Mrs. Maxon Protests

She went upstairs slowly, determinedly calm, but with beating heart and a touch of vivid colour on her cheeks. The door of his bedroom stood wide open. The furniture was all in its place; the toilet table was no barer than his visit to Woburn Square accounted for; the little clock she had given him ticked away on the mantelpiece. But Winnie made straight for the chest of drawers, and quickly opened and shut one after another. They were all empty. The wardrobe yielded the same result. All his clothes had gone, and his boots – all of them. She went back to the landing and opened the door of a cupboard, where his portmanteau was usually stowed away; it was gone. Preparation for a long stay – somewhere! Yet the chill was so much better that he had been able to visit the studio that morning, when, no doubt, he had carried off all these things – all of them, not merely drawing-board, books, and tobacco-jar.

She moved quickly into her own room. There all was as usual; but she had thought that perhaps there would be a letter. None was visible. A curious quiet, almost a desolation, seemed to brood over the little room; it too took on, suddenly, an uninhabited air. She sank into a wicker arm-chair and sat there quite still for some minutes. Then she sprang briskly to her feet again, exclaiming, "Oh, but nonsense!"

She was seeking indignantly to repel the conviction which was mastering her mind. Surely he would not, could not, do it like this? In her rare contemplation of their possible parting, as bargained for, there had always been not indeed argument, much less recrimination, but much friendly discussion, a calm survey of the situation, probably an agreement to 'try it again' for a longer or shorter time, till a mature and wise decision, satisfactory to the reason, if not to the feelings, of both, should be arrived at. But this would be sheer running away – literal running away from her, from the problem, from the situation. It could not be. There must be some explanation.

Sounds were easily audible in the small flimsy dwelling. She heard the front door bell ring – and sat listening for his voice calling her, his step across the studio floor, and then coming up the stairs. Neither voice came, nor step; besides – odd she had not remembered it before – of course he would have used his latchkey. She got up, took off her jacket, unpinned her hat, laid it on the bed, looked to her hair, and then went slowly downstairs again.

Amy Ledstone was standing in the middle of the studio; the knock had been hers. Then in an instant Winnie knew, and in an instant she put on her armour. Her tone was cool and her manner self-possessed; they need not both be cowards – she and Godfrey!

"How do you do, Miss Ledstone? You've come to tell me something?"

"Yes." Amy Ledstone was neither cool nor self-possessed. Her voice trembled violently; it was an evident effort for her not to break into sobbing. "He – he still loves you; he told me to tell you that."

"Told you to tell me! Isn't that rather odd? – After all our – well, he's been able to tell me for himself before. Won't you sit down?" She sat herself as she spoke.

"No, thank you. But he can't bear to see you; he can't trust himself. He told me to say that. He said you'd understand – that you had a – an understanding. Only he couldn't bear to say good-bye."

"He's not coming back?"

"He was really rather seedy on Sunday – so he stayed. And – and on Sunday night mother had a bad attack; we were really alarmed."

Winnie nodded. Always, from the very beginning, a dangerous enemy – mother's weak heart!

"Mother had been with him all day – she wouldn't leave him. I suppose she got over-tired, and there was the strain of – of the situation; and daddy – my father – broke out on Godfrey the next morning; and I'd broken out on him Christmas night."

"You?" There was a touch of reproach in the question.

"Yes, I told him he must choose. He really made love to Mabel all the time. So I told him – "

"I see." She smiled faintly. "The poor boy can't have had a pleasant Christmas, Miss Ledstone!"

"We were all at him, all three of us!" She stretched out her hands suddenly. "Do try to understand that he had something to bear too. And that we had – thinking as we do about it. It was hard for other people besides you. Father's getting old, and Godfrey's all mother and I – "

Winnie nodded her understanding of the broken sentence.

"I haven't said a word against him or any of you. He had a right to do what he has done, though he's done it in a way I didn't think he'd choose."

"He doesn't trust himself, and mother – oh!" Her forlorn murmuring ended hopelessly in nothing.

"Mother! Yes! What a lot of things there are to think of! I had just made up my mind to take him right away from all of you, to take him abroad. I could have done it if I'd found him here. Perhaps I could do it still – I wonder?"

Amy shivered uncomfortably under the thoughtful gaze of her companion's eyes.

