Mrs. Maxon Protests
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But the sternest moralist would hardly demand that momentous decisions and heart-rending avowals should be made on Christmas Day. That surely is a close time? So thought Godfrey Ledstone, and, the religious observances of the day having been honoured by all the family, the rest of it passed merrily in Woburn Square. The Thurseleys, mother and daughter, came to spend the afternoon, and came again to dinner.
"So good of you to take pity on us," said Mrs. Thurseley, a soft-voiced pleasant woman, who was placid and restful, and said the right thing. She would make an excellent mother-in-law – for some man.
Like the old-fashioned folk they were, they had a snapdragon and plenty of mistletoe and plenty of the usual jokes about both. As there was nobody else on whom the jokes could plausibly be fastened (Mr. Ledstone's reminiscences of his own courting tended towards the sentimental, while the subject was, of course, too tender in widowed Mrs. Thurseley's case), they were naturally pointed at Mabel and Godfrey. Mabel laughed and blushed. Really Godfrey had to play his part; he could not look a fool, who did not know how to flirt. He ended by flirting pretty hard. He had his reward in the beams of the whole circle – except Amy. She seemed rather out of humour that Christmas; she pleaded a headache for excuse. When Mrs. Ledstone said good-night to her son, she embraced him with agitated affection, and whispered: "I feel happier than I've done for a long while, Godfrey darling."
This was the pressure, the assault, of love – love urgent and now grown hopeful. But his Christmas was not to end on that note. There was also the pressure of disapproval and of scorn. Neither was easy to bear to a disposition at once affectionate and pliable.
The old people went to bed. Amy stayed, watching her brother light his pipe.
"Not going to bed, Amy? One pipe, and I'm off!"
"What do you think you're doing?"
He turned from the fire, smiling in his disarming way. "I've known all the evening I was going to catch it from you, Amy. I saw it in your eye. But what can a fellow do? He must play up a bit. I haven't actually said anything."
"What does Mabel think?" There was a formidable directness about her. But he had his answer, his defence to what he supposed to be the whole indictment.
"Come now, be fair. I wanted to tell her – well, I wanted her to have a hint given her. I told the mater so, but the mater wouldn't hear of it. The bare idea sent her all – well, absolutely upset her."
The events of the day and the two evenings had affected Amy Ledstone.
"You wanted to tell her? Her? Which?"
"Good Lord, Amy!" He was knocked out. What a question to be asked in Woburn Square! "Which?" Had they both rights? Strange doctrine, indeed, for Woburn Square.
"I was speaking of Miss Thurseley, and I think you knew it."
"Oh, I knew it."
"Anything else isn't your business at all. I never understood why the pater told you."
"There are just two decent things for you to do, Godfrey – let Mabel alone or drop Mrs. Maxon."
His own feelings, most concisely put, most trenchantly interpreted! His vague consciousness that the thing came to that was crystallized into an ultimatum. Against this he could not maintain his peevish resentment at his sister's interference or his assumed prudishness over her talking about Winnie. The pretext of shame would not serve, and his weak nature turned for help to a stronger. She was sitting by the table, rigid, looking straight before her. He sat down by her, laying his pipe on the table.
"By Jove, you're right! I'm in an awful mess. Which is it to be, Amy?"
"Oh, that's not my business. But you needn't be a sneak to both of them, need you?"
He laid his hand on hers, but she drew hers away sharply. "You don't understand how I was led into it. I say, you're not going to – to give me away to Mabel, are you?"
"No. I'm afraid of father and mother. I believe I ought to, but I daren't."
"I say, above all things, for heaven's sake, don't think of that!"
"But you say you proposed it yourself, Godfrey."
He jumped up from his chair in an agony of restlessness. He had proposed it, but only as a thing to be rejected. He had proposed it, but that was weeks ago – when he had not been coming to Woburn Square for very long, and had not seen so much of Mabel Thurseley. The idea seemed quite different now. He stared ruefully at Amy. His entreaty, her reply, threw a cold, cruel light on the recent workings of his mind. He saw now where he was going, where he was being led and driven, by love, by scorn, by the world he had been persuaded to think himself strong enough to defy – his world, which had only one name for Winnie Maxon.
