Patricia Brent, Spinster Part 11

"You are very kind," murmured Bowen absently, not yet recovered from his unceremonious dismissal. He was brought back to realities by Mrs.

Craske-Morton expressing a hope that he would give her the pleasure of dining at Galvin House one evening. "Shall we say Friday?" she continued without allowing Bowen time to reply, "and we will keep it as a delightful surprise for Miss Brent." Mrs. Craske-Morton exposed her teeth and felt romantic.

When Bowen left Galvin House that evening he was pledged to give Patricia "a delightful surprise" on the following Friday.

"That will teach them to pity me!" murmured Patricia that night as she brushed her hair with what seemed entirely unnecessary vigour. She was conscious that she was the best-hated girl in Bayswater, as she recalled the angry and reproachful looks directed towards her by her fellow-guests after Bowen's departure.

In an adjoining room Miss w.a.n.gle, a black cap upon her head, was also engaged in brushing her hair with a gentleness foreign to most of her actions.

"The cat!" she murmured as she lay it in its drawer, and then as she locked the drawer she repeated, "The cat!"

CHAPTER VI

THE INTERVENTION OF AUNT ADELAIDE

Sunday at Galvin House was a day of bodily rest but acute mental activity. The day of G.o.d seemed to draw out the worst in everybody; all were in their best clothes and on their worst behaviour. Mr.

Cordal descended to breakfast in carpet slippers with fur tops. Miss w.a.n.gle regarded this as a mark of disrespect towards the grand-niece of a bishop. She would glare at Mr. Cordal's slippers as if convinced that the cloven hoof were inside.

Mr. Bolton sported a velvet smoking-jacket, white at the elbows, light grey trousers and a manner that seemed to say, "Ha! here's Sunday again, good!" After breakfast he added a fez and a British cigar to his equipment, and retired to the lounge to read _Lloyd's News_. Both the cigar and the newspaper lasted him throughout the day. Somewhere at the back of his mind was the conviction that in smoking a cigar, which he disliked, he was making a fitting distinction between the Sabbath and week-days. He went even further, for whereas on secular days he lit his inexpensive cigarettes with matches, on the Sabbath he used only fusees.

"I love the smell of fusees," Miss Sikk.u.m would simper, regardless of the fact that a hundred times before she had taken Galvin House into her confidence on the subject. "I think they're so romantic."

Patricia wondered if Mr. Bolton's fusee were an offering to heaven or to Miss Sikk.u.m.

On Sunday mornings Miss w.a.n.gle and Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe went to divine service at Westminster Abbey, and Mr. Cordal went to sleep in the lounge.

Mrs. Barnes wandered aimlessly about, making anxious enquiry of everyone she encountered. If it were cloudy, did they think it would rain? If it rained, did they think it would clear up? If it were fine, did they think it would last? Mrs. Barnes was always going to do something that was contingent upon the weather. Every Sunday she was going for a walk in the Park, or to church; but her const.i.tutional indecision of character intervened.

Mr. Archibald Sefton, who showed the qualities of a landscape gardener in the way in which he arranged his thin fair hair to disguise the desert of baldness beneath, was always vigorous on Sundays. He descended to the dining-room rubbing his hands in a manner suggestive of a d.i.c.kens Christmas. After breakfast he walked in the Park, "to give the girls a treat," as Mr. Bolton had once expressed it, which had earned for him a stern rebuke from Miss w.a.n.gle. In the afternoon Mr.

Sefton returned to the Park, and in the evening yet again.

Mr. Sefton had a secret that was slowly producing in him misanthropy.

His nature was tropical and his courage arctic, which, coupled with his forty-five years, was a great obstacle to his happiness. In dress he was a dandy, at heart he was a craven and, never daring, he was consumed with his own fire.

The other guests at Galvin House drifted in and out, said the same things, wore the same clothes, with occasional additions, had the same thoughts; whilst over all, as if to compose the picture, brooded the reek of cooking.

The atmosphere of Galvin House was English, the cooking was English, and the lack of culinary imagination also was English. There were two and a half menus for the one o'clock Sunday dinner. Roast mutton, onion sauce, cabbage, potatoes, fruit pie, and custard; alternated for four weeks with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, cauliflower, roast potatoes, and lemon pudding. Then came roast pork, apple sauce, potatoes, greens with stewed fruit and cheese afterwards.

The cuisine was in itself a calendar. If your first Sunday were a roast-pork Sunday, you knew without mental effort on every roast-pork Sunday exactly how many months you had been there. If for a moment you had forgotten the day, and found yourself toying with a herring at dinner, you knew it was a Tuesday, just as you knew it was Friday from the Scotch broth placed before you.

n.o.body seemed to mind the dreary reiteration, because everybody was so occupied in keeping up appearances. Sunday was the day of reckoning and retrospection. "Were they getting full value for their money?" was the unuttered question. There were whisperings and grumblings, sometimes complaints. Then there was another aspect. Each guest had to enquire if the expenditure were justified by income. All these things, like the weekly mending, were kept for Sundays.

