Part 9

Martyn said that he would rather be shot than play bridge, any day of the week, and Sallie said that she thought cards out of doors would be a loathsome idea, and Bill Patch thanked Mrs. Leeds very much but he’d a good deal rather not. Mrs. Fazackerly, however, said that she would love to play, when she thought herself needed to make up a rubber, and when she saw that she wasn’t, said that she didn’t really care for bridge at all, and would honestly prefer not to play.

“You’ll play, Mrs. Harter,” said Leeds in his affirmative way. “I know you’re a gambler, right enough. D’you remember that night at the Club when old Patterson’s crew played whisky poker till the small hours, and by Jove, d’you remember the cards you picked up? I’ve never forgotten them. Never saw such cards in my life.”

“I always hold good cards,” said Mrs. Harter indifferently.

And of course one of the Kendals rushed in where ordinarily intelligent human beings, let alone angels, would have thought twice about treading.

“Lucky at cards, unlucky in love,” said Aileen, in the self-satisfied tone of one who is making a consciously apt observation.

The way in which some among us then looked straight at Bill and Mrs. Harter was only less indecently obvious than the way in which others among us at once looked away from them.

And Bill and Mrs. Harter just looked at one another, and if we hadn’t, all of us, known about them before, that look must have told us. Leeds was the only person who presumably saw nothing, for he went on to remind Mrs. Harter how badly screwed poor old Patterson had been that night in Egypt, and didn’t she remember his falling down the steps backwards?

“Good gracious!” said Dolly Kendal with all the fearful directness of the Kendals, “you must have known some funny people out there, Mrs. Harter.”

“Shall we cut for partners?” said Lady Annabel Bending very gently.

Mrs. Kendal does not play bridge, and she came and sat beside me, no doubt with the kindest intentions of enlivening me, but after observing three or four times that the picnic had been very well done, she gradually closed her eyes and ceased to say it. Mumma’s bulk was partly between me and the rest of the world, and I saw, as from the shadow of a great rock, what they were all doing, and it interested me. The people who were playing cards were almost altogether silent, as good players always are. Claire looked tense and eager, as she does over everything. It is nothing to her whether she wins at bridge or not, but it is everything whether she is thought to excel or not. As a matter of fact, she plays very well. General Kendal was her partner, and he is a good player, too.

Lady Annabel was playing with Leeds, and every now and then, at the end of a hand, his voice bellowed out encouragement or explanation, or even remonstrance.

“I can’t imagine why you didn’t back me up,” he said once. “A hand that positively screamed for a redouble--positively screamed for it.”

“I acted to the best of my judgment,” said Lady Annabel. “I thought at the time, and I still think, that I should not have been justified in redoubling.”

“But it would have given us the game! Listen to me,” commanded Leeds, most unnecessarily. “I led the spade....”

He proceeded to play the whole hand all over again, card by card. And at the end of it all Lady Annabel, drooping in a dignified way over the scattered packs, said that she did not really think she would have been justified in redoubling.

I suppose it was that spirit which made her the success that she undoubtedly was, in the days of H. E. Sir Hannabuss Tallboys.

While that was happening, most of the others had disappeared. Christopher Ambrey and Mrs. Fazackerly were with Sallie and some of the Kendals, but already the groups were breaking up into twos and threes.

Only Captain Patch and Mrs. Harter sat quite still, not very far from where I was, but a good deal removed from the others.

I could just hear the sound of his voice, and hers, as they spoke together.

_Chapter Ten_

Of course I thought about Mrs. Harter. She compelled one to think about her, even then. And I liked young Patch, too, and it seemed to me that he was heading straight for the rocks.

It was a very hot, still afternoon. Even the shadows of the beech trees were motionless and unflickering.

The servants had taken away the remains of the feast and the motor cars had been discreetly manœuvered to some invisible point on the horizon. By far the most sophisticated things within sight were the bridge players.

Nancy Fazackerly, coming toward me by herself, blended quite agreeably into the surrounding green, in her pale green linen frock with her ash-blonde hair uncovered.

I have known her nearly all her life, and, as one of the very few young women on earth whose society Claire could tolerate, she had spent quite a lot of time with us since her return to Cross Loman.

