Mrs. Lenoir's boast was not without warrant; in the course of her life she had held her own against men in more than one hard fight. She admired another woman who could do the same. In her refugee from the West Kensington studio she rejoiced to find not a sentimental penitent nor an emotional wreck, but a woman scarred indeed with wounds, but still full of fight, acknowledging a blunder, but not crushed by it, both resolved and clearly able to make a life for herself still and to enjoy it. She hailed in Winnie, too, the quality which her own career had taught her both to recognize and to value—that peculiarly feminine attractiveness which was the best weapon in her sex's battles; Winnie fought man with her native weapons, not with an equipment borrowed from the male armoury and clumsily or feebly handled. Under the influence of this sex-sympathy pity had passed into admiration, and admiration into affection, during the weeks which had elapsed since she brought Winnie to her roof.
Her ethical code was pagan, as perhaps is already evident. When she hated, she hurt if she could; when she loved, she helped—she would not have quarrelled with the remark that she deserved no credit for it. She was by now intent on helping Winnie, on giving her a fresh start, on obliterating the traces of defeat, and on co-operating in fresh manœuvres which should result in victory. But to this end some strategy was needful. Not only other people, but Winnie herself had to be managed, and there was need of tact in tiding over an awkward period of transition. As a subsidiary move towards the latter object, Mrs. Lenoir projected a sojourn abroad; in regard to the former she had to be on her guard against two sets of theories—the world's theories about Winnie, which might perhaps find disciples in her own particular friends, the General and his son, Major Merriam, and Winnie's theories about the world, which had before now led their adherent into a rashness that invited, and in the end had entailed, disaster.
She had pleasant memories of Madeira, which she had visited many years ago under romantic circumstances. She outlined a tour which should begin with that island, include a sea-trip thence to Genoa, and end up with a stay at the Italian lakes. On the day that Winnie spent at Shaylor's Patch she sketched out this plan to her friend, the General.
"Upon my word, it sounds uncommonly pleasant. I should like to come with you, but I don't want to leave Bertie for so long, now he's at home for once."
"No, of course you don't." For reasons of her own, she preferred that any suggestion should come from him.
The General pondered, then smiled rather roguishly. "What would you say, Clara, if two handsome young officers turned up at Madeira, for a few days anyhow? Just to bask in the sun, you know?"
"I should say that two handsome young women wouldn't be much annoyed."
"By Jove, I'll suggest it to Bertie!" All right—so long as it was the General who suggested it!
Mrs. Lenoir smiled at him. "Of course it would be very pleasant." A slight emphasis on the last word suggested that, if there were any reasons to weigh against the obvious pleasantness, they were matters for her friend's consideration, not for hers. If he chose to go out of his way to expose his eldest son to the fascination of a young woman about whom he knew nothing at all, it was his own look out. By now there was no doubt that Bertie Merriam was quite conscious of the fascination, though by no means yet dominated by it.
"We should make a very harmonious quartette," the General declared. "I shall certainly suggest it to Bertie."
"Oh, well, you must see how it strikes him. Remember, he may prefer the gaieties of London. Don't press him on our account!" She would not in any way invite; she preserved the attitude of a kindly, but not an eager, acquiescence in any decision at which Bertie might arrive. But she was strongly of opinion that the handsome officers would turn up—on the island, and not improbably even at Southampton docks.
All this, then, was in Mrs. Lenoir's mind when Winnie came back from Shaylor's Patch, her thoughts still occupied with two questions. One related to Dick Dennehy; it was a private matter and did not concern her hostess. But the problem of conduct which she had submitted to the Aikenheads did. On that she was bound in loyalty to consult Mrs. Lenoir. That lady had indeed given an opinion once, but circumstances alter cases. As she ate her dinner, she described humorously the difference of opinion between husband and wife, putting the case in the abstract, of course, without explicit reference to the Major, and taking the liberty of implying that it was Stephen who had initiated the debate. These concessions to modesty and discretion scarcely deceived Mrs. Lenoir, though she accepted them decorously. Both women knew that it was Bertie Merriam who might make a settlement of the point necessary before many days, or, at all events, many weeks, were out.
Worldly-wise Mrs. Lenoir took up a middle position. She was not prepared for Tora's uncompromising doctrine; yet she agreed with the view that there was much to be said for telling people what they might probably find out—and find out too late in their own opinion. All the same, she dissented from Stephen's extreme application of the rule of candour.
"You wouldn't accept a man without telling him, but you needn't blurt it out to anybody who makes you a few pretty speeches."
"Wouldn't it be fair to tell him before he got much in love?"
"If he wasn't much in love, he'd be rather inclined to smile over your telling him, wouldn't he?"
The suggestion went home to Winnie. "I shouldn't want to risk that."
"Unless circumstances make it absolutely necessary, I should let things stay as they are till your case is over, at all events. It'll be so much pleasanter for you to be incog. till then."
There was something in that suggestion too. Not great on theory, Mrs. Lenoir took good practical points.
"It's rather giving up my point of view," Winnie objected.
Mrs. Lenoir smiled in a slightly contemptuous kindness. "Oh, my poor child, take a holiday from your point of view, as well as from all the rest of it. And really it's quixotic of you to be so much afraid of giving some man or other a little shock, after all they've made you suffer."
Winnie felt the appeal to the cause of the sex also. In short all Mrs. Lenoir's points told; they seemed full of workaday wisdom and reasonable common-sense.
"Just don't think about it again till after the case. Promise me."
"That is best, I think, in the end. Yes, I promise, Mrs. Lenoir."
Mrs. Lenoir said nothing about the possibility of the two officers 'turning up' at Madeira—or at Southampton docks. Diplomacy forbade; the connection would have been too rudely obvious; it might have led Winnie to reconsider her pledge. In fact things were so managed—mainly by a policy of masterly inactivity, tempered by just one hint to the General—that the first Winnie heard of this idea came neither from Mrs. Lenoir nor from the General, but from Bertie Merriam himself. Emanating from that quarter, the suggestion could not be brusquely repelled; it was bound to meet with courteous consideration. Indeed, to refuse to accept it would be extremely difficult. To Mrs. Lenoir Winnie might have avowed the only possible objection; she could not so much as hint at it to the Major. Mrs. Lenoir knew her way about, as the colloquial phrase has it.
