Mrs. Maxon Protests Part 46

Mrs. Lenoir did not, as the phrase runs, "do as much for" Winnie Maxon as she had been prepared to do for the prospective Mrs. Bertie Merriam.

Perhaps because, though she had accepted the decision, her disappointment over the issue persisted. Perhaps merely because, as matters now stood, her bounty would not go in the end to benefit her old friend's stock. After providing an annuity for her precious Emily, and bequeathing a few personal relics to the General, she left to Winnie the furniture of her flat and fifteen hundred pounds. The residue which was at her disposition she gave--it may be with a parting kick at respectability; it may be because she thought he would enjoy it most--to her favourite, and the least meritorious, of the General's sons--the one who went in for too much polo and private theatricals in India.

"There's no immediate need for you to hurry out of here," the General added; he was the executor. "The rent must be paid till the summer anyhow, and Clara told me that she wished you to stay till then if you liked. I've no doubt Emily will stay with you."

"It was very kind of her, but I can't afford to live here long."

"Oh, well, just while you look about you, anyhow. And if there's anything I can do for you, you won't hesitate to let me know, will you?"

Winnie promised to call upon his services if she required them, but again the feeling came over her that, however kind and obliging he might be, the General did in his heart--even if unwillingly--regard their connexion with one another as over. The bond which Mrs. Lenoir had made was broken; that other and closer bond had never come into existence. It would have been unjust to say that the General was was.h.i.+ng his hands of her. It was merely a recognition of facts to admit that fate--the course of events--was performing the operation for him. They had no longer any purchase on one another's lives, any common interest to unite them. His only surviving concern now was in his three sons, and it had been irrevocably decided that there Winnie was not to count.

The consciousness of this involuntary drifting apart from the old man whom she liked and admired for his gentleness and his loyalty intensified the loneliness with which Mrs. Lenoir's death afflicted Winnie. She was in no better case now than when her friend had rescued her from the empty studio and thereby seemed to open to her a new life.

The new life, too, was gone with the friend who had given it. Looking back on her career since she had left Cyril Maxon's roof, she saw the same thing happening again and again. She had made friends and lost them; she had picked them up, walked with them to the next fork in the road, and there parted company. "Is it mere chance, or something in me, or something in my position?" she asked herself. A candid survey could not refuse the conclusion that the position had contributed largely to the result. The case of G.o.dfrey Ledstone, the more trivial instance of Bob Purnett, were there to prove it. The position had been a vital and practically exclusive factor in bringing about her parting from Bertie Merriam; she had an idea that its action was to be traced in the continued absence and silence of d.i.c.k Dennehy. The same thing which had parted her from her men-friends had forbidden her friends.h.i.+ps with women. She could, she felt, have made a friend of Amy Ledstone. To-day she would have liked to make a friend of kindly shrewd old Mrs. Ladd; but though Mrs. Ladd came to see her at the flat which had been Mrs.

Lenoir's, she received no invitation to Mrs. Ladd's house. The pressure of public opinion, the feelings of Mr. Attlebury's congregation, the 'awkwardness' which would arise with Mrs. Ladd's old, if too exacting, friend, Cyril Maxon, forbade. The one friends.h.i.+p which had proved able to resist the disintegrating influence was ended now by death.

Well, great benefits cannot reasonably be expected for nothing. If she was alone, she was also free--wonderfully free. And, of a certainty, complete freedom can seldom be achieved save at the cost of a voluntary or involuntary severing of ties. Must every one then be either a slave or a solitary? She was not so soured as to accept that conclusion. She knew that there was a way out--only she had not found it. The Aikenheads had, down at Shaylor's Patch! Thither--to her old haven--her thoughts turned longingly. While it stood, she did it injustice in calling herself friendless. Yet to retire to that pleasant seclusion went against pride; it seemed like a retreat, a confession that the world had been too much for her, that she was beaten. She was not prepared to acknowledge herself beaten--at least, not by the enemy in a fair square fight. Her disasters were due to the defection of her allies. So she insisted, as she sat long hours alone in the flat--ah, now so quiet indeed!

Shaylor's Patch had not forgotten her. The Aikenheads did not attend their friend Mrs. Lenoir's funeral--they had a theory antagonistic to graveside gatherings, which was not totally lacking in plausibility--but Stephen had written to her, promising to come and see her as soon as he could get to town. He came there very seldom--Winnie, indeed, had never met him in London--and it was above a fortnight before he made his appearance at the flat. Delighted as Winnie was by his visit, her glad welcome was almost smothered in amazement at his appearance. He wore the full uniform of a man about town, all in the latest fas.h.i.+on, from the curl of the brim of his silk hat to the exact cut of his coat-tails.

Save that his hair was a trifle long and full, he was a typical Londoner, dressed for a ceremonial occasion. As it was, he would pa.s.s well for a poet with social ambitions.

"Good gracious!" said Winnie, holding up her hands. "You got up like that, Stephen!"

