The Dark Tower

He could stay on for two years at the War Office, and Estelle meant him to stay without inconvenience to herself. He tried bargaining with her; but her idea of a bargain was one-sided.

“I sometimes feel as if you kept me out of everything,” she said at last.

Estelle was feeling her way; she thought she might collect a few extras to add to her side of the bargain.

Apparently she was right. Winn was all eagerness to meet her. “How do you mean?” he asked anxiously.

“Oh,” she said contemplatively, “such heaps of things! One thing, I don’t expect you’ve ever noticed that you never ask your friends to stay here. I’ve had all mine; you’ve never even asked your mother! It’s as if you were ashamed of me.”

“I’ll ask her like a shot if you like,” he said eagerly. Estelle was not anxious for a visit from Lady Staines, but she thought it sounded better to begin with her. She let her pass.

“It’s not only your relations,” she went on; “it’s your friends. What must they think of a wife they are never allowed to see?”

“But they’re such a bachelor crew,” he objected. “It never occurred to me you’d care for them — just ordinary soldier chaps like me, not a bit clever or amusing.”

Estelle did not say that crews of bachelors are seldom out of place in the drawing-room of a young and pretty woman. She looked past her husband to where in fancy she beheld the aisle of a church and the young Adonis, who had been his best man, with eyes full of reverence and awe gazing at her approaching figure.

“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.