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 INTERPRETIVE DESCRIPTION, SECOND
EDITION

The first edition of Interpretive Description established itself as the

key resource for novice and intermediate level researchers in applied
settings for conducting a qualitative research project with practical
outcomes. In the second edition, leading qualitative researcher Sally
Thorne retains the clear, straightforward guidance for researchers
and students in health, social service, mental health, and related
fields. This new edition includes additional material on knowledge
synthesis and integration, evidence-based practice, and data
analysis. In addition, this book

• takes the reader through the qualitative research

process, from research design through fieldwork,
analysis, interpretation, and application of the results;
• provides numerous examples from a variety of applied
fields to show research in action;
• uses an accessible style and affordable price to be the
ideal book for teaching qualitative research in clinical and
applied disciplines.
 DEVELOPING QUALITATIVE INQUIRY
Series Editor: Janice Morse
University of Utah

Books in the new Developing Qualitative Inquiry series, written

by leaders in qualitative inquiry, will address important topics in
qualitative methods. Targeted to a broad multidisciplinary
readership, the books are intended for mid-level/advanced
researchers and advanced students. The series will forward the field
of qualitative inquiry by describing new methods or developing
particular aspects of established methods.

Series Editorial Board

H. Russell Bernard, Kathy Charmaz, D. Jean Clandinin, Juliet Corbin,
Carmen de la Cuesta, John Engel, Sue E. Estroff, Jane Gilgun, Jeffrey
C. Johnson, Carl Mitcham, Katja Mruck, Judith Preissle, Jean J.
Schensul, Sally Thorne, John van Maanen, Max van Manen

Volumes in this Series:

1. Autoethnography as Method, Heewon Chang
2. Interpretive Description, Sally Thorne
3. Developing Grounded Theory: The Second Generation, Janice M.
Morse, Phyllis Noerager Stern, Juliet Corbin, Barbara Bowers,
Kathy Charmaz, and Adele E. Clarke
4. Mixed Method Design: Principles and Procedures, Janice M. Morse
and Linda Niehaus
5. Playbuilding as Qualitative Research: A Participatory Arts-based
Approach, Joe Norris
6. Poetry as Method: Reporting Research Through Verse, Sandra L.
Faulkner
7. Duoethnography: Dialogic Methods for Social, Health, and
Educational Research, Joe Norris, Richard D. Sawyer, and Darren
E. Lund, editors
8. Collaborative Autoethnography, Heewon Chang, Faith Wambura
Ngunjiri, and Kathy-Ann C. Hernandez
9. Engaging in Narrative Inquiry, D. Jean Clandinin
10. Participatory Visual and Digital Methods, Alene Gubrium and
Krista Harper
11. Fiction as Research Practice, Patricia Leavy
12. Applied Ethnography: Guidelines to Field Research, Pertti Pelto
13. Phenomenology of Practice, Max van Manen
14. Qualitative Ethics in Practice, Martin Tolich, editor.
15. Establishing Rigor in Qualitative Inquiry, Janice M. Morse
16. Engaging in Narrative Inquiries with Children and Youth, D. Jean
Clandinin, Vera Caine, Sean Lessard, and Janice Huber
 INTERPRETIVE DESCRIPTION
Qualitative Research for Applied Practice, Second
Edition

Sally Thorne
Second edition published 2016
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2016 Taylor & Francis

The right of Sally Thorne to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered

trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

First edition published by Left Coast Press 2009

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Thorne, Sally E. (Sally Elizabeth), 1951–
Title: Interpretive description : qualitative research for applied practice / Sally Thorne.
Description: Second edition. | New York ; London : Routledge, [2016] | Series: Developing
qualitative inquiry ; 2 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015040853 (print) | LCCN 2016000911 (ebook) | ISBN 9781629582986
(hardback) | ISBN 9781629582993 (paperback) | ISBN 9781315545196 (Consumer
eBook)
Subjects: LCSH: Education—Research. | Education—Research—Methodology. | Knowledge
management. | BISAC: SOCIAL SCIENCE / General. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Methodology. |
MEDICAL / Nursing / Research & Theory.
Classification: LCC LB1028 .T46 2016 (print) | LCC LB1028 (ebook) | DDC 370.7—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015040853

ISBN: 978-1-62958-298-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-62958-299-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-54519-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by Ryan Kenney
Contents

