CHAPTER V

John had been married six weeks. Four of them had been spent with an Angel in Paradise, and two of them at Mambles with Elise.

John had had a hard and lonely young life. He had plodded seriously through an orphaned childhood and into the sharpest crisis in history.

He had seen and read of the death of all his friends and come out of the shambles with one arm, and no observable future.

Then without effort or warning he had been admitted into work that moved nations; and into a friendship that saved his heart.

For three years he had held Arcady against all the enemies of life. And now, young, poor and maimed, he was master of his happiness, and owner of Mambles. It was enough to turn the head of a young man of any imagination, but it had not turned John’s. He behaved at Mambles as he had behaved at Mons. He looked about steadily for his duty and did it. Guns, disaster, and the sheer edge of danger had never deflected John at Mons; roses, young love, and luxury did not deflect him at Mambles. John felt that it was his plain duty to invite his sister-in-law to stay with his wife, and he invited her.

It was in the Dutch garden that John had seen and accepted the duty which in a fortnight had changed an angel into Elise, and Paradise into Mambles.

The moon shone big and yellow over the Dutch garden, it gave a haunting ghost light to the pale pink geraniums and the standard heliotrope rising in mauve clusters above the borders. The air was drunk with sweetness. It seemed as if time had consented to stand still and acknowledge the permanence of joy.

Elise leaning on John’s arm said suddenly, “And John, when may I have Hermione to stay?”

John had felt a momentary pang at her words, because he was so happy that he felt it an inconvenience to recognise the existence of other people.

Then he readjusted himself to the more perfect pleasure of pleasing Elise.

“Whenever you like, dearest,” he replied bravely if untruthfully. “Tell her we shall both be delighted to have her.”

Then one of them sighed.

When John told Mr. Brett what he had done, his father-in-law took his cigar out of his mouth and said in measured accents, “Well, John Sterling, I guess you feel you’ve done your duty. When a man does the plumb foolishest thing he can lay his hands on, naturally he has to find the highest motives for doing it; and a high motive is as easy to find as a barn door fowl; but it won’t lay any eggs for you. You can run round expecting your conscience to applaud you, and maybe your conscience will. I notice a man’s conscience comes when he calls it as quick as a cat after milk, but don’t come round for the approval of Oliver P. Brett!

“No, Sir! I respect a lunatic because he’s dangerous—but I don’t respect a normal man when he starts whistling for trouble; he can get all he wants without whistling.”

John looked haughty and said nothing. He had been so much admired lately by Elise that he felt whatever he did must be right.

Neither John nor Elise objected to Mr. Brett’s presence in their household. Mr. Brett’s personality was a strong one, but it was singularly unobtrusive.

He lived in the library which was a room John didn’t like, and in odd corners of the garden where the lovers never saw him.

Mr. Brett possessed that quality of ease and complete detachment which is only to be found in strong people who go their own way and do not want other people to accompany them.

John had never found the yoke of his secretaryship heavy. The work was astonishingly interesting and it would have been difficult to say which of the two men cared for it most.

It was not his return to work after the most perfect month of his existence which had so suddenly changed the paces of time, and checked John’s visions. Still John was loth to put the change down to the arrival of his charming sister-in-law, although she had arrived rather more copiously than anybody had intended. Hermione appeared within five hours of Elise’s invitation. Her exhausted household might have explained the swiftness of her move, but it did not appear precipitate to Hermione. She lay on a sofa with eau de Cologne on her forehead and gave the most admirable orders. Elise’s message came at eleven o’clock in the morning and Hermione moved with ten boxes, two Pomeranians, a medicine chest, a confidential maid, and a trained nurse, by a three o’clock train. She looked wonderfully fresh on her arrival and had not forgotten to wire for the electric brougham to meet her, because she could not stand the jolting of an ordinary car. She broke the news by telegram that she was bringing her maid and a trained nurse to save Elise trouble. The Pomeranians broke themselves.

A wild and harrowing few minutes was spent on the lawn by John, two gardeners and the chauffeur, in baffling Bodger, John’s bull terrier, in his masterly attempt to account for both the Pomeranians.

The yap of a Pom irritated Bodger in the same manner that in classical tales the bleat of the kid is said to excite the tiger.

A persuasive kick from John, conveniently placed, temporarily relieved the situation. Bodger was led away foaming at the mouth.

Hermione said most sweetly to John as soon as a human voice could be heard above the canine din, “Dear John, how unfortunate that you have a bull terrier! But I daresay you will be able to get rid of it quite soon.” It had not occurred to Hermione that John was not the kind of person to get rid of favourite bull terriers lightly.

Hermione came to Mambles with the best intentions. She liked John, and she felt, with all the tenderness of a whale for sprats, that if she could swallow John and Elise she would always be perfectly sweet to them. But whales do not like sprats who refuse to be swallowed. It took Hermione some days to realise that John, with every wish to please her superficially, would not change his habits to save her life. Hermione did not ask much of John, but she did expect him to be malleable. Elise had always been malleable. She had the habits which suited Hermione, but there was a change now. She had suddenly taken to having the habits that suited John.

