Part 7

“I know nothing whatever about writing,” said Carey, who, like many other people, appeared to think this in itself a reason for offering an opinion on the subject. “In fact, I’m willing to admit that it seems to me a damned waste of time for any full-grown person to sit and scribble a lot of nonsense about something that never happened, and never could have happened, for other full-grown persons to learn by heart and gabble off like a lot of board-school children. However, that’s as it may be. What you young people don’t realize is that there are things going on all around you every day that would beat the plot of any story, or any play, hollow.”

When old Carey had said this, he looked round him triumphantly, as though he had just made a new and valuable contribution to the subject of literature.

He also said that anyone could write, if only they had the time, and that reading novels was only fit for women, and that generally he had enough to do reading the _Times_ every day, with an occasional detective story if he had nothing better to do.

Mrs. Fazackerly looked unhappy, but Bill Patch was impervious to it all.

He sat down beside the old man and listened to him quite earnestly, and presently I heard old Carey, evidently intending a concession, inquire whether authors thought of their plots first and their characters afterwards or their characters first and their plots afterwards.

I have often wondered whether there is any writer in the world who has escaped that inquiry.

“I have often thought that I should like to write a book,” said Mrs. Kendal in a tolerant way. “I’m sure if I put down some of the things that have happened to me in my life, they would make a most extraordinary tale, and probably no one would believe that they had really happened.”

I fancied that Amy and Alfred Kendal cast rather a nervous glance at their parent at these implications, but the General remained entirely unmoved, and I found that, instead of listening, he was offering, in a rather uncertain manner, to drive Mrs. Fazackerly and Sallie into the town to choose material for the costumes that were to be worn in the play.

“What is the use of having a car if we cannot help our friends out of a difficulty?” said Mumma, with her large, kind smile. “Let us all go in this afternoon--you and I, Puppa, and Nancy and Sallie. The girls can keep Ahlfred company at home.”

If Mrs. Kendal is obliged to go out anywhere without her family, she always arranges some occupation for the absent members of it. I think it gives her a sense of security.

“The car holds four very comfortably, but more than four are bad for the springs, I believe. One has to think about the springs, especially in a new car. Springs are so important,” said Mumma.

“If my tin Lizzie can be of any use, I’ll drive anyone anywhere,” said Christopher Ambrey eagerly. “And in Lizzie’s case there’s no need to consider the springs, as there aren’t any to speak of. Look here, I suggest that if you and General Kendal can really find room for Sallie, I should drive Mrs. Fazackerly in, and--and then you can take, say, Patch. I’m sure Patch ought to be there to settle about the clothes and things--or Martyn. I should think Martyn ought to go, if anyone does, to make sure you get the right things for those boots.”

“We’re only going to buy materials--not clothes,” said Sallie. “But, still, I daresay that Martyn could be quite useful.”

“I think Bill had better go,” Martyn firmly declared.

“I can’t. It’s awfully good of you, Mrs. Kendal, but my partner will do all that far better than I could.”

He smiled at Mrs. Fazackerly, who was smiling back at him happily, when the unexpected sound of old Carey’s voice suddenly and completely extinguished the brightness in her face.

“Nancy can go with you, Mrs. Kendal, as you’re kind enough to propose it, and there are one or two things I want done in the town. Nancy can see to them.”

Sallie’s clear, intelligent gaze went from one to the other of them. She sees a great deal, but she has not yet learned how to look as though she didn’t see it.

“If Martyn and I may go with you, Mrs. Kendal, we’ll sit in the back of the car and rehearse to one another. (Yes, Martyn, we must--time is frightfully short, and you know how woolly you are about your words.) And then Chris can take Nancy, and we can all meet somewhere for tea. What time, Mrs. Kendal?”

Sallie is always so confident, and decisive, and resolute, that she can carry things off with a high hand. Old Carey subsided again and Mrs. Kendal said, some seven or eight times, that as they always had tiffin early at Dheera Dhoon--“a reminiscence of our Indian days, I’m afraid--” she thought that they had better start at two o’clock.

“Besides,” said Captain Patch to me, aside, “I believe it takes the General nearly an hour to do the ten miles.”