List of Boxes
Preface
Origins
How to Use This Book
Acknowledgments
Limitations
Foreword to the First Edition
References
PART I: INTERPRETIVE DESCRIPTION IN THEORY
Chapter 1. Qualitative Research in the Applied Disciplines
Theorizing and Application
The Nursing Example
Methodological Ancestry
Departure and Diversification
The Genesis of Interpretive Description
What Interpretive Description Is and What It Is Not
Chapter 2. Cultivating Questions in the Applied Practice
Field
What’s the Question?
Where Have We Come From?
 What Constitutes a Qualitative Question?
What Constitutes a Disciplinary Question?
What’s Worth Studying Qualitatively?
Generating Questions in Interpretive Description
Finding a Researchable Problem
Framing a Research Question
Clarifying Questions Amenable to Interpretive
Description
Chapter 3. Scaffolding a Study
Conducting a Literature Review
Finding Literature
Sorting and Organizing Literature
Interpreting and Writing Up Your Literature Review
Clarifying the Theoretical Forestructure
Locating Theoretical Allegiances
Locating the Disciplinary Orientation
Positioning the Researcher Within the Ideas
Chapter 4. Framing a Study Design
Foundational Underpinnings of Interpretive Description
Elements of Design
Mapping Out the Plan
Writing a Study Proposal
Obtaining Ethical Approval
Selecting Among Design Options
Deciding on Data Sources
Interviewing
Participant Observation
Focus Groups
Documentary and Other Collateral Data Sources
Using Multiple Data Sources
Chapter 5. Strategizing a Creditable Study
Sampling
Representation
Sampling Approaches
 Finding Terminology to Refer to Sample Members
Projecting a Sample Size
Setting Limits
Thinking Through Data Collection and Analysis
Building in Credibility Indicators
Planning and Adapting
PART II: INTERPRETIVE DESCRIPTION IN PROCESS
Chapter 6. Entering the Field
Situating Self Within the Research Role
Tracking Reflections
Learning Not to Lead
Disclosing the Discipline
Stepping Out of Role
Revealing and Concealing
Negotiating Informed Consent
Finding Your Tongue
Constraining Your Influence
Situating Self Within the Setting
Insiders and Outsiders
Navigating Access
Watching and Doing
Staying Safe
Honoring Confidentiality
Chapter 7. Constructing Data
The Process of Engaging with Data
Options for Data Collection
Interviewing
Focus Groups
Participant Observation
New and Emerging Variations
Managing the Collection
Protecting Data
Sorting and Organizing
Tracking Constructions
Chapter 8. Working Data
Finding Pattern Among the Pieces
Sorting and Organizing
The Coding Tradition
Alternative Sorting Options
Making Sense of Pattern
Knowing Your Purpose
Knowing Your Data
Considering Borrowed Technique
Capturing Analytic Insights
Chapter 9. Transforming Data
Transforming Pattern into Findings
Envisioning Possibilities
Confirming Your Bases
Expanding on Associations
Testing Relationships
Capitalizing on Outliers
Engaging the Critic
Building Findings
Setting Your Sights
Working the Ideas
Conceptualizing Findings
Avoiding Predictable Hazards
Premature Closure
Misinterpreting Frequency
Overinscription of Self
Moving Forward
Chapter 10. Writing Findings
Setting the Stage
Judging Your Readiness
Deciding on Structure
Determining a Writing Style
Engaging in the Process
Finding Your Writer’s Voice
Strategizing Examples
 Making the Audit Trail Accessible
Avoiding Predictable Problems
Misusing Metaphor
Descriptive or Analytic Excess
Conceptual Confusion
PART III: INTERPRETIVE DESCRIPTION IN CONTEXT
Chapter 11. Interpreting Meaning
Discussing Findings
Identifying Priorities
Deciding How to Interpret
Drawing Conclusions
Considering Implications
Implications for Further Research
Implications for Everything Else
Chapter 12. Enhancing Credibility
Quality Considerations
Evaluation Criteria
Epistemological Integrity
Representative Credibility
Analytic Logic
Interpretive Authority
Beyond Evaluation
Moral Defensibility
Disciplinary Relevance
Pragmatic Obligation
Contextual Awareness
Probable Truth
The Standards Imperative
Chapter 13. Disseminating Findings
Professional and Scholarly Communications
Presenting at Scholarly Meetings
Considering Publication Options
Public Domain Communications
Artistic Renderings
 Engaging the Media
Making Use of Information Technology
Community Engagement
Chapter 14. Advancing Evidence with Interpretive
Description
An Evidence Culture
Entering the Evidence Debate
Evidence-Based Practice or Practice-Based Evidence
Injecting Interpretive Description into the Evidence
Agenda
Strategic Positioning
A Role for Small Studies
A Role for Mixed Methods Research
Chapter 15. Building, Aggregating, and Synthesizing
Putting Research Products to Use
Programmatic Research
Secondary Analysis
Qualitative Metasynthesis
Synthesis Options
Research Integration
Chapter 16. Knowledge Integration
Implementation Science
Knowledge Transfer and Exchange
Working in Partnership
Knowledge Transfer Projects
Participatory Research
Looking Forward with Optimism
References
Index
Boxes

Text Box 2.1 What Has Been Lost?

Text Box 2.2 How Can We Help?
Text Box 3.1 The Human Side of a Health Care Problem
Text Box 3.2 Understanding Consequences of Care
Text Box 4.1 Sharing Experience
Text Box 5.1 Adding Voice to a Public Debate
Text Box 5.2 Seeing Attitudes in Action
Text Box 7.1 Understanding Professional Motivation
Text Box 7.2 Interpreting Access Issues
Text Box 7.3 Decolonizing Speech
Text Box 9.1 Beyond Gender Stereotypes
Text Box 9.2 Navigating Societal Frontiers
Text Box 9.3 Balancing Sensitivity and Authority
Text Box 9.4 Deconstructing Structural Intervention
Text Box 11.1 Illuminating Possibilities for Practice
Text Box 11.2 Turning Stories into Strategies
Text Box 11.3 Finding Options Through Understanding
Text Box 14.1 What Lies Beyond the Measures
Text Box 14.2 An Early Look at an Emerging Field
Text Box 14.3 Measuring and Unpacking Meaning
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Captain Patch escorted Mrs. Harter to the house in Queen Street....
Nancy Fazackerly told me the fact when she gave me the account of
the party. And I have wondered so often what took place in the
course of that short walk—the first time that those two people were
ever alone together, after the evening of music and talk and laughter
—that I have come to evolve a sort of imaginary conversation. It is
based, like almost all my conception of Mrs. Harter’s personality, on
conjecture, on the judgments of Mary Ambrey, who alone, of all
those who watched the events of that summer, combined clear
vision with pitifulness—and on what I saw of Bill Patch.
I don’t know—no one ever will know—what passed between them as
they went up the still, moonlit street and across the little open
square of the market place, their footsteps sounding very clearly in
the absolute quiet of the night-time.
But I have sometimes fancied that I could reconstruct the lines of
that conversation—and, for what it is worth, I shall put down what
they may have said, as though I knew that they really did say it.
Certainly, Diamond Harter dropped her guard that night. I am sure
of that. Perhaps it was something as follows—but perhaps not.
“Were you long in the East?”
“Nearly five years. This is the first time I’ve been home. Cross
Loman hasn’t changed much.”
“You must be glad of that, I should think.”
“Why?” said Mrs. Harter sharply. “I think it’s a horrid little country
town, and the people in it mostly snobs.”
“Why do you think that? I’ve found them all so kind and friendly.”
“You! Yes. That’s different. But you don’t suppose I should have
been asked to-night if I hadn’t happened to sing at the concert the
other day. That Mrs. Fazackerly is a kind little soul, and everyone
knows she’s had a hell of a time. But I’ve not any use for the
Ambreys—especially that girl.”
“I’m sorry you feel like that.”
“I know you all thought I was going to spoil the evening, at first. I
couldn’t help it.” Her voice softened a little in the darkness. “I felt
such a fish out of water.”
“Sometimes I’ve felt like that myself. I used to when I was in the
Army, very often. But one gets over it. People are awfully kind,
really.”
“Martyn Ambrey is all right, and Mrs. Ambrey, that girl’s mother. Do
you know her?”
“I’ve met her.”
“They weren’t living here when I was at home. As for the high and
mighty Lady Flower, you saw what she was like that night at the
concert.”
“Was she especially—anything?”
Mrs. Harter gave a short laugh.
“I don’t know why I’m giving myself away like this, I’m sure. Only
you somehow got things going to-night, just when I was cursing
myself for having been such a fool as to come.”
“I’m glad you did come, and I hope you’ll come to the Ambreys.”
He spoke simply and deliberately, and her reply was equally devoid
of any hint of conventional intention.
“Why?”
“Because you sound so lonely,” said Captain Patch. “I expect you’d
like people better if you saw them more often.”
“One doesn’t generally,” she said with an odd laugh.
“Give it a try, anyhow.”
“I shall. I always found this a dead-alive place, and after the East it
would be duller than ever if one didn’t know people.”
“But you must have plenty of friends if your home is here.”
“I was away at school before I got married, and anyhow, I never
was much of a one to make friends. The people I wanted to know
didn’t care particularly about me, and the ones that did want to
make friends I wasn’t particularly keen on. You see, my people sent
me to a school where there were a set of girls that thought
themselves a great deal better than the tradesmen’s daughters, and
that sort. I was with them, mostly, at school, but after I left it was
different. I was supposed to be going to teach, and one girl wrote
and asked if I’d like to come as governess to her little sister. When
we were at school, she’d invited me to go and stay as a friend, and
I’d spent the holidays there. So I knew what it was like. And I wasn’t
going to go back there as the governess after being a visitor in the
house, thank you.”
“What did you do then?”
“Nothing. Stayed at home and did the typing in the office. I hated
Cross Loman.”
“Did you like Egypt?”
“Yes,” said Diamond Harter slowly. “I liked Egypt. I got all the
dancing and the riding and the parties out there that I’d wanted and
hadn’t been able to get down here. Have you ever been to the
East?”
“No.”
“It’s all quite different, of course. Everyone knows everyone, in a
way. There aren’t ‘county’ people and other cliques, like there are
here. One got the chance of knowing people whom one wouldn’t
even have met at home.”
“Then,” said Captain Patch, rather doubtfully, “you’ll be glad to go
back there again, I suppose?”
“For some things. This is my door, Captain Patch. Thanks for
bringing me back. I suppose you wouldn’t care to come in and see
me one day?”
“I’d like to very much,” said the red-haired young man, with his
friendly smile. “Can’t I come and call on you?”
“I’m always here. Come and have tea with me on Thursday.”
“Yes, I will. Thank you very much.”
Her face in the moonlight looked strangely softened. “Have you got
a latchkey?”
“Yes. Good-night.”
Mrs. Harter held out her hand and he took it for an instant. It was a
strong hand, unusually broad, and capable of transmitting in contact
a faint, magnetic thrill.
“Good-night,” she repeated as she went up the three shallow steps
that led up to the neat, mean little door, with its liver-colored paint
and tarnished brass.
Captain Patch, on the pavement, watched the door open, saw the
tall, square-shouldered figure for a moment against the light that
hung in the narrow entrance, and then heard the slam of the door
and saw, through the ground-glass fan-light, the light go out.
Then he turned down the road again, softly whistling to himself “The
Bluebells of Scotland.”

