Mrs. Maxon Protests

CHAPTER X

MAUVE ENVELOPES

The first condition of being able to please yourself is to have enough to live upon. Stephen Aikenhead was entirely right about that. Thrift, exercised by yourself or by some beneficent forerunner, confers independence; you can live upon the world, and yet flout it. (Within the limits of the criminal law, of course, but why be a criminal if you have enough to live upon? You lack the one really good excuse.) Imagine the state of affairs if it were not so – if banks, railways, docks, and breweries could refuse you your dividends on the ground of irregularity in your private life! What a sudden and profound quarter-day reformation of manners among the well-to-do classes opens before our fantastic vision! Really enough to turn the clergy and ministers of all denominations green with envy!

This economic condition was fulfilled for Godfrey Ledstone's establishment – just fulfilled according to Winnie's ideas, and no more. She had a hundred and fifty pounds a year; Godfrey's earnings averaged about two hundred, or a trifle more. His father had been in the habit of giving him a cheque for fifty at Christmas – but that addition could scarcely be relied on now. It was not riches; to one accustomed to Devonshire Street and a rising King's Counsel's income it was by no means riches. But it was enough; with care it would support the small quarters they had taken near Baron's Court Station in West Kensington – a studio, a small dining-room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and "the usual offices" (unusually cramped "the usual offices"). No room for expansion! But they did not mean to expand at present.

Here Winnie sat down to defy or to convert the world. She had to begin the process with her cook-housemaid. Defiance, not conversion, was here certainly the word, and Godfrey was distinctly vexed at Winnie's opening of the matter to the cook-housemaid. Since there were to be no proceedings, need the good woman have been told at all?

The occasion of this – their first – tiff was small, but by no means insignificant. Winnie was holding Godfrey to his promise that he would not be ashamed of her.

"Among our friends, I meant, of course," Godfrey explained. "Among educated thinking people who can appreciate your position and our point of view. But this woman will simply think that you're – well, that you're what you're not, you know."

"How can she, when I told her all about it?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Wait till you blow her up about something; you'll see what I mean," said he.

"Then I shall dismiss her." Winnie's proud little face was very flushed.

There were sides of life which Godfrey had observed. They had three cook-housemaids in quick succession, and were approaching despair when Dick Dennehy found them an old Irish woman, who could not cook at all, but was entirely charitable. She had been told about the situation beforehand by Dick; there was no occasion for Winnie to refer to it. Winnie did not, and tried not to feel relieved. Also she ceased to tell the occasional charwomen, who came in "by the day." Godfrey was perhaps right in thinking that superfluous. Dennehy came often, and they had other visitors, some bachelor friends of Godfrey's, others belonging to the Shaylor's Patch frequenters – Mrs. Danford and Mr. Carriston, for example. Mrs. Lenoir also came – not of her own accord (she never did that), but in response to an invitation from Winnie. Godfrey did not seem very enthusiastic about this invitation.

"But you seemed to like her so much at Shaylor's Patch," said Winnie, in surprise.

"Oh yes! Ask her then, if you like." He formulated no objection; but in his mind there was the idea that Winnie did not quite realize how very careful she ought to be – in her position.

Such were the little passing clouds, obscuring for a moment the happiness of one or other of them.

Yet they were very happy. Godfrey was genuinely in love; so was Winnie, and to her there was the added joy – the new wonder – of being free. Free, and yet not lonely. She had a companion and yet not a master. Hers was the better mind of the two. She did not explicitly realize it, but unconsciously and instinctively she took the lead in most of their pursuits and amusements. Her tastes guided their interests and recreation – the books they read, the concerts and theatres which they "squeezed" out of their none too large margin of spare cash. This initiative was unspeakably delightful to the former Mrs. Maxon, an absolutely fresh thing in her life, and absolutely satisfying. This freedom, this liberty to expand, to grow, to develop, was what her nature had craved. Even if she set her love altogether on one side – and how should she? – this in itself seemed to justify her refusal to be any longer Mrs. Maxon and her becoming Mrs. Winifred Ledstone. In fact it was bound up with her love, for half the joy of these new travels and adventures of the mind lay in sharing them with Godfrey.

It still seemed as if everything were possible with a little courage, as if all the difficulties disappeared when boldly faced. Could there have been a difficulty more tremendous than Cyril Maxon? He had vanished into space!

