I can quite imagine her facing Bill, as she told him that, her mouth hard and rather mocking, and perhaps in her eyes the dawn of a hope that she strove to believe was an incredulous one.
And Bill said that had nothing at all to do with it. He didn’t specify what it was, that it had nothing to do with—but that was the last time Diamond Harter ever thought it necessary to point out to him the things about herself, by which the rest of the world judged her.
Chapter Seven
Most of us, no doubt—except, I must once more add, the Kendals—hover between two planes of consciousness: the inner life and the outer existence. The predominant values of either remain fairly well defined, and vary very little.
But for Captain Patch, that summer, the inner life and the outer one must have mingled strangely.
In the mornings, he listened to old Carey’s chatter of Crippen, and Mrs. Maybrick, and all the other figures in his rather macabre gallery of celebrities, and he gardened with Mrs. Fazackerly, and they worked at the “Bulbul Ameer” show together. Very often, in the afternoons, there were rehearsals, sometimes there were tennis parties. Very often, though not always, he and Mrs. Harter met at the latter. She was invited to quite a lot of places, partly thanks to Nancy Fazackerly’s efforts, and partly because she played a hard game of tennis quite extraordinarily well. Bill Patch always saw her home afterwards, quite openly. And every evening they were out together, often going very far afield, for she was a good walker. Once Martyn Ambrey met them, and it was after that, when someone spoke of “that Mrs. Harter,” that he said to Mary:
“Do you remember our saying she had such a defiant face, and you said she looked unhappy?”
“Yes. The night she sang ‘The Bluebells of Scotland’ at the concert.”
“And cousin Claire said she was hard.”
“Did she?”