Sallie Ambrey has not her mother’s intuition, nor, naturally, has she
Mary’s experience. But she has great acumen, and—that rarest and
most invaluable asset—a mind trained from babyhood to clear
thinking.
And, personally, I hold that she was absolutely right when she once
called Captain Patch a hopeless and temperamental romantic,
capable of a grande passion. One doesn’t associate it, somehow,
with red curly hair, and a slouch, and a very frank smile on a boyish
mouth and behind a pair of strong glasses.
Incongruity, in a way, was the keynote of the whole thing.
Diamond Harter wasn’t in the least beautiful, and certainly not
charming. She was his senior by a year or two and, as Mrs. Kendal
said later on, with her extraordinary gift for emphasizing the
unessential:
“Mrs. Harter was not, in any sense of the word, a lady.”
One is left wondering how many “senses of the word” exist, and
what they all are.
A few days after the concert, we decided that we would give a
dance.
The Ambreys had come up to tea, as they often do on Sundays, and
Mrs. Fazackerly came, and Bill Patch. I remember that Nancy
Fazackerly looked pretty that day, in a hat trimmed with blue daisies
and a blue cotton frock that seemed to be striped with a darker blue.
(Amy Kendal, who walked up later, with Mumma, of course, said to
her, “How smart you look!” in a reproving way. And Christopher
Ambrey, to whom the Kendal manner is not the familiar thing that it
is to us, asked me what that odious woman meant.)
“This is the very place for a dance,” said Sallie, looking round the
hall. “I can’t imagine why no one has thought of it before.”
Sallie is always rather apt to assume that because she has not
thought of a thing herself, nobody else has done so, and this is a
trick, among many others, that exasperates Claire.
“There were dances here before you were born or thought of, my
child. It may seem very strange to you,” said Claire ironically, “but I
happen to have been rather an unusually good dancer.”
Her annoyance was so obvious in her voice and manner—Claire
never attempts to dissemble her feelings—that Nancy Fazackerly
characteristically came to the rescue.
“I love to see you dance, Lady Flower,” she said earnestly. “I believe
you’d even make the new jazz dances look graceful.”
She said it so naturally and sincerely that I felt I was an ungrateful
brute for reflecting that she had probably never in her life seen
Claire dance a step.
Sometimes I think that a long course of being told that she is the
worst housekeeper, or the most inadequate manager, in the world,
varied only by the nerve-shattering experience of plates hurled at
her head, has altogether destroyed Nancy’s capacity for
distinguishing fact from fiction. I am sure that she does not
consciously fib. It is simply that her sense of expediency has
completely got the better of her. Truthful, she undoubtedly is not,
but I have always believed in her sincerity. And we were all secretly
grateful to her for restoring Claire’s good humor.
“I may not have a staff of A. D. C’s., but I have had quite as much
experience in entertaining as Lady Annabel Bending, I imagine,” said
Claire, with some elasticity of statement. “And I should like to do
something of the kind.”
“The difficulty will be to get men,” Mrs. Kendal stated, with all the
Kendal directness. “You know how few men there are anywhere near
Cross Loman. The girls often say that it’s next door to impossible to
get a man for anything round here. Of course, Ahlfred would come
down for it, and perhaps he could bring a friend—that would be two
men.”
We tried to look encouraged.
“Let’s make a list of the people you want to invite, Cousin Claire.”
Claire dictated names, and Sallie wrote them down, and we all made
suggestions. The monosyllable “men” must have resounded through
the hall fifty times, in Mumma’s emphatic contralto.
The list approximated to about forty couples when it was done. I
said that I thought we ought to do the thing properly and invite the
whole neighborhood, not merely dancers. “Can’t we have bridge or
something to amuse the older people?” said I, not without a thought
to my own entertainment.
“I know!” cried Martyn. “Let’s have theatricals—ask everybody to
come and see them, and then have a dance afterwards for those
who like it.”
Christopher, Mrs. Fazackerly, Sallie, and Captain Patch received the
suggestion with such clamorous enthusiasm that Claire and I
exchanged a glance and a word under cover of it.
“Would you care to, Claire? I’m quite ready, if you are, and it would
amuse Christopher.”
“Yes, it would. We haven’t done anything for a long time, either, and
Cross Loman really has had enough of the Drill Hall entertainments,
I should imagine.”
I knew that she was thinking of Lady Annabel again.
“You can have theatricals, Martyn,” said Claire graciously. “I think it’s
rather a good idea, and we’ll have dancing in the saloon afterwards.”
The list was revised, added to and discussed all over again.
“But who will act in the theatricals?” Mary said. “And what are you
going to act?”
“Captain Patch will write something—Oh yes, you must, or what’s
the good of having an author here at all?—and we’d better tell him
just how many people there are who can act, and then he can have
the right number of parts,” said Sallie rapidly. “And anyone who can’t
act, and wants to, can be told that there isn’t a part.”
“None of us can act to save our lives,” Amy Kendal superfluously
informed us.
“I cannot write a play,” said Bill Patch very firmly indeed. “But we
could get up something musical, if you liked, and write our own
libretto, and just set it to any tune that fits. I’ve seen that done very
successfully at short notice, and it’s all there’ll be time for, if Lady
Flower’s dance is to be three weeks from to-day.”
“Fancy your saying that you couldn’t write a play! I’m sure you could
write a play, Captain Patch,” said Mrs. Kendal amiably. “If a book,
why not a play?”
Bill Patch looked rather desperate, and said he didn’t know why not,
but he couldn’t, and Mumma remarked again, three or four times,
that she was quite sure he could easily write a play.
“Miles, why don’t you stage-manage it for them?” said Mary Ambrey.
“They’ll want someone....”
In the end, they settled it that way, after talking until nearly eight
o’clock.
The last thing I heard, as everyone took leave of us at the same
moment, was Mumma reiterating, pleasantly but steadily, her
conviction (a) that it would be difficult to get enough men, and (b)
that she was quite sure Captain Patch could easily write a play.
Chapter Five
Two days later, Bill Patch and Mrs. Fazackerly came to consult us
about their joint production.
“It isn’t a play,” Captain Patch said, his red hair standing up on end.
“Whatever Mrs. Kendal may think about it, I cannot write a play. But
we’ve strung something together, more or less—mostly a few songs.”
“We thought you’d know more about it than anybody else and would
advise us,” said Nancy Fazackerly prettily.
“Even Mrs. Kendal has never suggested that I could write a play, my
dear.”
“But I’ve sometimes wondered whether I oughtn’t to have gone in
for writing,” said Claire. “Only I haven’t had the time.”
“It’s more about the performers than the actual play that we want
advice,” explained Captain Patch. “Though even that isn’t going to
be all plain sailing. General Kendal—”
“Most kindly,” said Nancy Fazackerly.
“Most kindly,” Bill repeated, in a worried, obedient sort of way, “most
kindly turned up last night with a pair of Hessian boots.”
“Hessian boots?”
“He thought they’d make such a good stage property and that we
ought to write something that would make use of them. He really
was most awfully keen, poor old fellow, and of course it isn’t a bad
idea, in its way. Hessian boots, you know—you don’t see them
nowadays.”
To this we assented.
“One could do something with a uniform, and the boots would give a
finish, as it were,” Mrs. Fazackerly suggested.
“Hessian boots, and a belt, and a busby, would give the idea of a
Russian, I thought,” Bill Patch explained. “And we thought of doing
something with that old song, ‘The Bulbul Ameer.’ You could make
quite a lot out of it, and it would be much easier to dress up to that
sort of thing than to a regular play. You remember the song I
mean?”
“I brought it with me,” said Mrs. Fazackerly. And then and there she
read it aloud to us, in her pleasant, rather pathetic voice.

