Nightingale Wood Read Free Page B

reactions to marriage, Mr Wither was quite sick of the word.
    But Teddy never had been ambitious. Mr Wither had put him into a job, minor but with prospects, in the gas company, when he was twenty-two, and it was understood that he would work his way Up (where to was glossed over).
    But there Teddy had stayed for twenty years, his salary rising by five pounds a year because everybody’s salary in that company below a certain level did so automatically. It was not as though he had been content, either, with his minor job in which he earned so little money that Mr Wither was quite ashamed to think about it. Mr Wither was frequently told by friends of the family that of course Teddy’s real Dream had been of doing architecture or painting or something artistic; and these Dreams, always popping up at Mr Wither, annoyed him very much.
    He was sure that his acquaintances said, behind his back, that he ought to pay Teddy more money. But this he would not do, for many good reasons. Teddy did not deserve more money; nobody holding that job ever had had more money and he must not show favouritism to his son; Teddy did not need more money because he was not married, and so on.
    When at last Teddy did marry, at the age of forty-one, Mr Wither was in the happy position of not being able to raise his salary, for by that time he had sold out his interest in the company. He gave his son an allowance of eighty pounds a year, saying that this would be a help. But when Teddy had enjoyed the use of this for a year, he died, and Mr Wither was able to take it all back again.
    Mr Wither, gazing vaguely into the fire, mused that some fellows were very cut up when their sons died. Now, he had not been very cut up when Teddy died. It was a shock; of course, it was a shock. But it was strange that he had not been more cut up. Never had got on with Teddy, somehow, even when Teddy was a boy. Through his mind drifted the word ‘Milksop’. Yet there must have been something in the chap for a girl like Viola, quite a pretty girl, who must have known plenty of chaps and had plenty of choice, to pick him out and marry him.
    Not that it wasn’t a very fine thing for her; she knew which side her bread was buttered, no doubt, thought Mr Wither, sitting upright, frowning and nodding. And this afternoon he and Viola would have a little talk.
    Meanwhile, he must telephone to Major-General Breis-Cumwitt about that dismal piece of news on the City page, which he had carefully encircled with a sable ring.
    Not that Major-General Breis-Cumwitt could do anything; no power on earth could stop money when it began to jig about like that, but at least the two of them could confer, and discuss; and condole; and then Mr Wither (despite the one and threepence spent on a telephone call to London) would feel better.
    At ten minutes past twelve exactly the car came round the short circular drive, and stopped in front of the house.
    The chauffeur sat with his beautiful profile turned carefully from the house; a correct chauffeur does not peer up at the bedroom windows, scan the front door, nor appear aware of anything at all, and Saxon was most correct. The Eagles was a house of dark grey stucco, too tall for the grounds in which it stood, so that it seemed to stoop over them in a frightening way. There were more boring shrubs round the front door, approached by a good many steep steps. The windows on the lower floors were hung with heavy dark curtains; the upper ones had those half-curtains of white material with bits of coarse lace let into them which always suggest the windows of a nursing home, and also that the bedrooms are large and draughty.
    Two plaster birds, not badly modelled, sat on the two columns at the entrance to the drive and gave the house its name. These birds got on Mr Wither’s nerves for some reason, but he was afraid to ask how much it would cost to have them taken away; also, the house had belonged to his father, and he had a vague feeling that the