Miss Buncle's Book

by D. E. Stevenson

  “Oh, my dear!” she cried, “that’s just it—what you all do.”

  “It seems to me there are breakers ahead,” said Dr. John solemnly.

  Chapter Six

  Mrs. Carter’s Tea Party

  The first breaker broke a few days later at old Mrs. Carter’s tea party, and the full force of the wave fell upon the head of Barbara Buncle. They were all sitting in the drawing-room round the Jacobean gate-legged table, and there was a bowl of chrysanthemums—the very last, Mrs. Carter assured them—in the center. Barbara knew when she saw the china that Mrs. Featherstone Hogg was expected, and her spirits fell a degree for she did not like Mrs. Featherstone Hogg. Barbara had met Dorothea Bold on the doorstep and they had gone in together, and Miss King and Miss Pretty were there already. But not for these would Mrs. Carter have produced her best eggshell cups and saucers, that filmy drawn-thread-work tea-cloth, those lusciously bulging cream buns.

  “Agatha said she would look in later,” said Mrs. Carter in confidential tones. “She’s such a busy bee we must take her when we can get her.”

  Mrs. Featherstone Hogg was less like a busy bee than anybody Barbara could think of. She was tall and willowy and tired, so tired that you could not help feeling it was good of her to trouble to speak to you at all. She did not speak much to you, of course, if you were an unimportant person like Barbara Buncle. Barbara sometimes wondered what it was that gave Mrs. Featherstone Hogg her social position in Silverstream. Why did everyone flock to her dull parties and consume the poor fare provided for them there? Why did everybody do what she told them to do? Why did old Mrs. Carter produce her best china and linen for Agatha’s delectation? Was it because of her rude manner? Or was it because she bought her clothes from the most expensive place in London?

  It was this tired and languid lady that Mrs. Carter compared to a busy bee and something shook in Barbara’s interior at the ineptness of the description; but it would never do to laugh, nobody in Silverstream laughed at Mrs. Featherstone Hogg. Barbara turned quickly to her nearest neighbor, who happened to be Angela Pretty, and asked her if she had put in her bulbs yet. Of course it was just like Mrs. Featherstone Hogg to say she would “look in later”—she was not like an ordinary mortal who was expected to arrive at the time appointed for her arrival—Barbara made a mental note of the phrase and then remembered with a twinge of disappointment that Disturber of the Peace was finished, and that nothing more could be added to its teeming pages. Perhaps I will write another, she thought to herself in surprise.

  Angela was twittering on about her bulbs—the exact amount of moisture they required and the exact number of days one should keep them in the dark to promote the growth of healthy roots—it was very dull. Barbara detached one ear from Angela to listen to what the others were talking about.

  “She is coming to me tomorrow,” Mrs. Carter was saying. “Such a sudden decision, but, of course, I am delighted to have the dear child. I am putting her in the old nursery; it is the pleasantest room on that floor, and has a delightful view over the river. It gets all the morning sun, and sunshine is just what she requires after her operation—plenty of sunshine and fresh milk, the doctor said—so, of course, dear Harry thought of me at once.”

  Barbara could not see why he had thought of old Mrs. Carter in connection with the doctor’s prescription. Sunlight and milk were no part of the good lady’s régime. She hardly ever went out of doors even in the summer, unless to go to church or to tea with a friend, and Barbara had never beheld her neighbor imbibing milk except as an accompaniment to a cup of tea. But of course Harry was her son, so he must know her better even than Barbara did; or, perhaps, his thoughts went back to his childhood and milk puddings, and he connected his mother with these—it was rather farfetched, but the subconscious mind was so marvelous nowadays—

  “I don’t think you heard that, Barbara, dear,” said Mrs. Carter kindly, “you were talking to Angela. Harry is going out to India with his regiment and dear little Sally is coming to me to be built up after her appendicitis. Built up,” repeated Mrs. Carter, obviously delighted with the term, and nodding her beautifully waved gray head with solemn emphasis.

