If Winter Comes written by A.S.M. Hutchinson

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BY A.S.M. HUTCHINSON

THE HAPPY WARRIOR

ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER--

THE CLEAN HEART

IF WINTER COMES

IF WINTER COMES
BY
A.S.M. HUTCHINSON

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1921

Published, August, 1921
Reprinted, August, 1921 (twice)
Reprinted, September, 1921 (four times)
Reprinted, October, 1921

PRINTED BY C.H. SIMONDS COMPANY
BOSTON, MASS., U.S.A.

"...O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"

--SHELLEY

CONTENTS

PART ONE
PAGE
MABEL 1

PART TWO

NONA 77

PART THREE

EFFIE 187

PART FOUR

MABEL--EFFIE--NONA 317

PART ONE

MABEL

IF WINTER COMES

CHAPTER I

I

To take Mark Sabre at the age of thirty-four, and in the year 1912, and
at the place Penny Green is to necessitate looking back a little towards
the time of his marriage in 1904, but happens to find him in good light
for observation. Encountering him hereabouts, one who had shared school
days with him at his preparatory school so much as twenty-four years
back would have found matter for recognition.

A usefully garrulous person, one Hapgood, a solicitor, found much.

"Whom do you think I met yesterday? Old Sabre! You remember old Sabre at
old Wickamote's?... Yes, that's the chap. Used to call him Puzzlehead,
remember? Because he used to screw up his forehead over things old
Wickamote or any of the other masters said and sort of drawl out, 'Well,
I don't see that, sir.'... Yes, rather!... And then that other
expression of his. Just the opposite. When old Wickamote or some one had
landed him, or all of us, with some dashed punishment, and we were
gassing about it, used to screw up his nut in the same way and say,
'Yes, but I see what he _means_.' And some one would say, 'Well, what
does he mean, you ass?' and he'd start gassing some rot till some one
said, 'Good lord, fancy sticking up for a master!' And old Puzzlehead
would say, 'You sickening fool, I'm not sticking _up_ for him. I'm only
saying he's right from how he looks at it and it's no good saying he's
wrong.'... Ha! Funny days.... Jolly nice chap, though, old Puzzlehead
was.... Yes, I met him.... Fact, I run into him occasionally. We do a
mild amount of business with his firm. I buzz down there about once a
year. Tidborough. He's changed, of course. So have you, you know. That
Vandyke beard, what? Ha! Old Sabre's not done anything outrageous like
that. Real thing I seemed to notice about him when I bumped into him
yesterday was that he didn't look very cheery. Looked to me rather as
though he'd lost something and was wondering where it was. Ha!
But--dashed funny--I mentioned something about that appalling speech
that chap made in that blasphemy case yesterday.... Eh? yes, absolutely
frightful, wasn't it?--well, I'm dashed if old Sabre didn't puzzle up
his nut in exactly the same old way and say, 'Yes, but I see what he
_means_.' I reminded him and ragged him about it no end. Absolutely the
same words and expression. Funny chap ... nice chap....

"What did he say the blasphemy man meant? Oh, I don't know; some bilge,
just as he used to about the masters. You know the man talked some
rubbish about how the State couldn't have it both ways--couldn't
blaspheme against God by flatly denying that all men were equal and
basing all its legislation on keeping one class up and the other class
down; couldn't do that and at the same time prosecute him because he
said that religion was--well, you know what he said; I'm dashed if I
like to repeat it. Joke of it was that I found myself using exactly the
same expression to old Sabre as we used to use at school. I said, 'Good
lord, man, fancy sticking up for a chap like that!' And old Sabre--by
Jove, I tell you there we all were in a flash back in the playground at
old Wickamote's, down in that corner by the workshop, all kids again and
old Puzzlehead flicking his hand out of his pocket--remember how he used
to?--like _that_--and saying, 'You sickening fool, I'm not sticking _up_
for him, I'm only saying he's right from how he looks at it and it's no
good saying he's wrong!' Rum, eh, after all those years.... No, he
didn't say, 'You sickening fool' this time. I reminded him how he used
to, and he laughed and said, 'Yes; did I? Well, I still get riled, you
know, when chaps can't see--' And then he said 'Yes, "sickening fool";
so I did; odd!' and he looked out of the window as though he was looking
a thousand miles away--this was in his office, you know--and chucked
talking absolutely....

