Chapter II: Part 2

Sallie looked dubious, and certainly Mrs. Harter’s expression was rather more than slightly disagreeable-looking. Her squarish jaw was slightly underhung, her somber face almost colorless, and her heavy-lidded eyes, set beneath thick, straight black brows, expressed nothing so much as resentment.

Her hair was dark, and in exaggeration of the prevailing fashion was taken straight back from her forehead and brought low over her ears, accentuating the Slavonic suggestion of the high cheek-bones and broad, flat modeling of the features. Her skin, very dark, was coarse, rather than fine, in texture.

“No,” said Sallie. “No. I can’t agree with you, Martyn. _Not_ attractive.”

“Unusual, anyhow. Arresting.”

“She doesn’t look like Cross Loman, I grant you that.”

“Mrs. Harter--Song,” said Mrs. Kendal, for--I should think--the fourteenth time. “I suppose that means she’s going to sing.”

It did.

Mrs. Harter’s singing was calculated to please the unsophisticated, rather than the critical, among her audience. As in most audiences, however, the number of the former predominated over the latter.

She had a good voice, a very strong and very true mezzo-soprano. She had, also, a number of cheap tricks whereby to produce cheap effects, and she made full use of them.

“Third-rate teaching of the worst kind,” whispered Claire. Behind me I heard Captain Patch say to Mrs. Fazackerly, “I like her voice,” and Mrs. Fazackerly, the most musical person in Cross Loman, replied, eagerly, “Oh, so do I!” for once enabled to combine responsiveness and truth in a fashion that all too often eludes her.

The Kendal family applauded with a detached, deprecating air at the end of the song. “I may not know a great deal about music, but I know what I like,” Mumma remarked, as she has very frequently remarked on other occasions, and Puppa hummed something to himself, which I think he honestly believed to be a true and faithful repetition of the last line of Mrs. Harter’s song, and waved his head about from side to side in a musical sort of way.

The applause in the room was prolonged.

The song had been a very popular one, a modern sentimental ballad with all the sham values of its kind, and set to a tune that frankly _was_ a tune, and could be trusted to “run in the heads” of those who heard it for hours after the concert was over. Mrs. Harter received an enthusiastic encore.

There was a whispered consultation between her and the accompanist, a youth who always plays at all Cross Loman concerts, and whom we look upon as being almost part of the piano.

To the surprise of everybody, and to the delight of a few, he struck up the air of “The Bluebells of Scotland.”

“‘Oh, where, tell me where, is your Highland laddie gone?
Oh, where, tell me where, is your Highland laddie gone?’
‘He’s gone with streaming banners where noble deeds are done,
And it’s, oh! in my heart, I wish him safe at home.’”

The simplicity of the air was suited to Mrs. Harter’s clear voice, and she sang it without affectation.

“That’s more like,” Mrs. Fazackerly murmured to Captain Patch, who nodded emphatically. The accompanist was introducing an immense number of runs, variations, and repetitions of the well-known theme, between each of the verses. But while she was singing he subdued his accompaniment to the merest murmur:

“‘Oh, what, tell me what, if your Highland lad be slain?
Oh, what, tell me what, if your Highland lad be slain?’
‘Oh no! True love will be his guard and bring him safe again,
For it’s, oh! my heart would break, if my Highland lad were slain.’”

The accompaniment ended in a torrent of notes, out of which the gallant, plaintive air emerged for the last time.

“I liked that,” said Claire, softly. Her eyes were tearful. Almost every tune that she knows very well indeed will bring tears to her eyes, by rousing associations with a past that she always rates higher than she does the present.

“She doesn’t look like the sort of person to sing that sort of song,” analyzed Sallie Ambrey. “She looks hard.”

“She looks unhappy,” said Mary.

Christopher leaned forward. “Who is Mrs. Harter?”

“A girl called Diamond Ellison--old Ellison’s daughter. She married and went out to the East a few years ago.”

“It’s a pity she looked so bad-tempered all the time she was singing,” observed Dolly Kendal.

“Good-looking woman,” General Kendal muttered, and Mrs. Kendal, Claire, Sallie, and Aileen Kendal all said, “Oh, do you think so?” in tones implying surprise, or disagreement, or both. But Nancy Fazackerly agreeably said, “Yes, isn’t she?” after her fashion.

But when Mumma in the interval remarked, weightily, “That Mrs. Harter may be a good singer, but she’s a very plain woman,” I distinctly heard Nancy Fazackerly, ever obliging, say, “Yes, isn’t she?” all over again.

Captain Patch, like Christopher Ambrey, asked who Mrs. Harter was, and said that he would like to hear her sing again.

“If we can persuade Father--who is sometimes a wee bit inclined to be conservative, as you may have noticed--we will have a musical evening and ask Diamond Harter to come,” said Nancy Fazackerly, who has learned nothing from life and the late Mr. Fazackerly if not complaisance. “I’m sure Sallie and Martyn would come--and Major Ambrey?”

She looked at Christopher.

“I’d like it very much,” he said.

“I can play accompaniments, and we could have some songs, and it would be so nice,” said Nancy eagerly.

Her obvious capacity for enjoyment, taken in conjunction with the very few and poor opportunities of gratifying it that have ever fallen to her lot, struck me as rather pathetic.

I heard her give her invitation to Mrs. Harter at the end of the concert, as we were all leaving the hall together.

Mrs. Harter, who did not appear to be an enthusiastic person, accepted curtly. Her voice was low, and had not the intonation of good breeding, and when she passed under the flaring lights at the end of the room I saw that the sulky lines of her face had hardly relaxed at all.

“Thank you, I don’t mind if I do,” was all that she said before walking away.

“What an ungracious manner, and how typical of her class! I said she was common,” Claire observed when Mrs. Harter had disappeared.

