Mrs. Maxon Protests

"I say, are you making me a Prince in disguise, Winnie?"

"Well, don't you feel like a Prince now?" she asked, with the sweet audacity of a woman who knows that she is loved, and for her lover boldly takes herself at her lover's valuation.

Obedient to her wish, the outside world effected one of its disappearances – very obliging, if not of long duration. Even Woburn Square made tactful exit, without posing the question as to what its opinion of the proceedings might likely be. Of course, that point could be held immaterial for the present at least.

For the second time then, in Winnie Maxon's recent experience, with a little courage things proved easy; difficulties vanished when faced; you did what you held you had a right to do, and nothing terrible happened. Certainly nothing terrible happened that evening at Shaylor's Patch. There was a romantic, an idyllic, bit of courting, with the man ardent and gallant, the woman gay but shy; it was all along orthodox lines, really conventional. He had undertaken that the affair should be carried through on Winnie's lines; this was his great and fine concession – or conversion. He observed it most honourably; she grew more and more gratefully tender.

"Another man than you – yes, even another man I loved – might have wounded me to-night," she murmured, as they parted at the door after dinner.

"I could never wound you – even with my love."

She took his hand and kissed it. "I'm trusting you against all the world, Godfrey."

"You may trust me."

Her heart sang, even while her lover left her.

For what followed in the two or three days during which she still abode at Shaylor's Patch people shall find what names they please, since her history is, of necessity, somewhat concerned with contentious matters. Some may speak of unseemly travesty, some of idle farce; others may find a protest not without its pathos – a protest that she broke with the old order only because she must, that she would fain carry over into her new venture what was good in the old spirit, that her enterprise was to her a solemn and high thing. They were to be man and wife together; he must buy her the ring that symbolised union; they must have good and true witnesses – nothing was to be secret, all above-board and unashamed. There must even be a little ceremonial, a giving and taking before sympathetic friends, a declaration that she held herself his, and him hers, in all love and trust, and to the exclusion of all other people in the world. For ever? Till death did them part? No – the premises peremptorily forbade that time-honoured conclusion. But so long as the love that now bound them together still sanctified the bond which it had fastened. Satisfied in her heart that the love could never die, she defined without dismay the consequences of its death. At all events, she would have answered to an objector, could they be worse than what had befallen her when her love for Cyril Maxon died a violent death by crushing – died and yet was, in the name of all that is holy, denied decent burial?

And yet there were qualms. "Will people understand?" was her great question.

Tora – uncompromising, level-headed – answered that most of them would not even try to, and added, "What matter?" Stephen asked, "Well, so long as your friends do?" Her lover vowed that, whether her action were approved or not, no tongue could wag against her honour or her motives.

The last day came – the day when the pair were to set out together, Godfrey from his summer cottage in the village of Nether End, near Shaylor's Patch, Winnie from her haven under the Aikenheads' friendly roof. A home has been taken in London, but they were to have a week's jaunt – a honeymoon – in North Wales first. Winnie was now putting the finishing touch to her preparations by writing her luggage labels. The name she wrote seemed happily to harmonize personal independence with a union of hearts and destinies – Mrs. Winifred Ledstone.

The sound of a man's footstep made her look up. She saw Dick Dennehy before her. He had come in from the garden, and was just clutching off his hat at the sight of her.

"Mr. Dennehy! I didn't know you were coming here to-day."

"No more did I, Mrs. Maxon, till a couple of hours ago. I found I had nothing to do, so I ran down to see how you were all getting on."

"Some of us are just getting off," smiled Winnie. "You're in time to say good-bye."

"Why, where are you off to? I'm sorry you're going."

With a saucy glance Winnie pushed a luggage label across the table towards him. He took it up, studied it, and laid it down again without a word.

"Well?" said Winnie.

He spread out a pair of pudgy splay-fingered hands and shook his shock-haired head in sincere if humorous despair.

"You're all heathens here, and it's no good talking to you as if you were anything else."

"I'm not a heathen, but if the Church backs up the State in unjust laws – "

He wagged a broad forefinger. "Even a heathen tribe has its customs. Any customs better than none! Ye can't go against the custom of the tribe for nothing. I speak as heathen to heathen."

"Can't customs ever be changed?" Winnie was back at her old point.