"Yes, in his office I saw him.... He's in a good business down there at
Tidborough. Dashed good. 'Fortune, East and Sabre'... Never heard of
them? Ah, well, that shows you're not a pillar of the Church, old son.
If you took the faintest interest in your particular place of worship,
or in any Anglican place of worship, you'd know that whenever you want
anything for the Church from a hymn book or a hassock or a pew to a
pulpit or a screen or a spire you go to Fortune, East and Sabre,
Tidborough. Similarly in the scholastic line, anything from a birch rod
to a desk--Fortune, East and Sabre, by return and the best. No, they're
_the_ great, _the_ great, church and school-furnishing people.
'Ecclesiastical and Scholastic Furnishers and Designers' they call
themselves. And they're IT. No really decent church or really
gentlemanly school thinks of going anywhere else. They keep at
Tidborough because they were there when they furnished the first church
in the year One or thereabouts. I expect they did the sun-ray fittings
at Stonehenge. Ha! Anyway, they're one of the stately firms of old
England, and old Sabre is the Sabre part of the firm. And his father
before him and so on. Fortune and East are both bishops, I believe. No,
not really. But I tell you the show's run on mighty pious lines. One of
them's a 'Rev.', I know. I mean, the tradition of the place is to be in
keeping with the great and good works it carries out and for which,
incidentally, it is dashed well paid. Rather. Oh, old Sabre has butter
with his bread all right....

"Married? Oh, yes, he's married. Has been some time, I believe, though
they've no kids. I had lunch at his place one time I was down Tidborough
way. Now there's a place you ought to go to paint one of your
pictures--where he lives--Penny Green. Picturesque, quaint if ever a
place was. It's about seven miles from Tidborough; seven miles by road
and about seven centuries in manners and customs and appearance and all
that. Proper old village green, you know, with a duck pond and cricket
pitch and houses all round it. No two alike. Just like one of Kate
Greenaway's pictures, I always think. It just sits and sleeps. You
wouldn't think there was a town within a hundred miles of it, let alone
a bustling great place like Tidborough. Go down. You really ought to.
Yes, and by Jove you'll have to hurry up if you want to catch the
old-world look of the place. It's 'developing' ... 'being developed.'...
Eh?... Yes; God help it; I agree. After all these centuries sleeping
there it's suddenly been 'discovered.' People are coming out from
Tidborough and Alton and Chovensbury to get away from their work and
live there. Making a sort of garden suburb business of it. They've got a
new church already. Stupendous affair, considering the size of the
place--but that's looking forward to this development movement, the new
vicar chap says. He's doing the developing like blazes. Regular tiger
he is for shoving things, particularly himself. Chap called
Bagshaw--Boom Bagshaw. Character if ever there was one. But they're all
characters down there from what I've seen of it....

"Yes, you go down there and have a look, with your sketch-book. Old
Sabre'll love to see you.... His wife?... Oh, very nice, distinctly
nice. Pretty woman, very. Somehow I didn't think quite the sort of woman
for old Puzzlehead. Didn't appear to have the remotest interest in any
of the things he was keen about; and he seemed a bit fed with her sort
of talk. Hers was all gossip--all about the people there and what a rum
crowd they were. Devilish funny, I thought, some of her stories. But old
Sabre--well, I suppose he'd heard 'em before. Still, there was
something--something about the two of them. You know that sort of--sort
of--what the devil is it?--sort of stiffish feeling you sometimes feel
in the air with two people who don't quite click. Well, that was it.
Probably only my fancy. As to that, you can pretty well cut the welkin
with a knife at my place sometimes when me and my missus get our tails
up; and we're fearful pals. Daresay I just took 'em on an off day. But
that was my impression though--that she wasn't just the sort of woman
for old Sabre. But after all, what the dickens sort of woman would be?
Fiddling chap for a husband, old Puzzlehead. Can imagine him riling any
wife with wrinkling up his nut over some plain as a pikestaff thing and
saying, 'Well, I don't quite see that.' Ha! Rum chap. Nice chap. Have a
drink?"