Doubts, however, had for some time been assailing me as to the security of that state of affairs, and something in her face as she sat down beside me brought all my misgivings into active life.

“I wish,” said Mrs. Fazackerly gently, “that I knew what to do.”

“When a woman says that, it generally means that her mind is made up.”

Nancy laughed, but she said, “Mine isn’t.”

I suppose that if one of the Kendals had been there she would immediately have inquired, “Has he asked you yet?” I have not, however, been brought up by Mumma, and so these unflinching methods are beyond me. Moreover, I did not imagine for a minute that Nancy really wanted advice, any more than anybody else ever wants it. She only needed someone to whom she could talk more or less freely.

“You know that my dear father is sometimes a little--peculiar,” she began in a hesitating way.

“I know--and you know--” said I, “that he treats you disgracefully. Yes. Let’s come to the point, my dear.”

“Can you imagine that he would ever tolerate the idea of my leaving him again?”

“If you mean, do I think that he would take it lying down, no, I don’t. But in your place, I shouldn’t allow him a word in the matter.”

“You are always so brave,” she said wistfully.

“And you are always so cowardly.”

Then I felt rather ashamed of having said that, remembering that, after all, she had stuck to Fazackerly, from whom most women would probably have fled at the end of six weeks.

But Nancy only said sadly, “I know I am.”

“Is it Christopher?” I asked, well knowing that it was.

She nodded.

“I know you can’t say you’re glad,” she added hastily.

“But I should be glad, to see you happy.”

“It’s very nice of you.”

We were both thinking of Claire, but our conversation, as is the way of most conversations, made no mention of that of which we were thinking.

“I cannot imagine what Father would do, all by himself, although he does say that I am such a bad housekeeper. And it would be quite impossible to have anything like a joint establishment.”

I nearly said, “God forbid!” as I thought of old Carey, and his incessant grumbling, and his stinginess, and his criminology.

“Is your father the only reason why you’re hesitating?”

She gave me a most expressive look.

“Except that it seems far, far too good to be true. I thought my life was quite over, as far as that sort of thing went, and that I was just one of those unlucky people who’d made a bad mistake. And then to find _him_--so good and dear and nice, and actually caring for me!”

“I fail to see anything so astounding in that last item.”

Nancy Fazackerly shook her head.

“I know what I’m like--what circumstances have made me,” she said simply. “Father is a very dominant personality, as you know, and I’ve never been very brave. Sometimes I wonder that I’ve got any individuality left at all. And then, being so badly off has made me calculating, and even mean, in tiny little ways that you probably wouldn’t even understand if I told you about them. You see, I always knew that the bills would make Father angry, and the thing I’m most afraid of in the world is that people should be angry with me. Often and often I’ve said what isn’t true so as not to disagree with other people. I daresay you won’t believe me....”

I believed her, on the contrary, without any difficulty at all, and I was touched by her _naïveté_, and by the pathos of her confession.

“That would be all over if you married Christopher.”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course I suppose everyone, more or less, feels that if they could be happy they could be good, but if--if anything so wonderful as that happened to me, it would be the first great chance that I’d ever had in my life.”

I knew it was true.

“I believe it has come and that you’re going to take it and make the very most of it. And I’ll back you for all I’m worth, Nancy my dear.”

She thanked me with a gratitude that was disproportionate, and then asked if I thought that anybody had guessed.

“Because, of course, nothing whatever is settled yet, and in any case, his sister comes first.”

Nancy looked terribly apprehensive, and I could think of nothing whatever that would be at once convincing and reassuring, as to Claire’s reception of the tidings. So, on the principle of the counterirritant, I asked when she was going to tell her father.

Mrs. Fazackerly’s small face actually and literally became quite pale.

“Chris is going to tell him for me,” she murmured, in a conscience- stricken whisper. “He says he doesn’t mind. He and Captain Patch are the only two people I know who are not a little bit overwhelmed by dear Father’s personality.”

