Mrs. Maxon Protests

Things, then, were settling down in Woburn Square. By dint of being ignored, Winnie and her raid on the family reputation might soon be forgotten. The affair had been kept very quiet; that was the great thing. (Here Woburn Square and the high moralists seem lamentably at odds, but the high moralists also enjoin the speaking and writing of the truth.) It was over. It ranked no more as a defiance; it became merely an indiscretion – a thing young men will do now and then, under the influence of designing women. There was really jubilation – if only Amy would have looked a little less gloomy, and been rather more cordial towards her brother.

"I don't understand the girl," Mr. Ledstone complained. "Our line is to make things pleasant for him."

"It's that woman. She must have some extraordinary power," his wife pleaded. Winnie's extraordinary power made it all the easier to forgive her son Godfrey. Probably few young men would have resisted, and (this deep down in the mother's heart) not so very many had occasion to resist.

Then came the thunderbolt – from which jubilation fled shrieking. Who hurled it? Human nature, Winnie, Lady Rosaline Deering – little as she either had meant to do anything unkind to the household in Woburn Square? Surely even the high moralists – or shall we say the high gods, who certainly cannot make less, and may perhaps make more, allowances? – would have pitied Mr. Ledstone. Beyond all the disappointment and dismay, he felt himself the victim of a gross breach of trust. He fumed up and down the back room on the ground floor which was called his study – the place he read the papers in and where he slept after lunch.

"But he said there were to be no proceedings. He said he didn't believe in it. He said it distinctly more than once."

Mrs. Ledstone had gone to her room. The sinner had fled to his studio, leaving Amy to break the news to Mr. Ledstone; Amy was growing accustomed to this office.

"I suppose he's changed his mind," said Amy, with a weary listlessness.

"But he said it. I remember quite well. 'I am not a believer in divorce.' And you remember I came home and told you there were to be no proceedings? Monstrous! In a man of his position! Well, one ought to be able to depend on his word! Monstrous!" Exclamation followed exclamation like shots from a revolver – but a revolver not working very smoothly.

"It'll have to go through, I suppose, daddy."

"How can you take it like that? What'll your Uncle Martin say? And Aunt Lena – and the Winfreys? It'll be a job to live this down! And my son – a man with my record! He distinctly said there were to be no proceedings. I left him on that understanding. What'll Mrs. Thurseley think? I shall go and see this man Maxon myself." Of all sinners Mr. Maxon was ranking top in Woburn Square to-day – easily above his wife even.

"I don't expect that'll do any good."

"Amy, you really are – Oh, well, child, I'm half off my head. A man has no right to say a thing like that unless he means it. No proceedings, he said!"

"I expect he did mean it. Something's changed him, I suppose."

Something had – and it never occurred to Cyril Maxon that the Ledstone family had any right to a say in the matter. He would have been astonished to hear the interpretation that Mr. Ledstone put on the interview which he remembered only with vivid disgust, with the resentment due to an intrusion entirely unwarrantable. So the poor old gentleman must be left fuming up and down, quite vainly and uselessly clamouring against the unavoidable, an object for compassion, even though he was thinking more of the Thurseleys, of Uncle Martin, Aunt Lena, and the Winfreys than of how his son stood towards divine or social law on the one side, and towards a deserted woman on the other? Respectability is, on the whole, a good servant to morality, but sometimes the servant sits in the master's seat.

The culprit's state was no more enviable than his father's; indeed it appeared to himself so much worse that he was disposed to grudge his family the consternation which they displayed so prodigally and to find in it an unfair aggravation of a burden already far too heavy. Nothing, perhaps, makes a man feel so ill-used as to do a mean thing and then be baulked of the object for whose sake he did it. A mean thing it undoubtedly was, even if it had been the right thing also in the eyes of many people – for to such unfortunate plights can we sometimes be reduced by our own actions that there really is not a thing both right and straight left to do; and it had been done in a mean and cowardly way. Yet it was now no good. Things had just seemed to be settling down quietly; he was being soothed by the consolatory petting of his mother and father. Now this happened – and all was lost. His decent veil of obscurity was rent in twain; he was exposed to the rude stare of the world, to the shocked eyes of Aunt Lena and the rest. He had probably lost the girl towards whom his thoughts had turned as a comfortable and satisfactory solution of all his difficulties; and he had the perception to know that, whether he had lost Mabel or not, he had finally and irretrievably lost Winnie. Everybody would be against him now, both the men of the law and the men of the code; he had been faithful to the standards of neither.

