Mrs. Tim of the Regiment (42 page)

Mrs. McTurk, slightly bewildered by Mrs. Falconer's sudden question, hesitates whether to disown her
embonpoint
, or stand for a sense of humour at all costs. She loses her opportunity of getting a word in edgeways.

‘My brother, Edward, once had a fat white bull terrier,' says Mrs. Falconer reminiscently, and it is only too obvious what has given rise to this new train of thought. Guthrie dives to collect the scattered newspapers with a strange choking cough.

‘It was a most intelligent animal,' Mrs. Falconer continues. ‘Guthrie dear, have you swallowed a fly or something?'

‘No, yes,' says Guthrie. ‘At least, I think it was a bull terrier.' ‘A bull terrier! My dear boy, how could you possibly have swallowed a bull terrier? It must have been a gnat.'

I have been watching our guest with great interest; her reactions to Mrs. Falconer's conversation are worthy of note. She was first annoyed, then incredulous, and then utterly bewildered. I can now see her staggering like a torpedoed ship.

Tea appears, and with it our hostess, clad as usual in her shabby garments and queenly manner. Her manner becomes even more queenly when she perceives Mrs. McTurk, whom she abhors.

‘How do you do?' she enquires stiffly, and is compelled by her old-fashioned notion of hospitality to shake the woman's hand.

Mrs. McTurk, already sinking under the waves of Mrs. Falconer's talk, is in no condition to do herself justice. She replies feebly that she is well, and relapses into silence.

The fortunes and misfortunes of the bull terrier – which rejoiced in the name of Hannibal – are now related to us by Mrs. Falconer with a wealth of detail rarely equalled and never surpassed. We pull it through distemper in 1898, follow it to the seaside with the family in 1899, and finally attend its tragic demise – through eating rat poison – in 1902. Hannibal is buried in the garden with Christian honours beneath the shade of an elm, and his virtues are commemorated by a stone for which the whole family subscribe their monthly pence. From this sad scene we proceed by an agile bound to Mrs. Falconer's recollections of a visit to Madame Tussaud's. Here Mama accosts the wax policeman, and asks him the way to the Chamber of Horrors, while Papa, as usual, improves the occasion with well-chosen aphorisms.

Tea is now over, and we move slowly round the garden to the front drive, where the Rolls is waiting with its mulberry-coloured chauffeur in attendance. Mrs. McTurk suddenly realizes that this is her last chance, and makes a wild effort to gain her hostess's ear.

‘Mr. McTurk and I are staying at the hotel,' she says breathlessly, and I can see the invitation to dinner is trembling upon her lips, but Mrs. Falconer pounces on the last word like a tiger.

‘At the
hotel
!' she exclaims. ‘I wonder if you have met a friend of Guthrie's who is staying there just now – Major Morley his name is. He is really a very nice man, though a trifle too scurrilous for my liking.'

‘Scurrilous!' gasps Mrs. McTurk.

‘It just means very talkative,' explains Mrs. Falconer kindly. ‘Dear Papa used such
long
words, and us girls got into the habit of saying them, just from hearing
him
– much to Mama's horror. Poor Mama was always telling us we would never get husbands if we used such long words. It was not fashionable to be clever in my young days. Poor dear Mama was always telling us about it. “Let your conversation be yea yea and nay nay” she used to say. That's out of the Bible, of course, so I've no doubt it is very good advice, but if we all did that, and went about saying “yea yea and nay nay” we should look rather silly, and there would not be any conversation at all. Papa's views upon the subject were not quite so extreme; he used to say that conversation should never be one-sided. There should be give and take about it, and I think that is so
true
. And that is why I really do not care very much for Major Morley,' adds Mrs. Falconer triumphantly.

By this time Mrs. McTurk's eyes are quite glassy, and, when the mulberry chauffeur opens the door of the car, she gets in like a woman walking in her sleep, and is whirled off down the drive without saying another word.

