Certainly the quartette made a very agreeable party in Madeira. It proved to be as happily composed as the Major had anticipated. The two elders enjoyed the sunshine, the fine nights, the casino, much gossip with one another and with casual coevals who had anything to add. The young couple made their excursions, had their bath and a little lawn-tennis (Winnie could not be roused to enthusiasm over this), gambled mildly and danced enthusiastically. Not all these things with one another exclusively. There were other young women there, and other young men. The Major was in request among the former; Winnie among the latter. There was no overdoing of thetête-à-tête. Among the colours, the flowers, and the fun, life ran very pleasantly.
But Mrs. Lenoir was a little impatient. Her pet scheme seemed to hang fire. She could not quite make out why. It was not, she thought, the other young men and women; there was no sign of any foreign attraction such as might induce either of her predestined lovers to wander from the appointed path. Yet the Major's advances were, in her judgment, painfully deliberate, and Winnie's good fellowship with him was almost demonstratively unsentimental. Mrs. Lenoir felt her experience at fault; she had expected that, in such a favourable climate, the affair would ripen more quickly. But there are ways of forcing plants, and she was a skilful gardener.
One day, a week after the party had arrived on the island, she came out into the hotel garden after lunch and settled herself, with the General's gallant assistance, in a long chair; the spot commanded a view over the harbour. The General, his offices performed, sat in a shorter chair and smoked his cigar. Far below them the ramshackle pretty town seemed to blink in the sunshine; a rather sleepy blinking is the attitude it takes towards existence, except when a tourist ship comes in, or a squadron of men-of-war. Then it sits up, and eats, and anon sleeps again.
"I suppose, when they come down from the Mount, they'll go straight to the casino," said the General.
"Yes, I told them we'd meet them there. Hugh!"
She did not very often call him Hugh. In the use of his name he was in the habit of recognizing some rather special call on his services or his attention.
"Yes, my dear Clara? Now you're not going to worry about your share of the wine again?"
"No," said she, smiling, "I'm not. I've a little confession to make to you. I told you a fib about Winnie. I told you the fib I told everybody—that she was a distant cousin. She isn't. I met her at some friends'—very nice people. She was quite adrift. I asked her to come to me for a bit, and we got on so well that she's stayed. She's an orphan, I know—her father was a parson—and I think she's quite alone in the world, though she has a small income." She laughed. "You see what a long story it is. With most people it's so much easier to tell the little fib. But I've told you the truth about her now." Yet not all the truth. Mrs. Lenoir's conscience certainly seemed sometimes to work on easy springs.
"Thank you for telling me, Clara. I suppose I know why you told me. But I think my boy knows already that, if he has any designs about Miss Winnie, he'll not find me an obstacle. Only she doesn't seem to me to be anything more than friendly towards him."
"Well, she'd naturally wait for a lead, wouldn't she?"
"You think it's that?" Mrs. Lenoir's slight wave of her fan was non-committal. "He's a very conscientious fellow. He looks at a thing all round. I'm sure he'd consider not only whether he liked her, but whether he could satisfy her—whether the life he could offer her would be to her liking. Being a soldier's wife isn't all beer and skittles. And getting on with all the regiment!"
"Dear me, is there all that to consider?" Her tone was playful, yet rather contemptuous. "It doesn't look as if he was desperately in love."
"Men differ," mused the General. "Look at my three sons. Bertie's as I tell you—slow and solid—make an excellent husband to a woman of sense. The Colonel never looks at a woman, so far as I know. George runs after every petticoat he meets, and hangs the consequences—confound him!"
"And which," asked Mrs. Lenoir, "is most like father, Hugh?"
"Ancient history, ancient history!" he murmured, half in pleasure, half in contrition, yet with a glance at his companion. "Shall I tell him what you've told me about Miss Winnie?"
"Just as you like." She laughed. "I don't think he's gone far enough to have any rights yet, you know."
"I don't think he has," agreed the General, laughing too—and not aware of the bearings of his admission.
Mrs. Lenoir, however, treasured it in her armoury: she might have need of it. Plainly the General might consider that, confession once begun, confession ought to have gone further. She had the same plausible answers she had given to Winnie herself. She had another; she acknowledged her own fib, but she would plead that she had no right to betray her friend. In the end she had not much doubt that she could manage the General. She had managed him before—in a much more difficult case; and he was very fond of Winnie. Something of partisanship influenced her mood; the free lance renewed memories of old raids in this little skirmish against convention; she was minded to fight at the best advantage she could—with the father 'contained' and the son as deeply committed to his position as she could get him before the blow was struck.
As a result of this conversation the General carried away an uneasy idea—born of the confidence so pointedly reposed in him, enforced by the slight touch of contempt in Mrs. Lenoir's voice—that one of the ladies, even possibly both, considered his son, if not a laggard, yet at least somewhat prosaically circumspect in his love-making. Such a view, if really entertained, did some injustice to Bertie Merriam. He was not impulsive; he was not passionate. He took time to make up his mind. It would be almost true to say that, before falling in love, he made up his mind that he would—not the commonest order of events. But he had pretty well made up his mind by now. Only he received very little encouragement. Winnie was always 'jolly' to him; but she asked nothing of him, made no special claims on him—and took the same liberty as she accorded. In the pleasant round of their life he was one comrade among many; more intimate than the rest, no doubt, by reason of his habitual escort, the excursions, and the messing together at table, but not different in kind. Vaguely the Major felt that there was some barrier, real but imperceptible, which he could not pass—a thing made up out of a thousand unobtrusive trifles, yet composing in the mass a defence that he could not see how to penetrate.
There was a curious little man in the hotel—a man of about forty-five, short, bald, shabby, yet clean, though he did not bathe. In fact he did nothing—no excursions, no sports, no dancing, no flirtation. He did not even read; he sat about—meditating, it must be presumed. Something in him made the girls giggle and the men wink, as he passed by; the men said 'Dotty!' and the girls sniggered at the witticism. His name, sought out in the hotel register, proved to be Adolphus Wigram. The wit who had made the search called him 'Dolly'—and the name became his at once, varied back to 'Dotty' sometimes by an ultra-witticism.
