Chapter IV: Part 4

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.”

Mrs. Fazackerly may or may not have marked Christopher’s words--probably she did--but it was quite evident enough without them that the arrival of Harter in Cross Loman would precipitate a crisis.

“Is he coming here?” I asked.

Mrs. Fazackerly nodded.

“When?” I said, and Christopher Ambrey at the same moment said, “Why?”

“Very soon. And he’s coming because--” Nancy paused and then said in a slightly awe-stricken way: “She’s written and asked him to come.”

“Did she tell you so?”

“Captain Patch did.”

“And did he tell you why she did anything so astonishing?”

“Not exactly. I got an impression, though.” She hesitated.

“I think I’ll tell you. I think, in a way, he rather wanted me to tell people--especially if anyone is talking about them.”

“Everyone is talking about them,” I assured her. “Please add to the number.”

All the same, I knew that what she wanted to say was, by comparison with the tittle-tattle that was going on, something serious.

“Diamond Harter has written to her husband and asked him to come here. She is very unhappily married--everyone knows that--and I think she is going to try and put an end to it.”

“Put an end to it?”

“A separation, I suppose, or--or a divorce, perhaps.”

“And where, exactly, does Bill Patch come in?”

“I should have thought that was obvious,” muttered Christopher.

“That’s exactly where you’re mistaken, my dear fellow. There’s nothing obvious about any of it. Neither of them are obvious people, and I distrust profoundly the combination of an obvious situation and two such unobvious protagonists. It is quite impossible to predict what their reactions may be.”

I felt rather like Sallie as I spoke, and I also knew that Christopher, by instinct, dislikes and distrusts the use of polysyllabic words.

He looked at me rather disgustedly, but did not say anything.

Nancy Fazackerly went on.

“Of course, it’s impossible not to see that she and Captain Patch are--are always together. But really and truly I believe she’s written--or they both have--to Mr. Harter.”

“To tell him that they’re making themselves the talk of Cross Loman? How considerate!”

“It seems rather a brave sort of thing to have done,” Nancy said wistfully.

Her own strong point is not moral courage.

“Of course, she’s older than he is, and besides, she’s married already, and--and there are other things as well. But I can’t help being very sorry for her. And I am fond of him.”

I thought Christopher Ambrey looked rather anxious, at that, and that I had better give him the opportunity of going into the question of the exact degree of fondness that Captain Patch had inspired in Mrs. Fazackerly. So I left them together.

Their love affair was progressing very, very slowly, and I did not even then feel sure that it was destined to a successful fulfilment.

Claire, I knew, would use all her influence to prevent it, which seemed to render it rather more likely to happen, but old Carey was capable of working seriously upon his daughter’s feelings to the extent of making her think it her duty to remain with him.

There was no doubt that Christopher, hitherto singularly unsusceptible, was attracted by her. He always turned over the pages of her music for her at rehearsals, and once he had given her a bunch of lilies of the valley.

There were pauses in his courtship, during which he evidently thought over the next stage before embarking upon it, but on the whole the affair was going forward.

Nancy Fazackerly was looking prettier than I had ever seen her. She had one or two new frocks that summer, too, as though she thought it was worth while to look her best.

“Nancy Fazackerly doesn’t look like a widow,” Mrs. Kendal said, about this time. Her tone was not exactly disparaging, although neither was it enthusiastic. But her wide, opaque gaze rested quite blandly upon Nancy as she spoke.

“What does a widow look like?”

Mumma is not apt at definitions, and she only replied that a widow generally _looked_ like a widow, and that Nancy Fazackerly didn’t.

“So much the better,” said I.

“She is very young,” Mumma said tolerantly. “And I believe it is a positive fact that her first husband was in the habit of throwing plates at her head.”

She paused for a moment, and then, as far as Mumma’s large face can express anything, it expressed confusion.

“When I say her first husband,” she incredibly remarked, “I mean to say her late husband.”

I really thought that I had better not hear this at all, and so I turned the conversation abruptly to “The Bulbul Ameer.”

It was very easy to do this, since everyone who knew anything at all about the play, and many who did not, appeared to hold very strong views about the manner of its production and to be eager to advocate them.

Mumma was no exception.