At her mention of Captain Patch, we both glanced round at the little knoll, at the foot of which he and Mrs. Harter had been sitting, but the two figures had disappeared. At the same moment the bridge players rose and came towards us, and the servants apparently sprang out of the earth and began to collect the cards and markers and pencils and put them away.

Mrs. Leeds said, “What’s that young man, Patch, done to Mrs. Harter? I asked her on purpose to keep Hector amused, and she’s behavin’ like a flapper havin’ her first flirtation. It’s indecent, considerin’ all we know about the woman.”

“Do tell us what you know about her,” Claire suggested. “I think her manners are atrocious, myself, and she is victimizing unfortunate Captain Patch, who used to be quite a nice boy.”

Claire spoke very lightly indeed, and yet one could sense the bitterness that prompted the words. It was not only personal dislike of Mrs. Harter--although that certainly existed--it was also resentment at the central place that Mrs. Harter occupied in an emotional adventure. On a certain plane, Claire’s perceptions and intuitions are exceptionally acute, and I think she knew very well that greater forces were at work than she herself could have coped with, and the knowledge made her angry. No one likes to feel inadequate, and, after all, Claire’s speciality was the emotions.

“Do tell us what you know about Mrs. Harter,” she repeated.

“Oh, it doesn’t amount to anythin’ desperate,” said good-natured Mrs. Leeds. “She was pretty hot stuff out there and her husband carried on in rather an alarmin’ way, that’s all, when she went a bit too far. Ghastly little man, Harter--the men all barred him, absolutely.”

“Why?”

“He wasn’t supposed to be straight, or something--_I_ don’t know,” said Mrs. Leeds casually. “Never could imagine why the woman didn’t do a bunk, myself. One or two of the men were mad about her--God knows why. But nobody had a good word for Harter. He did some very dirty trick over a deal in polo ponies, I believe, but it was kept pretty dark, and anyway, we weren’t there very long. The men all said that Mrs. Harter was straight, whatever they meant by that, but I never heard of anyone havin’ a good word to say for Harter. I must say he was an objectionable-lookin’ little bounder, if ever there was one. No one could imagine why on earth she’d ever married him.”

“Perhaps she wanted to get away from the plumber’s shop, and thought that the only opportunity,” Claire suggested. “I suppose, from what you say, that she must be attractive to men--of a certain sort--but she isn’t in the least good-looking.”

Mrs. Leeds laughed loudly. I think it crossed her mind vaguely, with no sort of understanding, that Claire was in some way jealous of Mrs. Harter, and it amused her.

“It isn’t what _I_ say,” she remarked. “It’s what we could see for ourselves. That red-headed youth is perfectly besotted. I quite agree with you that she’s no beauty, but she’s got _him_ on a string all right.”

“It’s a great pity,” said Claire emphatically. “Captain Patch is a nice young man, really.”

Quite suddenly Mrs. Kendal woke up. She looked round upon us with rather a blank eye for a moment, but instinct, or her subconscious self, must have prompted her as to what we had been talking about, for she joined in almost automatically.

“Captain Patch--yes, indeed. That woman ought to know better. Why, she must be old enough to be his mother.”

“No.”

That was Mary Ambrey, who is always reasonable, and seldom emphatic.

“Really, Mrs. Kendal, she isn’t. Not by about eighteen years. Captain Patch looks very young, I quite agree, but as a matter of fact, he’s quite old enough to take care of himself.”

“More shame for him,” declared Mumma, not at all viciously, but with that effortless, relentless implacability of hers that always makes one think of a tank in action.

“I don’t expect they realize that the way they go about together isn’t very good form,” said Blanchie Kendal brightly and kindly. She is the one whom Mumma often speaks of as “our family peacemaker,” but I doubt if Mrs. Kendal thought it quite fitting that she should peacemake on the subject of Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch.

“That will do, dear,” she said, and Blanchie desisted from her charitable attempts at once.

The Kendals are all of them rather large young women, but when Mumma says, “That will do,” like that, they seem to shrink into a temporary invisibility.

“I think,” said Mrs. Kendal further, “that we shall have to make a move. Will you see if you can find Puppa and the others, Blanchie? I am afraid we ought to make a move.”