At the last minute, the whole thing was nearly wrecked by General Kendal, who suddenly observed: “Then I am to have the pleasure of driving you, Mrs. Fazackerly? I hope that you will not feel nervous. I am something of a tyro still, but I believe I am a careful driver.”

“Thank you--not a bit--but--”

“I think Sallie goes with you, General,” said Christopher.

And I saw Claire look round at the tone in which he said it.

Then the rehearsal broke up. Sallie and Martyn disappeared, but Mary Ambrey stayed and had lunch with us.

As soon as the servants had left the dining room, Claire wrung her hands together and looked despairing.

“Did you notice Christopher?” she asked in husky misery. “Surely, surely he couldn’t?”

Of course, both Mary and I knew what she meant. We had heard her say the same thing so often.

“He only offered to take her in the two-seater. There really need not be any very great significance in that,” I pointed out, although I knew very well that, to Claire’s type of mind, events are of two kinds only: the intensely significant and the completely non-existent.

“I thought you wanted Christopher to get married,” said Mary calmly.

Claire nearly screamed.

“Why shouldn’t he marry Nancy Fazackerly? Not that I think he wants to marry her just because he offers to take her for a drive--but supposing he did, Claire--I can’t see why you shouldn’t be pleased.”

“A woman whose husband used to throw plates at her head!” said Claire. “Have you forgotten that?”

“Mary cannot very well have forgotten it,” said I, “as no one ever allows it to rest in peace. If I’ve heard that story once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. And I fail to see, Claire, why the fact that Fazackerly had an unbridled temper should be supposed to detract from the desirability of his widow.”

I really did believe that Christopher was attracted by Nancy Fazackerly, and although I did not--as I believe women do--immediately begin to think about choosing them a wedding present, it had certainly crossed my mind that it would be a pleasant thing to see little Nancy happy. As for Christopher, I knew perfectly well that any nice woman, especially if she liked gardening and children, would make _him_ happy.

Claire, however, credited him with all her own exigencies.

“Nancy Fazackerly is all very well in her own way, perhaps, but she isn’t the sort of woman I expect my brother to marry, Miles. It may not be her fault--I daresay it isn’t--but she has some very odd ideas. I shall never forget how she talked about taking in a paying guest, and whether he was to have second helpings or not.”

“I imagine that Christopher could regulate the number of helpings that he required, at his own dinner table, for himself.”

“You know, Claire,” said Mary Ambrey, “if Nancy was away from her father, she would be quite different. It’s only his endless naggings about expense that has infected her. You know how adaptable she is.”

“I know that she is the most untruthful woman of my acquaintance,” returned Claire vehemently.

“That must have been the plates,” I affirmed positively. “I am convinced that Nancy would not tell so many fibs as she undoubtedly does tell if she could be brought to forget the outrageous Fazackerly and his plate-throwing. Don’t you agree with me, Mary?”

“Yes, I do. And in any case, Claire, you know we really are taking a good deal for granted. At one time you were afraid it might be Aileen Kendal.”

“Never,” said Claire, with a total disregard for accuracy that would have done ample credit to Mrs. Fazackerly herself.

Christopher brought Nancy back to the Manor that afternoon for a very late tea.

He was in excellent spirits, and they told us about their afternoon’s shopping.

“We got in long before the others. The General positively crawls in that Standard of his. And Patch did turn up, after all. We met him with Mrs. Harter.”

“That Mrs. Harter?” said Claire.

“We all of us got the things together, and we decided that Mrs. Harter ought to wear an Eastern dress, too, for singing ‘The Bulbul Ameer.’ She’s very clever at dressmaking and she and I can easily make the things ourselves. That’ll save expense,” babbled Nancy.

“Why didn’t you bring Captain Patch back with you? I like Captain Patch. He and I have so much in common.”

“He and Mrs. Harter were going to have tea together somewhere in the town.”

Claire drew her brows together for an instant and then raised them, as though puzzled.

“But how nice of him, to be kind to Mrs. Harter!”

“I think he admires her, if you ask me,” said Christopher easily. “They came in together by ’bus to-day from Cross Loman.”