Bill Patch and Nancy, however, were the joint authors of the piece, and so the conversation gradually veered round to personalities again.

Mrs. Kendal said that it was a great pity about Captain Patch and that she had always thought him a nice young fellow, before.

I declined, tacitly, to unravel these implications, and on the whole I was relieved when she worked her way back to the Nancy Fazackerly theme once more.

Everybody’s inflections, if not their words, were friendly and hopeful when they talked about Nancy Fazackerly and Christopher Ambrey. Almost equally universal were the characteristics of the words and inflections applied to Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch.

These were either condemnatory or regretful--and sometimes both.

_Chapter Nine_

It was an unusually eventful summer in Cross Loman.

The only large house in the neighborhood which is ever let, Grainges, was taken for three months by a wealthy fellow of the name of Leeds and his wife. Lady Annabel Bending was quite excited and said that they had “known H. E. in his Zanzibar days.” It was one of those links of which we had so often heard her speak, and she naturally called upon them at once. Then there was a tea party in their honor at the rectory, and Lady Annabel stood on the steps smiling and said a few appropriate words to each guest as she shook hands and at intervals raised her voice and said very clearly and distinctly:

“To your right as you go in. The door is open....”

Most of Cross Loman knows the inside of the rectory pretty well, and it is not a very large house, so that Lady Annabel’s directions were not really exactly necessary, but it was all very masterly and well organized, and we went into the drawing-room and avoided the dining room, which was the only other room opening out of the hall.

After that, Leeds and Mrs. Leeds were invited to various small social functions, and then, in return, they gave a monster picnic. It was, as entertainments not infrequently are, the occasion for one or two _contretemps_. Mrs. Leeds, a kindly, noisy, unperceiving creature, at the last moment extended an invitation to Mrs. Harter, whom it seemed that they had met in Cairo, when their yacht was coaling at Port Said. I was present at Grainges when Mrs. Leeds announced this to Lady Annabel.

“So very amusin’ to meet a well-known face unexpectedly,” she said jovially. “And Mrs. Harter was almost _too_ well-known, in Cairo--ha-ha! Any amount of scandal was talked about her, I believe--so interestin’, scandal, I always think.”

Lady Annabel looked pale and said in a very low voice that Mrs. Harter was the daughter of the local plumber, she believed.

“Really?” said Mrs. Leeds. “I wish I’d asked her to bring her father--he could have had a look at the range.”

We all met at Grainges, from whence a fleet of cars was to carry us to Berry Down. Leeds had two cars and his wife one, and the servants, besides a mountain of hampers, preceded us in a Ford lorry.

“It is almost like the East again to see this sort of thing. Native labor, you know....” Lady Annabel murmured to me rather wistfully.

However, she ceased to be wistful, and became austere instead, when she heard about Mrs. Harter.

Captain Patch brought her and they arrived on foot. Mrs. Leeds happened to be out of the room, giving final orders to one of the chauffeurs, and there was a moment’s awkwardness.

We were all assembled in the big drawing-room and Lady Annabel, for whom we waited instinctively, made no move at all.

Alfred Kendal said, “Hullo, Patch!” rather feebly and Mrs. Harter stood by the door, waiting.

I looked at Claire. She had flushed a little and was obviously undecided what line to take. And then Mary Ambrey got up and walked down the length of the room and shook hands with her and said very clearly:

“How do you do, Mrs. Harter? Mrs. Leeds has just gone out to see about the car, I believe. She’ll be back in a second or two. How brave of you to walk, in this heat!”

It was very like Mary, and more like her still to do it with perfect calm, and the most absolute naturalness.

I doubt if she even knew that we all drew a breath of intense relief, as she stood there, talking quietly, till Mrs. Leeds came dashing in at one of the French windows.

“That was rather finely done,” I heard Martyn murmuring in my ear, with his insufferable accent of patronizing approval. Claire heard him, too, and I saw that she was vexed.

She had missed an opportunity of making what, from her, would have been a very beautiful gesture.

The last guests to arrive were General and Mrs. Kendal with two of the girls. Puppa is the most punctual of men, but he admits that he cannot always estimate the time that it will take to drive anywhere in the new car. I suppose that it depends upon the number and promptitude of Mumma’s warning outbursts on the road.

