This was the pressure, the assault, of love—love urgent and now grown hopeful. But his Christmas was not to end on that note. There was also the pressure of disapproval and of scorn. Neither was easy to bear to a disposition at once affectionate and pliable.
The old people went to bed. Amy stayed, watching her brother light his pipe.
"Not going to bed, Amy? One pipe, and I'm off!"
"What do you think you're doing?"
He turned from the fire, smiling in his disarming way. "I've known all the evening I was going to catch it from you, Amy. I saw it in your eye. But what can a fellow do? He must play up a bit. I haven't actually said anything."
"What does Mabel think?" There was a formidable directness about her. But he had his answer, his defence to what he supposed to be the whole indictment.
"Come now, be fair. I wanted to tell her—well, I wanted her to have a hint given her. I told the mater so, but the mater wouldn't hear of it. The bare idea sent her all—well, absolutely upset her."
The events of the day and the two evenings had affected Amy Ledstone.
"You wanted to tell her? Her? Which?"
"Good Lord, Amy!" He was knocked out. What a question to be asked in Woburn Square! "Which?" Had they both rights? Strange doctrine, indeed, for Woburn Square.
"I was speaking of Miss Thurseley, and I think you knew it."
"Oh, I knew it."
"Anything else isn't your business at all. I never understood why the pater told you."
"There are just two decent things for you to do, Godfrey—let Mabel alone or drop Mrs. Maxon."
His own feelings, most concisely put, most trenchantly interpreted! His vague consciousness that the thing came to that was crystallized into an ultimatum. Against this he could not maintain his peevish resentment at his sister's interference or his assumed prudishness over her talking about Winnie. The pretext of shame would not serve, and his weak nature turned for help to a stronger. She was sitting by the table, rigid, looking straight before her. He sat down by her, laying his pipe on the table.
"By Jove, you're right! I'm in an awful mess. Which is it to be, Amy?"
"Oh, that's not my business. But you needn't be a sneak to both of them, need you?"
He laid his hand on hers, but she drew hers away sharply. "You don't understand how I was led into it. I say, you're not going to—to give me away to Mabel, are you?"
"No. I'm afraid of father and mother. I believe I ought to, but I daren't."
"I say, above all things, for heaven's sake, don't think of that!"
"But you say you proposed it yourself, Godfrey."
He jumped up from his chair in an agony of restlessness. He had proposed it, but only as a thing to be rejected. He had proposed it, but that was weeks ago—when he had not been coming to Woburn Square for very long, and had not seen so much of Mabel Thurseley. The idea seemed quite different now. He stared ruefully at Amy. His entreaty, her reply, threw a cold, cruel light on the recent workings of his mind. He saw now where he was going, where he was being led and driven, by love, by scorn, by the world he had been persuaded to think himself strong enough to defy—his world, which had only one name for Winnie Maxon.
He was exasperated. Why did the two things rend him asunder, like wild horses?
"Well, what is it to be, Amy?" he asked again.
The maiden sister sat unmoved in her chair, her eyes set on the ugly brown paper on the wall opposite. Her voice came level, unimpassioned, with a suggestion of dull despair.
"What's the good of asking me, Godfrey? What do I know about it? Nobody has ever loved me. I've never even been in love myself. I don't know what people do when they're in love. I don't know how they feel. I suppose I've been awfully unkind to you?"
"Well, of course, a fellow isn't himself." He turned sharp round on her. "It was only to last as long as we both wanted—as long as we both wanted one another. O Lord, how can I talk about it, even to you?"
"You needn't mind that. I've seen her. I went to see her. I asked her if she knew anything about Mabel. She didn't. Does she now? I think her wonderful. Miles above you or me, really. Oh, I know she's—she's whatever daddy and mother would choose to call her. But you made her that—and you might as well play fair, Godfrey."
"I don't understand you, Amy. I thought you—of all people——How in the world did you come to go and see her? When?"
"One Sunday, when I knew you were here."
"She never said a word to me about—about Mabel Thurseley."
"She never would. I'm not taking her part. But I should like my brother to be a man."
"She's never told me that you came. I can't understand your going."
He was opposite to her now. She raised her eyes to his, smiling bitterly.
"Don't try. Still, she's a woman, and my brother's—friend."
"Oh, you don't know a thing about it!"
"I said so. I know it. That's how it is with girls like me. Girls! Oh, well! If I did know, I might be able to help. I'm not your enemy, really, Godfrey."
"Everybody makes it fearfully hard for me. I—I want to keep faith, Amy."
"You're not doing it."
He threw himself into the big arm-chair that flanked the grate and its dying fire. He broke out against Winnie in a feeble peevishness: "Why did she make me do it? Any fool could have seen it would never work!"
"You needn't have done it," she retorted mercilessly.
"Needn't have done it? Oh, you don't know anything about it, as you say. What could you know? If you did know, you'd understand how men—yes, and by George, women too—do things. Things they can't stand by, and yet want to, things that are impossible, and yet have been done and have to be reckoned with. That's the way it happens."
Full of despair, his voice had a new note of sincerity. Amy looked across the table at him with a long, scrutinizing gaze.
"I expect I haven't allowed for all of it," she said at last. "I expect I don't know how difficult it is." She rose, moved round the table, and sat on the arm of the big chair beside him. "I'm sorry if I've been unkind, dear. But"—she caressed his hair—"don't be unkind to her—not more than you can help."
"To Mabel?" He was looking up to her now, and whispering.
"Oh no," she smiled. "You're going to marry Mabel. You aren't married to Mrs. Maxon, you see." She kissed his brow. "Make it as easy as you can for Winnie."
"By God, I love Winnie!"
Again her hand smoothed and caressed his hair. "Yes, but you can't do it," she said. "I don't think I could. But mightn't you tell her you can't? She's got more courage than you think, Godfrey." She rose to her feet, rather abruptly. "You see, when she knows the truth about you, she won't care so much, perhaps."
Her brother made her no answer; he lay back in the big chair, staring at the dead fire. Nor did she seem to have any more to say to him. She had said a good deal in the whole conversation, and had summed up a large part of it in her last sentence. When Winnie knew all about him she might not care so much! Was that true—or was it the judgment of the maiden sister, who thought that love was dependent on esteem?
"I'm going to bed. I've been a wet blanket this Christmas, Godfrey."
"My Lord, what a Christmas!"
For the capital farce, and the merry dinner, the snapdragon, mistletoe, and jokes were all forgotten. The woman who knew nothing about the matter had set the matter in its true light. With another kiss, a half-articulate 'My dear!' and a sudden sob, she left him to the contemplation of it.
