It was odd how Winn looked forward to seeing Staines; he couldn't
remember ever having paid much attention to the scenery before; he had
always liked the bare backs of the downs behind the house where he used
to exercise the horses, and the turf was short and smelt of thyme; and
of course the shooting was good and the house stood well; but he hadn't
thought about it till now, any more than he thought about his braces.
He decided to walk up from the station. There was a short cut through
the fields and then you came on the Court suddenly, over-looking a sheet
of water.
It was a still November day, colorless and sodden. The big elms were as
dark as wet haystacks and the woods huddled dispiritedly in a vague
mist.
The trees broke to the right of the Court and the house rose up like a
gigantic silver ghost.
It was a battered old Tudor building with an air of not having been
properly cleaned; blackened and weather-soaked, unconscionably averse
from change, it had held its own for four hundred years.
The stones looked as if they were made out of old moonlight and thin
December sunshine. A copse of small golden trees, aspen and silver
birches made a pale screen of light beside the house and at its feet,
the white water stretched like a gleaming eye.
There wasn't a tree Winn hadn't climbed or an inch he hadn't explored,
fought over and played on. He wanted quite horribly to come back to it
again, it was as if there were roots from the very soil in him tugging
at his menaced life.
His mother advanced across the lawn to meet him. She wore a very old
blue serge dress and a black and white check cap which looked as if it
had been discarded by a jockey.
In one hand she held a trowel and in the other a parcel of spring bulbs.
She gave Winn the side of her hard brown cheek to kiss and remarked,
"You've just come in time to help me with these bulbs. Every one of
them must be got in this afternoon. Philip has left us--your father
threw a watering can at him. I can't think what's happened to the men
nowadays, they don't seem to be able to stand anything, and I've sent
Davis into the village to buy ducks. He ought to have been back long ago
if it was only ducks, but probably it's a girl at the mill as well."
Winn looked at the bulbs with deep distaste. "Hang it all, Mother," he
objected, "it's such a messy day for planting bulbs!" "Nonsense," said
Lady Staines firmly, "I presume you wash your hands before dinner, don't
you, you can get the dirt off then? It's a perfect day for bulbs as
you'd know if you had the ghost of country sense in you. There's another
trowel in the small greenhouse, get it and begin." Winn strode off to
the greenhouse smiling; he had had an instinctive desire to get home, he
wanted hard sharp talk that he could answer as if it were a Punch and
Judy show.
In his married life he had had to put aside the free expression of his
thoughts; you couldn't hit out all round if the other person wouldn't
hit back and started whining. Every member of the Staines family had
been brought up on the tradition of combative speech, the bleakest of
personalities found its nest there. Sometimes, of course, you got too
much of it. Sir Peter and Charles were noisy and James and Dolores were
apt to be brutally rough. They were all vehement but there were
different shades in their ability. Winn got through the joints in their
armor as easily as milk slips into a glass. It was Lady Staines and Winn
who were the deadly fighters.
They fought the others with careless ease, but they fought each other
watchfully with fixed eyes and ready implacable brains.
It was difficult to say what they fought for but it was a magnificent
spectacle to see them fight, and they had for each other a regard which,
if it was never tender, had every element of respect.
They worked now for some time in silence. Suddenly Lady Staines cocked a
wintry blue eye in her son's direction and remarked, "Why ain't your
wife going with you to Davos?" Winn hurled a bulb into the small hole
prepared for it before answering, then he said:
"She's too delicate to stand the cold."
"Is there anything the matter with her?" asked his mother.
Winn preferred to consider this question in the light of rhetoric and
made no reply. He wasn't going to give Estelle away by saying there was
nothing the matter with her, and on the other hand a lie would have been
pounced upon and torn to pieces. "Marriage don't seem to have agreed
with either of you particularly well," observed Lady Staines with a grim
smile.
"We haven't got your constitution," replied her son. "If either you or
Father had married any one else--they'd have been dead within six
months."