As they entered, our host made his appearance. Leeds, what with his wealth, and a fine presence, and one of the loudest voices that I have ever heard in my life, is only to be described as an overwhelming man.

He was very hearty and enthusiastic, and welcomed us all, especially Mrs. Harter, to whom he immediately shouted:

“Last time we met, someone bet you wouldn’t drink six cocktails in succession, and you did it. By Jove, I’ve never forgotten it! Lounge of Shepherd’s Hotel, wasn’t it? Never saw a more sporting collection in my life, than we had that evening. You ought to have been there.”

I think that he uttered the last clause in an indiscriminate sort of way to all of us, perhaps conscious that his audience was not, so to speak, altogether with him. But it was a little unfortunate that the people immediately facing him happened to be Lady Annabel and Mrs. Kendal. It was so extraordinarily evident to the rest of us that they did not at all feel that they ought to have been there, on the occasion of Mrs. Harter’s rather singular achievement.

Leeds, however, alternates between a childlike touchiness and an egotistical obtuseness, and this time he was obtuse.

He went on talking to Mrs. Harter about Cairo, and the people there whom he had known, and whom he took it for granted that she had known also. Later on, I learned that the weakness of Mr. Leeds was to have known everybody. He is a young-looking man for his years, and people are always astonished, in a gratifying way, when he claims acquaintance with the celebrities of forty years ago.

He is exactly the kind of man to whom one would expect Mrs. Harter’s type to make a strong appeal, and he addressed his conversation almost exclusively to her.

When Mrs. Leeds said, “How are we all goin’?” there was the usual pause, followed by the usual demonstrations.

“Will you come in the Mercedes with me, Lady Annabel, and Sir Miles? Hector,” said Mrs. Leeds to her husband, “will you take Lady Flower in the two-seater?”

She did not make her suggestions with any assurance, and Lady Annabel, while acquiescing graciously as to the place allotted to her, seemed faintly amused. She said afterward that these things require a great deal of experience--which indeed is quite true--and that personally she had always instructed the A. D. C.s beforehand, and left nothing to chance.

“I can seat three people,” said General Kendal. “Not more. The springs, you know--and the hill up to Berry Down is a stiff pull.”

“You’d better let me sit in front with you, Puppa,” Mrs. Kendal said firmly. “Then I can keep my eyes open. If one hasn’t been driving very long,” she explained to the rest of us, “one is liable to get fussed. I always say to my husband, at critical moments, ‘Don’t get fussed, dear. Whatever you do, keep your head, and don’t allow yourself to get fussed.’”

“But this won’t do at all--we must separate relations!” cried Leeds. “We can’t all go about in family groups, like the Ark, or whatever it was. Might as well stay at home as do that.”

“I certainly think there’s more sense in staying at home and eating one’s food in comfort, than dragging it out of doors and eating it under the most miserable conditions imaginable, for no conceivable reason--” said General Kendal suddenly and strongly.

Everyone looked a little disconcerted, and Dolly Kendal said in a determined tone that picnics were great fun, if one took the rough with the smooth and didn’t _mind_ things.

“Why not let’s walk--some of us?” Bill Patch suggested. “It’s not more than a mile or so, through the woods.”

“No need to walk. There are plenty of conveyances,” said Leeds, in rather an offended way.

“Well, who’ll go in the second car?” cried Mrs. Leeds. “Let me see--Miss Kendal, Captain Patch, Major Ambrey--and what about you, Mrs. Fazackerly?”

“I should love to,” said Mrs. Fazackerly.

“That leaves the other Miss Kendal, and Mrs. Harter and Mrs. Kendal, oh, and Mrs. Ambrey--”

She began to look rather helpless again.

“My two-seater is here,” suggested Christopher.

“Oh, but do let some of us walk. It would be so nice to walk,” Sallie declared.

Nearly everybody in the room then began to explain how very much he, or she, would prefer to walk to Berry Down. It was a voluble contest in unselfish determination. Then, just as it seemed that Mrs. Leeds was reconciled to the idea of letting some of her guests start on foot, Leeds reduced the whole thing to chaos again by suddenly announcing that he would take Mrs. Harter in his small runabout.