"I might write letters too – as you used to – and contrive secret meetings. He's said nothing about Miss Thurseley to me – I don't suppose he'd say anything about me to Miss Thurseley. But he'd meet me all the same, I think. That seems to be his way; only before your last visit I didn't know it."

"Indeed he won't think of Mabel – not for a long while. He's so – so broken up."

Winnie raised her brows slightly; she was beginning to form an opinion of her own about that – an opinion not likely to be too generous to Godfrey.

Amy spoke with obvious effort, with an air of shame. "Mother begged and prayed me to – to try and persuade you – " She broke off again.

"To let him alone? I suppose she would. She thinks I've done all the harm? As far as he's concerned, I suppose I have. If we'd gone about it in the ordinary way, he really needn't have suffered at all."

Again came Amy's uncomfortable shiver; she was not at home with steady contemplation of the ways of the world; it had not come across her path any more than love-making had.

"You can tell your mother that I'll let him alone. Then, I hope, she'll get better."

"Oh, I don't understand you!"

"No? Well, I didn't understand Godfrey. But in your case it doesn't matter. Why should you want to? You can all put me out of your thoughts from to-day."

"I can't!" cried Amy; "I shall never be able to!" Suddenly she came over to Winnie, and, standing before her, rather awkwardly, burst into tears. "How can you be so hard?" she moaned. "Don't you see that I'm terribly unhappy for you? But it's hopeless to try to tell you. You're so – so hard. And I've got to go back home, where they'll be – "

Winnie supplied the word – "Jubilant? Yes." She frowned. "You cry, and I don't – it is rather funny. I wonder if I shall cry when you've gone!"

"Oh, do you love him, or don't you?"

Winnie's brows were raised again. In view of what had occurred that day, of the sudden revelation of Godfrey, of the abrupt change his act had wrought in her relations to him, the question seemed to imply an unreal simplicity of the emotions, a falsely uncomplicated contrast between two states of feeling, standing distantly over against one another. Such a conception in no way corresponded with her present feelings about Godfrey Ledstone. The man she loved had done the thing she could not forgive – did she love him? Yet if she did not love him, why could she not forgive him? Unless she loved him, it was small matter that he should be ashamed and run away. But if he were ashamed and ran away, how could she love? Love and contempt, tenderness and repulsion, seemed woven into one fabric of intricate, almost untraceable pattern. How could she describe that to Amy Ledstone?

"I suppose I love my Godfrey, but he seems not to be the same as yours. I can't put it better than that. And you love yours, and not mine. I think that's all we can say about it."

Amy had her complications of feeling too. She dried her eyes, mournfully saying, "That's not true about me. I like yours best – if I know what you mean. He was a man, anyhow. But then I know it's wicked to feel like that."

Winnie looked up at her. "Of course you must think it wicked – I quite see that – but you do understand more than I thought," she said. "And you won't think I'm abusing him? It wouldn't seem wicked to me at all – if I'd happened on the right man. But I didn't. That's all. And this way of ending it seems somehow to – to defile it all. The end spoils it all. That seems to me shamefully unfair. He had a right to go, but he had no right to be ashamed. And he is ashamed, and almost makes me ashamed. I could almost hate him for it."

"We've made him ashamed. You must hate us."

"I like you. And – no – how could I hate your father and mother? They made me no promise; I've given nothing to them on the strength of a promise. But to him I've given everything I had; not much, I know, but still – everything."

Amy twisted her gloved hands round one another. She was calmer now, but her face was drawn with pain. "Yes, that's true," she said. Then she came out abruptly with what had been behind her spoken words for the last ten minutes, with what she had to say before she could bring herself to leave Winnie. "At any rate, you've pluck. Godfrey's a coward."

Winnie's lips bent in a queer smile. "Don't! Where does it leave me? Oh yes, it's true about him, I suppose. That's my blunder."

Amy walked back to the mantelpiece; she had left her muff on it. She took it up and moved towards the door. "I'll go. You must have had enough of the lot of us!"

Winnie had an honest desire to be just, nay, to be kind, to reciprocate a friendliness obviously extended towards her, and extended in spite of a rooted disapproval. But those limits of endurance had been reached again. She had, indeed, had enough of the Ledstones; not even her husband could have suffered more strongly from the feeling. She made an effort.

"Oh, you and I part friends," she called after her visitor's retreating figure. Without turning round, Amy shook her head dolefully, and so passed out. Her mission was accomplished.