“I think she’s shy.”

Nancy Fazackerly is always ready to sacrifice truth to kindliness, as we all know. Perhaps it is the effect of having successively known a father and a husband, both of whom appear to have lived in a chronic state of annoyance with everybody.

“It was a nice concert, wasn’t it?” she added, with her childlike appreciation of any form of pleasuring.

We said that we had enjoyed it very much, and Mrs. Kendal added that the only thing she regretted was that the Kendal family had not been able to get seats all together. It being impossible to remove this blot on the evening, her complaint was received in silence by us all.

Then Lady Annabel came out, bowing in an indiscriminate sort of way, and saying, “Thank you--thank you so much,” to anyone who accidentally stood in her way.

“Quite a success, wasn’t it?” she asked us, and we all said at once that it had been a great success, and Nancy congratulated her.

“It entails a good deal of work, getting up this sort of thing and it is all so different when one cannot delegate part of the work to the A. D. C.s,” said Lady Annabel.

If the rector of Cross Loman kept a curate, I feel convinced that Lady Annabel would speak of him as “the A. D. C.” or perhaps “the P. S.”

“I hope you will have made a good deal of money,” said Mrs. Fazackerly. “I always think it’s wonderful, the way in which people here are always ready to spend money.”

“We must try and get up something else one of these days,” said Lady Annabel with vague graciousness. “Perhaps for the King’s birthday. Good-night--good-night. Thank you so much. So glad you were able to come--”

Until Lady Annabel came to the rectory, Cross Loman, although entirely loyal, had never been in the habit of concerning itself with the King’s birthday. But we know better, now.

“Do you have a birthday ball at the rectory?” asked Christopher, grinning.

“I wish we did,” said Sallie. “Couldn’t we have a dance? Oh, Cousin Miles, the Manor House would be the place for it.”

I looked at Claire.

“I should like to arrange something of that sort,” she said, thoughtfully, and I knew that it was in her mind to show Lady Annabel Bending that Government Houses are not the only places where these things can be done.

“Come up to tea on Sunday and let’s talk about it,” I suggested, and Claire extended the invitation to Nancy Fazackerly and to Captain Patch.

We took Mary and Sallie back to the Mill House in the car, and I remember that Christopher Ambrey began to ask about Mrs. Fazackerly.

Of course Sallie told him instantly that her husband used to throw plates at her head.

“What a hound the fellow must have been!”

“She shouldn’t have married him,” said Sallie. “Though I believe she only did it to get away from her father. If people are mad enough to bind themselves by those preposterous vows, what can you expect?”

“Preposterous vows?” said Christopher, surprised.

“Don’t you call the marriage service preposterous?” returned Sallie, equally surprised.

“No,” said Christopher, stoutly, “I don’t. I suppose I am old-fashioned. I like the Prayer Book, and songs with tunes to them, and pictures that tell a story you can understand, and--and Christmas carols.”

“Well done!” said I.

“Talking about songs with tunes,” Mary asked, “what did you think of Mrs. Harter, Miles?”

“I agree with you that, as an unusual type of person, she’s interesting.”

“Her choice of songs was interesting, too--that atrocity about cabbage roses--I beg your pardon, Christopher!--and then ‘the Bluebells of Scotland.’ The first one was so exactly what one would have expected, and the second one so exactly what one wouldn’t have expected,” said Sallie.

“I like the good old ‘Bluebells of Scotland,’” Christopher said. “We must make her sing it again when we go to Mrs. Fazackerly’s house.”

I was glad that he seemed to be looking forward to that pleasantly.

Claire and I are not lively people, but we both wanted to make Christopher enjoy himself, although I think Claire resented his Philistine forms of enjoyment a good deal.

Both he and Captain Patch went often to play tennis with the Kendals at Dheera Dhoon.

“He couldn’t, surely,” Claire said to me, desperately, upon this subject.

I know what she meant. Christopher’s possible--or, more probably, impossible--marriage, was always one of Claire’s deepest preoccupations. And she has always been victim to an intensive system under which her hopes and her fears alike leap to gigantic proportions within a few seconds of their conception.

I had no doubt that she had already endowed Christopher and one of the Kendals--probably Dolly, the one she dislikes the most--with a family of which all the members would have inherited the Kendal temperament, which Claire finds a singularly unattractive one.

“I don’t think he could,” I assured her.

She gazed at me out of her enormous, tragical eyes.

“I am living upon the edge of a volcano, Miles.” And as, I suppose, my silence appeared to her to be an inadequate rejoinder--as indeed it was--she added, with violent emphasis, the word: “_Literally_.”

Poor Claire!

The Kendals, than whom no young women in this world have ever been more devoid of a dangerous fascination, continued to exercise their harmless hospitality, and in return, Christopher begged us to let him ask them to the Manor House.

They played tennis moderately well, but I found that all of them looked upon it as a matter of course that they should take it in turns to sit by my wheel chair for five or ten minutes and talk to me very brightly and conscientiously.

I think they looked upon this exercise as something which cheered up that poor Sir Miles Flower, and no doubt, had they been Boy Scouts, it would have been counted as the One Good Deed, or Kind Act, or whatever it is that Boy Scouts are presumed to perform daily.

The Kendals, in reality, are a pre-war survival.

“Nothing ever happens to us” might be taken as their motto.

They frequently proclaim this negative state of affairs in the tones of aggressive resignation peculiar to themselves, rather as though they resented this absence of drama in their lives, and yet regarded it as a mark of superiority.

During the war, Blanche Kendal, the eldest daughter, stayed at home “To help Mumma,” and Amy, whom Mumma has decreed to be delicate, was not allowed to do anything except what her Mother called “cheering up poor Puppa in the evenings--that must be your war work, darling.”

