Patricia Brent, Spinster Part 48

CHAPTER XX

A RACE WITH SPINSTERHOOD

Before she had been at Eastbourne twenty-four hours Patricia was convinced that she had made a mistake in going there. With no claims upon her time, the restlessness that had developed in London increased until it became almost unbearable. The hotel at which she was staying was little more than a glorified boarding-house, full of "the most jungly of jungle-people," as she expressed it to herself. Their well-meant and kindly efforts to engage her in their pursuits and pleasures she received with apathetic negation. At length her fellow-guests, seeing that she was determined not to respond to their overtures, left her severely alone. The men were the last to desist.

She came to dislike the pleasure-seekers about her and grew critical of everything she saw, the redness of the women's faces, the a.s.sumed youthfulness of the elderly men, the shapelessness of matrons who seemed to delight in bright open-work blouses and juvenile hats. She remembered Elton's remark that Fashion uncovers a mult.i.tude of shins.

The shins exposed at Eastbourne were she decided, sufficient to undermine one's belief in the early chapters of Genesis.

At one time she would have been amused at the types around her, and their various conceptions of "one crowded hour of glorious life." As it was, everything seemed sordid and trivial. Why should people lose all sense of dignity and proportion at a set period of the year? It was, she decided, almost as bad as being a hare.

All she wanted was to be alone, she told herself; yet as soon as she had discovered some secluded spot and had settled herself down to read, the old restlessness attacked her, and fight against it as she might, she was forced back again to the haunts of men.

For the first few days she watched eagerly for letters. None came.

She would return to the hotel several times a day, look at the letter-rack, then, to hide her disappointment, make a pretence of having returned for some other purpose. "Why had not Bowen written?"

she asked herself, then a moment after she strove to convince herself that he had forgotten, or at least that she was only an episode in his life.

His sudden change from eagerness to indifference caused her to flush with humiliation; yet he had gone to Galvin House during the raid to a.s.sure himself of her safety. Why had he not written after what had occurred? Perhaps Aunt Adelaide was right about men after all.

Patricia wrote to Lady Tanagra, Mrs. Hamilton, Lady Peggy, Mr. Triggs, even to Miss Sikk.u.m. In due course answers arrived; but in only Miss Sikk.u.m's letter was there any reference to Bowen, a gush of sentiment about "how happy you must be, dear Miss Brent, with Lord Bowen running down to see you every other day. I know!" she added with maidenly prescience. Patricia laughed.

Mr. Triggs committed himself to nothing more than two and three-quarter pages, mainly about his daughter and "A. B.," Mr. Triggs was not at his best as a correspondent. Lady Tanagra ran to four pages; but as her handwriting was large, five lines filling a page, her letter was disappointing.

Lady Peggy was the most productive. In the course of twelve pages of spontaneity she told Patricia that the Duke and the Cabinet Minister had almost quarrelled about her, Patricia. "Peter has been to lunch with us and Daddy has told him how lucky he is, and how wonderful you are. If Peter is not very careful, I shall have you presented to me as a stepmother. Wouldn't it be priceless!" she wrote. "Oh! What am I writing?" She ended with the Duke's love, and an insistence that Patricia should lunch at Curzon Street the first Sunday after her return.

Patricia found Lady Peggy's letter charming. She was pleased to know that she had made a good impression and was admired--by the right people. Twenty-four hours, however, found her once more thrown back into the trough of her own despondency. Instinctively she began to count the days until this "dire compulsion of infertile days" should end. She could not very well return to London and say that she was tired of holiday-making. Galvin House would put its own construction upon her action and words, and whatever that construction might be, it was safe to a.s.sume that it would be an unpleasant one.

There were moments when a slight uplifting of the veil enabled her to see herself as she must appear to others.

"Patricia!" she exclaimed one morning to her reflection in a rather dubious mirror. "You're a c.u.mberer of the earth and, furthermore, you've got a beastly temper," and she jabbed a pin through her hat and partly into her head.

As the days pa.s.sed she found herself wondering what was the earliest day she could return. If she made it the Friday night, would it arouse suspicion? She decided that it would, and settled to leave Eastbourne on the Sat.u.r.day afternoon.

As the train steamed out of the station she made a grimace in the direction of the town, just as an inoffensive and prematurely bald little man opposite looked up from his paper. He gave Patricia one startled look through his gold-rimmed spectacles and, for the rest of the journey, buried himself behind his paper, fearful lest Patricia should "make another face at him," as he explained to his mother that evening.

"She's come home in a nice temper!" was Miss w.a.n.gle's diagnosis of the mood in which Patricia reached Galvin House.

Gustave regarded her with anxious concern.

The first dinner drove her almost mad. The raid, as a topic of conversation, was on the wane, although Mr. Bolton worked at it n.o.bly, and Patricia found herself looked upon to supply the necessary material for the evening's amus.e.m.e.nt. What had she done? Where had she been?