"Humph!" said his mother. "That only shows our sound judgment; we took
what we could stomach! It's her look-out of course, but I suppose she
knows she's running you into the Divorce Court, letting you go out there
by yourself? All those snow places bristle with grass widows and girls
who have outstayed their market and have to get a hustle on! Sending a
man out there alone is like driving a new-born lamb into a pack of
wolves!" Lady Staines with her eye on the heavily built and rather
leathery lamb beside her gave a sardonic chuckle. Winn ignored her
illustration.
"You needn't be afraid," he replied. "I'm done with women; they tempt me
about as much as stale sponge cakes."
"Ah!" said his mother, "I've heard that tale before. A man who says he's
done with women simply means one of them's done with him. Besides,
you're to be an invalid, I understand! An invalid man is as exposed to
women as a young chicken to rats. You won't stand a ghost of a chance.
Look at your father, if I left him alone when he was having an attack of
gout with a gray-haired matron of a reformatory, he'd be on his knees to
her before I could get back."
"You can take it from me," said Winn, "that even if I _should_ need such
a thing as a petticoat, I'd try a kind that won't affect marriage. I'll
never look at another good woman again--the other sort will do for me if
I can't stick it without."
"Don't racket too much," said Lady Staines, planting her last bulb with
scientific skill. "They say keeping women's very expensive up there--on
account of the Russian Princes."
"By the by," said Winn, "thanks for the money. Had any difficulty in
extracting it?"
"Not much," said Lady Staines, withdrawing to the lawn. "Charles got
rather in the way."
"Silly ass," observed Winn. "Didn't want me to have it, I suppose?"
"No, he did want you to have it," replied Lady Staines, "but he needn't
have been such a fool as to have said so. It nearly upset everything.
His idea was, you see, that if his father gave you something--he and
James would have to be bought off. So they were in the end, but they'd
have had more if he'd played his hand better."
Winn laughed. "Jolly to be home again," he remarked. "Dinner as usual?"
"Yes," said Lady Staines, "and don't forget one of the footmen's a
Plymouth Brother and mustn't be shocked. It's so difficult to get any
one nowadays, one mustn't be too particular. He said he could stand your
father by constant prayer, but he gave notice over Charles. Charles
ought to have waited till dessert to let himself go."
The dinner passed off well. Sir Peter and Winn had one never failing
bone of contention, the rival merits of the sister services. Sir Peter
expressed on every possible occasion in his son's presence, a bitter
contempt for the army, and Winn never let an opportunity pass without
pointing out the gorged and pampered state of the British Navy.
"If we'd had half the money spent on us, Sir, that you keep guzzling
over," Winn cheerfully threw out, "we could knock spots out of Europe.
The trouble with England is--she treats her sailors as if they were the
proud sisters--and we are shoved out like Cinderella into the scullery
to do all the dirty work."
"Pooh!" said Sir Peter, "work! Is that what you call it--takin' a horse
out for an hour or two, and shoutin' at a few men on a parade ground.
What's an army good for--even when it's big enough to be seen with the
naked eye and capable of attacking a few black savages with their
antiquated weapons. Why you're _safe_, that's what you are--dead safe!
Land's beneath you--immovable--you can get anywhere you want to as easy
as sliding down banisters! Targets keep still too! It's nothing to hit a
thing you can stand to fire at while _it_ stands still to _be_ fired at!
Child's play, that's what it is. Look at us, something up all the time,
peace or war. We've got the sea to fight--wind too--and thick weather.
We've got our pace to mind and if we ever did clinch up we'd have to do
our fighting at a rate that'd make an express train giddy--and running
after a target goin' as hard as we do! That's what I call something of a
service. No! No! The Army's played out. You're for ornament now, meant
to go round Buckingham Palace and talk to nurse-maids in the Park."
"Not many nurse-maids in the Kyber Pass," his son observed.
"Frontiers--yes, I dare say," snorted Sir Peter. "A few black rag dolls
behind trees popping at you to keep your circulation going, and you with
Maxims and all, going picnics in the hills and burning down villages as
easy as pulling fire-crackers--and half the time you want help from us!