Dolly and Aileen, after an inordinate number of family conclaves--the Kendals are nothing, if not tribal--had, in 1915, been permitted to go daily to the County Hospital, where they had zealously washed dishes and listened enviously to the talk of girls much younger than themselves, who worked in the wards as nurses or masseuses.

Alfred, whom neither parent would have dreamed of trying to coerce, did not succeed in passing as fit for foreign service, and had to content himself with Salisbury Plain.

It follows that the Kendals, although they would no doubt repudiate the suggestion indignantly, have, for all practical purposes, completely forgotten all about the war.

Where Puppa previously condemned and denounced the Radicals, he now condemns and denounces the Labor Party; and when, as sometimes happens, he loses his temper for no appreciable reason, Mumma explains the lapse by saying, “Poor Puppa is so worried about this _wicked_ Income Tax” instead of, as in former days, “Poor Puppa is so worried about this nonsensical Servants’ Insurance Bill.”

Mumma herself never loses her temper, but, even as she, once upon a time, allowed herself to speak of the Suffragettes as unsexed, hysterical idiots, so she now condemns as wicked, irreligious, and immoral, the increased scope of the Divorce Laws and the new independence of Domestic Servants. Since the thirtieth birthday of the twins, Mrs. Kendal has allowed herself more latitude in mentioning such subjects in their presence. She quite believes, and often proclaims, that she has the complete confidence of all her children.

Dolly and Aileen are affectionately regarded by the whole family as being the emancipated members of it.

“No one ever allowed us to read the books they read,” Blanche told me, after Mumma had actually left a library copy of “Women Napoleon Loved” lying about the drawing-room, without troubling to shroud it in a brown paper cover.

And Amy pointed out, quite unresentfully, that she and Blanche had always been made to dress alike, at the twins’ age. This was when Dolly boldly appeared in a tailor-made shirt with pink stripes, although Aileen had not yet discarded her winter “everyday” cream-colored flannel.

Variegated sweaters and low-necked silk jumpers, such as Sallie Ambrey wears, Mumma has pronounced to be in bad style.

Dolly, who was my informant upon this point, seemed to think that I might get a false impression of Mumma and her ideals from it, for she added at once:

“Not that Mumma is in the least narrow-minded about things of that sort, or indeed of any sort. Long before the days of women’s suffrage--although of course she disapproved utterly of the militant ones--Mumma always said that she saw no harm whatever in a woman having a vote, so long as she could find a good wise man to tell her how to use it.”

I could only feel thankful that neither Sallie nor Martyn was present to hear this remarkable testimony to Mumma’s catholicity of outlook.

It was the summer that Christopher Ambrey spent at the Manor House with us, that Puppa acquired a motor car.

The girls were not allowed to drive it. Two of them sat on the back of the car, poised upon the extreme edge of the seat, while Mumma sat in front and Puppa drove. Christopher once told me that it took General Kendal five-and-twenty minutes to drive from “Dheera Dhoon” to Miss Applebee’s shop--a distance of perhaps half a mile. Mumma, sitting beside him, and diffusing a general sense of tension, adopted the role of look-out.

“I should bear a little to the right here, Puppa--you remember the bad place in the road? Not too much, dear....”

Sometimes she cast a worried look behind them, and discerned something on the sky line almost invisible to less anxious eyes.

“Something coming, Puppa.... No, not just yet, dear, but I thought I’d warn you, as it will want to pass us. I suppose they will sound their horn before they get quite close up. Girls, there’s a car coming up behind us.”

Poor General Kendal gripped the wheel tighter and tighter--until, Christopher said, the veins sprang out on the backs of his hands--and drove slower and slower.

“A cart coming _towards_ you, Puppa ... take care, the road is so narrow here ... it’s coming towards us--it’s just a little way in front, isn’t it? Don’t get fussed, dear.”

I have never been out in the General’s car myself, but I believe that he has never become a really confident driver, and that to this day Mumma sits beside him and keeps up a running fire of warnings.

As for the Kendal girls, they go almost everywhere on their bicycles. They say that having too many people in the car always makes poor Puppa so nervous.

_Chapter Four_

It was Nancy Fazackerly herself who subsequently told me all about her musical evening. She very often comes to see me, and, unlike the Kendals, never causes me to see myself in the unpleasant light of something accomplished, something done, for the good of somebody else’s soul.

The party, it is perhaps needless to say, was invited to come in after supper.

“So many people prefer to dine quietly at home,” said Mrs. Fazackerly.

Captain Patch, one of the few people with whom old Carey--Mrs. Fazackerly’s father--had not had time to quarrel--put him into a good humor in the morning by presenting him with a small work entitled “Poison Crimes of the Past.”

Old Carey’s hobby is criminology.

“All full of old friends!” said Mrs. Fazackerly delightedly. “Palmer, I’m sure I remember him--and Pritchard? I’ve often heard you speak of Pritchard, I’m sure, Father.”

She tries very hard, I know, to be interested in these rather sinister celebrities, but old Carey never meets his daughter halfway.

“Pritchard was a bungler of the first water,” he witheringly replied. “That servant of yours has no sense, Nancy; she hasn’t filled the tea caddy.”

“I ought to have done it myself. I never let her touch the China tea, you know.”

“This isn’t China tea.”

“Oh, Father, it is indeed. I had it specially down from the Stores, only a week ago.”

“Then why did you tell me yesterday, when we were talking about the weekly books, that you hadn’t had anything from the Stores for six months?”

Old Carey is always laying traps for his daughter, and she is always falling into them.

“Did I say that? I suppose I forgot about the tea,” she said valiantly.

“You are the worst housekeeper in England, I believe,” was her parent’s dispassionate retort.