"Yes, I think I can hold my own in Piccadilly," said Stephen, complacently regarding himself in the long gilt mirror. "I believe I once told you I had atavistic streaks? This is one of them. I can mention my opinions if I want to--and I generally do; but there's no need for my coat and hat to go yelling them out in the street. That's my view; of course it isn't in the least Tora's. She thinks me an awful fool for doing it."

Winnie did not feel it necessary to settle this difficult point in the philosophy of clothes--on which eminent men hold widely varying opinions, as anybody who takes his walks abroad and keeps his eyes open for the celebrities of the day will have no difficulty in observing.

"Well, at any rate, I think you look awfully nice--quite handsome! I expect Tora's just afraid of your being too fascinating in your best clothes."

He sat down with a laugh and looked across at her inquiringly. "Pretty cheerful, Winnie?"

"Not so very particularly. I do feel her loss awfully, you know. I was very fond of her, and it seems to leave me so adrift. I had an anchorage here, but the anchor won't hold any more."

"Come and anchor at Shaylor's Patch. The anchor always holds there for you."

Winnie both made her confession and produced her objection. "I can't deny I've been thinking of you rather wistfully in these melancholy days, but it seems like--like giving up."

"Not a bit of it. You can be absolutely in the thick of the fight there, if you like." He looked across at her with his whimsical smile. "I'm actually going to do something at last, Winnie. I'm about to start on my life's work. I'm going to do a Synopsis of Social Philosophy."

"It sounds like a life's work," Winnie remarked. His society always cheered her, and already her manner showed something of its normal gaiety.

"Yes, it's a big job, but I'm a healthy man. You see, I shall take all the great fellows from the earliest time down to to-day, and collect from them everything that bears on the questions that we of to-day have to face--not worrying about their metaphysics and that sort of stuff, but taking what bears on the things we've really got to settle--the live things, you know. See the idea? There'll be a section on Education, for instance, one on Private Property, one on Marriage, one on Women and Labour. I want it to reach the ma.s.ses, so all the excerpts will be in English. Then each section will have an appendix, in which I shall collate the excerpts, and point out the main lines of agreement and difference. Perhaps I shall add a few suggestions of my own."

"I think you very likely will, Stephen."

"Now don't you think it's a ripping idea? Of course I shall take in poetry and novels and plays, as well as philosophers and historians. A comparison between Lecky and Ibsen, for instance! Bound to be fruitful!

Oh, it'll be a big job, but I mean to put it through." He leant forward to her. "That's not giving up, is it? That's fighting! And the point is--you can help me. You see, there'll be no end of books to read, just to see if there's anything of possible use in them. You can do lots of spade-work for me. Besides, you've got very good judgment."

"Wouldn't Tora help you better than I could?"

His eyes twinkled. "I wouldn't trust Tora, and I've told her so plainly.

She's so convinced of what she thinks herself that she considers the other view all nonsense--or, if she did hit on a particularly clever fellow who put the case too well against her, it's my firm belief that she'd have no scruple about suppressing him. Yours is much more the mind for me. We're inquirers, not dogmatists, you and I. With you, and a secretary learned in tongues, and a couple of typewriters, we shall make a hole in the work in no time."

Winnie could not be sure that he was not building a golden bridge for her retreat. Perhaps she did not wish to risk being made quite sure. The plan sounded so attractive. What things she would read and learn! And it was certainly possible to argue that she would still be fighting the battle of liberty and progress. After all, is it not the students who really set the line of advance? They originate the ideas, which some day or other the practical men carry out. It was Moltke who won the campaign, not the generals in the field. Such was the plea which inclination offered to persuade pride.

"But, Stephen, apart from anything else, it would mean quartering myself on you practically for ever!"

"What if it did? But, as a matter of fact, Tora thought you'd like to have your own place. You remember that cottage G.o.dfrey had? He took it furnished; but it's to be let on lease unfurnished now, and if you liked it----"

"Oh, I shouldn't mind it. And Mrs. Lenoir has left me her furniture."

"The whole thing works out beautifully," Stephen declared. He grew a little graver. "Come and try it, anyhow. Look here--I'll take the cottage, and sublet it to you. Then you can give it up at any moment, if you get sick of it. We shall be a jolly little colony. Old d.i.c.k Dennehy's house--you remember how we put him up to it?--is almost finished, and he'll be in it in six months. Of course he'll hate the Synopsis, and we shall have lots of fun with him."

"Oh, my dear, you're good!" sighed Winnie--and a smile followed the sigh. For suddenly life and activity, comrades.h.i.+p and gaiety, crossed her path again. The thing was not over. It had almost seemed over--there in the lonely flat. "How is dear old d.i.c.k Dennehy?" she asked.

"We've hardly seen him--he's only been down once. He's left me to build his house for him, and says encouragingly that he doesn't care a hang what it's like. He's been settling into his new job, I suppose. After a bit, perhaps, he'll be more amiable and accessible. You'll come and give it a trial, Winnie?" He got up and came over to her. "You've done enough off your own bat," he said. "I don't quite know how to put it to you, but what I think I mean is that no single person does any good by more than one protest. Intelligent people recognize that; but if you go on, you get put down not as a Protestant, but just as an anarchist--like our poor dear old friend here, you know."