“The sons of the Prophet are hardy and bold,

And quite unaccustomed to fear;—
But, of all, the most reckless of life or of limb,
Was Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer.
When they wanted a man to encourage the van,
Or to shout ‘hull-a-loo’ in the rear—
Or to storm a redoubt, they straightaway sent out
For Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer.

“There are heroes in plenty and well-known to fame

In the ranks that are led by the Czar;
But among the most reckless of name or of fame
Was Ivan Petruski Skivah.
He could imitate Irving, play euchre or pool,
And perform on the Spanish guitar;
In fact, quite the cream of the Muscovite team
Was Ivan Petruski Skivah.

“One morning the Russian had shouldered his gun

And put on his most cynical sneer,
When, going down town, he happened to run
Into Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer.
Said the Bulbul, ‘Young man, is your life then so dull
That you’re anxious to end your career?
 For, infidel, know that you’ve trod on the toe
Of Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer.’

“Said the Russian, ‘My friend, your remarks in the end

Will only prove futile, I fear;
For I mean to imply that you’re going to die,
Mr. Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer.’
The Bulbul then drew out his trusty chibouque,
And, shouting out, ‘Allah Akbar,’
Being also intent upon slaughter, he went
For Ivan Petruski Skivah.

“When, just as the knife was ending his life—

In fact, he had shouted ‘Huzza!’—
He found himself struck by that subtle calmuck,
Bold Ivan Petruski Skivah.
There’s a grave where the wave of the Blue Danube flows,
And on it, engraven so clear,
Is, ‘Stranger, remember to pray for the soul
Of Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer.’

“Where the Muscovite maiden her vigil doth keep

By the light of the true lover’s star,
The name she so tenderly murmurs in sleep
Is ‘Ivan Petruski Skivah.’
The sons of the Prophet are hardy and bold
And quite unaccustomed to fear;
But, of all, the most reckless of life or of limb,
Was Abdul, the Bulbul Ameer.”

