It must not be supposed that Mr. Mainwaring used such expressions as “spanking” in actual speech, or that the ironical account of his sublimity, as given above, was verbally his. But such, anyhow, was the manner in which these great tirades, delivered to Peter when he went up to see his father on his daily arrival at Howes an hour or so before dinner, impressed themselves on his mind. Usually there was a note for him on the table in the hall, which ran something like this:
“My Peter,—I am very low and despondent to-night, and I do not know if I can face a sociable evening. Come up to see me, my dear, for you are the only link which is left to me of those happy—far too happy—years, and see if your sweet spirit will not, like David playing before Saul, exorcise the demons of remorse and regret which shriek and gibber round the head of your unhappy father. I have tried so hard—ah, so hard—all day not to make myself a burden and a shadow to your dear ones, but I fear I have acquitted myself very ill. Come and cheer me up, Peter.”
Peter, to do him justice, always went, and in the majesty of egoism, his father, without any encouragement at all, would talk himself into a splendid courage. At whatever cost to himself, at whatever effort from worn and debilitated nerve-strings, he would show that there was some music yet left in his. He would twang his mental guitar, and if the frayed string snapped—well, his lawyer would know that his affairs were in order.... Then, sooner or later, to Peter’s great relief, the sonorous dressing-bell would ring, and he could go and have his bath. As likely as not, before he definitely quitted the room, his father would allude to the magnificent 1896 port which formed so admirable a feature in the cellars of Howes.
Usually after the bath he went in to see Silvia, but, for some reason or other, the spontaneous nonsense of these interviews had wilted and withered. Silvia, so it seemed to him, held herself in reserve, waiting for something from him. Peter would give an account of his day, of his talk with his father, and still Silvia seemed to wait. She was overbrimming with all that she ever had for him, but, to his perception, what she waited for was for him to turn the winch of the sluice.
Once there had been a really outrageous scene with his father, in which, after tears, Mr. Mainwaring had slid from his chair with a groan, and lay, an ignoble heap, upon the floor. Peter on this occasion had given Silvia a perfectly colourless précis of the degrading exhibition, and had endorsed it, brought collateral evidence to bear on its nature by the production of one of the notes which usually awaited him on his return from town. He had done that in some sort of self-justification: Silvia could not fail to realize how trying, from their very unreality, such scenes were for him, and he gave her also every evening a very respectable specimen of his patience with his father. And yet he felt that Silvia was not waiting for that; it was not how he behaved, how patient and cordial he schooled himself to be, that she waited for. He was patient, he was cordial, and though she often gave him a little sympathetic and appreciative word for his reward, it was no more than a sugar-plum to a child, something to keep it quiet. What she wanted, what she longed for the evidence of, was an internal loving driving force which turned the wheels of the machinery of his impeccable conduct, and that he had not got for her. He spun the wheels with a clever finger from outside.
But usually these wheels went round merrily enough. He reported his father’s despondence; he, ever so lightly, alluded to the fact that he had cheered him up, and his estimate was justified, for Mr. Mainwaring, on the crashing of the dinner-bell in the turret, would sometimes announce his progress from the state-rooms by a jubilant yodelling, and would remain for the greater part of dinner in a state of high elation. True, he would have a spasm now and then: if he happened to have his attention called to Mrs. Wardour’s pearls, he might for a brief dramatic moment cover his eyes and say in a choked voice: “My Carissima had some wonderful pearls”; but then, true to his manly determination, he would dismiss the miserable association and become master of his soul again.
Peter usually had a second dose of his father’s Promethean attitude later in the evening, after Silvia and her mother had gone upstairs.
“Your treasure, your pearl of great price, your angel!” he would ejaculate. “Her sweet pity, her divine compassion! It is she—she and you—who reconcile me to life. But I must not bask too long in that healing effulgence. I must get back to London; I must reinstate myself in my desolate house, and face it all, face it all. I must stand on my own feet again, poor sordid cripple that I am.” Then perhaps, if quite overcome, he would bury his face in his hands, but much more usually he would stand up, throw out his chest, breathe deeply, and draw himself up to the last half-inch of his considerable stature.
“Work!” he said. “Work is the tonic that God puts in the reach of all of us. Remember that, my Peter, if grief and sorrow ever visit you. But then you have by your side the sweetest, the most sympathetic woman ever sent to enlighten the gloom of this transitory world. So had I, by God, so had I, and I did not recognize her preciousness and her fragility.... Enough! Silvia! Did you notice her exquisite love towards me at dinner to-day, when for a moment the sight of Mrs. Wardour’s pearls unmanned me?”
Peter on this occasion was lashed to the extremity of irritation.