When Winnie came home from the casino this evening, having some minutes to spare before dressing for dinner, she went on to the hotel balcony, which overlooks the town from a loftier and, so to say, a more condescending altitude than the garden. She rested her elbows on the balcony and surveyed the beauty of the scene, so artfully composed of hill and slope and sea that one can hardly conceive it the outcome of nature's mere—and probably violent—caprice. She was lost in thought, and was startled to find elbows on a level with hers and a head in close neighbourhood, though rather lower. She recognized 'Dolly'—in the shabbiest of all suits, looking meditatively down on the lights of the town and harbour of Funchal.
"Quite a small place, Miss Wilson," said 'Dolly.' "Full of people!"
"I suppose it is," Winnie agreed politely. She had come out on the balcony occupied with another question than the population of Madeira.
"I tried to understand things once—to grasp them in the large, you know. Seems easy to some people, but I couldn't do it. I teach history. I was a bit overworked; some of my friends subscribed to send me out here for just a fortnight. Doing me good."
Winnie turned her face towards the funny jerky little man. "Are you going to grasp things in the large when you get back?" she asked.
"No, no; I'm afraid not. Thirty thousand or so of them down there, I suppose! All thinking they're very important. All being born, or dying, or love-making, or starving, or filling their bellies, and so on. Quite a small place!"
Winnie smiled. "Yes, I dare say. It sounds true, but rather trite. I have problems of my own, Mr. Wigram."
"So have I—income, and taxation, and necessary expenditure. Still, these thirty thousand are interesting."
"They're awfully lucky to want very few clothes and hardly any fires, and to live in such a beautiful place. What do you mean by things in the large, Mr. Wigram?"
"Well, I mean truth," said the absurd little man, clutching the balcony railings, just as if he were going to vault over them and crack his skull on the nut-shaped stones which served for a path thirty or forty feet beneath. "Truth is things in the large, you know."
"I don't think I know that, but I know a friend in England who talks rather like you."
"Poor devil! How much money does he make?"
"He's got independent means, Mr. Wigram."
"Then he can afford to talk a great deal better."
"You really make me rather uncomfortable. Surely everybody can say what they like nowadays?"
The little man gave an abrupt hoarse laugh. "I teach history in a school, and get a hundred and fifty pounds a year for it. Can I say what I like? Do I tell the truth about the history? Oh dear, no!"
"I've got just a hundred and fifty pounds a year. Can I do what I like?" asked Winnie.
'Dolly' turned to her with a queer ridiculous solemnity. "It seems to me," he observed, "a competency for an able-bodied young woman. I don't know what you can do, but I think you're quite in a position to tell the truth—if you happen to know it. Anybody dependent on you?"
"Not a soul," smiled Winnie.
"I've a mother and an unmarried sister. You see the difference? I think I heard the gong. Good evening."
"Good evening, Mr. Wigram." Winnie rushed in to dress for dinner, pitiful, smiling, and thoughtful.
The quartette was not as merry as usual that evening. Bertie Merriam was rather glum, and when Winnie perceived it she grew remorseful. Up at the Mount he had, at last, shown signs of making a definite advance; if she had not snubbed him, she had at least fought him off by affected unconsciousness of his meaning, by persistent unsentimentality. It was almost against her own will; she could not help it; the instinct in her was irresistible. She might have been equal to standing by Tora Aikenhead's view—"As long as my own conscience is clear, it's no affair of yours what I did before I knew you, and I shan't say a word about it." She could certainly have followed Stephen's atavistic 'public-school' idea of honour with perfect readiness. These were both, in their different ways, forms of defiance. But Mrs. Lenoir's compromise—"I'll wait till the truth can't hurt me, though it may hurt you"—was not defiance; it was deceit. Under the influence of gratitude to the friend to whom she owed so much kindness, and of the deference which she honestly accorded to her adviser's experience and wisdom, she had accepted it. All very well to accept it in words! She found that she could not act upon it. Instead of making Bertie Merriam like her so well that the truth could be told to him without risk—or, at any rate, with the minimum of risk—she was spending her time in trying to prevent him from liking her in that way at all. If she went on, she would succeed; he was sensitive, proud, easy to discourage. Yet, as things stood, she knew that she would not be able to resist going on. Then it came to this—Mrs. Lenoir's compromise would not work. It might or might not be justifiable, but it simply would not work in Winnie's hands. She could not carry it out, because it meant in the end that she was to behave just as Godfrey Ledstone had. The gravamen of his offence was that he had been ashamed of her; now she was being ashamed of herself. He had conceded to his family the right to think her shameful; she was allowing the same right to the Major, and merely trying to curry favour enough to override his judgment. Such a course was not only flat against her theories; it was flat against the nature which had produced the theories. And, in practice, it resulted in a deadlock; it kept the Major at a standstill. He did not retreat, because his feelings dictated an advance. He could not advance, because she would not let him. There he stuck—up against that impalpable, impenetrable barrier.
"I've been talking—out on the balcony—with that funny little man they call 'Dolly,'" she remarked. "He told me that, if you had nobody dependent on you, and had a hundred and fifty pounds a year, you were in a position to tell the truth."
"Is it exactly a question of what money you've got, Miss Winnie?" asked the General.
She let the question pass. "Anyhow, that happens to be exactly my income. Rather funny!" She looked across the small table at Mrs. Lenoir—and was not surprised to find that Mrs. Lenoir was looking at her already.
"I suppose he meant that if you weren't absolutely obliged to get or keep some job——" the Major began.
"That's what he meant; and there's a lot in it, isn't there, Major Merriam?"
"Well, it's not what we're taught at school, but perhaps there is."
"More luxuries for the rich," smiled Mrs. Lenoir.
"The Radicals can make a new grievance out of it at the next election," said the General.
Of course, the two men did not know what underlay Winnie's talk. Equally of course, Mrs. Lenoir did; she saw it in a minute, and her reading hardly needed the confirmation of Bertie's glum demeanour. Winnie was in rebellion—probably in irreconcilable rebellion. Mrs. Lenoir glanced across at her with a satirically protesting smile. Winnie smiled back, but her eyes were resolute—rather merrily resolute, as though she liked this new taste of her favourite cup of defiance.
"There are times and seasons," said Mrs. Lenoir. "Isn't there even a thing called the economy of truth? I don't think I know the exact doctrine."
"You wouldn't tell a child everything—or a fool either," observed the General.
"Would you choose the wrong time to tell the truth to anybody?" Mrs. Lenoir asked.
"Are you entitled to settle what's the right time—all by yourself?" Winnie retorted gaily. Her spirits had begun to rise. This was almost like a discussion at Shaylor's Patch. There was a deeper reason. With her determination had come a sense of recovered honesty, and, more, of liberty regained. Whatever the Merriams might think, she would be herself again—herself and no longer Miss Winnie Wilson, a young person whom, in the last week or so, she had begun to hate cordially.