He was exasperated. Why did the two things rend him asunder, like wild horses?
"Well, what is it to be, Amy?" he asked again.
The maiden sister sat unmoved in her chair, her eyes set on the ugly brown paper on the wall opposite. Her voice came level, unimpassioned, with a suggestion of dull despair.
"What's the good of asking me, Godfrey? What do I know about it? Nobody has ever loved me. I've never even been in love myself. I don't know what people do when they're in love. I don't know how they feel. I suppose I've been awfully unkind to you?"
"Well, of course, a fellow isn't himself." He turned sharp round on her. "It was only to last as long as we both wanted – as long as we both wanted one another. O Lord, how can I talk about it, even to you?"
"You needn't mind that. I've seen her. I went to see her. I asked her if she knew anything about Mabel. She didn't. Does she now? I think her wonderful. Miles above you or me, really. Oh, I know she's – she's whatever daddy and mother would choose to call her. But you made her that – and you might as well play fair, Godfrey."
"I don't understand you, Amy. I thought you – of all people – How in the world did you come to go and see her? When?"
"One Sunday, when I knew you were here."
"She never said a word to me about – about Mabel Thurseley."
"She never would. I'm not taking her part. But I should like my brother to be a man."
"She's never told me that you came. I can't understand your going."
He was opposite to her now. She raised her eyes to his, smiling bitterly.
"Don't try. Still, she's a woman, and my brother's – friend."
"Oh, you don't know a thing about it!"
"I said so. I know it. That's how it is with girls like me. Girls! Oh, well! If I did know, I might be able to help. I'm not your enemy, really, Godfrey."
"Everybody makes it fearfully hard for me. I – I want to keep faith, Amy."
"You're not doing it."
He threw himself into the big arm-chair that flanked the grate and its dying fire. He broke out against Winnie in a feeble peevishness: "Why did she make me do it? Any fool could have seen it would never work!"
"You needn't have done it," she retorted mercilessly.
"Needn't have done it? Oh, you don't know anything about it, as you say. What could you know? If you did know, you'd understand how men – yes, and by George, women too – do things. Things they can't stand by, and yet want to, things that are impossible, and yet have been done and have to be reckoned with. That's the way it happens."
Full of despair, his voice had a new note of sincerity. Amy looked across the table at him with a long, scrutinizing gaze.
"I expect I haven't allowed for all of it," she said at last. "I expect I don't know how difficult it is." She rose, moved round the table, and sat on the arm of the big chair beside him. "I'm sorry if I've been unkind, dear. But" – she caressed his hair – "don't be unkind to her – not more than you can help."
"To Mabel?" He was looking up to her now, and whispering.
"Oh no," she smiled. "You're going to marry Mabel. You aren't married to Mrs. Maxon, you see." She kissed his brow. "Make it as easy as you can for Winnie."
"By God, I love Winnie!"
Again her hand smoothed and caressed his hair. "Yes, but you can't do it," she said. "I don't think I could. But mightn't you tell her you can't? She's got more courage than you think, Godfrey." She rose to her feet, rather abruptly. "You see, when she knows the truth about you, she won't care so much, perhaps."
Her brother made her no answer; he lay back in the big chair, staring at the dead fire. Nor did she seem to have any more to say to him. She had said a good deal in the whole conversation, and had summed up a large part of it in her last sentence. When Winnie knew all about him she might not care so much! Was that true – or was it the judgment of the maiden sister, who thought that love was dependent on esteem?
"I'm going to bed. I've been a wet blanket this Christmas, Godfrey."
"My Lord, what a Christmas!"
For the capital farce, and the merry dinner, the snapdragon, mistletoe, and jokes were all forgotten. The woman who knew nothing about the matter had set the matter in its true light. With another kiss, a half-articulate 'My dear!' and a sudden sob, she left him to the contemplation of it.
CHAPTER XIII
CHRISTMAS AT SHAYLOR'S PATCH
On Christmas Eve Winnie had regained her old haven at Shaylor's Patch. It seemed as restful and peaceful as ever, nay, even to an unusual degree, for the only other guest was Dennehy, and Dennehy and Alice (again home for holidays) exercised some restraining force on sceptical argument. Both father and mother were intent on giving the child 'a good time,' and Stephen at least could throw himself into a game with just as much zest as into a dispute or a speculation. Here, too, were holly and mistletoe; and, if not a snapdragon, yet a Christmas tree and a fine array of presents, carefully hidden till the morrow. As they had preceded the Faith, so the old observances survived all doubts about it.