Almost directly after Amy left, the servant, Dennehy's old Irish woman, came in with tea and buttered toast. She drew a chair up to the gas stove, and a little table.

"Make yerself comfortable, me dear," she said.

"Did he say anything to you, Mrs. O'Leary?"

"Said he was going to visit his relations in the North for a bit." Then, after a pause, "Cheer up, mum. There's as good fish – !" And out the old woman shuffled.

Now that was a funny thing to say! 'There's as good fish – !' But Winnie's numb brain was on another tack; she did not pursue the implications of Mrs. O'Leary's remark. Nor did the tender mood, on whose advent she had speculated when she said, 'I wonder if I shall cry, when you've gone,' arrive. Nor was she girding against the Ledstones and Woburn Square any more. Her thoughts went back to her own parting from her husband. "Anyhow, I faced Cyril – we had it out," was the refrain of her thoughts, curiously persistent, as she sat before the stove, drinking her tea and munching her toast, enjoying the warmth, really (though it seemed strange) not so much miserable as intensely combative, with no leisure to indulge in misery, with her back to the wall, and the world – the Giant – advancing against her threateningly. Because her particular little rampart had collapsed entirely, the roof was blown off her shelter, her scheme of life in ruins – a situation cheerfully countered by Mrs. O'Leary's proverbial saying, but not in reality easy to deal with. Her boat was not out fishing; it was stranded, high and dry, on a barren beach. "I did face Cyril!" Again and again it came in pride and bitter resentment. Here she was faced with a dénoûment typical of a weak mind – at once sudden, violent, and cowardly.

She smoked two or three cigarettes – Ledstone had taught her the habit, undreamed of in her Maxon days – and the hands of the clock moved round. Half-past six struck. It acted as a practical reminder of immediate results. She had no dinner ordered; if she had, there was nobody to eat it with. There was nobody to spend the evening with. She would have to sleep alone in the house; Mrs. O'Leary had family cares, and got home to supper and bed at nine o'clock. She need not dine, but she must spend the evening and must sleep, with no company, no protective presence, in all the house. That seemed really rather dreadful.

Her luggage lay on the floor of the studio, still unpacked. She had not given another thought to it; she did now. "Shall I go back to Shaylor's Patch to-night?" It was a very tempting idea. She got up, almost determined; she would find sympathy there; even the tears might come. She was on the point of making for her bedroom, to put on her hat and jacket again, when another ring came at the bell. A moment later she heard a cheery voice asking, "Mrs. Ledstone at home?"

"But I'm not Mrs. Ledstone any more. Nor Mrs. Maxon! I don't see that I'm anybody."

The thought had just time to flash through her mind before Bob Purnett was ushered in by Mrs. O'Leary.

"Mr. Purnett, mum. Ye'll find the whisky in the usual place, sor, and the soda." It was known that Bob did not affect afternoon tea.

"I thought you'd be back, Mrs. Ledstone. Where's Godfrey? I've a free night, and I want you and him to come and dine and go to a Hall. Don't say no, now! I'm so lonely! Don't mind this cigar, do you, Mrs. Ledstone?"

There seemed a lot of 'Mrs. Ledstone' about it; but she knew that was Bob's good manners. Besides, it was a minor point. How much candour was at the moment requisite? Even that was not the main point. The main point was – 'Here's a friendly human being; in what way am I required by the situation to treat him?'

It was a point admitting of difficult consideration in theory; in practice it needed none whatever. Winnie clutched at the plank in her sea of desolation.

"Godfrey's staying over the night with his people; he's got a chill. I didn't know it, so I came back all the same from the Aikenheads'." – How glib! – "And I'm rather lonely too, Mr. Purnett."

He sat down near her by the stove. "Well – er – old Godfrey wouldn't object, would he?"

"You mean – that I should come alone? With you?"

"Hang it, if he will get chills and stay at Woburn Square! This doesn't strike one as very festive!" He looked round the studio and gave a burlesque shudder.

"It isn't!" said Winnie. "Shall I surprise you, Mr. Purnett, if I tell you that I have never in my life dined out or gone to the theatre alone with any man except Mr. Maxon and Godfrey?"

She puzzled Bob to distraction, or, rather, would have, if he had not given up the problem long ago. "I believe it if you say so, Mrs. Ledstone," he rejoined submissively. "But Godfrey and I are such good pals. Why shouldn't you?"

