Mrs. Maxon Protests Part 35

"Is it? I don't know. I often take this walk."

"Because I've just come from calling on Winnie." He eyed his prospective victim gloatingly. He was like a savage who thinks that he can unload some of his misfortune on to his neighbour by employing the appropriate ceremonies.

"Oh, I--I hope she's all right?"

"Seems blooming. I didn't have much talk with her, though. There was a chap dancing attendance--a Major somebody or other. Oh yes, Merriam--Major Merriam. He came in pretty soon, with a bouquet of flowers as big as your head. Seems that she and Mrs. Lenoir are off abroad to-morrow, and our friend the Major goes too. I don't think you need make yourself unhappy about Winnie, old chap."

"Who is he? I never heard of him."

"Well, I didn't suppose you and she were keeping up a correspondence! If you come to that, I should rather doubt if he ever heard of you." Bob smiled in a fas.h.i.+on less amiable than was his wont.

"Well, I'm in a hurry. Good-bye, old man."

"Walking my way?" He indicated Piccadilly and eastwards.

It had been G.o.dfrey's way home. "I've got to go to a shop in Sloane Street," said G.o.dfrey.

"Ta-ta then! It'll be a relief to you if she settles down all right, won't it?"

G.o.dfrey said nothing more than 'Good-bye.' But his face, as he said it, was very expressive; it quite satisfied Bob Purnett's impulse to hurt somebody. G.o.dfrey Ledstone did not like Major Merriam any more than he himself did! The magical ceremony had worked; some of his misfortune was unloaded.

Well, the two were in the end much in the same case. Winnie had led G.o.dfrey into the great experiment, and through it into the great failure. She had, this afternoon, made Bob Purnett, in his turn, false to his settled plan of life, had sent him away sore and savage because he could not do the one thing which he had always scornfully declared that he would never do. She had left them both--left G.o.dfrey to those proceedings, to the family woe, to Miss Thurseley's immediate repudiation; left Bob to contemplate a lost pleasure, a fruitless heroism, and the Major in Madeira. The two ought to have sympathized with one another. Yet their thoughts about one another were not friendly. "If I'd known the sort of chap he was, I'd have had a shot at it sooner," thought Bob. G.o.dfrey's protest went deeper. "Of course it'll happen, but why in heaven's name need he tell me about it?" For Bob had suppressed all that part of the story which accounted for his telling.

They went their separate ways--artificially separate on this occasion, since there was no shop in Sloane Street at which G.o.dfrey Ledstone desired to call. They went their ways with their thoughts, in whose mirror each saw Winnie smiling on the Major. Precisely what Miss Wilson was doing at the moment! Jealous men see more than happens, but what happens they generally see.

CHAPTER XXI

IS HE A BULLY?

Cyril Maxon's strong-willed and domineering nature registered its own decrees as having the force of law and regarded its own resolutions as accomplished facts. When he had once achieved the requisite modification of his opinions, and had decided that he wanted to many Lady Rosaline in due time, he thought of her in his secret soul as already his--at any rate, as set apart for him--and he found no difficulty in declaring that she had given a tacit consent in their interview in Paris and in the relations of friends.h.i.+p which now existed between her and himself.

But, naturally, the lady did not adopt the same view either of his rights or of her own actions. The 'very most' she had given him was leave to try his fortune, to recommend himself to her during the interval of time which was unavoidable. She was really rather glad of the interval, and observed one day to Mrs. Ladd that it would be no bad thing if everybody were forced to wait eight or nine months before they married. "Especially if we are to be bound by Mr. Attlebury's opinion!"

she added, laughing.

She liked the idea of the marriage; it was suitable, and she was lonely and not rich. She was not yet sure how much she liked the man as she came to know him more intimately; now and then she saw signs of something which helped her to a better understanding of Mrs. Maxon's att.i.tude. "Oh, I'm not afraid of fighting," she would then say to herself; "but I don't want to have to fight all the time. It's fatiguing, and rather vulgar." So she temporized, as the situation enabled her to do; for Maxon was still a tied man, however technical the tie had become; he was not in a position to force the pace. This accidental fact helped her to hold her own against his strong will and domineering instincts; for his conscience had granted him relief only on one point (if really on that), and it did not allow him to forget that he was still a married man.