But though the haven was the same, the mariner was in a different case. When she had come before, Shaylor's Patch had seemed the final end of a storm-tossed voyage; now it was but a harbour into which her barque put for a few hours in the course of a journey yet more arduous, a journey which had little more than begun; the most she could look for was a few hours of repose, a brief opportunity to rest and refit. Her relation towards her friends and hosts was changed, as it seemed to her, profoundly; she looked at Stephen and Tora Aikenhead with new eyes. The position between them and her was to her feelings almost reversed. They were no longer the intrepid voyagers to whose stories her ignorance hearkened so admiringly. In ultimate truth, now newly apparent, they had made no voyages; from the safe recesses of the haven they did but talk about the perils of the uncharted sea. She was now the explorer; she was making the discoveries about which they only gossiped and speculated. She remembered Mrs. Lenoir's kindly yet half-contemptuous smile over Stephen's facile theories and easy assurance of his theories' easy triumph. She was not as Mrs. Lenoir by the difference of many years and much knowledge; for Mrs. Lenoir still had that same smile for her. None the less, something of the spirit of it was in her when she came the second time to Shaylor's Patch.
But she resolved to take her brief rest and be thankful for her respite. Tora's benignant calm, Stephen's boyish gaiety, the simplicity of the child, Dennehy's loyal friendship – here were anodynes. For the moment nothing could be done; why then fret and worry about what to do? And if she spoke of or hinted at trouble, might it not seem to be in some sense like imputing a responsibility to her hosts? Yet she was asking much of herself in this resolve. She could hold her tongue, but she could not bind her thoughts.
In the morning Dennehy was off early on a five-mile walk to the nearest town, to hear Mass. The question of attending church Stephen referred to Alice's arbitrament; she decided in the affirmative.
"Whose turn?" asked Stephen of his wife.
"Mine," said Tora, with the nearest approach to an expression of discontent that Winnie had ever seen on her face.
Winnie stepped into the breach. "Oh, you look rather tired, and we've a busy day before us! Let me take Alice." So it was agreed, and Alice ran off to get ready.
"Do you always leave the question to her?"
"What else could we do? We say nothing against it, but how could we force her?"
"She's forced at school, I suppose?"
"I don't think any doubts suggest themselves. It's just part of the discipline. As a fact, I think the child's naturally religious. If so – " He waved his hands tolerantly.
Winnie laughed. "If so, she'll soon be rather shocked at her parents."
"It's quite arguable, Winnie, that it's a good thing for children to see their parents doing some things which they would naturally think – or at any rate be taught to think – wrong. They know by experience that the parents are on the whole a decent sort – kind and so on – and they learn not to condemn other people wholesale on the strength of one or two doubtful or eccentric practices. Do you see what I mean? It promotes breadth of view."
"I dare say it's arguable – most things are here – but I won't argue it, or we shall be late for church."
When Godfrey Ledstone attended church with his family on the same day, he went without any questioning, not conscious of any peculiarity in his attitude towards the Church, though well aware of what the Church's attitude would be towards him, if its notice happened to be called to the facts. What of that? One compromised with the Church just as one compromised with the world; the code had provisions as applicable to the one negotiation as to the other. He did not go to church regularly, but, when he did, he took part in the service with an untroubled gratification, if not with any particular spiritual benefit. On this occasion he achieved what was, considering the worries which oppressed him, a very creditable degree of attention.