Winnie did not go to the casino that evening; she left the General and his son to walk there together. She followed Mrs. Lenoir into the drawing-room, and sat down by her.
"So you've made up your mind, Winnie?" Mrs. Lenoir did not seem angry or hurt. She merely recognized Winnie's resolution.
"Yes. I can't go on with it. And it's a good moment. The newspapers come to-morrow, and, if what Hobart Gaynor told me was right, there'll be something about me in them."
"Yes, I remember. Well, if you're set on doing it, that doesn't make such a bad—occasion." Mrs. Lenoir was considering how the 'occasion' could best be twisted into a justification of previous silence. With the Major that would not be so much a pressing question—other factors would probably decide his action—but it was a point that her friend the General might raise. She looked thoughtfully at Winnie. "How much do you like him?" she asked.
"I like him as much as I know him, but I don't know him very much. I shall know a little more to-morrow." She paused. "I should like the life, the whole thing, very much, I think."
"She's not in love, but she'd take him," Mrs. Lenoir inwardly interpreted.
"I'm sorry to act against your advice, after all you've done for me. It does look ungrateful."
"Oh, I don't expect people to give up their liberty, just because I'm fond of them." She rose. "I'm off to my room, my dear. Good night—and good luck."
Winnie went out on the balcony, to seek for Mr. Adolphus Wigram and some more talk about truth. But he was not there; he had gone down to the casino, where he lost exactly half a dollar with unbroken bad luck every night—probably one of the things which the claims of his family and the figure of his salary would cause him to suppress the truth about when he got back to his school. So she remembered that there was an impromptu dance going on downstairs, and went and danced and flirted furiously till midnight. The girls said that they had never seen Miss Wilson look so well, and never had the young men crowded round Miss Wilson so eagerly. In fact Miss Wilson had her fling. Small blame to her. It was the last night of her life—at least, so far as that life had any real significance. Though Winnie did not propose to change her name in the hotel book or on the lips of casual companions during her stay in Madeira, yet for essential purposes that night saw an end of Miss Winnie Wilson.
Since English newspapers arrive in the island only once a week, the competition for them on the mail day is formidable. Persons who combine agility and selfishness with a healthy interest in public affairs may be observed sitting on five copies of their favourite journal, reading a sixth, and anon glaring angrily round at potential applicants for one of the spare copies. Winnie took no part in the scramble, and attacked nobody's reserve pile of intelligence. She knew that her paper would come in a separate wrapper, addressed to her personally by Hobart Gaynor; she wanted only one day's paper.
She found it laid by her plate at lunch—a meal which passed in the discussion of the news of the world; the Major had been a successful competitor in the struggle, and was well-primed. Winnie rose when coffee appeared, her paper in her hand. She addressed Bertie Merriam rather pointedly.
"I'm going into the garden—that seat under the trees. You know?"
"I'll come too. Directly I've drunk my coffee." As Winnie walked off he exchanged a glance with his father. They had had a confidential little talk at the casino the evening before, in which Winnie's behaviour was the subject of some puzzled comment. This invitation to the garden looked more promising. Mrs. Lenoir was busy reading a letter. Winnie had read one letter too—from Hobart Gaynor, telling her all she needed to know, and referring her to a certain page of her paper.
Yes, there it was—very short, matter-of-fact, and hard. Well, what else should it be? Only it seemed oddly to reproduce Cyril Maxon himself. The report sounded as if his exact words, nay, his very tones, had been caught; they seemed to echo in her ears; she almost heard him saying it all. And what more appropriate, what so inevitable, an ending could there be to Cyril's utterances than the words which closed this brief record—'Judgment accordingly'? Those words might always have been written at the end of Cyril's remarks. 'Judgment accordingly.' It seemed to sum up, as well as to close, the story of her relations with him. From the beginning right through to this, the end, on her and her works—on all she did and was—there had been 'Judgment accordingly.'
She let the copy of theTimesfall on her lap, and sat idle—waiting for Bertie Merriam, yet not thinking much of him. The figure of 'Dolly' shuffled into view. The odd little man was smoking a cigarette, and, in the intervals of puffing, was apparently talking to himself in a cheerful and animated way—no sounds, but the lips moved quickly. As he passed, Winnie hailed him. "Had your mail, Mr. Wigram?"
He stopped. "I've had good news, Miss Wilson—good news from home. They've raised my salary."
"Oh, I am glad, Mr. Wigram."
"A twenty-pound rise, Miss Wilson. Well, I've done fifteen years. But still it's liberal." He seemed to swell a little. "And it's a recognition. I value it as a recognition." The transient swelling subsided. "And it'll help," he ended soberly.
"Shall you be able to tell the truth to any greater extent, Mr. Wigram?"
"Oh, I think not, I think not. I—I hadn't thought of it from that point of view, Miss Wilson."
"I've had no rise in my income, but I'm going to do it."
He was not really listening. He gave a feeble cackle of a laugh. "I'm just making a few calculations, Miss Wilson." On he went, apportioning every penny of that hard-earned increase of twenty pounds per annum. Valuable—but not enough to enable him to teach true history.
Major Merriam sauntered towards her with his cigar. He was really rather eager, but he did not look it. The invitation might be merely a tardy apology for the snubs of yesterday.
"May I sit down by you?"
"Please do. Have you seen theTimes?"
"I looked through the lot of them."
"Have you seen this one—the 26th?" She held up her copy.
"I suppose I have. I had a run through them all."
"Read that." Her finger indicated the report.
He read it; the process did not take long. He took his cigar out of his mouth. "Well, Miss Wilson?"
"I was Mrs. Maxon; that's all," said Winnie.
Had Bertie Merriam displayed righteous indignation or uncontrollable grief, Winnie would have left him to digest his emotion in solitary leisure. Since, however, he merely looked extremely thoughtful, as he let theTimesflutter to the ground and took a long pull at his cigar, it seemed natural to tell him the story. This she proceeded to do, neither boastfully nor apologetically, but with sober veracity, tempered by a humorous appreciation of how the various parties to it, herself included, came out of their various ordeals. Now and then her auditor nodded his understanding of the points—of the impossibility of life with Cyril Maxon; of how Shaylor's Patch enlarged the horizon; of the experiment with Godfrey Ledstone and its comico-tragic failure; of how Maxon, for reasons unascertained, had found open to him a course which he had always declared to be lawfully open to no man; finally, of the considerations, sufficient or insufficient, which had led to the incarnation of Miss Winnie Wilson. In fact, so far as it lies within a human being's power to tell the truth about himself or herself, Winnie told it; she had no dependents and she had a hundred and fifty pounds a year.
