A RACE WITH SPINSTERHOOD
Before she had been at Eastbourne twenty-four hours Patricia was convinced that she had made a mistake in going there. With no claims upon her time, the restlessness that had developed in London increased until it became almost unbearable. The hotel at which she was staying was little more than a glorified boarding-house, full of "the most jungly of jungle-people," as she expressed it to herself. Their well-meant and kindly efforts to engage her in their pursuits and pleasures she received with apathetic negation. At length her fellow-guests, seeing that she was determined not to respond to their overtures, left her severely alone. The men were the last to desist.
She came to dislike the pleasure-seekers about her and grew critical of everything she saw, the redness of the women's faces, the assumed youthfulness of the elderly men, the shapelessness of matrons who seemed to delight in bright open-work blouses and juvenile hats. She remembered Elton's remark that Fashion uncovers a multitude of shins. The shins exposed at Eastbourne were she decided, sufficient to undermine one's belief in the early chapters of Genesis.
At one time she would have been amused at the types around her, and their various conceptions of "one crowded hour of glorious life." As it was, everything seemed sordid and trivial. Why should people lose all sense of dignity and proportion at a set period of the year? It was, she decided, almost as bad as being a hare.
All she wanted was to be alone, she told herself; yet as soon as she had discovered some secluded spot and had settled herself down to read, the old restlessness attacked her, and fight against it as she might, she was forced back again to the haunts of men.
For the first few days she watched eagerly for letters. None came. She would return to the hotel several times a day, look at the letter-rack, then, to hide her disappointment, make a pretence of having returned for some other purpose. "Why had not Bowen written?" she asked herself, then a moment after she strove to convince herself that he had forgotten, or at least that she was only an episode in his life.
His sudden change from eagerness to indifference caused her to flush with humiliation; yet he had gone to Galvin House during the raid to assure himself of her safety. Why had he not written after what had occurred? Perhaps Aunt Adelaide was right about men after all.
Patricia wrote to Lady Tanagra, Mrs. Hamilton, Lady Peggy, Mr. Triggs, even to Miss Sikkum. In due course answers arrived; but in only Miss Sikkum's letter was there any reference to Bowen, a gush of sentiment about "how happy you must be, dear Miss Brent, with Lord Bowen running down to see you every other day. I know!" she added with maidenly prescience. Patricia laughed.
Mr. Triggs committed himself to nothing more than two and three-quarter pages, mainly about his daughter and "A. B.," Mr. Triggs was not at his best as a correspondent. Lady Tanagra ran to four pages; but as her handwriting was large, five lines filling a page, her letter was disappointing.
Lady Peggy was the most productive. In the course of twelve pages of spontaneity she told Patricia that the Duke and the Cabinet Minister had almost quarrelled about her, Patricia. "Peter has been to lunch with us and Daddy has told him how lucky he is, and how wonderful you are. If Peter is not very careful, I shall have you presented to me as a stepmother. Wouldn't it be priceless!" she wrote. "Oh! What am I writing?" She ended with the Duke's love, and an insistence that Patricia should lunch at Curzon Street the first Sunday after her return.