Expecting Mrs. Pentherby

by H.H. Munro (SAKI)

It was Reggie Bruttle's own idea for converting what had threatened to bean albino elephant into a beast of burden that should help him along thestony road of his finances. "The Limes," which had come to him byinheritance without any accompanying provision for its upkeep, was one ofthose pretentious, unaccommodating mansions which none but a man ofwealth could afford to live in, and which not one wealthy man in ahundred would choose on its merits. It might easily languish in theestate market for years, set round with noticeboards proclaiming it, inthe eyes of a sceptical world, to be an eminently desirable residence. Reggie's scheme was to turn it into the headquarters of a prolongedcountry-house party, in session during the months from October till theend of March--a party consisting of young or youngish people of bothsexes, too poor to be able to do much hunting or shooting on a seriousscale, but keen on getting their fill of golf, bridge, dancing, andoccasional theatre-going. No one was to be on the footing of a payingguest, but every one was to rank as a paying host; a committee would lookafter the catering and expenditure, and an informal sub-committee wouldmake itself useful in helping forward the amusement side of the scheme. As it was only an experiment, there was to be a general agreement on thepart of those involved in it to be as lenient and mutually helpful to oneanother as possible. Already a promising nucleus, including one or twoyoung married couples, had been got together, and the thing seemed to befairly launched. "With good management and a little unobtrusive hard work, I think thething ought to be a success," said Reggie, and Reggie was one of thosepeople who are painstaking first and optimistic afterwards. "There is one rock on which you will unfailingly come to grief, manageyou never so wisely," said Major Dagberry, cheerfully; "the women willquarrel. Mind you," continued this prophet of disaster, "I don't saythat some of the men won't quarrel too, probably they will; but the womenare bound to. You can't prevent it; it's in the nature of the sex. Thehand that rocks the cradle rocks the world, in a volcanic sense. A womanwill endure discomforts, and make sacrifices, and go without things to anheroic extent, but the one luxury she will not go without is herquarrels. No matter where she may be, or how transient her appearance ona scene, she will instal her feminine feuds as assuredly as a Frenchmanwould concoct soup in the waste of the Arctic regions. At thecommencement of a sea voyage, before the male traveller knows half adozen of his fellow passengers by sight, the average woman will havestarted a couple of enmities, and laid in material for one or twomore--provided, of course, that there are sufficient women aboard topermit quarrelling in the plural. If there's no one else she willquarrel with the stewardess. This experiment of yours is to run for sixmonths; in less than five weeks there will be war to the knife declaringitself in half a dozen different directions." "Oh, come, there are only eight women in the party; they won't pickquarrels quite so soon as that," protested Reggie. "They won't all originate quarrels, perhaps," conceded the Major, "butthey will all take sides, and just as Christmas is upon you, with itsconventions of peace and good will, you will find yourself in for aglacial epoch of cold, unforgiving hostility, with an occasional Etnaflare of open warfare. You can't help it, old boy; but, at any rate, youcan't say you were not warned." The first five weeks of the venture falsified Major Dagberry's predictionand justified Reggie's optimism. There were, of course, occasional smallbickerings, and the existence of certain jealousies might be detectedbelow the surface of everyday intercourse; but, on the whole, the women-folk got on remarkably well together. There was, however, a notableexception. It had not taken five weeks for Mrs. Pentherby to get herselfcordially disliked by the members of her own sex; five days had beenamply sufficient. Most of the women declared that they had detested herthe moment they set eyes on her; but that was probably an afterthought. With the menfolk she got on well enough, without being of the type ofwoman who can only bask in male society; neither was she lacking in thegeneral qualities which make an individual useful and desirable as amember of a co-operative community. She did not try to "get the betterof" her fellow-hosts by snatching little advantages or cleverly evadingher just contributions; she was not inclined to be boring or snobbish inthe way of personal reminiscence. She played a fair game of bridge, andher card-room manners were irreproachable. But wherever she came incontact with her own sex the light of battle kindled at once; her talentof arousing animosity seemed to border on positive genius. Whether the object of her attentions was thick-skinned or sensitive,quick-tempered or good-natured, Mrs. Pentherby managed to achieve thesame effect. She exposed little weaknesses, she prodded sore places, shesnubbed enthusiasms, she was generally right in a matter of argument, or,if wrong, she somehow contrived to make her adversary appear foolish andopinionated. She did, and said, horrible things in a matter-of-factinnocent way, and she did, and said, matter-of-fact innocent things in ahorrible way. In