CHAPTER II

I

Thus, by easy means of the garrulous Hapgood, appear persons, places,
institutions; lives, homes, activities; the web and the tangle and the
amenities of a minute fragment of human existence. Life. An odd
business. Into life we come, mysteriously arrived, are set on our feet
and on we go: functioning more or less ineffectively, passing through
permutations and combinations; meeting the successive events, shocks,
surprises of hours, days, years; becoming engulfed, submerged, foundered
by them; all of us on the same adventure yet retaining nevertheless each
his own individuality, as swimmers carrying each his undetachable burden
through dark, enormous and cavernous seas. Mysterious journey!
Uncharted, unknown and finally--but there is no finality! Mysterious and
stunning sequel--not end--to the mysterious and tremendous adventure!
Finally, of this portion, death, disappearance,--gone! Astounding
development! Mysterious and hapless arrival, tremendous and mysterious
passage, mysterious and alarming departure. No escaping it; no volition
to enter it or to avoid it; no prospect of defeating it or solving it.
Odd affair! Mysterious and baffling conundrum to be mixed up in!...
Life!

Come to this pair, Mark Sabre and his wife Mabel, at Penny Green, and
have a look at them mixed up in this odd and mysterious business of
life. Some apprehension of the odd affair that it was was characteristic
of Mark Sabre's habit of mind, increasingly with the years,--with
Mabel.

II

Penny Green--"picturesque, quaint if ever a place was", in garrulous Mr.
Hapgood's words--lies in a shallow depression, in shape like a narrow
meat dish. It runs east and west, and slightly tilted from north to
south. To the north the land slopes pleasantly upward in pasture and
orchards, and here was the site of the Penny Green Garden Home
Development Scheme. Beyond the site, a considerable area, stands
Northrepps, the seat of Lord Tybar. Lord Tybar sold the Development site
to the developers, and, as he signed the deed of conveyance, remarked in
his airy way, "Ah, nothing like exercise, gentlemen. That's made every
one of my ancestors turn in his grave." The developers tittered
respectfully as befits men who have landed a good thing.

Westward of Penny Green is Chovensbury; behind Tidborough the sun rises.

Viewed from the high eminence of Northrepps, Penny Green gave rather the
impression of having slipped, like a sliding dish, down the slope and
come to rest, slightly tilted, where its impetus had ceased. It was
certainly at rest: it had a restful air; and it had certainly slipped
out of the busier trafficking of its surrounding world, the main road
from Chovensbury to Tidborough, coming from greater cities even than
these and proceeding to greater, ran far above it, beyond Northrepps.
The main road rather slighted than acknowledged Penny Green by the
nerveless and shrunken feeler which, a mile beyond Chovensbury, it
extended in Penny Green's direction.

This splendid main road in the course of its immense journey across
Southern England, extended feelers to many settlements of man,
providing them as it were with a talent which, according to the energy
of the settlement, might be increased a hundredfold--drained, metalled,
tarred, and adorned with splendid telegraph poles and wires--or might be
wrapped up in a napkin of neglect, monstrous overgrown hedges and
decayed ditches, and allowed to wither: the splendid main road, having
regard to its ancient Roman lineage, disdainfully did not care tuppence
either way; and for that matter Penny Green, which had ages ago put its
feeler in a napkin, did not care tuppence either.

It was now, however, to have a railway.

And meanwhile there was this to be said for it: that whereas some of the
dependents of the splendid main road constituted themselves abominably
ugly carbuncles on the end of shapely and well-manicured fingers of the
main road, Penny Green, at the end of a withered and entirely neglected
finger, adorned it as with a jewel.

III

A Kate Greenaway picture, the garrulous Hapgood had said of Penny Green;
and it was well said. At its eastern extremity the withered talent from
the splendid main road divided into two talents and encircled the Green
which had, as Hapgood had said, a cricket pitch (in summer) and a duck
pond (more prominent in winter); also, in all seasons, and the survivors
of many ages, a clump of elm trees surrounded by a decayed bench; a well
surrounded by a decayed paling, so decayed that it had long ago thrown
itself flat on the ground into which it continued venerably to decay;
and at the southeastern extremity a village pound surrounded by a
decayed grey wall and now used by the youth of the village for the
purpose of impounding one another in parties or sides in a game well
called "Pound I."

At the southwestern extremity of the Green, and immediately opposite the
Tybar Arms, was a blacksmith's forge perpetually inhabited and directed
by a race named Wirk. The forge was the only human habitation or
personal and individual workshop actually on the Green, and it was said,
and freely admitted by the successive members of the tribe of Wirk, that
it had "no right" to be there. There it nevertheless was, had been for
centuries, so far as anybody knew to the contrary, and administered
always by a Wirk. In some mysterious way which nobody ever seemed to
recognize till it actually happened there was always a son Wirk to
continue the forge when the father Wirk died and was carried off to be
deposited by his fathers who had continued it before him. It was also
said in the village, as touching this matter of "no right", that nobody
could understand how the forge ever came to be there and that it
certainly would be turned off one day; and with this also the current
members of the tribe of Wirk cordially agreed. They understood less than
anybody how they ever came to be there, and they knew perfectly well
they would be turned off one day; saying which--and it was a common
subject of debate among village sires of a summer evening, seated
outside the Tybar Arms--saying which, the Wirk of the day would gaze
earnestly up the road and look at his watch as if the power which would
turn him off was then on its way and was getting a bit overdue.