He had not the grace to hate himself; that would have been a promising state of mind. But fuming up and down in his studio off Fitzroy Square (just like his father in the back room in Woburn Square) and lashing himself into impotent fury, he began to feel that he hated everybody else. They had all had a hand in his undoing – Bob Purnett and his lot with their easy-going moralities, Shaylor's Patch and its lot with their silly speculations and vapourings over things they knew nothing about, Cyril Maxon who did not stand by what he said nor by what he believed, Winnie with ridiculous exacting theories, Mabel Thurseley (poor blameless Mabel!) by attracting his errant eyes and leading him on to flirtation, his parents by behaving as if the end of the world had come, his sister because she despised him and had sympathy with the deserted woman. He was in a sad case. Nobody had behaved or was behaving decently towards him, nobody considered the enormous – the impossible – difficulties of his situation from beginning to end. Was there no justice in the world – nor even any charity? What an ending – what an ending – to those pleasant days of dalliance at Shaylor's Patch! What was deep down in his heart was – "And I could have managed it all right my way, if she'd only have let me!"

He did not go home to dinner that evening. He slunk back late at night, hoping that all his family would be in bed. Yet when he found that accusing sister sitting alone in the drawing-room, he grounded a grievance on her solitude. She was sewing – and she went on sewing in a determined manner and in unbroken silence.

"Well, where's everybody? Have you nothing to say? I'm sent to Coventry, I suppose?"

"Mother's in bed. Oh, she's pretty easy now; you needn't worry. Daddy's in his study; he was tired out, and I expect he's gone to sleep. I'm quite ready to talk to you, Godfrey."

Perhaps – but her tone did not forebode a cheerful conversation.

He got up from the chair into which he had plunged himself when he came in.

"Pretty gay here, isn't it? Oh, you do know how to rub it in, all of you! I should think living in this house would drive any man to drink and blue ruin in a fortnight."

Amy sewed on. She had offered to talk, but what he said seemed to call for no comment. He strode to the door and opened it violently. "I'm off to bed."

"Good-night, Godfrey," said Amy; her speech was smothered by the banging of the door.

Poor sinner! Poor creature! Winnie Maxon might indeed plead that her theory had not been fairly tried; she had chosen the wrong man for the experiment.

Here, then – save for the one formality on which Cyril Maxon now insisted – Winnie and the Ledstone family were at the parting of the ways. Their concurrence had been fortuitous – it was odd what people met one another at Shaylor's Patch, Stephen's appetite for humanity being so voracious – fortuitous, and ill-starred for all parties. They would not let her into their life; they would not rest till they had ejected her from her tainted connexion with it. Now they went out of hers. She remembered Godfrey as her great disappointment, her lost illusion, her blunder; Amy as it were with a friendly stretching-out of hands across a gulf impassable; the old folk with understanding and toleration – since they did no other than what they and she herself had been taught to regard as right. How could the old change their ideas of right?

Their memory of her was far harder – naturally, perhaps. She was a raider, a brigand, a sadly disturbing and destructive invader. At last she had been driven out, but a track of desolation spread behind her retreating steps. Indeed there were spots where the herbage never grew again. The old folk forgave their son and lived to be proud of him once more. But Amy Ledstone had gauged her brother with an accuracy destructive of love; and within twelve months Mabel Thurseley married a stockbroker, an excellent fellow with a growing business. She never knew it, but she, at least, had cause for gratitude to Winnie Maxon.

Godfrey returned to the obedience of the code. He was at home there. It was an air that he could breathe. The air of Shaylor's Patch was not – nor that of the Kensington studio.

CHAPTER XVIII

NOTHING SERIOUS

"By the law came sin – " quoted Stephen Aikenhead.

"He only meant the Jewish law. Man, ye're hopeless." Dennehy tousled his hair.

The February afternoon was mild; Stephen was a fanatic about open air, if about nothing else. The four sat on the lawn at Shaylor's Patch, well wrapped up – Stephen, Tora, and Dennehy in rough country wraps, Winnie in a stately sealskin coat, the gift of Mrs. Lenoir. She had taken to dressing Winnie, in spite of half-hearted remonstrances and with notable results.