Neither was Winnie – in the little church at Nether End – convicted of sin; after all, that is not the particular note sought to be struck by a Christmas service – the Church has its seasons. But she was overcome by an unnerving sense of insignificance. The sermon dwelt on the familiar, yet ever striking, theme that all over the world, in well-nigh every tongue, this service was being held in honour of, and in gratitude for, the great Event of this day. That seemed a tremendous thing to stand up against. There is majesty in great organizations, be they spiritual or secular. Are insignificant atoms to flout them? Or can the argument from insignificance be turned, and the rebel plead that he is so small that it does not matter what he does? The organizations will not allow the plea. Insignificant as you are, they answer, little as your puny dissent affects us, yet it is of bad example, and if you persist in it we will, in our way, make you unhappy and uncomfortable. Now mankind has been, in the course of its eventful history, from time to time convinced that many things do matter and that many do not, and opinions have varied and shall vary thereanent. But nobody has had any real success in convincing mankind that it does not matter whether it is happy or not – in the long run. Mankind is obstinately of the contrary opinion.
At the church door Dennehy was waiting for her and Alice – his Mass heard and ten good miles of country road behind him; spiritually and physically fortified. He was not handsome, but middle-age on its approach found him clean in wind and limb – temperate, kindly (outside politics), and really intensely happy.
"It's a concession for me to come as far as the door of this place," he said, smiling. Winnie glanced warningly at Alice. "You needn't mind her – the poor child hears everything! But it's my belief that Heaven has made her a fine old Tory, and they can't hurt her."
"You approving of Tories! Mr. Dennehy!" She turned to the child. "You liked it, Alice?"
"Didn't you hear me singing?" It seemed a good retort. Alice had sung lustily. She did not seem inclined to talk. She walked beside them in a demure and absent gravity. Over her head they looked at one another; the child was thinking of the story of the Child, and finding it not strange, but natural and beautiful, the greatest of all her beloved fairy stories – and yet true.
Dennehy gently patted Alice's shoulder. "In God's good time!" he murmured.
"What do you mean?" Winnie asked, in a low voice.
"True people will find truth, and sweet people do sweet things," he answered. Then he laughed and snapped his fingers. "And the Divvle take the rest of humanity!"
"Everybody except the Irish, you mean?"
"I mustn't be supposed to let in Ulster," he warned her with a twinkle. "But there's an English soul or two I'd save, Mrs. Ledstone."
"I don't like your being false to your convictions. I've one name that I've not denied and that nobody denies me. It's Winnie."
"Winnie it shall be on my lips too henceforth," he answered. "And I thank you."
Respect for his convictions? Yes. But there was more behind her permission, her request. There was a great friendliness, and, with it, a new sense that 'Mrs. Winifred Ledstone' might prove to be a transitory being, that the title was held precariously. Why need her chosen friends be bound to the use of it?
Richard Dennehy was by now one of that small band. He was so loyal and sympathetic, though he was also very cocksure in his condemnations, and terribly certain that he and his organization alone had got hold of the right end of the stick. Yet the cocksureness was really for the organization only; it left him in himself a humble man, not thinking himself so clever as the emancipated persons among whom he moved, rather regretting that such able minds should be so led astray. One habit indeed he had, of which Stephen Aikenhead would humorously complain; he used emotion as an argumentative weapon. There are words and phrases which carry an appeal independent of the validity of the idea they express, a strength born of memory and association. They can make a man feel like a child again, or make him feel a traitor, and either against his reason.
"Spells and incantations I call them," said Stephen, "and I formally protest against their use in serious discussion."
"And why do you call them that?"
"Because they depend for their effect on a particular form of words – either a particularly familiar or a particularly beautiful formula. If you expressed the same idea in different language, its power would be gone; at least it would seem just as legitimately open to question as any profane statement that I may happen to make. Now to depend for its efficacy on the exact formula and not on the force of the idea is, to my mind, the precise characteristic of a spell, charm, or incantation, Dick."
"I dare say the holy words make you uncomfortable, my boy!"
"Exactly! And is it fair? Why am I, a candid inquirer, to be made uncomfortable? Prove me wrong, convince me if you can, but why make me uncomfortable?"
Winnie, an auditor of the conversation, laughed gently. "I think that's what you tried to do to me, coming back from church – when you talked about 'God's good time,' I mean."
Dennehy scratched his head. "I don't do it on purpose. They just come to my lips. And who knows? – It might be good for you!"
Alice ran in, announcing that it was time for the Christmas tree. Even at Shaylor's Patch discussion languished for the rest of the day, and Winnie had her hours of respite.
