We Are Not Alone by James Hilton

Author:James Hilton [Hilton, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-4044-1
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

IT HAD BEEN DAVID’S habit for many years to give a party during the latter half of July, a sort of garden party with music, to which all the notables of Calderbury society were invited. If the weather was warm and fine the French windows were thrown open to the walled garden, and the guests sat about in or out of doors as they chose. No other function in Calderbury’s year offered quite the same features, but it was generally considered that the doctor had established a right to be original and that his party was among the events of the social season. In truth, the originality had arisen merely from the fact that Jessica had wanted a garden party in summer while the doctor preferred a musical evening in winter, and neither wanted both. David had, indeed, a quiet liking for music that led him to join the Calderbury Philharmonic Society and play the violin in string quartets.

It was during the second week of Leni’s last fortnight that the party was to take place. All day the sun had shone so warmly that one of Shawgate’s pavements had been deserted and the other crowded with shade-seeking shoppers. Jessica, always insistent on getting precisely what she wanted and at the most economical price, was among them; the tradesmen respected her for the qualities that made her visits a trial. Besides, they knew the doctor’s party was to be in the evening and that somebody would say, “Do tell me, Mrs. Newcome, where you got these delicious preserves?”

While she was shopping, Sam Bates, the electrician, was running a few colored lights under the cedar tree in the doctor’s garden, and Johnny Johnson, the odd-job gardener, was erecting trestle tables, arranging chairs on the lawn, and generally making himself useful. The doctor was visiting; Susan was baking pies for the evening; Leni was doing simply nothing.

By special arrangement there was to be no surgery session, and David, as soon as he got home, took a tepid bath and changed into a different suit of clothes that looked exactly the same. The invitations were for eight o’clock, by which time the heat of the day had drained into walls and pavements, leaving the air cool. The sky was clear, and a half-moon rose over the cedar tree.

About fifty people gathered and grouped in the drawing-room and garden—the Dean and the Archdeacon, the Precentor, Jaggers the organist, Yule the choirmaster, various vicars of parishes, doctors, a solicitor, a retired admiral, the headmaster of the local grammar school, the editor of the Calderbury Gazette. But there the edge was reached of that social territory beyond which Mrs. Newcome would not venture; and it was tacitly understood that Fred Garton, son of the town’s leading grocer and invited because of his fine baritone, was not really a guest in the same sense as the others.

Greetings, gossip, a piano solo by the choirmaster, who did not play very well, and for whom the doctor’s piano would

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