Mrs. Maxon Protests

"So much the worse for the woman, you'd say, I suppose?"

"I don't want to say anything. What I felt seems pretty well indicated by what I did, doesn't it, Lady Rosaline? Because I wasn't in love with anybody else then, you know."

No, what she felt was not sufficiently indicated for Lady Rosaline's purposes. What Winnie had done showed that, to her, life with Cyril was impossible; but it did not show why. Just the point essential to Lady Rosaline was omitted.

"I should think some women might get on very well with him, though?" she hazarded.

Winnie gazed over the lake; she appeared to ruminate. Then she turned to her companion, smiling.

"Perhaps!" she said. "And now I really must go and see how Mrs. Lenoir – my friend – is. I hope we shall have another talk before we go – I don't mean about Cyril!"

Lady Rosaline watched her erect figure and her buoyant step as she walked back to the hotel, recalled her gaiety and the merriment of her smile as she enjoyed lake, mountains, and the little town, caught again the elusive twinkle of her eyes as she referred to the one inconsistent thing that Cyril Maxon had ever done. And that 'Perhaps!' – that most unsatisfactory, tantalizing 'Perhaps!' Was it a genuine assent, or merely a civil dismissal of the question, as one of no moment to the person interrogated? Or was it in effect a dissent – a reception of the suggestion profoundly sceptical, almost scornful? Probably a different woman could – possibly some woman might – no woman conceivably could – that 'Perhaps!' seemed susceptible of any of the three interpretations. Lady Rosaline made impotent clutches at the slippery word; it gave her no hand-hold; it was not to be tackled.

It was no use consulting Mrs. Ladd; she had not heard the elusive answer. Could Lady Rosaline unbosom herself plainly to Mrs. Maxon? That was her secret and urgent instinct, but, somehow, it did not seem an admissible thing to do; it was bizarre, and distasteful to her feelings. Yet before long she must answer Cyril's letter. To allow him to come and meet her would be tantamount to an acceptance. To refuse to allow him would be, at least, such a postponement as he would bitterly resent and probably decline to agree to; he would either take it as a definite rejection, or he would come without leave – and 'bully' her again? She could hide herself – but could she? Mrs. Ladd would want to know why, and laugh at her – and not improbably put Cyril on the track. Lady Rosaline felt herself wrapped in perplexity as in a garment.

"Bother the man!" she suddenly said to herself aloud. Then she started violently. A tall, handsome, elderly lady, carrying a parasol, a large cushion, and a book, was absolutely at her elbow. She recognized Winnie's companion, Mrs. Lenoir.

"I'm afraid I startled you? May I sit down here? Winnie Maxon told me who you were, and you've been talking to her, haven't you?" Mrs. Lenoir's amused expression left no doubt that she was aware of the subject of the conversation. "Oh, she only just mentioned that you were a friend of Mr. Maxon's," she added. "She didn't betray your confidences."

"I really don't think I made any," smiled Lady Rosaline. "But Mr. Maxon is a friend of mine. Oh, do let me settle that cushion comfortably for you. You're not feeling very well this morning, Mrs. Maxon told me."

"I feel better now," said Mrs. Lenoir, graciously accepting the proffered service. "And the day's so beautiful that I thought I'd come out. But I didn't mean to make you jump, Lady Rosaline."

She gave a sigh of contentment as she achieved a satisfactory position in regard to the cushion. "I don't know Mr. Maxon myself," she remarked.

"I like him very much."

"Yes?" She was just as non-committal as Winnie had been with her 'Perhaps!'

"Of course, you've heard her side of the story."

"I have," said Mrs. Lenoir. "Or as much of it as she'd tell me."

Lady Rosaline determined to try what a little provocation would do.

"Of course, we who are his friends think that all might have gone well with a little more wisdom on her part."

Mrs. Lenoir raised her brows ever so slightly. "Oh, perhaps!" she murmured gently.

It was really exasperating! To be baffled at every turn by that wretched word, with its pretence of conceding that was no real concession, with its feigned assent which might so likely cloak an obstinate dissent! It was like listening for an expected sound from another room – the noise of voices or of movements – and finding, instead, absolute silence and stillness; there was something of the same uncanny effect. Lady Rosaline passed from mere perplexity into a vague discomfort – an apprehension of possibilities which she was refused the means of gauging, however vitally they might affect her. Dare she walk into that strangely silent room – and let them bolt and bar the door on her?