Lady Rosaline's att.i.tude excited, of course, the liveliest curiosity and an abundance of gossip on the part of her friends, Mrs. Ladd and Miss Fortescue. What did Rosaline mean to do? "Oh, she means to have him,"

exclaimed Miss Fortescue, "in the end, you know!"

"I think she will, but I believe that quite a little thing might turn her," was Mrs. Ladd's more cautious verdict. Cyril Maxon would not have received it pleasantly.

The good ladies' great disappointment was that they could not induce their revered pastor to say a word on the subject, accessible and, indeed, chatty as he generally was with his flock. When Maxon had taken the first step in those proceedings which had so maddened poor old Mr.

Ledstone, he had written to his friend a long and highly argumentative letter, justifying his course. Attlebury had replied in kind, and suggested an interview. This Maxon declined as painful to him, and ended with an a.s.severation that his conscience approved the course he was taking.

"If it does, there's not much use in my saying any more; but make sure it does," was Attlebury's answer. Maxon took some offence at it, as though it impugned his sincerity. There was no open rupture, but the men did not meet any more in intimate friends.h.i.+p; there was a reserve between them. Yet Attlebury had said no more, or very little more, than Lady Rosaline herself; she also had asked that his own conscience should approve. But Attlebury could not, or, at all events, did not, keep the note of authority out of his counsel. Maxon stiffened his neck instinctively. Before the necessary interval had run half its course, this instinct was powerfully seconded by another.

He had gone to tea with Mrs. Ladd one Sunday. They were old acquaintances, and for several years back he had been accustomed to pay her five or six calls in the course of a twelvemonth; on which occasions, since his marriage, Mrs. Ladd had discreetly condoled with him over Winnie's shortcomings. But Winnie had disappeared for good; there was now a topic even more attractive.

"Rosaline and I talk of a little trip abroad together in a month's time." She smiled at him. "Will you forgive me if I take her away for three or four weeks?"

"I shall miss you both very much. I wish I could come too, but it's quite impossible."

"I think she wants a change." What Mrs. Ladd wished to convey was that the necessary interval might be tiresome to Lady Rosaline, but she did not quite see how to put it delicately. "It's a long drag from Christmas to Easter, isn't it? Have you seen her lately?"

"I paid her a late call one day last week--that's all. I'm very busy."

"Of course you are--with your practice! Have you met a Sir Axel Thrapston at Rosaline's?"

"Axel Thrapston? No, I don't think so. No, I'm sure not." He very seldom met anybody at Lady Rosaline's, as his visits were timed so as to avoid, as far as possible, such a contingency. "Who is he?"

"I don't know much about him myself. He comes from Northumberland, I think, and lives there generally. I believe his wife was an old friend of Rosaline's; she died about two years ago. I've met him there twice--a middle-aged man, rather bald, but quite good-looking."

"No, I haven't met him, Mrs. Ladd."

"He seems just to have made his appearance, but I think he's rather a.s.siduous." She laughed again. "And two years is just about the dangerous time, isn't it?"

Thus Mrs. Ladd, hinting to Cyril Maxon, in all friends.h.i.+p, that he was not the only man in the world and had better not forget the fact. Friend as she was, she knew enough of her man to feel a certain pleasure in administering the wholesome warning.

It needed more to drive Cyril Maxon from his confident appropriation of Lady Rosaline, but that something more was not long in coming. He, too, met Sir Axel at her flat--once or twice in the hours which he had grown into the habit of considering as reserved for himself; he tried very hard to show neither surprise nor annoyance, but he felt an immediate grievance. Here was he, the busiest of men, painfully contriving a spare hour; was he to spend it in three-cornered trivial talk? Thrapston had all the long idle day to call. Lady Rosaline really might give him a hint! But it appeared not to strike her that she might. And she seemed to like Sir Axel's company--as, indeed, most people would. He was a simple country gentleman, no fool at all at his own business, but without much pretension to intellectual or artistic culture. This, however, he could recognize and respect; he recognized and respected it in Lady Rosaline, was anxious to learn from her, and deferred to her authority. "When people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant.

