“I heard from Connie Duxbury this morning,” she said.
“Not the most desirable of your acquaintances, I think,” said William.
“Oh, my dear. Sir Ralph’s a member of Parliament now.”
“It isn’t a certificate of respectability.”
She looked thoughtfully at him, as he rose and went into the library to write to Rupert, with the careful, anxious gaze of a wife who sees in her husband the symptoms of ill-health. She wished to leave Staithley for her own sake, but decidedly it was for William’s sake as well. In Manchester, if he had not been advanced, if (for instance) his play at Bridge was circumspect while hers was dashing, he had been broadminded. She remembered that he had spoken of Sir Ralph as a profiteer, but had admitted that most of their friends were profiteers. Staithley, already, was narrowing William, in months. What would it not do for him in years? She must get him out of Staithley before it was too late.
He was writing to Rupert; so would she write to Rupert. She would assume, and she had her shrewd idea that the assumption was correct, that Rupert’s views of Staithley marched with her own. She would paint in lurid colors a picture of life in Staithley; she would exhibit William, his furrowed brow, his whitening hair, as an awful warning; she would enlarge upon the post-war difficulties, so immensely more wearisome than in Sir Philip’s time. She would suggest that the accountants’ letter was a salvation, a means honorable and reasonable, of cutting the entail, of escaping from the Service. And she would tell him to regard her letter as confidential.
She had no doubt whatever of her success with Rupert and as to William, waverer was written all over him. Rupert’s decision would decide William, and the William Hepplestalls would go to London. There were housing troubles, but if you had money and if you took time by the forelock, trouble melted. She proceeded to take time by the forelock and wrote to Lady Duxbury to ask her to keep an eye open for a large house near her own. She whispered to her dearest Connie in the very, very strictest confidence that Hepplestall’s was going to be sold.