By tea-time the atmosphere was one of unrest. Mr. Sefton returned from the Park disappointed, Miss Sikk.u.m from Sunday-school, breathless from her flight before some alleged admirer, Patricia from her walk, conscious of a dissatisfaction she could not define. Mr. Cordal awoke unrefreshed, Mrs. Craske-Morton emerged from her "boudoir," where she balanced the week's accounts, convinced that ruin stared her in the face owing to the tonic qualities of Bayswater air, and Mr. Bolton emerged from _Lloyd's News_ facetious. Miss w.a.n.gle was acid, Mrs.

Mosscrop-Smythe ultra-forbearing, whilst Mrs. Barnes found it impossible to decide between a heart-cake and a rusk. Only Mrs.

Hamilton, at work upon her inevitable knitting, seemed human and content.

On returning to Galvin House Patricia had formed a habit of instinctively casting her eyes in the direction of the letter-rack, beneath which was the table on which parcels were placed that they might be picked up as the various guests entered on their way to their rooms. She took herself severely to task for this weakness, but in spite of her best efforts, her eyes would wander towards the table and letter-rack. At last she had to take stern measures with herself and deliberately walk along the hall with her face turned to the left, that is to the side opposite from that of the letter-rack table.

On the Sunday afternoon following her adventure at the Quadrant Grill-room, Patricia entered Galvin House, her head resolutely turned to the left, and ran into Gustave.

"Oh, mees!" he exclaimed, his gentle, cow-like face expressing pained surprise, rather than indignation.

Gustave was a Swiss, a French-Swiss, he was emphatic on this point.

Patricia said he was Swiss wherever he wasn't French, and German wherever he wasn't Swiss and French.

"I am so sorry, Gustave," apologised Patricia. "I wasn't looking where I was going."

Gustave smiled amiably, Patricia was a great favourite of his. "There is a lady in the looaunge, Mees Brent, the same as you." Gustave smiled broadly as if he had discovered some subtle joke in the duplication of Patricia's name.

"Oh, bother!" muttered Patricia to herself. "Aunt Adelaide, imagine Aunt Adelaide on an afternoon like this."

She entered the lounge wearily, to find Miss Brent the centre of a group, the foremost in which were Mrs. Craske-Morton, Miss w.a.n.gle, and Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe. Patricia groaned in spirit; she knew exactly what had been taking place, and now she would have to explain everything. Could she explain? Had she for one moment paused to think of Aunt Adelaide, no amount of frenzy or excitement would have prompted her to such an adventure. Miss Brent would probe the mystery out of a ghost. Material, practical, levelheaded, victorious, she would strip romance from a legend, or glamour from a myth.

As she entered the lounge, Patricia saw by the movement of Miss w.a.n.gle's lips that she was saying "Ah! here she is." Miss Brent turned and regarded her niece with a long, non-committal stare. Patricia walked over to her.

"Hullo, Aunt Adelaide! Who would have thought of seeing you here."

Miss Brent looked up at her, received the frigid kiss upon one cheek and returned it upon the other.

"A peck for a peck," muttered Patricia to herself under her breath.

"We've been talking about you," said Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe ingratiatingly.

"How strange," announced Patricia indifferently. "Well, Aunt Adelaide," she continued, turning to Miss Brent, "this is an unexpected pleasure. How is it you are dissipating in town?"

"I want to speak to you, Patricia. Is there a quiet corner where we shall not be overheard?"

Miss w.a.n.gle started, Mrs. Craske-Morton rose hurriedly and made for the door. Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe looked uncomfortable. Miss Brent's directness was a thing dreaded by all who knew her.

"You had better come up to my room, Aunt Adelaide," said Patricia.

As she reached the door, Mrs. Craske-Morton turned. "Oh! Miss Brent,"

she said, addressing Patricia, "would you not like to take your aunt into my boudoir? It is entirely at your disposal."

Mrs. Craske-Morton's "boudoir" was a small cupboard-like apartment in which she made up her accounts. It was as much like a boudoir as a starveling mongrel is like an aristocratic chow. Patricia smiled her thanks. One of Patricia's great points was that she could smile an acknowledgment in a way that was little less than inspiration.

When they reached the "boudoir," Miss Brent sat down with a suddenness and an air of aggression that left Patricia in no doubt as to the nature of the talk she desired to have with her.

Miss Brent was a tall, angular woman, with spinster shouting from every angle of her uncomely person. No matter what the fashion, she seemed to wear her clothes all bunched up about her hips. Her hair was dragged to the back of her head, and crowned by a hat known in the dim recesses of the Victorian past as a "boater." A veil clawed what remained of the hair and hat towards the rear, and accentuated the sharpness of her nose and the fleshlessness of her cheeks. Miss Brent looked like nothing so much as an aged hawk in whom the l.u.s.t to prey still lingered, without the power of making the physical effort to capture it.

"Patricia," she demanded, "what is all this I hear?"

"If you've been talking to Miss w.a.n.gle and Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe, Aunt Adelaide, heaven only knows what you've heard," replied Patricia calmly.

"Patricia." Miss Brent invariably began her remarks by uttering the name of the person whom she addressed. "Patricia, you know perfectly well what I mean."