After some six weeks of this pleasant existence – during which the difficulties at least tactfully effaced themselves, save in such trifles as have been lightly indicated – a phenomenon began to thrust itself on Winnie's notice. Godfrey was not a man of much correspondence; he did most of his business in person and conducted other necessary communications mainly by telephone (that was a luxury which they had agreed that they must "run to" at the cost of some other, and unspecified, luxury to be forgone). Now he began to receive a certain type of envelope quite often – three times a week perhaps. It was a mauve envelope, rather larger than the ordinary. Winnie was careful not to scrutinize these envelopes – she did not even inspect the postmarks – but she could not help observing that, though the envelopes were always alike, the handwriting of the address varied. In fact she noted three varieties. Being a woman of some perspicacity, she did not really need to inspect the postmarks. Godfrey had a father, a mother, a sister. They were writing to him, writing rather bulky letters, which he did not read in company, but stowed away in his pocket; they never reappeared, and presumably were disposed of secretly, on or off the premises. Nor did she ever detect him in the act of answering one; but in the course of his work he spent many hours away from home, and he belonged to a modest little club in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden; no doubt it had writing-paper.

These mauve envelopes began to afflict the peace, or at least the happiness, of the little household. The mornings on which they came were less cheerful than other mornings; a constraint showed itself in greetings and farewells. They were reminders – ominous reminders – of the big world outside, the world which was being defied. His family was at Godfrey Ledstone – three of his family, and one of them with a weak heart.

Three weeks of the mauve envelopes did their work. One had come on the Saturday; on the Sunday morning Godfrey made an apology to Winnie. He would not be able to join her in their usual afternoon excursion – for a walk, or to a picture gallery, and so forth.

"My mother's not very well – she's not strong, you know. I must go to my people's."

"Of course you must, Godfrey. But – without me?"

"Yes." Passing her on his way to the mantelpiece, he pressed her hand for a moment. Then he stood with his back to her, as he filled his pipe with fingers unusually clumsy. "Oh, I've tried! They've been at me for weeks – you probably guessed – and I've been back at them – letter after letter. It's no use! And yesterday father wrote that mother was really seriously upset." He turned round, and spoke almost fiercely. "Don't you see I must go, Winnie?"

"Of course you must," she said again. "And I can't come if they – if they won't let me in!" She managed a smile. "It's all right. I'll have a walk by myself."

He tried to find a bright side to the situation. "I may have a better chance of convincing them, if I go. I'm no good at letters. And mother is very fond of me."

"Of course you must go," Winnie repeated yet again. What else was there for Winnie to say – with Mrs. Ledstone not strong and really seriously upset?

"I haven't seen any of them for – oh, it must be three months – and I used to go every Sunday, when I was in town."

"Well, you're going to-day, dear. That's all settled!" She went up to him and kissed him daintily. "And we won't despair of them, will we? When do you go?"

"I – I generally used to go to lunch. They want me to. And come away after tea."

"Well, do just what you used to. I hope I shall be doing it with you in a few weeks."

"Oh, I hope so, dearest."

He had not the glimmer of such a hope. To ask him if he had even the wish would have been to put an awkward question. The code wherein he was Bob Purnett's pupil recognizes quite a strict division of life into compartments. He was Winnie's lover of a certainty; quite doubtfully was he her convert. Being her lover was to break the law; being her convert was to deny it. Before he met her, he had been of the people who always contemplate conforming to the law – some day; at the proper time of life, or at the proper time before death – whichever may be the more accurate way of putting it. He was ready to say to the Tribunal, "I have done wrong" – but not to say, "You – or your interpreters – have been wrong." A very ordinary man was Godfrey Ledstone.

So after a solitary lunch (a sausage left cold from breakfast and a pot of tea) Winnie started on a solitary expedition. She took the train from Baron's Court to Hyde Park Corner, with the idea of enjoying the "autumn tints" along by Rotten Row and the Serpentine. But, as she walked, her thoughts were not so much on autumn tints as on Woburn Square – on that family so nearly related to her life, yet so unspeakably remote, to whom she was worse than a menace – she was a present and active curse – who to her were something wrong-headed, almost ridiculous, yet intensely formidable – really the concrete embodiment of all she had to struggle against, the thing through which the great world would most probably hit at her, wound her, and kill her if it could. And both the family and Winnie thought themselves so absolutely, so demonstrably, right! Right or wrong, she knew very well, as she walked on towards the Serpentine, that now – this instant – in Woburn Square they were trying to get her man away from her; to make him ashamed of her (he had sworn never to be), to make him throw her over, to leave her stranded, to the ridicule and ruin of her experiment. With a sudden catch in the breath she added, "And the breaking of my heart!"