‘How very strange not to say “Good-bye” ,' says Mrs. Falconer, peering down the drive after the disappearing Rolls with her shortsighted eyes. ‘Did you notice that, Elspeth? Guthrie, did you notice? People
are
extraordinary nowadays. Papa always said . . . '

But Mrs. Loudon does not remain to hear Papa's ideas upon the subject – she is already hastening into the house; and Guthrie is making for the woods as if he were fleeing from the wrath to come. I murmur that I
must
write some letters at once, and follow my hostess with all speed. Mrs. Falconer is left standing on the drive, the unconscious victor of the day, in undisputed possession of all she surveys.

I find Mrs. Loudon in the drawing room, sitting on the sofa and giggling feebly.

‘Gracious me!' she gasps. ‘Did you see the poor body's face? I declare to goodness I was sorry for the woman though I can't thole her! She'll be away back to the hotel with the story that I've a tame lunatic in the house.'

We discuss the afternoon's entertainment at length, dwelling on the parts which appealed particularly to our sense of humour.

‘Yea yea and nay nay!' exclaims Mrs. Loudon, with a gust of laughter. ‘Poor Millie, it's a crime to laugh at her, but the thing's beyond me this time.'

‘How could she help being peculiar with parents like that?' I reply. ‘Poor Mama was a harmless idiot, of course, but I feel sure I would have hated dear Papa.'

‘You would not, then,' says Mrs. Loudon promptly. ‘Uncle Edward was a nice, kind, wise-like creature. That's just the odd bit. Millie doesn't exactly tell lies, but she makes everything sound different from what it was. Yon tale about the dog, for instance I was staying with them when the beast died, and it all happened exactly as she said – and yet it was not like that at all.'

‘You should have been there when she began the story,' I gasp, wiping my flowing tears. ‘She took one long look at Mrs. McTurk, and away she went I thought Guthrie would have burst.'

‘I'm thankful I missed that. It would have destroyed me,' rejoins my hostess feebly. ‘The woman really is exactly like yon bulldog even to her small beady eyes. I don't admire your taste in friends, Hester.'

‘I know you don't,' I reply with sorrowful emphasis.

‘Well, well!' says Mrs. Loudon, rising and blowing her nose with a trumpeting sound. ‘Well, well, it's been a mad sort of tea party, and I dare say it's very good for us to have a good laugh, but I'll not get any letters written sitting here giggling with you '

‘I thought you were writing letters all the afternoon.'

‘It was too hot,' she replies. ‘I just sat down by the window with a book, and the next thing I knew it was teatime. And if an old done woman can't take a nap on a Sunday afternoon without people grinning at her like a Cheshire cat I don't know what the world's coming to. Away with you, I
must
write Elinor before dinner. Did you know Elinor Bradshaw, by any chance, when you were at Hythe?' she continues, rummaging fiercely in her desk. ‘Elinor's perhaps coming up for a few days towards the end of the month.'

‘Good heavens, are they still there?' I exclaim, pausing on my way to the door.

Mrs. Loudon laughs. ‘There speaks the wanderer. And why shouldn't they still be there in their own comfortable house? It's not everyone goes trailing over the face of the world like you soldiers' wives. Elinor's still there in the same place, and there's no reason to suppose she will leave it till she's carried out feet first. I don't know why I asked if you knew them, except that they always seem to have a stream of army friends coming and going about the house. Elinor is forever in despair about some bosom friend or other going off to India or Aldershot or some such outlandish – spot and then another woman appears on the scene, and the first one's forgotten in a week.'

As usual, Mrs. Loudon has hit off her subject to the life I can't help laughing at the portrait. How incredible it seems that Elinor has been living there all this time, and I have never thought of her from one year's end to another! I have moved from place to place, borne children, ordered dinners, been happy or intensely miserable, and Elinor has lived on at Hythe keeping house for her brother, with no changes in her life, save the one sad change of growing older. How incredible it seems that the house, with its sunny aspect, and parquet floors, and the garden with its gorgeous roses and queer old sundial, are still the same! Although I have not thought of them for years they have been there all the time –

‘But don't you think,' says Mrs. Loudon, with a twinkle in her eye. ‘Don't you think you are a wee thing egotistical, Hester, to be surprised that the poor creatures can go on living unless you think of them occasionally?'