To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others which a sensible person would always wish to avoid." Jane Austen perhaps allows herself a little malice in this remark, but we cannot deny that she speaks with authority on human nature.

On one occasion, when he did find his friend alone, Maxon complained of the times when he had not.

"I've nothing against him, of course, but it's you I come to talk to.

Why, I scandalize my clerk, and sometimes my clients, for the sake of coming!" He managed to keep voice and manner playful.

She was gracious, admitting the force of his plea. "It was stupid of me not to think! Of course Sir Axel can come at any time. I'll give him a hint to call earlier. Is that satisfactory, my lord?" She sometimes called him by that t.i.tle--partly in antic.i.p.ation of the judges.h.i.+p, but also with a hint of raillery at the domineering nature.

"It's very kind--and don't you like it better like this yourself?"

"Perhaps I do. And clearly you do. And"--she smiled--"very likely Sir Axel does. We shall all three be pleased! Delightful!"

"I wasn't thinking of his point of view, I confess." He was rather too scornful.

"No, but he may think of it, I suppose? And I suppose I may, if I like, Mr. Maxon?"

He looked at her sourly for just a moment, then recovered himself and, without replying, pa.s.sed on to the subject of a book which he had brought her. But he was annoyed that she should resist him, stand up to him, and claim her liberty--especially her liberty to receive Sir Axel alone. However, it was not good fighting ground; he had brought her rebuke upon himself.

Lady Rosaline was quite alive to the fact that Sir Axel's appearance and Sir Axel's attentiveness were a valuable a.s.set to her, but she did not think of her old friend's husband in any other light. To begin with, he himself, though a.s.siduous, had shown no sign of sentiment. If he were moving in that direction at all, he was moving slowly and secretly. And then she was still inclined to Maxon. She had a great opinion of his ability--she was more sure about that than about how much she liked him--and the chances of a high career for him allured her. But Sir Axel and his a.s.siduity enhanced her value and b.u.t.tressed her independence.

They helped her to establish her position; she had an idea that the more firmly she established it now, the better it would resist any attacks on it, if and when she became Lady Rosaline Maxon. Here she was probably right. But she had another idea too. She was not going to be dictated to; she would not be browbeaten into becoming Lady Rosaline Maxon.

In this state of external affairs and internal dispositions, the 'proceedings' came and went--really meaning no more than a transitory quarter of an hour's annoyance to the rising Cyril Maxon, for whom everything was made as easy and sympathetic as possible. Other effects in Woburn Square, no doubt--possibly others in Madeira! Yet transitory and formal as they were, the proceedings left behind them a state of affairs more essentially transitory and formal still. The tie was now a mere technicality, and when conscience took the position that Cyril Maxon was still a married man for all purposes, conscience began to seem to put the matter too high. For present conduct, yes--and he had no wish to run counter to the injunction, for reasons both moral and prudential; but for laying down the future on definite lines? That seemed a different point. He reconsidered his att.i.tude--not without being influenced, more or less consciously, by Lady Rosaline's independence and by the a.s.siduity of Sir Axel Thrapston. The hint that she still considered herself free, the notion of a rival, turned the necessary interval from a mere nuisance into a possible danger. Moreover she was going abroad with Mrs. Ladd, and he could not follow. Mrs. Ladd was a friendly influence, but he would like to define the situation before Lady Rosaline went. Not desiring to risk a peculiarly annoying collision with Sir Axel, he wrote and asked her for an appointment.

She neither desired to refuse the interview, nor well could. But she scented an attack, and stood instinctively on the defensive. She wanted just the opposite of what Cyril Maxon did; the trip first and the decision afterwards was her order of events. She relied on the necessary interval, while he was now out of patience with it. "I won't be rushed!"

she said to herself. She gave him the appointment he asked on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon (he had suggested that comparatively free day) at half-past four, but she let drop to Sir Axel that she would be at home at half-past five on the same afternoon. Her motive in doing this was rather vague--just a notion that some discussions can go on too long, or that she might like to relax an agitated mind in talk with a friend, or, possibly, that she might like to be told that she had done right. Her reasons for the intimation to Sir Axel defy conclusive a.n.a.lysis.