On Christmas Eve Winnie had regained her old haven at Shaylor's Patch. It seemed as restful and peaceful as ever, nay, even to an unusual degree, for the only other guest was Dennehy, and Dennehy and Alice (again home for holidays) exercised some restraining force on sceptical argument. Both father and mother were intent on giving the child 'a good time,' and Stephen at least could throw himself into a game with just as much zest as into a dispute or a speculation. Here, too, were holly and mistletoe; and, if not a snapdragon, yet a Christmas tree and a fine array of presents, carefully hidden till the morrow. As they had preceded the Faith, so the old observances survived all doubts about it.
But though the haven was the same, the mariner was in a different case. When she had come before, Shaylor's Patch had seemed the final end of a storm-tossed voyage; now it was but a harbour into which her barque put for a few hours in the course of a journey yet more arduous, a journey which had little more than begun; the most she could look for was a few hours of repose, a brief opportunity to rest and refit. Her relation towards her friends and hosts was changed, as it seemed to her, profoundly; she looked at Stephen and Tora Aikenhead with new eyes. The position between them and her was to her feelings almost reversed. They were no longer the intrepid voyagers to whose stories her ignorance hearkened so admiringly. In ultimate truth, now newly apparent, they had made no voyages; from the safe recesses of the haven they did but talk about the perils of the uncharted sea. She was now the explorer; she was making the discoveries about which they only gossiped and speculated. She remembered Mrs. Lenoir's kindly yet half-contemptuous smile over Stephen's facile theories and easy assurance of his theories' easy triumph. She was not as Mrs. Lenoir by the difference of many years and much knowledge; for Mrs. Lenoir still had that same smile for her. None the less, something of the spirit of it was in her when she came the second time to Shaylor's Patch.
But she resolved to take her brief rest and be thankful for her respite. Tora's benignant calm, Stephen's boyish gaiety, the simplicity of the child, Dennehy's loyal friendship—here were anodynes. For the moment nothing could be done; why then fret and worry about what to do? And if she spoke of or hinted at trouble, might it not seem to be in some sense like imputing a responsibility to her hosts? Yet she was asking much of herself in this resolve. She could hold her tongue, but she could not bind her thoughts.
In the morning Dennehy was off early on a five-mile walk to the nearest town, to hear Mass. The question of attending church Stephen referred to Alice's arbitrament; she decided in the affirmative.
"Whose turn?" asked Stephen of his wife.
"Mine," said Tora, with the nearest approach to an expression of discontent that Winnie had ever seen on her face.
Winnie stepped into the breach. "Oh, you look rather tired, and we've a busy day before us! Let me take Alice." So it was agreed, and Alice ran off to get ready.
"Do you always leave the question to her?"
"What else could we do? We say nothing against it, but how could we force her?"
"She's forced at school, I suppose?"
"I don't think any doubts suggest themselves. It's just part of the discipline. As a fact, I think the child's naturally religious. If so——" He waved his hands tolerantly.
Winnie laughed. "If so, she'll soon be rather shocked at her parents."
"It's quite arguable, Winnie, that it's a good thing for children to see their parents doing some things which they would naturally think—or at any rate be taught to think—wrong. They know by experience that the parents are on the whole a decent sort—kind and so on—and they learn not to condemn other people wholesale on the strength of one or two doubtful or eccentric practices. Do you see what I mean? It promotes breadth of view."
"I dare say it's arguable—most things are here—but I won't argue it, or we shall be late for church."
When Godfrey Ledstone attended church with his family on the same day, he went without any questioning, not conscious of any peculiarity in his attitude towards the Church, though well aware of what the Church's attitude would be towards him, if its notice happened to be called to the facts. What of that? One compromised with the Church just as one compromised with the world; the code had provisions as applicable to the one negotiation as to the other. He did not go to church regularly, but, when he did, he took part in the service with an untroubled gratification, if not with any particular spiritual benefit. On this occasion he achieved what was, considering the worries which oppressed him, a very creditable degree of attention.
Neither was Winnie—in the little church at Nether End—convicted of sin; after all, that is not the particular note sought to be struck by a Christmas service—the Church has its seasons. But she was overcome by an unnerving sense of insignificance. The sermon dwelt on the familiar, yet ever striking, theme that all over the world, in well-nigh every tongue, this service was being held in honour of, and in gratitude for, the great Event of this day. That seemed a tremendous thing to stand up against. There is majesty in great organizations, be they spiritual or secular. Are insignificant atoms to flout them? Or can the argument from insignificance be turned, and the rebel plead that he is so small that it does not matter what he does? The organizations will not allow the plea. Insignificant as you are, they answer, little as your puny dissent affects us, yet it is of bad example, and if you persist in it we will, in our way, make you unhappy and uncomfortable. Now mankind has been, in the course of its eventful history, from time to time convinced that many things do matter and that many do not, and opinions have varied and shall vary thereanent. But nobody has had any real success in convincing mankind that it does not matter whether it is happy or not—in the long run. Mankind is obstinately of the contrary opinion.
At the church door Dennehy was waiting for her and Alice—his Mass heard and ten good miles of country road behind him; spiritually and physically fortified. He was not handsome, but middle-age on its approach found him clean in wind and limb—temperate, kindly (outside politics), and really intensely happy.
"It's a concession for me to come as far as the door of this place," he said, smiling. Winnie glanced warningly at Alice. "You needn't mind her—the poor child hears everything! But it's my belief that Heaven has made her a fine old Tory, and they can't hurt her."
"You approving of Tories! Mr. Dennehy!" She turned to the child. "You liked it, Alice?"
"Didn't you hear me singing?" It seemed a good retort. Alice had sung lustily. She did not seem inclined to talk. She walked beside them in a demure and absent gravity. Over her head they looked at one another; the child was thinking of the story of the Child, and finding it not strange, but natural and beautiful, the greatest of all her beloved fairy stories—and yet true.
Dennehy gently patted Alice's shoulder. "In God's good time!" he murmured.
"What do you mean?" Winnie asked, in a low voice.
"True people will find truth, and sweet people do sweet things," he answered. Then he laughed and snapped his fingers. "And the Divvle take the rest of humanity!"
"Everybody except the Irish, you mean?"
"I mustn't be supposed to let in Ulster," he warned her with a twinkle. "But there's an English soul or two I'd save, Mrs. Ledstone."
"I don't like your being false to your convictions. I've one name that I've not denied and that nobody denies me. It's Winnie."
"Winnie it shall be on my lips too henceforth," he answered. "And I thank you."
Respect for his convictions? Yes. But there was more behind her permission, her request. There was a great friendliness, and, with it, a new sense that 'Mrs. Winifred Ledstone' might prove to be a transitory being, that the title was held precariously. Why need her chosen friends be bound to the use of it?
Richard Dennehy was by now one of that small band. He was so loyal and sympathetic, though he was also very cocksure in his condemnations, and terribly certain that he and his organization alone had got hold of the right end of the stick. Yet the cocksureness was really for the organization only; it left him in himself a humble man, not thinking himself so clever as the emancipated persons among whom he moved, rather regretting that such able minds should be so led astray. One habit indeed he had, of which Stephen Aikenhead would humorously complain; he used emotion as an argumentative weapon. There are words and phrases which carry an appeal independent of the validity of the idea they express, a strength born of memory and association. They can make a man feel like a child again, or make him feel a traitor, and either against his reason.