“So ought we,” said Claire, and in spite of hospitable protests from Leeds and Mrs. Leeds, people began to prepare for departure.

Claire, perhaps with a recollection of her tête-à-tête journey with Leeds in his runabout, at once offered to take Mary and her children back to the Manor House if they would spend the evening with us, and Mary agreed.

Christopher had already put Mrs. Fazackerly into his two-seater, and Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch were nowhere to be seen.

I really felt sorry for Leeds, as I saw the blank expression with which he offered to drive Lady Annabel Bending home.

“What a bounder that fellow is!” young Martyn observed pleasantly as the car moved away.

“You’ve eaten his salt,” Claire said gravely. She looked very austere and high-minded as she said it, but that was probably for the benefit of Martyn--who seemed in no way impressed--and I saw every reason to fear that another volcano was claiming Claire’s inward attention. I knew she would say nothing in front of Sallie and Martyn, but as soon as we got home they dashed upstairs in search of some property connected with the play, and Claire and Mary and I remained together.

Then poor Claire’s features relaxed into an expression of desperation. These histrionic transformations in her are largely instinctive, I believe. She herself is never, for an instant, out of her own line of vision.

“It has come.”

It was useless to ask what had come. I knew and Mary knew.

“Has Christopher said anything to you?” I asked.

“No. Has he to you?”

Claire’s question came like a rapier point, and I was thankful to be able to say no in reply to it.

“He is going to marry that little third-rate creature.” Claire spoke with concentrated bitterness.

Claire, theoretically, is a democrat. She is also the champion of individual freedom, and she believes in the right of every man or woman to marry for love.

Neither Mary nor I was tactless enough to remind her of all this. In fact, we said very little. The Claire type of mind cannot be approached by arguments, being almost as wholly devoid of sustained reasoning powers as is a young child. It was inevitable that Claire should be jealous of the woman with whom her brother fell in love, and the obviousness of poor Mrs. Fazackerly’s shortcomings made things simpler, in a way. It provided Claire with a more or less legitimate outlet for her irrational sense of grievance.

“I should never utter one word--I should thank God upon my knees--if Christopher had found somebody with whom he could go through life in utter and absolute sympathy--the perfect companion--” said Claire emotionally, and quite genuinely unaware that her aspirations on Christopher’s behalf were far beyond any that he would ever entertain for himself.

I remember, word for word, a curious little interlude that came in, there, the outcome of that outburst of poor Claire’s.

“The perfect companion of whom you speak has no existence, at least on this plane,” I said, foolishly enough.

Mary Ambrey looked at me and smiled. “Miles!” She said my name almost exactly in the half-affectionate, half-amused way in which a mother admonishes a child when the child is trying to “show off” before strangers. She wasn’t in the least taken in by my cheap cynicism, and she wouldn’t allow me to be taken in by it, either.

Dear, beautiful Mary Ambrey! I never, like people in a novel, wonder whether she has ever guessed. With her fine, clear intelligence, of course she has guessed--long, long ago.

We had a bad quarter of an hour with Claire. Mary, of course, was far more successful with her than I was, because she did not exhaust herself and infuriate Claire by reasoning with her. She just let her talk--and talk--and talk.

By the time that Sallie came in Claire had got to the stage of knowing that she was repeating herself and of being secretly glad of an interruption.

“We were going to have the dress rehearsal next week,” Sallie said. “Which day, Cousin Miles?”

So we were once more absorbed into the atmosphere of the theatricals.

“The Bulbul Ameer,” one could not help feeling, was taking shape as a play in spite of most of the people who were acting in it. Sallie and Martyn both had talent and a certain amount of amateur experience, but Alfred Kendal’s sole qualification appeared to be an unlimited confidence in something which he spoke of, in a very professional way, as “gag.”

This had a disastrous effect upon Bill Patch, and both of them took to appealing to Nancy Fazackerly, as part author of the piece.

Her ingenuity was hard put to it, once or twice, and I was touched when I noticed that she seemed to be making some endeavors in the direction of truthfulness.

Claire noticed it, too, I feel certain, and the atmosphere that she managed to diffuse at rehearsal became less violently hostile than it had been at first.

