, or wanted, to get into uniform. They were, I guessed, the wreckage of a diocesan society, the object of which is to encourage gay young things to bring culture and amusement, and some mild religious interest, into the lives of their poorer sisters, by way of study circles, concerts, and mystery plays. Our branch doesn’t flourish very well here, partly, as Miss Henly says cynically, because the smart set of her High School girls are afraid of meeting their less prosperous and ignored relations if they visit the slums; and really, I think, because in these sturdy northern midland towns, the less socially select detest and suspect any form of patronage. These two or three wealthier girls —for wealth is our only standard here—were sitting aloof, very much made-up, and wearing trousers and gipsy scarves, a costume for which I could see no reason at a working-party. Balzac would see in these red-lipped Pamelas and Dianas an infinite variety of Vie de Province. Only those who have lived in a Stampfield can begin to understand the smallness of these petty princesses, and how little the circles of modern thought and culture and artistic activity in London mean to them. But obviously I could not talk on Dull Lives or Balzac or the Provinces, so I shut my eyes metaphorically and with memories of the dreadful proportions which the Strang affair has assumed this week, I plunged into a short (very short) address on Gossip.

  It was candidly a very poor address. A malign imp seizes me always, just when I am trying to represent a Real Middle-aged Parson’s Wife, and puts Dick’s slang and Dick’s phrases into my mind. And really, as I laboured on—my ideas disturbed by a fear that my hair wasn’t too tidy and my face flushed with my unusually good lunch—about words in season and out of season, and how truth should always be spoken but all truth should not be spoken; and how on a seat at Saint Andrew’s is the old motto: “They say; What say they; Let them say.” I heard Dick say, “Atta-girl! Let them have it!” and found words like “lousy” and worse hovering on my lips, though mercifully they got no further. In about five minutes I seemed to have exhausted every single aspect of the subject, when I had the inspiration of describing the game of Russian Scandal we used to play in my youth. (Why was it called “Russian” I wondered? In the Russia of my youth surely a fear of Siberia checked the mildest whispers?) They laughed a little over my illustrations, and I suggested rashly that we should try a round for fun. But it was no fun at all when the last in the chain of whisperers announced proudly: “Mr. Elgin tried to run away with Miss Croft, but Mr. Strang ran after them and gave them both influenza!”

  I said, with all the impressiveness I could muster, that this exemplified all I had been saying. “I expect,” I added, “that the story began with some innocent remark from one of you and that someone else”—here I looked distinctly at Pamela and Diana—“gave it a malicious twist. Nothing could prove to you more clearly than that what a detestable thing gossip is. I don’t suppose you know, of course, that poor Mr. Strang is very ill indeed, and I don’t suppose you can realize that the views of a few people in a small place like this don’t contain all the truth of the world. But at least I do hope you will remember all this when you are next tempted to speak idly or unkindly.”

  After that I retreated in not very good order, avoiding Miss Boness’s baleful eye. It was an infinite relief to enter my quiet, empty, echoing house, and to make tea by the study fire. I had expected to sit in self-abasement and contrition—for of what conceivable use is a parson’s wife if she can’t “say a few words” without rousing mischief, when the afternoon post brought a letter from Dick, and I forgot all about it—and what better can one do with one’s failures?

  Dick’s letters used to break my heart at first by his gallant determination to make the best of everything, but there was nothing save his old high spirits in this one. “Leave might come any minute now instead of later, so just you be prepared with Kate’s three-ton explosive puddings! I can’t really tell you till I’m coming, but Ida’s promised to make it with me whenever I get off. By the way, better not say anything to Ma Weekes about it yet, as we gather that things in the old home haven’t been cordial latterly in the Church line. But who could resist a gallant hero who hasn’t had a proper bath for months?” The fact that “it” was already referred to as “it” stunned me so completely with joy and surprise, together with those reflections on the lightning passage of years between a baby in his bath and a bridegroom at the altar, which no mother can quite avoid, that I rushed to the doorstep headlong when the front-door bell rang, and had to try very hard not to look disappointed when I saw, not Arthur, but Miss Croft.

  “Oh, do come in, I’m just having tea,” I said, hurriedly adjusting myself.

  Certainly Miss Croft didn’t notice. I thought at first it was because a mourning dress gives few openings for arts and crafts that she looked vaguely different, but as we sat down by the fire I realized that there was more in it. She pulled off her gloves quite portentously—it was a relief to see a relic of old times in a large moonstone surrounded by pewter twists on her middle finger—and spoke in a tremulous voice.

  “This is very good of you, Mrs. Lacely. I wanted to come straight to you, or the dear Vicar, to tell you that something has happened which has made—will make—the greatest difference in my life. I never guessed,” she went on, becoming suddenly tearful and incoherent, “I never dreamt … I mean he was only my mother’s first cousin, but no children … after all these years, and he was always supposed to be so hard and quite poor … and all in trust securities, my lawyer tells me … and even with the Income Tax … it’s all like some wonderful dream.”

&nb
sp; It was quite easy to gather the main plot, and no doubt, though I was the first to hear that Miss Croft had inherited her cousin’s money, both Kate and Miss Boness will be able to tell me to-morrow just how much a year she will get and what her plans about the future may be. At the moment I only sympathized and exulted, and listened to a confused account of the cousin’s death-bed and the liabilities of “Ye Olde Teapot” all mixed together, till Miss Croft had been persuaded to eat something and grew more tranquil.

  “And now you are asking yourself”, she said, in her old dramatic manner, “why I came first to you? Well, the reason is that now at last I can do something for our dear church—what rapture there will be in giving instead of merely taking, Mrs. Lacely. I want at once to do something for the music in dear Saint Simon’s, and I think the best, the very best way I could do it, would be by adding something to the stipend of our organist. No man can give his soul to music when he is so poor, so grindingly poor as Mr. Elgin, I feel, and if his worst anxieties were removed, he could give his whole heart to the services!”

  Terrible visions of two anthems at every service and the parochial disturbance if Mr. Elgin clamoured for a sung Mass, flitted across my mind, but I only thanked the dear little lady for her kind thoughts.

  “It is so like you to want to help others at once,” I said, warmly. “And if I may say so, you look quite ten years younger already!”