Then they began to talk about the play again.

It was then, on that same day, that Mary Ambrey and Claire and I had begun to ask ourselves if Christopher was falling in love with Nancy Fazackerly, that the first suggestion was made of anybody’s having noticed the friendship between Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch.

_Chapter Eight_

After that, the two affairs in one sense ran concurrently, so far as the outer world was concerned. In that other world, of course, that I have called the inner life, they were on altogether different planes.

As far as I know, Bill Patch and Mrs. Harter knew no hesitations at all. The day after that evening when they had gone up Loman Hill he said to Mrs. Fazackerly that he could not come to the rehearsal and that he wanted to be out all day. At nine o’clock in the morning he was at the house in Queen Street, where she was waiting for him.

He saw her, as he crossed the road, sitting at the execrable little bow window of the dining room, her hands clasped in her lap, quite obviously looking down the street, waiting. When he reached the three steps, she got up and opened the front door and said to him, “Let’s get out of this!” jerking her head backwards at the linoleum floor and tiled walls of the tiny entrance.

She was wearing her outdoor things, all ready.

As they walked down Queen Street together Mary Ambrey passed them. She stopped, with some question for Bill about the play. Mrs. Harter stood by, and after one look at her Mary suddenly remembered Martyn’s words:

“That woman hard? I wonder what we were all thinking about!”

Captain Patch, in a way, was always joyous, and that morning he only looked younger than ever, but, to Mary’s perceptions, there was something about them both that almost made her catch her breath.

They looked, she said, somehow _dazed_. Mary never told me or anyone else about this brief meeting until some time afterwards, but then she said that, whenever anyone condemned either or both of those two people who caused so much talk in our small community, she remembered that morning and the strange impression she received of sheer, dazzling happiness. Captain Patch told Mary that they were going up to the moors--some twelve miles away. He never, either then or afterwards, attempted the slightest concealment of the fact that they went everywhere together. Neither did Mrs. Harter, but then she was not by any means on friendly terms with the whole of Cross Loman, as Bill Patch was, and her manner towards the people whom she did know always held the same semi-contemptuous reticence.

It was only a very few days later that people began to talk about them.

It began, I have not the slightest doubt, at Dheera Dhoon. The Kendals, like so many other people who are temperamentally good, take an impassioned interest in those things and people which they consider bad. But, as a matter of fact, it was Lady Annabel Bending from whom I first heard about it.

“That is a nice youth who is staying at the Cottage with old Mr. Carey. But they tell me that he is running after that very common-looking woman who sings.”

Lady Annabel never sees things from her bedroom window or hears them over the counter from Miss Applebee, like the rest of us. She obtains all her information from a mysterious and unspecified source. “They” tell her, or she “is informed.”

No doubt this is another relic of the Government House days.

“Mrs. Harter must be a great deal older than he is, surely, and what can they possibly have in common?”

“Music,” said I feebly.

Not for one instant did I suppose that Bill Patch and Mrs. Harter walked twelve miles on a hot day in order to talk about music.

Lady Annabel showed me at once that neither did she believe anything so improbable.

“From what I have heard of Mrs. Harter, Sir Miles, I should think that music is the last thing to occupy her mind. I think I told you that a good deal is known about her, though it reached me only through entirely unofficial channels. But Captain Patch is a very nice young fellow indeed, and one can’t help feeling it’s a pity that he should be victimized.”

“Perhaps he isn’t victimized. He may admire her.”

“So much the worse,” said Lady Annabel in her lowest, gentlest and most inexorable voice. “Surely there are plenty of nice, innocent girls to choose from without running after a married woman. The Rector’s position makes it difficult for me to speak about these things, as you know. But, if you remember, I said some time ago that it was a most unwise proceeding to invite a person like Mrs. Harter to take part in your theatricals.”

“She has, up to the present, come to no rehearsals, so the theatricals can hardly be held responsible for bringing them together.”

Lady Annabel bent her head. I knew, however, and she meant me to know, that this was mere courtesy on her part--not acquiescence.

