Chapter VI

“I don’t think I shall attend those Welfare meetings any more,” remarked Mrs. Lewis Wonnicott with a slight drawl. She gathered up her letters from the breakfast table and walked to the window.

In the garden below, Leach, the gardener, was experimenting with a new mower on the well-clipped lawns. The ramblers on the pergola were at their best. Her husband in a broad check suit and a white stock, looked up from _The Times_ and said:

“Oh, how is that, my dear?”

“They are getting such awful people in. That dreadful woman, the wife of Mounthead, the publican, has joined.”

“Old Mounthead’s all right--not a bad sort. He knows a gelding from a blood mare.”

“That may be, but his wife is the limit. I happened to say something about the new mower, and she was simply rude. An awful vulgar person, wears spangles, and boasts about the money her husband makes out of selling whisky.”

“By gad! I bet he does, too. I wouldn’t mind having a bit in his pub. Do you see Canadian Pacifics are still stagnant?”

“Lewis, I sometimes wish you wouldn’t be so material. You think about nothing but money.”

“Oh, come, my dear, I’m interested in a crowd of other things--things which I don’t make money out of, too.”

“For instance?”

“The land, the people who work on it, horses, cattle, game, the best way to do things for everybody. Besides, ain’t I interested in the children? The two girls’ careers at Bedales? Young Ralph at Rugby and going up to Cambridge next year?”

“You know they’re there, but how much interest you take, I couldn’t say.”

“What is it you want me to do, my dear?”

“I think you might bestir yourself to get amongst better people. The girls will be leaving school soon and coming home. We know no one, no one at all in the neighbourhood.”

“No one at all! Jeminy! Why, we know everyone!”

“You spend all your time among horse-breeders and cattle-dealers, and people like Mounthead, and occasionally call on the Vicar, but who is there of any importance that we know?”

“Lord! What do you want? Do you want me to go and call at Crawshay Park, and ask Sir Septimus and Lady Letter to come and make up a four at bridge?”

“Don’t be absurd! You know quite well that the Letters are entirely inaccessible. He’s not only an M.P. and owner of half the newspapers in the country, but a millionaire. They entertain house parties of ministers and dukes, and even royalty. They can afford to ignore even the county people themselves. But there are others. We don’t even know the county.”

“Who, for instance?”

“Well, the Burnabys. You met St. John Burnaby at the Constitutional Club two or three times and yet you have never attempted to follow it up. They’re very nice people and neighbours. And they have three boys all in the twenties, and the girl Sheila--she’s just a year younger than Ralph.”

“My word! Who’s being material now?”

“It isn’t material, it’s just--thinking of the children.”

“Women are wonderful,” muttered Lewis Wonnicott into his white stock, without raising his head. Mrs. Wonnicott swept to the door. Her thin lips were drawn in a firm straight line. Her refined hard little face appeared pinched and petulant. With her hand on the door-handle she said acidly:

“If you can spare half an hour from your grooms and pigs, I think you might at least do this to please me--call on Mrs. Burnaby to-day.”

And she went out of the room, shutting the door crisply.

“Oh, Jiminy-Piminy!” muttered Mr. Wonnicott. “Jiminy-Piminy!”

He stood up and shook himself. Then with feline intentness he walked quickly to the French window, and opening it walked down the steps into the garden. All the way to the sunk rose-garden he kept repeating, “Jiminy-Piminy!”

Once among the rose-bushes he lighted his pipe. (His wife objected to smoking in the house.) He blew clouds of tobacco smoke amongst imaginary green-fly. Occasionally he would glance furtively out at the view across the downs. Half buried amongst the elms near Basted Old Church he could just see the five red gables of the Burnabys’s capacious mansion.

“I can’t do it,” he thought, “I can’t do it, and I shall have to do it.”

It was perfectly true he had been introduced to St. John Burnaby and had spoken to him once or twice. It was also true that Burnaby had never given any evidence of wishing to follow up the acquaintanceship. Bit of a swell, Burnaby, connected with all sorts of people, member of half a dozen clubs, didn’t race but went in for golf, and had a shooting box in Scotland. Some said he had political ambitions, and meant to try for Parliament at the next election. He didn’t racket round in a check suit and a white stock and mix with grooms and farm hands; he kept up the flair of the gentleman, the big man, even in the country. He had two cars, and three acres of conservatory, and peacocks, and a son in the diplomatic service, a daughter married to a bishop. His wife, too, came of a poor but aristocratic family. Over at the “Five Gables” they kept nine gardeners and twenty odd servants. Everything was done tip-top.

Lewis Wonnicott turned and regarded his one old man gardener, trying the new mower, which Mrs. Mounthead had been so rude about to Dorothy. Poor Dorothy! She was touchy, that’s what it was. Of course she _did_ think of the children--no getting away from it. She was ambitious more for them than for herself or himself. She had given up being ambitious for him. He knew that she looked upon him as a slacker, a kind of cabbage. Well, perhaps he had been. He hadn’t accomplished all he ought to. He had loved the land, the feel of horse-flesh, the smell of wet earth when the morning dews were on it. He had been a failure ... a failure. He was not up to county people. He was unworthy of his dear wife’s ambitions. Jiminy-Piminy! It would be a squeeze to send Ralph up to Cambridge next year!

He looked across the valley at the five red gables among the elms, and sighed.

“Lucky devil!” he murmured. “Damn it all! I suppose I must go.”