"After all, it's not our business," Mrs. Lenoir remarked, with a smile. "Winnie couldn't stand it, but, as you say, perhaps a wiser woman – "

"Couldn't stand what?" Lady Rosaline broke in impatiently.

"Oh, Cyril Maxon, you know."

Not a step in advance! Silence still! Lady Rosaline, frowning fretfully, rose to her feet. Mrs. Lenoir looked up, smiling again. She was not sure of the case, but she was putting two and two together, helped by the exclamation which she had involuntarily overheard. In any case, she had no mind to interfere. This woman was Cyril Maxon's friend, not Winnie's. Mrs. Lenoir instinctively associated the husband's women-friends with the wife's hardships. Let this friend of Maxon's fend for herself!

"But, of course, one woman's poison may be another woman's meat. Are you going in?"

"Yes, I think so. The sun's rather hot."

"Oh, I'm a salamander! Good-bye, then, for the present, Lady Rosaline."

Lady Rosaline had come from abroad for a breathing space, to take stock of the situation, to make up her mind about Cyril Maxon. It had not proved easy, and her encounter with these two women made it harder still. The perplexity irked her sorely. She bore a grudge against the two for their baffling reticence; insensibly the grudge extended itself to the man who was the ultimate cause of her disquiet. He was spoiling her holiday for her. "I shall fret myself into a fever!" she declared, as she wandered disconsolately up to her bedroom, to make herself tidy for déjeuner.

On her dressing-table lay a letter – from Venice. She had not forgotten her promise to send an address to the Hôtel Danieli. Now Sir Axel Thrapston informed her that he was starting for home in a couple of days' time, and would make it convenient – and consider it delightful – to pass through Bellaggio on his way; would she still be there, and put up with his company for a day or two? "Pictures and churches and gondolas are all very well; but I shall like a gossip with a friend better still," wrote Sir Axel.

As she read, Lady Rosaline was conscious of a relief as vague as her discomfort had been, and yet as great. The atmosphere about her seemed suddenly changed and lightened. Almost with a start she recalled how she had experienced a similar feeling when Cyril Maxon had gone and Sir Axel had come that afternoon in Hans Place. The feeling was not of excitement, nor even primarily of pleasure; it was of rest, instead of struggle – of security, as against some unascertained but possibly enormous liability. And it was present in her in even stronger force than it had been before, because of those two women and their baffling slippery 'Perhaps!' As she took off her hat and arranged her hair before going downstairs, the import of this vague change of feeling began to take shape in her mind. Slowly it grew to definiteness. Lady Rosaline was making up her mind at last! The possibilities lurking in the darkness of that 'Perhaps!' were too much for her. "If I feel like this about it, how can I dare to do it?" was the shape her thoughts took. Yet, even if she dared not do it, there was trouble before her. Cyril Maxon would not sit down tamely under that decision. He would protest, he would persist, he might 'bully' her again; he might seek her even though she forbade him, and, if he found her, she was not quite confident of her power to resist.

A smile came slowly to her lips as she looked at herself in the pier-glass and put the finishing touches to her array. It would be pleasant to have Sir Axel's company; it might even be agreeable to travel home under Sir Axel's escort, if that gentleman's leisure allowed. Lady Rosaline's thoughts embraced the idea of Sir Axel as an ally, perhaps envisaged him as a shield. Possibly they went so far as to hazard the suggestion that a man who will not bow before a decision may be confronted with a situation which he cannot but accept. At any rate, when she went downstairs to the dining-room, Lady Rosaline's fretful frown had disappeared; passing Mrs. Lenoir and Winnie in the doorway, she smiled at them with no trace of grudge. "I'm glad I met them now," was her reflection. She forgave 'Perhaps!'