Captain Patch broke in with some inquiry about the little book on poison cases. Unlike Mrs. Fazackerly, he never confused the Mannings with the Seddons, and he always appeared to be genuinely interested in the records of their activities.

Mrs. Fazackerly looked at him gratefully. She had a strong feeling of friendliness for red-headed Captain Patch. He was always so ready to put kindly interpretations upon everything, and she sometimes felt that there was a good deal in her life, both past and present, that positively craved for kindly interpretations.

Mrs. Fazackerly told me that sometimes she sighed with relief, as she woke in the morning to the remembrance of her paying guest’s presence. She had never before known such an easy summer.

The money from Captain Patch was paid into her account regularly and he not only gave no trouble, but was the only person to whom her father, for many years, had taken a liking. Since Captain Patch had been at the Cottage talking and joking, and above all, always ready to listen, Mrs. Fazackerly’s father had found fault with her less often and had made fewer demands upon her.

“It would be nice to have a little fun,” Mrs. Fazackerly may have thought to herself, wistfully, from time to time.

“The fish is here please ’m. He would like to speak to you.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Fazackerly, startled. “The fish. Very well; thank you, Bessie. I will come and speak to the fish at once.”

She turned towards the house again, recapitulating mentally the points to which she had already decided that the attention of “the fish” must be drawn.

After that, she certainly had no more time in which to think about improbable accessions of happiness to herself. Old Carey, whether or not at the suggestion of Captain Patch, announced his intention of spending the afternoon and evening at the Club.

“You can be ready to take me there at three o’clock,” he told his daughter, to whom belonged the privilege of pushing the heavy wheeled chair in which he took his exercise.

“I wish you’d let me do that, sir,” said Captain Patch. “I really want a job this afternoon.”

He nearly always found some good reason for relieving his hostess of this fatigue duty.

That evening, she put on the only evening dress that she possessed, a black crêpe-de-chine one embroidered with silver crescents, and looked long and critically at her reflection in the glass.

She powdered her small, straight, impertinent-looking nose, admired her really beautiful teeth, and wished, as she had often wished before, that her complexion had been anything but the creamy, freckled pallor of a _blonde cendrée_. Just before going downstairs, she allowed herself the comfort and pleasure of inspecting, with a hand mirror, the reflection of her back hair.

As she went down, she was still smiling at the thought of that soft and fluffy twist of thick, pale gold hair.

Nancy Fazackerly told me that she very often thought of her hair resolutely, when other people displayed new and charming clothes, such as she herself had never possessed.

Sallie Ambrey’s frock that night was one that Mrs. Fazackerly had not seen before, a straight, slim, green-and-gold little frock, with no sleeves at all.

“It’s lovely,” said Nancy frankly.

“Christopher is so old-fashioned that he’s been objecting to it as indecent,” said the girl with perfect unconcern.

“So it is,” Christopher asserted.

“Surely decency and indecency are out of date, nowadays,” Martyn suggested. “Like talking of people being shocked. I believe it was quite usual to be shocked, some years ago, but one never hears of its happening now.”

“Nancy,” said Sallie, “will your Mrs. Harter be shocked? She looked rather as though she might be, at the concert.”

“No, she won’t,” Mrs. Fazackerly asserted positively. “And she’s not my Mrs. Harter. I know very little of her, except that she hasn’t many friends.”

“Is she amusing?”

It might have been truthfully asserted that no one, on that first evening, found Mrs. Harter exactly amusing. It was, indeed, very difficult to make her utter a word, from what I was told.

She sat on the edge of an armchair, wearing the same black dress that she had worn at the concert, and twisting her wedding ring round and round on her finger. Her dark face wore a look of resentful shyness, her voice was low and abrupt, and all her replies were monosyllables. She did not originate any remark at all.

Her evident sense of constraint began to affect everybody in the room.

Sallie, who believes in letting people alone, leaned back on the sofa and smoked a cigarette and said very little. Martyn looked at Mrs. Harter, his young expressive face more and more sharply critical.

Then Christopher Ambrey and Captain Patch broke the silence simultaneously.

“Did you see the--”

“Have you been to--”

“I beg your pardon.”

“I beg your pardon. Go on.”

“Oh no, it wasn’t anything.”

“Please say what you were going to say--”

“Please--”

Sallie Ambrey laughed, but the others were all in painful earnest.

“It really isn’t worth saying,” Captain Patch truthfully remarked. “I was only going to ask if anyone had seen the eclipse yesterday. There was supposed to be an eclipse, I believe.”

No one seemed to have known or cared about this phenomenon, and after it had been briefly dismissed from life, there was another silence.

“How is Mr. Carey?”

“He’s had some quite good days, lately, and he’s really wonderful, considering.”

“Hullo, a moth!”

“How still it is, to-night, isn’t it?”

“Mrs. Harter, do you sing a great deal?”

It was all very disconnected, and spasmodic and embarrassing. Mrs. Fazackerly felt that never would these six people unite in singing “My old Kentucky Home” and “Swanee River” as she had intended them to do. The presence of Mrs. Harter, and her ungracious self-consciousness, were making havoc of the party.

It was red-headed Captain Patch who saved the situation. He boldly went over to the piano and threw it open.

“Mrs. Harter, we’ve wanted to hear ‘The Bluebells of Scotland’ again ever since the concert. May we all join in the chorus?”

Without waiting for any reply, he began to play, with one finger, and the others thankfully took up the well-known air.

After that there was no more constraint, and Captain Patch made Mrs. Fazackerly take his place as accompanist and stood behind the rest of the group, and eventually went away and returned carrying a laden coffee-tray.

Presently there was a great deal of cigarette smoke in the room, and a great deal of talk and laughter.

