If Winter Comes Part 13

"Sabre," inquired Mr. Fortune, "you get on well with Twyning, I trust?"

"Get on? Oh yes. We don't have much to do with each other."

"Do you dislike Twyning?"

"I don't dislike him. I'm indifferent to him."

"I regret to hear that," said Mr. Fortune.

From the door Sabre put a question in his turn: "When are you going to make this change with Twyning?"

"Not to-day."

"Am I still to remember that you held out partnership to me?"

"Certainly you may."

"When is it likely to be?"

"Not to-day."

Maddening expression!

Sabre, in his room, went towards his chair. He was about to drop into it when he recollected something. He went out into the corridor and along the corridor, past Mr. Fortune's door (Canon Toomuch coming heavily up the stairs) to Twyning's room. He put in his head. "Oh, I say, Twyning, if Fortune should ever ask you if you told me about that business, you can tell him you didn't."

"Oh--oh, right-o," said Twyning; and to himself when the door closed, "Funked speaking to him!"

V

Arrived again in his room, Sabre dropped into his chair. In his eyes was the look that had been in them when he had tried to explain to Mr.

Fortune about the books, what Mr. Fortune had confessed he found a little beyond him. He thought: "The books.... Of course Fortune hasn't imagined them ... seen them grow helped them to grow.... But it hurts.

Like h.e.l.l it hurts.... And I can't explain to him how I feel about them.... I can't explain to any one."

His thoughts moved on: "I've been twelve years with him. Twelve years we've been daily together, and when I said that about the books I sat there and he sat there--and just looked. Stared at each other like masks. Masks! Nothing but a mask to be seen for either of us. I sit behind my mask and he sits behind his and that's all we see. Twelve mortal years! And there're thousands of people in thousands of offices ... thousands of homes ... just the same. All behind masks.

Mysterious business. Extraordinary. How do we keep behind? Why do we keep behind? We're all going through the same life. Come the same way.

Go the same way. You look at insects, ants, scurrying about, and not two of them seem to have a thing in common, not two of them seem to know one another; and you think it's odd, you think it's because they don't know they're all in the same boat. But we're just the same. They might think it of us. And we _do_ know. And yet you get two lives and put them together twelve years in an office ... in a house.... Mabel and I ... practically we just sit and look at each other. Her mask. My mask...."

He thought: "One knows what it is, what it looks like, with ants.

They're all plugging about like mad like that, not knowing one another, nor caring, because they all seem to be looking for something. I wonder.... I wonder--are we? Is that the trouble? All looking for something.... You can see it in half the faces you see. Some wanting, and knowing they are wanting something. Others wanting something but just putting up with it, just content to be discontented. You can see it. Yes, you can. Looking for what? Love? But lots have love. Happiness?

But aren't lots happy? But are they?"

He knitted his brows: "It goes deeper than that. It's some universal thing that's wanting. Is it something that religion ought to give, but doesn't? Light? Some new light to give every one certainty in religion, in belief. Light?"

His thoughts went to Mabel. "Those houses in King's Close are going to be eighty pounds a year, and what do you think, Mrs. Toller is going to take one." And he had not answered her but had rustled the newspaper and had intended her to know why he had rustled the paper: to show he couldn't stick it! Unkind. His heart smote him for Mabel. Such a pathetically simple thing for Mabel to find enjoyment in! Why, he might just as reasonably rustle the newspaper at a baby because it had enjoyment in a rattle. A rattle would not amuse him, and Mrs. Toller taking a house beyond her means did not amuse him; but why on earth should he--?

He put the thing to himself in his reasoning way, his brow wrinkled up: She was his wife. She had left her home for his home. She had a right to his interest in her ideas. He had a duty towards her ideas. Unkind.

Rotten.

Upon a sudden impulse he looked at his watch. Only just after twelve. He could get back in time for lunch. Lonely for her, day after day, and left as he had left her that morning. They could have a jolly afternoon together. He could make it a jolly afternoon. Nona kept coming into his thoughts--and more so after this Twyning business. He would have Mabel in his thoughts.

He went in and told Mr. Fortune he rather thought of taking the afternoon off if he was not wanted. He mounted his bicycle and rode purposefully back to Mabel.

CHAPTER III

I

The free-wheel run down into Perry Green landed him a little short of his gate,--not bad! Pirrip, the postman, whom he had pa.s.sed in the bicycle's penultimate struggles, overtook him in its death throes and watched with interest the miracles of balancing with which, despite his preoccupation of mind, habit made him prolong them to the uttermost inch.

He dismounted. "Anything for me, Pirrip?"

"One for you, Mr. Sabre."

Sabre took the letter and glanced at the handwriting.

It was from Nona.

Her small, neat, masculine script had once been as familiar to him as his own. It was curiously like his own. She had the same trick of not linking all the letters in a word. Her longer words, like his own, looked as if they were two or three short words close together. To this day, when he did not get a letter from her once in a year--or in five years--his address on an envelope in her handwriting was a thing he could bring, and sometimes did bring with perfect clearness before his mental vision.

He glanced at it, regarded it for slightly longer than a glance, and with a little pucker of brows and lips, then made the action of putting it, unopened, in his pocket. Then he rested the bicycle against his hip and opened her letter.

"Northrepps. Tuesday." She never dated her letters. He used to be always telling her about that. Tuesday was yesterday.

Dear Marko--We're back. We've been from China to Peru--almost. Come up one day and be bored about it. How are you?

Nona.

He thought: "Funny she didn't mention she'd written just now. Perhaps she thought it was funny I didn't say I'd had it. I must tell her."

He returned her letter to its envelope and put the envelope in his pocket. Then wheeled his bicycle into his gate. He smiled. "Mabel will be surprised at me back like this."

Mabel was descending the stairs as he entered the hall. In the white dress she wore she made a pleasant picture against the broad, shallow stairway and the dark panelling. But she did not appear particularly pleased to see him. But he thought, "Why should she be? That's just it.

That's why I've come back."

"Hullo?" she greeted him. "Have you forgotten something?"

He smiled invitingly. "No, I've just come back. I suddenly thought we'd have a holiday."

She showed puzzlement. "A holiday? What, the office? All of you?"

She had paused three steps from the foot of the stairs, her right hand on the banisters.

His wife!...

He slid his hand up the rail and rested it on hers. "Good lord, no. Not the office. No, I suddenly thought we'd have a holiday. You and I."