Paula Felstead came to tea with me the day after the race. She came to tell me all about it and how Sweet Molly had won the Ladies’ Cup by half a head, and she was much surprised when I told her that I had been there and seen it with my own eyes and was eight pounds richer for the outing. Her surprise was natural, for she had tried her best to persuade me to go and I had refused.
“Well, I’m glad you went,” she said. “Even though it is slightly galling to find you prefer Geoff’s company to mine.”
“But I don’t. I would much rather have gone with you. The man wheedled me into going—I simply couldn’t refuse.”
“He must be a champion wheedler,” said Paula. “I thought you were adamant.”
“I was,” I declared. “I didn’t want to go. I only went with him because I was sorry for him—I felt I had been rather brutal.”
Paula looked at me and raised her eyebrows. “So you turned him down?” she said.
I nodded. “What else could I do? Clementina’s only thirteen…I told the man he could come back in four years and we would see.”
“Char!” she exclaimed. “What on earth made you do that?”
“What else could I do?” I inquired, somewhat puzzled by her dismay. “Do you mean I should have sent him away altogether? I hadn’t the heart to do that, and I really hadn’t the right to do it, had I? If he is still of the same mind in four years—”
“But why four years?” she cried. “Why send the man away at all?”
“I didn’t want him hanging about here looking miserable.”
Paula gazed at me in amazement. “My dear Char, I’m an interfering person, I know, but I can’t let you make this dreadful mistake without a word. Geoff may never come back at all, have you realized that?”
“Of course I realized it. But what could I do? Clementina is only thirteen.”
“Clem can look after herself. There is no need to sacrifice yourself for Clem. If you care for Geoff—”
“Good heavens, what are you talking about, Paula?” I cried incoherently. “It’s Clementina, not me at all—how could you have thought it was me? It’s Clementina.”
“Clem?” she said incredulously. “D’you mean he’s in love with Clem?”
“Yes, but he didn’t put it quite like that. He is very fond of her, he thinks she is perfect.”
“Goodness!” said Paula. “How I should hate any man to be thinking of Violet in that way! But, of course, Violet isn’t Clem. Violet is still a child, and Clem has never been a child; she has missed her childhood, poor lamb. I daresay an older man would suit Clem as a husband. She requires a lot of understanding.”
“That’s what I thought—and I like Geoff,” I said.
“He’s sound,” she agreed. “And not a bit dull (as sound people so often are), in fact he amuses me immensely. I’m very sorry about the whole thing. I thought it was you the man was after. He would have made you an excellent husband and there is plenty of time for Clem.”
“Whereas he was my last hope,” I added smiling.
“Don’t be silly, you know what I mean perfectly well. The man’s a fool.”
“You said just now he was sound.”
“In some ways,” she returned unblushingly. “Sound in some ways, but a fool to think of Clem when you are anywhere about.”
“I shall never marry,” I told her firmly. “So don’t try to match-make for me, Paula. You see there was only one man…one man I ever cared for…and something went wrong…he’s dead now.”
She looked up at me with clear, bright eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be interfering, Char. I say things before I think.”
“But I like you to be interested. I never find you interfering,” I said quickly. “You’re such a help to me with everything, with Clementina. I know nothing about children, you see, and—”
“Shucks!” said Paula smiling. “You have worked miracles with Clem. You understand her to the bone, and you know it, and are proud of it. Don’t play the modest spinster aunt to me.”
“But you will go on being—being interested?”
“Oh, yes, I shall go on interfering,” laughed Paula. “I can interfere in any way I like except that I must not try to find you a husband—is that it?”
“That’s it,” I said with a sigh of relief.
I was glad we had discussed the matter frankly, and that the misunderstanding had been cleared up. It was a horrible misunderstanding, but quite natural under the circumstances. I saw, now, how the neighborhood had construed Geoff’s constant attendance at the Manor—Paula was probably by no means the only person in the County who had read a wrong meaning into Geoff’s friendship for Clementina and myself and his fierce championships of our cause—everybody would say that he had proposed to me and I had refused him, that was obvious.
“Paula,” I said at last, “for God’s sake tell everybody that there’s no truth in the story. I don’t want it to be even hinted that there was anything between Geoff and me. These tales have a way of spreading and cropping up years later. If Geoff comes back and wants to marry Clementina—”
“Yes,” she said thoughtfully, “I see what you mean. You don’t want any malicious gossip about yourself and Clem’s future husband. It would be—nasty. I’ll do what I can to quash it. The worst of it is we can’t tell them the truth—it will have to be all strictly platonic, and so few people believe in platonic friendship—I don’t, myself, for that matter.”