"I'm going to," said Winnie.

He rose with cheerful alacrity. "All right. I'll meet you at the Café Royal – eight sharp. Jolly glad I looked in! I say, what price poor old Godfrey – with a chill at Woburn Square, while we're having an evening out?" He chuckled merrily.

"It serves Godfrey quite right," she said, with her faintly flickering smile.

Mrs. O'Leary was delighted to be summoned to the task of lacing up one of Winnie's two evening frocks – the better of the two, it may be remarked in passing.

"Ye might have moped, me dear, here all by yourself!" she said, and it certainly seemed a possible conjecture.

There was only one fault to be found with Bob Purnett's demeanour during dinner at the Café Royal. It was quite friendly and cheerful; it was not distant; but it was rather overwhelmingly respectful. It recognized and emphasized the fact of Godfrey Ledstone's property in her (the thing can hardly be put differently), and of Bob's perfect acquiescence in it. It protested that not a trace of treason lurked in this little excursion. He even kept on expressing the wish that Godfrey were with them. And he called her 'Mrs. Ledstone' every other sentence. There never was anybody who kept the straitest rule of the code more religiously than Bob Purnett.

But he was in face of a situation of which he was ignorant, and of a nature which (as he was only too well aware) he very little comprehended. Winnie looked very pretty, but she smiled inscrutably. At least she smiled at first. Presently a touch of irritation crept into her manner. She gave him back copious 'Mr. Purnett's' in return for his 'Mrs. Ledstone's.' The conversation became formal, indeed, to Bob, rather dull. He understood her less and less.

It was, on Winnie's extremely rough and not less irritated computation, at the one hundred and fourth 'Mrs. Ledstone' of the evening – which found utterance as they were driving in a cab from the restaurant to the selected place of entertainment – that her patience gave as with a snap, and her bitter humour had its way.

"For heaven's sake don't call me 'Mrs. Ledstone' any more this evening!"

"Eh?" said Bob, removing his cigar from his mouth. "What did you say, Mrs. Led – Oh, I beg pardon!"

"I said, 'Don't call me "Mrs. Ledstone"' – or I shall go mad."

"What am I to call you, then?" He was trying not to stare at her, but was glancing keenly out of the corner of his eye.

"Let's be safe – call me Mrs. Smith," said Winnie.

On which words they arrived at the music hall.

CHAPTER XVI

A WORD TAKEN AT PLEASURE

The excellent entertainment provided for them acted as a palliative to Winnie's irritation and Bob Purnett's acute curiosity. There are no 'intervals' at music halls; they were switched too quickly from diversion to diversion for much opportunity of talk to present itself; and during the 'orchestral interlude,' half-way through the programme, Bob left his place in search of refreshment. When they came out, the subject of 'Mrs. Smith' had not advanced further between them.

Winnie refused her escort's offer of supper. By now she was tired out, and she felt, though reluctant to own it, a childish instinct – since she had to sleep in that desert of a house – to hide her head between the sheets before midnight. This aim a swift motor-cab might just enable her to accomplish.

Nor did the subject advance rapidly when the cab had started. Winnie lay back against the cushions in a languid weariness, not equal to thinking any more about her affairs that night. Bob sat opposite, not beside her, for fear of his cigar smoke troubling her. She often closed her eyes; then he would indulge himself in a cautious scrutiny of her face as the street lamps lit it up in their rapid passage. She looked exceedingly pretty, and would look prettier still – indeed, 'ripping' – with just a little bit of make-up; for she was very pale, and life had already drawn three or four delicate but unmistakable lines about eyes and mouth. Bob allowed himself to consider her with more attention than he had ever accorded to her before, and with a new sort of attention – on his own account as a man, not merely as a respectful critic of Godfrey Ledstone's taste. Because that remark of hers about not being called 'Mrs. Ledstone' – on pain of going mad – made a difference. Perhaps it meant only a tiff – or, as he called it, a 'row.' Perhaps it meant more; perhaps it was 'all off' between her and Godfrey – a final separation.

