If Winter Comes | Page 6

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!"
Mark gave a mock groan. "Oh, lord, not den!"
"Yes, of course, den. Why ever not?"
"I absolutely can't stick den." He glanced about "Who on earth's left
those fearful old slippers there?"
"They're a pair of father's. I took them specially for you for this room.
You haven't got any slippers like that."
He gazed upon the heels downtrodden by her heavy father. He did not
much like her heavy father. "No, I haven't," he said, and thought grimly,
"Thank God!"
"But, Mark, what do you mean, you can't stick 'den'?"
He explained laughingly. He ended, "It's just like lounge hall. Lounge
hall makes me feel perfectly sick. You're not going to call the hall a
lounge hall, are you?"
She was quite serious and the least little bit put out. "No--I'm not. But I
can't see why. I've never heard such funny ideas."
He was vaguely, transiently surprised at her attitude towards his funny

ideas. "Well, come on, let's see upstairs."
"Yes, let's, dear."
He stepped out, and she closed the door after them. "Well, that's your
den."
As if he had never spoken! A vague and transient discomfort shot
through him.
VII
It was when they came down again, completely happy and pleased, that
the servant incident occurred. Mabel was down the stairs slightly before
him and turned a smiling face up to him as he descended. "By Jove, it's
jolly," he said. "We'll be happy here," and he kissed her.
"You'd better see the kitchen. It's awfully nice;" and they went along.
At the kitchen door she paused and began in a mysterious whisper a
long account of the servants. "I think they'll turn out quite nice girls.
They're sisters, you know, and they're glad to be in a place together.
They've both