Just as she came near to the lake she saw – among the walkers who had till now seemed insubstantial shades to her preoccupied mind – a familiar figure, Hobart Gaynor! Her heart leapt in sudden joy; here was an old, a sympathetic friend, the man who understood why she had done what she had. But Hobart Gaynor was not alone. His radiant and self-satisfied demeanour was justified by the fair comeliness of the girl who walked beside him – his bride, wedded to him a month ago, Cicely Marshfield. Winnie had sent him congratulations, good wishes, and a present; all of which had been cordially acknowledged in a letter written three days before the wedding. The ceremony had taken place in the country, and quietly (because of an aunt's death); no question had arisen as to who was or was not to be asked to attend it.

Her heart went out to Hobart. He had loved her; she had always been very fond of him. In her drab uneventful girlhood he had provided patches of enjoyment; in that awful married life he had now and then been a refuge. She did not know Cicely, but Hobart would surely have chosen a nice girl, one who would be a friend, who would understand it all, who could be talked to about it all? With a happy smile and a pretty blush she met Hobart and his bride Cicely. She saw him speak to her, a quick, hurried word. Cicely replied – Winnie saw the rapid turn of her head and the movement of her lips. He spoke once more – just as Winnie nodded and smiled at him, and he was raising his hand to his hat. Then came the encounter. But before it was fairly begun, Winnie's heart was turned to lead. Hobart's face was flushed; his hand came out to hers in a stiff reluctance. The tall fair girl stood so tall, so erect, looking down, bowing, not putting out a hand at all, ignoring a pathetically comic appeal in her embarrassed husband's eyes.

Winnie's eager words of congratulation, of cordiality and friendship, met with a chilly "Thank you," uttered under an obvious protest, under force majeure. Winnie set her eyes on Hobart's, but his were turned away; a rigid smile on his lips paid a ghastly tribute to courtesy.

Winnie carried the thing through as briefly as possible. She was not slow to take a cue.

"Well, I'm glad to have run across you," she said, "and when you're settled in, I must come and see you. You won't want to be bothered just yet."

Again Hobart's glance appealed desperately to his wife. But his wife left the answer to him.

"We are a bit chaotic still," he stumbled. "But soon, I hope, Winnie – "

"I'll give you notice. Don't be afraid! Now I must hurry on – good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Cicely, with another inclination of her head – it seemed so high above Winnie's, looking down from such an altitude.

"Good-bye, Winnie." A kindliness, queerly ashamed of itself, struggled to expression in Hobart's voice.

When the pair had passed by – after a safe interval – Winnie turned and looked at their retreating figures, the haughty erect girl, dear old Hobart's broad solid back, somewhat bowed by much office work. Winnie was smiling; it is sometimes the only thing to do.

"This isn't my lucky day." So she phrased her thoughts to herself, coupling together the encounter in Hyde Park with what was now – at this moment – going on in Woburn Square; for it was not yet tea-time, and Godfrey's visit would last, according to custom, till after tea.

She got home and waited for him in the dusk of the autumn evening. An apprehension possessed her; she did not know how much effect Woburn Square might have had upon him. But he came in about six, cheerful, affectionate, unchanged. On the subject of his home-visit, however, he was rather reticent.

"They were all very kind – and I really don't think mother's any worse than usual. About her frail ordinary." He seemed inclined to dismiss the matter with this brief summary. "And what did you do with yourself?"

"I took the Tube up to the Park and had a walk." She paused. "I met Hobart and Cicely Gaynor."

"Oh, the happy pair! How were they flourishing?"

"They – well, they warned me off, Godfrey. At least she did – and he had to follow suit, of course."

Godfrey had been helping himself to whisky and soda-water; tumbler in hand, he walked across the studio and back again.

"Hobart's one of the very few people in the world I'm really fond of."

"Well, you know, Winnie, you wanted it this way. I assure you I don't find it altogether comfortable either." He emptied the tumbler in a long draught and set it down on the table.

She jumped up quickly, came to him, and clasped her arms round his neck; she could but just reach, for he was tall.

