Patricia Brent, Spinster Part 2

A meaning glance pa.s.sed between Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe and Miss w.a.n.gle.

Why she had fixed upon the Quadrant Grill-room Patricia could not have said.

"And now," said Patricia, "I must run upstairs and see that my best bib and tucker are in proper condition to be worn before my fiance. I'll tell him what you say about the ring. Good night, everybody, if we don't meet again."

"Patricia Brent," admonished Patricia to her reflection in the looking-gla.s.s, as she brushed her hair that night, "you're a most unmitigated little liar. You've told those people the wickedest of wicked lies. You've engaged yourself to an unknown major in the British Army. You're going to dine with him to-morrow night, and heaven knows what will be the result of it all. A single lie leads to so many. Oh, Patricia, Patricia!" she nodded her head admonishingly at the reflection in the gla.s.s. "You're really a very wicked young woman." Then she burst out laughing. "At least, I have given them something to talk about, any old how. By now they've probably come to the conclusion that I'm a most awful rip."

Patricia never confessed it to herself, but she was extremely lonely.

Instinctively shy of strangers, she endeavoured to cover up her self-consciousness by a.s.suming an att.i.tude of nonchalance, and the result was that people saw only the artificiality. She had been brought up in the school of "men are beasts," and she took no trouble to disguise her indifference to them. With women she was more popular.

If anyone were ill at Galvin House, it was always Patricia Brent who ministered to them, sat and read to them, and cheered them through convalescence back to health.

Her acquaintance with men had been almost entirely limited to those she had found in the various boarding-houses, glorified in the name of residential hotels, at which she had stayed. Five years previously, on the death of her father, a lawyer in a small country town, she had come to London and obtained a post as secretary to a blossoming politician.

There she had made herself invaluable, and there she had stayed, performing the same tasks day after day, seldom going out, since the war never at all, and living a life calculated to make an acid spinster of a Venus or a Juno.

"Oh, bother to-morrow!" said Patricia as she got into bed that night; "it's a long way off and perhaps something will happen before then,"

and with that she switched off the light.

CHAPTER II

THE BONSOR-TRIGGS' MENAGE

The next morning Patricia awakened with a feeling that something had occurred in her life. For a time she lay pondering as to what it could be. Suddenly memory came with a flash, and she smiled. That night she was dining out! As suddenly as it had come the smile faded from her lips and eyes, and she mentally apostrophised herself as a little idiot for what she had done. Then, remembering Miss w.a.n.gle's remark and the expression on Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe's face, the lines of her mouth hardened, and there was a determined air about the tilt of her chin.

She smiled again.

"Patricia Brent! No, that won't do," she broke off. Then springing out of bed she went over to the mirror, adjusted the dainty boudoir cap upon her head and, bowing elaborately to her reflection, said, "Patricia Brent, I invite you to dine with me this evening at the Quadrant Grill-room. I hope you'll be able to come. How delightful.

We shall have a most charming time." Then she sat on the edge of the bed and pondered.

Of course she would have to come back radiantly happy, girls who have been out with their fiance's always return radiantly happy. "That will mean two _cremes de menthes_ instead of one, that's another shilling, perhaps two," she murmured. Then she must have a good dinner or else the _creme de menthe_ would get into her head, that would mean about seven shillings more. "Oh! Patricia, Patricia," she wailed, "you have let yourself in for an expense of at least ten shillings, the point being is a major in the British Army worth an expenditure of ten shillings? We shall----"

She was interrupted by the maid knocking at the door to inform her that it was her turn for the bath-room.

As Patricia walked across the Park that morning on her way to Eaton Square, where the politician lived who employed her as private secretary whilst he was in the process of rising, she pondered over her last night's announcement. She was convinced that she had acted foolishly, and in a way that would probably involve her in not only expense, but some trouble and inconvenience.

At the breakfast-table the conversation had been entirely devoted to herself, her fiance, and the coming dinner together. Miss w.a.n.gle, Mrs.

Mosscrop-Smythe, and Miss Sikk.u.m, supported by Mrs. Craske-Morton, had returned to the charge time after time. Patricia had taken refuge in her habitual breakfast silence and, finding that they could draw nothing from her her fellow-guests had proceeded to discuss the matter among themselves. It was with a feeling of relief that Patricia rose from the table.

There was an east wind blowing, and Patricia had always felt that an east wind made her a materialist. This morning she was depressed; there was in her heart a feeling that fate had not been altogether kind to her. Her childhood had been spent in a small town on the East Coast under the care of her father's sister who, when Mrs. Brent died, had come to keep house for Mr. John Brent and take care of his five-year-old daughter. In her aunt Patricia found a woman soured by life. What it was that had soured her Patricia could never gather; but Aunt Adelaide was for ever emphasizing the fact that men were beasts.

Later Patricia saw in her aunt a disappointed woman. She could remember as a child examining with great care her aunt's hard features and angular body, and wondering if she had ever been pretty, and if anyone had kissed her because they wanted to and not because it was expected of them.