“It’s not a bad tune,” said Captain Patch. “You see, someone comes
on and sings the whole thing straight off—just to put the audience in
touch with the general hang of affairs—and then, I thought, we’d act
it. This fellow Abdul, you know, full of swagger—dressed up like a
Turk—nothing easier than to dress like a Turk, on the stage—a towel
twisted round your head, and shoes turning up at the toes, and a
bill-hook or something for a scimitar, and everyone tumbles to it
directly. Well, Abdul could get quite a lot of laughs by putting on
tremendous side and all that sort of thing. Then the Russian chap—
or we could just call him Slavonic, if you think Russians are rather a
slump in the market just now—of course he’s in love with Abdul’s
girl, the Muscovite maiden. He’d have to be the hero of the piece—
Ivan Petruski Skivah—flourishing about with a sword and that kind of
thing—and in uniform—”
“The Hessian boots?”
“Exactly. The Hessian boots. A note of realism introduced at once—”
“And what about the Muscovite maiden?” said Claire.
“She’ll sing duets with Ivan Petruski, of course, and she’s easy to
dress, too. A veil over her head, and slave-bangles, and perhaps a
Yashmak. An eastern get-up is always effective, and so very
economical to arrange,” said Mrs. Fazackerly with satisfaction.
“We’re going to put in extra parts as well—chorus of Eastern
maidens, and Cossacks, and things like that. But those are the
principals.”
“And how have you cast it?” I inquired.
“Sallie must be the Muscovite maiden. She’ll look sweet,” said Mrs.
Fazackerly, “and she can sing, too.”
“Will Major Ambrey take on the Bulbul Ameer?” Captain Patch asked.
Christopher was not present. We were both positive that he would
refuse the suggested honor, and we knew well, moreover, that
Christopher is no musician. I have heard him sing in church.
“You’ll have to do it yourself, Captain Patch,” said Claire. “How about
the Hessian boots?”
“We thought of Martyn. And someone will be wanted to sing the
song itself, as a kind of prologue, before the curtain goes up,” said
Mrs. Fazackerly.
I remember that she looked as much pleased and excited over their
plans as a child over a party.
“You see, that song is meant to be a sort of recurring motif
throughout the whole show,” Bill said. “When we’re at rather a loose
end, someone can play the refrain or sing it, and it will buck things
up at once. It’s extraordinary how pleased an audience always is
with anything that’s repeated often enough. They know where they
are, I suppose, when they recognize an old friend. And at the end,
we can all stand in a row across the stage and sing the chorus
together. You know the kind of thing—just to bring down the
curtain.”
He looked just as much pleased and excited as Nancy Fazackerly did.
They were like two very nice children.
“It sounds all right,” I said. “I take it that we really want to do the
acting among ourselves, as much as possible, and entertain the rest
of the people and then all wind up with a dance.”
“Exactly,” said Claire.
“The only outside talent, as far as one can see at present, will be
Mrs. Harter,” said Bill Patch—and he was genuinely quite
unconcerned about it, too.
But I saw that Nancy Fazackerly knew well enough that Claire wasn’t
going to stand for that.
“Mrs. Harter?”
There was more than one note of interrogation in Claire’s way of
saying it—quite three or four.
“You remember how rippingly she sang ‘The Bluebells of Scotland’
the other night?”
“Oh, yes, I remember that.”
“We thought of her, for the ‘Bulbul Ameer’ song at the beginning
because one really does want someone who’ll pronounce all the
words distinctly. And she’s got a good ‘carrying’ voice, if ever I heard
one.”
“I daresay,” said Claire distantly.
Bill Patch looked from one to another of us, and I remembered how,
the first time I saw him, he had reminded me of a Clumber spaniel—
so young, and awkward, and eager—and now, evidently, so much
puzzled as well.
“Her voice really is a very good one,” said Mrs. Fazackerly pleadingly.
“And I’m rather sorry for her, do you know. After all, in Egypt she
must have had a very amusing time and known heaps of people—
and now to come back to Cross Loman—”
“Where she came from!” ejaculated Claire.
“I know—but that makes it harder, in a way. She’s outgrown the
people whom she saw most of when she was Diamond Ellison—and
after all, she wasn’t so very much more than a schoolgirl when she
married and went away. I think she feels a little bit stranded
sometimes.”
“Where is Mr. Harter—and what is he?” Claire demanded.
“He is a solicitor—and he’s still in the East, but he may come home
this summer. I don’t think the marriage is a very happy one,” said
Mrs. Fazackerly, looking down.
I fancy that to all of us there then came a momentary vision of
crockery, propelled violently through space, after the reckless habit
that report had imputed to Mrs. Fazackerly’s excitable partner.
“It would be so very kind of you, Lady Flower, to say that we may
ask her to help with the show,” said Nancy, raising her pretty eyes to
Claire’s face, and speaking with her habitual flattering deference.
“You see, if once you gave a lead, Mrs. Harter wouldn’t feel out of
things any more.”
“And,” said Captain Patch, not quite so diplomatically, “it would be
such a shame to waste that beautiful voice.”
“Who is going to play your accompaniments—or do you rise to an
orchestra?” I interrupted.
“I can play the accompaniments,” said Mrs. Fazackerly radiantly. “It’s
all I’m good for. I have no voice and I can’t act. Which reminds me
that some of the Kendals really ought to be asked to take part,
oughtn’t they, after General Kendal has so very kindly provided those
boots?”
“Perhaps Alfred and two of the girls might do something in the
chorus without damaging it.”
“We must go and find out. And—what about Mrs. Harter?”
Claire shrugged her shoulders.
“I think it’s rather a mistake to ask her, myself. But please do exactly
as you like about it. If her voice is essential, then I suppose she
must be asked.”
“Now, what about the stage itself?”
Nancy Fazackerly was quite wise enough not to press the question of
Mrs. Harter any further, and they went off into a discussion as to the
structure and position of the stage.
I asked Claire afterwards if she really objected very much to letting
old Ellison’s daughter take part in the performance.
“She won’t expect to be asked here afterwards, if that’s what you’re
afraid of.”
“How do you know she won’t? I thought that she looked like a
pushing sort of woman, and common.”
“Do you remember how they did those portraits of her in Sallie’s
game the other day?”
“Yes. Why?”
“It struck me as odd that they’d all thought enough about her to find
it worth while—although not one of them knows her in the least
intimately.”
“As I said at the time, Miles, she has personality. I suppose I have
personality myself. It’s an indefinable sort of thing.”
We left it at that.
Mrs. Fazackerly and Captain Patch were to have a week in which to
prepare their program, and after that there was to be a general
assembly of the prospective performers.
“And you’ll preside, won’t you, to settle about parts, and then no one
will be hurt or offended,” said Mrs. Fazackerly, speaking, I fear, from
a wide past experience of the wonderful capacities of other people
for being hurt or offended on the very slightest provocation.
I asked them to hold the meeting in the library and promised to do
my best that no one should be either hurt or offended.
On the day that I was expecting them I drove down to the Mill
House in the morning to see Mary. I drive out in a low basket-
carriage drawn by a very old pony, because that is the only safe way
in which I can convey my semi-helpless person about without
assistance.
She was in the garden, as usual, doing something with a trowel.
Mary never seems surprised to see me, only pleased, and she does
not stand by with an anxious frown, brightly and carefully talking
about other things while I adjust my crutches and lower myself out
of the pony carriage.
“Sallie and Martyn are rolling the tennis lawn. Isn’t it energetic of
them on such a lovely day? Let’s sit in the shade.”
There is a big beech tree on Mary’s lawn, and we sat under it and
watched the tiny little stream that runs at the bottom of the garden.
The sound of it, more than any other sound I know, always recalls to
