Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  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, whilst 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.

  “Sallie for the heroine, of course — she can act and she can sing. Nancy Fazackerly can’t act and can’t sing, but she’s going to play the accompaniments to all the songs. They suggested Martyn for the hero, and Patch for the villain — dressed as a Turk. I don’t know what other parts they’ll put in, but apparently the whole thing is perfectly elastic, and can be added to or taken away from as desired.

  It’s all to be Eastern dress, more or less — as being easy to arrange. And they’re very keen to have Mrs. Harter, to sing the Bul-bul Ameer song. It’s the keynote of the whole thing, that song.”

  “What does Claire say?”

  “She says they may do as they like, but she doesn’t care for the idea very much. For one thing, she thinks Mrs. Harter — Diamond Ellison — will feel out of her element.”

  “I wonder. After all, she’s been for years in Cairo, and must have met all sorts of people. And I’m convinced that she’s intelligent, Miles, and probably very adaptable. Martyn says that she’s an exceptional person altogether.”

  “Does he know her?”

  “No. But both my children tell me that they are natural psychologists of a high order.”

  We laughed and then Mary said —

  “I sometimes wonder if it’s a mistake to have let their critical faculties — Sallie’s especially — develop quite unchecked. She finds people more interesting than anything else, but it’s all so very impersonal and analytical.”

  “You might divide humanity into those who put people first, those who put things first, and those who put ideas first.”

  “Which do you put first, Miles?”

  (Claire would have said “Which do I put first?”) “People, of course. So do you. But it’s the people who put things first, who are in the majority. In the ultimate issue, they weigh what Mr. Wemmick called portable property — things like houses, and business, and money — against the personal relations, and the portable property counts most.”

  “I know. They are called practical people, because they would never postpone a business appointment on account of a child’s birthday party. The birthday party would have to be postponed. And what about the ones who put ideas first?”

  Of course, Mary knew as well as I did — or better — what about them. But she also knew that I like long, wandering, impersonal discussions, of the kind that I can indulge in with no one else.

  I smiled at her, just to show that I knew quite well how she was humouring me.

  “The people who put ideas first are, I think fortunately, in a very small minority. Religious enthusiasts, of course — and perhaps the few people who really are thorough-going, matter-of-fact, conventionalists.”

  “You are thinking of the Kendals,” said Mary unerringly.

  I admitted that she was right.

  “Can you imagine Mumma, for instance, on a jury, admitting ‘extenuating circumstances’? ‘A crime is crime,’ she would probably say, and as she would say it not less than fourteen times, she would end in hypnotising all the other eleven into agreeing with her. People like that ought really never to be allowed to have any say in any question affecting their fellow-creatures, but unfortunately there’s generally a sort of spurious worth and solidity about them, that compels attention.”

  “I remember,” said Mary, “that once at Dheera Dhoon, we were talking about a man who had become a Catholic, and someone said that it would be very difficult, and require a good deal of moral courage, to take a step of that sort. And Mrs. Kendal answered: ‘How can there be any courage in deliberately going from the true to the false? Nothing of the kind.’”

  And one felt that she would never, by any possibility, see it in any other light.

  I made Mary promise that she would come and help me at the meeting in the library that afternoon. Sallie and Martyn were to be there, of course; and the authors of the production, and we felt that it was probable that one or two of the Kendals might appear, in order to inform us that they couldn’t act.

  “What about Mrs. Harter?”

  “Oh, no. You see, she won’t be actually in the play, anyhow. They only want her to sing before the curtain goes up, and then again at the end.”

  “Do you know that they are all coming here this evening, to sing? Sallie invited them that time they went to Nancy Fazackerly’s. Mrs. Harter, too.”

  “I’m glad.”

  So I was. What Mrs. Fazackerly had told me of Diamond Harter, made me feel sorry for her, in spite of her aggressive airs. I wanted her to go to Mary Ambrey’s house, into the atmosphere of sanity, and kindness, and serenity, that belongs to Mary.

  When I got home, I found Claire entertaining Lady Annabel Bending.

  I felt sure that she had come to hear about the dance that we proposed to give. The invitations had only just been sent out, but in Cross Loman we are never long in ignorance of one another’s arrangements.

  (Miss Emma Applebee, before now, has darted out of her shop and inquired of me solicitously how her Ladyship’s cold is, when I myself had only been made aware of its existence about an hour earlier.)

  Lady Annabel was inclined to be rather grave, although courteous, about our entertainment. Did we realise quite what we were undertaking, especially — if she might say so — with an invalid in the house?

  She glanced at me.

  I have reason to believe that Lady Annabel speaks of me behind my back as “our afflicted friend, Sir Miles Flower.”

  “I have done so much — so very much — entertaining myself, and necessarily on such an enormous scale, that I perhaps realise better than most people, what it all means. When I heard what you were contemplating, I felt that it would be friendly to come round at once and offer you the benefit of my experience.”