  “How nice for you—and for her of course,” exclaimed Barbara. She had lived for so long among these people and had suffered so many afternoon teas that she was able to say the expected thing without thinking about it at all. You simply put a penny in the machine and the expected thing came out at once, all done up in a neat little packet, and suitably labeled. The machine worked without any effort on Barbara’s part. It even worked when the real Barbara was absent and only the shell, dressed in its shabby garments, remained sitting upright upon its chair. The real Barbara often flew away like that and took refuge from the dullness and boredom of Silverstream in the scintillating atmosphere of Copperfield.

  “It will be nice for us all in Silverstream—there are so few young people here,” said Angela Pretty prettily.

  At this moment—Barbara was just handing Mrs. Carter her cup for some more tea—the door opened, and Mrs. Featherstone Hogg burst in. She appeared to be carrying something in one hand, holding it away from her as if it were a poisonous reptile or a loathsome toad.

  “Filth!” she cried. “Filth!” And flung it onto the table all among the cakes and china and chrysanthemums. It lay there, half resting upon a dish of cream buns, and half propped up against the damson jam—it was a copy of Barbara Buncle’s book.

  “My dear Agatha!” exclaimed Mrs. Carter with pardonable surprise. The rest of the party was too aghast for speech. It was as if a bombshell had burst among them; even Barbara was amazed and pained at the transformation which her simple story had wrought upon the elegant, languid personality of Mrs. Featherstone Hogg.

  “You are in it too,” said “dear Agatha,” incoherently to her hostess. “You haven’t read it, I suppose, or you wouldn’t be sitting there like a graven image. You wear a wig, you know, and false teeth, and you put pectin in your damson jam to make it set, and your son elopes with a married woman—Mrs. Farmer is your name.”

  “She’s mad,” whispered Mrs. Carter, white to the lips.

  Mrs. Featherstone Hogg laughed shrilly. “Oh no, I’m not mad,” she said. “I’m quite sane, I assure you. I intend to have the man up for libel. Edwin has gone up to town to see our lawyer about it—I sent him straight up in the Daimler. The man will find he can’t trifle with me. He’ll be sorry he was born before I’ve done with him. You’re in it too,” she added, pouncing upon Dorothea Bold so fiercely that the poor woman nearly choked on a piece of dry seed-cake. “And you—and you—and you,” she continued, pointing with her heavily ringed fingers at the remaining three guests.

  Miss King found her voice first. Perhaps it was the manliness of her attire that gave her confidence in her own capabilities, or perhaps it was her confident and capable nature which promoted the manliness of her attire. It does not really matter which, the important thing is that Miss King believed she was a capable sensible person and this belief was a great help to her in emergencies such as the present one.

  “Do you mean that we are all described in that book?” demanded Miss King in her deep quiet voice, and she pointed to the somewhat battered copy of Disturber of the Peace which lay dejectedly upon the buns.

  “I’ve told you so, haven’t I?” shrieked Mrs. Featherstone Hogg. “Are you all deaf or imbecile that you can’t understand plain English?”

  Barbara Buncle never knew how she got away from that dreadful tea party. She had a vague idea that she had made her exit in the wake of Miss King, and that Miss King had remarked upon the beauty of the night and added that Mrs. Featherstone Hogg had rather given herself away, hadn’t she? Some people’s elegance was only skin-deep, scrape off a little bit of the veneer and you got the real wood—common deal in this case, Miss King suspected. Barbara made some noncommittal reply, and staggered home—fortunately it was o
nly next door—and she sat down in her comfortable chair beside her own cheerful fire and held her head.

  Presently she rose and went to the telephone. She must speak to Mr. Abbott. If anyone could help her he could, but she did not think anyone could help her. It was a sort of blind instinct that made her fly to Mr. Abbott.

  They told her at the office that he had gone home some time ago, and, after an agonizing delay, and much consultation among themselves, they consented to give her the telephone number of his private residence. Barbara was almost in tears when she got on to him at last.

