Miss Buncle Married (8 page)

“I said Kate,” declared Mrs. Dance—really Mrs. Abbott must be half-witted—“Kate Sparling. She has lived there for years and knows everybody.”

“Where?” inquired Barbara.

“Rye, of course.”

“I've never been to Rye,” explained Barbara casually.

“But you said you had lived there—”

“I didn't—I couldn't possibly have said that, because I've never been there at all.”

Mrs. Dance gave up the struggle. The woman was a fool—there wasn't a doubt of it—a fool and a liar (because she had most certainly said she lived at Rye). But I mustn't go yet, thought Mrs. Dance, it isn't any good offending her at the very beginning, especially if they belong to Edwin's congregation.

“I hope the Marvells won't plague you to death,” she said aloud. “They live next door in a quaint little modern bungalow. He built it himself, you know, and it's supposed to be very artistic. It's certainly very inconvenient,” continued Mrs. Dance giggling. “Queer-shaped rooms, full of divans and things. He's a painter, of course, and the children run wild. Mrs. Marvell is very peculiar; some people say she drinks, but, of course, one must be charitable. I daresay her vague manner is not really due to drink at all. The children have the most extraordinary names. Edwin was quite worried when he had to christen them.”

“Fancy!” Barbara exclaimed.

“Poor children!” continued Mrs. Dance lugubriously. “Poor children, what chance have they got to make good in the world with such a peculiar upbringing? Really, when I look at my own child—so carefully taught and guided into the right paths—my heart positively bleeds for them.”

“Dreadful!” said Barbara shaking her head sadly. She wished again that Mrs. Dance would go. The stair was very hard to sit on, and there was such a lot to do. Barbara thought of all the things she had to do while she listened with one ear to Mrs. Dance's prattle. It was quite easy to do this when you got used to it, and Barbara had had a lot of practice. In the old days, at Silverstream, Barbara had perfected herself in the art of half-listening to boring conversations. You listened just enough to know when the right time came to say “Yes” and “No” and when to shake your head sadly and say “Fancy!” or “Goodness!” or “How awful!” With these remarks, made at the proper time and in the proper manner, you could carry on a conversation for hours without any trouble to yourself.

Barbara was practicing her most useful invention on Mrs. Dance when, quite suddenly, she heard a name she knew, and she was all attention.

“—Lady Chevis Cobbe,” Mrs. Dance was saying, “Very ill indeed.”

“Ill?” inquired Barbara with interest.

“I said she had
been
ill,” said Mrs. Dance. “She is getting better now, and I hear she hopes to be well enough to have one of her Musical Evenings in November. Such a charming woman. She gave us ten pounds for the Organ Fund,” added Mrs. Dance hopefully.

“Fancy her being ill!” Barbara said thoughtfully. “I wonder…”

“Perhaps you know Lady Chevis Cobbe?” suggested Mrs. Dance after waiting for a few moments—most eagerly—to know what it was that Mrs. Abbott wondered.

“No,” said Barbara.

“What were you going to say?” inquired Mrs. Dance, who could contain her curiosity no longer.

“Nothing,” said Barbara.

“You said you wondered,” urged Mrs. Dance.

“Oh, I wondered—I just wondered—what was the matter with her,” said Barbara, and she blushed, because she hated having to tell lies.

“Something internal,” whispered Mrs. Dance mysteriously.

She rose. She could sit no longer on the cold hard stair, not even for the sake of the Organ Fund. She felt chilled to the bone, and that portion of her anatomy which had been in contact with the stone was quite numb. I only hope
I
don't get something internal, she thought, but perhaps, as it was in such a very Good Cause—

“Good-bye, Mrs. Abbott,” she said. “It has been
such
a pleasure—yes, I really must go. I have promised to go and have tea with an invalid, and she would be
so
disappointed. Little things mean so much when—
Good
-bye. We shall look forward to seeing you settled here soon.”

“Good-bye,” Barbara said. “Good-bye, so nice of you to come.”