"You're not strong enough for the job, Mrs. Maxon." His voice was full of pity.

But Winnie was in no mood to accept pity. "You call me a heathen. Suppose it was A.D. 50 or 100, and not A.D. 1909. I think you'd be a heathen, and I – well, at any rate I should be trying to screw up my courage to be a Christian martyr."

He acknowledged a hit. "Oh, you're all very clever!" he grumbled. "I'll bet Stephen taught you that. That's from his mint, if I know the stamp! Take it as you say then – are you looking forward to your martyrdom?"

Perhaps she was, and in what must be admitted to be the proper spirit – thinking more of the crown than of the stake. "I don't look very unhappy, do I?" she asked radiantly.

"Going off with him to-day, are you?" She nodded gaily. The natural man suddenly asserted itself in Dennehy. He smiled. "It's more than the young dog deserves, sure it is!"

"Oh, well, you're being a heathen now!" laughed Winnie, distinctly well-pleased.

"I'm wondering what Mrs. Lenoir will say about it."

Winnie's pleasure suffered a slight jar.

"Why should Mrs. Lenoir be any judge of a case like mine?" she asked rather coldly.

"Oh, I'm not making comparisons," he murmured vaguely. Still there was a point of comparison in his mind. Mrs. Lenoir, too, had been a rebel against the custom of the tribe, and, though the motives of rebellion differ, the results may be the same. "Well, I'll wish you luck anyhow," he continued, holding out his hand. "I hope he'll make you happy, for you're giving him a lot, by the powers, you are!"

"I hope I'm giving anything like as much as I'm getting."

He grumbled something inarticulate as he passed by her and out of the door into the garden. Winnie looked after him with a smile still on her lips. If this were the worst she had to expect, it was nothing very dreadful. It was even rather amusing; she did not conceive that she had come off in any way second-best in the encounter.

Stephen came in a moment later and, on her report of Dennehy's arrival, went to look for his friend in the garden. But Dennehy was nowhere to be found; he was seen no more that day. He went straight back to London; he could not stop the deed, but he would not be an accomplice.

"Well, if he doesn't agree with what we're doing, I think he's right not to stay," said Tora. Yet Winnie felt a little hurt.

Then came the travesty, or the farce, or the protest, or whatever it may be decided to call it, in which Winnie formally – to a hostile eye perhaps rather theatrically – in the presence of her witnesses, did for herself what the powers that be would not do for her – declared her union with Cyril Maxon at an end and plighted her troth to Godfrey Ledstone. Godfrey would rather have had this little ceremony (if it had to be performed at all) take place privately, but he played his part in it with a good grace. It would be over soon – and soon he and she would set out together.

What of little Alice during all this? She had been sent to play with the gardener's daughter. It would be a portentous theory indeed that forced a child to consider the law of marriage and divorce before she attained the age of eleven. Even Tora Aikenhead did not go so far, and, as has been seen, Stephen's theorizing tendencies were held in check in his child's case.

Then off they went, and, on their arrival in London, they were met by Bob Purnett, who gave them a hearty welcome and a champagne luncheon, where all was very merry and gay. There was indeed a roguish twinkle in Bob Purnett's eye, but perhaps it was no more than custom allows even in the case of the most orthodox of marriages – and in any event Bob Purnett's was not that class of opinion to which Winnie's views could most naturally be expected to appeal. He treated Winnie most politely and called her Mrs. Ledstone. She did not realize that he would have done just the same if – well, in the case of any lady for whom a friend claimed the treatment and the title.

The next morning two letters duly and punctually reached their respective destinations. All was to be open, all above-board! Winnie had not found hers hard to write, and Godfrey had said nothing to her about how extraordinarily difficult he had found his. One was addressed to Cyril Maxon, Esquire, K.C., at the Temple; the other to William J. Ledstone, Esquire, at Woburn Square. Now in neither of these places were the views of Shaylor's Patch likely to find acceptance, or even toleration. No, nor Bob Purnett's either. Though, indeed, if a choice had to be made, the latter might have seemed, not more moral, but at least less subversive in their tendency. A thing that is subversively immoral must be worse, surely, than a thing that is merely immoral? Granting the immorality in both cases, the subversive people have not a leg to stand on. They are driven to argue that they are not immoral at all – which only makes them more subversive still.