"Spells and incantations I call them," said Stephen, "and I formally protest against their use in serious discussion."
"And why do you call them that?"
"Because they depend for their effect on a particular form of words—either a particularly familiar or a particularly beautiful formula. If you expressed the same idea in different language, its power would be gone; at least it would seem just as legitimately open to question as any profane statement that I may happen to make. Now to depend for its efficacy on the exact formula and not on the force of the idea is, to my mind, the precise characteristic of a spell, charm, or incantation, Dick."
"I dare say the holy words make you uncomfortable, my boy!"
"Exactly! And is it fair? Why am I, a candid inquirer, to be made uncomfortable? Prove me wrong, convince me if you can, but why make me uncomfortable?"
Winnie, an auditor of the conversation, laughed gently. "I think that's what you tried to do to me, coming back from church—when you talked about 'God's good time,' I mean."
Dennehy scratched his head. "I don't do it on purpose. They just come to my lips. And who knows?—It might be good for you!"
Alice ran in, announcing that it was time for the Christmas tree. Even at Shaylor's Patch discussion languished for the rest of the day, and Winnie had her hours of respite.
Indeed, it was a matter of hours only; peace was not to endure for her even over the Sunday. Early in the morning the maid brought her a telegram from Godfrey Ledstone: "Caught slight chill. Think better not travel. Don't interrupt visit. Shall stay Woburn Square.—Godfrey."
It was significant of how far her mind had forecast probabilities that she brushed aside the excuse without a moment's hesitation. Does an hour's journey on a mild morning frighten a strong man if he really wants to go? At any rate Winnie was not inclined to give Godfrey the benefit of that doubt. He did want to stay in Woburn Square, or he did not want to come to Shaylor's Patch. Whichever way it was put, it came to much the same thing. It was another defeat for her, another victory for the family. And for Mabel Thurseley? That, too, seemed very likely. Her heart quailed in grief and apprehension, as it looked into a future forlorn and desolate; but not for a moment did she think of giving up the struggle. Instead of that, she would fight more resolutely, more fiercely. This was not the common case of a variable man's affections straying from one woman to another. She knew that it was his courage which had failed first, and by its failure undermined the bastion of his love. He had been ashamed of her first; if he had now ceased—or begun to cease—to love her, it was because she made him ashamed before his family and friends, because she put him "in a false position" and made things awkward and uncomfortable. That he felt like that was in part—nay, largely—her own fault. Either from mistaken confidence, or chivalry, or scruple, or a mixture of the three, she had exposed him, unsupported, to the fullest assault of Woburn Square, and of all it represented. She had been wrong; she should have stood on her rights and forbidden him to go there unless she were received also. At the beginning she could have done it; she ought to have done it. Was it too late to do it now?
She formed a plan of campaign. She would take him away, put the sea between him and his people, the sea between him and Mabel Thurseley. There was money in the till sufficient for a holiday. His very weakness, his responsiveness to his surroundings, favoured success. He would recover his courage, and hence-forward a ban should rest on his family till his family removed its ban from her.
There was no church for her that morning; she was not in the mood. Stephen had to go, since Tora sophistically maintained that she had attended by proxy the day before. Winnie strolled with Dick Dennehy, when he came back from his early expedition.
"It's funny we're such friends, when you think me so wicked," she said.
"You're not wicked, though you may do a wicked thing—through wrong-headedness."
"You can't understand that I look on myself as Godfrey's wife for all my life or his."
"Didn't you once think the same about Mr. Maxon?"
"Oh, you really are——!" Winnie laughed irritably.
"And you ran away from him. What happens if Master Godfrey runs away from you?"
Winnie glanced at him sharply. Rather odd that he should put that question! Was there any suspicion among her friends, any at Shaylor's Patch?
"Because," Dennehy continued, "you wouldn't go on from man to man, being married to each of 'em for life temporarily, would you?"
Winnie laughed, if reluctantly. But there is hardly anything that a ready disputant cannot turn to ridicule.
"How you try to pin people down!" she complained. "You and your principles! I know what I should like to see happen, Mr. Dennehy."
"Ah, now—'Dick'—as a mere matter of fairness, Winnie!"
"Well, Dick, what I should just love to see is you in love with somebody who was married, or had been divorced, or something of that sort, and see how you'd like your principles yourself." She looked mischievous and very pretty.
Dennehy shook his head. "We're all miserable sinners. But I don't believe I'd do it."
"What, fall in love, or give way to it?"
"The latter. The former's out of any man's power, I think."
"What would you do?"
"Emigrate to America."
"Out of the frying-pan into the fire! It's full of divorced people, isn't it?"
"Not the best Irish society." He laughed. "Well, you're chaffing me."
"Oh no, I'm not. I'm serious. I should like to see the experiment. Dick, if Godfrey does run away, as you kindly suggest, give me a wide berth! Oh, is it quite impossible that, if I tried, I might—make you miserable?"
"If you'll flirt with me after this fashion every time we meet, I'll not be miserable—I'll be very happy."
"Ah, but that's only the beginning! The beginning's always happy."
The sadness in her voice struck him. "You poor dear! You've had bad luck, and you've fallen among evil counsellors, in which term, heaven forgive me, I include my dear friends here at Shaylor's Patch."
"I'll try your principles another way. If you were Godfrey, would you leave me—now?"
He twisted his moustache and hesitated. "Well, there you have me," he admitted at last. "If a man does what he did, as a gentleman he must stand to be damned for it."
"Godfrey's free to go, of course—that's our bargain. But you wouldn't have made a bargain like that?"
"I would not, Winnie. To do me justice, I believe I'd think it enough to be ruining one woman, without providing for my liberty to ruin another as soon as I wanted to."
Winnie laid her hand on his arm for a moment. "How pleasantly we quarrel!" she said.
"And why wouldn't we?" he asked, with native surprise that a quarrel should be considered a thing inherently unpleasant. "Ah, here come Stephen and Alice, back from church! I'll go and run races with her, and get an appetite for lunch."
Stephen lounged up, his pipe in full blast.
"Stephen, how is it that this old world gets on at all, with everybody at loggerheads with everybody else?"
"I've often considered that. The solution is economic—purely economic, Winnie. You see, people must eat."
"So far the Court is with you, Stephen."
"And in anything except a rudimentary state of society they must feed one another. Because no man has the genius to make for himself all the things he wants to eat. Consequently—I put the argument summarily—you will find that, broadly speaking, all the burning and bludgeoning and fighting, all the killing in short, and equally all the refraining from killing, are in the end determined by the consideration whether your action one way or the other will seriously affect your supply of food—to which, in civilized society, you may add clothes, and so on."