  “Thank you,” said Claire.

  Her eyes were so dark and scornful, and her voice held so satirical an intonation, that I interposed.

  “Claire’s young cousins are very anxious to get up some theatricals, and to take advantage of having that young fellow here — Patch — to do some writing for them. They’re working up something musical.”

  “Delightful, indeed,” said Lady Annabel in a severe and melancholy voice. “And is there much musical talent hereabouts?”

  “Sallie Ambrey sings rather nicely, and Mrs. Fazackerly is really musical — she is adapting Captain Patch’s libretto — and then there are one or two others.”

  “Let me warn you—” began Lady Annabel.

  She suddenly glanced to the right and to the left of our not very large drawing-room, as though we might be suspected of having concealed one of the servants behind a bookcase.

  Then she sank her always low voice to a pitch that was all but a whisper, and most impressive.

  “You understand that I am speaking in the utmost confidence? It must never go beyond the walls of this room” — we all three instinctively gaze
d with deep distrust at the walls— “I’m not thinking of myself, but of what it might do for the Rector, if it got round that I had said anything about one of his people — you understand what I mean — in the Rector’s position—”

  Of course I said at once that I quite understood what she meant, although one couldn’t help feeling that this was one of the moments when Lady Annabel was perhaps confusing the Rector with “H.E.” the late Sir Hannabuss Bending. (We have all learnt to think of him as “H.E.”)

  Claire did not join in my protestations. I judged from her expression that she was, once more, living upon the edge of a volcano.

  “Absolutely between ourselves, I should very strongly advise you not to let anyone suggest that the young woman whom I most mistakenly allowed to sing at the concert the other night — Mrs. Harter — should be asked to perform. I should think it most inadvisable.”

  “May I ask why?”

  Lady Annabel looked distressed.

  “You do understand that I am speaking entirely unofficially?”

  Not only did we understand, but, personally, I really did not see how she could speak in any other way.

  “Then,” said Lady Annabel, “the fact is that I have, since the concert, heard one or two things about her. Naturally, I have links all over the Empire, as I may say, and this Mrs. Harter, as you know, has just come from the Near East. It seems that she and her husband are on most unhappy terms — no doubt there are faults on both sides, in fact my correspondent said as much — but she has made herself quite notorious, in a place where everyone in the European colony is of course watched, and commented upon. And I noticed at the concert the other evening that there was a tendency to bring her into notice, simply, I suppose, because Cross Loman thinks it a fine thing for Ellison the plumber’s daughter to have married a man socially above her — Mr. Harter is a solicitor — and to have lived abroad. If they only knew what I know as to the sort of people one is obliged to receive, out there!”

  Lady Annabel Bending is not a spiteful woman. She would just as readily, I am sure, have come to the Manor House in order to sing the praises of Mrs. Harter as to disparage her. All that she ever wants is still to be as important as she believes herself to have been in her Colonial Service days.

  Her admonitions clinched the question of Mrs. Harter’s inclusion in the theatricals. Claire sent a note to Mrs. Fazackerly that afternoon, I believe, to the effect that Mrs. Harter must by all means be asked to sing, and, if possible, to act as well.

  And if Nancy Fazackerly was at all taken aback by so rapid and complete a volte-face, she was far too tactful ever to give any signs of it.

  Lady Annabel was not offended when Claire made her intentions evident. She is never offended; she only becomes more remote, and her graciousness less smiling.

  “I shall speak to the Rector about your invitation as soon as I can, and hope to send you an answer to-morrow. You know what the correspondence of a man in his position is. Pray don’t get up, Sir Miles. Good-bye — Good-bye. So very glad — it all sounds charming. I hope — we both hope — that it will be the very greatest success. But I’m sure it will be. Good-bye again.”

  I rather think that she bowed, in an absent-minded way, to the footman who opened the hall-door for her.

  The Rectory only possesses a small governess-cart and pony, and Lady Annabel is driven out by the gardener’s boy. But she always, by means of smiles and bows, and small waves of the hand, makes a kind of royal progress for herself. It is her boast that she never forgets a face, and in consequence a great number of the tradespeople in Cross Loman are gratified by the marks of recognition lavishly showered upon them from the Rectory pony-carriage.

  I was told afterwards by Miss Applebee, who saw it happen, that on that particular day Lady Annabel was nearly run down by General Kendal’s new motor car, which he was slowly driving up Fore Street.

  Mumma was at her usual post of observation beside him, and no doubt she had said: “There’s the Rectory pony-cart coming towards you, dear — I should sound the horn, if I were you.” But perhaps she said it too soon, or repeated it so often that poor Puppa’s senses became rather dazed, and he ceased to take in the meaning of the words.

  At all events, he appeared to drive the car deliberately, and very, very slowly, straight at Lady Annabel.