And the dictionary defines "subversion" in these terms: "The act of overturning, or the state of being overturned; entire overthrow; an overthrow from the foundation; utter ruin; destruction" – anyhow, clearly a serious matter, and at that we may leave it for the moment.

CHAPTER IX

NO PROCEEDINGS!

At Cyril Maxon's chambers in the Temple – very pleasant chambers they were, with a view over a broad sweep of the river – the day began in the usual fashion. At half-past nine Mr. Gibbons, the clerk, arrived; at a quarter to ten the diligent junior, who occupied the small room and devilled for the King's Counsel, made his punctual appearance. At ten, to the stroke of the clock, Maxon himself came in. His movements were leisurely; he had a case in the paper – an important question of demurrage – but it was not likely to be reached before lunch. He bade Mr. Gibbons good morning, directed that the boy should keep a watch on the progress of the court to which his case was assigned, passed into his own room, and sat down to open his letters. These disposed of, he had a couple of opinions to write, with time left for a final run through his brief, aided by the diligent junior's note.

Half an hour later Mr. Gibbons opened the door. Maxon waved him back impatiently.

"I'm busy, Gibbons. Don't disturb me. We can't be on in court yet?"

"No, sir. It's a gentleman to see you. Very urgent business, he says."

"No, no, I tell you I'm busy."

"He made it a particular favour. In fact, he seems very much upset – he says it's private business." He glanced at a card he carried. "It's a Mr. Ledstone, sir."

"Oh," said Maxon. His lips shut a little tighter as he took up a letter which lay beside the legal papers in front of him. "Ledstone?" The letter was signed "Winifred Ledstone."

"Yes, sir."

"What aged man?"

"Oh, quite elderly, sir. Stout, and grey 'air."

The answer dispelled an eccentric idea which had entered Maxon's head. If this couple so politely informed him of their doings, they might even be capable of paying him a call!

"Well, show him in." He shrugged his shoulders with an air of disgust.

Stout and grey-haired (as Mr. Gibbons had observed), yet bearing a noticeable likeness to his handsome son, Mr. Ledstone made a very apologetic and a very flustered entrance. Maxon bowed without rising; Gibbons set a chair and retired.

"I must beg a thousand pardons, Mr. Maxon, but this morning I – I received a letter – as I sat at breakfast, Mr. Maxon, with Mrs. Ledstone and my daughter. It's terrible!"

"Are you the father of Mr. Godfrey Ledstone?"

"Yes, sir. My boy Godfrey – I've had a letter from him. Here it is."

"Thank you, but I'm already in possession of what your son has done. I've heard from Mrs. Maxon. I have her letter here."

"They're mad, Mr. Maxon! Mean to make it all public! What are we to do? What am I to say to Mrs. Ledstone and my daughter?"

"You must really take your own course about that."

"And my poor boy! He's been a good son, and his mother's devoted to him, and – "

Cyril Maxon's wrath found vent in one of those speeches for which his wife had a pet name. "I don't see how the fact that your son has run away with my wife obliges, or even entitles, me to interfere in your family affairs, Mr. Ledstone."

Acute distress is somewhat impervious to satire.

"Of course not, sir," said Mr. Ledstone, mopping his face forlornly. "But what's to be done? There's no real harm in the boy. He's young – "

"If you wish to imply that my wife is mainly in fault, you're entirely welcome to any comfort you and your family can extract from that assumption."

Ledstone set his hands on the table between them, and looked plaintively at Maxon. He was disconcerted and puzzled; he fancied that he had not made himself, or the situation, fully understood. He brought up his strongest artillery – the most extraordinary feature in the case.

"The boy actually suggests that he should bring your – that he should bring Mrs. – that he should bring the lady to see Mrs. Ledstone and my daughter!" He puffed out this crowning atrocity with quick breaths, and mopped his face again.

"You're master in your own house, I suppose? You can decide whom to receive, Mr. Ledstone." He pushed his chair back a little; the movement was unmistakably a suggestion that his visitor should end his visit. Mr. Ledstone did not take the hint.

"I suppose you'll – you'll institute proceedings, Mr. Maxon?"

"I'm not a believer in divorce."

"You won't?"

"I said I was not a believer in divorce." Growing exasperation, hard held, rang in his voice.