Everybody else was frankly interested in Christopher and Nancy, and waited hopefully for them to announce their engagement.

“Is it official, yet?” Lady Annabel asked me one day, and when I said, “No,” she assured me that she understood perfectly and that I could rely upon her absolute discretion. The years that she had spent in the Colonial Service, Lady Annabel said, had trained her.

Several people came to the dress rehearsal. Mrs. Fazackerly’s father invited himself, to the unspeakable dismay of almost everybody, and General and Mrs. Kendal, of course, were not to be denied.

“I think that Amy will be far less nervous if she sees me there,” said Mrs. Kendal, with her kindest smile. “Ahlfred, now, is not nervous--but Amy is. I think she may be less nervous if she sees me there. Call it a mother’s fancy if you like, Sir Miles, but I can’t help thinking that Amy will be far less nervous if she sees me in the front row. So there I shall be.”

And there, in fact, she was.

Puppa was there, too, although less preoccupied with Amy and Alfred than with the pair of Hessian boots that he had lent for the performance. So long as they were on the stage, he never took his eyes off them.

“Is everyone here?” I asked Nancy.

“Mrs. Harter is coming. Bill went to fetch her.”

She sighed.

“It is all very queer, don’t you think--I mean the way in which they go about together. Of course, I’m dreadfully sorry for Bill. I think he’s terribly in love with her.”

I was inclined to think so, too, and I found it quite impossible not to watch them both when they arrived together.

It was not the first time that Mrs. Harter had come to a rehearsal--it might have been the second, or at most the third.

Bill took her straight up to Mary Ambrey after she had received Claire’s very brief greeting and had bowed stiffly in reply to mine.

“Will you come into the green room, Mrs. Harter? They’re all getting ready.”

“I’m sorry we’re so late,” said Bill. “It was my fault; I started late to fetch her. I’ll just see the curtain go up and then cut off and get into my things. I don’t come on till the middle of the scene.”

He marched off to the piano, where Nancy sat already.

I heard her say, “Shall I begin the overture?” and Patch answer, “Give her ten minutes to get changed. She says it won’t take her longer than that.”

Mrs. Harter, of course, had to be on the stage before anybody else, in order to sing “The Bulbul Ameer.”

Bill and Christopher fussed about with the lights, and tested the curtain and found that it had stuck, as curtains invariably do stick at all amateur theatricals, and Alfred Kendal said, “Why not have put it up properly in the first place?” and finally a step ladder was produced and Patch went up it and dealt adequately with the curtain. It all took time and created the right atmosphere of dramatic crisis and masterly presence of mind, and I hope that nobody except myself heard my neighbor, old Carey, asking what the devil they were all mucking about like that for.

When the curtain did go up, officially, as Lady Annabel Bending might have said, the small stage showed a painted background of palm trees and blue sea, and Mrs. Harter standing in front of it in her Eastern dress.

The straight lines of the long veil over her head and the circlet of coins across her forehead suited her very well, although the swarthiness of her coloring became almost startlingly evident. Her bare arms were hung with bracelets and she wore long drop earrings and a girdle of colored stones. The dress, Claire was at pains to assure us quietly, was entirely incorrect from the point of view of any known nationality--but it was very effective, all the same.

Sallie, in almost similar clothes, and Amy Kendal, had had their faces stained with some brown pigment or other and their brows darkened, but Mary told me that Mrs. Harter had needed scarcely any make-up at all.

She made no attempt at acting, but simply sang the ridiculous, mock-pathetic song on which Bill and Nancy had based their play, right through from beginning to end.

I had forgotten how very good her voice was. At least, I supposed that I had. Since the day of the dress rehearsal I have sometimes wondered whether something new had come into it that had not been there when she sang “The Bluebells of Scotland” at the concert.

Mrs. Harter looked straight in front of her while she was singing, her hands behind her back. The silence in the room had a very peculiar character; it was strangely intent.

Even old Carey, who, after all, was by no means a fool, was perfectly motionless, and he, like everybody else, was looking at the woman on the stage.

It was with a perfectly conscious effort that I turned my eyes away from Mrs. Harter and looked across to where Captain Patch stood.