Had she bathed? Were the dresses pretty? How many times had Bowen been down? Had she met any nice people? Was it true that the costumes of the women were disgraceful?

At last, with a forced laugh, Patricia told them that she must have "notice" of such questions, and everybody had looked at her in surprise, until Mr. Bolton's laugh rang out, and he explained the parliamentary allusion.

When at last, under pretence of being tired, she was able to escape to her room, she felt that another five minutes would have turned her brain.

Sunday dawned, and with it the old panorama of iterations unfolded itself: Mr. Bolton's velvet coat and fez, Mr. Cordal's carpet slippers with the fur tops, Mrs. Barnes' indecision, Mr. Sefton's genial and romantic optimism, Miss Sikk.u.m's sumptuary excesses; all presented themselves in due sequence just as they had done for--"was it centuries?" Patricia asked herself. To crown all it was a roast-pork Sunday, and the reek of onions preparing for the seasoning filled the house.

Patricia felt that the fates were fighting against her. In nerving herself for the usual human Sunday ordeal, she had forgotten the vegetable menace, in other words that it was "pork Sunday." Mr. Bolton was always more than usually trying on Sundays; but reinforced by onions he was almost unbearable. Patricia fled.

It was the Sunday before August Bank Holiday. Patricia shuddered at the remembrance. It meant that people were away. She did not pause to think that her world was at home, pursuing its various paths whereby to cultivate an appet.i.te worthy of the pork that was even then sizzling in the Galvin House kitchen under the eagle eye of the cook, who prided herself on her "crackling," which Galvin House crunched with noisy gusto.

Patricia sank down upon a chair far back under the trees opposite the Stanhope Gate. Here she remained in a vague way watching the people, yet unconscious of their presence. From time to time some s.n.a.t.c.h of meaningless conversation would reach her. "You know Betty's such a sport?" one man said to another. Patricia found herself wondering what Betty was like and what, to the speaker's mind, const.i.tuted being a sport. Was Betty pretty? She must be, Patricia decided; no one cared whether or no a plain girl were a sport. She found herself wanting to know Betty. What were the lives of all these people, these shadows, that were moving to and fro in front of her, each intent upon something that seemed of vital importance? Were they----?

"I doubt if Ca.s.sandra could have looked more gloomily prophetic."

She turned with a start and saw Geoffrey Elton smiling down upon her.

"Did I look as bad as that?" she enquired, as he took a seat beside her.

"You looked as if you were gratuitously settling the destinies of the world," he replied.

"In a way I suppose I was," she said musingly. "You see they all mean something," indicating the paraders with a nod of her head, "tragedy, comedy, farce, sometimes all three. If you only stop to think about life, it all seems so hopeless. I feel sometimes that I could run away from it all."

"That in the Middle Ages would have been diagnosed as the monastic spirit," said Elton. "It arose, and no doubt continues in most cases to arise from a sluggish liver."

"How dreadful!" laughed Patricia. "The inference is obvious."

"The world's greatest achievements and greatest tragedies could no doubt be traced directly to rebellious livers: Waterloo and 'Hamlet'

are instances."

"Are you serious?" enquired Patricia. She was never quite certain of Elton.

"In a way I suppose I am," he replied. "If I were a pathologist I should write a book upon _The Influence of Disease upon the Destinies of the World_. The supreme monarch is the microbe. The Germans have shown that they recognise this."

"Ugh!" Patricia shuddered.

"Of course you have to make some personal sacrifice in the matter of self-respect first," continued Elton, "but after that the rest becomes easy."

"I suppose that is what a German victory would mean," said Patricia.

"Yes; we should give up lead and nickel and T.N.T., and invent germ distributors. Essen would become a great centre of germ-culture, and----"

"Oh! please let us talk about something else," cried Patricia. "It's horrible!"

"Well!" said Elton with a smile, "shall we continue our talk over lunch, if you have no engagement?"

"Lady Peggy asked me----" began Patricia.

"They're away in Somerset," said Elton, "so now I claim you as my victim. It is your destiny to save me from my own thoughts."

"And yours to save me from roast pork and apple sauce," said Patricia, rising. As they walked towards Hyde Park Corner she explained the Galvin House cuisine.

They lunched at the Ritz and, to her surprise Patricia found herself eating with enjoyment, a thing she had not done for weeks past. She decided that it must be a revulsion of feeling after the menace of roast pork. Elton was a good talker, with a large experience of life and a considerable fund of general information.

"I should like to travel," said Patricia as she sipped her coffee in the lounge.

"Why?" Elton held a match to her cigarette.

"Oh! I suppose because it is enjoyable," replied Patricia; "besides, it educates," she added.