A visible relief brightened Mr. Ledstone's face. "You won't?" he repeated. "Oh, well, that's something. That gives us time at all events."

Maxon smiled – not genially. "I don't think you must assume that your son and the lady who now calls herself Mrs. Ledstone will be as much pleased as you appear to be."

"Oh, but if there are no proceedings!" murmured Ledstone. Then he ventured a suggestion. "Private influence could be brought to bear?"

"Not mine," said Cyril Maxon grimly.

"Still, you don't propose to take proceedings!" He munched the crumb of comfort almost affectionately.

Cyril Maxon sought refuge in silence; not to answer the man was probably the best way to get rid of him – and he had defined his attitude twice already. Silence reigned supreme for a minute or two.

"I suppose my wife and daughter must know. But as for the rest of the family – " Mr. Ledstone was discussing his personal difficulties. Maxon sat still and silent as a statue. "It may all be patched up. He'll see reason." He glanced across at Maxon. "But I mustn't keep you, Mr. Maxon." He rose to his feet. "If there are no proceedings – " Maxon sharply struck the handbell on his table; Gibbons opened the door. "Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Maxon." Maxon's silence was unbroken as his visitor shuffled out.

Maxon's nature, hard and proud, not tender in affection, very tenacious of dignity, found now no room for any feeling save of disgust – a double disgust at the wickedness and at the absurdity – at the thing itself and at the despicable pretence in which the pair sought to cloak it. Ledstone's intrusion – so he regarded the visit of Godfrey's father – intensified his indignant distaste for the whole affair. To have to talk about it to a man like that! To be asked to use his influence! He smiled grimly as he tried to picture himself doing that. Pleading with his wife, it must be supposed; giving wise counsel to the young man perhaps? He asked nothing now but to be allowed to wash his hands of them both – and of the Ledstone family. Really, above all, of the Ledstone family! How the thought of them got on his nerves! Mr. Attlebury's teaching about the duty of saving a soul passed out of sight. Was not he, in his turn, entitled to avail himself of the doctrine of the limits of human endurance? Is it made only for sinners – or only for wives? Maxon felt that it applied with overwhelming force to any further intercourse with the Ledstone family – and he instructed Mr. Gibbons to act accordingly, if need should arise. Mr. Gibbons had noticed Winnie's handwriting, with which naturally he was acquainted, on her letter, and wondered whether there could be any connection between it and the odd visit and the peremptory order. He had known for some two or three weeks that Mrs. Maxon was no longer in Devonshire Street; he was on very friendly terms with the coachman who drove Cyril Maxon's brougham.

Mr. Ledstone, mercifully ignorant of the aspect he assumed in Maxon's thoughts, walked home to Woburn Square, careful and troubled about many things. Though he was a good man and of orthodox views, it cannot be said that he either was occupied primarily with the duty of saving souls; saving a scandal was, though doubtless not so important, considerably more pressing. He was, in fact, running over the names of all those of his kindred and friends whom he did not wish to know of the affair and who need know nothing about it, if things were properly managed, and if Godfrey would be reasonable. He wished to have this list ready to produce for the consolation of his immediate family circle. They – Mrs. Ledstone and his daughter – must be told. It would be sure to "get to" them somehow, and Mrs. Ledstone enjoyed the prestige of having a weak heart; it would never do for a thing like this to get to her without due precautions. Angry as he was with his son, he did not wish the boy to run the risk of having that on his conscience! As a fact, the way things get to people is often extremely disconcerting. It is a point that Shaylor's Patch ought to have considered.

In view of the weak heart – Mrs. Ledstone never exposed it to the sceptical inspection of a medical man – he told Amy first, Amy concerning whom it seemed to be settled that she would never be married, although she was but just turned twenty-five. He showed Amy the letter from Godfrey his son; he indicated the crowning atrocity with an accusing forefinger.

"Oh, she made him put that in," said Amy, with contemptuous indifference – and an absolute discernment of the truth.

Mr. Ledstone boiled over. "The impudence of it!"

Amy looked down at her feet – shod in good stout shoes, sensible, yet not ugly; she was a great walker and no mean hockey player. "I wonder what she's like," said Amy. "I've seen Mr. Maxon's name in the Mail quite often. What did you think of him, daddy?" She had always kept the old name for her father.

