“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 aëroplanes 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.”