She was not the only person to talk about Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch, of course. It is never only one person who talks; these things get into the air, no one knows how.

Mrs. Kendal spoke to Claire, and Claire reported what she had said to me.

“I have seen them myself, walking about the town,” said Mumma impressively. “They actually went into the butcher’s together. Of course, I suppose she does her own marketing, living in rooms. And I distinctly saw them go into the butcher’s together.”

Claire said that it seemed an unromantic sort of trysting place.

“It shows how intimate they are, their going like that to the butcher’s together. None of my girls would ever dream of taking a gentleman to do their household shopping,” said Mrs. Kendal with absolute truth. “I should think less of it, in a way, if Captain Patch and Mrs. Harter went to the theater, or even to the cinematograph, together. But when it comes to their going together to the butcher’s, I ask myself what it all means.”

Mrs. Kendal had not been content only to ask herself what it all meant. She had asked several other people as well, including her four daughters and her son.

“It means,” said Dolly, with her most uncompromisingly sensible expression, “that Mrs. Harter is trying to get up a flirtation with Captain Patch.”

“She’s old enough to be his mother, I should think,” said Aileen.

When the twins had made these scathing statements, I think they felt that the situation had been exhaustively analyzed. At any rate, although they thereafter talked round and round the subject with tireless persistency, the sum total of their observations never amounted to more than that Mrs. Harter was trying to get up a flirtation with Captain Patch and that she was old enough to be his mother.

I did not think it worth while to point out that twenty-eight cannot be the mother of twenty-six.

It was odd, and to me profoundly interesting, to compare the comments which the situation evoked.

Mary Ambrey, of course, made none, and was, I should imagine, almost the only person in Cross Loman of whom that could be said.

Sallie and Martyn, with their strange, passionless habits of dissection, were coldly and impersonally interested.

I remember one exposition of their views. The spirit of it impressed itself upon my consciousness so clearly that I can almost remember the letter.

“There’ll be a scandal over Patch and the fascinating Mrs. Harter one of these days,” said Martyn.

“She’s not fascinating,” Sallie asserted.

Her brother raised his eyebrows slightly, and she understood and laughed.

“Flat contradiction is rather uncivilized, I admit. And besides, she probably _is_ fascinating, to some people.”

“She certainly is to Bill Patch.”

“I know. As a matter of fact, there’s more to it than that, I believe. I mean, he’s more than just attracted by her.”

“Really? You once said he was a temperamental romantic, I know. Are you trying to justify that now by building up a mountain out of a molehill?”

“I am not. Events are simply confirming my previous psychological deductions, that’s all,” said Sallie with bland dignity.

I was glad that Claire was not in the room. Like all egotists, she is driven nearly to frenzy by a display of egotism in anybody else.

“In all this,” said I, “there is one person who is never mentioned. What about Mr. Harter?”

There was a pause. Then Martyn remarked: “Negligible, I should think.”

“Possibly, as a personality. But as a man and a husband, he exists. It is even conceivable that he has feelings.”

“Oh, _feelings_!” said Sallie and Martyn, more or less together.

The tone of each expressed the utmost contempt.

“Some people might even go so far as to say that he has rights.”

“To a certain extent, so he has,” said Sallie, evidently determined to be broad-minded.

“Presumably she made the usual undertakings when she married him. But from all accounts, they’ve each gone their own way ever since they married. From a sentimental point of view, it can hardly matter what she does now. Perhaps she’s working up for a divorce.”

“If so, it’s bad luck on Patch. He can’t want to marry her.”

But to that Sallie replied thoughtfully, “I’m not so sure.”

“Are they together a great deal?” Martyn queried. “Mrs. Kendal speaks as though they were never to be seen apart, but she bases that upon their having gone into the butcher’s shop at the same time, which she appears to regard as peculiarly incriminating.”

“He takes her for a walk every day and sees her home whenever they’re at the same parties, but I can’t personally see why he shouldn’t do that,” Sallie declared. “All this gossip and tittle-tattle makes me sick. Whatever they do it’s their own business and nobody else’s.”

Again I mentioned Mr. Harter’s name, and it met with as little acclamation as before.

