Phyllis Bottome - The Dark Tower

“Is anything the matter?” she asked coldly.

He had only himself to thank that she was cold – he knew that. He saw so plainly now, all the mistakes he’d made, that the ones Estelle had made, receded into the distance. He’d never been gentle to her. Even when he thought he loved her, he wasn’t really gentle.

Gentleness was superlative kindness, and no woman who had not had just that sort of kindness from the man she married, could help being rather nasty. He had owed it to Estelle – no matter whether she told him the truth or not.

“Look here, Estelle,” he began. “I want our boy to go to Charterhouse.”

It wasn’t exactly what he meant to say, but it was something; he had never called Peter “our boy” before. Estelle did not notice it.

“Of course, I should prefer Eton,” she said, “but I suppose you will do as you like – as usual!”

Winn dropped the piece of tassel, but he persevered.

“I say,” he began, “don’t you think we’ve got rather off the track? I know it’s not your fault, but your being ill and my being away and all that? I don’t want you to feel sore about it, you know. I want you to realize that I know I’ve been rather a beast to you. I don’t think I’m fitted somehow for domestic life – what?”

“Fitted for it!” said Estelle, tragically. “I have never known one happy moment with you! You seem incapable of any kind of chivalry! I never would have believed a man could exist who knew less how to make a woman happy! It’s too late to talk of it all now! I’ve made my supreme sacrifice. I’ve offered up my broken heart! I am living upon a higher plane! You would never understand anything that wasn’t coarse, brutal, and low! So I shan’t explain it to you. I know my duty, but I don’t think after the way you have behaved I really need consider myself under any obligation to live with you again. Father Anselm agrees with me.”

Winn laughed. “Don’t you worry about that,” he hastened to assure her, “or Father Anselm either; there isn’t the least necessity – and it wasn’t what I meant.”

Estelle looked annoyed. It plainly should have been what Winn meant.

“Have as much of the higher plane as you like,” he went on, “only look after the boy. I’m off to London to-night, there’s probably going to be some work of a kind that I can do. I mayn’t be back directly. Hope you’ll be all right. We can write about plans.”

He stood up, hesitating a little. He had an idea that it would make him feel less strange if she kissed him. Of course it was absurd, because just to have a woman’s arms round his neck wasn’t going to be the least like Claire. But he had a curious feeling that perhaps he might never be alone with a woman again, and he wanted to part friends with Estelle.

“I wonder,” he said, leaning towards her, “would you mind very much if I kissed you?”

Estelle turned her head away with a little gesture of aversion.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I shall not willingly allow you to kiss me, but of course you are my husband – I am in your power.”

“By Jove,” said Winn, unexpectedly, “what a little cat you are!”

They were the last words he ever said to her.

For a time he could do nothing but think of his luck – it was astounding how obstacles had been swept aside for him.

The best he had expected was that in the hurry of things he might get back to India without a medical examination, in the hope that his regiment would be used later. But his work at the Staff College had brought him into notice, a man conveniently died, and Winn appeared at the right moment.

Within twenty-four hours of his visit to the War Office, he was attached for staff duty to a British division.

Then work closed over his head. He became a railway time-table, a lost-luggage office, a registrar, and a store commissioner.

He had the duties of a special Providence thrust upon him, with all the disadvantages of being readily held accountable, so skilfully evaded by the higher powers.

Junior officers flew to him for orders as belated ladies fly to their pin cushions for pins.

He ate when it was distinctly necessary, and slept two hours out of the twenty-four.

He left nothing undone which he could do himself; his mind was unfavorable to chance. The heads of departments listened when he made suggestions, and found it convenient to answer with accuracy his sudden questions.

Subordinates hurried to obey his infrequent but final orders; and when Winn said, “I think you’d find it better,” people found it better.

The division slipped off like cream, without impediment or hitch.

There were no delays, the men acquired their kit, and found their railway carriages.

The trains swept in velvet softness out of the darkened London station through the sweet, quiet, summer night into a sleepless Folkestone. The division went straight onto the right transports; there wasn’t a man, a horse, or a gun out of place.

Winn heaved a sigh of relief as he stepped on board; his troubles as a staff officer had only just begun, but they had begun as troubles should always begin, by being adequately met. There were no arrears.

He did not think of Claire until he stood on deck and saw the lights receding and the shadow that was England passing out of his sight.

He remembered her then with a little pang of joy – for suddenly he knew that he was free to think of her.

He had thought of her before as a man registers a fact that is always present to him, but in the interval since he had seen her his consciousness of her had been increasingly troubled.

Now the trouble was fading, as England faded, as his old life was fading.

He had a sense that he was finally freed. It was not like seeing Claire again, but it was like not having to see anything else.

“Until I’m dead I’m hers, and after I’m dead I’m hers, so that’s all right,” he said to himself. “I haven’t got to muddle things up any more.”

The sea lay around them at dawn like a sheet of pearl – it was very empty but for the gulls’ wings beating to and fro out of the mist.

Winn had lived through many campaigns. He had known rough jungle tussles in mud swamps, maddened by insects, thirst, and fever; he had fought in colder, cleaner dangers down the Khyber Pass, and he had gone through the episodic scientific flurries of South Africa; but France disconcerted him; he had never started a campaign before in a country like a garden, met by welcoming populations, with flowers and fruit.

It made him feel sick. The other places were the proper ones for war.

It was not his way to think of what lay before him. It would, like all great emergencies, like all great calamities, keep to its moment, and settle itself. Nevertheless he could not free his mind from the presence of the villages – the pleasant, smiling villages, the little church towers in the middle, the cobbled streets, the steep-pitched, gray roofs and the white sunny walls.

Carnations and geraniums filled the windows, and all the inhabitants, the solid, bright-faced people, had a greeting for their khaki guests.

“Voilà quelque choses des solides, ces Anglais!” the women called to each other.

Winn found himself shrinking from their welcoming eyes. He thought he hadn’t had enough sleep, because as a rule a Staines did not shrink; but when he slept in the corner of the hot jolting railway train, he dreamed of the villages.

They were to attack directly they arrived at their destination. By the time they reached there, Winn knew more. He had gathered up the hastily flung messages by telegram and telephone, by flying cars and from breathless despatch riders, and he knew what they meant.