"Does that apply to the persecution of opinions?"
"Certainly it does—usually by way of limitation of killing, though an exception must be made for human sacrifice. There have been temporary aberrations of judgment, but, generally speaking, they never killed more than a decent minimum of any useful heretics—not, anyhow, where secular statesmen had the last word. They had to make some kind of a show, of course, to satisfy, as they supposed, their superior officers. Still—they left a good many Jews, Winnie!"
"Wasn't that the spread of toleration?"
"Certainly—toleration based on food, originally, and afterwards perhaps reinforced by doubt." He broke into a laugh. "But even to-day I'm hanged if I'd trust to the doubt without the food!" He beamed on her. "I'll tell you a secret—religion's all food, Winnie."
Winnie had asked for the exposition—but she had had enough of it. Even Stephen's last—and rather startling—thesis failed to draw further inquiries.
"It seems to follow that we oughtn't to keep lunch waiting," she said, laughing, as she put her arm through his. "I do love Shaylor's Patch," she went on, gently patting his arm. "You can always forget yourself and your troubles by talking nonsense—or sense—about something or other. If I come to grief again"—her voice shook for an instant—"you'll give me a shed to lie in here, won't you, Stephen?"
"My poor house is thine, and all that is in it," he answered orientally.
"Yes, in a way I know it is—and so I needn't quite starve," said Winnie.
To Winnie's few but devoted adherents Cyril Maxon was not a man, but a monster, a type of tyranny, the embodied symbol of an intolerable servitude; even Dick Dennehy, staunch champion of the institution, had no charity for the individual. Needless to say that this was not at all the view Mr. Maxon took of himself, and not entirely the judgment which an impartial observer would form of him. There were many women with whom he might have got on very well, women of a submissive temper, meek women, limited women, sly women who hoodwinked under a show of perfect obedience. He would not have been hard to hoodwink, had Winnie been content to attack her problem in that old-fashioned way. Or, again, an extremely clever and diplomatic woman—but she can make a good husband out of the rawest of raw material, mere flesh and bone with (as Stephen Aikenhead would certainly have added) the economic prerequisite.
From the moment that his wife had identified herself with the Ledstone family—his memory of Mr. Ledstone was vivid and horrible—he had set aside the idea that she would soon 'have had enough of it.' It was no longer in his power to hold to that conclusion. Now it was he himself who had had more than enough of it. She was done with. He took up his life alone. At first he sought to mitigate solitude by constant work. It was not a complete success. Then he installed an unmarried sister in his house. She was his senior, her temper was akin to his; the experiment lasted just a month, after which Miss Maxon returned to Broadstairs. Then gradually he began to seek society again, to show his face at his old resorts, to meet the women who admired him, who gushed over him as interesting, clever, and rising. They gushed still more now, hinting, each with what degree of delicacy nature had given her, their sympathy with him, and their unlimited astonishment at the folly and perverseness of Mrs. Maxon. He found this the most effective specific that he had tried.
It would be unpardonably rash to generalize, but it may be hazarded that in some cases the man who treats his wife worst misses her most. A comrade can perhaps be replaced, a new slave is hard to come by. Besides, Cyril Maxon's principles forbade the search for one, and now he had to apply his principles to his own case. A year ago nothing in the whole world would have seemed so unlikely—Fate at its pranks again! It makes us pay for sins and principles alike—perhaps the best way (with deference to theà prioriphilosophers) of learning to appraise either.
Cyril Maxon was very rising by now; people called him a certainty for a judgeship in some ten years' time (he was only thirty-eight); and the ladies were very sympathetic. Several of them were members of Mr. Attlebury's congregation, and the personal friends of that genial but exacting apostle. Some of the ladies wondered how Mr. Attlebury could be so responsive, and yet so definitely restricted in his responsiveness; they thought of his demeanour as of an occult art, and might have been right had they stopped at calling it esoteric. Attlebury himself felt no difficulty, not even a consciousness of effort. He met them in absolute intimacy of soul to soul. Happily in all creeds—and discreeds—there are men and women who can do it.
At first Cyril Maxon had refused to talk about his misfortune, which, of course, soon became public property, and the hints about it had to be almost impossibly delicate. But, as time went on, he found two or three friends to whom he could, more or less, open his heart. There was Mrs. Ladd, an elderly woman with hearty kindly ways and a mind shrewdly matter of fact. There was Miss Fortescue, one of Attlebury's best 'workers,' a benevolent sensible spinster of five-and-forty. There was also Lady Rosaline Deering, daughter of a Scotch peer, widow of a Colonial Administrator. She was a woman of three-and-thirty, or thereabouts, tall and of graceful carriage; her nose was too long, and so was her chin, but she had pretty hair and fine eyes. She was a bit of a blue-stocking and dabbled in theology and philosophy. "Not afraid to think for myself," was the way in which she defined her attitude, in contradistinction (as she implied) from the attitude of most of the women who sat at Mr. Attlebury's feet. She admired Attlebury, but she thought for herself.
"One can't quite give up one's reason," she would say, with a winning smile. "Besides, I was brought up in the Church of Scotland, you know." This ecclesiastical origin seemed to give her independence; she paid only so much voluntary allegiance as she chose to Attlebury and his Church; she could in case of need fall back on her Church of origin, as though on a domicile never finally forfeited. Also in her husband's lifetime she had seen the cities of men and known their minds. In fact she might be considered emancipated, and her adherence to Mr. Attlebury's school was rather æsthetic than dogmatic; she thought that religion should be invested with beauty, but she was not afraid to talk of some of its doctrines as possibly 'symbolic.'
All the three ladies took a great interest in Maxon, but by common consent the first place was yielded to Lady Rosaline. Mrs. Ladd could fortify him, Miss Fortescue could cheer him up; they both recognized that Lady Rosaline could do something else, a subtle thing into which femininity entered more specifically; one of the things which Mrs. Maxon ought to have given him, but obviously had not; perhaps something like what Lady Rosaline herself derived from Attlebury's church services, a blend of intellectual and æsthetic satisfaction. Mrs. Ladd and Miss Fortescue were weak in the æsthetic element. Moreover there was a special bond of sympathy between Lady Rosaline and Maxon. The late Colonial Administrator had been by no means all that he should have been as a husband, and when death severed the union, it was but a very slender string that its shears cut.
Mrs. Ladd and Miss Fortescue had hinted at this sad story; Lady Rosaline herself told it, though in reticent outline only, to Cyril one evening in November when he happened to have leisure to go to tea with her at her flat in Hans Place.
"It's a terrible thing to have to say, but really his death—poor fellow!—ended a situation which had become almost unendurable to any woman of fine feelings. He was never rude or unkind to me, but one's pride! And the solitude of the soul, Mr. Maxon!"
"Still you endured it bravely." His tone subtly asked sympathy, while his words gave it.