Hermione was not rude to John, and she was tenderness itself to Elise, but slowly, with graceful and increasing tenacity, she began to put pressure on Elise. There was no open strife between her and her brother-in-law, but at the end of a fortnight John had said “Damn” to Elise. He had not meant to say it, but the previous evening had been an exceedingly trying one, and John had been more polite than his nature could sustain. The evening had culminated in John’s trying to save the broken remnants of his remarkably good temper by starting an impersonal topic.

“I shall have the lawn mowed to-morrow,” he observed as pleasantly as he could manage, and Hermione replied,

“What a pity to cut off the dear little daisies’ heads!”

Elise said, “Yes, _must_ it be mown, John?” and John had explained briefly, with an unfortunate edge to his voice, that English lawns were wholly incompatible with the heads of daisies. The subject a little abruptly withered, and if Elise had been married longer she would have known that subjects which abruptly wither need very careful handling if they are to be revived in any satisfactory manner.

Elise came into John’s dressing room while he was shaving, and announced quite cheerfully that the lawn mustn’t be mown to-day on any account, because Hermione had a terrible headache and couldn’t bear the sound of a mowing machine under her window.

John said “Damn” with his face all over lather, which made it sound fiercer, and Elise exclaimed,

“Why, John, I think you’re real mean!”

Then they looked at each other aghast.

Elise wore her blue silk dressing gown and a lace cap covered with pink rosebuds. A fortnight ago John had told her that when she wore it he felt that he was entertaining the Madonna.

It was obvious that he was unprepared to give Elise a suitable entertainment in this character at present.

Elise retreated into her bedroom, and John continued shaving. He did not countermand the mowing machine.

It began ten minutes later and went on for a quarter of an hour. Every minute of that time John and Elise heard the lawn-mower, as if they had been the heads of the daisies expecting immediate execution.

Hermione heard it too, but she knew that she was not going on hearing it. She had never been in the position of a threatened daisy.

In a quarter of an hour John told the gardener to stop. The gardener pointed out that it would look rather queer, as he had only just had time to make a stripe across the lawn.

John used language which he could only have heard from a Cavalry General confronted by an ill-cooked meal, and retreated into the shrubbery. The gardener said, “My word! The new master has a tongue!” and went into the kitchen to tell the cook, trusting on the strength of his recital to be given a glass of cider.

John missed Bodger. There are moments in life when only a rather large white bull terrier, personally devoted, but publicly ferocious, can minister to a mind diseased. John had to go on missing Bodger because he was chained (for the first time in his life) in the stable yard, and if he was unchained there would have been no more Pomeranians.

John had never liked small dogs, and Bichon and Bichette had a strange craze for getting under his feet and tripping him up. They had not been trained to do this by Hermione; they had never been trained at all, with the result that they got into everybody’s way and on to everybody’s nerves, except Hermione’s. It sometimes seemed as if Hermione had very strong nerves.

John proceeded down the shrubbery path, frowning.

He had everything in the world that he wanted, including all that he could never have reasonably expected to obtain; and the only thing that he could think of was that the lawn was not properly mowed.

Elise, his honeymoon and Mambles became insignificant and obscure objects in the distant recesses of his brain.

Mambles lay outstretched before him, sunny, fruitful, silent, rich with the dews of the morning; but all John saw was an uneven strip of lawn without daisies, between broad spaces of green, insolently alive with daisies.

At the end of the shrubbery John found his father-in-law on a campstool doing a pen and ink drawing of some hollyhocks against a bit of sixteenth century wall.

Mr. Brett did exquisite pen and ink drawings, and if he had had no other faculty he could have made a living out of it.

John felt an access of irritation at the sight of the steady placidity of his father-in-law. It seemed to him it would have been more sympathetic of Mr. Brett to be doing nothing and to be in an irritated state of mind.

During the last two weeks Mr. Brett had remained bafflingly aloof from the domestic situation. He had not even seemed conscious that there was one, he had taken nobody’s part and he had never corrected or restrained Hermione.

He had not avoided the society of his invalid daughter, he invariably offered her his chair when she came into a room, and helped to fetch some of the things she wanted. (No one person could have possibly fetched them all.)

John supposed that this was Mr. Brett’s way of keeping the peace, but he thought he might have had more tacit support from his father-in-law.

Mr. Brett could not have failed to hear the approach of his son-in-law, because both Bichon and Bichette accompanied John by the simple process of hurling themselves between his legs and shrieking at irregular intervals.

When they reached the end of the shrubbery they caught sight of Mr. Brett, and burst into rapturous greetings a semi-tone higher up the scale and continuous.

Mr. Brett went on drawing his delicate fine lines and did not turn his head.

John puffed at his pipe and watched his father-in-law sulkily.