Winnie's relations with Bertie Merriam had now reached the stage which a mature and retrospective judgment, though not, of course, the heat of youth, may perhaps declare to be the pleasantest that can exist between man and woman—a congenial friendship coloured into a warmer tint by admiration on the one side and a flattered recognition of it on the other. Winnie's recent experience raised recognition to the height of gratification, almost to that of gratitude. Not only her theory had suffered at Godfrey Ledstone's hands; deny it though she might, her vanity also had been wounded. She welcomed balms, and smiled kindly on any who would administer them. After an unfortunate experience in love, people are said often to welcome attentions from a new-comer 'out of pique'; it is likely that the motive is less often vexation with the offender than gratitude to the successor, who restores pride and gives back to life its potentiality of pleasure. This was Winnie's mood. She was willing to take Mrs. Lenoir's advice not merely on the specific point on which it was offered. She was willing to accept it all round—willing, so far as she could, to forget her theories and her point of view, as well as what they had entailed upon her. She wanted to enjoy the pleasant things of life for awhile; one could not be playing apostle or martyr all the time! She was ready to see what this new episode, this journey and this holiday, had to offer; she was not unwilling to see how much she might be inclined to like Major Merriam. Yet all this is to analyse her far more than she analysed herself. In her it was, in reality, the youthful blood moving again, the rebound from sorrow, the reassertion of the right of her charms and its unimpeded exercise. Such a mood is not one where the finer shades of scruple are likely to prevail; it is too purely a natural and primitive movement of mind and body. Besides, Winnie could always, as Mrs. Lenoir reminded her, soothe a qualm of conscience by a staggeringtu quoquelaunched against the male sex in general.
Again, in an unconscious and blindly instinctive way, she was a student of human nature, and rather a head-strong one. She did not readily rest in ignorance about people, or even find repose in doubt. She liked to search, test, classify, and be guided by the result. Her history showed it. She had tested Cyril Maxon, classified him, and acted on her conclusion. She had experimented on Godfrey Ledstone, classified him, found that she had miscalculated, paid the expense of an unsuccessful experiment, and accepted the issue of it. Here, now, was new material—men of a kind to whom her experience had not previously introduced her in any considerable degree of intimacy. She might often have dined in the company of such; but under Maxon's roof real knowledge of other men was not easily come by.
Men of views and visions, men of affairs and ambitions, men of ease and pleasure—among these her lot had been cast since she left her father's house. The Merriams were pre-eminently men of duty. They had their opinions, and both took their recreations with a healthy zest; but the Service was as the breath of their nostrils. The General was the cleverer soldier of the two, as the Kala Kin Expedition bore witness. The son was not likely ever to command more than a regiment or, at most, a brigade; higher distinctions must be left to the second brother. Bertie's enthusiasm corresponded nicely with his gifts. He adored the regiment, and in due course a few months would see him Lieutenant-Colonel; if only the regiment could see service under his command, how joyously would he sing hisNunc dimittis, with duty done and his name on an honourable roll!
Winnie sat regarding his pleasant tanned face, his sincere pale blue eyes, and his very well-made clothes, with a calm satisfaction. She had been hearing a good deal about the regiment, but the gossip amused her.
"And where do the officers' wives—I suppose some of you have wives?—come in?" she asked.
"Oh, they're awfully important, Miss Wilson. The social tone depends so much on them. You see, with a parcel of young chaps—the subalterns, you know—well, you do see, don't you?"
"Well, I think I can see that, Major Merriam. They mustn't flirt with the subalterns? At any rate, not too much?"
"That's rotten. But they ought to teach them their manners."
"Ought to be motherly? You don't look as if that sounded quite right! Elder-sisterly?"
"That's more like it, Miss Wilson."
He said 'Miss Wilson' rather often, or so it struck Winnie—just as Bob Purnett used to say 'Mrs. Ledstone' much too often. He gave her another little jar the next moment. He left the subject of officers' wives, and leant forward to her with an ingratiating yet rather apologetic smile.
"I say, do you know what the General has had the cheek to suggest to your cousin?"
Winnie had forgotten her cue. "My cousin?" she exclaimed in surprise.
"Why, Mrs. Lenoir! She is your cousin, isn't she?"
The lie direct Winnie disliked. Yet could she betray her benefactress? "It's so awfully distant that I forget the cousin in the friend," she said, with an uneasy little laugh. "But what has the General had the cheek—your phrase, not mine—to suggest to Mrs. Lenoir?" She seemed to have forgotten the cousin again, for she said 'Mrs. Lenoir,' not 'Cousin Clara.' As, however, the Major had never heard her say anything else, the point did not attract his notice.
"Why, that we four might make a party of it as far as Madeira. Nice little place, though I suppose it won't be as lively now as it was when the war was going on."
"It sounds delightful."
"I've got a paper to read to the Naval and Military Institute in six weeks' time. I could just fit it in—and write the thing out there, you know."
"We'd all help you," said Winnie.
The Major detected raillery. "I should have a go at it before you were up in the morning."
"Oh, well, then I must be content with the humble function of helping to relax your mind afterwards."
"But you wouldn't mind our coming?"
"You don't appreciate how fond I am of the General."
"Well, he half-worships you, Miss Wilson. And you'll put up with my company for his sake?"
"He's too distinguished a man to carry the rugs and cushions."
"You can fag me as much as you like on board. The difficulty is to get enough moving about."
"On that distinct understanding, I won't veto the party, Major Merriam." She laughed. "But, of course, I've really got nothing to say to it. It's for Mrs. Lenoir to decide, isn't it?"
Bertie Merriam felt that he had obtained permission, but hardly encouragement—just as the General was convinced that he had made a suggestion and not received one. But permission was enough.
"I shall tell the General I've squared you," he said, beaming. "There are jolly excursions to be made, you know. You can either ride, or be carried in a hammock——"
"I wonder if Mrs. Lenoir will care for the excursions!"
"Well, if the seniors want to take it easy, we could do them together, couldn't we, Miss Wilson?"
"To be sure we could," smiled Winnie. "More rugs and cushions for you! Won't it be what you call fatigue duty?"
"I'll take it on," he declared. "I don't shirk work in a good cause, you know."
One thing about him surprised Winnie, while it also pleased her. Obviously he considered her witty. She had never been accustomed to take that view of herself. Cyril Maxon would have been amazed at it. Though Stephen Aikenhead now and then gave her credit for a hit, her general attitude towards him was that of an inquirer or a disciple, and disciples may not becomingly bandy witticisms with their masters. Because Bertie Merriam visibly enjoyed—without attempting to equal—her fencing, she began to enjoy it herself. Nay, more, she began to rely on it. No less than her staggeringtu quoqueto the male sex, it might serve, at a pinch, to quiet a qualm of conscience. "I can always keep him at his distance." That notion in her mind helped to minimize any scruples to which his admiration, the expedition, the excursions, the rugs and the cushions, might give rise. For if fencing can accord permission, it can surely also refuse it? If the Merriams were anything in this world, they were gentlemen. In matters of the heart a gentleman need not be very clever to take a hint; he feels it.
But the most dexterous soother of qualms and scruples was Mrs. Lenoir. Her matter-of-fact treatment of the joint excursion shamed Winnie out of making too much of it. What reason was there to suppose that Bertie would fall in love? A pleasant passing flirtation perhaps—and why not? Moreover—here the subject was treated in a more general way, though the special application was not obscure—suppose he did! What did it matter? Men were always falling in love, and falling out of it again. A slight shrug of still shapely shoulders reduced these occurrences to their true proportions. Finally she took occasion to hint that Bertie Merriam was not what he himself would call 'pious.' He accepted the religion of his caste and country as he found it; he conformed to its observances and had an honest uninquiring belief in its dogmas. It was to him a natural side of life and an integral part of regimental discipline—much, in fact, as church-going was to Alice Aikenhead, at school. But there was no reason to suppose that he would carry it to extremes, or consider that it could ask more of him than the law asked. So far as the law went, all objections would vanish in a few months. Strong in her influence over the General, Mrs. Lenoir foresaw, in the event of the falling in love coming to pass, a brief trouble and a happy ending. The second was well worth the first. In fact she was by now set on her project—on the fresh start and the good match for Winnie. She was ready to forward it in every way she could, by diplomacy, by hard fighting if need be, by cajolery, and, finally, by such an endowment for Winnie as would remove all hindrances of a financial order. Though most of her money was sunk in an annuity, she could well afford to make Winnie's income up to four hundred a year—not a despicable dower for the wife of a regimental officer. With three sons in the army the General was not able to make very handsome allowances; the four hundred would be welcome with a bride.
She would have been interested to overhear a conversation which took place between the General and his son while they were dining together at Bertie's club two days before the expedition was to set out. The General filled his glass of port and opened the subject.
"Bertie, my boy, you ought to get married," he said. "A C.O., as you will be soon, ought to have a wife. It's good for the regiment, in my opinion—though some men think otherwise, as I'm aware—and it makes it much less likely that a man will get into any scrape on his own account—a thing a bachelor's always liable to do, and in these days a much more serious matter than it used to be."
The General, at least, did not sound unpracticably 'pious.' Mrs. Lenoir might take comfort.
Bertie Merriam blushed a little through his tan. "Well, to tell the truth, I have been just sort of thinking about it—in a kind of way, you know."
"Anybody special in your eye?" asked the General.
"It's rather early days to give it away," Bertie pleaded.
"Yes, yes. I quite see, my boy. I beg your pardon. But I'm very glad to hear what you say. I know you'll choose a good girl—and a pretty one too, I'll lay odds! I won't ask any more. A little bit of money wouldn't hurt, of course. Take your own time, Bertie, and I'll wait." Thus the General ostensibly passed from the subject. But after finishing his glass and allowing it to be refilled, he remarked, "I'm looking forward to our jaunt, Bertie. It was a happy idea of mine, wasn't it? I shall enjoy talking to Clara—I always do—and you'll be happy with little Miss Wilson. I like her—I like her very much. Of course, twenty years ago it wouldn't have been wise for Clara to chaperon her, but at this time of day it's all forgotten. Only old fogies like me remember anything about it. It oughtn't to prejudice the girl in any sensible man's eyes."
He exchanged a glance with his son. Nothing explicit was said. But a question had been answered which Bertie had desired to put. It was now quite clear to him that, if he were desirous of courting Miss Winnie Wilson, he need expect no opposition from the General.
"I'm quite with you there, father. It would be very unfair to Miss Wilson."
With what mind would Mrs. Lenoir—and Miss Wilson—have overheard the conversation? Might they have recognized that they were not giving quite such fair treatment as was being accorded to them? Or would Winnie's theories and her ability to launch a staggeringtu quoque, and Mrs. Lenoir's practical points of difficulty, still have carried the day? It is probable that they would. Taken all together, they were very powerful, and Stephen Aikenhead's atavistic 'public-school' idea of honour could hardly have prevailed.
Father and son walked home, arm in arm. The talk of his son's marriage, the prospect of his son's commanding his regiment, moved the old soldier to unwonted feeling.
"I shall be a proud man when I can boast of two Colonels—and if that scamp George'll stick to work, he ought to give me a third before many years are over. There's no finer billet in the world than the command of a regiment—no position in which you can do more good, in my opinion, or serve the King to better purpose. And a good wife can help you, as I said—help you a lot."
He pressed his son's arm and added, "Only you mustn't let her interfere with your work. The regiment must still come first in everything, Bertie—aye, even before your wife! That's the rule of the Service."
Bob Purnett spent nearly two months in Ireland; it was much longer than he had intended, but he liked the hunting there, and, when that was over, found excellent quarters and amusing society at the house of a squire whom his prowess in the field had won to friendship and who maintained the national tradition in the matter of good claret. Bob had no cause for hurry; his year's work was done. A holiday on the Riviera was the next item in his annual programme.
He arrived in London two days before the expedition to Madeira was to start. Of it he knew nothing. He had written a couple of friendly breezy letters to Winnie (under the idea that she might be down-hearted), and the answer to the first—she had not answered the second—told him where she was and conveyed the impression that she still found life bearable. Where she was possessed a certain significance in his eyes; he nodded his head over it. It was a factor—precisely how important he could not say—in answering the question he had been, not with oppressive frequency yet from time to time, asking himself in the intervals of hunting and of drinking his host's good claret. "Why shouldn't she?" was the form the question assumed in his thoughts. If she had with Godfrey Ledstone—not much of a chap after all!—why shouldn't she with somebody else? True, Winnie had always puzzled him. But there was the line of division—a fixed line surely, if anything was fixed? She had crossed it once. He could not see why, with the proper courtesies observed, she should not make another transit. Yet, because she had always puzzled him, he was, as he told himself, stupidly nervous about making the proposition. People who do things, and yet do not seem to be the sort of people who generally do them, occasion these doubts and hesitations, confusing psychology and perplexing experience. Yet, finally, he was minded to 'chance it'—and, let it be said, not without such a sense of responsibility as it lay in his nature to feel. She had crossed the line, but he knew that she did not regard herself as a denizen of the other side. He was ready to concede that, to allow for it, to be very much on his good behaviour. Above all, no hint of the mercantile! He had the perception to see not only how fatal, but how rude and unjustifiable such a thing would be. He was (in a sentence) prepared to combine a charming companionship with an elevating influence. Permanently? Ah, well! If bygones are to be bygones, futurities may, by a parity of treatment, be left to the future.
He called at the flat in Knightsbridge on Friday afternoon. In the drawing-room neighbourhood no signs of the impending expedition were visible; invaluable Emily restricted the ravages of packing to the bedrooms and their immediate vicinity. Mrs. Lenoir and Winnie were together, drinking tea. Winnie received him with glad cordiality; in the hostess he felt vaguely a hint of reserve. Mrs. Lenoir, full of her new project, did not see why Bob Purnett should come. She had nothing against him, but he was irrelevant; if her scheme succeeded, he would naturally drop out. She was distantly gracious—the 'grand manner' made its appearance—and, after giving him a cup of tea, went back to her packing, concerning which neither she nor Winnie had said a word—Winnie waiting for a lead from her friend, and her friend not being minded to give it.
Winnie had not thought of Bob for weeks, but her heart warmed to him. "He saved my life that first night," was her inward utterance of gratitude. She lounged back on the sofa, and let him talk. But he did not talk idly for long; Bob Purnett took his fences; after all, he had made a thorough inspection of this particular 'teaser' before he mounted his horse.
"I've been thinking a lot about you, since I've been away."
"Flattered, Mr. Purnett."
"Oh, rot. I mean, hoping you weren't unhappy, and so on, you know."
Winnie moved her small hands in a gesture expressive of a reasoned endurance.
"But, I say, pretty quiet here, isn't it?"
"Oh yes, but I don't mind that."
"Don't want to sit down here all your life, do you?"
"That is rather a large order, isn't it? Have you anything else to suggest?"
"You've begun to laugh at a fellow already!"
"Already? Good gracious, is there anything tremendous coming?"
Bob got up from his chair, moved across the hearthrug, and stood by her. He cleared his throat and lit a cigarette. Winnie began to be curious; she smiled up at him. "I believe you've got something on your mind. Out with it." A sudden idea flashed into her head. "You've not come from Godfrey? Because that's utterly impossible."
"What do you take me for? I haven't seen the fellow. I say, what made you think that?"
"Oh, I beg your pardon—I'm sorry. But you asked whether I wanted to stay here; that was like suggesting I should go somewhere else, wasn't it? So I thought you might mean that I should go—go back, you know. I'd sooner kill myself."
"Oh, please drop it. I wasn't talking about that. I'm off to Monte Carlo on Tuesday." He looked down at his well-polished broad-welted brown boots; he was always admirably shod. Yet he seemed to find no inspiration, or not a very happy one. "Got over it, haven't you?"
Winnie shrank into her shell. "I think I prefer your dumb sympathy. How can you expect me to talk about it?"
"Put my foot in it?"
"Well, yes, rather." Her right hand beat a tattoo on the arm of her chair.
"Always do," remarked Bob reflectively, his eyes still on his boots. He was not surprised that she thought his question badly phrased—necessary preliminary as it was in substance.
"Oh, nonsense. You're a dear. But have you really anything you're trying to say?"
He must jump now—or he must refuse. He saw it, and courage came with the need for it.
"I say, could you think of coming with me to Monte?" He raised his eyes, and looked her full in the face as he put the question. He had courage—but the puzzle was terribly persistent. "Will she come, or will she kick me out?"—is a brief summary of his inward questioning; he thought it about equal betting.
"Come with you?"
"Yes. Have a bit of fun, you know. We'd have a rare time." He was down at his boots again. "And everything just as you like, honour bright, Winnie, till—till you saw what you wanted, don't you know?"
Winnie sat quite still for a few moments. She looked at Bob Purnett with an inquiring glance. He was a very good fellow. That she knew. Was he quite sane? He was certainly funny—so funny that indignation refused to adorn the situation. Slowly a smile bent the lines of her mouth. Here was a pretty contrast to Dick Dennehy's heartfelt appeal to her to 'take care of herself'; and not less to Bertie Merriam's respectfully cautious attentions. Aye, and to Mrs. Lenoir's schemes! She was aware that Bob had never grasped the true significance of her action in regard to Godfrey Ledstone. But to think that he had missed it so tremendously as this! And there were the trunks packed, not for Monte Carlo, but for Madeira—trunks redolent of respectability. She might be amused, but her amusement could not be devoid of malice; she might smile, but Bob must suffer—well, just a little, anyhow. She looked up at him, smiling still in treacherous amiability.
"Is this a proposal of marriage, Bob?" she asked.
He flushed. "Well—er—you can't marry, can you, Winnie?"
"Not at the moment. But I can in a little more than six months. Would you and Monte Carlo wait for me?"
"In a little more than——? What, is Maxon——?"
"Yes, he is—very soon now."
"You never told me!"
"Up to now, I had no reason to suppose you were interested."
Bob Purnett was obviously upset, very much upset indeed. He stared at her for a moment, his eyes seeming prominent in their aghast surprise. "Good Lord!" he muttered, and started striding across the room, then back again—like Mr. Ledstone in the back room at Woburn Square or Godfrey in his new studio. He went on with this for three or four minutes. Winnie sat with her head resting on the high back of her arm-chair, her eyes following him in scornful amusement and gratified malice. Bob was suffering for his presumption, his inability to appreciate plain differences, his gross misjudgment of her. His wrigglings under the chastisement were entertaining to watch. In his unfortunate person she seemed to be punishing all the great world which had refused to understand her; she was getting a little bit of her own back at last.
Once, as he walked, he looked at her. His face was red, and he was frowning. Winnie's steady smile seemed to give him no comfort. With a queer jerk of his head he resumed his restless pacing.
Indeed, Bob felt himself fairly caught. What a fool he had been not to reconnoitre the ground before an advance which had proved so rash! But he was not a scoundrel; he prided himself on 'playing the game.' Some men he knew would lightly give a promise if it were likely to serve their purpose and make no bones about breaking it six months hence. That was not his way, even where it would serve his purpose. What he was asking, as he paced, was whether he were bound to make the promise; if he made it, it should be kept. Of course it was the last thing he had ever meant; it was entirely outside his scheme of life, and his feeling for Winnie was not nearly strong enough to oust his scheme from the first place in his affections. But could he get out of the hole he was in without brutality, without insulting her? He did not see that he could. She had not married Godfrey Ledstone—it had been impossible. In his heart Bob had never believed in there being any other really operative reason. Her theories had been just a making the best of it. Now it would be possible, shortly, for her to marry him. It was, he conceded, entirely natural that she should jump at the chance. Could he decline, after his first proposal? That would to put the case—both his and her cases, in fact—in disagreeably plain terms. But he felt that it was terribly bad luck, and he, too, had his resentment—an angry protest against inconsistency. Why did Maxon first refuse, and then take back his refusal? Why did Winnie cross the line, and then want to cross back again? They 'let a man in' by behaviour like that—let him in very badly.
Still, he was in his way very fond of her; and he was sorry for her. It did not lie in him to hurt her wilfully, even though not hurting her were to his own damage. And, then, it would be rather heroic—so very much the right thing to do. In common with most of mankind, he was susceptible to the attractions of the heroic; the glamour of it would, or, at all events, might, help him to bear the situation.
He came and stood in front of her, his hands in his pockets; he looked rather sheepish.
"All right, Winnie. Just as soon as it's possible. There's my word on it." He mustered a smile. "Don't be too down on me, though. I never pictured myself as a husband, you know."
"You certainly needn't picture yourself as mine," said Winnie.
"You mean—you won't do it?"
"Of course I won't—any more than I'll go with you to Monte Carlo." She broke into a laugh at the perplexity of his red face. "Oh, you old goose, to think that I should do either!"
Bob knew that his first proposal was irregular, and might have been taken as insulting—at least by a woman so inconsistent as Winnie; his second was undoubtedly handsome and heroic. He could not see that either was ridiculous. He flushed redder still under the friendly contempt of Winnie's words.
"I don't see anything so particularly absurd about it. When I thought you couldn't marry, I didn't ask you to. When you told me you could, I did. What's the matter with that?"
"Why, you are—and I am—very much the matter with it! But don't fly out at me, Bob. I might have flown out at you, but I didn't."
"Oh, you got home all right in your own way. You've made me look an ass." His tone expressed a grudging resentful admiration; his glance was of the same order. He was furious, and Winnie, in her animation and triumph, was very pretty.
"I don't see that it's altogether my doing. I think you helped. Come, don't be cross. You know that you're most awfully relieved. Your face, as you considered the question, was a study in consternation."
He was certainly relieved about the marriage; but he was disappointed and hurt about the trip to Monte Carlo. If she had 'flown out' at him in moral indignation, that would have been intelligible, though, again, in his opinion hardly consistent, conduct on her part; as it was, she had called him, not a scoundrel, but a goose, and had played her trick on him with a smiling face, looking the while most attractive and hopelessly unapproachable.
"Well, I mean what I say. My offer stands. Perhaps you'll think better of your answer." His voice was doggedly angry now. He plainly suggested that she—in her position—might go farther and fare worse.
Winnie did not miss the hint, but let it pass with a gay contempt.
"I won't quarrel; I don't mean to. If I had, I should have quarrelled at the beginning." She jumped up from her chair, and laid a hand on his arm. "Let's forgive each other, Bob!"
Under a sudden impulse he caught her round the waist. Winnie's figure stiffened into a sudden rigidity, but she made no other movement. Bob's arm fell away again; he walked off towards a chair behind the door, on which he had left his hat and gloves. "I expect I'd better go," he said, in an unsteady voice, without turning his head towards her.
"Please, Bob."
The situation was relieved, or, at least, ended, by the opening of the door. The parlour-maid announced, "Major Merriam, miss!"
The Major came in briskly. A large funnel-shaped parcel of white paper proclaimed a bouquet of flowers. Bob, behind the door, was not within the Major's immediate range of vision.
"Well, Miss Wilson, are you all ready for the voyage? I've brought you a few flowers for your cabin."
"Oh, thank you so much. May I—er—introduce you to my friend, Mr. Purnett? Mr. Purnett—Major Merriam." The Major bowed politely; Bob rather stiffly.
"I was just off," he said, coming back towards Winnie, with hat and gloves in his left hand. He was wondering 'who the devil that chap is'—and 'what was that about a voyage and a cabin.'
"Yes, we're actually nearly ready, women though we are! Emily's so splendid at it! Must you go, Bob? It'll be some time before we meet again. We're off to Madeira to-morrow morning, and then on to Italy—to the Lakes." She smiled on Bob. "But I'm afraid we shan't get to Monte Carlo!"
"I didn't know you were—were going away."
"I was just going to tell you when Major Merriam came in. We're all looking forward to it; aren't we, Major? Major Merriam and his father are coming with us as far as Madeira."
"The ladies are good enough to accept our escort and our company for two or three weeks," said Bertie Merriam. He thought the other fellow looked rather sulky.
"Going to be away long?" Bob jerked out the inquiry.
"Oh, about three months, I think. Well, if you must go, good-bye, Bob. So good of you to come and see me." She smelt the nosegay which she had taken from Bertie. "Your flowers are delicious, Major Merriam!"
Bob Purnett had never dreamt of such a factor in the situation as the Major now presented—this perfectly equipped, much-at-ease Major, who had no doubt that his flowers would be welcome, and whose company was accepted as far as Madeira—for two or three weeks, indeed, in Madeira. The feelings which had prompted him to put his hand round Winnie's waist transformed themselves into a fierce jealousy. She had laughed at his proposal—his heroic offer. Would she laugh at the Major's, if he made one? In one way and another his feelings had by now carried him far from the mood in which he had originally braced himself up to the proposal. He had made it for honour's sake. He would have made it now to stop her from going to Madeira with the Major. His mind was not quick of movement, yet he suddenly realized that not improbably he would see no more of her. His world was not, save in the casual intercourse of the hunting-field, the world of men like the Major.
"Well, good-bye; I wish you a pleasant voyage," he managed to say, under the eyes of the Major.
"Good-bye—andau revoir—when I come back!"
How he hated the eyes of the Major! He did not dare even to press her hand; the Major would detect it and laugh at him! A limp shake was all he could give. Then he had to go away, and leave her with the Major—leave her to make ready, not for Monte Carlo with him, but for Madeira with the Major. That was a fine reward for an heroic offer! Certainly, in her duel against the male sex, Winnie had scored some hits that afternoon.
Listlessly and disconsolately he strolled towards Piccadilly. He was at odds with the world. He had nobody to go to Monte Carlo with—nobody he cared a straw about. Indeed, whom did he care about really, or who really cared about him? He had a lot of friends of a sort; but how much did he care for them, or they for him? Precious little—that was the truth, seen in the unusual clarity of this afternoon's atmosphere. Other men had wives, or children, or devoted friends. He seemed to have nobody. Disgusting world it was! And he liked Winnie—nay, he more than liked her. He had learnt that also this afternoon. And he had, in the end, proposed the handsome thing. For nobody else in the world would he have done that. His reward had been ridicule from her—and the appearance of the Major. "It's all a bit too thick," reflected poor Bob Purnett, thus suddenly brought up against the sort of thing that is prone occasionally to happen to people who lead the sort of life he led. But he did not explicitly connect the sort of life and the sort of thing. He had no more than a general, but desperate, sense of desolation. The times were out of joint.
When a man is miserable, he is under sore temptation to hurt somebody—even some blameless individual, whose only crime is that he forms a minute (and involuntary) part of the world which is behaving so badly. Should a particularly vulnerable person chance to pass by, let him look out for himself! One connected, however remotely, with the cause of the misery, for instance. Misery is apt to see a foe everywhere—and to seek a companion.
Just as Bob was passing Hyde Park Corner, he ran plump into Godfrey Ledstone, who came out from the Park at a quick walk. The street lamp revealed them to one another. Godfrey would have passed by with a nod and a 'How are you?' That was not at all Bob's idea. He was resolute in buttonholing his friend, in saying how long it was since they had met, in telling him about his doings in the meantime. He enjoyed Godfrey's uneasiness; for Godfrey set him down as a sympathizer with Winnie and was in fear of reference to the topic. Bob made the reference in his own good time.
"Funny I should meet you!" he observed, with a strong draw at his cigar.
"Is it? I don't know. I often take this walk."
"Because I've just come from calling on Winnie." He eyed his prospective victim gloatingly. He was like a savage who thinks that he can unload some of his misfortune on to his neighbour by employing the appropriate ceremonies.
"Oh, I—I hope she's all right?"
"Seems blooming. I didn't have much talk with her, though. There was a chap dancing attendance—a Major somebody or other. Oh yes, Merriam—Major Merriam. He came in pretty soon, with a bouquet of flowers as big as your head. Seems that she and Mrs. Lenoir are off abroad to-morrow, and our friend the Major goes too. I don't think you need make yourself unhappy about Winnie, old chap."
"Who is he? I never heard of him."
"Well, I didn't suppose you and she were keeping up a correspondence! If you come to that, I should rather doubt if he ever heard of you." Bob smiled in a fashion less amiable than was his wont.
"Well, I'm in a hurry. Good-bye, old man."
"Walking my way?" He indicated Piccadilly and eastwards.
It had been Godfrey's way home. "I've got to go to a shop in Sloane Street," said Godfrey.
"Ta-ta then! It'll be a relief to you if she settles down all right, won't it?"
Godfrey said nothing more than 'Good-bye.' But his face, as he said it, was very expressive; it quite satisfied Bob Purnett's impulse to hurt somebody. Godfrey Ledstone did not like Major Merriam any more than he himself did! The magical ceremony had worked; some of his misfortune was unloaded.
Well, the two were in the end much in the same case. Winnie had led Godfrey into the great experiment, and through it into the great failure. She had, this afternoon, made Bob Purnett, in his turn, false to his settled plan of life, had sent him away sore and savage because he could not do the one thing which he had always scornfully declared that he would never do. She had left them both—left Godfrey to those proceedings, to the family woe, to Miss Thurseley's immediate repudiation; left Bob to contemplate a lost pleasure, a fruitless heroism, and the Major in Madeira. The two ought to have sympathized with one another. Yet their thoughts about one another were not friendly. "If I'd known the sort of chap he was, I'd have had a shot at it sooner," thought Bob. Godfrey's protest went deeper. "Of course it'll happen, but why in heaven's name need he tell me about it?" For Bob had suppressed all that part of the story which accounted for his telling.
They went their separate ways—artificially separate on this occasion, since there was no shop in Sloane Street at which Godfrey Ledstone desired to call. They went their ways with their thoughts, in whose mirror each saw Winnie smiling on the Major. Precisely what Miss Wilson was doing at the moment! Jealous men see more than happens, but what happens they generally see.
Cyril Maxon's strong-willed and domineering nature registered its own decrees as having the force of law and regarded its own resolutions as accomplished facts. When he had once achieved the requisite modification of his opinions, and had decided that he wanted to many Lady Rosaline in due time, he thought of her in his secret soul as already his—at any rate, as set apart for him—and he found no difficulty in declaring that she had given a tacit consent in their interview in Paris and in the relations of friendship which now existed between her and himself.
But, naturally, the lady did not adopt the same view either of his rights or of her own actions. The 'very most' she had given him was leave to try his fortune, to recommend himself to her during the interval of time which was unavoidable. She was really rather glad of the interval, and observed one day to Mrs. Ladd that it would be no bad thing if everybody were forced to wait eight or nine months before they married. "Especially if we are to be bound by Mr. Attlebury's opinion!" she added, laughing.
She liked the idea of the marriage; it was suitable, and she was lonely and not rich. She was not yet sure how much she liked the man as she came to know him more intimately; now and then she saw signs of something which helped her to a better understanding of Mrs. Maxon's attitude. "Oh, I'm not afraid of fighting," she would then say to herself; "but I don't want to have to fight all the time. It's fatiguing, and rather vulgar." So she temporized, as the situation enabled her to do; for Maxon was still a tied man, however technical the tie had become; he was not in a position to force the pace. This accidental fact helped her to hold her own against his strong will and domineering instincts; for his conscience had granted him relief only on one point (if really on that), and it did not allow him to forget that he was still a married man.
Lady Rosaline's attitude excited, of course, the liveliest curiosity and an abundance of gossip on the part of her friends, Mrs. Ladd and Miss Fortescue. What did Rosaline mean to do? "Oh, she means to have him," exclaimed Miss Fortescue, "in the end, you know!"
"I think she will, but I believe that quite a little thing might turn her," was Mrs. Ladd's more cautious verdict. Cyril Maxon would not have received it pleasantly.
The good ladies' great disappointment was that they could not induce their revered pastor to say a word on the subject, accessible and, indeed, chatty as he generally was with his flock. When Maxon had taken the first step in those proceedings which had so maddened poor old Mr. Ledstone, he had written to his friend a long and highly argumentative letter, justifying his course. Attlebury had replied in kind, and suggested an interview. This Maxon declined as painful to him, and ended with an asseveration that his conscience approved the course he was taking.
"If it does, there's not much use in my saying any more; but make sure it does," was Attlebury's answer. Maxon took some offence at it, as though it impugned his sincerity. There was no open rupture, but the men did not meet any more in intimate friendship; there was a reserve between them. Yet Attlebury had said no more, or very little more, than Lady Rosaline herself; she also had asked that his own conscience should approve. But Attlebury could not, or, at all events, did not, keep the note of authority out of his counsel. Maxon stiffened his neck instinctively. Before the necessary interval had run half its course, this instinct was powerfully seconded by another.
He had gone to tea with Mrs. Ladd one Sunday. They were old acquaintances, and for several years back he had been accustomed to pay her five or six calls in the course of a twelvemonth; on which occasions, since his marriage, Mrs. Ladd had discreetly condoled with him over Winnie's shortcomings. But Winnie had disappeared for good; there was now a topic even more attractive.
"Rosaline and I talk of a little trip abroad together in a month's time." She smiled at him. "Will you forgive me if I take her away for three or four weeks?"
"I shall miss you both very much. I wish I could come too, but it's quite impossible."
"I think she wants a change." What Mrs. Ladd wished to convey was that the necessary interval might be tiresome to Lady Rosaline, but she did not quite see how to put it delicately. "It's a long drag from Christmas to Easter, isn't it? Have you seen her lately?"
"I paid her a late call one day last week—that's all. I'm very busy."
"Of course you are—with your practice! Have you met a Sir Axel Thrapston at Rosaline's?"
"Axel Thrapston? No, I don't think so. No, I'm sure not." He very seldom met anybody at Lady Rosaline's, as his visits were timed so as to avoid, as far as possible, such a contingency. "Who is he?"
"I don't know much about him myself. He comes from Northumberland, I think, and lives there generally. I believe his wife was an old friend of Rosaline's; she died about two years ago. I've met him there twice—a middle-aged man, rather bald, but quite good-looking."
"No, I haven't met him, Mrs. Ladd."
"He seems just to have made his appearance, but I think he's rather assiduous." She laughed again. "And two years is just about the dangerous time, isn't it?"
Thus Mrs. Ladd, hinting to Cyril Maxon, in all friendship, that he was not the only man in the world and had better not forget the fact. Friend as she was, she knew enough of her man to feel a certain pleasure in administering the wholesome warning.
It needed more to drive Cyril Maxon from his confident appropriation of Lady Rosaline, but that something more was not long in coming. He, too, met Sir Axel at her flat—once or twice in the hours which he had grown into the habit of considering as reserved for himself; he tried very hard to show neither surprise nor annoyance, but he felt an immediate grievance. Here was he, the busiest of men, painfully contriving a spare hour; was he to spend it in three-cornered trivial talk? Thrapston had all the long idle day to call. Lady Rosaline really might give him a hint! But it appeared not to strike her that she might. And she seemed to like Sir Axel's company—as, indeed, most people would. He was a simple country gentleman, no fool at all at his own business, but without much pretension to intellectual or artistic culture. This, however, he could recognize and respect; he recognized and respected it in Lady Rosaline, was anxious to learn from her, and deferred to her authority. "When people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others which a sensible person would always wish to avoid." Jane Austen perhaps allows herself a little malice in this remark, but we cannot deny that she speaks with authority on human nature.
On one occasion, when he did find his friend alone, Maxon complained of the times when he had not.
"I've nothing against him, of course, but it's you I come to talk to. Why, I scandalize my clerk, and sometimes my clients, for the sake of coming!" He managed to keep voice and manner playful.
She was gracious, admitting the force of his plea. "It was stupid of me not to think! Of course Sir Axel can come at any time. I'll give him a hint to call earlier. Is that satisfactory, my lord?" She sometimes called him by that title—partly in anticipation of the judgeship, but also with a hint of raillery at the domineering nature.
"It's very kind—and don't you like it better like this yourself?"
"Perhaps I do. And clearly you do. And"—she smiled—"very likely Sir Axel does. We shall all three be pleased! Delightful!"
"I wasn't thinking of his point of view, I confess." He was rather too scornful.
"No, but he may think of it, I suppose? And I suppose I may, if I like, Mr. Maxon?"
He looked at her sourly for just a moment, then recovered himself and, without replying, passed on to the subject of a book which he had brought her. But he was annoyed that she should resist him, stand up to him, and claim her liberty—especially her liberty to receive Sir Axel alone. However, it was not good fighting ground; he had brought her rebuke upon himself.
Lady Rosaline was quite alive to the fact that Sir Axel's appearance and Sir Axel's attentiveness were a valuable asset to her, but she did not think of her old friend's husband in any other light. To begin with, he himself, though assiduous, had shown no sign of sentiment. If he were moving in that direction at all, he was moving slowly and secretly. And then she was still inclined to Maxon. She had a great opinion of his ability—she was more sure about that than about how much she liked him—and the chances of a high career for him allured her. But Sir Axel and his assiduity enhanced her value and buttressed her independence. They helped her to establish her position; she had an idea that the more firmly she established it now, the better it would resist any attacks on it, if and when she became Lady Rosaline Maxon. Here she was probably right. But she had another idea too. She was not going to be dictated to; she would not be browbeaten into becoming Lady Rosaline Maxon.
In this state of external affairs and internal dispositions, the 'proceedings' came and went—really meaning no more than a transitory quarter of an hour's annoyance to the rising Cyril Maxon, for whom everything was made as easy and sympathetic as possible. Other effects in Woburn Square, no doubt—possibly others in Madeira! Yet transitory and formal as they were, the proceedings left behind them a state of affairs more essentially transitory and formal still. The tie was now a mere technicality, and when conscience took the position that Cyril Maxon was still a married man for all purposes, conscience began to seem to put the matter too high. For present conduct, yes—and he had no wish to run counter to the injunction, for reasons both moral and prudential; but for laying down the future on definite lines? That seemed a different point. He reconsidered his attitude—not without being influenced, more or less consciously, by Lady Rosaline's independence and by the assiduity of Sir Axel Thrapston. The hint that she still considered herself free, the notion of a rival, turned the necessary interval from a mere nuisance into a possible danger. Moreover she was going abroad with Mrs. Ladd, and he could not follow. Mrs. Ladd was a friendly influence, but he would like to define the situation before Lady Rosaline went. Not desiring to risk a peculiarly annoying collision with Sir Axel, he wrote and asked her for an appointment.
She neither desired to refuse the interview, nor well could. But she scented an attack, and stood instinctively on the defensive. She wanted just the opposite of what Cyril Maxon did; the trip first and the decision afterwards was her order of events. She relied on the necessary interval, while he was now out of patience with it. "I won't be rushed!" she said to herself. She gave him the appointment he asked on a Saturday afternoon (he had suggested that comparatively free day) at half-past four, but she let drop to Sir Axel that she would be at home at half-past five on the same afternoon. Her motive in doing this was rather vague—just a notion that some discussions can go on too long, or that she might like to relax an agitated mind in talk with a friend, or, possibly, that she might like to be told that she had done right. Her reasons for the intimation to Sir Axel defy conclusive analysis.
"Lady Rosaline," said Cyril Maxon, as he put down his empty teacup, "last week saw the end of an episode in my life." (Mr. Attlebury would hardly have referred to it as an episode.) "The future is my concern now. I took the action I did take on the fullest consideration, and I'm glad to think, from what you said in Paris, that it had your approval." He paused a moment. "I hope I'm not wrong in thinking that you understood why I took it, when once I had made up my mind that it was permissible?"
"Oh, you mustn't make too much of what I said in Paris. I'm no authority. I left it to you."
He smiled. "The question of permissibility—naturally. But the other altogether? Well, never mind that." He rose from his chair and stood by her. "You must know that it was for your sake that I took the step I did?"
She moved restlessly, neither affirming nor denying. She knew it very well.
"Before the world we must remain as we are for the present. But it would make a vast difference to me, during this time of waiting, to know that I—that I could rely on you, Rosaline. You can have no doubt of my feelings, though I have exercised self-restraint. I love you, and I want you to be my wife as soon as possible."
"Well, it's not possible at present, is it?"
"No. But there's no reason why we shouldn't have a perfect understanding between ourselves."
"Wouldn't it make gossip, and perhaps raise awkward questions, if we—well, if we arranged anything definitely now—before the time's up?"
"It would be quite between ourselves. There could be no questions. There would be no difference in our present relations—we should neither of us wish that. But the future would be secure."
"I can't see the good of being engaged now, if it's to make no difference," she murmured fretfully.
"It'll make an enormous difference in my feelings. I think you know that."
"It seems to me to set up rather a—rather a difficult state of things. You know how much I like you—but why shouldn't we both be free till the time comes?" She took courage to raise her eyes to his on this suggestion.
"I have no desire to be free." His voice grew rather harsh. "I didn't know that you had. In Paris——"
She flared out suddenly; for her conscience was, in fact, not quite easy. "Well, what did I say in Paris after all? You never said in Paris what you're saying now! If you had—well, I should have told you that I wasn't at all ready to give a decision. And I'm not ready now. I want this time of waiting to make up my mind. You're trying to drive me into saying 'Yes' before I'm ready. What's the good of that, even to you? Because what prevents me from changing my mind in the next six months—even if you make me say 'Yes' to you now?"
"I took an important—and to me a difficult—step in reliance on your feelings towards me. I seem to have been mistaken about them." His voice was sombre, even rather rancorous.
"Don't say that, Cyril. But why must I give up my liberty long before—well, long before I can get anything instead of it?" She smiled again, propitiating him. "Let me go abroad, anyhow. I'll try to tell you when I come back. There!"
"I confess to thinking that you had practically told me long ago. On the faith of that, I acted."
"You've not the smallest right to say that. I liked you and let you see it. I never pledged myself."
"Not in words, I allow."
"Cyril, your insinuation isn't justifiable. I resent it. Whatever I may have felt, I have said and done nothing that I mightn't have with anybody."