"I wonder if I could have gone on! I should shock Mr. Attlebury, I suppose, but I thought more than once of divorce. Our home—when we were at home—had always been in Scotland. That would have made it easier, and it needn't have hurt his career anything like so much. He could just have left me and stayed away the necessary time, you see. After the last—the last trouble—he offered me that, if I wished it."
"You must have been under a considerable temptation."
"Yes. But then his health began to fail, and—and things were different. I had to stay and look after him; and so we became better friends at the end. I really don't bear malice now."
"I think with Attlebury on that question, you know."
"Yes, I suppose you do. But then, isn't there—room for doubt?"
"I scarcely think so, Lady Rosaline."
"Oh, but it is hard sometimes, then!" she murmured, looking into the fire. "Do you think there's nothing in the view that the offence itself is a dissolution?—That it's the offender himself—or herself—who puts asunder, not the judge, who merely deals with the legal consequences?"
"No, I can't see that." He paused, frowning, then went on: "I can understand a man maintaining that it's given as a counsel of perfection, rather than an absolutely binding rule—I mean, that a man should try, but, if it proves beyond his strength, he might not be absolutely condemned."
"Does it hurt you to talk about it?"
"Not to people who understand."
"How strange she didn't understand you better! Do you mind my saying that?"
"If I'd ever had any doubts about the substantial rights of the matter, her subsequent proceedings would have dispelled them completely."
"Yes, they throw a light back, don't they?"
Cyril Maxon threw more light, setting forth the preposterous charges which his wife had levelled against him before she went away. He put them as honestly as he could; they were to him so unreasonable that he was not in the least afraid to submit them to an impartial judge. They seemed just as unreasonable to Lady Rosaline. She was as secure of herself as was Mrs. Lenoir; she was not afraid of being 'crushed.' (Perhaps being 'Lady Rosaline' helped her a little there.) And Winnie's alleged grievances fell so short of her own tale of wrongs as to seem a ridiculously inadequate excuse.
"I can't understand her any more than you can," she said.
"There's really no use in saying any more about her, Lady Rosaline. It's a matter of character."
"And she's actually with this man Ledstone now?"
He spread out his hands and bowed his head. It was both answer and comment enough.
"They'd marry, I suppose, if they could?"
Cyril Maxon was not quick at marking the delicate shades of a woman's mood; there at least Winnie was right. He did not now detect the underlying note of pity in Lady Rosaline's voice. It was, indeed, no more than hinted. He made another gesture—this time of pronounced impatience and distaste. Lady Rosaline smiled faintly, and changed the subject.
When he had left her, she sat on by the fire, musing. She was a widow with few happy memories and no fond regrets; she was childless; in spite of her high connections she was by no means rich; she could not afford to travel much in the style she desired, or to entertain much. And she was thirty-three. Surveying her position as a whole, she did not take a roseate view of it. "I'm bound to drop out in a few years"—that was how she summed up her prospects—not a cheerful summary, it must be admitted. She had not the contentment of a Mrs. Ladd nor the philanthropic zeal of a Miss Fortescue. She had a good deal of ambition, a love of luxury, and (as has been said) a commendable self-confidence. Masterful herself under all her graceful gentleness, she liked rather than feared masterful men; Cyril Maxon attracted her none the less because he had 'crushed' Winnie. "A poor little thing like that!" So ran her verdict on Winnie, whom she had met half a dozen times. And he was very rising. She found herself recalling the precise words that he had used about 'a counsel of perfection.'
It needs little acuteness to detect a congruity between the interpretation of a rule as a counsel of perfection, and the doctrine of the limits of human endurance. In fact they come to very much the same thing and are invoked, rightly or wrongly, plausibly or unplausibly, on much the same occasions and under very similar circumstances. If a man strikes you lightly on one cheek, you turn the other. But if he strikes the first cheek very hard? If he forces you to go a mile with him, will you go with him twain? Does the amenity of the road make no difference? If he takes your coat, shall he take your cloak also? Something might turn on the relative value of the two garments. In such cases the human race makes accommodations; and accommodations are not confined to any one class of thinkers.
Cyril Maxon had afforded scant countenance to Lady Rosaline's suggestion that the offender himself severed the tie. She had picked it up from an article of Catholic complexion, which set out the authorities for it only to confute them. His logical mind saw that the position implied rather startling consequences; for if an act can sever, an act can bind. But he did not so easily or readily reject his own idea of the counsel of perfection. Arguing before a Court, he could have made a good case for it. Argued in the forum of his own conscience, it found pleas and precedents. Yet it was slowly that it gained even a hearing from the judge, and only by much dexterous pleading; for at first sight the authorities to which he bowed were all against it. They had seemed absolutely and immediately conclusive on the morning when Mr. Ledstone called in the Temple. 'No proceedings!' Save as a record of his own attitude, Maxon attached no importance to the utterance so charged with relief to its auditor. It was in no sense a pledge; it was merely an expression of present intention. On what conceivable theory had that Ledstone family any right to pledges from him? If a pledge at all, it was one to himself and to the school of thought to which he belonged. To the Ledstones? Never!
So the slow hidden current of his feelings began to bore for itself a new channel—a way round the rock of principle that barred direct advance. Another change there was in him. A woman—his wife—had gibbeted him as a man impossible to live with. He was secretly, almost unconsciously, afraid of the world's agreeing with her. Seeking sympathy, he tried to manifest it; afraid of being misunderstood, he embarked on an effort to be understanding. He made a fair success of it. People said that he was human after all, and that Mrs. Maxon ought to have seen it. The work which Winnie had done redounded to her discredit; it is not an uncommon case. The rebels are shot, flogged, or have to fly the kingdom. But reforms are introduced into the administration, and these make the rebels seem more guilty still—because, of course, the reforms were just going to be introduced anyhow, if only the rebels would have had a little faith, a little patience. Who has not read it a score of times in the newspapers?
"That little wife of his can't have known how to manage a man," said old Mrs. Ladd, who had owned two husbands, the first an over-festive soul, the second a hypochondriac.
"The Vicar has the highest opinion of him," remarked Miss Fortescue.
Mrs. Ladd smiled. "He won't have such a high opinion of him if he goes gadding after Rosaline Deering."
Miss Fortescue was shocked and interested. "My dear, is there any chance of that?"
Mrs. Ladd pursed up her lips. "I don't see much harm in it myself," she said.
"Oh, Mrs. Ladd! If the Vicar heard you!"
"If you may marry again when your husband's dead——"
"It's allowed, but it's—it's not exactly recommended, is it?"
"Well, on the Vicar's theory, I don't see in the end any difference between the two cases—or, at any rate, not much." Mrs. Ladd destroyed her logic by a concession to her friend's pained surprise. She ought to have stuck to there being no difference at all. Then on Attlebury's theory she had an argument; 'not much' came perilously near to cutting the roots of it.
