Captain Patch, in a way, was always joyous, and that morning he only looked younger than ever, but, to Mary’s perceptions, there was something about them both that almost made her catch her breath.
They looked, she said, somehow dazed. Mary never told me or anyone else about this brief meeting until some time afterwards, but then she said that, whenever anyone condemned either or both of those two people who caused so much talk in our small community, she remembered that morning and the strange impression she received of sheer, dazzling happiness. Captain Patch told Mary that they were going up to the moors—some twelve miles away. He never, either then or afterwards, attempted the slightest concealment of the fact that they went everywhere together. Neither did Mrs. Harter, but then she was not by any means on friendly terms with the whole of Cross Loman, as Bill Patch was, and her manner towards the people whom she did know always held the same semi-contemptuous reticence.
It was only a very few days later that people began to talk about them.
It began, I have not the slightest doubt, at Dheera Dhoon. The Kendals, like so many other people who are temperamentally good, take an impassioned interest in those things and people which they consider bad. But, as a matter of fact, it was Lady Annabel Bending from whom I first heard about it.
“That is a nice youth who is staying at the Cottage with old Mr. Carey. But they tell me that he is running after that very common-looking woman who sings.”
Lady Annabel never sees things from her bedroom window or hears them over the counter from Miss Applebee, like the rest of us. She obtains all her information from a mysterious and unspecified source. “They” tell her, or she “is informed.”
No doubt this is another relic of the Government House days.
“Mrs. Harter must be a great deal older than he is, surely, and what can they possibly have in common?”
“Music,” said I feebly.
Not for one instant did I suppose that Bill Patch and Mrs. Harter walked twelve miles on a hot day in order to talk about music.