Mr. Foster was only too well aware that his Agatha was not one of his successes, and it distressed him very much. He could not understand it. Here they were, risen from a little house in Balham to something very like a mansion in the country, with Mr. Foster retired from business into the position of rustic gentleman, and Agatha seemed no more excited about it than she had been over the burnt sausages that morning at breakfast. And the rise was really all the more remarkable when one reflected that the Fosters ought never to have been in Balham at all, for it is much easier to rise out of one’s real class than into it. Mr. Foster had been at one of the minor public schools, and Agatha was actually related to a Duke. The connection between the families was not a very recent one perhaps, nor a very close one, but it was quite indisputable. A stranger seldom had converse with Mr. Foster very long before finding these two facts insinuated into his knowledge.
And yet Agatha was not a success. It really was very remarkable. Mr. Foster never troubled to speculate about his wife’s views on this disappointing subject, because really, what would be the use? One did not want to think unkindly of Agatha, but one might just as well speculate about the views of a piece of dough as the cook puts it into the oven. Mr. Foster was in the habit of putting it more tactfully in his own mind by reflecting that Mrs. Foster simply never happened to hold views.
As is so often the case with our nearest, if not necessarily our dearest, Mr. Foster was not quite correct in this opinion. As she stood at her bedroom window and watched the centre of her universe inspecting his spring greens with an encouraging eye, Mrs. Foster was holding a quite definite view. She was wishing with singular intensity that the ground would open and swallow her husband up; then, and then only so far as she could see, would she be free from the necessity of going into Abingchester in the big closed car when she had a splitting headache, listening to the cook’s insolence on the subject of burnt sausages, and doing all the other hundred and one other repellent things which the living presence of the cabbage-gazer in the garden imposed upon her. But above all she would never, never have to listen to him talk again.
With a faint sigh she turned away from the window. The ground gave no sign of incipient aperture; it never did. She began to put on her aching head the new hat Mr. Foster had chosen for her last week (Mr. Foster always chose his wife’s hats) and which she loathed with singular intensity.
If a small fairy in whose veracity he could repose no doubt, had appeared before Mr. Foster among his cabbages at that moment and remarked: “Good morning, Mr. Foster. Do you know that your wife hates you with a degree of detestation quite unparalleled in the annals of Duffley? She does, you know. I thought you might be interested to hear it. Good-morning,” he would, after the initial shock was over, have been filled with complete bewilderment.
Why, in the name of Heaven? Why should she? Hadn’t he always been kindness itself to her? And not only kindness but, far more important, patience? Her headache, for instance. He had been most sympathetic about that at breakfast, in spite of the sausages. Naturally he had told her that it doesn’t do to make too much of a fuss about these things, for otherwise the things get bigger than the person; and that really one ought not to refuse to go into Abingchester just on account of a little headache, like an unbalanced schoolgirl. But the point was that he had said it kindly. He had not even hinted for a moment at his opinion that Agatha took trifles just a little bit too seriously, not for a moment. And that again in spite of the sausages. No, the whole thing would have been completely beyond him.
It was very fortunate that no little busybody of a fairy put in an appearance after all.
Ignorant of his fortunate escape, Mr. Foster pulled out his large gold watch. He frowned. Well past eleven. He had better be going indoors and seeing that Agatha was … A low whistle from the fence behind him caused him to turn about sharply.
Mr. Foster’s fat red house stood at a corner of the main road, where a somewhat insignificant turning led to a remote countryside and a village two miles away. It followed that Mr. Foster’s garden ran along the side of this insignificant turning, the boundary between importance and insignificance being marked with a fence. Over the top of this fence a girl’s face was now regarding Mr. Foster with every sign of anxiety.
“Good gracious!” said Mr. Foster, and hurried towards it. Pretty faces hanging anxiously over his fence were something new in Mr. Foster’s experience. Large yokel faces, decorated with foolish grins, he had seen before and with pain, but not pretty ones that whistled. He proceeded to investigate.