Speculation as to Mr. Attlebury's attitude was not confined to these good members of his flock. It had a place in Cyril Maxon's own mind, so soon as he began to consider the idea of freeing himself from the legal bond of marriage—and of reviewing his situation after that was done. But here the idiosyncrasy of the man came in, and cut across the loyalty of the Churchman. He had given to Attlebury a voluntary allegiance. But if Attlebury tried to extort a forced obedience? Cyril's face set at the thought. Winnie's great offence had been that she would not 'adapt herself.' In his heart he demanded that the priest and the Church should adapt themselves also, should recognize his services and his value, and find a way out for him, if necessary. The 'counsel of perfection' theory seemed more and more, on consideration, to be a possible way out, and already he began to feel, in anticipation, a resentment against the man or the institution that should say the contrary. He chafed beforehand at such dictation, such interference with a view conscientiously held by a man whom all must admit to be sincere and devout—and, moreover, an adherent very much worth having.
Among the various influences which caused the project of freeing himself to take definite shape in his mind, Rosaline Deering had to be reckoned first, no doubt, but she was not the only woman who counted. Done with as she was, out of his life, yet Winnie Maxon also had her share in the work. He felt a primitive desire to 'show her,' as children say—to show her that she had not the power to destroy his life, that there were women wiser than she, women who did not think him impossible to live with, but would hold it high fortune to become his wife. As soon as he began to think of Rosaline Deering, he thought oftener of his wife, setting the two women in opposition as it were, and endowing Rosaline with all the virtues which Winnie had so conspicuously lacked. Even such an adventitious thing as Rosaline's courtesy title counted in this connexion; it would help to convince Winnie of her own insignificance, of what a much greater career than her own she had tried—vainly tried—to spoil. When she was little better than a vagabond—he did not put things mercifully—Mr. Justice and Lady Rosaline Maxon might be entertaining in Devonshire Street—or perhaps Berkeley Square.
When the Law Courts rose for the Christmas vacation he went to Paris, and Lady Rosaline was gracious enough to make no secret of the fact that his presence there had a share in determining her also on a short visit. They did some of the sights together, they had many talks over the fire, and it was there—on the same Christmas Eve whereon Winnie had gone to Shaylor's Patch and Godfrey Ledstone to Woburn Square—that he told her that he had made up his mind to seek legal dissolution of his ill-starred marriage.
"I have looked at the question from all sides, and I have satisfied my conscience," he said. "Now I must act on my own responsibility."
In the last words there sounded anticipatory defiance of Mr. Attlebury—a defiance which indicated that the satisfaction of his conscience was not quite complete. The case rather was that his conscience had come to terms with the other influences, and under their pressure had accepted the way out.
"I think I may justly plead that the circumstances are exceptional." He leant forward towards her and asked, "You don't condemn me?"
"What's my opinion worth? You know much more about it; you're much more able to form a judgment."
"But I want to know that I haven't forfeited your good opinion, your regard, if I may hope that I have ever gained it."
"No, I don't condemn you, if your own conscience doesn't, Mr. Maxon." She rose and stood—leaning her elbow on the mantelpiece, her back half turned towards him. The pose displayed well the grace of her tall figure; his eyes rested on her in satisfaction.
"Thank you," he said. "That—that means a great deal to me, Lady Rosaline."
Her elbow rested on the mantelpiece, her face on her hand; her mouth was hidden. But unseen by him a smile bent her lips. His words were entirely decorous—from a man still married—but they were explicit enough. "I can have him if I want him," probably sums up pretty accurately the lady's comfortable conclusion.
In spite of the untoward telegram, her visit to Shaylor's Patch heartened up Winnie in two ways. It checked the searching of conscience which is the natural and frequent result of threatened failure; by the evidence it afforded her of Stephen's affection and Dick Dennehy's loyal admiration, it strengthened her woman's confidence in her power to hold her man. After all, Mabel Thurseley was not very pretty; with the sea between Godfrey and Woburn Square, there would be full cause for hope. She dreamed of Italian skies. Though she had recalled and recognized his liberty, under their bargain, to leave her, it was not prominent in her mind. The natural woman was fighting—and fights, it may be supposed, much the same, whatever her status by law or her rights by agreement.
She had telegraphed to Godfrey the proposed time of her arrival at the studio, and expected to find him there; for surely the slight chill would be better by now? He was not there; yet apparently the chill was better, for he had been there earlier in the day. The old Irish servant gave her this news, looking at her in what Winnie felt to be rather an odd way. The woman lingered by the door for a minute, glancing round the room, seeming half in a mind to say something more, and half in a mind not to. In the end she said nothing, and went out in silence—as a rule she was loquacious—when her mistress told her that she would give any necessary orders after she had unpacked. Winnie's mind was on the idea of carrying Godfrey off that very night.
Short as her absence had been, the studio looked somehow unfamiliar; it had less of the 'lived in' look which she associated with it as a pleasant feature. She scanned it with awakening curiosity. The board on which he stretched his drawing-paper—what had become of that? His tobacco-jar was not in its usual place; technical books of his were missing from their appointed shelf. He must have felt inclined for work in spite of the chill, and come to fetch them; at least, that would account for the board and books, if not as well for the tobacco-jar. She moved towards the kitchen, to inquire of the servant, but suddenly came to a full stop in the middle of the room. She stood there for a moment, then turned sharp round and went up the stairs that led to the bedrooms—not to unpack, for she left her own trunk and dressing-bag on the floor of the studio.
She went upstairs slowly, determinedly calm, but with beating heart and a touch of vivid colour on her cheeks. The door of his bedroom stood wide open. The furniture was all in its place; the toilet table was no barer than his visit to Woburn Square accounted for; the little clock she had given him ticked away on the mantelpiece. But Winnie made straight for the chest of drawers, and quickly opened and shut one after another. They were all empty. The wardrobe yielded the same result. All his clothes had gone, and his boots—all of them. She went back to the landing and opened the door of a cupboard, where his portmanteau was usually stowed away; it was gone. Preparation for a long stay—somewhere! Yet the chill was so much better that he had been able to visit the studio that morning, when, no doubt, he had carried off all these things—all of them, not merely drawing-board, books, and tobacco-jar.
She moved quickly into her own room. There all was as usual; but she had thought that perhaps there would be a letter. None was visible. A curious quiet, almost a desolation, seemed to brood over the little room; it too took on, suddenly, an uninhabited air. She sank into a wicker arm-chair and sat there quite still for some minutes. Then she sprang briskly to her feet again, exclaiming, "Oh, but nonsense!"
She was seeking indignantly to repel the conviction which was mastering her mind. Surely he would not, could not, do it like this? In her rare contemplation of their possible parting, as bargained for, there had always been not indeed argument, much less recrimination, but much friendly discussion, a calm survey of the situation, probably an agreement to 'try it again' for a longer or shorter time, till a mature and wise decision, satisfactory to the reason, if not to the feelings, of both, should be arrived at. But this would be sheer running away—literal running away from her, from the problem, from the situation. It could not be. There must be some explanation.