“You are taking Lady Flower, dear,” said poor Mrs. Leeds. “We’ve got muddled.”

We had indeed.

In the end, things were settled contrary to the wishes of almost everybody. Bill Patch and Sallie and Alfred Kendal went off on foot, Christopher, with a face of thunder, declared himself delighted to take Aileen Kendal in his two-seater, and the rest of us were somehow packed into the big cars, all except Martyn, who insisted upon going off on his own motor bicycle and taking Mrs. Harter on the carrier.

Mr. Leeds and Claire, mutually dissatisfied, went in our host’s runabout.

I do not know exactly what they said to one another, of course, but I do know that Claire is not in the least interested in the celebrities that other people have met. Even the ones that she has met herself appeal to her from only one point of view, which is what she thinks that they thought about her. At all events, when they arrived at the particular clump of Scotch firs indicated, Claire looked utterly exhausted, and Leeds made straight for Mrs. Harter and threw himself down on the dry, heathery turf at her feet and asked for a drink.

It was, actually, only the second time that I had seen Mrs. Harter. She looked better than she had looked in evening dress, wearing a thin dark tweed and a purple felt hat properly rammed down over her black hair. (The Kendals had large straw hats, the backs of which almost touched their shoulder blades.)

Our host’s voice boomed on without ceasing and I caught the words “cocktails,” “Cairo” and “moonlight” a good many times, but from Mrs. Harter I hardly heard a syllable. She sat and smoked cigarettes, and every now and then she looked across the gorse and heather and bracken to the path along which the walkers would come.

The interval during which we waited for them was mostly passed in discussion as to whether we should wait or not. I remember that Mrs. Kendal kept on saying, “I should have thought they would have been here by this time. I should have thought so,” and that each time she said it, one or other of us replied, intelligently, that _we_ should have thought so, too.

Then Mrs. Leeds wanted us to begin lunch, and we said, “Oh no, we’d better wait,” and then one by one capitulated, and said, “Well, perhaps we’d better not wait.” And by that time the habit of uncertainty that I had already discerned in Mrs. Leeds had got the better of her again and she said, “Oh well, perhaps we’d better give them a few minutes’ law.”

At last we saw approaching the emerald-green handkerchief that Sallie wore knotted round her head, and they came up to us.

Captain Patch went and sat beside Diamond Harter without pause or hesitation, and I very much doubt if he even saw the look of astonished resentment turned upon him by Mr. Leeds.

The rest of us saw it, however, including Mrs. Leeds, who had not been among us long enough to realize fully the inner subtleties of the _affaire_ Harter, and remarked with a loud laugh that Hector would be simply furious with that red-headed young man. Hector had, as she put it, made all the running with Mrs. Harter last time they met, on board the yacht.

Nobody made very much response, and it was a relief on every account when we at last began luncheon.

But luncheon was not without its perilous moments, either.

Mr. and Mrs. Leeds are the sort of people who provide cocktails at a picnic, and these of course revived the reminiscences of Mrs. Harter’s feats in Cairo. Even Leeds, however, must have seen that he was not being a success. Mrs. Harter’s face showed that plainly enough, and even more expressive was the way in which she presently turned her back on him and left him to Sallie, who was sitting on his other side. With Sallie, Leeds had only too much scope.

There is a colloquialism made use of in the servants’ hall which has always seemed to me a wonderfully expressive one. Somebody is described as “playing up” somebody else. It occurred to me very forcibly, while watching and listening to Sallie and Leeds.

Sallie was shamelessly “playing him up.” She encouraged him with artless questions, and listened to his loud and generally boastful replies with innocent and unwavering interest, and all the time I knew, and Mary Ambrey did, that the horrid little clever thing was storing up every word of it, and mentally labeling, filing, and indexing him for future reference.

Sallie will certainly write a novel some day, and all of us will recognize one another in it.

Leeds told several stories, not very funny ones, but in such stentorian tones that we were all more or less obliged to listen, and twice Claire said, “That reminds me of how I once” but Leeds didn’t hear.

Nancy Fazackerly took off her hat, and the sun shone on her beautiful blonde hair, and she looked very happy and young.