"But the deuce is," Stephen continued – this time on his own account and, therefore, less authoritatively – "that when you take away the law, the sin doesn't go too."

Winnie's story was by now known to these three good friends. Already it was being discussed more as a problem than as a tragedy. Some excuse might be found in Winnie's air and manner. She was in fine looks and good spirits, interested and alert, distinctly resilient against the blows of fortune and the miscarriage of theoretical experiments. So much time and change had done for her.

"And it seems just as true of any other laws, even if he did mean the Jewish, Dick," Stephen ended.

"Don't lots of husbands, tied up just as tight as anything or anybody can tie them, cut loose and run away just the same?" asked Tora.

"And wives," added Winnie – who had done it, and had a right to speak.

"It's like the old dispute about the franchise and the agricultural labourer. I remember my father telling me about it somewhere in the eighties – when I was quite a small boy. One side said the labourer oughtn't to have the vote till he was fit for it, the other said he'd never be fit for it till he had it."

"Oh, well, that's to some extent like the woman question," Tora remarked.

"Are we to change the law first or people first? Hope a better law will make better people, or tell the people they can't have a better law till they're better themselves?"

"Stephen, you've a glimmer of sense in you this afternoon."

"Well, Dick, we don't want to end by merely making things easier for brutes and curs – male or female."

"I think you're a little wanting in the broad view to-day, Stephen. You're too much affected by Winnie's particular case. Isn't it better to get rid of brutes and curs anyhow? The quicker and easier, the better." Tora was, as usual, uncompromising.

"Everybody seems to put a good point. That's the puzzle," said Stephen, who was obviously enjoying the puzzle very much.

"Oh, ye're not even logical to-day, Tora," Dennehy complained, "which I will admit you sometimes are, according to your wrong-headed principles. Ye call the man a brute or a cur, and this and that – oh, ye meant Godfrey! What's the man done that he hadn't a right to do on your own showing? His manners were bad, maybe."

"It's our own showing that we're now engaged in examining, if you'll permit us, Dick," Stephen rejoined imperturbably. "When a man's considering whether he's been wrong, it's a pity to scold him; because the practice is both rare and laudable."

"Oh, you mustn't even consider whether I've been wrong, Stephen," Winnie cried. "Wrong in principle, I mean. As to the particular person – but I don't want to abuse him, poor fellow. His environment – "

"That's a damnable word, saving your presence," Dennehy interrupted. "Nowadays whenever a scoundrel does a dirty trick, he lays it to the account of his environment."

"But that's just what I meant, Dick."

"Say the devil, and ye're nearer the mark, Winnie."

"Environment's more hopeful," Stephen suggested. "You see, we may be able to change that. Over your protégé we have no jurisdiction."

"He may have over you, though, some day! Oh, I'll go for a walk, and clear my head of all your nonsense."

"Don't forget you promised to take me to the station after tea," said Winnie.

"Forget it!" exclaimed Dick Dennehy in scorn indescribable. "Now will I forget it – is it likely, Winnie?" He swung off into the house to get his walking-stick.

Tora Aikenhead shook her head in patient reproof. No getting reason into Dick's, no hope of it at all! It was just Dick's opinion of her.

A short silence followed Dennehy's departure. Then Stephen Aikenhead spoke again.

"You've had a rough time, Winnie. Are you sorry you ever went in for it?"

"No, it was the only thing to try; and it has resulted – or is just going to – in my being free. But I did fail in one thing. I was much more angry with Godfrey than I had any right to be. I was angry – yes, angry, not merely grieved – because he left me, as well as because he was afraid to do it in a straightforward way. I didn't live up to my theories there."

"I don't know that I think any theory easy to live up to," said Tora. "Is the ordinary theory of marriage easy to live up to either?"

"It's always interesting to see how few people live up to their theories." Stephen smiled. "It seems to me your husband isn't living up to his."

"No, he isn't, and it's rather consoling. I don't fancy it ever entered his head that he would have to try it in practice himself. Rather your own case, isn't it, Stephen? You've never really found what any – any difficulty could mean to you."