Mrs. Harter looked quite different.

“Thank goodness, it’s going to be a success after all,” Mrs. Fazackerly thought. She had an absurd feeling that the rescuing of her party from failure was a good omen for the future.

It was past twelve o’clock when the Ambreys went home in Christopher’s small car, and Captain Patch escorted Mrs. Harter to the narrow house in Queen Street where she was living in rooms.

“Good-by. Let’s do it again soon,” cried Sallie. “Why don’t we all meet this day week at our house and sing some more?”

“Let’s,” said Christopher.

“Mrs. Harter, can you?”

“Thanks very much.”

“About half-past eight then, all of us. I’ll look up some part-songs and things. Good-night.”

The car moved away.

* * * * *

Captain Patch escorted Mrs. Harter to the house in Queen Street....

Nancy Fazackerly told me the fact when she gave me the account of the party. And I have wondered so often what took place in the course of that short walk--the first time that those two people were ever alone together, after the evening of music and talk and laughter--that I have come to evolve a sort of imaginary conversation. It is based, like almost all my conception of Mrs. Harter’s personality, on conjecture, on the judgments of Mary Ambrey, who alone, of all those who watched the events of that summer, combined clear vision with pitifulness--and on what I saw of Bill Patch.

I don’t know--no one ever will know--what passed between them as they went up the still, moonlit street and across the little open square of the market place, their footsteps sounding very clearly in the absolute quiet of the night-time.

But I have sometimes fancied that I could reconstruct the lines of that conversation--and, for what it is worth, I shall put down what they may have said, as though I knew that they really did say it. Certainly, Diamond Harter dropped her guard that night. I am sure of that. Perhaps it was something as follows--but perhaps not.

“Were you long in the East?”

“Nearly five years. This is the first time I’ve been home. Cross Loman hasn’t changed much.”

“You must be glad of that, I should think.”

“Why?” said Mrs. Harter sharply. “I think it’s a horrid little country town, and the people in it mostly snobs.”

“Why do you think that? I’ve found them all so kind and friendly.”

“You! Yes. That’s different. But you don’t suppose I should have been asked to-night if I hadn’t happened to sing at the concert the other day. That Mrs. Fazackerly is a kind little soul, and everyone knows she’s had a hell of a time. But I’ve not any use for the Ambreys--especially that girl.”

“I’m sorry you feel like that.”

“I know you all thought I was going to spoil the evening, at first. I couldn’t help it.” Her voice softened a little in the darkness. “I felt such a fish out of water.”

“Sometimes I’ve felt like that myself. I used to when I was in the Army, very often. But one gets over it. People are awfully kind, really.”

“Martyn Ambrey is all right, and Mrs. Ambrey, that girl’s mother. Do you know her?”

“I’ve met her.”

“They weren’t living here when I was at home. As for the high and mighty Lady Flower, you saw what she was like that night at the concert.”

“Was she especially--anything?”

Mrs. Harter gave a short laugh.

“I don’t know why I’m giving myself away like this, I’m sure. Only you somehow got things going to-night, just when I was cursing myself for having been such a fool as to come.”

“I’m glad you did come, and I hope you’ll come to the Ambreys.”

He spoke simply and deliberately, and her reply was equally devoid of any hint of conventional intention.

“Why?”

“Because you sound so lonely,” said Captain Patch. “I expect you’d like people better if you saw them more often.”

“One doesn’t generally,” she said with an odd laugh.

“Give it a try, anyhow.”

“I shall. I always found this a dead-alive place, and after the East it would be duller than ever if one didn’t know people.”

“But you must have plenty of friends if your home is here.”

“I was away at school before I got married, and anyhow, I never was much of a one to make friends. The people I wanted to know didn’t care particularly about me, and the ones that did want to make friends I wasn’t particularly keen on. You see, my people sent me to a school where there were a set of girls that thought themselves a great deal better than the tradesmen’s daughters, and that sort. I was with them, mostly, at school, but after I left it was different. I was supposed to be going to teach, and one girl wrote and asked if I’d like to come as governess to her little sister. When we were at school, she’d invited me to go and stay as a friend, and I’d spent the holidays there. So I knew what it was like. And I wasn’t going to go back there as the governess after being a visitor in the house, thank you.”

“What did you do then?”

“Nothing. Stayed at home and did the typing in the office. I hated Cross Loman.”

“Did you like Egypt?”

“Yes,” said Diamond Harter slowly. “I liked Egypt. I got all the dancing and the riding and the parties out there that I’d wanted and hadn’t been able to get down here. Have you ever been to the East?”

“No.”

“It’s all quite different, of course. Everyone knows everyone, in a way. There aren’t ‘county’ people and other cliques, like there are here. One got the chance of knowing people whom one wouldn’t even have met at home.”

“Then,” said Captain Patch, rather doubtfully, “you’ll be glad to go back there again, I suppose?”

“For some things. This is my door, Captain Patch. Thanks for bringing me back. I suppose you wouldn’t care to come in and see me one day?”

“I’d like to very much,” said the red-haired young man, with his friendly smile. “Can’t I come and call on you?”

“I’m always here. Come and have tea with me on Thursday.”

“Yes, I will. Thank you very much.”

Her face in the moonlight looked strangely softened. “Have you got a latchkey?”

“Yes. Good-night.”

Mrs. Harter held out her hand and he took it for an instant. It was a strong hand, unusually broad, and capable of transmitting in contact a faint, magnetic thrill.

“Good-night,” she repeated as she went up the three shallow steps that led up to the neat, mean little door, with its liver-colored paint and tarnished brass.

Captain Patch, on the pavement, watched the door open, saw the tall, square-shouldered figure for a moment against the light that hung in the narrow entrance, and then heard the slam of the door and saw, through the ground-glass fan-light, the light go out.