Sounds were easily audible in the small flimsy dwelling. She heard the front door bell ring—and sat listening for his voice calling her, his step across the studio floor, and then coming up the stairs. Neither voice came, nor step; besides—odd she had not remembered it before—of course he would have used his latchkey. She got up, took off her jacket, unpinned her hat, laid it on the bed, looked to her hair, and then went slowly downstairs again.
Amy Ledstone was standing in the middle of the studio; the knock had been hers. Then in an instant Winnie knew, and in an instant she put on her armour. Her tone was cool and her manner self-possessed; they need not both be cowards—she and Godfrey!
"How do you do, Miss Ledstone? You've come to tell me something?"
"Yes." Amy Ledstone was neither cool nor self-possessed. Her voice trembled violently; it was an evident effort for her not to break into sobbing. "He—he still loves you; he told me to tell you that."
"Told you to tell me! Isn't that rather odd?—After all our—well, he's been able to tell me for himself before. Won't you sit down?" She sat herself as she spoke.
"No, thank you. But he can't bear to see you; he can't trust himself. He told me to say that. He said you'd understand—that you had a—an understanding. Only he couldn't bear to say good-bye."
"He's not coming back?"
"He was really rather seedy on Sunday—so he stayed. And—and on Sunday night mother had a bad attack; we were really alarmed."
Winnie nodded. Always, from the very beginning, a dangerous enemy—mother's weak heart!
"Mother had been with him all day—she wouldn't leave him. I suppose she got over-tired, and there was the strain of—of the situation; and daddy—my father—broke out on Godfrey the next morning; and I'd broken out on him Christmas night."
"You?" There was a touch of reproach in the question.
"Yes, I told him he must choose. He really made love to Mabel all the time. So I told him——"
"I see." She smiled faintly. "The poor boy can't have had a pleasant Christmas, Miss Ledstone!"
"We were all at him, all three of us!" She stretched out her hands suddenly. "Do try to understand that he had something to bear too. And that we had—thinking as we do about it. It was hard for other people besides you. Father's getting old, and Godfrey's all mother and I——"
Winnie nodded her understanding of the broken sentence.
"I haven't said a word against him or any of you. He had a right to do what he has done, though he's done it in a way I didn't think he'd choose."
"He doesn't trust himself, and mother—oh!" Her forlorn murmuring ended hopelessly in nothing.
"Mother! Yes! What a lot of things there are to think of! I had just made up my mind to take him right away from all of you, to take him abroad. I could have done it if I'd found him here. Perhaps I could do it still—I wonder?"
Amy shivered uncomfortably under the thoughtful gaze of her companion's eyes.
"I might write letters too—as you used to—and contrive secret meetings. He's said nothing about Miss Thurseley to me—I don't suppose he'd say anything about me to Miss Thurseley. But he'd meet me all the same, I think. That seems to be his way; only before your last visit I didn't know it."
"Indeed he won't think of Mabel—not for a long while. He's so—so broken up."
Winnie raised her brows slightly; she was beginning to form an opinion of her own about that—an opinion not likely to be too generous to Godfrey.
Amy spoke with obvious effort, with an air of shame. "Mother begged and prayed me to—to try and persuade you——" She broke off again.
"To let him alone? I suppose she would. She thinks I've done all the harm? As far as he's concerned, I suppose I have. If we'd gone about it in the ordinary way, he really needn't have suffered at all."
Again came Amy's uncomfortable shiver; she was not at home with steady contemplation of the ways of the world; it had not come across her path any more than love-making had.
"You can tell your mother that I'll let him alone. Then, I hope, she'll get better."
"Oh, I don't understand you!"
"No? Well, I didn't understand Godfrey. But in your case it doesn't matter. Why should you want to? You can all put me out of your thoughts from to-day."
"I can't!" cried Amy; "I shall never be able to!" Suddenly she came over to Winnie, and, standing before her, rather awkwardly, burst into tears. "How can you be so hard?" she moaned. "Don't you see that I'm terribly unhappy for you? But it's hopeless to try to tell you. You're so—so hard. And I've got to go back home, where they'll be——"
Winnie supplied the word—"Jubilant? Yes." She frowned. "You cry, and I don't—it is rather funny. I wonder if I shall cry when you've gone!"
"Oh, do you love him, or don't you?"
Winnie's brows were raised again. In view of what had occurred that day, of the sudden revelation of Godfrey, of the abrupt change his act had wrought in her relations to him, the question seemed to imply an unreal simplicity of the emotions, a falsely uncomplicated contrast between two states of feeling, standing distantly over against one another. Such a conception in no way corresponded with her present feelings about Godfrey Ledstone. The man she loved had done the thing she could not forgive—did she love him? Yet if she did not love him, why could she not forgive him? Unless she loved him, it was small matter that he should be ashamed and run away. But if he were ashamed and ran away, how could she love? Love and contempt, tenderness and repulsion, seemed woven into one fabric of intricate, almost untraceable pattern. How could she describe that to Amy Ledstone?
"I suppose I love my Godfrey, but he seems not to be the same as yours. I can't put it better than that. And you love yours, and not mine. I think that's all we can say about it."
Amy had her complications of feeling too. She dried her eyes, mournfully saying, "That's not true about me. I like yours best—if I know what you mean. He was a man, anyhow. But then I know it's wicked to feel like that."
Winnie looked up at her. "Of course you must think it wicked—I quite see that—but you do understand more than I thought," she said. "And you won't think I'm abusing him? It wouldn't seem wicked to me at all—if I'd happened on the right man. But I didn't. That's all. And this way of ending it seems somehow to—to defile it all. The end spoils it all. That seems to me shamefully unfair. He had a right to go, but he had no right to be ashamed. And he is ashamed, and almost makes me ashamed. I could almost hate him for it."
"We've made him ashamed. You must hate us."
"I like you. And—no—how could I hate your father and mother? They made me no promise; I've given nothing to them on the strength of a promise. But to him I've given everything I had; not much, I know, but still—everything."
Amy twisted her gloved hands round one another. She was calmer now, but her face was drawn with pain. "Yes, that's true," she said. Then she came out abruptly with what had been behind her spoken words for the last ten minutes, with what she had to say before she could bring herself to leave Winnie. "At any rate, you've pluck. Godfrey's a coward."
Winnie's lips bent in a queer smile. "Don't! Where does it leave me? Oh yes, it's true about him, I suppose. That's my blunder."
Amy walked back to the mantelpiece; she had left her muff on it. She took it up and moved towards the door. "I'll go. You must have had enough of the lot of us!"
Winnie had an honest desire to be just, nay, to be kind, to reciprocate a friendliness obviously extended towards her, and extended in spite of a rooted disapproval. But those limits of endurance had been reached again. She had, indeed, had enough of the Ledstones; not even her husband could have suffered more strongly from the feeling. She made an effort.