As has been said, the Major was not an especially religious man. He had himself lived an unusually steady and regular life, keeping himself in strict training for the work to which his whole heart was devoted, but his moral ideas were those of his class and generation. He was not strait-laced. Moreover he was heavily biassed in favour of the lady who now took him into her confidence, and not only had the advantage of telling her side of the story without anybody to criticize or contradict, but succeeded in telling it so as to carry conviction of her sincerity, if not of her wisdom. He was ready to see with her eyes, at least to the point of admitting excuse where she pleaded justification. Though he imputed to her a great want of worldly wisdom in her dealings with Godfrey Ledstone, her moral character did not suffer in his estimation, nor (what was perhaps more remarkable) were his feelings towards her perceptibly chilled. Neither did he cherish any personal grievance. She was entitled to protect herself from the idle curiosity of casual acquaintances. So soon as she had definite ground for according to him a special treatment, she had dealt openly with him and made a clean breast of it.
"Thank you," he said at the end. "I shall respect your confidence."
"What I've told you is meant for the General too, please."
"Thank you again. It's very straight of you. You must be glad to have it all over at last?"
Winnie made the slightest grimace. "Isn't that rather a sanguine view?" Her own views about things being 'all over' had become less sanguine than of yore.
"Well, yes, I suppose it is." Even while he had been speaking, the same idea was at the back of his own mind. Things have a way of never getting 'all over,' of possessing no absolute ends, of continuing, for good and evil, to affect life till life itself ends—and even, after that, of affecting other lives sometimes. Bertie Merriam himself, thoughtfully considering, saw that the thing was by no means 'all over' with the coming of the news contained in theTimesof the 26th.
"And now," said Winnie, rising from her chair, "I'm going to talk nonsense with the Layton girl and the Anstruther boys, and forget all about it for a bit." She stood looking at him for a moment in a very friendly, rather puzzled, way. She wanted to convey to him that she would consider it very natural for her disclosure to make all the difference, but the assurance was not easy to frame without assuming more than she was, by the forms of the game, entitled to assume. She got as near to it as she could. "I've been prepared to accept the consequences all through. If I claim liberty of opinion myself, I allow it to others, Major Merriam."
"Yes, yes, I quite understand. You surely don't fear a harsh judgment from me?" He added, after the briefest pause, "Or from my father?"
"I don't think I need. You've both been such kind good friends to me." She broke into a smile. "And, of course, on my theory I don't admit that I'm properly a subject of judgment at all."
"But you admit that I may think differently if I like?"
"Yes, I admit that. We may all think what we like, and do as we like, so long as we do it sincerely."
"Wouldn't things get rather—well, chaotic—under that system?" he asked, smiling in his turn.
"I knew I shouldn't convert you—you stickler for discipline!"
He heard the description with a laugh, but without protest or disclaimer. To his ears it was a compliment. Nor did he think Winnie, so far as he claimed to understand her, quite so scornful of all discipline as her playful taunt implied, nor in practice so thoroughgoing an anarchist as her theory of the unbridled liberty of private judgment required in logic that she should be. She did not appear to him a naturally lawless woman, nor even unusually volatile. She had had 'hard luck' and had fought against it blindly and recklessly. But, given good conditions, she would readily conform to the standards, since she would not want to do anything else. Taking this view, he saw little reason to revise his judgment or to alter his intentions, so far as the judgment and intentions depended on his estimate of the woman herself. Her candour was even a new point in her favour.
So far then neither Winnie nor even Mrs. Lenoir need regret the disclosure. The case, when fully explained, seemed to the Major eminently pardonable—at worst, a piece of visionary folly in which an ignorant young woman had rashly matched herself against the world. But there was another aspect of the case.Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner.Perhaps. But some people shrink from understanding things for that very reason; the consequences seem too alarming and even revolutionary. And the great bulk of people, even if they were willing to understand every case, have really no time to do it; it cannot be expected of them in this busy life. They find themselves obliged to work by generalizations and categories, to bind by rules and prohibitions admitting of no exception. It is the only way by which people in a society can tackle the job of estimating the conduct of other people, or indeed of regulating their own. The world labels in rows and pronounces judgment on squads, an inevitably rough-and-ready method, but—the world pleads—the only practical alternative to a moral anarchy against which it must protect itself, even though at the cost of constantly passing the same sentence on offenders of widely different degrees of criminality.
Now the world, or society, or public opinion, or whatever collective term may be used for that force to which all gregarious animals, whether they like it or not, are of necessity amenable—possessed for Major Merriam a meaning which was to him all-important, but to which Winnie and Mrs. Lenoir had accorded only the faintest, if indeed any, consideration; it meant something not vague and distant, but near, potent, with close and imperative claims on him. This thing it was which occupied his mind as he walked through the garden to the annex in which his father and he were lodged, and where he would find the General reading on the verandah until it should be time to go to the casino. For society at large, for the moralists or gossips of London, he had not much regard. He was not a prominent man; few people would know, of those few half would not care, and the thing would soon blow over. But neither his life nor his heart was in London, and it was not about the feelings or views of the great city that he went, with Winnie's copy of theTimesin his hand, to consult his father.
The General had been reading, and was now dozing, on the verandah. He woke up at the sound of his son's step. "Ready for the casino, my boy?" he asked briskly.
"Well, I've something I want to talk about first, if you don't mind." He laid theTimeson the table.
When the General heard the story, told more briefly than Winnie had related it, but with no loss to its essential features, he conceived a grudge against Mrs. Lenoir—Clara's silence, rendered more deceitful by that delusive half-confidence of hers, seemed to him unkind—but, as regards the prisoner at the bar herself, his judgment was even more lenient than his son's, as perhaps might be expected from his more various experience. The thing was annoying, distinctly annoying, but he liked Winnie none the less. The poor girl had been in a fix!
"However it's really not our business to judge her," he concluded, looking across at his son. "We've got nothing to do with that. That's for her and her own conscience."
"She's had devilish hard luck," said Bertie.
"Yes, she has. Heavens, my boy, who am I to be hard on her?"