“You must make them believe in it,” I told her earnestly.
She rose to go. “I always stay hours longer than I mean to,” she said as she seized her hat, which she had removed for comfort, and crammed it carelessly onto her head. “By the way, that reminds me, when are you coming with me to choose a new hat? I promised myself a new hat if Sweet Molly won.”
We arranged a day. Paula was less tied now that Violet was so much better, and, although I was working hard at the book, I did not grudge the loss of a day when it meant shopping with Paula. It was good for both of us to shake a leg loose now and then, she from nursing and domestic cares, and I from my book. After an outing with Paula I came back to my work with renewed vigor and a clearer judgment; she was an invigorating companion, she struck sparks from my mind. Her moods were as swift as an April day—from grave to gay, and from gay to grave—and they were as infectious as measles.
My dominant mood was one of sadness for Garth’s untimely end; but no one is forever occupied with sorrow, and there is a kind of gaiety that goes hand in hand with sorrow. Sorrow stands aside for a while to make room for mirth, and then steps forward to take her victim in a stronger grip. It was like that with me. My heart was sad for the loss of my old-time friend, and the future looked empty and lonely when I dared to look at it at all, but there were times when I was possessed with a strange, almost hysterical gaiety, and this happened quite often when I was with Paula, and sometimes when I was with Geoff.
The day we had fixed for our trip to London was damp and mild. Paula arrived to fetch me in the car, which she drove herself with verve and a neat judgment. The London traffic never bothered Paula, and policemen were as wax in her hands.
“Do you mind, Char?” she asked. “Bob wanted me to take Banks, but I feel silly today, and Banks is so proper.”
“I always feel quite safe with you,” I assured her.
“Misguided woman!” she giggled.
She was sparkling with merriment and high spirits that day, and I soon learned the cause. Sir Maxton Grant had seen Violet and had been full of cheer. “He’s never been like that before,” Paula said as she turned out of the gates of the Manor into the main road. “I’ve always thought him a melancholy individual—kind but melancholy. He’s got a long face and red hair—a typical Scot—but yesterday he was quite lively and skittish…He says Violet will make a complete recovery…she is to have a quiet pony…Oh, Charlotte!”
She was quite mad that day—full of the most idiotic nonsense—and she infected me. We giggled like a pair of schoolgirls at the slightest provocation. At the hat shop she pretended to persuade me to buy a straw saucer which the assistant perched jauntily over my left eyebrow.
“Quite perfect,” she said gravely.
I looked in the mirror and burst out laughing in the assistant’s face. My long-shaped brown face beneath the straw saucer was irresistibly comic.
“Paula,” I gasped, “I’m like a horse…those horses with little straw hats…It only wants two holes and two ears sticking through…”
The assistant snatched the hat off my head and replaced it with a brown mushroom straw. I thought it was quite nice, but Paula would have none of it.
“Never buy a hat that you think is quite nice,” she said, dragging me away. “A hat should be a tonic, not a head covering.”
“Aren’t you going to buy one?” I asked, following her breathlessly out of the millinery department.
“No, I’m not. It wouldn’t be safe,” she replied firmly. “If I were to buy a hat in this mood I should buy a mad hat and I could only wear it when I felt mad. I don’t feel mad often enough to make it worthwhile. You want tumblers, don’t you?”
I said I did, and after some trouble we found the china and glass department.
“I want a drinking trough for the dogs,” said Paula. Oldgarden swarmed with dogs of all sizes.
A fat, stolid young man came forward to serve us. “A drinking trough for a dog. Yes, Moddam. Would you prefer a plain trough or one with ‘dog’ written on it?”
Paula looked at him gravely. “It doesn’t really matter,” she replied. “My dogs can’t read and my husband never drinks water.”
The young man looked at her disapprovingly; he was a very serious young man. We were so weak with repressed laughter that we staggered out of the department with our purchases unmade.
“I’m sorry, Char,” Paula said, wiping her eyes. “It is disgraceful of me to behave like this. I don’t suppose you will ever come shopping with me again.”
“Shopping!” I echoed. “Do you call this shopping? We haven’t bought anything yet and I can’t possibly go back to either of those departments.”
“I’m mad today,” said Paula remorsefully, “quite mad. If you want to shop seriously we had better separate. I can’t promise to be good because I know I couldn’t be.”
“It’s after one now and I’m starving,” I replied. “Laughing always makes me hungry. Did you ask me to lunch at your club, I wonder?”
“Dare we go to the club?” asked Paula. “Supposing I do something mad there, they might turn us out.”
It did seem a risk under the circumstances; we decided to lunch at a quiet restaurant where nobody would know us.
“They might think I was drunk or something,” Paula said, “and Bob would hate it so. I am drunk really, Char. Drunk with happiness, not wine. Supposing I get taken up for being drunk with happiness in charge of a car, what will the fine be?”
“Look out,” I told her. “We were nearly into that bus.”
“My dear, what a fuss you are! There was at least an inch to spare.”
“I like rather a bigger margin.”
“A miss is as good as a mile,” Paula said. “Don’t worry, Char, it’s my day out today, nothing horrid can happen. Do you ever have days like that when nothing can go wrong? And then there are the days when nothing can go right,” Paula continued. “When your hair won’t lie down properly, and your stockings develop ladders at the worst possible moment, or your suspender breaks, and buttons fly off your gloves. When you say the wrong things to the wrong people, and spill coffee on your favorite frock, and break your reading glasses, and your cook asks for a raise—you know the kind of thing I mean,” said Paula, swerving to avoid a fat woman, who had darted off an island in the middle of the road without looking. “You know the kind of thing I mean. I always think on these occasions that my guardian angel is having a holiday.”
“He’s on duty today, anyhow,” I told her curling up my toes as we swept down a one way street and swung to the right.
“Yes,” said Paula calmly. “That’s exactly my point. I’m leaving it all to him. What about that little restaurant over there for lunch? It looks rather nice.”
We lunched at the little restaurant cheaply but amply. It was one of those little “arty” places that spring up all over London and endure for a while before they disappear as mysteriously as they came. The food was clean and good and the service adequate. Paula fell into conversation with the proprietor—who had appeared from the back premises to inquire whether we were satisfied—and elicited various interesting details about the restaurant business, and its peculiar intricacies. Wherever Paula went she made friends and gathered information—she was interested in everything and everybody, and her interest drew people toward her and opened their hearts. Her manner was always natural and sincere, and it rarely failed to evoke a natural and sincere response—she was never patronizing, never gushing, never subservient, she was always herself.
We dallied at the restaurant long after our simple meal was ended, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes while the proprietor bared his soul. He told us that his wife was an invalid and that he had borrowed money to start the restaurant so that she should have a home of her own. He told us that he rose at four every morning to buy his food at the markets, and that he superintended the cooking himself because he could not afford to engage a first class chef. He told us that his son had gone to Paris to study continental cooking and that he hoped to take him into partnership when he was sufficiently trained. Paula leaned forward over the little table and drank in every word. She was not pretending to be interested in the man’s story, she was interested. She promised to recommend the restaurant to her friends, and to arrange for the man’s invalid wife to have a fortnight at a convalescent home near the sea.
“I won’t forget,” she said as she rose and reached for her coat—and she didn’t forget. The restaurant proprietor had made a friend, and so had Paula. We were escorted to the car with royal honors.
Paula drove me to Mr. Ponsonby’s office and left me there. She had an appointment with her hairdresser and we decided to meet at five and drive home together.
I had to wait for a few minutes in the dingy office, for Mr. Ponsonby was engaged. It was a dull, dreary room, furnished with heavy mahogany furniture of the Victorian period. The walls were lined with shelves upon which stood black tin boxes painted with white names. Bereft of Paula my mood changed to one of black despondency. Garth was gone, the future was drab. I had probably at least thirty years of life before me, thirty years of loneliness and frustration. There was nothing for me to look forward to except loneliness; there was nothing for me to look back upon except loneliness. I had lost the hardly gained content which I had won during my years at Wentworth’s; I was no longer resigned to a hermit’s lot—I wanted more now. I wanted all the things that other women had—a husband, children, a full and useful life. Hinkleton had awakened my dormant desires. Paula had shown me how full and useful a normal woman’s life could be.
I was deep in the slough of despond when Mr. Ponsonby appeared. He was full of apologies for keeping me waiting and inquired eagerly after the progress of the book. I pulled myself together and replied that I was getting on with it, and found it very interesting work.
“Good!” he said rubbing his hands. “That is excellent news. I have spoken to a publisher—Mr. Falks, of Messrs. Falks and Lamb—they handled Mr. Wisdon’s other books and are very anxious to have this one also. They suggest that the new book should be prefaced by a biography of Mr. Wisdon—the man and his work—I said I would speak to you about it.”
“You mean me to write it?” I asked doubtfully.
“Who else? You knew him so well. It need not be long nor detailed, just a simple biography comprising his childhood, his life at Oxford, his war career and a short criticism of his books.”
“It sounds rather ambitious—I have never done anything of that kind,” I told him.
“Please try, Miss Dean. Mr. Falks was exceedingly anxious for something of the sort to be attempted. He pointed out that Mr. Wisdon’s writings have not received the notice they merited. Mr. Wisdon was feeling his way toward the expression of his individualism. If he had lived he would have been a great writer—so Mr. Falks says, and I believe in his judgment in such matters; he has had wide experience, very wide experience.”
I had been considering the matter while he spoke and had begun to think I might do it. I saw vaguely how it might be done. The biography took nebulous shape before my eyes.
“I will think it over,” I told him cautiously.
“Don’t put it off too long,” said Mr. Ponsonby. “Mr. Falks is anxious to have the book as soon as possible. We don’t want to hurry you, that would be a fatal mistake, but Mr. Wisdon is in the public eye. The book should come out if possible before the public has forgotten him.”
“Their memories are short,” I said. “You are asking me to hurry and yet not to hurry.”
He laughed. “You are always condensing me, or putting words into my mouth, Miss Dean. I must remember my P’s and Q’s when you are about.”
There were several other matters to settle, business connected with the estate. Mr. Ponsonby had engaged a bailiff and he was to take up his duties almost immediately. All sorts of papers required my signature and it was getting on for five when I left the office.
Paula was waiting for me. “You look dazed,” she said.
“I feel dazed,” I replied. “Legal papers are dazing to an ordinary woman like myself. And I’ve been let in for something rather—rather big.”
I told her about the biography—all that Mr. Ponsonby had said and Mr. Falks as reported by Mr. Ponsonby.
“You must do it,” she told me earnestly. “I feel you could do it well, and it would be worth doing. We need biographies of men like Mr. Wisdon. Men who stand for the old ideals of truth and justice. Make it the biography of an Englishman—he was that before everything. He was the product of generations of Englishmen—his feet were planted deep in English soil. I always used to feel that there was something strong and deep about Mr. Wisdon—there was weakness too, but that weakness was merely the offshoot of his strength. He hated anything shoddy or mean; he hated deceit. These things found his weak point, his Achilles heel. He was truth and generosity personified, but he veiled his virtues with cynicism.”
“I think you had better write the biography,” I told her with gentle sarcasm.
Her mood changed swiftly from deep earnestness to raillery. “I could do it beautifully,” she agreed, “if I had time. D’you know, Char, I once heard a woman say that to Mr. Walpole. It was at a dull dinner, a dreadfully dull dinner. ‘I admire your books so much,’ she told him gushingly, ‘I could write too if only I had time. I’ve always wanted to write, you know, but I have such a busy life that I scarcely have time to write my letters. I have five dogs, you see, and really I never have a moment to myself.’ ‘The dogs are more fortunate than we,’ he replied gravely. I thought it was a lovely answer.”
“It was, but how does it affect me?”
“I was only illustrating my meaning. If I hadn’t five dogs I could write the biography for you, Char. But let’s be serious.”
“I thought we were serious.”
“No, but we will be. Are you just going to do it out of your head or have you any data to help you? However well you know a person, it must be difficult to write a biography without anything to go on. There must be spaces in his life that you know nothing about.”
I had not thought of that, but now I saw that what Paula said was true. I had imagined that I knew Garth well, and yet for twelve years I had scarcely set eyes on him.
“Perhaps there are old letters, or something,” Paula suggested. “He was away from home so much, he must have written to his wife when he was away, or to Clem.”
“There are diaries,” I told her, “he always kept a diary, he told me so himself.”
“Splendid.”
“But I can’t pry into his diaries, Paula.”
“That’s nonsense!” she said firmly. “Of course you must read them.”
“I couldn’t.”
“What will you do with them then?” she asked.
It was a reasonable question, but I had no answer for it. What should I do with Garth’s diaries? They must be somewhere in the Manor—Nanny would probably know where.
“You would never burn them,” Paula continued. “You might burn something valuable. The man was a born writer, he had greatness, he had wonderful ideas. He had not reached his zenith, of course, his two books are merely a promise of better things to come—it is sad to think that the promise can never be fulfilled. You must read the diaries, Char, and put extracts into the biography.”
I saw that what she said was true. If the biography were to be more than a mere outline of Garth’s life, and an incomplete outline at that, I must read the diaries. I shrank from the task. It would be painful to pry into Garth’s life. The diary of the expedition had been written with a view to publication, it had been left to me to do with it as I thought best. The earlier diaries were quite a different matter; they were the private expressions of Garth’s soul. Could I violate that privacy?
“You must, Char dear,” said Paula answering my thoughts. “Think it over quietly and you will see that you can’t do otherwise.”