Lady Staines was slightly afraid of leaving them in this atmosphere, but at last she reluctantly withdrew to the hall, where she listened to the varying shades of Sir Peter’s voice and decided they were on the whole loud enough to be normal.
At eleven o’clock she and Winn between them assisted Sir Peter to bed.
This was a sharp and fiery passage usually undertaken by the toughest of the gardeners.
Winn however managed extraordinarily well. He insisted on occasional pauses and by a home truth of an appallingly personal nature actually silenced his father for the last half flight.
Sir Peter breakfasted in his room.
He had had a bad night. He wouldn’t, as he explained to his wife, have minded if Winn had been a puny chap; but there he was, sound and strong, with clear hard eyes, broad, straight shoulders and a grip of iron, and yet Taylor, that little village hound of an apothecary, said once you had microbes it didn’t matter how strong you were — they were just as likely to be fatal as if you were a narrow-chested epileptic.
Microbes! The very thought of such small insignificant creatures getting in his way filled Sir Peter with fury. He had always hated insects. But the worst of it was in the morning he didn’t feel angry, he simply felt chilled and helpless. His son was hit and he couldn’t help him. It all came back to that. There was only one person who could help a sick man, and that person was his wife. Theoretically Sir Peter despised and hated women, but practically he leaned on his wife as only a strong man can lean on a woman; without her, he literally would not have known which way to turn. His trust in her was as solid as his love for a good stout ship. In every crisis of his life she had stood by his side, bitter tongued, hard-headed, undemonstrative and his as much as any ship that had sailed under his flag.
If she had failed him he would have gone down, and now here was his son’s wife — another woman — presumably formed for the same purpose, leaking away from under him at the very first sign of weather.
He thought of Estelle with a staggered horror; she had looked soft and sweet — just the woman to minister to a knocked-out man. The trouble with her was she had no guts.
Sir Peter woke his wife up at four o’clock in the morning to shout this fact into her ear. Lady Staines said, “Well — whoever said she had?” and apparently went to sleep again. But Sir Peter didn’t go to sleep: Estelle reminded him of how he had once been done over a mare, a beautiful, fine stepping lady-like creature who looked as if she were made of velvet and steel, no vice in her and every point correct; and then what had happened? He’d bought her and she’d developed a spirit like wet cotton wool, no pace, no staying power. She’d sweat and stumble after a few minutes run, no amount of dieting, humoring or whipping affected her. She’d set out to shirk, and shirk she did — till he worked her off on a damned fool Dolores had fortunately introduced him to — only wives can’t be handed on like mares — “Devil’s the pity” — Sir Peter said to himself, as he fell off to sleep. “Works perfectly with horses.”