  “It’s going splendidly,” his cheerful voice proclaimed. “Nothing to worry about. I’ve put a second impression in hand—we shall probably need a third—”

  “But they know,” she squeaked. “They know it’s them—they are going to start libel actions—”

  “They won’t do anything of the sort,” he assured her in his comforting deep voice. “No lawyer would look at it. Now don’t worry, and don’t say another word over the telephone. I’ll come over and see you tomorrow afternoon and you can tell me all about it.”

  Barbara put down the receiver and stood there for a few minutes looking at it thoughtfully.

  Chapter Seven

  First Fruits

  There’s absolutely nothing to worry about,” said Mr. Abbott. He was standing in front of Miss Buncle’s fire in Miss Buncle’s comfortable, though rather shabby, and old-fashioned drawing-room and smiling at her cheerfully. “Any respectable lawyer would turn down the case. He would look a fool appearing in court with a case like that, and his clients would be made to look worse fools. We have only got to say, ‘The portrait which you find so ugly was never intended to be a portrait of you. If you really think you are like that we are sorry for you and offer you our sincere sympathy.’”

  Barbara actually smiled. It had taken Mr. Abbott half an hour’s hard work to obtain that smile. Now that he had obtained it, he liked it immensely, and he liked her teeth—he had decided quite definitely that they were real.

  “Of course they don’t know it’s me,” Barbara said hopefully.

  (It was curious, Mr. Abbott thought, that a woman who could write good English should be unable to speak it. He had noticed this little peculiarity of Miss Buncle’s before, and it amused and intrigued him.)

  “No,” he agreed, “and you are perfectly safe with us.”

  “Oh, I hope so,” cried Barbara. “I should have to leave here if they found out who it was.”

  “Surely it is not as bad as all that!”

  “Quite as bad,” Barbara told him nodding emphatically, “of course they haven’t all read it yet but Mrs. Featherstone Hogg is furious, and Mrs. Carter doesn’t like the bit about her wig and the pectin in her jam. She is frightfully proud of her damson jam, you see, but I’m sure there is pectin in it. I’m sure it would never set like that without pectin—mine won’t—besides I saw the packets in the grocer’s basket.”

  She was beginning to talk now. Mr. Abbott urged her on with encouraging noises and nods. He had already noticed that Miss Buncle was either monosyllabic and completely inarticulate, or else overpowered by a stream of words which forced themselves between her lips like water from a bursting dam.

  “I suppose I should never have written it,” continued Miss Buncle sadly. “But you see I had to do something—I told you about the dividends, didn’t I?—and the only thing I could do was to write a book, and the only kind of book I could write was about people I knew. And then another thing was that I never really thought or believed in my bones that the book would be published. I just finished it and sent it up—”

  “And why to me?” inquired Mr. Abbott with much interest. “I mean why did you send the book to me? Perhaps you had heard from somebody that our firm—”

  “Oh, no,” she exclaimed. “I knew nothing at all about publishers. You were the first on the list—alphabetically—that was all.”

  Mr. Abbott was somewhat taken aback—on such trifles hang the fates of bestsellers!

  “And then when you took it,” continued Miss Buncle, quite oblivious of his reaction to her naive admission, “when you actually said you would publish it, I was so excited that I forgot about the people being so like the people here. It seemed so funny to be a real author—so important somehow. When I thought about it at all (which wasn’t often), I thought, perhaps they’ll never see it or read it at all (heaps of books are published and you never hear about them) and even if they do read it, they’ll never think it could possibly be them—in a book, I mean. But really and truly I scarcely even thought about it at all,” said Miss Buncle, trying hard to be absolutely exact, and to explain her extraordinary density in the matter.

  “It was quite natural,” Mr. Abbott told her.

  “But of course I see now that I should never have written it at all.”

  “That would have been a pity,” said Mr. Abbott with his mind on the mounting sales of Disturber of the Peace. “A pity for me, and a pity for you. The book is doing so well.” He took out his pocketbook and produced a large white note which he laid down beside her on the table. “Just a little something on account,” he added, smiling at her surprise. “I thought perhaps you might be glad to have it with Christmas coming on. I shall want a receipt of course.”