Then he turned down the road again, softly whistling to himself “The Bluebells of Scotland.”

* * * * *

Sallie Ambrey has not her mother’s intuition, nor, naturally, has she Mary’s experience. But she has great acumen, and--that rarest and most invaluable asset--a mind trained from babyhood to clear thinking.

And, personally, I hold that she was absolutely right when she once called Captain Patch a hopeless and temperamental romantic, capable of a _grande passion_. One doesn’t associate it, somehow, with red curly hair, and a slouch, and a very frank smile on a boyish mouth and behind a pair of strong glasses.

Incongruity, in a way, was the keynote of the whole thing.

Diamond Harter wasn’t in the least beautiful, and certainly not charming. She was his senior by a year or two and, as Mrs. Kendal said later on, with her extraordinary gift for emphasizing the unessential:

“Mrs. Harter was not, _in any sense of the word_, a lady.”

One is left wondering how many “senses of the word” exist, and what they all are.

A few days after the concert, we decided that we would give a dance.

The Ambreys had come up to tea, as they often do on Sundays, and Mrs. Fazackerly came, and Bill Patch. I remember that Nancy Fazackerly looked pretty that day, in a hat trimmed with blue daisies and a blue cotton frock that seemed to be striped with a darker blue.

(Amy Kendal, who walked up later, with Mumma, of course, said to her, “How smart you look!” in a reproving way. And Christopher Ambrey, to whom the Kendal manner is not the familiar thing that it is to us, asked me what that odious woman meant.)

“This is the very place for a dance,” said Sallie, looking round the hall. “I can’t imagine why no one has thought of it before.”

Sallie is always rather apt to assume that because she has not thought of a thing herself, nobody else has done so, and this is a trick, among many others, that exasperates Claire.

“There were dances here before you were born or thought of, my child. It may seem very strange to you,” said Claire ironically, “but I happen to have been rather an unusually good dancer.”

Her annoyance was so obvious in her voice and manner--Claire never attempts to dissemble her feelings--that Nancy Fazackerly characteristically came to the rescue.

“I love to see you dance, Lady Flower,” she said earnestly. “I believe you’d even make the new jazz dances look graceful.”

She said it so naturally and sincerely that I felt I was an ungrateful brute for reflecting that she had probably never in her life seen Claire dance a step.

Sometimes I think that a long course of being told that she is the worst housekeeper, or the most inadequate manager, in the world, varied only by the nerve-shattering experience of plates hurled at her head, has altogether destroyed Nancy’s capacity for distinguishing fact from fiction. I am sure that she does not consciously fib. It is simply that her sense of expediency has completely got the better of her. Truthful, she undoubtedly is not, but I have always believed in her sincerity. And we were all secretly grateful to her for restoring Claire’s good humor.

“I may not have a staff of A. D. C’s., but I have had quite as much experience in entertaining as Lady Annabel Bending, I imagine,” said Claire, with some elasticity of statement. “And I should like to do something of the kind.”

“The difficulty will be to get men,” Mrs. Kendal stated, with all the Kendal directness. “You know how few men there are anywhere near Cross Loman. The girls often say that it’s next door to impossible to get a man for anything round here. Of course, Ahlfred would come down for it, and perhaps he could bring a friend--that would be two men.”

We tried to look encouraged.

“Let’s make a list of the people you want to invite, Cousin Claire.”

Claire dictated names, and Sallie wrote them down, and we all made suggestions. The monosyllable “men” must have resounded through the hall fifty times, in Mumma’s emphatic contralto.

The list approximated to about forty couples when it was done. I said that I thought we ought to do the thing properly and invite the whole neighborhood, not merely dancers. “Can’t we have bridge or something to amuse the older people?” said I, not without a thought to my own entertainment.

“I know!” cried Martyn. “Let’s have theatricals--ask everybody to come and see them, and then have a dance afterwards for those who like it.”

Christopher, Mrs. Fazackerly, Sallie, and Captain Patch received the suggestion with such clamorous enthusiasm that Claire and I exchanged a glance and a word under cover of it.

“Would you care to, Claire? I’m quite ready, if you are, and it would amuse Christopher.”

“Yes, it would. We haven’t done anything for a long time, either, and Cross Loman really has had enough of the Drill Hall entertainments, I should imagine.”

I knew that she was thinking of Lady Annabel again.

“You can have theatricals, Martyn,” said Claire graciously. “I think it’s rather a good idea, and we’ll have dancing in the saloon afterwards.”

The list was revised, added to and discussed all over again.

“But who will act in the theatricals?” Mary said. “And what are you going to act?”

“Captain Patch will write something--Oh yes, you must, or what’s the good of having an author here at all?--and we’d better tell him just how many people there are who can act, and then he can have the right number of parts,” said Sallie rapidly. “And anyone who can’t act, and wants to, can be told that there isn’t a part.”

“None of us can act to save our lives,” Amy Kendal superfluously informed us.

“I cannot write a play,” said Bill Patch very firmly indeed. “But we could get up something musical, if you liked, and write our own libretto, and just set it to any tune that fits. I’ve seen that done very successfully at short notice, and it’s all there’ll be time for, if Lady Flower’s dance is to be three weeks from to-day.”

“Fancy your saying that you couldn’t write a play! I’m sure you could write a play, Captain Patch,” said Mrs. Kendal amiably. “If a book, why not a play?”

Bill Patch looked rather desperate, and said he didn’t know why not, but he couldn’t, and Mumma remarked again, three or four times, that she was quite sure he could easily write a play.

“Miles, why don’t you stage-manage it for them?” said Mary Ambrey. “They’ll want someone....”

In the end, they settled it that way, after talking until nearly eight o’clock.