There were plenty of things for John to do, but John did not feel in the mood for doing any of them, and he resented the fact that Mr. Brett did not give him the provocation of suggesting that he should begin doing them.

“I thought,” Mr. Brett observed by-and-bye, “that I heard the sound of a lawn mower about half an hour since, but I guess I was mistaken: it seems to have stopped.”

The vials of John’s wrath were unloosed.

“It has stopped,” he said furiously, and then he gave a reproduction in a slightly milder form of what he had said to the gardener. He concluded by kicking Bichon into the nearest hedge. This broke off two handsome gladioli of which John had been justly proud, and did nothing to dishearten the vocal explosions of the Poms.

When their shrieks had died away into the distance, Mr. Brett spoke again.

“Does it matter seriously?” he asked, “about that old lawn?”

It seemed to John the weakest thing he had ever heard his father-in-law say. He tried to explain that the lawn was a symbol and mowing it a fixed religious principle, but it was always difficult to explain symbols to Mr. Brett.

“Well,” said his father-in-law patiently, “I guess I wouldn’t let a little thing like a principle worry me. If you want peace, John, you better let symbols rip. I never knew a man keep peaceful with a raft of symbols around him.”

Then John broke down. He poured out the accumulated bitterness of the last fortnight.

“Now, John,” said Mr. Brett gently, when John’s category came to an end. “Let’s give all those other things the go bye. When you get irritated, it helps a heap to stick to one fact. I get more comfort out of a solid fact than I get out of a whole pack of fine arguments.

“Let’s get back to the mowing machine.

“Either you ought not to have started mowing that lawn, or else you should have gone on mowing it until it was finished.”

“Yes, I know that,” said John, whose temper was already a trifle soothed. “That stripe looks awful—just in front of the house too!”

“I wasn’t thinking of the stripe,” said Mr. Brett, starting on a fresh hollyhock. “I guess you and I could stand a stripe on a piece of grass as well as a Zebra stands it on his back, if we had to. What I was thinking of was your future.

“I daresay you think I’ve been kind of tea-coseying out of your situation, sitting under an embroidered cushion and keeping warm, don’t you, John? Well!—I was waiting for that symbol of yours to come along. It don’t do to butt in before a man hollers. As long as you thought I had a prejudice against Hermione I should only have made things worse, and Hermione would have got in under my skin. Now I’ll give you all I’ve got on the subject; and I’ll go right on giving it to you.

“There’s just two ways of treating Hermione. The best way—miles and miles the best way—is to have nothing at all to do with her. It’s too late to think of that now. The other way is never to let her rile you.

“Give in to her when it don’t cost any one else too much, and don’t give in to her when it does, but never splutter.

“Now I don’t want to be critical, but I reckon you spluttered about that lawn.

“Don’t you splutter again, John, it gives her pleasure every time, and if I were you I should continue so that Hermione couldn’t get any pleasure that way.

“It may seem to you a thin consolation—maybe it is—but at my age thin consolations count.”

“I haven’t told you everything,” said John in a contrite voice. “This morning I upset Elise.”

“That’s bad,” said Mr. Brett sympathetically. “That’s too bad, John. For Elise’ll have to get upset enough anyway.”

“I wasn’t fit to marry her,” John groaned. “I never knew I had such a beast of a temper!”

“Don’t you yield to remorse, John,” said Mr. Brett with sudden emphasis. “I don’t know anything as weakening to the moral fibre as remorse, it wears your nerves to a frazzle and takes all the lift out of your next kick. I expect you’ve the same kind of temper as anybody else has, when they’re stung by a hornet.

“You asked for trouble when you invited Hermione to stay with you, and you’ve got trouble, but you don’t need to double up under it. You keep on smiling and be sure you are right. You stick to the facts.

“This is your place, that lawn’s your lawn. If Hermione don’t like the sound of a mowing machine, you tell Elise how sorry you are the country don’t suit Hermione. It’s the smile Elise wants, and what Hermione wants ain’t coming her way at present. If retributive justice ever comes off I’d like to be there. I’ve tarried the Lord’s leisure quite a while.”

John laughed and wheeled towards the house. He felt reinvigorated, and almost unashamed.

He would kiss Elise and have the lawn mowed before lunch.

When Mr. Brett came in at lunch time, the lawn was mowed, the stripe had disappeared. Elise looked perfectly happy and Hermione had moved her room.

“She said,” Elise explained a little apologetically to her father, “that your room was the only one in the house where she couldn’t hear the lawn being mowed, and she was sure you wouldn’t mind my putting her into it!”

John glanced quickly at his father-in-law, but Mr. Brett was calmly peeling a ripe tomato which, with a small, square piece of cheese, comprised his entire lunch.

“Sure, Elise,” he said cheerfully. “I’m pleased as Punch to change that room. I kinder dislike the frogs moaning down by the pond in that guttural way they have—the same as if they were interned aliens. You tell Hermione I’m real pleased to pass her on those frogs—”