The Major gazed out over the garden. "As far as I'm concerned myself, I'd take the chances and go on with it." He knew that his father would understand what he meant by 'it.'
"Well, well, there are things to consider——"
Bertie turned sharply round again. Conviction rang in his voice as he interrupted: "By Jove, there are! There's the regiment!"
The General pursed up his lips and gave two quick little nods of his head. "Yes. In a few months you'll be in command."
"It might not get out, of course. There's always that chance."
"Next year you go to India. Everything gets out in India."
"Of course, if people could be got to understand the case as we do——"
"Don't you build on that, Bertie. The mere fact of this"—he tapped theTimes—"will be all they want; take my word for it. They wouldn't make things comfortable for her."
For the moment at least Bertie's mind was not on that point; it was directed towards the subject on which he had once discoursed to Winnie herself—the influence which the wife of a commanding officer does and ought to exercise on the tone of the small society over which she is naturally called upon to exercise a sort of presidency. "Would it be good for the regiment?"
The General wore a mournful air as he took out and lit a long lean cheroot. He did not look at Bertie, as he murmured, "Must consider that, in your position."
Certainly that had to be considered; for here the two men touched what was their real effective religion—the thing which in truth shaped their lives, to which they were both loyal and uncompromising adherents, in regard to which the son was almost a fanatic. What was important to the regiment was of vital importance to Bertie Merriam and to his life's work. One of the things important to the regiment was the wives of its officers; most important was their influence on the 'young chaps'—as he had said to Winnie. It ought to be, if not motherly, at least 'elder-sisterly.' Viewed in this connection, there was evidently matter for consideration, assuming that everything got out in India, as according to the General it did. To present to the 'young chaps' such an 'elder sister' as Winnie—certainly consideration was needed.
Later in the afternoon Mrs. Lenoir sat in a wicker chair on the casino terrace which overlooks, from a respectable and precipitous height, the roadstead and the sea. She had spent a lonely afternoon, she had seen none of her three friends, and by herself had drifted down to a solitary cup of tea at this resort, which she was at the moment feeling to be insecurely entitled to be called one of pleasure. She had an instinct that something was happening, that things were being settled behind her back. The feeling made her fretful; when she was fretful, the lines on her face showed a deeper chiselling. And by a very human instinct, because she thought that her friend the General was going to be angry with her, she began to get angry with him—so as not to start the quarrel at a disadvantage. They were making a fuss; now what in heaven's name was there to make a fuss about? Hugh to make a fuss! A smile more acrid, less kind, than usual, bent Mrs. Lenoir's lips; it made her look older.
Suddenly, without seeing where he came from, she found the General beside her—rather a stiff General, raising his hat very ceremoniously. "You've had your tea, Clara? May I sit down by you?"
"Yes, I've had my tea, thank you. And you?"
"No, thank you. I—in fact I've had a whisky and soda."
The indulgence was unusual. It confirmed Mrs. Lenoir's instinct.
"Where's Bertie?"
"He's gone for a walk to Camara de Lobos."
The instinct was proved infallibly correct. A stride along the one level road—clearly a case of mental disturbance needing physical treatment!
The General sat down. He was not even smoking; he rested the big silver knob of his stick against his lips. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. Oh yes, certainly yes!
When he spoke, it was abruptly. "I don't know exactly how long you mean to stay here, Clara, but I'm afraid Bertie and I must take the next boat home. We must get back to London."
"Who's inconsolable in London?"
"I've had a letter which makes it advisable——"
"Oh, nonsense!" She did not disguise her impatience. "She's told him, has she?"
"I don't think you've treated me quite fairly."
The sun began to sink below the promontory which bounded the view on the right. The growing sombreness of the atmosphere seemed to spread over Mrs. Lenoir's face. Her voice was hard too, when she spoke.
"I've treated you absolutely fairly. You men always want to play with your cards held up, and ours down on the table. That's the masculine idea of an even game! Oh, I know it! For my part I think she's silly to have told him so soon. I wouldn't have. And so she's not good enough for him, isn't she?"
Mrs. Lenoir had certainly done well to whip up her anger. It enabled her to deliver the assault, and forestall the General's more deliberate offensive movement. Also by her plainness she exposed ruthlessly her friend's tactful invention of a letter from London making it advisable for him and his son to take the next boat back to England.
"It's not quite a question of that," said the General, his pale-brown old cheek flushing under the roughness of her scornful words. "You know how much I like her, and how much Bertie likes her too. But we must look facts in the face—take things as they are, Clara. It's not so much a matter of his own feelings. There's the regiment."
Mrs. Lenoir grew more annoyed—because she perceived in a flash that, old student of men as she was, she had neglected an important factor in the case. Being annoyed, and being a woman, she hit out at the other women who, as she supposed, stood in her way.
"A parcel of nobodies, in a garrison or cantonment somewhere!" Whatever the judgment on her life, she was always conscious that she herself had been famous.
"I suppose you're referring to the women? I wasn't thinking so much of them. It'd be sure to get out, and it wouldn't do with the youngsters."
She turned to him almost fiercely, but his next words struck a new note.
"And it'd prejudice my boy's career, Clara."
The sun had set. There was an interval of cold light before the glories of the afterglow. Mrs. Lenoir's face looked wan and hard. "Yes, it would follow them all over the world," she said. "Now a mail ahead of them, now a mail behind—always very close. Yes, the women would chatter and lift their skirts; the old men would snigger and the youngsters make jokes. Is there anything at all to choose between us, Hugh—between you men and us women? Anything at all?"
He would not enter on that. "You don't quite understand. I may think about his interest—well, I'm his father, and he's my eldest. He sees it in the light of his duty to the Service."
"My poor little Winnie!" Gradually the afterglow was coming and seemed to soften the hard lines of her face.
"You know I—why, I fairly love her myself!" His voice trembled for a moment. "Pretty nearly as much, I believe, in the end, as the boy does. But—could I tell him anything different? I'd give a year's pay not to hurt her feelings."
"A year's pay! You old goose, Hugh! You'd give your life—but you wouldn't give one button off the tunic of one of the soldiers in your blessed regiment." She held out her hand to him, smiling under misty eyes. "You men are queer," she ended.
After a stealthy look round, the General raised her hand to his lips. They were friends again, and he was glad. Yet she would not forgo her privilege of ridicule and irony—the last and only weapon of the conquered.
