Winterbourne’s father, whom I knew slightly, was an inadequate sentimentalist. Mild, with an affection of gentility, incompetent, seffishily unselfish (i.e. always patting himself on the back for “renouncing” something he was afraid to do or be or take), he had a genius for messing up other people’s lives. The amount of irreparable harm which can be done by a really good man is astounding. Ten astute rogues do less. He messed up his wife’s life by being weak with her; messed up his children’s lives by being weak and sentimentalish with them and by losing his money – the unforgivable sin in a parent; messed up the lives of his friends and clients by honestly losing their money for them; and messed up his own most completely. That was the one thing he ever did with complete and satisfactory thoroughness. The mess he got his life into would have baffled an army of psychologists to unravel.
When I told Winterbourne what I thought of his father, he admitted it was mostly true. But he rather liked the man, probably disarmed by the mildness, and not sufficiently hard to his father’s soft, selfish sentimentality. Possibly old Winterbourne would have felt and have acted differently in his reactions to George’s death, if circumstances had been different. But he was so scared by the war, so unable to adjust himself to a harsh, intruding reality – he had spent his life avoiding realities – that he took refuge in a drivelling religiosity. He got to know some rather slimy Roman Catholics, and read the slimy religious tracts they showered on him, and talked and sobbed to the exceedingly slimy priest they found for him. So about the middle of the war he was “received,” and found – let us hope – comfort in much prayer and Mass-going and writing rules for Future Conduct and rather suspecting he was like François de Sales and praying for the beatification of the super-slimy Thérèse of Lisieux.
Old Winterbourne was in London, “doing war work,” when the news of George’s death came. He would never have done anything so positive and energetic if he had not been nagged and goaded into it by his wife. She was animated less by motives of disinterested patriotism than by exasperation with him for existing at all and for interrupting her love affairs. Old Winterbourne always said with proud, sad dignity that his “religious convictions forbade” him to divorce her. Religious convictions are such an easy excuse for being nasty. So she found a war job for him in London, and put him into a position where it was impossible for him to refuse.
The telegram from the War Office – “regret to inform… killed in action… Their Majesties’ sympathy…” – went to the home address in the country, and was opened by Mrs. Winterbourne. Such an excitement for her, almost a pleasant change, for it was pretty dull in the country just after the Armistice. She was sitting by the fire, yawning over her twenty-second lover – the affair had lasted nearly a year – when the servant brought the telegram. It was addressed to Mr. Winterbourne, but of course she opened it; she had an idea that “one of those women” was “after” her husband, who, however, was regrettably chaste, from cowardice.
Mrs. Winterbourne liked drama in private life. She uttered a most creditable shriek, clasped both hands to her rather soggy bosom, and pretended to faint. The lover, one of those nice, clean, sporting Englishmen with a minimum of intelligence and an infinite capacity for being gulled by females, especially the clean English sort, clutched her unwillingly and automatically but with quite an Ethel M. Dell appearance of emotion, and exclaimed:
“Darling, what is it? Has he insulted you again?”
Poor old Winterbourne was incapable of insulting any one, but it was a convention always established between Mrs. Winterbourne and her lovers that Winterbourne had “insulted” her, when his worst taunt had been to pray earnestly for her conversion to the True Faith, along with the rest of “poor misguided England.”
In low moaning tones, founded on the best tradition of sensational fiction, Mrs. Winterbourne feebly ejaculated:
“Dead, dead, dead!”
“Who’s dead? Winterbourne?”
(Some apprehension perhaps in the attendant Sam Browne – he would have to propose, of course, and might be accepted.)
“They’ve killed him, those vile, filthy foreigners. My baby son.”
Sam Browne, still mystified, read the telegram. He then stood to attention, saluted (although not wearing a cap), and said solemnly:
“A clean sportin’ death, an Englishman’s death.”
(When Huns were killed it was neither clean nor sportin’, but served the beggars – (“buggers,” among men) sob – right.)
The tears Mrs. Winterbourne shed were not very natural, but they did not take long to dry. Dramatically, she ran to the telephone. Dramatically, she called to the local exchange:
“Trrrunks. (Sob.) Give me Kensington 1030. Mr. Winterbourne’s number, you know. (Sob.) Our darling son – Captain Winterbourne – has been killed by those (Sob) beasts. (Sob. Pause.). Oh, thank you so much, Mr. Crump, I knew you would feel for us in our trouble. (Sob. Sob.) But the blow is so sudden. I must speak to Mr. Winterbourne. Our hearts are breaking here. (Sobissimo.) Thank you. I’ll wait till you ring me.”
Mrs. Winterbourne’s effort on the telephone to her husband was not unworthy of her:
“Is that you, George? Yes, Isabel speaking. I have just had rather bad news. No, about George. You must be prepared, darling. I fear he is seriously ill. What? No. George. GEORGE. Can’t you hear? Yes, that’s better. Now, listen, darling, you must prepare for a great shock. George is seriously ill. Yes, our George, our baby son. What? Wounded? No, not wounded, very dangerously ill. No, darling, there is little hope. (Sob.) Yes, darling, a telegram from the King and Queen. Shall I read it? You are prepared for the shock, (sob) George, aren’t you? ‘Deeply regret killed in action… Their Majesties’ sympathy (Sob. Long pause.) Are you there, George? Hullo, hullo. (Sob.) Hullo, hullo. HULLO. (Aside to Sam Browne.) He’s rung off! How that man insults me! how can I bear it in my sorrow? After I had prepared him for the shock! (Sob. Sob.) But I have always had to fight for my children, while he squatted over his books – and prayed,”
To Mrs. Winterbourne’s credit, let it be said, she had very little belief in the value of prayer in practical affairs. But then, her real objection to religion was founded upon her dislike for doing anything she didn’t want to do, and a profound hatred for everything distantly resembling thought.
At the fatal news Mr. Winterbourne had fallen upon his knees (not forgetting, however, to ring off the harpy), ejaculating: “Lord Jesus, receive his soul!” Mr. Winterbourne then prayed a good deal, for George’s soul, for himself, for “my erring but beloved spouse,” for his other children, “may they be spared and by Thy Mercy brought to the True Faith,” for England (ditto), for his enemies, “though Thou knowest, Dear Lord Jesus, the enmity was none of my seeking, sinner though I be, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, Ave Maria…
Mr. Winterbourne remained on his knees for some time.
But, as the hall tiles hurt his knees, he went and knelt on a hassock at the prie-dieu in his bedroom. On the top of this was an open Breviary in very ecclesiastical binding with a florid ecclesiastical book-marker, all lying on an ecclesiastical bit of embroidery, the “gift of a Catholic sister in Christ.” Above, on a bracket, was a coloured B.V.M. from the Place St. Sulpice, holding a nauseating Infant Jesus dangling a bloody and sun-rayed Sacred Heart. Over this again was a large but rather cheap-looking imitation bronze Crucifix, with a reproduction (coloured) of Leonardo’s Last Supper to the right, and another reproduction (uncoloured) of Holman Hunt’s (heretical) Light of the World to the left. All of which gave Mr. Winterbourne the deepest spiritual comfort.
After dinner, of which he ate sparingly, thinking with dreary satisfaction how grief destroys appetite, he went round to see his confessor, Father Slack. He spent a pleasantly emotional evening. Mr. Winterbourne cried a good deal, and they both prayed; Father Slack said perhaps George had been influenced by his father’s prayers and virtues and had made