“As far as I know,” Lady Staines replied, “nobody ever dies before causing trouble; they die after it, and add their funeral expenses to the other inconveniences they have previously arranged for. Can’t you see the boy’s marriage has gone to pot?”
“I wish you wouldn’t pick up slang expressions from your sons,” growled Sir Peter. “You never hear me speaking in that loose way. Why haven’t they got a home of their own? You would ask them here — nurse, bottles, and baby like a traveling Barnum’s — and Winn glares in one corner — and that little piece of dandelion fluff lies down and grizzles on the nearest cushion — and now you want to have a garden party on the top of ’em! Anybody’d suppose this was a Seamen’s Home from the use you put it to! And of all damned silly ways of entertaining people, a garden party’s the worse! Who wants to look at other people’s gardens except to find fault with ’em?
“Besides, unless you want rain (which we don’t with the hay half down) it’s tempting Providence. Nothing’ll keep rain off a garden party except prayers in church during a drought.
“What the hell do you expect to gain by it? I know what it all means — Buns! Bands! high-heeled kick-shaws cutting up my turf! Why the devil don’t you get a Punch and Judy show down and be done with it?”
“Of course you don’t like a garden party,” said Lady Staines, smoothly, “nor do I. Do you suppose I care to be strapped tight into smart stays at my age, and walk about my own gravel paths in purple satin, listening to drivel about other people’s children? We must do something for the neighborhood sometimes, whether they like it or not. That’s what we’re here for — it’s the responsibility of our position. Quite absurd, I know, but then, most people’s responsibilities are quite absurd. You have a son and he behaves like a fool. You can leave him to take the consequences of course if you like — only as some of them will devolve on us, it is worth a slight effort to evade them.”
“For God’s sake, spit it out, and have done with it!” shouted Sir Peter. “What’s the boy done?”
Lady Staines sat down opposite her husband and folded her hands in her lap. She was a woman who always sat perfectly still on the rare occasions when she was not too busy to sit down at all.
“What I hoped would happen,” she said, “hasn’t happened. He’s presumably picked up with some respectable woman.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Sir Peter. “I never knew any one as cold-bloodedly immoral as you are, Sarah. Did you want the boy to pick up with a baggage?”
“Certainly,” said Lady Staines. “Why not? I have always understood that the Social Evil was for our protection, but I never believed it. No woman worth her salt has ever wanted protection. It’s men that want it. They need a class of creature that won’t involve them beyond a certain point, and quite right too. Winn seemed to see this before he went off — but he didn’t keep it in mind — he ran his head into a noose.”