“He’d better come to England if he doesn’t like his wife to have friendships.”

“Do you suppose she writes and tells him about them?” asked Sallie ironically.

“One has links, as Lady Annabel would say. He’s probably heard all about it, and rather more than all, from some officious soul who thinks he ought to know. After all, Mrs. Harter was Diamond Ellison, the plumber’s daughter, and pretty well-known, at least by name, to everybody here, let alone that she’s the sort that always does get talked about.”

“She interests me a good deal, as a psychological study,” said Sallie. “But as a matter of fact, I don’t consider that she’s behaving well.”

“You mean that what she’s doing--getting herself talked about with Patch, while her husband is abroad--is anti-social?” Martyn suggested.

“Yes, exactly. I’ve no feelings, personally, as to the rights or wrongs of anything, from an ethical point of view, but I do bar the sort of thing that can only be called anti-social.”

They are both perfectly satisfied once they have found a label, and affixed it, to any situation.

I should like to see Martyn or Sallie--but especially Sallie--in love. There are times when I believe that she is quite incapable of it. She would pin down and analyze every symptom of her condition and then discuss it exhaustively, and very likely write a book about it. Perhaps passion could survive all this. I am not prepared to say that it could not, for I am conscious that the understanding of one generation cannot project itself into that of another, whatever Claire may say about the experience of a lifetime, which in reality has nothing whatever to do with it.

Once upon a time, Martyn Ambrey did bring a very young girl, with shingled hair and most beautiful slim ankles, to stay with his mother for a week-end. They went out on his motor bicycle all Sunday, and that evening--when the girl was out of the room--Martyn said casually to Mary and Sallie:

“Lois has plenty of brains, but I didn’t realize how conventional her upbringing has made her. She’d insist upon having her children baptized.”

On Monday morning he took her away again on the carrier of his motor bicycle, and that--so far as I know--was the end of it.

Mary said that Lois, from start to finish, remained as demure as a Victorian school girl. They have their own standards, no doubt. Mary says so, and leaves it at that. But Claire says, in one and the same breath, that the Lois and Martyn type do not know the meaning of reality, and are incapable of recognizing it when they meet it, and that their attitude of detachment is all a pose.

Perhaps she envies them their undoubted immunity from the perpetual emotional turmoil in which her own life has been spent.

But, on the other hand, there was bitter and passionate envy in her condemnation of Mrs. Harter.

I could understand that, in a way. Claire, like many another woman who is more or less incapable of self-command, holds the theory that this lack of discipline constitutes a special and peculiar claim upon Providence. Only a supreme call, they hold, can bring forth the supreme response of which they feel themselves to be capable. Failing that, it is impossible that they should fulfil themselves. They go through life with a sense of frustration.

Claire has far too much perception not to appraise an atmospheric value very quickly. She knew quite well that Bill Patch and Mrs. Harter were not engaged upon the odious pastime, so odiously described by Dolly Kendal, of “getting up a flirtation.”

Bill Patch himself, quite unconsciously, made one see that. He did not very often speak Mrs. Harter’s name, but when he did, it was like an electric spark in the room.

“What will happen?” Nancy Fazackerly murmured to me once, so vaguely that I half wondered if she knew that she was speaking aloud.

“You think something _will_ happen? Sometimes these things die of themselves, you know.”

“Sometimes. But this won’t. I can’t bear to think of it. You know, one gets very fond of Bill.”

I knew.

But I doubt if anyone else would have added, as Nancy did, “And I’m so sorry for _her_.”

“Why?” said Christopher, who was beside her as usual. He was one of the people who did not admire Mrs. Harter.

“Well, she is married, isn’t she?” Mrs. Fazackerly suggested. “I suppose things may be rather difficult, perhaps, when Mr. Harter comes to England.”

One could not help remembering that Mrs. Fazackerly had the best of reasons for understanding how difficult things could be made by the return of a husband, even although the late Mr. Fazackerly had had no serious grievances to provoke his habits of violence.

“I know nothing about Mr. Harter,” said Christopher, “but if he’s coming here, mark my words, there’ll be trouble.”