me the summer days of childhood.
Presently I consulted Mary about the theatricals and the assignment
of the parts.
“Sallie for the heroine, of course—she can act and she can sing.
Nancy Fazackerly can’t act and can’t sing, but she’s going to play the
accompaniments for all the songs. They suggested Martyn for the
hero and Patch for the villain—dressed as a Turk. I don’t know what
other parts they’ll put in, but apparently the whole thing is perfectly
elastic and can be added to or taken away from as desired. It’s all to
be Eastern dress, more or less—as being easy to arrange. And
they’re very keen to have Mrs. Harter to sing the ‘Bulbul Ameer’
song. It’s the keynote of the whole thing, that song.”
“What does Claire say?”
“She says they may do as they like, but she doesn’t care for the idea
very much. For one thing, she thinks Mrs. Harter—Diamond Ellison—
will feel out of her element.”
“I wonder. After all, she’s been for years in Cairo, and must have met
all sorts of people. And I’m convinced that she’s intelligent, Miles,
and probably very adaptive. Martyn says that she’s an exceptional
person altogether.”
“Does he know her?”
“No. But both my children tell me that they are natural psychologists
of a high order.”
We laughed and then Mary said:
“I sometimes wonder if it’s a mistake to have let their critical
faculties—Sallie’s especially—develop quite unchecked. She finds
people more interesting than anything else, but it’s all so very
impersonal and analytical.”
“You might divide humanity into those who put people first, those
who put things first, and those who put ideas first.”
“Which do you put first, Miles?”
(Claire would have said, “Which do I put first?”)
“People, of course. So do you. But it’s the people who put things first
who are in the majority. In the ultimate issue, they weigh what Mr.
Wemmick called portable property—things like houses, and furniture,
and money—against the personal relations, and the portable
property counts most.”
“I know. They are called practical people because they would never
postpone a business appointment on account of a child’s birthday
party. The birthday party would have to be postponed. And what
about the ones who put ideas first?”
Of course, Mary knew as well as I did—or better—what about them.
But she also knew that I like long, wandering, impersonal
discussions of the kind that I can indulge in with no one else.
I smiled at her, just to show that I knew quite well how she was
humoring me.
“The people who put ideas first are, I think fortunately, in a very
small minority. Religious enthusiasts, of course—and perhaps the
few people who really are thorough-going, matter-of-fact
conventionalists.”
“You are thinking of the Kendals,” said Mary unerringly.
I admitted that she was right.
“Can you imagine Mumma, for instance, on a jury, admitting
‘extenuating circumstances’? ‘A crime is crime,’ she would probably
say, and as she would say it not less than fourteen times, she would
end in hypnotizing all the other eleven into agreeing with her. People
like that ought really never to be allowed to have any say in any
question affecting their fellow-creatures, but unfortunately there’s
generally a sort of spurious worth and solidity about them that
compels attention.”
“I remember,” said Mary, “that once at Dheera Dhoon we were
talking about a man who had become a Catholic, and someone said
that it would be very difficult and require a good deal of moral
courage to take a step of that sort. And Mrs. Kendal answered, ‘How
can there be any courage in deliberately going from the true to the
false? Nothing of the kind.’ And one felt that she would never, by any
possibility, see it in any other light.”
I made Mary promise that she would come and help me at the
meeting in the library that afternoon. Sallie and Martyn were to be
there, of course, and the authors of the production; and we felt that
it was probable that one or two of the Kendals might appear in order
to inform us that they couldn’t act.
“What about Mrs. Harter?”
“Oh, no. You see, she won’t be actually in the play, anyhow. They
only want her to sing before the curtain goes up and then again at
the end.”
“Do you know that they are all coming here this evening to sing?
Sallie invited them that time they went to Nancy Fazackerly’s. Mrs.
Harter, too.”
“I’m glad.”
So I was. What Nancy had told me of Diamond Harter made me feel
sorry for her, in spite of her aggressive airs. I wanted her to go to
Mary Ambrey’s house, in the atmosphere of sanity, and kindness,
and serenity, that belongs to Mary.
When I got home, I found Claire entertaining Lady Annabel Bending.
I felt sure that she had come to hear about the dance that we
proposed to give. The invitations had only just been sent out, but in
Cross Loman we are never long in ignorance of one another’s
arrangements.
Miss Emma Applebee, before now, has darted out of her shop and
inquired of me solicitously how her Ladyship’s cold is, when I myself
had only been made aware of its existence about an hour earlier.
Lady Annabel was inclined to be rather grave, although courteous,
about our entertainment. Did we realize quite what we were
undertaking, especially—if she might say so—with an invalid in the
house?
She glanced at me.
I have reason to believe that Lady Annabel speaks of me behind my
back as “our afflicted friend, Sir Miles Flower.”
“I have done so much—so very much—entertaining myself, and
necessarily on such an enormous scale, that I perhaps realize better
than most people what it all means. When I heard what you were
contemplating, I felt that it would be friendly to come round at once
and offer you the benefit of my experience.”
“Thank you,” said Claire.
Her eyes were so large and scornful and her voice held so satirical
an intonation that I interposed.
“Claire’s young cousins are very anxious to get up some theatricals
and to take advantage of having that young fellow here—Patch—to
do some writing for them. They’re working up something musical.”
“Delightful, indeed,” said Lady Annabel in a severe and melancholy
voice. “And is there much musical talent hereabouts?”
“Sallie Ambrey sings rather nicely, and Mrs. Fazackerly is really
musical—she is adapting Captain Patch’s libretto—and then there are
one or two others.”
“Let me warn you—” began Lady Annabel.
She suddenly glanced to the right and to the left of our not very
large drawing-room as though we might be suspected of having
concealed one of the servants behind a bookcase.
Then she sank her always low voice to a pitch that was all but a
whisper and most impressive.
“You understand that I am speaking in the utmost confidence? It
must never go beyond the walls of this room”—we all three
instinctively gazed with deep distrust at the walls—“I’m not thinking
of myself, but of what it might do for the Rector if it got round that I
had said anything about one of his people—you understand what I
mean—in the Rector’s position—”
Of course I said at once that I quite understood what she meant,
although one couldn’t help feeling that this was one of the moments
when Lady Annabel was perhaps confusing the Rector with “H. E.,”
the late Sir Hannabuss Tallboys. (We have all learned to think of him
as “H. E.”)
Claire did not join in my protestations. I judged from her expression
that she was, once more, living upon the edge of a volcano.
“Absolutely between ourselves, I should very strongly advise you not
to let anyone suggest that the young woman whom I most
mistakenly allowed to sing at the concert the other night—Mrs.
Harter—should be asked to perform. I should think it most
inadvisable.”
“May I ask why?”
Lady Annabel looked distressed.
“You do understand that I am speaking entirely unofficially?”
Not only did we understand, but, personally, I really did not see how
she could speak in any other way.
“Then,” said Lady Annabel, “the fact is that I have, since the concert,
heard one or two things about her. Naturally, I have links all over the
Empire, as I may say, and this Mrs. Harter, as you know, has just
come from the Near East. It seems that she and her husband are on
most unhappy terms—no doubt there are faults on both sides; in
fact, my correspondent said as much—but she has made herself
quite notorious in a place where everyone in the European colony is