The present representatives of the tribe of Wirk were known as Old Wirk
and Young Wirk. Young Wirk was sixty-seven. No one knew where a still
younger Wirk would come from when Old Wirk died and when Young Wirk
died. But no one troubled to know. No one knows, precisely, where the
next Pope is coming from, but he always comes, and successive Wirks
appeared as surely. Old Wirk was past duty at the forge now. He sat on a
Windsor chair all day and watched Young Wirk. When the day was finished
Old Wirk and Young Wirk would walk across the Green to the pound, not
together, but Old Wirk in front and Young Wirk immediately behind him;
both with the same gait, bent and with a stick. On reaching the pound
they would gaze profoundly into it over the decayed, grey wall, rather
as if they were looking to see if the power that was going to turn out
the forge was there, and then, the power apparently not being there,
they would return, trailing back in the same single file, and take up
their reserved positions on the bench before the Tybar Arms.

IV

Mark Sabre, intensely fond of Penny Green, had reflected upon it
sometimes as a curious thing that there was scarcely one of the
village's inhabitants or institutions but had evidenced little
differences of attitude between himself and Mabel, who was not intensely
fond of Penny Green. The aged Wirks had served their turn. Mabel had
once considered the Wirks extremely picturesque and, quite early in
their married life, had invited them to her house that she might
photograph them for her album.

They arrived, in single file, but she did not photograph them for her
album. The photograph was not taken because Mark, when they presented
themselves, expressed surprise that the aged pair were led off by the
parlour maid to have tea in the kitchen. Why on earth didn't they have
tea with them, with himself and Mabel, in the garden?

Mabel did what Sabre called "flew up"; and at the summit of her flight
up inquired, "Suppose some one called?"

"Well, suppose they did?" Sabre inquired.

Mabel in a markedly calm voice then gave certain orders to the maid, who
had brought out the tea and remained while the fate of the aged Wirks
was in suspense.

The maid departed with the orders and Sabre commented, "Sending them
off? Well, I'm dashed!"

Half an hour later the aged pair, having been led into the kitchen and
having had tea there, were led out again and released by the maid on to
the village Green rather as if they were two old ducks turned out to
grass.

Sabre, watching them from the lawn beside the teacups, laughed and said,
"What a dashed stupid business. They might have had tea on the roof for
all I care."

Mabel tinkled a little silver bell for the maid. _Ting-a-ling-ting!_

V

The houses of Penny Green carried out the Kate Greenaway effect that the
Green itself established. Along the upper road of the tilted dish were
the larger houses, and upon the lower road mostly the cottages of the
villagers; also upon the lower road the five shops of Penny Green: the
butcher's shop which was opened on Tuesdays and Fridays by a butcher who
came in from Tidborough with a spanking horse in front of him and half a
week's supply of meat behind and beneath him; the grocer's shop and the
draper's shop which, like enormous affairs in London, were also a large
number of other shops but, unlike the London affairs, dispensed them all
within the one shop and over the one counter. In the grocer's shop you
could be handed into one hand a pound of tea and into the other a pair
of boots, a convenience which, after all, is not to be had in all Oxford
Street. The draper's shop, carrying the principle further, would not
only dress you; post-office you; linoleum, rug and wall paper you; ink,
pencil and note paper you; but would also bury you and tombstone you, a
solemnity which it was only called upon to perform for anybody about
once in five years--Penny Green being long-lived--but was always ready
and anxious to carry out. Indeed in the back room of his shop, the
draper, Mr. Pinnock, had a coffin which he had been trying (as he said)
"to work off" for twenty-two years. It represented Mr. Pinnock's single
and disastrous essay in sharp business. Two and twenty years earlier Old
Wirk had been not only dying but "as good as dead." Mr. Pinnock on a
stock-replenishing excursion in Tidborough, had bought a coffin, at the
undertaker's, of a size to fit Old Wirk, and for the reason that, buying
it then, he could convey it back on the wagon he had hired for the day
and thus save carriage. He had brought it back, and the first person he
had set eyes on in Penny Green was no other than Old Wirk himself,
miraculously recovered and stubbornly downstairs and sunning at his
door. The shock had nearly caused Mr. Pinnock to qualify for the coffin
himself; but he had not, nor had any other inhabitant of suitable size
since demised. Longer persons than Old Wirk had died, and much shorter
and much stouter persons than Old Wirk had died. But the coffin had
remained. Up-ended and neatly fitted with shelves, it served as a store
cupboard, without a door, pending its proper use. But it was a terribly
expensive store cupboard and it stood in Mr. Pinnock's parlour as a
gloomy monument to the folly of rash and hazardous speculation.