short, the unanimous feminine verdict on her was thatshe was objectionable. There was no question of taking sides, as the Major had anticipated; infact, dislike of Mrs. Pentherby was almost a bond of union between theother women, and more than one threatening disagreement had been rapidlydissipated by her obvious and malicious attempts to inflame and extendit; and the most irritating thing about her was her successful assumptionof unruffled composure at moments when the tempers of her adversarieswere with difficulty kept under control. She made her most scathingremarks in the tone of a tube conductor announcing that the next stationis Brompton Road--the measured, listless tone of one who knows he isright, but is utterly indifferent to the fact that he proclaims. On one occasion Mrs. Val Gwepton, who was not blessed with the mostreposeful of temperaments, fairly let herself go, and gave Mrs. Pentherbya vivid and truthful _resume_ of her opinion of her. The object of thisunpent storm of accumulated animosity waited patiently for a lull, andthen remarked quietly to the angry little woman-- "And now, my dear Mrs. Gwepton, let me tell you something that I've beenwanting to say for the last two or three minutes, only you wouldn't givenme a chance; you've got a hairpin dropping out on the left side. Youthin-haired women always find it difficult to keep your hairpins in." "What can one do with a woman like that?" Mrs. Val demanded afterwards ofa sympathising audience. Of course, Reggie received numerous hints as to the unpopularity of thisjarring personality. His sister-in-law openly tackled him on the subjectof her many enormities. Reggie listened with the attenuated regret thatone bestows on an earthquake disaster in Bolivia or a crop failure inEastern Turkestan, events which seem so distant that one can almostpersuade oneself they haven't happened. "That woman has got some hold over him," opined his sister-in-law,darkly; "either she is helping him to finance the show, and presumes onthe fact, or else, which Heaven forbid, he's got some queer infatuationfor her. Men do take the most extraordinary fancies." Matters never came exactly to a crisis. Mrs. Pentherby, as a source ofpersonal offence, spread herself over so wide an area that no one womanof the party felt impelled to rise up and declare that she absolutelyrefused to stay another week in the same house with her. What iseverybody's tragedy is nobody's tragedy. There was ever a certainconsolation in comparing notes as to specific acts of offence. Reggie'ssister-in-law had the added interest of trying to discover the secretbond which blunted his condemnation of Mrs. Pentherby's long catalogue ofmisdeeds. There was little to go on from his manner towards her inpublic, but he remained obstinately unimpressed by anything that was saidagainst her in private. With the one exception of Mrs. Pentherby's unpopularity, the house-partyscheme was a success on its first trial, and there was no difficultyabout reconstructing it on the same lines for another winter session. Itso happened that most of the women of the party, and two or three of themen, would not be available on this occasion, but Reggie had laid hisplans well ahead and booked plenty of "fresh blood" for the departure. Itwould be, if any thing, rather a larger party than before. "I'm so sorry I can't join this winter," said Reggie's sister-in-law,"but we must go to our cousins in Ireland; we've put them off so often.What a shame! You'll have none of the same women this time." "Excepting Mrs. Pentherby," said Reggie, demurely. "Mrs. Pentherby! _Surely_, Reggie, you're not going to be so idiotic asto have that woman again! She'll set all the women's backs up just asshe did this time. What _is_ this mysterious hold she's go over you?" "She's invaluable," said Reggie; "she's my official quarreller." "Your--what did you say?" gasped his sister-in-law. "I introduced her into the house-party for the express purpose ofconcentrating the feuds and quarrelling that would otherwise have brokenout in all directions among the womenkind. I didn't need the advice andwarning of sundry friends to foresee that we shouldn't get through sixmonths of close companionship without a certain amount of pecking andsparring, so I thought the best thing was to localise and sterilise it inone process. Of course, I made it well worth the lady's while, and asshe didn't know any of you from Adam, and you don't even know her realname, she didn't mind getting herself disliked in a useful cause." "You mean to say she was in the know all the time?" "Of course she was, and so were one or two of the men, so she was able tohave a good laugh with us behind the scenes when she'd done anythingparticularly outrageous. And she really enjoyed herself. You see, she'sin the position of poor relation in a rather pugnacious family, and herlife has been largely spent in smoothing over other people's quarrels.You can imagine the welcome relief of being able to go about saying anddoing perfectly exasperating things to a whole houseful of women--and allin the cause of peace." "I think you are the most odious person in the whole world," saidReggie's sister-in-law. Which was not strictly true; more than anybody,more than ever she disliked Mrs. Pentherby. It was impossible tocalculate how many quarrels that woman had done her out of.

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