Christopher Ambrey sat next her and looked at her a great deal.

“I wonder if old Chris has asked her, yet,” I heard Martyn say quietly to one of the Kendals. And she replied in an interested way:

“I should think he’d do it to-day, anyhow. Wouldn’t you?”

“Too many people about.”

“They can go for a walk or something, after lunch.”

“We’ll have a bet on it, if you like,” Martyn suggested, and they arranged the terms of a very mild wager, with some suppressed giggling from Aileen.

I thought to myself that if I had been a young man, people like Martyn and the Kendals would not have been given the opportunity of exercising their wit upon my love affairs. But as a matter of fact I knew well enough that if Chris and Nancy really did become engaged, they would probably be told all about the bet, and would find it quite amusing.

The servants from Grainges had solemnly laid an enormous tablecloth over the heather, and weighted the corners of it--not with stones, nothing so rural--but with plated ice buckets, full of broken ice. We had lobster, and salmon-mayonnaise, and chicken salad, and galantine, and an immense variety of cold sweets and pastries, and our plates were changed by the servants after each course, and our glasses filled with Moselle, or whisky or lemonade.

One felt ungrateful for feeling that it would have been a relief if only the salt had been forgotten, or there hadn’t been enough rolls to go round.

Christopher did, in an honest attempt to make the thing less magnificent, suggest sharing a salad plate with his neighbor, but Leeds overheard him, and roared to one of the men servants. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Kendal was sitting on the missing salad plate, which was afterwards found embedded deeply into quite hard ground, but of course the servants produced an extra one without a moment’s hesitation.

However, iced Moselle, whether suitable or not to a picnic on the moors, was bound to have its effect, and, anyway, Leeds and Mrs. Leeds undeniably came into the category known to modern slang as “cheery souls.” So that by the time we were all eating cherries and strawberries, the picnic had become a very animated and successful affair.

Claire, while Leeds was telling Sallie that he had been through parts of China where no other white man had ever been allowed to set foot, got her opportunity, and gave Alfred Kendal and Mrs. Leeds, and one or two others, an amusing account of an impromptu charade party of the previous summer. The point of the story was her own success in a tragic impersonation, but she brought it in very skilfully. The contrast between her methods, and those of Leeds, was rather amusing.

Lady Annabel talked to the Kendals. Puppa and Mumma have lived sufficiently long in the East to understand her point of view.

Most of the younger people present were playing bob-cherry, but Christopher, with his hat tipped right over his eyes, was talking to Nancy Fazackerly, and Bill Patch and Mrs. Harter were silent.

He was industriously scraping together a small pile of fir needles and dry twigs--one of those mechanical occupations that are generally the sign of complete mental absorption in something else--and she was lighting and smoking one after another of her interminable cigarettes.

Mary Ambrey had been sitting next to me, but she gave me a little nod presently, and changed her place, and went to talk to Mrs. Leeds. She has out-of-date ideas of the courtesy due to a hostess from a guest, which are not shared by her children. Then Mrs. Leeds added the final touch to her lavish entertainment, and produced, with the air of a benevolent conjuror, a couple of tooled-leather boxes containing cards and bridge markers.

“I thought it’d be a shame to waste the afternoon,” she said simply, clearing a space for a thin carriage rug to cover the purple heather, and setting her back against a small, shimmering silver birch.

“Upon my word, that’s a great idea,” said General Kendal, brightening for the first time since the expedition had started.

“Hector!”

“Hello!” said Leeds, turning half round. “Oh, I see--you want to build card-houses, do you? Well, Miss Sallie, the end of it was that these perishers, never having seen anyone like me before, absolutely knuckled under. Most ridiculous thing you ever saw. Why, they’d have made me crowned king over them if I’d allowed it. You must let me tell you the end of the yarn another day--that is, if I haven’t been boring you stiff.”

As he did not wait to hear Sallie’s answer, one supposes that Leeds was happily confident as to its nature.

Of course, everybody began to be unselfish again about the bridge, and those who most obviously wanted to play unanimously offered to resign their places to those who did not care about it in the least.

But the present new generation, like every other generation, has the qualities of its defects, and if it is graceless, it is also fearlessly candid.

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.