“I thought,” she said indifferently, “you liked that man you insisted on having instead of Lord Arlington at the wedding?”
“I do,” said Winn. “He’s my best friend. I meet him sometimes in town, you know.”
“He must think it awfully funny,” said Estelle, sadly, “our never having him down here.”
“He’s not that sort,” said Winn. “He was my sub, you know. He wouldn’t think anything funny unless I told him to. We know each other rather well.”
“That makes it funnier still,” said Estelle, relentlessly.
“Oh, all right,” said Winn, after a moment’s pause. “Have him down here if you like. Shall I write to him or will you?”
“He’s your friend,” said Estelle, politely.
“Yes,” said Winn, “but it’s your idea.” There was a peculiar look in his eyes, as if he wanted to warn her about something. He went to the door and then glanced back at her, apparently hoping that she had changed her mind.
Estelle hadn’t the faintest intention of changing her mind. She had already decided to put sweet peas in Lionel’s room and a marked copy of “The Road Mender.”
“You may as well ask him yourself,” said Winn, “if you really want him to come.”
CHAPTER VI
It was time, Estelle felt, that the real things of life should come back to her. She had had them before marriage – these real things – light, swift, contacts with chosen spirits; friendships not untinged with a liability to become something less capable of definition. But since her marriage she had been forced into a world of secondary experiences. Winn, to begin with, had stood very much in the way, and when he had ceased to block the paths of sentiment she had not found a substitute. At Aldershot, where they lived, there was an unspoken rule that brides should be left alone. Women called, and men were polite, but when Estelle began those delicate personal conversations which led the way to deeper spiritual contacts she discovered that nothing followed. She could not say that she found the men elusive; stone walls are not elusive, but they do not lend themselves to an easy way across country. As to women, theoretically Estelle desired their friendship just as much as that of men; but in practice she generally found them unsympathetic, and incapable of the finest type of intimacy. They did not seem to know what the word devotion meant. Men did, especially young men, though the older ones talked more about it. Estelle had already seen herself after marriage as a confidante to Winn’s young brother officers. She would help them as only a good woman can. (She foresaw particularly how she would help to extricate them from the influences of bad women. It was extraordinary how many women who influenced men at all were bad!) Estelle never had any two opinions about being a good woman herself. She couldn’t be anything else. Good women held all the cards, but there was no reason why they shouldn’t be attractive; it was their failure to grasp this potentiality, which gave bad women their temporary sway.
It was really necessary in the missionary career open to young and attractive married women, to be magnetic. Up to a certain point men must be led on, because if they didn’t care for you in the right way you couldn’t do anything with them at all. After that point, they must be gently and firmly stopped, or else they might become tiresome, and that would be bad both for them and for you. Especially with a husband like Winn, who seemed incapable of grasping fine shades, and far too capable of dealing roughly and brutally with whatever he did grasp. There had been a dress, for instance, that he simply refused to let Estelle wear – remarking that it was a bit too thick – though that was really the last quality it had possessed.
The question of congenial friendship was therefore likely to be a difficulty, but Estelle had never forgotten Lionel Drummond. When she stopped thinking about Winn except as an annoyance, it became necessary for her to think of somebody else, and her mind fixed itself at once upon her husband’s friend. It seemed to her that in Lionel Drummond she would find a perfect spiritual counterpart. She dreamed of a friendship with him too deep for mere friendliness, too late for accepted love; and it seemed to her exactly the kind of thing she wanted. Hand in hand they would tread the path of duty together, surrounded by a rosy mist.
They might even lead Winn to higher things; but at this point Estelle’s imagination balked. She could not see Winn being led – he was too truculent – and he had never in his tenderest moments evinced the slightest taste for higher things. It would be better perhaps if they simply set him a good example. He would be certain not to follow it.
She and Lionel would have terrible moments, of course. Estelle thrilled at the thought of these moments, and from time to time she slightly stretched the elastic of the path of duty to meet them. They would still keep on it, of course; they would never go any further than Petrarch and Laura. These historic philanderers should be their limit, and when the worst came to the worst, Estelle would softly murmur to Lionel, “Petrarch and Laura have borne it, and we must bear it too.”
She became impatient for Lionel’s arrival and bought a new and exquisitely becoming blue chiffon dress. Both she and her maid were so struck by her appearance that when Estelle heard Winn banging about at the last moment in his dressing room, she knocked at his door. Even the lowest type of man can be used as a superior form of looking glass. He shouted “Come in!” and stared at her while he fumbled at his collar stud; then he lifted his eyebrows and said “War-paint – eh?”
“I only wanted to remind you, dear,” said Estelle patiently, “that the key of the wine cellar is in my bureau drawer.”
Lionel arrived before Winn had finished dressing. Estelle greeted him with outstretched hands. “I am so very glad to see you at last,” she said in her softest, friendliest voice. “I think it will do Winn good to have you here.”
Lionel laughed shyly.
“I shouldn’t have thought,” he said, “that Winn would need much more good.”
“Ah, my dear fellow!” said Winn’s voice behind him, “you don’t know how great my needs are. Sorry I couldn’t meet you.”
Estelle’s beautiful, wavering eyes rested for a moment on her husband. She had never known a man to dress so quickly, and it seemed to her an unnecessary quality.
The dinner was a great success. Both men were absurdly gay. Winn told good stories, laughed at Lionel, and rallied his young wife. She had never seen him like this before, and she put it down to the way one man sets off another.
Estelle felt that she was being a great success, and it warmed her heart. The two men talked for her and listened to her; she had a moment when she thought that perhaps, after all, she needn’t relegate Winn to a lower world.
They accepted with enthusiasm her offer to sing to them after dinner and then they kept her waiting in the drawing-room for an hour and a half.
She sat there opposite a tall Italian mirror, quivering with her power, her beauty, her ability to charm, and with nothing before her but the empty coffee-cups.
She played a little, she even sang a little (the house was small) to recall them to a sense of her presence, but inexplicably they clung to their talk. Winn who at ordinary times seemed incapable of more than disconnected fragments of speech was (she could hear him now and then quite distinctly) talking like a cataract; and Lionel was, if anything, worse. Her impatience turned into suspicion. Probably Winn was poisoning his friend’s mind against her. Perhaps he was drinking too much, Sir Peter did, and people often took after their fathers. That would have to be another point for Lionel and her to tackle. At last they came in, and Lionel said without any attempt at an apology:
“We should love some music, Mrs. Winn.”