The lack of sympathy between aunt and niece had driven Patricia more and more to seek her father's companionship. He was a silent man, little given to emotion or demonstration of affection. He loved Patricia, but lacked the faculty of conveying to her the knowledge of his love.

As she walked across the Park Patricia came to the conclusion that, for some reason or other, love, or the outward visible signs of love, had been denied her. Warm-hearted, impetuous, spontaneous, she had been chilled by the self-repression of her father, and the lack of affection of her aunt. She had been schooled to regard G.o.d as the G.o.d of punishment rather than the G.o.d of love. One of her most terrifying recollections was that of the Sundays spent under the paternal roof.

To her father, religion counted for nothing; but to her aunt it counted for everything in the world; the hereafter was to be the compensation for renunciation in this world. Miss Brent's att.i.tude towards prayer was that of one who regards it as a means by which she is able to convey to the Almighty what she expects of Him in the next world as a reward for what she has done, or rather not done, in this.

Patricia had once asked, in a childish moment of speculation, "But, Aunt Adelaide, suppose G.o.d doesn't make us happy in the next world, what shall we do then?"

"Oh! yes He will," was her aunt's reply, uttered with such grimness that Patricia, though only six years of age, had been satisfied that not even G.o.d would dare to disappoint Aunt Adelaide.

Patricia had been a lonely child. She had come to distrust spontaneity and, in consequence, became shy and self-conscious, with the inevitable result that other children, the few who were in Aunt Adelaide's opinion fit for her to a.s.sociate with, made it obvious that she was one by herself. Patricia had fallen back on her father's library, where she had read many books that would have caused her aunt agonies of stormy anguish, had she known.

Patricia early learnt the necessity for dissimulation. She always carefully selected two books, one that she could ostensibly be reading if her aunt happened to come into the library, and the other that she herself wanted to read, and of which she knew her aunt would strongly disapprove.

Miss Brent regarded boarding-schools as "hotbeds of vice," and in consequence Patricia was educated at home, educated in a way that she would never have been at any school; for Miss Brent was thorough in everything she undertook. The one thing for which Patricia had to be grateful to her aunt was her general knowledge, and the sane methods adopted with her education. But for this she would not have been in the position to accept a secretaryship to a politician.

When Patricia was twenty-one her father had died, and she inherited from her mother an annuity of a hundred pounds a year. Her aunt had suggested that they should live together; but Patricia had announced her intention of working, and with the money that she realised from the sale of her father's effects, particularly his library, she came to London and underwent a course of training in shorthand, typewriting, and general secretarial work. This was in March, 1914. Before she was ready to undertake a post, the war broke out upon Europe like a cataclysm, and a few months later Patricia had obtained a post as private secretary to Mr. Arthur Bonsor, M.P.

Mr. Bonsor was the victim of marriage. Destiny had ordained that he should spend his life in golf and gardening, or in breeding earless rabbits and stingless bees. He was bucolic and pa.s.sive. Mrs. Bonsor, however, after a slight altercation with Destiny, had decided that Mr.

Bonsor was to become a rising politician. Thus it came about that, pushed on from behind by Mrs. Bonsor and led by Patricia, whose general knowledge was of the greatest possible a.s.sistance to him, Mr. Bonsor was in the elaborate process of rising at the time when Patricia determined to have a fiance.

Mr. Bonsor was a small, fair-haired man, prematurely bald, an indifferent speaker; but excellent in committee. Instinctively he was gentle and kind. Mrs. Bonsor disliked Patricia and Patricia was indifferent to Mrs. Bonsor. Mrs. Bonsor, however, recognised that in Patricia her husband had a remarkably good secretary, one whom it would be difficult to replace.

Mrs. Bonsor's att.i.tude to everyone who was not in a superior position to herself was one of patronage. Patricia she looked upon as an upper servant, although she never dare show it. Patricia, on the other hand, showed very clearly that she had no intention of being treated other than as an equal by Mrs. Bonsor, and the result was a sort of armed neutrality. They seldom met; when by chance they encountered each other in the house Mrs. Bonsor would say, "Good morning, Miss Brent; I hope you walked across the Park." Patricia would reply, "Yes, most enjoyable; I invariably walk across the Park when I have time"; and with a forced smile Mrs. Bonsor would say, "That is very wise of you."

Never did Mrs. Bonsor speak to Patricia without enquiring if she had walked across the Park. One day Patricia antic.i.p.ated Mrs. Bonsor's inevitable question by announcing, "I walked across the Park this morning, Mrs. Bonsor, it was most delightful," and Mrs. Bonsor had glared at her, but, remembering Patricia's value to her husband, had made a non-committal reply and pa.s.sed on. Henceforth, Mrs. Bonsor dropped all reference to the Park.

On the first day of Patricia's entry into the Bonsor household, Mrs.

Bonsor had remarked, "Of course you will stay to lunch," and Patricia had thanked her and said she would. But when she found that her luncheon was served on a tray in the library, where Mr. Bonsor did his work, she had decided that henceforth exercise in the middle of the day was necessary for her, and she lunched out.