Whatever the remark meant, the state of affairs it indicated brought Winnie more within her present companion's mental horizon. Tiffs and separations were phenomena quite familiar to his experience. The truth might be put higher; tiffs were the necessary concomitant, and separations the inevitable end, of sentimental friendships. They came more or less frequently, sooner or later; but they came. Growing frequency of tiffs usually heralded separations. But sometimes the 'big row' came all at once – a storm out of a blue sky, a sudden hurricane, in which the consort ships lost touch of one another – or one went under, while the other sailed away. All this was familiar ground to Bob Purnett; he had often seen it, he had experienced it, he had joked and, in his own vein, philosophized about it. The thing he had not understood – though he had punctiliously feigned to accept – was the sanctity and permanence of a tie which was, as everybody really must know, neither sacred nor likely to be permanent. There he was out of his depth; when tiffs and separations came on the scene, Bob felt his feet touch bottom. And he had always been of opinion, in his heart, that, whatever Winnie might believe, Godfrey Ledstone felt just as he did. Of course Godfrey had had to pretend otherwise – well, the face opposite Bob in the cab was worth a bit of pretending.

Winnie spoke briefly, two or three times, of the performance they had seen, but said nothing more about herself. When they arrived at her door, she told him to keep the cab.

"Because I've got nothing for you to eat, and I think you finished even the whisky! Thanks for my evening, Mr. Purnett."

He walked through the little court up to the door with her. "And you look as tired as a dog," he remarked – with a successful suppression of 'Mrs. Ledstone.' "What you want is a good sleep, and – and it'll all look brighter in the morning. May I come and see you soon?"

"If I'm here, of course you may. But I haven't made up my mind. I may go back to the country, to the Aikenheads, my cousins – where I met Godfrey, you know."

He could not resist a question. "I say, is there trouble? You know how I like you both. Has there been a row?"

She smiled at him. "Godfrey avoided any danger of that. I don't want to talk about it, but you may as well know. Godfrey has gone away."

"Oh, but he'll come back, Mrs. – He'll come back, I mean, you know."

"Never. And I don't want him. Don't ask me any more – to-night, anyhow." She gave him her hand with a friendly pressure. "Good-night."

"Good Lord! Well, I'm sorry. I say, you won't cut me now, will you?"

"I haven't so many friends that I need cut a good one. Now, if you drive off at once, you'll be back in time to get some supper somewhere else." She smiled again, and in a longing for comfort owned to him – and to herself – her childish fears. "And I want to be snug in bed before the spooks come out! I feel rather lonely. So, again, good-night." He had a last vision of her small pale face as she slowly, reluctantly it seemed to him, shut the door. A great rattle of bolts followed.

"Well, I'm left outside, anyhow," Bob reflected philosophically, as he walked back to the cab. But his mind was occupied with the picture of the proud forlorn woman, there alone in the empty house, very much alone in the world too, and rather afraid of 'spooks.' All his natural kindliness of heart was aroused in pity and sympathy for her. "I should like to give her a really good time," he thought. In that aspect his impulse was honestly unselfish. But the image of the pale delicate face abode with him also. The two aspects of his impulse mingled; he saw no reason why they should not, if it were really 'all off' between her and Godfrey Ledstone. "I think she likes me well enough – I wonder if she does!" He did not, to do him justice, ask an extravagant degree of devotion in return for any 'good times' which he might find himself able to offer. When it is so easy for two people with good tempers, sound digestions, and plenty of ready cash to enjoy themselves, why spoil it all by asking too much? Surely he and Winnie could enjoy themselves? The idea stuck in his mind. Again, why – to him – should it not? His scrupulous behaviour hitherto had been based on loyalty to Godfrey Ledstone. It appeared that he was released from the obligation by his friend's own act. "He can't say I didn't play the game, while the thing lasted," thought Bob, with justifiable self-satisfaction.

The morrow of a catastrophe is perhaps harder to bear than the hour in which it befalls us. The excitement of battling with fate is gone; but the wounds smart and the bruises ache. Physically refreshed by sleep – a sleep happily unbroken by assaults from without or ghostly visitants within the house – Winnie braced her courage to meet the call on it. Her task, not easy, yet was plain. She would not weep for her Godfrey Ledstone; she would try not to think of him, nor to let her thoughts stray back to the early days with him. She would and must think of the other Godfrey, the one in Woburn Square. What woman would weep for such a man as that – except his mother? On him she would fix her thoughts, until she need think no more of either of them. She had to think of herself – of what she had done and of what she was now to do. On the first head she admitted a blunder, but no disgrace – a mistake not of principle or theory, only a mistake in her man; with regard to the second, she must make a decision.