CHAPTER XXVI

A FRIEND DEPARTS

Mrs. Lenoir and Winnie stayed at Bellaggio four or five days, during which time their acquaintance with the other two ladies blossomed into more intimate cordiality. Yet neither of the two who knew the position, nor yet the one who confidently suspected it, thought it well to suggest to Winnie the existence of any special situation or any urgent question in which Lady Rosaline and Cyril Maxon were concerned. Such a disclosure would, it was felt by all three, lead to awkwardness. But when once the two parties had said farewell, and Winnie and she were on their way home, Mrs. Lenoir saw no reason against mentioning the conclusion at which she had arrived, or against conjecturing what, if any, bearing on the state of affairs the arrival of Sir Axel Thrapston might have; he had reached Bellaggio the day before their own departure, and had been received by Lady Rosaline with much graciousness.

Winnie had not stumbled on the truth for herself; indeed her mind had been occupied with the thought of another man than Cyril Maxon. She heard it from her friend without surprise, and was not unable to appreciate Mrs. Lenoir's grimly humorous embroidering of the situation. Yet her native and intimate feeling was one of protest against that way of the world which, under the pressure of her various experiences, she was beginning to recognize and to learn that she would have to accept. On the day she left Cyril Maxon's house for good and all, she had conceived herself to be leaving Cyril Maxon also for good and all, to be putting him out of her life, away from and behind her, without the right or power to demand one backward glance from her as she trod a path conditioned, indeed, in one respect by his existence, but, for the future, essentially independent of him. The course of events had hardly justified this forecast. Freedom from the thought of him had not proved possible; he did more than impose conditions; he still figured as rather a determining factor in life and her outlook on it. She seemed to take him with her where she went, so to say, and thus to bring him into contact with all those with whom she had relations herself. Both in small things and in great it happened – as, for example, in this queer encounter with Rosaline Deering, and in the moving episode of her acquaintance with Bertie Merriam, no less than in the earlier history of the West Kensington studio. She had not succeeded in disassociating her destiny from his, in severing to the last link the tie which had once so closely bound her to him. Complete freedom, and the full sense of it, might come in the future; for the moment her feeling was one of scorn for the ignorant young woman who had thought that a big thing could so easily be undone – robbed of effect and made as if it had never been. And suppose that complete freedom, now possible in action to her, should really come, and with it a corresponding inward emancipation; yet there stood and would stand the effect on those other lives – effects great or small, transitory or permanent, but in the mass amounting to a considerable sum of human experience, owing its shape and colour in the end to her own action.

Though she had not loved Bertie Merriam, their intercourse, his revelation of himself, and the manner of their parting had deeply affected her. For the first time she had seen the enemy, convention – the established order, the proper thing – in a form which she could not only understand, but with which she was obliged to sympathize. What had seemed to her hard dogmatism in her husband and Attlebury, and a mere caste-respectability, external, narrow, and cowardly, in the denizens of Woburn Square, took on a new shape when it was embodied in the loyalty of a soldier and found its expression, not in demands upon another, but in the sacrifice of self to an obligation and an ideal. Liberty had been her god, and she would not desert the shrine at which Shaylor's Patch had taught her to worship; but Merriam had shown her, had brought home to her through the penetrating appeal of vivid emotion, that there were other deities worthy of offerings and noble worshippers who made them. It was a great revulsion of feeling which drove her to declare that Merriam could do no other than sacrifice his hope of her to his sworn service and to the regiment.

In justifying, or more than justifying, himself, in some sort Merriam pleaded for Cyril Maxon. Winnie held herself to a stricter account of her dealings with her husband. When she understood why he had deviated from his strict conviction, and how it was likely that the deviation would be in vain, she was anxious to rid her soul of any sense of responsibility. She recalled just what she had said, as near as she could; she listened carefully to Mrs. Lenoir's account of her own conversation with Lady Rosaline.

"Do you think that we influenced her – that we stopped her?" she asked. "Because I wouldn't have done that on purpose."

"I certainly wouldn't have encouraged her on purpose. And, if you ask me, I think that our attitude of – well, of reserve (Mrs. Lenoir was smiling) will have its weight – combined, perhaps, with Sir Axel's attractions."

"I'm sorry. If Cyril does want her, and it doesn't come off, he'll hate me worse than ever."

"He won't guess you've had anything to do with it – supposing you have."

"No, but he'll trace the whole thing back to me, of course. He'll blame me for having forced him into acting against his conscience."

"Tut, tut, he shouldn't have such a silly conscience," said Mrs. Lenoir easily. To her, consciences were not things to be treated with an exaggerated punctilio. "After all, if she'd asked you right out, what would you have said?"