"And they've all been at me – and at you about me – in Woburn Square too, I suppose?"

"On my honour, you weren't once mentioned the whole time, Winnie. They were all three just awfully kind, and glad to see me."

Winnie's face wore much the same smile as when she had regarded Cicely Gaynor's erect back in retreat from her.

"That was rather clever of them," she remarked. "Never to have mentioned me!"

"Are you being quite just?" He spoke gently and kissed her.

"No, dear," she said, and burst into tears. "How can I be just when they're trying to take you from me?"

"Neither they nor anybody else can do that."

And then – for a space again – she believed her lover and forgot the rest.

But on the Monday morning there came two mauve envelopes. Winnie was down first as it chanced – and this time she looked at the postmarks. Both bore the imprint, "W.C.," clearly indicative of Bloomsbury. Winnie smiled, and proffered to herself an excuse for her detective investigation.

"You see, I thought one of them might be from Cicely Gaynor. I'm quite sure she uses mauve envelopes too."

The world of propriety seemed to be draping itself in mauve – not, after all, a very cheerful colour.

Godfrey came in, glanced at the two mauve envelopes, glanced across at Winnie, and put the envelopes in his pocket. After a silence, he remarked that the bacon was very good.

CHAPTER XI

AN UNMENTIONED NAME

As autumn turned to winter, Godfrey's Sundays at Woburn Square firmly re-established themselves as a weekly custom. Winnie could hardly deny that in the circumstances of the case they constituted a fair compromise. Woburn Square had a right to its convictions, no less than had Shaylor's Patch; it was not for her to deny that, however narrow she thought the convictions; and it would be neither just nor kind in her, even if it proved possible, to separate Godfrey from his family. At all events, as the visits became regular, the mauve envelopes arrived less frequently; some consolation lay in that, as one sound buffet may be preferred to a hundred pinches. She tried to reconcile herself to finding her own amusements for Sunday, and Godfrey, in loyalty, perhaps in penitence, dedicated Saturday's half-holiday to her instead. Yet a weight was on her spirit; she feared the steady unrelenting pressure of Woburn Square, of the family tie, the family atmosphere, Mrs. Ledstone's weak heart. In truth she had greater cause for fear than she knew, more enemies than she realized. There was her lover's native and deeply rooted way of looking at things, very different from the way into which she had forced or cajoled him. There was the fact that it was not always only the members of the family whom he met in Woburn Square.

In spite of Godfrey's absence and Hobart Gaynor's defection, Winnie was not without friends and distractions on her Sundays. Sometimes Dick Dennehy would come, quite unshaken in his disapproval, but firm also in his affection, and openly scornful of Woburn Square. "You'd be bored to death there," he told her. "And as for the principle of the thing, if you can turn up your nose at the Church Catholic, I should think you could turn it up at the Ledstone family."

A reasonable proposition, perhaps, but not convincing to Winnie. The Church Catholic did not take her lover away from her every Sunday or fill her with fears about him.

Mrs. Lenoir would come sometimes, or bid Winnie to tea with her. With the stateliness of her manner there was now mingled a restrained pity. Winnie was to her a very ignorant little woman, essaying a task meet only for much stronger hands, and needing a much higher courage – nay, an audacity of which Winnie made no display. When her first passion had worn off, what she had got and what she had lost would come home to her. She was only too likely to find that she had got nothing; and she had certainly lost a great deal – for Mrs. Lenoir was inclined to make light of Cyril Maxon's "crushing." She was quite clear that she would not have been crushed, and thought the less of Winnie's powers of resistance. But, being a sensible woman, she said nothing of all this – it was either too late or too soon. Her view showed only in that hint of compassion in her manner – the pity of the wayworn traveller for the youth who starts so blithely on his journey.

Winnie found consolation and pleasure in discussing her affairs with both of these friends. Another visitor afforded her a healthy relief from the subject. Godfrey had brought Bob Purnett to the studio one day. His first visit was by no means his last. His working season had set in; he hunted five days a week; but it was his custom to get back to town on Saturday evening and to spend Sunday there. So it fell out, naturally and of no malice aforethought, that his calls generally happened on Sunday afternoons, when Godfrey was away; sometimes he would stay on and share their simple supper, often he would take the pair out to dinner at a restaurant, and perhaps come back again with them – to talk and smoke, and so go home, sober, orderly, and in good time – ready for the morrow's work.