If Winter Comes | Page 2

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