"I don't know that anything need be said——"
"So you two valiant soldiers have decided that I had better say it?" she interrupted.
"How could either of us so much as hint that she—that she was the least interested in our movements?"
"Not even in your retreats? Oh, I'll tell her you're going by the next boat. Nearly a week off, though, isn't it?" She hinted maliciously that the week might be difficult—even dangerous. Whether it would be depended on how Winnie took their decision. Mrs. Lenoir's unregenerate impulse would have been to make that week rather trying to the Major, had she been in Winnie's place. By being disagreeable to him? No, she would have found a better way than that.
A merry laugh sounded from the door of the casino. Winnie was there, in animated conversation with the Anstruther boys. A great event had happened, calculated to amuse the whole hotel. 'Dolly' had come down with his usual half-dollar—and had lost it as usual. He walked round the room, then up and down the concert-room adjoining. He went to the other table, he came back to the one at which he had played. He fidgeted about, behind the second Anstruther boy, for some minutes. Then he fished out another half-dollar, and put it on a single number—twenty! Could Winnie, his confidante, doubt what was in his mind? The number twenty was the gage of Dame Fortune; he would wear it on his sleeve! Number twenty came up; the little man, with a quick gasp for breath, pounced on his handful of money.
"Well, any of us may win after that!" said the elder Anstruther boy, who had been strongly for the view that Mr. Wigram was a 'hoodoo' to the whole hotel.
With rapid yet gracious dexterity Winnie got rid of her companions. She had caught sight of the General's tall figure as he left Mrs. Lenoir's side. She came down to her friend's chair, and laid a hand on her shoulder.
"Not cold?" Mrs. Lenoir shook her head. "Well, let's go home, anyhow—shall we? I've had a long afternoon with those boys—I'm tired."
"Sit down for a minute, child. So you let the cat out of the bag?"
"I told you I had to. Has he been here? I haven't seen him."
"Bertie? No—only the General. Bertie's gone for a walk by himself. But, before he went, he told the General."
"Well?" Winnie was drawing on the gloves she had taken off to count out her money in the room.
"They're going home by the next boat." Winnie gave no sign, made no movement. "A letter from London—if you want to observe the usual fiction." Her malice, her desire that her sex should fight for itself and avenge its injuries, twinkled in her eyes again. "But they can't go till Tuesday!"
Winnie's eyes turned out to sea. "Tuesday, or Tuesday twelvemonth—what difference does it make?" She gave a little sigh; she had liked the idea of it—of the life it meant, of seeing the world, of a fresh start, of his great courtesy and kindness. "I don't think that we need consider ourselves responsible for a broken heart," she added suddenly.
"No, but he'd have gone on, even after you told him." Her voice took on its ironical inflexion. "He'd have gone on but for the regiment."
Winnie had been leaning back in her chair. She sat up straight, almost with a jerk. "Gone on but for what?" she asked, in a tone of genuine amazement.
Mrs. Lenoir's acrid smile penetrated the twilight. After a moment's blank staring, Winnie's parted lips met in a smile too. To both of them, in the end, it seemed funny—rather unaccountable.
"The regiment, Winnie!" Mrs. Lenoir repeated, as she rose from her seat.
"It really never entered my head," said Winnie.
It might well seem that by now Winnie would have become accustomed to the discovery that things which had never entered her head might none the less occupy a large and unassailable position in the heads of other people—nay, that she might, for safety's sake, allow for the likelihood of such a revelation when she laid plans or embarked on a course of conduct. But, in fact, this would be asking her to have learned very early a very hard lesson. It was not as if there were only one or two of these entrenched convictions; fresh ones leapt, as it were, from ambush at every step of her advance, at every stage of her pilgrimage, and manifested a strength on which she had not calculated, for which the airy and untrammelled flight of Shaylor's Patch speculation had not prepared her. It was all very well for her to declare that she accorded to others the freedom of thought and opinion which she claimed for herself. Of course she did; but the others made such odd uses of their liberty! Maxon's point of view, Dick Dennehy's point of view, Woburn Square's point of view, Bob Purnett's point of view (his—and Godfrey Ledstone's!)—let these be taken as mastered and appreciated. Between them they had seemed to cover the ground pretty completely, to comprehend all the objections which could be raised by standards religious, social, or merely habitual. But no. Here was a man who was willing, for himself, to waive all the usual objections, but suddenly produced a new cult, an esoteric worship, a tribal fetish of his own, evidently a very powerful fetish, to be propitiated by costly sacrifices, which he regarded himself as obviously necessary, and had no doubt would be easily understood by other people.
"How could I be expected to think of the regiment?" asked Winnie pathetically. "I declare I thought of everything else—that's why I told him. He doesn't mind all the great world, but he does mind half a dozen women and a dozen boys somewhere in India! People are queer, aren't they, Mrs. Lenoir?"
But by now Mrs. Lenoir had been schooled; talks with both father and son had made her understand better, and, since the thing had to be thus, it was desirable that Winnie should understand also.
"Well, Winnie, that may be all his regiment is to you—a pack of women and boys in India; indeed that's pretty much what I called it myself. But, in justice to Bertie, we must remember that to him it's a great—a great——"
"A great what?" Winnie was looking malicious over her friend's hesitation.
"Well, a great institution," Mrs. Lenoir ended, rather lamely.
"An institution! Yes!" Winnie nodded her head. "That's it—and I'm absolutely fated to run up against institutions. They wait for me, they lie in hiding, they lurk round corners. And what a lot of them there are, to break one's shins over!"
"They all come back to one in the end, I think," said Mrs. Lenoir, smiling. She was glad to hear Winnie's philosophizing. It was a fair proof that neither here was there a broken heart, though there might be some disappointment and vexation. "I was very hurt at first," she went on, "and it made me rude to the General. It's no use being hurt or angry, Winnie. We bring it on ourselves, if we choose to go our own way. Whether it's worth taking the consequences—that's for each of us to decide."
"Worth it a thousand times in my case," said Winnie. "All the same I didn't in the least understand what it would be like. Only—now I do understand—I'm going to face it. Fancy if I'd had fewer scruples, and effected a furtive entrance into the regiment! What mightn't have happened?"
