“Hum!” said Lady Staines thoughtfully. “I can’t see what people spend so much on education for nowadays. I really can’t! And you’re going to marry my second son, ain’t you?” she demanded. “Well, I’m sure it’s very kind of you. All the Staines have tempers, but Winn’s is quite the worst. I don’t want to exaggerate, but I really don’t think you could match it in this world. He generally keeps it, too! He was a nasty, murderous, little boy. I assure you I’ve often beaten him till he was black and blue and never got a word out of him.”
Mrs. Fanshawe looked horrified. “But my dear Lady Staines,” she urged, “surely you tried kindness?”
Lady Staines shook her head. “No,” she said, “I don’t think so, I don’t think I am kind – very. But he’s turned out well, don’t you think? He’s the only one of my sons who’s got honors – a ‘D.S.O.’ for South Africa, and a C.B. for something or other, I never know what, in China; and he got his Majority extraordinarily young for special services – or he wouldn’t have been able to marry you, my dear, for his father won’t help him. He doesn’t get drunk as often as the other two boys, either; in fact, on the whole, I should call him satisfactory. And now he’s chosen you, and I’m sure we’re all very grateful to you for taking him in hand.”
Mrs. Fanshawe offered her visitor tea; she was profoundly shocked, but she thought that tea would help. Lady Staines refused it. “No, thank you very much,” she said. “I must be getting back to give Sir Peter his. I shall be late as it is, and I shall probably hear him swearing all down the drive. We shall all be seeing more than enough of each other before long. But there’s no use making a fuss about it, is there? We’re a most disagreeable family, and I’m sure it’ll be worse for you than for us.”
Estelle accompanied her future mother-in-law to the door. She had not been as much shocked as her mother.
Lady Staines laid her small neat hand on the girl’s arm. She looked at her very hard, but there was a spark of some kind, behind the hardness; if the eyes hadn’t been those of Lady Staines, they might almost have been said to plead.
“I wonder if you like him?” she said slowly.
Estelle said, “Oh, dear Lady Staines, believe me – with all my heart!”
Lady Staines didn’t believe her, but she smiled good-humoredly. “Yes, yes, my dear, I know!” she said. “But how much heart have you got? You see his happiness and yours depend on that. The woman who marries a Staines ought to have a good deal of heart and all of it ought to be his.”
Estelle put on an air of pretty dignity. “I have never loved any one before,” she asserted with serene untruthfulness (she felt sure this fact couldn’t be proved against her), “and Winn believes in my heart.”
“Does he?” said his mother. “I wonder. He believes in your pretty face! Well, it is pretty, I acknowledge that. Keep it as pretty as you can.”
She didn’t kiss her future daughter-in-law, but she tapped her lightly on the shoulder and trudged back with head erect through the rain.
“It’s a bad business,” she said to herself thoughtfully. “He’s rushed his fence and there’s a ditch on the other side of it, deep enough to drown him!”
CHAPTER III
Winn wanted, if possible, a home without rows. He knew very little of homes, and nothing which had made him suppose this ideal likely to be realized.
Still he went on having it, hiding it, and hoping for it.
Once he had come across it. It was the time when he had decided to undertake a mission to Tibet without a government mandate. He wanted young Drummond to go with him. The job was an awkward and dangerous one. Certain authorities had warned Winn that though, if the results were satisfactory, it would certainly be counted in his favor, should anything go wrong no help could be sent to him, and he would be held personally responsible; that is he would be held responsible if he were not dead, which was the most likely outcome of the whole business.
It is easy to test a man on the Indian frontier, and Winn had had his eye on Lionel Drummond for two years. He was a cool-headed, reliable boy, and in some occult and wholly unexpressed way Winn was conscious that he was strongly drawn to him. Winn offered him the job, and even consented, when he was on leave, to visit the Drummonds and talk the matter over with the boy’s parents. It was then that he discovered that people really could have a quiet home.
Mrs. Drummond was a woman of a great deal of character, very great gentleness, and equal courage. She neither cried nor made fusses, and no one could even have imagined her making a noise.
It was she who virtually settled, after a private talk with Winn, that Lionel might accompany him. The extraordinary thing that Mrs. Drummond said to Winn was, “You see, I feel quite sure that you’ll look after Lionel, whatever happens.”
Winn had replied coldly, “I should never dream of taking a man who couldn’t look after himself.”
Mrs. Drummond said nothing. She just smiled at Winn as if he had agreed that he would look after Lionel. General Drummond was non-committal. He knew the boy would get on without the mission, but he also seemed to be influenced by some absurd idea that Winn was to be indefinitely trusted, so that he would say nothing to stop them. Lionel himself was wild with delight, and the whole affair was managed without suspicion, resentment, or hostility.
The expedition was quite as hard as the authorities had intimated, and at one point it very nearly proved fatal. A bad attack of dysentery and snow blindness brought Lionel down at a very inconvenient spot, crossing the mountains of Tibet during a blizzard. The rest of the party said with some truth that they must go forward or perish. Winn sent them on to the next settlement, keeping back a few stores and plenty of cartridges. He said that he would rejoin them with Drummond when Drummond was better, and if he did not arrive before a certain date they were to push on without him.
They were alone together for six weeks, and during these six weeks Winn discovered that he was quite a new kind of person; for one thing he developed into a first-rate nurse, and he could be just like a mother, and say the silliest, gentlest things. No one was there to see or hear him, and the boy was so ill that he wouldn’t be likely to remember afterwards. He did remember, however, he remembered all his life. The stores ran out and they were dependent on Winn’s rifle for food. They melted snow water to drink, and there were days when their chances looked practically invisible.
Somehow or other they got out of it, the boy grew better, the weather improved, and Winn managed, though the exact means were never specified, to drag Lionel on a sledge to the nearest settlement, where the rest of the party were still awaiting them.
After that the expedition was successful and the friendship between the two men final. Winn didn’t like to think what Mrs. Drummond would say to him when they got back to England, but she let him down quite easily; she gave him no thanks, she only looked at him with Lionel’s steady eyes and said, smiling a little, “I always knew you’d bring him back to me.”
Winn did not ask Lionel to stay at Staines Court until the wedding. None of the Staines went in much for making friends, and he didn’t want his mother to see that he was fond of any one.
The night before the wedding, however, Lionel arrived in the midst of an altercation as to who had ordered the motor to meet the wrong train.
This lasted a long time because all the Staines, except Dolores, were gathered together, and it expanded unexpectedly into an attack on Charles, the eldest son, whose name had been coupled with that of a lady whose professional aptitudes were described as those of a manicurist. There was a moment when murder of a particularly atrocious and internecine character seemed the only possible outcome to the discussion – then Charles in a white fury found the door.