He had held his temper hard; it gave a kick now. "With Thrapston, for instance?" he sneered.
"Oh, how absurd! I've never so much as thought of Sir Axel in that way!" As she spoke, she glanced at the clock. No, there was plenty of time. She did not desire an encounter between the two this afternoon. She rose and stood by Maxon. "You're being rather exacting and—and tyrannical, my lord," she said. "I don't think I like you so much to-day. You almost bully me—indeed you do!"
He bent his eyes on hers, frowning heavily. "I did it for you."
"Oh, it's not fair to put that on me! Indeed it isn't. But, please, don't let's quarrel. It's really such a little thing I ask—not much more than a month to think it over—when nothing can happen for more than six! Indeed, I think a year would—well, would look better for both of us."
"Oh, make it two years—make it five!" he growled.
"Cyril, if you go on like this, I'll make it never—here, now, and for good!"
Even he saw that he had gone too far. He contrived to smooth brow and voice, and put in the man's usual plea to excuse his rough impatience. "It's only because I love you."
"Yes, but you needn't be like a bear making love," she retorted pettishly. Yet, to a certain extent, she was appeased by the apology; and she by no means wanted to 'make it never' then and there. His rudeness and his apology together gave her a tactical advantage which she was not slow to use. "But if you do love me as you say, you won't refuse what I ask of you," she went on. Then she indulged him with a touch of sentiment. "If I say 'Yes,' I want to say it without any doubt—with my whole heart, Cyril. 'Yes' now wouldn't be what it ought to be between you and me."
She maintained her advantage to the end of the interview. She won her respite; nothing more was to be said till after her return from abroad. Meanwhile they would correspond as friends—"As great friends as you like!" she threw in, smiling. As friends, too, they parted on this occasion; for when he offered to embrace her, she held out her hand gracefully, saying, "That'll do for to-day, I think, Cyril." His frown came again, but he submitted.
In fact, in the first encounter between them, Cyril Maxon was beaten. She stood up against him, and had won her way. True, she was almost bound to; her position was so much the more favourable. Yet, however defeat came, Maxon was not accustomed to it, and did not like it. And he liked her the less for inflicting it—he used one or two hard words about her as he drove home from Hans Place—but he did not the less want to marry her. The masterful element in him became the more urgent to achieve that victory, to make up all the ground that he had lost to-day—and more. But, if he contrasted to-day's interview with his previous assumptions, it was plain that he had lost a lot of ground. What had seemed the practically certain became merely the reasonably probable. Instead of being to all intents and purposes accepted, he was told that he was only a suitor, though, no doubt, a suitor who was entitled to entertain good hopes of success. Yes, very good hopes, if nothing intervened. But he hated the trip abroad, and he hated Sir Axel Thrapston—in spite of Lady Rosaline's disclaimer of any sentimental interest in that gentleman. The mere fact of her asking for a delay made every delay dangerous, and, while she doubted at all, any man much about her might make her more doubtful. "If she throws me over now——" he muttered angrily to himself; for always in his mind, as now and then on his lips, was that 'I did it for you.' She had accepted the sacrifice of his conscience; was she now to refuse to answer his prayer? In the new light of her possibly refusing, he almost admitted the sacrifice. At any rate, he asserted, he had acted on a conclusion full of difficulty and not quite free from doubt. It was beyond question that the case of conscience might vary in aspect, according as Lady Rosaline Deering did or did not say 'Yes.'
If the vanquished combatant was decidedly savage, the victorious was rather exhausted. Lady Rosaline lay prone in a luxurious arm-chair before the fire, doing nothing, feeling very tired. She had won, but a succession of such victories—a perpetual need of such victories—would be Pyrrhic in its effect on her nerves. The room seemed suddenly filled with an atmosphere of peace. She gave a little stretch, a little yawn, and nestled down farther into her big chair.
Thus Sir Axel Thrapston, punctual to his half-past five and missing Cyril Maxon by some ten minutes, found her. His arrival did not disturb her sense of repose and, perhaps, rather accentuated it; for with him she had no quarrel, and about him no complication of feelings difficult to unravel. Moreover, he was an essentially peaceful person, a live-and-let-live man. She received him graciously, but without rising from the big chair.
"Forgive my not getting up; I'm rather tired. You take the little chair, and draw it up."
He did as he was bid. "Been doing too much?" he asked.
"Oh, not particularly, but I am tired. But you'll rest me, if you'll sit there, and not mind if I don't talk much." However, she went on talking. "There are some people whom one likes and admires tremendously, and yet who are rather—well, exacting, aren't there?"
Sir Axel would have been dull not to surmise that his friend had had recent experience of some such person as she described.
"No, exacting isn't quite the word I want. I mean, they take their own point of view so strongly that it's really a struggle—a downright struggle—to make them see that there may be another."
"I know the sort of fellow. My Scotch gardener's one of 'em."
"Well, I don't know your Scotch gardener, but I do know one or two men of the sort."
"I should think you could stand up for yourself!"
His glance was one of friendly appreciation of her—and of her appearance. She certainly looked well in the firelight.
"Oh, I think I can, but one doesn't want always to be having to do it."
"Not good enough to live with people like that, Lady Rosaline!"
He meant no personal reference, but his companion had little difficulty in finding a personal application. Her eyes wandered from the fire and settled on his face in a meditative gaze.
"Unless, I mean, you were quite sure of coming out on top. And even then—well, I hate rows, anyhow."
"So do I—even when I win, Sir Axel! I do so agree with you." The eyes took on a grateful look. Sir Axel was making a more favourable impression than the good man had any idea of. Cyril Maxon was responsible for Sir Axel's success this afternoon; it was a true instinct that had led Lady Rosaline to make a second appointment! Her nerves were soothed; her weariness passed into a pleasant languor. She smiled at him indolently, in peaceful contentment.
"When did you say you were off?" she inquired. In asking when he might come to see her, he had founded his plea on the ground of an early departure from London.
"Next Tuesday. I'm looking forward to it. I've never seen Venice. I shall be at Danieli's."
"Now did I ask for your address, Sir Axel?"
He laughed. "Oh, I was playing my own hand. I thought perhaps, if I couldn't stand my own society all the time, you'd let me pay a call on you at the Lakes on my way back."
Lady Rosaline and Mrs. Ladd had planned an absolutely quiet time at the Italian Lakes. But, then, Sir Axel was absolutely quiet—after Cyril Maxon.
"Well, I might go so far as to send you an address. Don't consider it a command—or even an invitation!"
"You see, I don't know a soul out there, and can't speak a word of the language."
"Well, if absolute desperation drives you to our door, perhaps we'll let you stay a little."
"Oh, I say, I didn't quite mean that!"
"The fact is, you're not very good at pretty speeches, are you? But I don't mind that—and you know I should always be glad to see you."
Sir Axel departed well-pleased, not knowing to whom or to what the better part of his pleasure might justly be attributed. So may we profit by our neighbours' blunders, and find therein some consolation for our sufferings from their superior brilliancy.