‘You're a witch,' I tell her, ‘and a black witch at that.' And, with this parting shot, I leave her to write to Elinor, and fly upstairs to write to Tim.

Thirteenth June

Betty and I decide to walk to the village. She wishes to spend a sixpence which she won from Guthrie, who bet her that she could not sit still for two minutes. We set off together very happily across the moor.

‘I only did it by wriggling my toes,' Betty informs me. ‘Two minutes is a terrible long time – I suppose it was quite
fair
to wriggle my toes?' she enquires anxiously.

The hill wind is cold, and whips our hair across our faces. The larch trees quiver, and bend their proud heads and shake their glittering leaves. The wind rustles through the pale green bracken, and flows over the moor like a crystal stream. The clouds are racing over the hills, there is movement everywhere today.

Betty finds a glossy-leaved plant with a gold flower – I don't know its name? Never mind, probably it has some long, clumsy, Latin name which does not suit it at all. Flowers should be born with names fitting to their beauty, not labelled by spectacled scientists with collecting tins and dissecting scissors; and those flocks of cloud, like teeming ewes rushing over the hills, they too have long names, according to their shape and density, but, to me, they are a flock of ewes, driven by the summer wind.

Betty runs, and jumps, and springs into the air like a young goat.

‘The hills make me full of springiness,' she says. ‘D'you think I shall find something nice to buy at the shop, Mummie? Guthrie says they have everything except what you want, but I don't know what I want so perhaps they'll have it. What do you think, Mummie?'

The problem is beyond me, and I say so with suitable humility.

‘I like Guthrie – don't you?' she continues, hopping along on one leg. ‘But I like Major Morley much better. He's the cleverest, isn't he? Guthrie's rather stupid sometimes. And I like Mrs. Loudon, and I like Mrs. Falconer –
she
said I was to call her Aunt Millie, but I always forget. Why does she want me to call her Aunt Millie, Mummie? And I like Mary, and I like Kitty, but I don't like Jean. Don't you think Jean's got a cross face, Mummie? And Annie doesn't like Jean either. Annie says she gets the sulks.'

We reach the village shop without adventure, and Betty turns her attention to the business in hand, while I invest in stamps and darning wool.

‘I think I'll buy a post card for Daddy,' she says. ‘And something – for Annie some chocolate perhaps. Oh, what a darling little pail! That red one how much is it? Oh, dear, I've only got sixpence! Well, how much is that fishing rod Oh, dear, haven't you got anything only sixpence? No, I don't want a ball – '

I have completed my modest purchases by this time, and am forced to go to Betty's aid. The shop is ransacked by a patient girl to find something that will appeal to my daughter, and yet be within her means. She seems to have forgotten her altruistic intentions towards Daddy and Annie. Boats, dolls, painting books are all turned down; they do not attract her at all. I can't help wishing that it were not against my principles to buy her a fishing rod – price half a crown as it would solve all our difficulties in a trice; but I feel that this would be bad training for her character.

At last a wooden hoop is brought to light; Betty greets its appearance with rapture, and demands its price with bated breath. The patient girl replies glibly that it is ‘chust sixpence with the stick', and all is well.

Coming out of the shop we meet Elsie Baker, attired in the height of fashion, with a red cap on the very back of her head. She says she has been wanting to see me, and can she walk back a bit of the way with me? I reply that she can, and we set off together in a friendly manner, with Betty in front, bowling her hoop.

Elsie takes my arm as we turn up the path which leads over the moor, and says – quite untruthfully – that I have always been so kind to her. ‘Oh yes, you have, Mrs. Christie – I mean to say you don't try and make me feel small. Look at the other night – I'd have laughed at Mr. MacArbin if you hadn't stopped me. I thought he'd done it for a lark. I don't know much about
Scotch
people, you see.'

I reply that I have suffered from the same disability myself, and a fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind.