The Two Mrs. Abbotts (5 page)

“Different!” echoed Barbara, for she could not understand the matter at all. If Lancreste did not think Miss Besserton quite perfect why did he want to marry her?

“Once we're married she'll settle down, won't she?” said Lancreste hopefully.

“Settle down!”

“And I won't love her so much.”

“You won't love her so much,” repeated Barbara in amazement. She knew she was behaving like a parrot but she could not help it—and Lancreste was too upset to notice.

“I know it sounds odd,” admitted Lancreste, “but as a matter of fact I couldn't go on loving Pearl like I do now. I'm miserable when I'm with her and I'm miserable when I'm away from her. I'm miserable all the time. I'm sure I shall go mad. I'm mad now, of course. It's mad to come and talk to you like this but there's nobody else. Nobody understands or cares.”

“Oh, Lancreste.”

“Nobody,” repeated Lancreste. “Nobody cares a hoot. Even Pearl doesn't care. She thinks I'm silly—I expect she's right but I can't help it. Perhaps we'd get on better if we were married.”

“I don't think so,” said Barbara.

Lancreste paid no attention. “She says she'll marry me if I like,” he declared. “At least that's what she said this morning. She may have changed her mind again by tomorrow—she keeps on changing her mind and it's driving me mad. I don't know where I am with her…”

“Look here, Lancreste,” began Barbara.

“No,” he said, interrupting her. “No, it's no use. I'll just have to marry her and hope for the best. She's ill—I told you that, didn't I?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, ill in bed—and the rooms are awful. They didn't look so bad when we took them and of course we thought she'd be out most of the time. I thought Mother would ask her—but Mother won't—and there she is in bed. I don't know what's the matter with her. She won't let me get the doctor.”

“I'll go and see her, Lancreste,” Barbara said. It seemed the only thing to say.

“Oh, Mrs. Abbott!” cried Lancreste. “Oh, if only you
would!
”

“I'll get my hat,” said Barbara.

As they walked along the street together toward Miss Besserton's rooms Lancreste continued to talk about her, and (although his tale was extremely incoherent) a sort of composite picture of the unfortunate affair formed itself bit by bit in Barbara's mind. He had met Pearl at a party in London and had fallen for her suddenly and completely. One moment she had meant nothing to him at all (she was just an ordinary girl that he had been introduced to at a party) and the next moment he was a slave. The odd thing was he appeared to have very few illusions about her; he seemed to realize she was as hard as nails and completely selfish, but still he was her slave, bound to her chariot wheels by chains of steel.

Barbara listened. She did not understand the affair in the least, but that was not her fault. She did her best for Lancreste by listening intently…and as a matter of fact she was so unselfconscious by nature that it was easy to tell her things, so Lancreste found.

Miss Besserton was lying in bed. She looked ill, but not very ill, and she had not omitted to paint her face, which was a good sign, Barbara thought. The room was awful—as Lancreste had said. It was untidy and sordid; the dressing table was covered with powder; garments lay about in confusion upon every available chair. Lancreste hovered around in an embarrassed manner, asking if he should open the window or light the gas fire or bring another pillow.

“Do go away, Lanky,” said Miss Besserton, waving her hand.

“I'll wait in the hall,” said Lancreste humbly and he disappeared.

Barbara moved some stockings off a chair and sat down near the bed. “I'm so sorry you're ill,” she said sympathetically.

“I'm miserable,” said Pearl. “Oh, it isn't because I'm ill. There's nothing much the matter with me—it's just a chill or something. I'm miserable and I'm sick of everything—you know how you get sometimes.”

“Yes,” said Barbara, but she said it doubtfully for she could not remember feeling sick of everything. There was always so much to do and so many interesting people to see…but of course I'm lucky, thought Barbara.

“I get like that sometimes,” continued Pearl. “It's my temperament. I'm very artistic, you see. I get so as I feel I want to scream at people. Lanky drives me mad.”

“He's very fond of you.”

“Oh yes, I know. We're going to get married soon.”

“Why?” asked Barbara.

Pearl laughed. “That's a funny question! You got married yourself, didn't you?”

“But if he drives you mad,” began Barbara patiently.

“Not all the time, he doesn't. Lanky can be quite good company sometimes.”

Barbara was speechless.

“I've knocked about a lot,” continued Pearl. “I left home when I was seventeen. It was too dull. Me and another girl took a flat in town—two rooms and a kitchen. We were in business,” she added.

“What kind of business?” asked Barbara.

“Stockings,” replied Pearl, adding defiantly, “Lots of nice girls go into business nowadays.”

“Of course,” agreed Barbara.

“We had a good time,” continued Pearl, smiling reminiscently. “We went about a lot, but after a bit I got fed up with Joan. It would have taken a saint to live with Joan…always chipping at me, she was. Always on at me to keep the place tidy. I'd had enough of that sort of thing at home and I told her so.”

There was a little silence. Barbara looked around the room. She had a feeling that she could sympathize with Joan.

“After that I moved about,” continued Pearl. “Lodgings and hostels—there isn't much to choose between them as far as I can see. In hostels the girls are so nosey you can't call your soul your own. In lodgings there's always a fuss about one thing or another.”

It sounded incredibly dreary and Barbara was sorry for her. “Why don't you go home?” she asked.

“I should hate it,” Pearl replied. She humped herself about in the bed and added, “I don't know why I'm so unlucky, I'm shore.”

When Jerry stated that Markie was happy in spite of everything, she had said no more than the truth. Markie was elderly and deaf, she suffered from rheumatism and was poor in worldly goods but these disabilities, which might have affected the spirits of a woman of lesser breed, had no power to affect the inward happiness of Sophonisba Marks. To understand this enigma it is essential to know something of the history of Miss Marks. Very few people knew her history—practically nobody except herself—because, although friendly, she was reserved. She was one of those somewhat mysterious people that other people take for granted. There she was—elderly, plain, and kindly—as if she had materialized from the atmosphere full-fledged. Looking at her, one could not imagine her as a child, helpless and uncontrolled. One could not imagine her as a girl, young and pretty and slim. In short one could not imagine Miss Marks in any way different from what she was in the late summer of nineteen forty-two. But of course she had a history—even the most uninteresting people have histories and Miss Marks was not uninteresting. Her history was one of hard work and abnegation, of disappointments and anxieties.

Sophonisba was the daughter of a minister in the Scottish Presbyterian Church. She was born the very day upon which Britain secured “peace with honor” by the diplomacy of Lord Beaconsfield, but, as Mr. Marks was a devoted follower of Mr. Gladstone, this interesting circumstance was only discovered by Sophonisba when she was in a position to discover it herself. She was an only child, at a time when only children were exceedingly rare, and was brought up in a small parish in East Fife. Later she went to St. Andrews University, where she took honors in Arts and History and on the strength of these attainments she was offered an extremely good post. The skies seemed bright and clear that summer. She was busy and happy and the path of life stretched out before her in the sunshine. Then Mrs. Marks died and Sophonisba gave up her career and returned to the manse to keep house for her father.

It would not have been such a serious blow if she had had anything in common with her father, but he was a narrow-minded man and difficult to deal with. He missed his wife and Sophonisba did not fill the gap—she did not understand him. He did not understand her either, of course. He saw her going about her duties cheerfully with a pleasant smile, and it would have taken a more perspicacious individual than Mr. Marks to guess at the disappointment, the misery, the sense of frustration that warred in her bosom. Years passed and with them Sophonisba's youth. She was thirty-four when Mr. Marks became ill. She nursed him for months. They were nearer, then, than they had ever been, for they appreciated each other. He bore his pain with fortitude, with a steady courage that won him her admiration. She won his respect for her devotion to his service. When her father died Sophonisba found herself penniless (the sale of the furniture covered a few small debts and paid for the funeral). She was not surprised, of course, for she knew her father pretty well by this time; he was not the sort of man who could save; he thought it a sin to worry about the future. If anyone had suggested to him that it was his duty to provide for his daughter, who had given up her career on his account, he would have replied: “Consider the lilies of the field,” or perhaps, more sternly, “The Lord will provide,” but Sophonisba was not a lily, she required clothes and food, so it was necessary to toil and spin. She managed to get a post in a girls' school near Bournemouth and was there for years, teaching history and literature and other things no less important that were not set out upon the prospectus of “Wheatfield House.” She had become “Markie” now.

Nobody called her by her Christian name—indeed nobody knew what it was. The girls, who found time to be interested in the matter, looked at her neat signature on their papers and decided that it was probably Susan, or Sarah—the idea that it might be Sylvia made them giggle. During those years at Wheatfield House hundreds of girls passed through Markie's life, they respected her and loved her and occasionally laughed at her, and then they left and forgot all about her. But sometimes when two or three of them were gathered together they would discuss old times and one of them would say, “D'you remember Markie? Wasn't she a dear?”

Markie stayed at Wheatfield House until the head mistress retired and a new broom was appointed in her place, and then, because she did not approve of the changes being made, she left the place and took up private teaching. Her first post was with the Cobbes at Ganthorne Lodge; she was there until Jerry grew up, and then she left and went to the Glovers at Sunbury. She went from post to post, but each time she left one post it was a little more difficult to find another. Her references were excellent and she was a highly qualified teacher but she was getting on in years and she was slightly deaf. Markie began to get a little frightened. The money she had managed to save would not last very long—it was melting away rapidly. What was to become of her? Who wanted an old deaf governess?

She was nearing the end of her tether and envisaging the future with dismay when she received a letter from Jerry Cobbe. The letter was not as cheerful as usual and was even more badly phrased and spelt—for Jerry had not profited as much as she might have done from Markie's painstaking instruction.

“
I'm in dispair
,” wrote Jerry. “
It's really desperite. I can't get servants anyhow or if I manige to get them to come they won't stay. Of course I love Ganthorne but you know what it is with lamps and everything. I don't know what I'm going to do
.”

Markie shook her head over this letter. Two spelling mistakes and a total disregard for punctuation. Jerry was incorrigible…but she was quite the dearest pupil Markie had ever had. “I wonder…” said Markie to herself in a thoughtful manner. She looked around the horrible little bedroom with its sloping roof and sliding window and decided that there was no time to wonder—she must act—and taking up her pen she wrote off at once saying that she was out of a job at the moment and, if Jerry liked, she would come to Ganthorne and help to run the house. She would come for a week or two and see how it worked. What did Jerry think of the idea?

Markie sat down to wait for a reply but she did not wait long. She received a wire the following day saying, “Come at once.”

It was a great relief to find that somebody wanted her, that she was not utterly and completely useless. Of course Jerry did not want her as a governess, nor even as a companion. Jerry wanted somebody to cook and clean the rooms. Markie had no illusions at all, she was aware that she was going back to Ganthorne as a cook-general.

It is just as well that I can cook, thought Markie a trifle bitterly as she packed her box. But once at Ganthorne the bitterness vanished and she settled down to her new job. It was different work, but it was just as important in its way. She was providing food for Jerry's body instead of Jerry's mind—and Jerry was such a dear.

Nearly eight years had passed since Markie had come back to Ganthorne and she was still there. She had suggested leaving once or twice, in a tentative sort of way, not because she wanted to leave Ganthorne, but just to see how Jerry felt about it (for her greatest fear was that she might become an incubus) and each time she had mentioned the matter Jerry had implored her to stay, had implored her in such a manner as to leave no doubts as to her sincerity. Markie had suggested leaving when Jerry married Sam Abbott, and they had both implored her to stay. “We can't do without you,” Jerry had declared and Sam had backed her up, saying earnestly, “If you're bored with us take a holiday, but for goodness' sake come back.”

Markie was not bored with them. She adored them both. She did not want a holiday—where would she go? She was perfectly happy cooking and cleaning and mending…and of course there was no need to allow one's brain to rust because one brushed the carpets and prepared the meals—dear me, no! Markie read history (history had always been her subject); she studied ethnology and anthropology with pleasure and diligence. She delved into the works of Blumenbach, Flower, Keane, and Dixon as she waited for the kettle to boil, and digested their theories as she dried the plates and put them away on the rack. Sometimes her fine strong capable hands hesitated in their task as a particularly interesting theory and a hitherto unrelated fact clicked together in her mind…

The war, the departure of Jerry's husband, and the arrival of the 7th Westshires made changes at Ganthorne but the changes came gradually and Markie took them in her stride. She was not the only person whose life was completely revolutionized by the war and who accepted the revolution without question.

***

On this particular afternoon toward the end of August Markie was busier than usual for she had decided to give Jerry's bedroom a thorough clean. She had turned it out methodically—as was her way—and now she gathered up the cretonne covers, which she had taken off the chairs, and bore them down to the wash house. She was not in the least surprised to find three soldiers there (in fact she would have been surprised to find it empty). One was shaving, one was scrubbing his equipment at the sink, and the third was sitting on an upturned bucket playing “Home Sweet Home” on a mouth organ. They all greeted Markie cordially and the one at the sink—who was Colonel Melton's batman—turned around with a smile and said he was “through.” He and Markie were particular friends because they had both seen light for the first time in the Kingdom of Fife—it was a strong bond between them.

“I'll wash it out for you,” he said, suiting the action to the word. “I've mended the plug. I got a wee bit of chain from the quarty.”

“Thank you, Fraser,” said Markie, smiling back at him. She put the covers to soak and went into the kitchen, and here she found more soldiers. One was sitting at the table writing a letter, two were reading, another had taken his rifle to pieces and was cleaning the barrel carefully and whistling through his teeth. Markie sat down at the table and began to peel potatoes.

There was no real need for Markie to cook the supper in the kitchen (when she and Jerry had decided to give the soldiers the run of the back premises they had turned the pantry into a kitchenette and installed a gas cooker for which cylinders of gas were procured) but Markie was of an economical nature and it seemed to her exceedingly wasteful to use gas when there was a perfectly good fire in the kitchen range. She therefore used the kitchen for what she called “hard cooking” and the gas stove in the pantry for sauces and omelets and last minute odds and ends.

“I'll peel those potatoes,” said the man who was reading near the fire. “You leave those to me. I'm a dab at the job. I always do them for the missus when I'm at home.”

“How is she, Willis?” asked Markie with solicitude.

“Better. I had a letter this morning—and the baby's doing well, too.”

“I expect you're longing to see them.”

“Yes,” said Willis. He came over to the table and took the potato knife in his large horny hand. “You leave those to me,” he said.

“It's very good of you,” declared Markie, getting up.

The boy at the other end of the table, who was writing a letter, seemed to be having some difficulty with its composition. He was biting his pencil and twisting himself into knots, and Markie was interested to observe that the tip of his tongue was protruding slightly and rolling around as he formed his words. She had noticed the same thing in the kindergarten at Wheatfield House when she had been called upon to take the “babies” for their writing lesson.

“'ow d'you spell man yoovers?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

Markie spelt it out to him, letter by letter and he wrote it down.

“I'd never 'ave thort of that,” he declared looking at his handiwork in approval. “'Ilda won't 'arf be surprised when she sees that.”

Markie would have liked to explain the roots of the word, but she curbed the impulse, reflecting as she did so that the difference one found in the intelligence of these men was extremely interesting. They all looked much the same on parade but their uniform appearance hid a multitude of individualities and idiosyncrasies. Girls in schools—of whom Markie had experience—did not show so much disparity, so much innate capacity or incapacity for progress and improvement. Here, too, amongst these men, Markie found many types of cephalism. She measured their heads and jaws in her mind's eye and labeled them to her own satisfaction…and this was all extremely interesting to Markie, who for years had lived in the depths of the country with practically no human material upon which to try out her theoretical knowledge of the groupings of the human race.

Two other men came in and one of them turned on the wireless, which immediately said…

“And now we are all fairies. Listen to the music, children…it's gay music, isn't it? But soon you will hear the raindrops falling and you must
run
back to your places
ever
so quickly. Fairies don't like getting their wings wet, you know. Are you ready, children…”

None of the men smiled. Perhaps none of them heard the sugary voice on the air…not because they were deaf, of course, thought Markie, but simply because they kept the wireless going full blast from morning to night and had become so used to it that the sound did not reach their brains. Markie had been about to take a jar of rice from the cupboard for she intended to give Jerry curry for supper tonight, but now she paused, and looked around. Somehow or other the voice on the air had torn a veil from Markie's eyes…“Now we are all fairies, running very softly,” and lo and behold there was the kitchen full of soldiers—soldiers smoking, reading, talking, writing letters, and cleaning their rifles—and she, Sophonisba Marks, was moving about amongst them, perfectly at home, perfectly at ease, stepping over their feet on her way to and from the range. She thought, “How very strange! Is this I? Is this true?”