Mrs. Dance walked very quickly down the drive. She walked quickly, partly to warm herself up, and lessen the chance of getting a severe chill, and partly because she was going to tea with Mrs. Thane and she was late. But I shall have quite a lot to tell her, thought Mrs. Dance complacently.

The great day came at last; the Abbotts “moved in” to their new abode. Mr. Abbott left Sunnydene in the morning, and returned at night to The Archway House. Everything was in order for his arrival. Barbara and Dorcas had been there all day getting things straight. The new servants had arrived and settled in. Barbara was almost as pleased with her new servants as she was with her house. She was so thankful to see the last of the Rasts with their endless quarrels and sour faces. The new servants were “nice,” thought Barbara (her favorite word); they were pleasant and agreeable, they smiled when you spoke to them, and were obviously delighted with the lovely, clean, new house.

Mr. Abbott arrived about teatime. He motored down in his new Vauxhall with his smart new chauffeur at the wheel. The trains were quite good, and quite convenient—he would use the trains occasionally, of course—but the first day he wanted to arrive in comfort, to arrive in state (as it were), so Strange had been ordered to call for him at the office at three o'clock. By this time Arthur was quite excited about the new house—almost as excited as Barbara herself—he had entirely forgotten his first dismal impressions of the place, and he would have been indignant if anybody had suggested to him that he had been coerced into buying the place by his wife.

“Most comfortable!” he said, walking round the house with his hands clasped behind his back, and his kind eyes gleaming through his spectacles. “Most comfortable!” he repeated, sinking gratefully into the larger of the two leather chairs arranged before the fire in the snug study behind the drawing-room. “Most comfortable!” he was to reiterate as he snuggled down in his beautiful new bed with the spring mattress and the blue swansdown blankets—but that was not yet; that was a pleasure to come, there was sherry, and then dinner (a truly excellent meal achieved by the new cook), and a little stroll round the garden with Barbara to be enjoyed before the acme of comfort was experienced.

Barbara was extremely keen on the little stroll round the garden after dinner. She wanted to show Arthur the beds which had been prepared for the new roses, and, although Arthur would just as soon have remained cozily by the fire, and put off seeing the beds until the morning—when he could have seen them much better—Barbara was obviously disappointed at the suggestion, and Barbara had toiled and moiled to make the place nice (she had done so much and done it so well) that Arthur felt he owed it to her to indulge her whim.

They waited until the moon rose behind the trees, and then they went out. It was a trifle cool, not to say chilly, in the garden, for it was now the end of October, but Barbara was too hardy to mind about that.

“You see, Arthur,” she said earnestly. “The roses must be
here.
Grimes has been making the crazy pavement. I think he's doing it nicely, don't you? The roses must be here so that we can look out on them from the drawing-room windows.”

The rose garden was absolutely bare. There was not even a twig to be seen, not a weed marred its surface. A pile of manure filled the night air with its unroselike odor.

“I wonder how it will look,” said Arthur thoughtfully.

“Oh, Arthur, can't you
see
it?” Barbara exclaimed. “I can. I can see the roses all bursting into flower. I can
smell
them,” she added, sniffing appreciatively.

“That's not roses, it's manure you smell,” said Arthur in his “smiling voice.” “I thought you had no imagination, Barbara. But if you can see roses in an empty bed, and smell them in manure, you must have a good deal of imagination.”

Barbara had done more spectacular feats of imagination than this, but she had not realized it.

“Oh!” she said in surprise. “I believe you're right, Arthur. I believe I must have an imagination after all.”

Arthur laughed. There was a tinge of heavenly foolishness in his Barbara; it was one of the surprising and delightful things about her.

They walked on, arm in arm. It was very pleasant if you kept moving; there was a freshness in the air, a tingle and a nip that Mr. Abbott found most agreeable after a day in his London office.

“I think perhaps Wandlebury has done that to me,” Barbara continued. “I'm sure I never had an imagination when I was at Hampstead Heath or Silverstream. Look at my books—it was all because of me not having an imagination that there was so much fuss about them. If I'd had an imagination I wouldn't have had to write about the Snowdons, and the Bulmers, and Mrs. Featherstone Hogg. I could have made up new people out of my head.”