Mr. Ledstone searched for a description of his impressions. "He didn't strike me as very sympathetic. He didn't seem to feel with us much, Amy."

"Hates the very idea of us, I suppose," remarked Amy. She turned to Godfrey's letter again; a faint smile came to her lips. "He does seem to be in love!"

"The question is – how will mother take it?"

"Yes, of course, dear," Amy agreed, just a trifle absently. Yet, generally considered, it is a large question; it has played a big part, for good and evil, in human history.

Mrs. Ledstone – a woman of fifty-five, but still pretty and with prettily surviving airs of prettiness (it is pleasant to see their faded grace, like the petals of a flower flattened in a heavy book) – took it hardly, yet not altogether with the blank grief and dismay, or with the spasm of the heart, which her husband had feared for her. She did indeed say, "The idea!" when the crowning atrocity – the suggestion that Winnie should be brought to see her – was mentioned; and she cordially endorsed the list of kindred and friends who need know nothing about it. Also she paid a proper and a perfectly sincere tribute to outraged proprieties. But behind all this was the same sort of interest as had appeared in her daughter's comments – and had existed more explicitly in her daughter's thoughts. These Maxons – this Mrs. Maxon, for the husband was a subordinate figure, although with his own interest – had abruptly made incursion into the orderly life of Woburn Square, not merely challenging its convictions, but exciting its curiosity, bringing it suddenly into contact with things and thoughts that it had seen only in the newspapers or (in Amy's case) now and then at the theatre, where dramas "of ideas" were presented. Of course they knew such things happened; one may know that about a thing, and yet find it very strange when it happens to oneself.

"There was always something about that boy," said Mrs. Ledstone. The vagueness was extreme, but pride lurked in the remark, like onion in the salad.

And she, like her husband, was immeasurably comforted by the news that there would be no proceedings. "His career won't suffer, father." She seemed to draw herself up, as though on the brink of moral laxity. "But, of course, it must be put a stop to at once." She read a passage in Godfrey's letter again. "Oh, what a goose the boy is! His head's turned; you can see that. I suppose she's pretty – or what they call smart, perhaps."

"The whole thing is deplorable, but the grossest feature is the woman's effrontery." The effrontery was all the woman's – an unkind view, but perhaps in this case more unkind than unjust. "How could she look you in the face, mother?" Mr. Ledstone squeezed his wife's hand sympathetically.

"Well, we must get him away from her as soon as possible."

A pessimist – one of those easily discouraged mortals who repine at nothing being effected within the brief span of their own generation – might liken the world to a ponderous ball, whereunto are attached five thousand strings. At the end of each somebody is tugging hard; but all of them are tugging in different directions. Universal effort, universal fatigue – and the big ball remains exactly where it was! Here was Winnie, heart and soul in her crusade, holding it great, almost holy. But the only idea in Woburn Square was to put an end to it as soon as possible! – And meanwhile to cover it up, to keep it quiet, to preserve the possibility of being able to say no more about it as soon as it was happily over. No proceedings! What a comfort!

"Of course we can have nothing to do with her. But what about him – while it lasts, I mean?" Mr. Ledstone propounded the question. "We ought to mark our – our horror."

"Yes, father, but we can't abandon the poor boy because he's been deluded. What do you think, Amy? After all, you're a grown-up woman now." (Mrs. Ledstone was defending herself against an inward sense of indelicacy in referring to the matter before her unmarried daughter.)

"Oh, the more we can get him here, the better," was Amy's view. "He'll realize how we feel about it then."

"Amy's right," the father declared emphatically. "And so are you, mother. We mustn't abandon him. We must bring our influence to bear."

"I want to hear the poor boy's own story – not a letter written with the woman at his elbow," said Mrs. Ledstone.

"Will he come without her?" Amy asked.

"Without her – or not at all! It's my duty to shield you and your mother, Amy. And now, really, I must read my paper." In the excitement of the morning, in his haste to find Cyril Maxon, in his terror of proceedings, he had omitted the rite.

"I haven't been through the wash yet," said Mrs. Ledstone.

"It's time for Snip's walk," added Amy.

Life had to go on, in spite of Winnie Maxon – just as we read that some people lived their ordinary routine throughout the French Revolution.