of course watched and commented upon. And I noticed at the
concert the other evening that there was a tendency to bring her
into notice, simply, I suppose, because Cross Loman thinks it a fine
thing for Ellison the plumber’s daughter to have married a man
socially above her—Mr. Harter is a solicitor—and to have lived
abroad. If they only knew what I know as to the sort of people one
is obliged to receive out there!”
Lady Annabel Bending is not a spiteful woman. She would just as
readily, I am sure, have come to the Manor House in order to sing
the praises of Mrs. Harter as to disparage her. All that she ever
wants is still to be as important as she believes herself to have been
in her colonial service days.
Her admonitions clinched the question of Mrs. Harter’s inclusion in
the theatricals. Claire sent a note to Mrs. Fazackerly that afternoon, I
believe, to the effect that Mrs. Harter must by all means be asked to
sing, and if possible to act as well.
And if Nancy Fazackerly was at all taken aback by so rapid and
complete a volte-face, she was far too tactful ever to give any signs
of it.
Lady Annabel was not offended when Claire made her intentions
evident. She is never offended; she only becomes more remote and
her graciousness less smiling.
“I shall speak to the Rector about your invitation as soon as I can,
and hope to send you an answer to-morrow. You know what the
correspondence of a man in his position is. Pray don’t get up, Sir
Miles. Good-by—Good-by. So very glad—it all sounds charming. I
hope—we both hope—that it will be the very greatest success. But
I’m sure it will be. Good-by again.”
I rather think that she bowed, in an absent-minded way, to the
footman who opened the hall door for her.
The rectory possesses only a small governess cart and pony, and
Lady Annabel is driven out by the gardener’s boy. But she always, by
means of smiles and bows, and small waves of the hand, makes a
kind of royal progress for herself. It is her boast that she never
forgets a face, and in consequence a great number of the
tradespeople in Cross Loman are gratified by the marks of
recognition lavishly showered upon them from the rectory pony
carriage.
I was told afterwards by Miss Applebee, who saw it happen, that on
that particular day Lady Annabel was nearly run down by General
Kendal’s new motor car, which he was slowly driving up Fore Street.
Mumma was at her usual post of observation, beside him, and no
doubt she had said, “There’s the rectory pony cart coming towards
you, dear—I should sound the horn, if I were you.” But perhaps she
said it too soon, or repeated it so often that poor Puppa’s senses
became rather dazed and he ceased to take in the meaning of the
words. At all events, he appeared to drive the car deliberately, and
very, very slowly, straight at Lady Annabel.
But she never flinched at all, even when the gardener’s boy almost—
but not quite—drove her into the gutter in order to avoid a collision.
And when she subsequently mentioned the incident to Mary Ambrey,
Lady Annabel said that she did not wish any official notice to be
taken of it. Her manner distinctly gave Mary the impression that
General Kendal had narrowly escaped excommunication at the hands
of the Rector.
Chapter Six
Mrs. Harter did not come to discuss the play with the others that
afternoon, but Captain Patch went straight from the meeting to the
house in Queen Street and told her about it, and made her promise
to sing the “Bulbul Ameer” song.
Again I shall have to fall back upon what, in reality, can only be
guess-work, based upon what was afterward told me by Mary
Ambrey.
It was their second meeting, and it clinched matters, so far as Bill
Patch was concerned. Mrs. Harter may have known, too—probably
she did—but she held complexities in her nature that would make
her surrender a less simple and less instantaneous affair than his.
I can imagine that, realizing as she certainly did, the strength of the
extraordinary thing that was coming, inevitably, to overwhelm them
both, she may have hesitated for a moment—not from doubt or fear,
but simply in order to gauge, in one breathless instant, the smashing
force of the storm before it should break.
He went to see her, and they walked out of the narrow Queen Street
house and up Loman Hill to the crossroads there. She told him about
her life.
I have put together what I heard in the time, later on, when we
were all talking about her, and the little that she said to Mary in their
one interview, and the facts that afterward Nancy Fazackerly gave
me. And, knowing her turns of phraseology, which remained
characteristic of her class and of the defiant streak that ran all
through her, I have made out my own version of what she said.
She had been an ambitious girl. Cross Loman had not liked her and
she had not liked Cross Loman. Although she was not beautiful, she
possessed very powerful sex magnetism and had love affairs from
her schooldays onward. But the hard, practical vein that had come
to her direct from Ellison, the successful tradesman, never failed her.
She never lost her head. She despised her country-town lovers, even
while she flaunted their admiration in the face of all Cross Loman.
But she knew very well that only marriage could give her her
chance. Mr. Harter (I am sure that she spoke of him as “Mr. Harter”
throughout) was the uncle of one of her school friends. Diamond
Ellison went to stay with this girl at her home in one of the London
suburbs, and the solicitor—twenty years her senior—came to the
house and fell under one of the brief, incomprehensible spells that
young women of a certain type sometimes exercise over men no
longer in their first youth.
He misjudged her from first to last, probably misled by the boldness
of her mere physical outlines and the mixture of contempt and
familiarity in her manner towards men. His first proposals were
received by her with no sense of shock—she was both too
experienced in men and too ruthlessly cynical for that—but with
utter disdain.
“You can ask me to marry you—or you can clear out,” said Diamond
Ellison.
He married her.
In the East, she had all the success that she had expected and
intended to have. The women never liked her, but she knew herself
to be essentially a man’s woman, and she was indifferent then and
always to the opinions of her surroundings. The men fell in love with
her, and Harter was furiously jealous.
On her own showing, Harter had everything to complain of in his
wife. She did not pretend to care for him, she flirted with other men,
she was notorious, even judged by the lax standards of the East,
and she replied to his incessant, nagging remonstrances with sulky,
curt indifference. The only thing that he could never charge her with
was extravagance, for she was far too practical a woman to
squander money, and perhaps also too proud, since she had not a
penny of her own. (Mrs. Ellison was dead, and she had long ago
quarreled with old Ellison, who gave her nothing at all.)
Harter threatened to send her home, and she replied that she would
not go. Nor did she.
A far stronger man than Harter would have found it impossible to
get the better of her. A combination of recklessness and absolute
determination made her very nearly impervious.
She even took her pleasures sulkily and without enthusiasm,
although she never missed an entertainment or an expedition.
They had no child, of course.
Harter got her back to England at last, after nearly five years of it,
by pretending to book his passage as well, and then backing out of it
at the last minute.
She despised him all the more for the subterfuge. She herself was
never anything but absolutely direct.
She told Patch that she would not have come home even then, but
that she was ill, and it is very certain that only a woman of iron
physique and resolute will could have stood the climate, and the
racket of her days and nights, for that length of time.
As it was, she’d been a month in a London nursing home before she
came to Cross Loman. It was in the nursing home, I imagine, that
Diamond Harter took stock of life. She’d been in that home for
weeks and not a soul had been to see her. There was no one to
come. Her father had retired from business and lived by himself at
Torquay. They hadn’t even corresponded for years.
I have heard Mrs. Harter’s speaking voice—a voice stronger and