"Oh, I know I'm accused of that. I can't help it; it's absolutely impossible to get up a row with Tora. And even I don't say that you ought to walk out of the house just for the fun of it!"

"We prove our theory best by the fact of the theory making no difference," said Tora.

"I suppose that in the end it's only the failures who want theories at all," Winnie mused.

"Probably – with the happy result of reducing, pro tanto, the practical importance of the subject, without depriving it of its speculative interest," laughed Stephen. "Love, union, parentage, partnership – it's good to have them all, but, as life goes on, a lot of people manage with the last two – or even with only the last. It grows into a pretty strong tie. Well, Winnie, you seem to have come through fairly well, and I hope you won't have much more trouble over the business."

"I shan't have any, to speak of. I've put it all in Hobart Gaynor's hands. I went to see him and told him all he wanted to know. He's taken charge of the whole thing; I really need hear no more about it. He was awfully kind – just his dear old self." She smiled. "Well, short of asking me to his house, you know."

"Oh, that's his wife," said Tora.

"Mrs. Gaynor seems to live up to her theories, at any rate," chuckled Stephen.

"It's not so difficult to live up to your theories about other people. It's about yourself," said Winnie.

"I think your going to Mrs. Lenoir's is such a perfect arrangement." Tora characteristically ignored the large body of opinion which would certainly be against her on the question.

"I'm very happy there – she's so kind. And I seem quite a fixture. I've been there nearly two months, and now she says I'm to go abroad with her in the spring." She paused for a moment. "The General's very kind too. In fact I think he likes me very much."

"Who's the General? I don't know about him."

Winnie explained sufficiently, and added, "Of course he thinks I'm just Miss Wilson. Mrs. Lenoir says it's all right, but I can't feel it's quite straight."

"As he appears to be nearly seventy, and Mrs. Lenoir's friend, if anybody's – " Stephen suggested.

Winnie smiled and blushed a little. "Well, you see, the truth is that it's not only the General. He's got a son. Well, he's got three, but one of them turned up about a fortnight ago."

"Oh, did he? Where from?"

"From abroad – on long leave. It's the eldest – the Major."

"Does he like you very much too, Winnie?"

Winnie looked across the lawn. "It seems just conceivable that he might – complicate matters," she murmured. "I haven't spoken to Mrs. Lenoir about that – aspect of it."

Stephen was swift on the scent of another problem. "Oh, and you mean, if he did – well, show signs – how much ought he to be told about Miss Wilson?"

"Yes. And perhaps even before the signs were what you'd call very noticeable. Wouldn't it be fair? Because he doesn't seem to me at all a – a theoretical kind of person. I should think his ideas are what you might call – "

"Shall we say traditional – so as to be quite impartial towards the Major?"

"Yes. And especially about women, I should think."

Stephen looked across at his wife, smiling. "Well, Tora?"

Without hesitation Tora gave her verdict. "If you'd done things that you yourself knew or thought to be disgraceful, you ought to tell him before he grows fond of you. But you're not bound to tell him what you've done, on the chance of his thinking it disgraceful, when you don't."

"I expect it's more than a chance," Winnie murmured.

"I'm groping after Tora's point. I haven't quite got it. From the Major's point of view, in the hypothetical circumstances we're discussing, what's of importance is not what Winnie thinks, but what he does."

"What's important to the Major," Tora replied, "is that he should fall in love with a good woman. Good women may do what the Major thinks disgraceful, but they don't do what they themselves think disgraceful. Or, if they ever do, they repent and confess honestly."

"Oh, she's got an argument! She always has. Still, could a good woman let herself be fallen in love with under something like false pretences?"

"There will be no false pretences, Stephen. She will be – she practically is – an unmarried woman, and, if she married him, she'd marry him as such. The rest is all over."

"It may be atavistic – relics of my public school and so on – but it doesn't seem to me quite the fair thing," Stephen persisted; "to keep him in the dark about our young friend, Miss Wilson, I mean."

"I think I agree with you, Stephen." Winnie smiled. "If he does show signs, that's to say!"

"Oh, only if he shows signs, of course. Otherwise, it's in no way his business."

"Because, whatever his rights may be, why should I risk making him unhappy? Besides, in a certain event, he might find out, when it was – from his point of view – too late."