Look at South Africa!"
They looked at South Africa for some time till the dessert came and the
Plymouth Brother thankfully withdrew. After that Winn allowed himself
some margin and Lady Staines leaned back in her chair, ate grapes and
enjoyed her coffee.
The conversation became pungent, savage and enlivened on Sir Peter's
part by strange oaths.
Winn kept to sudden thrusts of irony impossible to foresee and difficult
to parry.
They drank velvety ripe old port. Sir Peter was for the moment out of
pain and anxious to assert his freedom from doctors. The conversation
shifted to submarines. Sir Peter thought them an underhand and decadent
development suited to James, who was in command of one of them.
As to aeroplanes he said that as we'd now succeeded in imitating
infernal birds and fishes--he supposed we'd soon bring off reptiles the
kind of creature the modern young would be likely to represent best.
"We shall soon have the police crawling on their bellies up and down the
Strand hiding behind lamp-posts," finished Sir Peter. "Call that kind of
thing science! It's an inverted Noah's Ark! That's what it is! And when
you get it all going to suit yourself, there'll be another flood, and
serve you all damned well right. I shall enjoy seeing you drown!"
Winn replied that you had to fight with your head now and that people
who fought with their fists were about as dangerous as stuffed rabbits.
Sir Peter replied that in the end everything came down to blood, how
much you'd got yourself and how much you could get out of the enemy.
Lady Staines was slightly afraid of leaving them in this atmosphere, but
at last she reluctantly withdrew to the hall, where she listened to the
varying shades of Sir Peter's voice and decided they were on the whole
loud enough to be normal.
At eleven o'clock she and Winn between them assisted Sir Peter to bed.
This was a sharp and fiery passage usually undertaken by the toughest of
the gardeners.
Winn however managed extraordinarily well. He insisted on occasional
pauses and by a home truth of an appallingly personal nature actually
silenced his father for the last half flight.
Sir Peter breakfasted in his room.
He had had a bad night. He wouldn't, as he explained to his wife, have
minded if Winn had been a puny chap; but there he was, sound and strong,
with clear hard eyes, broad, straight shoulders and a grip of iron, and
yet Taylor, that little village hound of an apothecary, said once you
had microbes it didn't matter how strong you were--they were just as
likely to be fatal as if you were a narrow-chested epileptic.
Microbes! The very thought of such small insignificant creatures getting
in his way filled Sir Peter with fury. He had always hated insects. But
the worst of it was in the morning he didn't feel angry, he simply felt
chilled and helpless. His son was hit and he couldn't help him. It all
came back to that. There was only one person who could help a sick man,
and that person was his wife. Theoretically Sir Peter despised and hated
women, but practically he leaned on his wife as only a strong man can
lean on a woman; without her, he literally would not have known which
way to turn. His trust in her was as solid as his love for a good stout
ship. In every crisis of his life she had stood by his side, bitter
tongued, hard-headed, undemonstrative and his as much as any ship that
had sailed under his flag.
If she had failed him he would have gone down, and now here was his
son's wife--another woman--presumably formed for the same purpose,
leaking away from under him at the very first sign of weather.
He thought of Estelle with a staggered horror; she had looked soft and
sweet--just the woman to minister to a knocked-out man. The trouble with
her was she had no guts.
Sir Peter woke his wife up at four o'clock in the morning to shout this
fact into her ear. Lady Staines said, "Well--whoever said she had?" and
apparently went to sleep again. But Sir Peter didn't go to sleep:
Estelle reminded him of how he had once been done over a mare, a
beautiful, fine stepping lady-like creature who looked as if she were
made of velvet and steel, no vice in her and every point correct; and
then what had happened? He'd bought her and she'd developed a spirit
like wet cotton wool, no pace, no staying power. She'd sweat and stumble
after a few minutes run, no amount of dieting, humoring or whipping
affected her. She'd set out to shirk, and shirk she did--till he worked
her off on a damned fool Dolores had fortunately introduced him to--only
wives can't be handed on like mares--"Devil's the pity"--Sir Peter said
to himself, as he fell off to sleep. "Works perfectly with horses."