more abrupt than that of most women—and her tones ring in my
ears now, sometimes, so that I think I can distinguish the very
words that she may have used on the day that she and Bill Patch
went up Loman Hill together. But there must have been an
intonation in her voice then that neither I, nor anyone else, ever
heard there.
She told him that she’d never been in love. Men had stirred her
senses, and one or two of them had excited her half-resentful
admiration. She had a most acute power of distinguishing nuances
of breeding, and in the East she came into contact with a class of
man of very different caliber from that of Harter.
Not once, in all her twenty-eight years, had she even wished to
establish a permanent link between herself and a fellow creature.
And Bill Patch, who liked everybody and who was everybody’s friend,
listened to her.
I suppose it was just that element in Bill Patch that made a writer of
him, which enabled him to understand. Something rather beyond the
apprehension of most of us, to whom he was simply a good-
tempered, red-headed boy with an unexpected brain power. Only
Sallie, justifying her determination to specialize in psychology, had
seen rather further than other people when she said that Captain
Patch was a temperamental romantic, capable of a grande passion.
He listened to Diamond Harter and came, I suppose, as near to
perfect comprehension of her as one soul can ever come to perfect
comprehension of another. That is to say that he not only
understood what her words told him, but that he saw far beyond
them to the Diamond Harter that she might have been, and that—
almost unknown to herself—she must, sometimes, have dimly felt a
wish to be.
Whatever else there is to say about Mrs. Harter, it is indisputable
that she possessed a character of unusual strength and that there
were in her latent possibilities almost frightful in their intensity.
Bill Patch saw straight past everything, accepted everything, and
somehow made her see that he understood and that he accepted.
He was passionately in love with her—but that day on Loman Hill he
did not speak a word of love to her. There were no preliminary
explanations or tentative confidences between them. The whole
thing was too vital for that.
At the top of Loman Hill, at the crossroads, is a beech tree, on which
lovers have carved their initials for generations. It stands beside a
low hedge in which is set a rickety five-barred gate. It was at that
gate that they must have stood, as everyone stands, gazing at the
blue haze that lies over the hills beyond and at the square, red
sandstone tower of Cross Loman church below them.
I have stood at the crossroads on Loman Hill many and many a time
and looked over the five-barred gate, at the tower of St. Andrew’s,
and when I went there last, I thought of those two who must have
stood there together—Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch.
She was a tall woman, and her shoulders and his were nearly on a
level; and his red head topped hers only by a matter of a quarter of
an inch. I never saw Bill Patch wear a cap or a hat. Her clothes were
rather distinctive, and she wore them well. She had a figure for
tailor-made suits, and they were nearly always dark in color, and she
wore with them a white silk shirt, open at the throat. Her hats were
always severe—dark velours, of the plainest possible contour. Mary
says that she knew her style, and stuck to it.
It was characteristic of her to keep her hands thrust into her coat
pockets, and I always fancy that it was so that she leaned against
the rickety gate, her shoulders as erect as Bill’s were slouched.
He was so short-sighted that he never took off his glasses, and
through those queer, thick lenses he must have looked at her, as he
listened. His eyes always had that friendly smile in them, and that
odd, pathetic look that had reminded me of a Clumber spaniel. It
was his mouth that betrayed him, with the sensitive line of lip that
was visible only when he was not laughing. That gave one Bill Patch,
the writer and dreamer—Sallie’s potential romantic.
They stood at the crossways for a very long while, and, after a time,
in silence. Bill Patch knew, absolutely for certain, that he loved her,
and that they belonged to one another. The supreme importance of
it, in his eyes, made everything else of so little account that he did
not even wonder what would happen.
Mrs. Harter was different. She had never waited as Bill, quite
unconsciously, had waited. The thing had come upon her unawares,
and part of her—the part that had made her marry Harter, and then
flirt with other men—had absolutely denied the existence of the one
supreme reality.
But the capacity for recognizing it had been there all the time,
smothered under her cheap cynicism, her ruthless ambition, and the
streak in her of sheer, iron hardness.
She had to recognize it, when it came, and to surrender to it.
And so she was frightened, or at least overwhelmed, at first. Bill’s
intuition told him that, and he gave her time.
He told her that he’d been very happy all his life, even during the
war. His mother had died when he was too little to remember her,
and his father had married again. He was friends with his
stepmother. She and his father had two jolly little kids.
He had heaps of friends. A good many of them had gone west in the
war.
His writing, Bill Patch said, was a frightfully real thing in its way, but
it actually only took a bit of him to do it—he looked on it as a sort of
trick. He thought perhaps his subconscious self did most of it, and
that was why he could write so easily, and didn’t mind old Carey
chatting about poisoners all the time, or people talking in the room,
or anything. He knew it was a form of self-expression, for some
people, but it wasn’t for him. He didn’t, in fact, think he needed a
form of self-expression. He had always, he said again, been very
happy.
And all the time he had known that he was waiting for something,
and that it was something very great. But he hadn’t known at all
what it would be.
Sometimes I have wondered what Mrs. Harter made of it all, as she
listened to him. He was so much younger than she, in experience,
and in knowledge, and most of all in spirit. Mrs. Harter was, one
might say, temperamentally sophisticated, and Bill Patch, who was
two years her junior, was most essentially childlike. It is the only
adjective I can think of that comes anywhere near to describing that
quality in him that had made him, all his life, always happy.
There had never been any woman at all, “to count” he said. He had
gone straight from school into the Army, and he hadn’t thought
about girls much, although he greatly admired the pretty ones.
Always he came back to it again—he’d had that queer feeling of
waiting for something. He didn’t mean someone—a person—no, it
was more like a job, something that only he could do. It sounded
odd, Bill admitted, but there it was. Something to do, in a way, with
God. Yes, he believed in God.
And Mrs. Harter, who didn’t, and who never had, didn’t say a word.
It was Bill Patch who said at last that they ought to go. One
supposes that no single one of all the men whom Mrs. Harter had
known would have been sufficiently lacking in the technique of that
sort of situation, to propose putting an end to it. She wouldn’t have
given them the chance, probably saying it herself, with her most
disconcerting air of suddenly finding their company not at all worth
her while.
But when Bill Patch said that it was late, and that he ought to take
her home again, Mrs. Harter acquiesced, simply. They must have
taken a last look over the five-barred gate at the evening sky,
against which the red church tower always stands out with peculiar,
clear-cut precision of outline, before they turned away, and went
down the long slope of Loman Hill, which lies between high banks
where the green almost meets overhead.
Bill asked her about her singing, and she said that she’d learned at
school, and taken a few lessons just before she married. She used to
sing a good deal, in Cairo, because the men she knew liked it. Did
he understand, she asked him, that she was the sort of person who
sang only for that sort of reason? Once, at a party in a man’s rooms,
they’d put her right up on the top of the piano, and she’d sung