Stephen laughed. "At least admit, Tora, that from a merely practical point of view, there's something to be said for telling people things that they may find out for themselves at an uncomfortably late hour."

"Oh, I thought we were trying to get a true view of a man's – or a woman's – rights in such a case," said Tora, with lofty scorn. "But it seems I'm in a minority."

"You wouldn't be happy if you weren't, my dear. It's getting dusk, and here comes Dick back. Let's go in to tea."

Dick Dennehy often grew hot in argument, but his vexation never lasted long. Over tea he was in great spirits, and talked eagerly about a new prospect which had opened before him. The post he held as correspondent was a poor affair, ill-paid and leading to nothing. He had the chance of being appointed a leader-writer on a London daily paper – a post offering a great advance both in pay and in position. The only possible difficulty arose from his religious convictions; they might, on occasion, clash with the policy of the paper, in matters concerning education for instance.

"But they're good enough to say they think so well of me in every other way that the little matter may probably admit of adjustment."

"Now don't you go back on your theories – or really where are we?" said Stephen chaffingly.

"I won't do that; I won't do that. I should be relieved of dealing with those questions. And, Stephen, my boy, I'd have a chance of a decent place to live in and of being able to put by my old age pension."

They all entered eagerly into the discussion of these rosy dreams, and it was carried, nem. con., that Dick must build himself a 'week-end' cottage at Nether End, as near as might be to Shaylor's Patch. Perhaps Winnie could find one to suit her too!

"And we'll all sit and jaw till the curtain falls!" cried Stephen Aikenhead, expressing his idea of a happy life.

"Ye're good friends here, for all your nonsense," said Dennehy. "I'd ask no better."

"Moreover, Dick, you can marry. You can tie yourself up, as Tora puts it, just as tightly as you like. Choose a woman, if possible, with some breadth of view. I want you to have your chance."

"Oh, I'm not likely to be marrying." A cloud seemed to pass over his cheery face. But it was gone in a moment. "Well, who'd look at me, anyhow?"

"I think you'd make an excellent husband, Dick," said Winnie. "I should marry you – yes, even tie you up – with the utmost confidence."

He gave her a queer look, half-humorous, half-resentful. "Don't be saying such things, Winnie, or ye'll turn my head and destroy my peace of mind."

"Oh, last time I flirted with you, you said you liked it!" she reminded him, laughing.

On the way to the station, Winnie walked with her arm through his, for the evening had fallen dark, and the country road was rough. With a little pressure of her hand, she said, "I'm so glad – so glad – of the new prospects, Dick. I believe in you, you know, though we do differ so much."

He was silent for a moment, and then asked abruptly, "And what prospects have you?"

"Oh, I suppose I'm rather like the politician who had his future behind him. But I haven't made up my mind what to do. I'm living rather from hand to mouth just now, and taking a holiday from thinking."

"Oh, I'll mind my own business, if that's what you mean."

"Dick, how can you? Of course it wasn't. Please don't be huffy about nothing."

"I'm worried about you. Don't let those people up at the Patch get at you again, Winnie – for pity's sake, don't! Take care of yourself, my dear. My heart bleeds to see you where you stand to-day, and if you got into any other trouble – you don't understand that you're a woman a man might do bad as well as good things for."

Emotion was strong in his voice; Winnie lightly attributed it to his nationality.

"Don't fret about me. I've got to pay for my blunders, and, if I've any sense at all, I shall be wiser in future."

"If ye're ever inclined to another man, for God's sake try him, test him, prove him. Ye can't afford another mistake, Winnie. It'd kill you, wouldn't it?"

"I shouldn't – like it," she answered slowly. "Yes, I shall be cautious, Dick. And it would take a good deal to make me what you call 'inclined to' any man just yet." She broke into a laugh. "But it's your domestic prospects that we were discussing this afternoon!"

"I have none," he answered shortly, almost sourly.

"Oh, you've only just begun to think of it," she laughed. "Don't despair of finding somebody worthy some day!"

They had just reached the station – nearly a quarter of an hour ahead of their time. Dennehy was going back to sleep at the Aikenheads', but he sat down with her in the waiting-room under a glaring gas lamp, to wait for the train. Seen in the light, Dennehy's face looked sad and troubled. Winnie was struck by his expression.