Winn came up-stairs soon after breakfast a little set and silent, to say
good-by to his father. Sir Peter had thrown his breakfast out of the
window and congealed the Plymouth Brother's morning prayers. He wanted
to get hold of something tangible to move circumstances and cheat fate,
but he couldn't think what you did do, when it wasn't a question of
storms or guns--or a man you could knock down for insubordination,
simply a physical fact.
He scowled gloomily at his son's approach. "I wish you weren't such a
damned fool," he observed by way of greeting. "Why can't you shake a
little sense into your wife? What's marriage for? I've been talking to
your mother about it. I don't say she isn't a confoundedly aggravating
woman, your mother! But she's always stuck to me, hasn't let me down,
you know. A wife ain't meant to do that. It's unnatural! Why can't you
say to her, 'You come with me or I'll damned well show you the reason
why--' That's the line to take!"
"A woman you've got to say that to isn't going to make much of a
companion," Winn said quietly. "I'd rather she stayed where she liked."
Sir Peter was silent for a moment, then he said, "Any more children
coming?"
"No," said his son, "nor likely to be either, as far as I'm concerned."
"There you are!" said Sir Peter. "Finicky and immoral, that's what I
call it! That's the way trouble begins, the more children the less
nonsense. Why don't you have more children instead of sitting sneering
at me like an Egyptian Pyramid?"
"That's my look-out," said Winn with aggravating composure. "When I want
'em, I'll have 'em. Don't you worry, Father."
"That's all devilish well!" said Sir Peter crossly. "But I _shall_
worry! Do I know more about the world or do you? Not that I want to
quarrel with you, my dear boy," he added hastily. "I admit things are
awkward for you--damned awkward--still it's no use sitting down under
them when you might have a row and clear the air, is it? What I want to
say is--why not have a row?"
"You can't have a row with a piece of pink silk, can you?" his son
demanded. "I don't want to blame her, but it's no use counting her in;
besides, honestly, Father, I don't care a rap--why should I expect her
to? My marriage was a misdeal."
Sir Peter shook his head. "Men ought to love their wives," he said
solemnly; "in a sense, of course, no fuss about it, and never letting
them know--and not putting oneself out about it! But still there ought
to be something to hold on to, and anyhow the more you stick together,
the more there is, and your going off like this won't improve matters.
Love or no love, marriage is a life."
Winn laughed again. "Life--" he said, "yes--well--how do I know how much
longer I shall have to bother about life?"
There was a silence. Sir Peter's gnarled old hands met above his
blackthorn stick and trembled.
Winn wished he hadn't spoken. He did not know how to tell his father not
to mind. He hadn't really thought his father would mind.
However, there they sat, minding it.
Then Sir Peter said, "I don't believe in consumption, I never have, and
I never shall; besides Taylor says Davos is a very good place for it,
and you're an early case, and it's all damned nonsense, and you've got
to buck up and think no more about it. What I want to hear is that
you're back in your Regiment again. I dare say there'll be trouble later
on, and then where'll you be if you're an invalid--have you ever thought
of that?"
"Yes--that'd be something to live for," Winn said gravely; "trouble."
"You shouldn't be so confoundedly particular," said his father. "Now
look at me--if we did have trouble where'd I be? Nowhere at all--old!
Just gout and newspapers and sons getting up ideas about their lungs,
but when do I complain?
"If you want another L50 any time--I don't say that I can't give it to
you--though the whole thing's damned unremunerative! There's the trap.
Well--good-by."
Winn stood quite still for a moment looking at his father. It might have
been thought by an observer that his eyes, which were remarkably
bright, were offensively critical, but Sir Peter, though he wished the
last moment to end, knew that his son was not being critical.
Then Winn said, "Well--good-by, Father. I'm sure I'm much obliged to
you." And his father said, "Damn everything!" just after the door was
shut.