  But she never flinched at all, even when the gardener’s boy almost — but not quite — drove her into the gutter in order to avoid a collision.

  And when she subsequently mentioned the incident to Mary Ambrey, Lady Annabel said that she did not wish any official notice to be taken of it. Her manner distinctly gave Mary the impression that General Kendal had narrowly escaped ex-communication at the hands of the Rector.

  VI

  MRS. HARTER did not come to discuss the play with the others that afternoon, but Captain Patch went straight from the meeting to the house in Queen Street and told her about it, and made her promise to sing the Bul-bul Ameer song.

  Again, I shall have to fall back upon what, in reality, can only be guess-work — reconstruction, based upon what was afterwards told me by Mary Ambrey.

  It was their second meeting, and it clinched matters, so far as Bill Patch was concerned. Mrs. Harter may have known, too — probably she did — but she held complexities in her nature that would make her surrender a less simple and less instantaneous affair than his.

  I can imagine that, realising as she certainly did, the strength of the extraordinary thing that was coming, inevitably, to overwhelm them both, she may have hesitated for a moment — not from doubt or fear, but simply in order to gauge, in one breathless instant, the smashing force of the storm before it should break.

  He went to see her, and they walked out of the narrow Queen Street house, and up Loman Hill to the cross roads there. She told him about her life.

  I have put together what I heard in the time, later on, when we were all talking about her, and the little that she said to Mary in their one interview, and the facts that afterwards Nancy Fazackerly gave me. And, knowing her turn of phraseology, which remained characteristic of her class, and of the defiant streak that ran all through her, I have made out my own version of what she said.

  She had been an ambitious girl. Cross Loman had not liked her, and she had not liked Cross Loman. Although she was not beautiful she possessed very powerful sex-magnetism, and had love-affairs from her schooldays onwards. But the hard, practical vein that had come to her direct from Ellison, the successful tradesman, never failed her. She never lost her head. She despised her country-town lovers even while she flaunted their admiration in the face of all Cross Loman.

  But she knew very well that only marriage could give her her chance. Mr. Harter — I am sure that she spoke of him as “Mr. Harter” throughout — was the uncle of one her schoolfriends. Diamond Ellison went to stay with this girl, at her home in one of the London suburbs, and the solicitor — twenty years her senior — came to the house and fell under one of the brief, incomprehensible spells that young women of a certain type sometimes exercise over men no longer in their first youth.

  He misjudged her from first to last, probably misled by the boldness of her mere physical outlines and the mixture of contempt and familiarity in her manner towards men. His first proposals were received by her with no sense of shock — she was both too experienced in men, and too ruthlessly cynical, for that — but with utter disdain.

  “You can ask me to marry you — or you can clear out,” said Diamond Ellison.

  He married her.

  In the East, she had all the success that she had expected and intended to have. The women never liked her, but she knew herself to be essentially a man’s woman, and she was indifferent, then and always, to the opinions of her surroundings. They fell in love with her, and Harter was furiously jealous.

  On her own showing, Harter had everything to complain of in his wife. She did not pretend to care for him, she flirted with other men, she was notorious, even judged by the lax sta
ndards of the East, and she replied to his incessant, nagging remonstrances with sulky, curt indifference. The only thing that he could never charge her with was extravagance, for she was far too practical a woman to squander money, and perhaps also too proud, since she had not a penny of her own.

  (Mrs. Ellison was dead, and she had long ago quarrelled with old Ellison, who gave her nothing at all.)

  Harter threatened to send her home, and she replied that she would not go. Nor did she.

  A far stronger man than Harter would have found it impossible to get the better of her. A combination of recklessness, and absolute determination, made her very nearly impervious.

  She even took her pleasures sulkily, and without enthusiasm, although she never missed an entertainment or an expedition.

  They had no child, of course.

  Harter got her back to England at last, after nearly five years of it, by pretending to book his passage as well, and then backing out of it at the last minute.

  She despised him all the more for the subterfuge. She herself was never anything but absolutely direct.

  She told Patch that she would not have come home even then, but that she was ill, and it is very certain that only a woman of iron physique and resolute will could have stood the climate, and the racket of her days and nights, for that length of time.

  As it was, she’d been a month in a London nursing home before she came to Cross Loman. It was in the nursing home, I imagine, that Diamond Harter took stock of life. She’d been in that home for weeks and not a soul had been to see her. There was no one to come. Her father had retired from business, and lived by himself at Torquay. They hadn’t even corresponded for years.

  I have heard Mrs. Harter’s speaking voice — a voice stronger and more abrupt than that of most women — and her tones ring in my ears now, sometimes, so that I think I can distinguish the very words that she may have used on the day that she and Bill Patch went up Loman Hill together. But there must have been an intonation in her voice then, that neither I, nor anyone else, ever heard there.