“They wouldn't have been so funny,” said Mr. Abbott with conviction.

“Oh yes, they would,” Barbara argued. “If I'd had an imagination, they would have been, because, don't you see, I could have imagined funny people. Look at Dickens; you don't suppose he ever knew anybody like Mr. Dick, or Mr. Micawber; he just made them up out of his head and everybody laughs at them.” She sighed and pressed Arthur's arm. “I do wish I had an imagination,” she said, “I believe it might grow if I live in Wandlebury long enough, and then I could write things out of my head. Wandlebury makes me imagine things. The first day I got here I saw people in the square—ladies and gentlemen with whiskers and poke bonnets—”

Arthur chuckled appreciatively. He hoped Barbara would go on talking; he adored it when Barbara was in one of her garrulous moods. It was rubbish, he supposed, if you really analyzed it, but what amusing rubbish it was! “Ladies and gentlemen with whiskers and poke bonnets”—Barbara was delightful.

Mr. Abbott had not seen nearly enough of Barbara lately; she had been so busy and so worried. Even when he
did
see her she was up to the neck in wallpapers or cretonnes and he had got no good of her—no good at all. But now all that was over, and Mr. Abbott would get his wife back again with all her dear funny innocent ways. He was looking forward to it immensely.

“Perhaps you imagined Mr. Tyler,” he suggested, hoping to start Barbara off again. He was getting very clever at the art of making his wife talk.

“It
is
funny about Mr. Tyler,” agreed Barbara elliptically, “I can't think why he's always out when we call at the office. I thought he rather liked me that first day. He was so welcoming—you know what I mean—and he made me drink port—he really wanted me to. Now Mr. Tupper doesn't mind whether I drink it or not.”

“But you don't like port,” Arthur objected.

“I know,” said Barbara. “But even if I don't like it, I like people to
want
me to drink it. It shows they're really interested, you see. I wish you could see Mr. Tyler. I really do. I know you'd like him, Arthur. He's got a round pink face and he beams at you through his spectacles. He's not thin and dry like Mr. Tupper, and he's the sort of man who minds a lot whether you like him or not, and he likes you to think he's very clever and very important because he knows, in his inmost heart, that he's not clever or important at all. So he puts on very grown-up airs, and swanks a little in front of the clerks, because it would be so awful if the clerks found out that he's just a little boy pretending to be a grown-up lawyer.”

Mr. Abbott digested all this with interest—not because he was the slightest bit interested in Mr. Tyler, a man he did not know, but because he was tremendously interested in Barbara, whom, after eighteen months of daily contact, he was just beginning to know. The strangest thing about Barbara, Arthur reflected, the strangest thing about this strange woman who was now his lawful wedded wife, was that although she understood practically nothing, she yet understood everything.

She might or might not have “an imagination” (Arthur could not be sure of that), but she certainly had an extraordinary power of getting underneath people's skins. Without being conscious of it herself she was able to sum up a person or a situation in a few minutes. People's very bones were bare to her—and she had no idea of it. She used the very simplest language to voice her thoughts—quite often her expressions were couched in doubtful grammar—but this, in some strange manner, seemed to enhance their piquant flavor. Mr. Abbott could not understand it, but the very fact that he could not understand it intrigued him all the more. It was not that Barbara was illiterate, for when she had a pen in her hand her thoughts flowed freely, and flowed in perfectly good English, and, this being so, why was it that for everyday purposes she employed only the most colloquial expressions, and used banalities and hackneyed idioms? Barbara loved proverbs and worn-out clichés, and this was not because she was lazy and slipshod—as most people are who employ these phrases. (When she had insisted on calling her last book
The
Pen
Is
Mightier—
she had called it that in all sincerity, and not in a satirical spirit with her tongue in her cheek as so many people had thought. No, she had called her book
The
Pen
Is
Mightier—
simply because she had discovered—somewhat to her surprise—what a mighty weapon the pen was, when wielded by her hand. She had seen the good and the evil that her first book had wrought in Silverstream, and the sheer force of her sincerity had made the trite saying her own.)