Three days had elapsed from the date of Winnie's confession to the Major; they had changed the relative attitudes of the two women. Mrs. Lenoir had got over her disappointment and returned to her usual philosophy, her habitual recognition of things as they were, her understanding that with men their profession and their affairs must come first. Winnie had hardened towards her late suitor. Ready to be rejected on her own account, she could not bring herself to accept rejection on account of the regiment with meekness. After the great things she had defied, the regiment seemed a puny antagonist. All the same, little thing as it was, a mere dwarf of an institution compared with her other giant antagonists, it, not they, now vanquished her; it, not they, now held Bertie Merriam back.
It must be confessed that she behaved rather maliciously during the days when the two officers were waiting for their ship. An exaggerated interest in the affairs of the regiment, an apparently ingenuous admiration of the wonderfulesprit de corpsof the British service, earnest inquiries as to the means by which the newly promoted Commanding Officer hoped to maintain a high moral tone among his subalterns—these were the topics with which she beguiled the hours of lunch and dinner. The Major wriggled, the General looked grave and pained; Mrs. Lenoir affected to notice nothing, for she saw that her young friend was for the moment out of hand and only too ready to quarrel with them all. For the rest, Miss Wilson—whose artificial existence was to end when she got on the steamer for Genoa—flirted with the Anstruther boys and lost her money gambling.
So time went on till the eve of the departure of father and son. At dinner that night Winnie was still waywardly gay and gaily malicious; when the meal was over she ran off into the garden, and hid herself in a secret nook. The Anstruther boys sought her in vain, and discontentedly repaired to the casino. But there was a more persistent seeker.
She was roused from some not very happy meditations by finding Bertie Merriam standing opposite to her. He did not apologize for his intrusion nor, on the other hand, ask leave to sit by her; he stood there, looking gravely at her.
"Why do you take a pleasure in making me unhappy?" he asked. "Why do you try to make me look ridiculous, and feel as if I'd done something ungentlemanly? I'm not ridiculous, and I'm not aware of having done anything ungentlemanly. The subject is a very difficult one for me even to touch on with you; but I'm acting from honest motives and on an honest conviction."
Winnie looked up in a moody hostility. "Whenever I've acted from honest motives and on honest convictions, people have all combined to make me unhappy, Major Merriam."
"I'm sincerely, deeply sorry for that, and I don't defend it. Still, the cases are not the same."
"Why aren't they?"
"Because you wanted to do what you did. No doubt you were convinced you had the right, but you wanted to, besides. Now I don't want to do what I'm doing. That's the difference. I want it less and less every hour I spend with you—in spite of your being so disagreeable." He smiled a little over the last words.
Winnie looked at him in curiosity. What was he going to say?
"You're not consistent. You say you like people to act up to their convictions; you feel wronged when people blame you for acting up to your convictions. Yet you punish me for acting up to mine. Will you let me put the thing before you frankly—since we're to part, probably for good, to-morrow?"
"Yes, you can say what you like—since we're to part to-morrow."
"Mine isn't the absurd idea you think it is, and I'm not the grandmother you try to make me out. I'm going to be called on to serve the King in a position of great responsibility, where my example and my standards will affect many lives. I must be true to my responsibilities as I see them. If I did what my feelings incline me to do—pray believe that I assume nothing as to yours—I shouldn't be true to them. Because in the regiment you wouldn't be understood—neither your position nor your convictions. What do most officers' wives, and what do most young men in the army, know about the sort of society or the sort of speculations which produce convictions like yours? They would neither understand nor appreciate them. And if they didn't—well, what opinion must they hold about you? And what effect would that opinion have? I don't speak of your position—that would be for you to consider—but what effect would it have on my position and my influence?"
"They'd just put me down as an ordinary—an ordinary bad woman?"
"Let's say the ordinary case of a woman who has made a scandal. Because I agree with you in thinking that such a woman needn't be a bad woman. But even when she's not bad, she may in certain positions be injurious to the commonwealth—and a regiment's a commonwealth. I'm not clever, as my brother is. I'm not likely ever to get a bigger job than this. It'll be the most important trust I shall get, I expect. I want to be loyal to it. I'm being loyal to it at a great cost to me—yes, a great cost now. And you try to make me look ridiculous! Well, let that pass. Only, feeling as I do, I want to put myself right in your eyes, before we say good-bye."
"I'm sorry I tried to make you look ridiculous. Is that enough, Major Merriam?"
"It's something," he smiled. "But couldn't you go so far as not to think me ridiculous?"
"Have I got to think the officers' wives and the subalterns not ridiculous too?"
"I can leave that to your later reflections. They're not going to part from you to-morrow, and they don't care so much about your good opinion."
"No, I don't think you ridiculous any more." She spoke now slowly and thoughtfully. "I didn't understand. I see better what you mean and feel now. Only understanding other people doesn't make the world seem any easier! But I think I do understand. The King pays you for your life, and you're bound to give it, not only in war, if that's required of you, but in peace too—is it something like that?"
"Yes, that's the sort of thing it is. Thank you."
"And you mustn't do anything that makes the life he's bought less valuable to him either in war or peace?"
"Yes, that's it too." He smiled at her more happily now and in a great kindness.
"In fact, you've sold yourself right out and quite irrevocably?"
"Ah, well, that's not quite the way I should put it. We Merriams have always done it."
"Hereditary slaves!" smiled Winnie. "It's really rather like marriage, as Cyril conceived it. You mustn't have another wife. The regiment's yours. It would be bigamy!"
"Charming people can talk great nonsense," the Major made bold to observe. He was rather chilled again.
"We're veering round in this discussion. Now you're making out that I'm ridiculous!"
He made a gesture of protest. Winnie laughed. "Six days ago I didn't care particularly about you, but I should have married you if you'd asked me."
"So you told me why I'd better not ask you? Yes?"
"Now I like you very particularly, but nothing on earth would induce me to marry you," said Winnie. She shot a quick glance of raillery at him. "So, if you're struggling, you needn't struggle."
"I am struggling rather, Winnie."
"To-morrow ends it."
"Yes, but what's going to happen to you?"
"That's become rather more difficult to answer than it used to be." She rose from her chair. "But now I'm going in, to beg the General's pardon for having been so naughty."
She stood there before him, slim, almost vague, in the soft darkness. Her black gown was a darker spot on the gloom; her face and shoulders gleamed white, her brows and the line of her red lips seemed black, and black, too, the eyes with which she regarded him, half-loving, still half-ridiculing, from across the gulf that parted them. He made a quick impulsive step towards her, putting out his arms. It seemed to him that hers came out to meet them; at least she did not retreat. With a sigh and a shiver she yielded herself to his embrace. "I'm half sorry it's so utterly impossible all round," she whispered.