"I should have refused to say anything, of course."

"She probably thought as much, so she tried to pump you indirectly. I think you seem to have been very moderate – and I'm sure I was. And, as one woman towards another, you ought to be glad if Lady Rosaline does prove quick at taking a hint. I shall be glad too, incidentally, because I like her, and hope to see something of her in town – which I certainly shouldn't do, if she became Lady Rosaline Maxon."

"Well, I had no idea how matters stood, and I said as little as I could," Winnie ended, protesting against any new entry on the debit side of her account with Cyril – a column about which she had not been wont greatly to concern herself.

Winnie soon found distraction from curious probings of her conscience in the care and tendance of her friend, in which she assisted the invaluable Emily. As they travelled gradually homewards, Mrs. Lenoir developed a severe and distressing cough, which made sleep very difficult and reduced her none too great strength to dangerous weakness. Yet home she would go, rejecting almost curtly any suggestion of a return to a milder climate. She faced her position with a fatalistic courage, and her attitude towards it was marked by her habitual clearness of vision.

"If I'm going to die – and I rather think I am – I'd sooner die at home than in a hotel."

"Oh, don't talk about dying!" Winnie implored. "What am I to do?" Indeed she was now bound to her friend by a strong affection.

"Well, there's just you – and the General. But the General will die too quite soon, and you'll go away anyhow. Oh yes, you'll have to, somehow; it'll happen like that. There's nobody else who cares. And I don't know that women like me do themselves any good by living to be old. I'm not complaining; I chose my life and I've enjoyed it. Let me go home, Winnie!"

The appeal could not be resisted, and the beginning of May found them at home. A late cold spring filled Winnie with fears for her friend. Yet Mrs. Lenoir neither would nor, as it now seemed, could make another move. She lay on her sofa, her beautiful eyes steadily in front of her. She moved and spoke little. She seemed just to be waiting. Often Winnie wondered through what scenes of recollection, through what strains of meditation, her mind was passing. But she preserved all that defensiveness which her life had taught her – the power of saying nothing about herself, of giving no opening either to praise or to blame, of asking no outside support. Perhaps she talked to the General. He came every day, and Winnie was at pains to leave them alone together. Towards the rest of the world, including even Winnie, she was evidently minded to maintain to the end her consistent reticence. Sickness puts a house out of the traffic of the world; day followed day in a quiet isolation and a sad tranquillity.

What had passed left its mark on Winnie's relations with the General. He was, of course, courteous and more than that. He was uniformly kind, even affectionate, and constituted himself her partner in all that could be done or attempted for the patient whom they both loved. That link between them held, and would hold till another power than theirs severed it. But it was all that now kept them together; when it was gone, he would be in effect a stranger to her. If she said to herself, with a touch of bitterness, "He has lost all his interest in me," there was a sense in which she spoke the truth. He had pictured her as coming into the inner circle of his life, and had urgently desired the realization of the picture. Now she was definitely relegated to the outskirts; she was again just Mrs. Lenoir's young friend – with this change – that he cherished a pathetically amiable grudge against her for the loss of the picture. How much he knew of what had passed between herself and his son on that last evening, she was not aware; but he knew the essence of it. Though in charity he might refrain from censure, she had been an occasion of sore distress to his best-beloved son. To her sensitive mind, in spite of his kindness, there was a reserve in his bearing; he now held their friendship to its limits. The love he had borne her was wounded to death by the pain she had given him. She could imagine his thoughts made articulate in the words, "You shan't have it in your power to hurt mine and me again." She opened her eyes to the fact that she had lost a good friend, in these days which menaced her, only too surely, with the loss of a dear one. This chapter of her life seemed like to come to its end – as other chapters had before.

One visitant from the outside world – the General seemed a part of the household – made an appearance in the person of Mrs. Ladd. She came to call on Mrs. Lenoir, unaware of her illness; it was one of the patient's days of exhaustion, and Winnie had to entertain the good lady and, after listening to her appropriate sympathy, to hear her news. She had come back to England alone. Rosaline had gone to stay with friends at Biarritz.

"I think she didn't want to come home just now," said Mrs. Ladd, with a glance at Winnie which plainly fished for information.

"Mrs. Lenoir has told me a certain impression of hers, which I didn't form for myself at Bellaggio," Winnie remarked. "Are you referring to that, Mrs. Ladd?"