The last thing I heard, as everyone took leave of us at the same moment, was Mumma reiterating, pleasantly but steadily, her conviction (a) that it would be difficult to get enough men, and (b) that she was quite sure Captain Patch could easily write a play.

_Chapter Five_

Two days later, Bill Patch and Mrs. Fazackerly came to consult us about their joint production.

“It isn’t a play,” Captain Patch said, his red hair standing up on end. “Whatever Mrs. Kendal may think about it, I cannot write a play. But we’ve strung something together, more or less--mostly a few songs.”

“We thought you’d know more about it than anybody else and would advise us,” said Nancy Fazackerly prettily.

“Even Mrs. Kendal has never suggested that _I_ could write a play, my dear.”

“But I’ve sometimes wondered whether _I_ oughtn’t to have gone in for writing,” said Claire. “Only I haven’t had the time.”

“It’s more about the performers than the actual play that we want advice,” explained Captain Patch. “Though even that isn’t going to be all plain sailing. General Kendal--”

“Most kindly,” said Nancy Fazackerly.

“Most kindly,” Bill repeated, in a worried, obedient sort of way, “most kindly turned up last night with a pair of Hessian boots.”

“Hessian boots?”

“He thought they’d make such a good stage property and that we ought to write something that would make use of them. He really was most awfully keen, poor old fellow, and of course it isn’t a bad idea, in its way. Hessian boots, you know--you don’t see them nowadays.”

To this we assented.

“One could do something with a uniform, and the boots would give a finish, as it were,” Mrs. Fazackerly suggested.

“Hessian boots, and a belt, and a busby, would give the idea of a Russian, I thought,” Bill Patch explained. “And we thought of doing something with that old song, ‘The Bulbul Ameer.’ You could make quite a lot out of it, and it would be much easier to dress up to that sort of thing than to a regular play. You remember the song I mean?”

“I brought it with me,” said Mrs. Fazackerly. And then and there she read it aloud to us, in her pleasant, rather pathetic voice.

“The sons of the Prophet are hardy and bold,
And quite unaccustomed to fear;--
But, of all, the most reckless of life or of limb,
Was Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer.
When they wanted a man to encourage the van,
Or to shout ‘hull-a-loo’ in the rear--
Or to storm a redoubt, they straightaway sent out
For Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer.

“There are heroes in plenty and well-known to fame
In the ranks that are led by the Czar;
But among the most reckless of name or of fame
Was Ivan Petruski Skivah.
He could imitate Irving, play euchre or pool,
And perform on the Spanish guitar;
In fact, quite the cream of the Muscovite team
Was Ivan Petruski Skivah.

“One morning the Russian had shouldered his gun
And put on his most cynical sneer,
When, going down town, he happened to run
Into Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer.
Said the Bulbul, ‘Young man, is your life then so dull
That you’re anxious to end your career?
For, infidel, know that you’ve trod on the toe
Of Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer.’

“Said the Russian, ‘My friend, your remarks in the end
Will only prove futile, I fear;
For I mean to imply that you’re going to die,
Mr. Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer.’
The Bulbul then drew out his trusty chibouque,
And, shouting out, ‘Allah Akbar,’
Being also intent upon slaughter, he went
For Ivan Petruski Skivah.

“When, just as the knife was ending his life--
In fact, he had shouted ‘Huzza!’--
He found himself struck by that subtle calmuck,
Bold Ivan Petruski Skivah.
There’s a grave where the wave of the Blue Danube flows,
And on it, engraven so clear,
Is, ‘Stranger, remember to pray for the soul
Of Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer.’

“Where the Muscovite maiden her vigil doth keep
By the light of the true lover’s star,
The name she so tenderly murmurs in sleep
Is ‘Ivan Petruski Skivah.’
The sons of the Prophet are hardy and bold
And quite unaccustomed to fear;
But, of all, the most reckless of life or of limb,
Was Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer.”

“It’s not a bad tune,” said Captain Patch. “You see, someone comes on and sings the whole thing straight off--just to put the audience in touch with the general hang of affairs--and then, I thought, we’d act it. This fellow Abdul, you know, full of swagger--dressed up like a Turk--nothing easier than to dress like a Turk, on the stage--a towel twisted round your head, and shoes turning up at the toes, and a bill-hook or something for a scimitar, and everyone tumbles to it directly. Well, Abdul could get quite a lot of laughs by putting on tremendous side and all that sort of thing. Then the Russian chap--or we could just call him Slavonic, if you think Russians are rather a slump in the market just now--of course he’s in love with Abdul’s girl, the Muscovite maiden. He’d have to be the hero of the piece--Ivan Petruski Skivah--flourishing about with a sword and that kind of thing--and in uniform--”

“The Hessian boots?”

“Exactly. The Hessian boots. A note of realism introduced at once--”

“And what about the Muscovite maiden?” said Claire.

“She’ll sing duets with Ivan Petruski, of course, and she’s easy to dress, too. A veil over her head, and slave-bangles, and perhaps a Yashmak. An eastern get-up is always effective, and so very economical to arrange,” said Mrs. Fazackerly with satisfaction.

“We’re going to put in extra parts as well--chorus of Eastern maidens, and Cossacks, and things like that. But those are the principals.”

“And how have you cast it?” I inquired.

“Sallie must be the Muscovite maiden. She’ll look sweet,” said Mrs. Fazackerly, “and she can sing, too.”

“Will Major Ambrey take on the Bulbul Ameer?” Captain Patch asked.

Christopher was not present. We were both positive that he would refuse the suggested honor, and we knew well, moreover, that Christopher is no musician. I have heard him sing in church.

“You’ll have to do it yourself, Captain Patch,” said Claire. “How about the Hessian boots?”