I wonder what it is, thought Mr. Abbott, as they walked round the garden in friendly contented silence, I wonder what it is that makes Barbara's books sell like they do. Has she genius—as Spicer declares—or only natural facility, natural talent? And, if it is genius, am I justified in not encouraging her to exercise it? But what is the difference, he wondered. Just where does talent merge into genius? If talent is a natural aptitude for creation with an outlook on life peculiar to oneself, then genius is to have an outlook on life, peculiar to oneself, which yet appeals to everybody. Talent is for oneself and a few others, but genius is universal. Judged by this standard Barbara must very nearly have genius—if not quite—for her books seem to appeal to an enormous number of people in every class and every walk of life. But I shan't worry her, he thought, I shall just leave it alone, and, if she wants to write she can write, and if she doesn't want to, she needn't. That's what I said at the very beginning, and I shall stick to it. But I really hope, in a way, that she won't want to write (thought Mr. Abbott) because this place is delightful—simply charming—and if Barbara starts writing about our neighbors, we shall most probably have to leave Wandlebury—just as she had to leave Silverstream—in a hurry.

Mr. Abbott smiled as he thought of that midnight flitting from Silverstream. He had come down in his car as had been arranged, and had found Barbara and Dorcas ready and waiting, sitting on their suitcases—for the furniture had already gone. They were both frightened, he remembered, for they had been through a good deal already, and they knew there was worse to come. They were thankful to see him, thankful to get away from Tanglewood Cottage before the storm burst. Then, the very next day, he and Barbara had been married—a quiet affair in a dingy London church with no witnesses save the faithful Dorcas and Sam.

Mr. Abbott's thought stopped when they came to Sam, and he heaved an enormous sigh, for Sam was being extraordinarily difficult and annoying at the moment.

Barbara's hand tightened on his arm. “What's the matter, Arthur?” she inquired sympathetically.

“It's Sam,” replied Mr. Abbott. “I don't know what on earth I'm going to do about Sam.”

Sam Abbott was the son of Mr. Abbott's eldest brother who had been killed in the war; Mr. Abbott had made himself responsible for Sam's education, and, when the right moment arrived, had taken him into the office to try him out. He meant to make a partner of Sam later on. “Abbott, Spicer, & Abbott” sounded rather well—so thought the senior Abbott—but now he was beginning to feel dubious as to whether Sam would ever settle down to work and become the sort of man who would make a safe partner. The thing was, you couldn't depend on the boy. Sometimes he seemed reliable enough, sometimes he seemed positively brilliant, but sometimes he was a confounded nuisance, and Mr. Abbott would reflect gloomily that the devil must have begotten Sam and sent him to Abbott & Spicer's with the sole object of plaguing and badgering them into an early grave.

“What has Sam been doing?” Barbara inquired.

“Hmm,” said Mr. Abbott. It seemed rather unfair to sneak to Barbara about Sam's misdemeanors. After all the boy was only twenty-five—quite young—and his father had been killed when he was four years old, so he hadn't had much of a chance. You couldn't be very angry with him—and Elsie was weak. Elsie had spoiled the boy frightfully—not that he altogether blamed Elsie; it was difficult for a woman with a fatherless boy
not
to spoil him. But this morning, when Mr. Abbott had had to trek down to Bow Street and pay a fine for the boy, he
had
been angry, very angry indeed, and he
had
blamed Elsie. What a scene it had been! Elsie in a flood of tears, the boy ashamed and defiant in turn, and the magistrate smiling behind his hand. It wasn't anything very serious, of course (just foolishness after some sort of dinner party, and Mr. Abbott had a strong suspicion that Sam had been made a sort of scapegoat), but Mr. Abbott had never got into trouble with the police in
his
young days. Why, when he was Sam's age he had been fighting in France—an officer, with men's lives dependent upon his common sense. Responsibility, thought Mr. Abbott.
That
was the thing to make a man of you. There were no wars now, thank God, and he hoped, most devoutly, that there never would be anymore, but he was very glad that he had been the right age for the last war.

“What has Sam been doing?” inquired Barbara again.

“Oh, painting the town red,” said Mr. Abbott, laughing a little.