If Winter Comes Part 15

His thought was, "d.a.m.n the letter!"

Mabel handed it back, without returning it to its envelope. She said, "No, it's not formal."

She snipped three roses with astonis.h.i.+ng swiftness,--_snip, snip, snip_!

Sabre sought about in his mind for something to say. There was nothing in his mind to say. He had an absurd vision of his two hands feeling about in the polished interior of a skull, as one might fumble for something in a large jar.

At the end of an enormous cavity of time he found some slight remark about blight on the rose trees--the absence of it this year--and ventured it. He had again an absurd vision of dropping it into an enormous cavern, as a pea into an immense bowl, and it seemed to tinkle feebly and forlornly, as a pea would. "No blight this year, eh?"

"No; is there?" agreed Mabel,--_snip_!

Nevertheless conversation arose from the forlorn pea and was maintained.

They moved about the garden from flower bed to flower bed. In half an hour the shallow basket was beautified with fragrant blooms and Mabel thought she had enough.

"Well, that's that," said Sabre as they reentered the morning room.

III

Low Jinks, her matchless training at the level of mysteriously performed duties pat to the moment and without command, appeared with a tray of vases. Each vase was filled to precisely half its capacity with water.

There were also a folded newspaper, a pair of small gilt scissors and a saucer. Low Jinks spread the newspaper at one end of the table, arranged the vases in a semicircle upon it, and placed the gilt scissors precisely in alignment with the right-hand vase of the semicircle, and the saucer (for the stalk ends) precisely in alignment with the left-hand vase. She then withdrew, closing the door with exquisite softness. Sabre had never seen this rite before. The perfection of its performance was impressive. He thought, "Mabel is marvellous." He said, "Shall I take them out of the basket?"

"No, leave them. I take them up just as I want them."

She took up a creamy rose and snipped off a fragment of stalk over the saucer. "Why does she call you 'Marko'?"

He was utterly taken aback. If the question had come from any one but Mabel, he would have quite failed to connect it with the letter. But there had distinctly been an "incident" over the letter, though so far closed, as he had imagined, that he was completely surprised.

He said "Who? Nona?"

"Yes, Nona, if you like. Lady Tybar."

"Why, she always has. You know that."

Mabel put the rose into a specimen vase with immense care and touched a speck off its petals with her fingers. "I really didn't."

"Mabel, you know you do. You must have heard her."

"Well, I may have. But long ago. I certainly didn't know she used it in letters."

He felt he was growing angry.

"What on earth's the difference?"

"It seems to me there's a great deal of difference. I didn't know she wrote you letters."

He was angry. "d.a.m.n it, she doesn't write me letters."

She shrugged her shoulders. "You seem to get them anyway."

Maddening!

And then he thought, "I'm not going to let it be maddening. This is just what happens." He said, "Well, this is silly. I've known her--we've known one another--for years, since we were children, pretty well. She's called me by my Christian name since I can remember. You must have heard her. We don't see much of her--perhaps you haven't. I thought you had.

Anyway, dash the thing. What does it matter?"

"It doesn't _matter_"--she launched a flower into a vase--"a bit. I only think it's funny, that's all."

"Well, it's just her way."

Mabel gave a little sniff. He thought it was over. But it wasn't over.

"If you ask me, I call it a funny letter. You say your Christian name, but it isn't your Christian name--_Marko_! And then saying, 'How are you?' like that--"

"Like what? She just said it, didn't she?"

"Yes I know. And then 'Nona.' Don't you call that funny?"

"Well, I always used to call her 'Nona.' She'd have thought it funny, as you call it, to put anything else. I tell you it's just her way."

"Well, I think it's a very funny way and I think anybody else would think so. I don't like her. I never did like her."

There seemed no more to say.

IV

He walked up to his room. He closed the door behind him and sat on a straight-backed chair, his legs outthrust. Failure? He had come back home thus suddenly with immensely good intentions. Failure? On the whole, no. There was a great deal more he could have said downstairs, and a great deal more he had felt uncommonly inclined to say. But he had left the morning room without saying it, and that was good; that redeemed his sudden return from absolute failure.

Why had he returned? He "worked back" through the morning on the Fargus principle. Not because of his thoughts after the Twyning business; not because of the disturbance of the Twyning business. No. He had returned because he had seen Nona. Thoughts--feelings--had been stirred within him by meeting her. And it had suddenly been rather hateful to have those thoughts and to feel that--that Mabel had no place in them.

Well, why had he come up here? What was he doing up here? Well, it hadn't been altogether successful. Mabel hadn't been particularly excited to see him. No, but that didn't count. Why should she be? He had gone off after breakfast, glum as a bear. Well, then there was that niggling business over why he had returned. Always like that. Never plump out over a thing he put up. Niggling. And then this infernal business about the letter. That word "funny." She must have used it a hundred times. Still.... The niggling had been carried off, they had gone into the garden together; and this infernal letter business--at least he had come away without boiling over about it. Much better to have come away as he did.... Still....

V

A gong boomed enormously through the house. It had been one of her father's wedding presents to Mabel and it always reminded Sabre of the Dean's, her father's voice. The Dean's voice boomed, swelling into a loud boom when he was in mid-speech and reverberating into a distant boom as his periods terminated. This was the warning gong for lunch. In ten minutes, in this perfectly ordered house, a different gong, a set of chimes, would announce that lunch was ready. The reverberations had scarcely ceased when Low Jinks, although she had caused the reverberations, appeared in his room with a bra.s.s can of hot water.

"Mr. Boom Bagshaw has not arrived yet, sir," said Low Jinks; "but the mistress thought we wouldn't wait any longer."

She displaced the ewer from the basin and subst.i.tuted the bra.s.s can. She covered the can with a white towel, uncovered the soap dish, and disappeared, closing the door as softly as if it and the doorpost were padded with velvet. Perfect establishment!

Sabre washed his hands and went down. Mabel was in the morning room, seated at the centre table where the flowers had been and where now was her embroidery basket. She was embroidering, an art which, in common with all the domestic arts, she performed to perfection. "Bagshaw's late?" said Sabre.

Mabel glanced at the clock. Her gesture above her busy needle was pretty.

"Well, he wasn't absolutely sure about coming. I thought we wouldn't wait. Ah, there he is."

Sabre thought, "Good. That business is over. Nothing in it. Only Mabel's way."