"Yes. Rosaline told me that you suspected nothing. But since it's all settled, there's no harm in speaking of it now. Sir Axel is at Biarritz too. I think they'll probably be married as they pass through Paris on their way home."

"Oh, it's as settled as that, is it?" Winnie's speculations revived. How much had she and Mrs. Lenoir between them contributed to the settlement?

"I think she's right to bring it to a point. It avoids all question." Mrs. Ladd put her head on one side. "I've seen Mr. Maxon. Of course he doesn't know that you've ever seen Rosaline since – since the old days – much less that you had anything to do with it?"

"Had I? I never meant to have."

"Oh, I think so. Rosaline spoke vaguely, but I think something in your manner – of course you couldn't help it, and you didn't know. And, as I say, he has no notion of it."

"I'm glad. He'd be so angry with me, and I don't want him to be more angry than he must."

"I don't think he's got any anger to spare for you. He never referred to you. But her! Oh, my dear!" Mrs. Ladd's kindly old face assumed an almost frightened expression. "Well, I just had to stop him. I told him Rosaline was my friend, and that I wouldn't listen to it. He declared that he had a promise from her, and that on the faith of it, and of it alone, he – well, you know, don't you? Of course I said that there must have been a complete misunderstanding, but he wouldn't have it. Really, we all but quarrelled, if not quite."

How well Winnie knew! The domineering man, so sure both of his desires and of his claims, so confident in his version of the facts, so impervious to any other impression of them – from out the past the picture of him rose complete.

"I knew, of course, that he liked his own way," said Mrs. Ladd. "But, really, I was rather startled." She suddenly leant forward and patted Winnie's hand. No words passed, but Winnie understood that Mrs. Ladd had been, to some extent at least, revising a judgment, and wished her to know it.

"He'll marry, though – mark my words! I know him, and I know something about that sort of man. He'll marry in a twelvemonth, if it's only to show Rosaline he can, and to hold up his end against Mr. Attlebury. I told Mr. Attlebury so. 'He's taken his line, and he'll go through with it,' I said, 'as soon as he finds a woman to help him.'"

"What did Mr. Attlebury say?"

"Nothing! He wouldn't talk about it. He just waved his hands in that way he has. But you may take it from me that that's what will happen."

The prophecy, born of the old woman's amiable worldly wisdom, seemed likely of fulfilment. There was nothing Cyril Maxon hated so much as failure or the imputation of it, nothing he prized so dearly as proving himself right, to which end it was ever necessary to refuse to admit that he had been wrong. Winnie seemed to hear him grimly declaring that, since he had taken his course, not Lady Rosaline, not a dozen Attleburys, should turn him from it. He would follow it to the end, even though he had little desire for it; antagonism was often to him stimulus enough. Thus it was that he became an implacable enemy to the liberty of those about him, warring with them if they asserted any independence, tyrannizing if they submitted. Such people create resistance, as it were out of a vacuum – even a wild and desperate resistance, which takes little heed of what it may hurt or overthrow in its struggle against domination. Venerable institutions, high ideals, personal loyalty may have to pay the price. All go by the board when the limits of human endurance are reached.

Had Winnie Maxon received a classical education – the absence of which had not in her case proved a panacea against all forms of failure – she might have found in wise old Mrs. Ladd a good embodiment of the Greek Chorus – usually people with little business of their own (as would appear for all that appears to the contrary) and bent on settling other people's on lines safely traditional; yet with a salt of shrewdness, not revolutionaries, but brave enough to be critics, admitting that acceptance and submission present their difficulties – but you may go further, and far worse by a great deal! Those limits of endurance must be stretched as far as possible.

On the next day but one, the expected blow fell. Pneumonia declared itself; the patient took the doctor's diagnosis as a death-sentence – final, hardly unwelcome. Her nights were pain; day brought relief, yet increasing weakness. Now the General could not endure much of the sick-room; he came, but his visits were briefer. Besides his grief for his friend, some distress was upon him – distress still for her sake, perhaps also for the sake of others who had gone before, even for himself, it may be. He knew so much more than Winnie did. Infinitely tender to his dying friend, he said but one word to Winnie. "When I suggest that she might see somebody, she only smiles."