VI

Penny Green, like Rome, had not been built in a day. The houses of the
Penny Green Garden Home, on the other hand, were being run up in as near
to a day as enthusiastic developers, feverish contractors (vying one
with another) and impatient tenants could encompass. Nor was Penny Green
built for a day. The houses and cottages of Penny Green had been built
under the influence of many and different styles of architecture; and
they had been built not only by people who intended to live in them, and
proposed to be roomy and well cup boarded and stoutly beamed and floored
in them, but who, not foreseeing restless and railwayed generations,
built them to endure for the children of their children's children and
for children yet beyond. Sabre's house was of grey stone and it
presented over the doorway the date 1667.

"Nearly two hundred and fifty years," Mabel had once said.

"And I bet," Sabre had replied, "it's never been better kept or run than
you run it now, Mabel."

The tribute was well deserved. Mabel, who was in many ways a model
woman, was preeminently a model housewife. "Crawshaws" was spotlessly
kept and perfectly administered. Four living rooms, apart from the
domestic offices, were on the ground floor. One was the morning room, in
which they principally lived; one the dining room and one the
drawing-room. They were entered by enormously heavy doors of oak, fitted
with latches, the drawing-room up two steps, the dining room down one
step and the morning room and the fourth room on the level. All were
low-beamed and many-windowed with lattice windows; all were stepped into
as stepping into a very quiet place, and somehow into a room which one
had not expected to be there, or not quite that shape if a room were
there. Sabre never quite lost that feeling of pleasant surprise on
entering them. They had moreover, whether due to the skill of the
architect or the sagacity of Mabel, the admirable, but rare attribute of
being cool in summer and warm in winter.

The only room in the house which Sabre did not like was the fourth
sitting room on the ground floor; and it was his own room, furnished and
decorated by Mabel for his own particular use and comfort. But she
called it his "den", and Sabre loathed and detested the word den as
applied to a room a man specially inhabits. It implied to him a
masculine untidiness, and he was intensely orderly and hated untidiness.
It implied customs and manners of what he called "boarding-house
ideas",--the idea that a man must have an untidily comfortable apartment
into which he can retire and envelop himself in tobacco smoke, and where
he "can have his own things around him", and "have his pipes and his
pictures about him", and where he can wear "an old shooting jacket and
slippers",--and he loathed and detested all these phrases and the ideas
they connoted. He had no "old shooting jacket" and he would have given
it to the gardener if he had; and he detested wearing slippers and never
did wear slippers; it was his habit to put on his boots after his bath
and to keep them on till he put on shoes when changing for dinner. Above
all, he loathed and detested the vision which the word "den" always
conjured up to him. This was a vision of the door of a typical den being
opened by a wife, and of the wife saying in a mincing voice, "This is
George in his den," and of boarding-house females peering over the
wife's shoulder and smiling fatuously at the denizen who, in an old
shooting jacket and slippers, grinned vacuously back at them. To Mark
this was a horrible and unspeakable vision.

Mabel could not in the least understand it, and common sense and common
custom were entirely on her side; Mark admitted that. The ridiculous and
trivial affair only took on a deeper significance--not apparent to Mark
at the time, but apparent later in the fact that he could not make Mabel
understand his attitude.

The matter of the den and another matter, touching the servants, came up
between them in the very earliest days of their married life. From
London, on their return from their honeymoon, Mark had been urgently
summoned to the sick-bed of his father, in Chovensbury. Mabel proceeded
to Crawshaws. He joined her a week later, his father happily recovered.
Mabel had been busy "settling things", and she took him round the house
with delicious pride and happiness. Mark, sharing both, had his arm
linked in hers. When they came to the fourth sitting room Mabel
announced gaily, "And this is your den!"

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