Indeed, it was a matter of hours only; peace was not to endure for her even over the Sunday. Early in the morning the maid brought her a telegram from Godfrey Ledstone: "Caught slight chill. Think better not travel. Don't interrupt visit. Shall stay Woburn Square. – Godfrey."
It was significant of how far her mind had forecast probabilities that she brushed aside the excuse without a moment's hesitation. Does an hour's journey on a mild morning frighten a strong man if he really wants to go? At any rate Winnie was not inclined to give Godfrey the benefit of that doubt. He did want to stay in Woburn Square, or he did not want to come to Shaylor's Patch. Whichever way it was put, it came to much the same thing. It was another defeat for her, another victory for the family. And for Mabel Thurseley? That, too, seemed very likely. Her heart quailed in grief and apprehension, as it looked into a future forlorn and desolate; but not for a moment did she think of giving up the struggle. Instead of that, she would fight more resolutely, more fiercely. This was not the common case of a variable man's affections straying from one woman to another. She knew that it was his courage which had failed first, and by its failure undermined the bastion of his love. He had been ashamed of her first; if he had now ceased – or begun to cease – to love her, it was because she made him ashamed before his family and friends, because she put him "in a false position" and made things awkward and uncomfortable. That he felt like that was in part – nay, largely – her own fault. Either from mistaken confidence, or chivalry, or scruple, or a mixture of the three, she had exposed him, unsupported, to the fullest assault of Woburn Square, and of all it represented. She had been wrong; she should have stood on her rights and forbidden him to go there unless she were received also. At the beginning she could have done it; she ought to have done it. Was it too late to do it now?
She formed a plan of campaign. She would take him away, put the sea between him and his people, the sea between him and Mabel Thurseley. There was money in the till sufficient for a holiday. His very weakness, his responsiveness to his surroundings, favoured success. He would recover his courage, and hence-forward a ban should rest on his family till his family removed its ban from her.
There was no church for her that morning; she was not in the mood. Stephen had to go, since Tora sophistically maintained that she had attended by proxy the day before. Winnie strolled with Dick Dennehy, when he came back from his early expedition.
"It's funny we're such friends, when you think me so wicked," she said.
"You're not wicked, though you may do a wicked thing – through wrong-headedness."
"You can't understand that I look on myself as Godfrey's wife for all my life or his."
"Didn't you once think the same about Mr. Maxon?"
"Oh, you really are – !" Winnie laughed irritably.
"And you ran away from him. What happens if Master Godfrey runs away from you?"
Winnie glanced at him sharply. Rather odd that he should put that question! Was there any suspicion among her friends, any at Shaylor's Patch?
"Because," Dennehy continued, "you wouldn't go on from man to man, being married to each of 'em for life temporarily, would you?"
Winnie laughed, if reluctantly. But there is hardly anything that a ready disputant cannot turn to ridicule.
"How you try to pin people down!" she complained. "You and your principles! I know what I should like to see happen, Mr. Dennehy."
"Ah, now – 'Dick' – as a mere matter of fairness, Winnie!"
"Well, Dick, what I should just love to see is you in love with somebody who was married, or had been divorced, or something of that sort, and see how you'd like your principles yourself." She looked mischievous and very pretty.
Dennehy shook his head. "We're all miserable sinners. But I don't believe I'd do it."
"What, fall in love, or give way to it?"
"The latter. The former's out of any man's power, I think."
"What would you do?"
"Emigrate to America."
"Out of the frying-pan into the fire! It's full of divorced people, isn't it?"
"Not the best Irish society." He laughed. "Well, you're chaffing me."
"Oh no, I'm not. I'm serious. I should like to see the experiment. Dick, if Godfrey does run away, as you kindly suggest, give me a wide berth! Oh, is it quite impossible that, if I tried, I might – make you miserable?"
"If you'll flirt with me after this fashion every time we meet, I'll not be miserable – I'll be very happy."
"Ah, but that's only the beginning! The beginning's always happy."
The sadness in her voice struck him. "You poor dear! You've had bad luck, and you've fallen among evil counsellors, in which term, heaven forgive me, I include my dear friends here at Shaylor's Patch."
"I'll try your principles another way. If you were Godfrey, would you leave me – now?"