Phyllis Bottome - The Dark Tower

“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!”

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.

Before he had gone out of earshot Sir Peter asked Lionel what his father would do if presented with a possible daughter-in-law so markedly frail? Sir Peter seemed to be laboring under the delusion that he had been weakly favorable to his son’s inclinations, and that any other father would have expressed himself more forcibly. Lionel was saved from the awkwardness of disagreeing with him by an unexpected remark from Lady Staines.

“A girl from some kind of a chemist’s shop,” she observed musingly. “I fancy she’s too good for Charles.”

Sir Peter, who was fond of Charles, said the girl was probably not from a chemist’s shop; and described to the horror of the butler, who had entered to prepare the tea-table, just what kind of a place she probably was from.

Lady Staines looked at Winn, and said she didn’t see that it was much worse to marry a manicure girl than one who looked like a manequin. They were neither of them types likely to do credit to the family. Winn replied that, as far as that went, bad clothes and good morals did not always go together. He was prepared apparently with an apt illustration, when Isabella’s husband, the Rev. Mr. Betchley, asked feebly if he might go up-stairs to rest.

It was quite obvious to everybody that he needed it.

The next morning at breakfast the manicure girl was again discussed, but in a veiled way so as not really to upset Charles before the wedding.

Winn escaped immediately afterwards with Lionel. They went for a walk, most of which was conducted in silence; finally, however, they found a log, took out their pipes, and made themselves comfortable.

Lionel said, “I wish I’d seen Miss Fanshawe; it must be awfully jolly for you, Winn.”

Winn was silent for a minute or two, then he began, slowly gathering impetus as he went on: “Well — yes, of course, in a sense it is. I mean, I know I’m awfully lucky and all that, only — you see, old chap, I’m frightfully ignorant of women. I know one sort of course — a jolly sight better than you do — but girls! Hang it all, I don’t know girls. That’s what worries me — she’s such a little thing.” He paused a moment. “I hope it’s all right,” he said, “marrying her. It seems pretty rough on them sometimes, I think — don’t you — I fancy she’s delicate and all that.” Lionel nodded. “It does seem rather beastly,” he admitted, “their having to have a hard time, I mean — but if they care for you — I suppose it works out all right.” Winn paid no attention to this fruitless optimism. He went on with his study of Estelle. “She’s — she’s religious too, you know, that’s why we’re to have that other service first. Rather nice idea, I think, don’t you, what? Makes it a bit of a strain for her though I’m afraid, but she’d never think of that. I’m sure she’s plucky.” Lionel also was quite sure Estelle must be plucky.

“Fancy you getting married,” Lionel said suddenly. “I can’t see it somehow.”

“I feel it funny myself,” Winn admitted. “You see, it’s so damned long, and I never have seen much of women. I hope she won’t expect me to talk a lot or anything of that kind. Her people, you know, chatter like so many magpies — just oozes out of ’em.”

“We must be off,” Lionel said.

They stood up, knocked the ashes out of their pipes, and prepared to walk on.

It was a mild June day, small vague hills stretched behind them, and before them soft, lawn-like fields fell away to the river’s edge.

Everywhere the green of trees in a hundred tones of color and with delicate, innumerable leaf shadows, laid upon the landscape, the fragrance and lightness of the spring.

They were in a temperate land, every yard of it was cultivated and civilized, immensely lived on and understood. None of it had been neglected or was dangerous or strange to the eye of man.

Simultaneously the thought flashed between them of other lands and of sharper vicissitudes; they saw again bleak passes which were cruel death traps, and above them untrodden alien heights; they felt the solemn vastness of the interminable, flawless snows. They kept their eyes away from each other — but they knew what each other was feeling, adventure and danger were calling to them — the old sting and thrill of an unending trail; and then from a little hollow in the guarded hills rang out the wedding bells.

Lionel looked a little shyly at his chief. “I wonder,” he said, as Winn made no response, “if we can ever do things — things together again, I mean — I should like to think we could.” Winn gave him a quick look and moved hastily ahead over the field path toward the church. “Why the devil shouldn’t we?” he threw back at Lionel over his shoulder.