“We thought of Martyn. And someone will be wanted to sing the song itself, as a kind of prologue, before the curtain goes up,” said Mrs. Fazackerly.

I remember that she looked as much pleased and excited over their plans as a child over a party.

“You see, that song is meant to be a sort of recurring _motif_ throughout the whole show,” Bill said. “When we’re at rather a loose end, someone can play the refrain or sing it, and it will buck things up at once. It’s extraordinary how pleased an audience always is with anything that’s repeated often enough. They know where they are, I suppose, when they recognize an old friend. And at the end, we can all stand in a row across the stage and sing the chorus together. You know the kind of thing--just to bring down the curtain.”

He looked just as much pleased and excited as Nancy Fazackerly did. They were like two very nice children.

“It sounds all right,” I said. “I take it that we really want to do the acting among ourselves, as much as possible, and entertain the rest of the people and then all wind up with a dance.”

“Exactly,” said Claire.

“The only outside talent, as far as one can see at present, will be Mrs. Harter,” said Bill Patch--and he was genuinely quite unconcerned about it, too.

But I saw that Nancy Fazackerly knew well enough that Claire wasn’t going to stand for _that_.

“Mrs. Harter?”

There was more than one note of interrogation in Claire’s way of saying it--quite three or four.

“You remember how rippingly she sang ‘The Bluebells of Scotland’ the other night?”

“Oh, yes, I remember that.”

“We thought of her, for the ‘Bulbul Ameer’ song at the beginning because one really does want someone who’ll pronounce all the words distinctly. And she’s got a good ‘carrying’ voice, if ever I heard one.”

“I daresay,” said Claire distantly.

Bill Patch looked from one to another of us, and I remembered how, the first time I saw him, he had reminded me of a Clumber spaniel--so young, and awkward, and eager--and now, evidently, so much puzzled as well.

“Her voice really is a very good one,” said Mrs. Fazackerly pleadingly. “And I’m rather sorry for her, do you know. After all, in Egypt she must have had a very amusing time and known heaps of people--and now to come back to Cross Loman--”

“Where she came from!” ejaculated Claire.

“I know--but that makes it harder, in a way. She’s outgrown the people whom she saw most of when she was Diamond Ellison--and after all, she wasn’t so very much more than a schoolgirl when she married and went away. I think she feels a little bit stranded sometimes.”

“Where is Mr. Harter--and what is he?” Claire demanded.

“He is a solicitor--and he’s still in the East, but he may come home this summer. I don’t think the marriage is a very happy one,” said Mrs. Fazackerly, looking down.

I fancy that to all of us there then came a momentary vision of crockery, propelled violently through space, after the reckless habit that report had imputed to Mrs. Fazackerly’s excitable partner.

“It would be so very kind of you, Lady Flower, to say that we may ask her to help with the show,” said Nancy, raising her pretty eyes to Claire’s face, and speaking with her habitual flattering deference. “You see, if once you gave a lead, Mrs. Harter wouldn’t feel out of things any more.”

“And,” said Captain Patch, not quite so diplomatically, “it would be such a shame to waste that beautiful voice.”

“Who is going to play your accompaniments--or do you rise to an orchestra?” I interrupted.

“I can play the accompaniments,” said Mrs. Fazackerly radiantly. “It’s all I’m good for. I have no voice and I can’t act. Which reminds me that some of the Kendals really ought to be asked to take part, oughtn’t they, after General Kendal has so very kindly provided those boots?”

“Perhaps Alfred and two of the girls might do something in the chorus without damaging it.”

“We must go and find out. And--what about Mrs. Harter?”

Claire shrugged her shoulders.

“I think it’s rather a mistake to ask her, myself. But please do exactly as you like about it. If her voice is essential, then I suppose she must be asked.”

“Now, what about the stage itself?”

Nancy Fazackerly was quite wise enough not to press the question of Mrs. Harter any further, and they went off into a discussion as to the structure and position of the stage.

I asked Claire afterwards if she really objected very much to letting old Ellison’s daughter take part in the performance.

“She won’t expect to be asked here afterwards, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“How do you know she won’t? I thought that she looked like a pushing sort of woman, and common.”

“Do you remember how they did those portraits of her in Sallie’s game the other day?”

“Yes. Why?”

“It struck me as odd that they’d all thought enough about her to find it worth while--although not one of them knows her in the least intimately.”

“As I said at the time, Miles, she has personality. I suppose I have personality myself. It’s an indefinable sort of thing.”

We left it at that.

Mrs. Fazackerly and Captain Patch were to have a week in which to prepare their program, and after that there was to be a general assembly of the prospective performers.

“And you’ll preside, won’t you, to settle about parts, and then no one will be hurt or offended,” said Mrs. Fazackerly, speaking, I fear, from a wide past experience of the wonderful capacities of other people for being hurt or offended on the very slightest provocation.

I asked them to hold the meeting in the library and promised to do my best that no one should be either hurt or offended.

On the day that I was expecting them I drove down to the Mill House in the morning to see Mary. I drive out in a low basket-carriage drawn by a very old pony, because that is the only safe way in which I can convey my semi-helpless person about without assistance.

She was in the garden, as usual, doing something with a trowel.

Mary never seems surprised to see me, only pleased, and she does not stand by with an anxious frown, brightly and carefully talking about other things while I adjust my crutches and lower myself out of the pony carriage.

“Sallie and Martyn are rolling the tennis lawn. Isn’t it energetic of them on such a lovely day? Let’s sit in the shade.”

There is a big beech tree on Mary’s lawn, and we sat under it and watched the tiny little stream that runs at the bottom of the garden. The sound of it, more than any other sound I know, always recalls to me the summer days of childhood.

Presently I consulted Mary about the theatricals and the assignment of the parts.