He touched, with a true and discerning hand, on one of the great difficulties. If you were burnt at the stake for conscience' sake, it was hard to question your sincerity--though it appears that an uncalled-for and wanton quest of even the martyr's crown was not always approved by the soberer heads of and in the Churches. It was far harder to make people believe or understand that what you wanted to do might seem also what it was your duty to do--that the want made the duty. Only because the want was great--a thing which must be satisfied if a human life were not to be fruitlessly wasted--did the duty become imperative.

A doctrine true, perhaps, but perilous! Its professors should be above suspicion.

"It's awfully difficult," Stephen went on, stroking his forehead the while. "It's war, you see, and in any war worth arguing about both sides have a lot to say for themselves. We shall bring that out in the Synopsis."

"Don't be too impartial, Stephen!"

"No, I've got my side--but the other fellows shall have a fair show."

His smile grew affectionate. "But I think you're ent.i.tled to come out of the fighting line and go into the organizing department--whatever it's called technically."

"I'll tell you all about it some day. I'll wait a little. I seem only just to be getting a view of it."

"You're very young. You may have a bit more practical work to deal with still. At any rate, I shall be very glad to hear all about it." He rose and took his resplendent silk hat--that symbol of a sentimental attachment to the old order, from which he sprang, to which his sceptical mind had so many questions to put. "Look here, Winnie, I believe you've been thinking life was finished--at any rate, not seeing any new start in it. Here's one--take it. It'll develop. The only way to put a stopper on life is to refuse to go along the open lines. Don't do that." He smiled. "I rather think we started you from Shaylor's Patch once. We may do it again."

The plain truth came suddenly in a burst from her. "I'm so tired, Stephen!"

He laid down the hat again and took her two hands in his. "The Synopsis will be infinitely restful, Winnie. I'm going straight back to take the cottage, and begin to whitewash it. Send me word when you're ready to come. I'll tell you the truth before I go--or shan't I? Yes, I will, because, as I've told you before now, you've got pluck. You tell yourself you're facing things by staying here. You're not. You're hiding from things--and people. There are people you fear to meet, from one reason or another, in London, aren't there? Leave all that then. Come and live and work with us--and get your nerve back."

She looked at him in a long silence, then drew her breath. "Yes, I think you're right. I've turned afraid." She threw out her arms in a spreading gesture. "Here it is so big--and it takes no notice of me! On it goes--on--on!"

"You didn't expect to stop it, all on your own, did you?" asked Stephen, smiling.

"Or if it does take notice for a minute, half of it shudders, and the other half sn.i.g.g.e.rs! Is there nothing in between?"

"Oh, well, those are the two att.i.tudes of conservatism. Always have been--and, I suppose, always with a good deal of excuse. We do blunder, and we have a knack of attracting ridiculous people. It sets us back, but it can't be helped. We win in the end." He took up his hat again.

"And the Synopsis is going to leaven the lump. Send me a wire to-morrow, Winnie, and the whitewas.h.i.+ng shall begin!"

Faith, patience, candour--these were the three great qualities; these composed the temper needed for the work. Stephen Aikenhead had them, and, even though he never put himself to the ordeal of experience, nay, even though he never finished the Synopsis (a contingency likely enough), encouragement radiated from him, and thus his existence was justified and valuable. There were bigots on both sides, and every cause counted some fools among its adherents. Probably, indeed, every individual in the world, however wise and open-minded in the sum, had his spot of bigotry and his strain of folly. After Stephen's departure Winnie did much moralizing along these and similar lines, but her moralizing was at once more cheerful and more tolerant than it had been before he came. She had a greater charity towards her enemy the world--even towards the shudders and the sn.i.g.g.e.rs. Why, the regiment would have been divided between shudders and sn.i.g.g.e.rs--exactly the att.i.tudes which Bertie Merriam had sketched--and yet she had felt, under his inspiration, both liking and respect for the regiment. Why not then for that greater regiment, the world? Liking and respect, yes--but not, therefore, a.s.sent or even acquiescence. And on her own proceedings, too, Stephen enabled her to cast new eyes--eyes more open to the humorous aspect, taking a juster view of how much she might have expected to do and could reasonably consider herself to have done. Both seemed to come to very little compared with the wear and tear of the effort. But, then, if everybody did even a very little--why, the lump would be leavened, as Stephen said.

Three days later--just after she had made up her mind for Shaylor's Patch and the Synopsis, and had given notice to the General--and to Emily--of her approaching departure, there came a short note from the obstinately absent and invisible d.i.c.k Dennehy. It was on the official notepaper of the great journal:

"I hear from Tora that you're going back to Shaylor's Patch, to settle down there quietly. Thank G.o.d for it! Perhaps I shall see you there before very long, but I'm still very busy.--Yours, R. D."