"Oh, you and I part friends," she called after her visitor's retreating figure. Without turning round, Amy shook her head dolefully, and so passed out. Her mission was accomplished.
Almost directly after Amy left, the servant, Dennehy's old Irish woman, came in with tea and buttered toast. She drew a chair up to the gas stove, and a little table.
"Make yerself comfortable, me dear," she said.
"Did he say anything to you, Mrs. O'Leary?"
"Said he was going to visit his relations in the North for a bit." Then, after a pause, "Cheer up, mum. There's as good fish——!" And out the old woman shuffled.
Now that was a funny thing to say! 'There's as good fish——!' But Winnie's numb brain was on another tack; she did not pursue the implications of Mrs. O'Leary's remark. Nor did the tender mood, on whose advent she had speculated when she said, 'I wonder if I shall cry, when you've gone,' arrive. Nor was she girding against the Ledstones and Woburn Square any more. Her thoughts went back to her own parting from her husband. "Anyhow, I faced Cyril—we had it out," was the refrain of her thoughts, curiously persistent, as she sat before the stove, drinking her tea and munching her toast, enjoying the warmth, really (though it seemed strange) not so much miserable as intensely combative, with no leisure to indulge in misery, with her back to the wall, and the world—the Giant—advancing against her threateningly. Because her particular little rampart had collapsed entirely, the roof was blown off her shelter, her scheme of life in ruins—a situation cheerfully countered by Mrs. O'Leary's proverbial saying, but not in reality easy to deal with. Her boat was not out fishing; it was stranded, high and dry, on a barren beach. "I did face Cyril!" Again and again it came in pride and bitter resentment. Here she was faced with adénoûmenttypical of a weak mind—at once sudden, violent, and cowardly.
She smoked two or three cigarettes—Ledstone had taught her the habit, undreamed of in her Maxon days—and the hands of the clock moved round. Half-past six struck. It acted as a practical reminder of immediate results. She had no dinner ordered; if she had, there was nobody to eat it with. There was nobody to spend the evening with. She would have to sleep alone in the house; Mrs. O'Leary had family cares, and got home to supper and bed at nine o'clock. She need not dine, but she must spend the evening and must sleep, with no company, no protective presence, in all the house. That seemed really rather dreadful.
Her luggage lay on the floor of the studio, still unpacked. She had not given another thought to it; she did now. "Shall I go back to Shaylor's Patch to-night?" It was a very tempting idea. She got up, almost determined; she would find sympathy there; even the tears might come. She was on the point of making for her bedroom, to put on her hat and jacket again, when another ring came at the bell. A moment later she heard a cheery voice asking, "Mrs. Ledstone at home?"
"But I'm not Mrs. Ledstone any more. Nor Mrs. Maxon! I don't see that I'm anybody."
The thought had just time to flash through her mind before Bob Purnett was ushered in by Mrs. O'Leary.
"Mr. Purnett, mum. Ye'll find the whisky in the usual place, sor, and the soda." It was known that Bob did not affect afternoon tea.
"I thought you'd be back, Mrs. Ledstone. Where's Godfrey? I've a free night, and I want you and him to come and dine and go to a Hall. Don't say no, now! I'm so lonely! Don't mind this cigar, do you, Mrs. Ledstone?"
There seemed a lot of 'Mrs. Ledstone' about it; but she knew that was Bob's good manners. Besides, it was a minor point. How much candour was at the moment requisite? Even that was not the main point. The main point was—'Here's a friendly human being; in what way am I required by the situation to treat him?'
It was a point admitting of difficult consideration in theory; in practice it needed none whatever. Winnie clutched at the plank in her sea of desolation.
"Godfrey's staying over the night with his people; he's got a chill. I didn't know it, so I came back all the same from the Aikenheads'."—How glib!—"And I'm rather lonely too, Mr. Purnett."
He sat down near her by the stove. "Well—er—old Godfrey wouldn't object, would he?"
"You mean—that I should come alone? With you?"
"Hang it, if he will get chills and stay at Woburn Square! This doesn't strike one as very festive!" He looked round the studio and gave a burlesque shudder.
"It isn't!" said Winnie. "Shall I surprise you, Mr. Purnett, if I tell you that I have never in my life dined out or gone to the theatre alone with any man except Mr. Maxon and Godfrey?"
She puzzled Bob to distraction, or, rather, would have, if he had not given up the problem long ago. "I believe it if you say so, Mrs. Ledstone," he rejoined submissively. "But Godfrey and I are such good pals. Why shouldn't you?"
"I'm going to," said Winnie.
He rose with cheerful alacrity. "All right. I'll meet you at the Café Royal—eight sharp. Jolly glad I looked in! I say, what price poor old Godfrey—with a chill at Woburn Square, while we're having an evening out?" He chuckled merrily.
"It serves Godfrey quite right," she said, with her faintly flickering smile.
Mrs. O'Leary was delighted to be summoned to the task of lacing up one of Winnie's two evening frocks—the better of the two, it may be remarked in passing.
"Ye might have moped, me dear, here all by yourself!" she said, and it certainly seemed a possible conjecture.
There was only one fault to be found with Bob Purnett's demeanour during dinner at the Café Royal. It was quite friendly and cheerful; it was not distant; but it was rather overwhelmingly respectful. It recognized and emphasized the fact of Godfrey Ledstone's property in her (the thing can hardly be put differently), and of Bob's perfect acquiescence in it. It protested that not a trace of treason lurked in this little excursion. He even kept on expressing the wish that Godfrey were with them. And he called her 'Mrs. Ledstone' every other sentence. There never was anybody who kept the straitest rule of the code more religiously than Bob Purnett.
But he was in face of a situation of which he was ignorant, and of a nature which (as he was only too well aware) he very little comprehended. Winnie looked very pretty, but she smiled inscrutably. At least she smiled at first. Presently a touch of irritation crept into her manner. She gave him back copious 'Mr. Purnett's' in return for his 'Mrs. Ledstone's.' The conversation became formal, indeed, to Bob, rather dull. He understood her less and less.
It was, on Winnie's extremely rough and not less irritated computation, at the one hundred and fourth 'Mrs. Ledstone' of the evening—which found utterance as they were driving in a cab from the restaurant to the selected place of entertainment—that her patience gave as with a snap, and her bitter humour had its way.
"For heaven's sake don't call me 'Mrs. Ledstone' any more this evening!"
"Eh?" said Bob, removing his cigar from his mouth. "What did you say, Mrs. Led——Oh, I beg pardon!"
"I said, 'Don't call me "Mrs. Ledstone"'—or I shall go mad."
"What am I to call you, then?" He was trying not to stare at her, but was glancing keenly out of the corner of his eye.
"Let's be safe—call me Mrs. Smith," said Winnie.
On which words they arrived at the music hall.