Mr. Bonsor had married beneath him. His father, a land-poor squire in the north of England, had impressed upon all his sons that money was essential as a matrimonial a.s.set, and Mr. Bonsor, not having sufficient individuality to starve for love, had determined to follow the parental decree. How he met Miss Triggs, the daughter of the prosperous Streatham builder and contractor, Samuel Triggs, n.o.body knew, but his father had congratulated him very cordially about having contrived to marry her. Miss Triggs's friends to a woman were of the firm conviction that it was Miss Triggs who had married Mr. Bonsor.

"'Ettie's so ambitious." remarked her father soon after the wedding, "that it's almost a relief to get 'er married."

Mr. Bonsor was scarcely back from his honeymoon before he was in full possession of the fact that Mrs. Bonsor had determined that he should become famous. She had read how helpful many great men's wives had been in their career, and she determined to be the power behind the indeterminate Arthur Bonsor. Poor Mr. Bonsor, who desired nothing better than a peaceable life and had looked forward to a future of ease and prosperity when he married Miss Triggs, discovered when too late that he had married not so much Miss Triggs, as an abstract sense of ambition. Domestic peace was to be purchased only by an att.i.tude of entire submission to Mrs. Bonsor's schemes. He was not without brains, but he lacked that impetus necessary to "getting on." Mrs. Bonsor, who was not lacking in shrewdness, observed this and determined that she herself would be the impetus.

Mr. Bonsor came to dread meal-times, that is meal-times _tete-a-tete_.

During these symposiums he was subjected to an elaborate cross-examination as to what he was doing to achieve greatness. Mrs.

Bonsor insisted upon his being present at every important function to which he could gain admittance, particularly the funerals of the ill.u.s.trious great. Egged on by her he became an inveterate writer of letters to the newspapers, particularly _The Times_. Sometimes his letters appeared, which caused Mrs. Bonsor intense gratification: but editors soon became shy of a man who bombarded them with letters upon every conceivable subject, from the submarine menace to the question of "should women wear last year's frocks?"

Mr. Triggs had once described his daughter very happily: "'Ettie's one of them that ain't content with pressing a bell, but she must keep 'er thumb on the bell-push." That was Mrs. Bonsor all over; she lacked restraint, both physical and artistic, and she conceived that if you only make noise enough people will, sooner or later, begin to take notice.

Within three years of his marriage, Mr. Bonsor entered the House of Commons. He had first of all fought in a Radical const.i.tuency and been badly beaten; but the second time he had, by some curious juggling of chance, been successful in an almost equally strong Radical division, much to the delight of Mrs. Bonsor. The success had been largely due to her idea of flooding the const.i.tuency with pretty girl-canva.s.sers; but she had been very careful to keep a watchful eye on Mr. Bonsor.

One of her reasons for engaging Patricia, for really Mrs. Bonsor was responsible for the engagement, had been that she had decided that Patricia was indifferent to men, and she decided that Mr. Bonsor might safely be trusted with Patricia Brent for long periods of secretarial communion.

Mr. Bonsor, although not lacking in susceptibility, was entirely devoid of that courage which subjugates the feminine heart. Once he had permitted his hand to rest upon Patricia's; but he never forgot the look she gave him and, for weeks after, he felt a most awful dog, and wondered if Patricia would tell Mrs. Bonsor.

When she married, Mrs. Bonsor saw that it would be necessary to drop her family, that is as far as practicable. It could not be done entirely, because her father was responsible for the allowance which made it possible for the Bonsors to live in Eaton Square. The old man was not lacking in shrewdness, and he had no intention of being thrown overboard by his ambitious daughter. It occasionally happened that Mr.

Triggs would descend upon the Bonsor household and, although Mrs.

Bonsor did her best to suppress him, that is without in any way showing she was ashamed of her parent, he managed to make Patricia's acquaintance and, from that time, made a practice of enquiring for and having a chat with her.

Mrs. Bonsor was grateful to providence for having removed her mother previous to her marriage. Mrs. Triggs had been a homely soul, with a marked inclination to be "friendly." She overflowed with good-humour, and was a woman who would always talk in an omnibus, or join a wedding crowd and compare notes with those about her. She addressed Mr. Triggs as "Pa," which caused her daughter a mental anguish of which Mrs.

Triggs was entirely unaware. It was not until Miss Triggs was almost out of her teens that her mother was persuaded to cease calling her "Girlie."

In Mrs. Bonsor the reforming spirit was deeply ingrained; but she had long since despaired of being able to influence her father's taste in dress. She groaned in spirit each time she saw him, for his sartorial ideas were not those of Mayfair. He leaned towards checks, rather loud checks, trousers that were tight about the calf, and a coat that was a sporting conception of the morning coat, with a large flapped pocket on either side. He invariably wore a red tie and an enormous watch-chain across his prosperous-looking figure. His hat was a high felt, an affair that seemed to have set out in life with the ambition of being a top hat, but losing heart had compromised.

If Mrs. Bonsor dreaded her father's visits, Patricia welcomed them.