After his passionate kiss the man let her go and drew back. "Now I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself," he said.
"Oh, my dear, you needn't be. Here we are, two small puzzled things, together on this beautiful night for just a little while, and then a long way from one another for ever! And we've done nothing very dreadful. Just what you like in me has kissed me, and just what I like in you has kissed you, and wished you God-speed, and been sorry for the trouble I've made, and told you how much I hope for you and your dear regiment. I'm glad you did it, and I'm glad I did it. Surely it makes us friends for always that our lips have met like that?"
"I'll give it all up if you ask me, Winnie."
"No, no. I've been learning to think how one will feel about things to-morrow. Forget you said that. You don't really mean it."
He stood silent for a moment. "No, I didn't really mean it. I beg your pardon."
"I bear you no malice. I liked you to think it for just a minute. It's all over." She smiled reassuringly. "But I shall remember—and like to remember. Everything of me won't leave you, nor everything of you leave me now, to-morrow—not absolutely everything. Well, it never does, with people you've met intimately, I think. But what you leave to me is all good. I was getting hard. This glimpse of you as you really are has stopped it. Dear friend, kiss me once again, and so good-bye."
Very gently now he kissed her lips again—for it was her lips she gave him in a perfect confidence.
"Let's go in now," said Winnie, putting her arm through his.
They sauntered slowly through the fragrant garden. The night was still; no envious wind disturbed the island's rest. Merriam, deeply moved, but now master of himself, did not speak, but once or twice gently pressed the hand that lay on his arm. With Winnie there was a sense of sadness, yet also of peace. She had made a friend, and now was to lose him—yet not wholly. And, in winning him, she had won back herself also, and had done with the Miss Wilson who had been flouting and flirting these last few days, with intentions none too kind and manners none too good; she was again trying to understand, to be fair, to strike a true balance between herself and other people.
"You're very different from the others," she said suddenly; "but, somehow, you're helping me to be more just to them too." She gave a little sigh. "But justice is most awfully difficult. It's really much more comfortable to believe that there's absolutely nothing to be said for people. You believe that about a lot of people, don't you? You'd believe it about my friend Dick Dennehy, I expect, who wants to have Ireland independent, and to destroy the monarchy, and put down the army and navy, and all that sort of thing. Yet he's one of the greatest gentlemen."
"Then I'd hang him, but I'd shake hands with him first," said the Major.
"Rather like what he's done to me!" thought Winnie to herself; but Merriam did not read the meaning of the glance, the smile, and the gentle pressure on his arm.
"But he's got his regiment too!" she went on. Then, glancing up at her companion, she saw that he was not heeding her words, and the rest of her meditation over the parallel was conducted in silence.
The General was not to be found that night—he had retreated to his own quarters in the annex. Winnie said her farewell to him on the balcony after breakfast the next morning, as they stood and looked at the big hull of the liner in the roadstead; she was to start in a couple of hours' time.
"Have you forgiven me, General? Will you say good-bye to me? I said good-bye to your son last night."
"He'll be gone before you get back to England. He told me something about last night. You're friends, he and you, now? And, of course, my dear, you and I. And we shall meet."
The ship sent out a warning hoot. "Come on, if you're coming," she seemed to say.
"But he and I shan't meet. I'm so glad we have met—just for an hour once."
The funny little man, 'Dolly,' fussed on to the balcony, monstrously encumbered with impedimenta—a rug, a 'nest' of wicker baskets, a cap and a pair of shoes of the country, a huge bunch of bananas, and a specimen of sugar cane. The ship hooted again, and he made a hurried rush up to Winnie.
"Good-bye, Miss Wilson, good-bye," he said, dropping half a dozen things on the floor in order to give her a handshake. "I've got something for everybody, I think. I won—yes, I won—last night, and I went down to the town early and bought these presents."
"How fine! Good-bye, Mr. Wigram. Tell all the truth you can, won't you?"
He put his head on one side, in a comical seriousness. "I've been thinking—since I talked to you, Miss Wilson—that my senior class could stand a little." Another hoot! "Oh, good-bye!" he exclaimed, in an extraordinary fluster, as he picked up the things he had dropped, and made a bolt for the stairs. Winnie watched him running down the steps that led through the garden to the landing-stage.
"I think the senior class can stand a little, don't you, General?"
"You're over-young to be in it, my dear."
She turned to him. "I'm not unhappy, and I don't reckon myself unfortunate, because I think that, to some extent at least, I can learn. The only really unhappy people are people who can't learn at all, I think. Fancy going through it all and learning absolutely nothing!"
A longer, more insistent hoot! Bertie Merriam sauntered on to the balcony. No observer would have guessed that the hoot meant anything to him or that he had any farewell to make. The General held out his hand to Winnie. "I'll take the steps gently—Bertie can overtake me.Au revoir, Miss Winnie, in London!"
Bertie Merriam came to her. "You slept well?" he asked.
"Oh yes. Why not? I was so at peace. Say nothing this morning. We said good-bye last night."
"Yes, I know, but——" He was obviously embarrassed. "But I want to ask you one thing. It'll seem jolly absurd, I know, and rather conceited."
"Will it?" asked Winnie, with bright eyes glistening.
"Well, if there should be any little row in India—I know people at home don't take much notice of them—any little expedition or anything of that kind, could you keep your eye on it? Because we might have the luck to be in it, and I should like you to know how the regiment shows up."
"If you've the luck to be getting killed, I'll read about it," said Winnie. She smiled with trembling lips. "It's really the least I can do for a friend, Major Merriam."
"Killed? Oh, rot! Just see first how near to full strength we turn out—that's my great test—and then, if you read of any other fellows showing us the way, you might let me know, and I'll inquire about it—because we don't reckon to let it happen very often. Hullo, that whistle really sounds as if she meant business!" He gripped her hand tightly and looked into her eyes. "Here's the end, Winnie!"
"I wouldn't have had it not happen; would you?"
"I shall often wonder if I did right."
She smiled. "You needn't. What you did would have made no difference—only you'd have been a little less loyal to your duty."
"I wish I knew what was going to become of you."
"I'm not afraid any more. God bless you, dear."
He waited one moment longer. "You've no grudge against me?"
Winnie turned sharply away, and leant over the balcony. "Oh, please, please!" she stammered.
When she saw him again, he was half-way down to the landing-stage. He turned, waved his hand, and so passed out of sight—and out of life for Winnie Maxon.