  Barbara looked at it—she could not believe her eyes—and then she looked at Mr. Abbott.

  “But I couldn’t—” she said tremulously.

  “My dear girl, I am not a philanthropist. You’ve earned it,” said Mr. Abbott. “I didn’t bring you a check, because if a check from us goes through your bank it might give the show away. Banks are supposed to be soundproof,” said Mr. Abbott, talking on to give this extraordinary woman time to get over the shock of receiving a hundred pounds. “But my experience is if you want to keep a thing dark the fewer people who know about it the better. So you can pay that in, and nobody will know where it has come from.…You can say it is a present from your uncle in Australia,” added Mr. Abbott chuckling. “Make him a sheep-farmer with a benevolent disposition, or a gold digger who has struck lucky if you like.”

  It took him ten minutes to convince the extraordinary woman that this was her own money which she had earned by the sweat of her brow, and that there was more coming which she would receive in due course.

  Mr. Abbott had said that he was not a philanthropist, and he was not. He was merely a man who did business in his own way. He called himself a student of psychology. Authors—he was wont to say—were kittle cattle. He prided himself on his management of authors. Mr. Abbott had produced the hundred-pound note for several reasons. To begin with, Disturber of the Peace had earned it and was well on its way to earn more. Of course he need not have paid Miss Buncle anything on account; there was nothing about it in the contract. If he wanted to be strictly businesslike he would have waited until February—when his books were made up and sent her a check for what was due, but he did not want to be strictly businesslike. It amused him to surprise and please people, and perhaps especially to surprise and please Miss Buncle. Then Miss Buncle was distressed about the stir caused by her book and Mr. Abbott knew of nothing more soothing to worry or distress than a nice round fat check (or bank note). Lastly—and this was the most subtle reason of all—lastly he wanted another book from Miss Buncle, and he wanted it soon, before the éclat of Disturber of the Peace had died away and John Smith had faded out of the fickle memories of the great British Public, and he knew that—paradoxical as it might sound—a nice fat check (or bank note) was not only a soothing and comforting balm to troubled authors, but it was also a spur.

  Miss Buncle signed the receipt for a hundred pounds on account of her novel with a trembling hand. It was not nearly such a neat signature as that which had appeared upon the contract. He didn’t know—he couldn’t possibly have known—that in spite of all her economies, in spite of stinti
ng and scraping, of eschewing meat, and eating margarine instead of butter, and diluting the milk, and buying the very cheapest tea that floated like dust on the top of your cup, Miss Buncle’s account at the bank was overdrawn by seven pounds fifteen shillings and would soon have been overdrawn by more; for the dividends, which had been steadily decreasing, had now practically ceased.

  There were tears in Miss Buncle’s eyes as she signed the receipt and folded up the amazing note. Fancy that tiny piece of paper representing so much! It really was rather astonishing (when you come to think of it) what that tiny piece of paper represented—far more than a hundred sovereigns (although in modern finance less). It represented food and drink to Barbara Buncle, and, perhaps, a new winter coat and hat; but, above all, freedom from that awful nightmare of worry, and sleep, and a quiet mind.

  Chapter Eight

  Miss King and Mr. Abbott

  Mr. Abbott was very busy when Miss King called to see him, but he agreed to “give her ten minutes.” The truth was Mr. Abbott could not resist the temptation of seeing Miss King, for she had written on her card “re Disturber of the Peace.”

  Miss Buncle’s book intrigued Mr. Abbott, and Miss Buncle herself intrigued him. She was such a queer mixture of simplicity and subtlety (at least he thought she was). She spoke bad grammar and wrote good English. She was meticulously truthful in all she said (it was almost as if she were on oath to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth all day long and every day of the week). She lived her solitary life among all those people, with her tremendous secret locked up in her breast; going about among them looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but taking careful note of all they said and did, and then going quietly home and writing it all down. They were after her now like a pack of hounds, but they didn’t know that the fox was in the very midst of them, under their very noses, disguised as one of themselves—it was a piquant situation and Mr. Abbott fully appreciated it.