The Dark Tower

Winn wished he hadn’t spoken. He did not know how to tell his father not to mind. He hadn’t really thought his father would mind.

However, there they sat, minding it.

Then Sir Peter said, “I don’t believe in consumption, I never have, and I never shall; besides Taylor says Davos is a very good place for it, and you’re an early case, and it’s all damned nonsense, and you’ve got to buck up and think no more about it. What I want to hear is that you’re back in your Regiment again. I dare say there’ll be trouble later on, and then where’ll you be if you’re an invalid — have you ever thought of that?”

“Yes — that’d be something to live for,” Winn said gravely; “trouble.”

“You shouldn’t be so confoundedly particular,” said his father. “Now look at me — if we did have trouble where’d I be? Nowhere at all — old! Just gout and newspapers and sons getting up ideas about their lungs, but when do I complain?

“If you want another £50 any time — I don’t say that I can’t give it to you — though the whole thing’s damned unremunerative! There’s the trap. Well — good-by.”

Winn stood quite still for a moment looking at his father. It might have been thought by an observer that his eyes, which were remarkably bright, were offensively critical, but Sir Peter, though he wished the last moment to end, knew that his son was not being critical.

Then Winn said, “Well — good-by, Father. I’m sure I’m much obliged to you.” And his father said, “Damn everything!” just after the door was shut.

CHAPTER X

It hadn’t seemed dismal at first, it had only seemed quite unnatural. Everything had stopped being natural when the small creature in lawn, only the height of his knee, had been torn reluctantly away from its hold on his trousers. This parting had made Winn feel as if something inside him was being unfairly handled.

There was nothing he could get hold of in Peter to promise security, and the only thing that Peter could grasp was the trousers, which had had to be forcibly removed from him.

Later on Peter would be consoled by a Teddy Bear or the hearth brush, but Winn had had to go before Peter was consoled, and without the resources of the hearth brush.

Estelle wept bitterly in the hall, but Winn hadn’t minded that; he had long ago come to the conclusion that Estelle had a taste for tears, just as some people liked boiled eggs for breakfast. He simply patted her on the shoulder and looked away from her while she kissed him.

He had enjoyed starting from Charing Cross, intimidating the porters and giving the man who registered his luggage dispassionate and unfavorable pieces of his mind. But when he was once fairly off he began to have a new feeling. It came over him when he was out of England and had crossed the small gray strip of formless familiar sea — the sea itself always seemed to Winn to belong much more to England than to France — so much so that it annoyed him at Boulogne to have to submit to being thought possibly unblasphemous by porters. He began to feel alone. Up till now he had always seen his way. There had been fellows to do things with and animals; even marriage, though disconcerting, had not set him adrift. He had been cramped by it, but not disintegrated. Now what seemed to have happened was that he had been cut loose. There wasn’t the regiment or even a staff college to fall back upon. There wasn’t a trail to follow or horses to gentle; his very dog had had to be left behind because of the ridiculous restrictions of canine quarantine.

It really was an extraordinarily uncomfortable feeling, as if he were a damned ghost poking about in a new world full of surprises. It was quite possible that he might find himself among bounders. He had always avoided bounders, but that had been comparatively easy in a world where everybody observed an unspoken, inviolable code. If people didn’t know the ropes, they found it simpler to go, and Winn had sometimes assisted them to find it simpler; but he saw that now bounders could really turn up with impunity, for, as far as ropes went, it was he himself who would be in the minority. He might meet men who talked, long-haired, mysterious chaps too soft to kick or radicals, though if the worst came to the worst, he flattered himself that he had always the resource of being unpleasant.

He knew that when the hair rose up on his head like the back of a challenged bull-dog, and he stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at people rather straight between the eyes, they usually shut up.

He didn’t mind doing this of course, if necessary; only if he had to do it to everybody in the hotel it might become monotonous, and he had a nervous fear that consumption was rather a cad’s disease.

Fortunately he had got his skates, and he supposed there’d be toboggans and skis. He would see everybody in hell before he would share a table.