Mrs. Maxon Protests Part 14

"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 att.i.tude 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 G.o.dfrey'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 pa.s.sed out of sight. Was not he, in his turn, ent.i.tled 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 Devons.h.i.+re Street; he was on very friendly terms with the coachman who drove Cyril Maxon's brougham.

Mr. Ledstone, mercifully ignorant of the aspect he a.s.sumed 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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey'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 pa.s.sage in G.o.dfrey'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 s.h.i.+eld 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.

Snip was Amy Ledstone's Aberdeen terrier--and, let it be said at once, an extremely attractive and accomplished dog; he "died" for the King and whined if one mentioned the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Amy lavished on him her surplus of affection--what was left after her love for mother, father, and brother, her affection for uncles, aunts, and cousins, and a stray friends.h.i.+p or two which survived from schoolgirl days. Dogs sometimes come in for these windfalls. But to-day her thoughts--as she made her way along the Euston Road and into Regent's Park--were less occupied with Snip than was usually the case. Obstinately they fastened themselves on Winnie Maxon; on more than Winnie Maxon--on ill-regulated affections in general. She had read about them in novels (which are so largely occupied with them), seen them exhibited in plays, pursed her lips over them in newspapers. All that was not the same thing--any more than an earthquake in China is the same thing as a burglary in one's own house. Here they were--actually in the family circle! Not mere "dissipation," but a settled determination to set the rules at naught.

What manner of woman was this Mrs. Maxon? What had driven her to it? She had "borne more than any human being could"--so said G.o.dfrey's letter.

She now "claimed a little happiness," which "wronged n.o.body." She only "took what the law ought to give her--freedom from unendurable bondage."

The phrases of the letter were vivid in Amy's recollection. A woman who rebelled against the law--ought not her case against it to be heard?

Hadn't she at least a right to a hearing? After all, as things stood, she had nothing to do with making it--nothing direct, at any rate. That sounded a plausible plea for Mrs. Maxon. But on the other hand, because she had been wronged, or suffered ill-treatment, or had bad luck, to go on and do what was, by Amy's training and prepossession, the one absolutely unpardonable thing, the thing hardly to be named--"I don't see how she could, whatever she thinks!" exclaimed Amy, as she entered the Broad Walk.

People will, when they are allowed, go to see other people hanged, or to see murderers in their cells, or to watch a woman battling in open court for her fame as for her life. It was something of this sort of interest that fastened Amy's thoughts on Winnie Maxon. There is some admiration, some pity, in the feeling--and certainly a high curiosity about such people in the average mind, the law-keeping, the non-speculative mind, the mind trained to regard conventions as eternities and national customs as laws divine.

Suddenly a smile came on her lips. Would it be very wrong? She and G.o.dfrey had always been "awfully good friends." She would like to be that still. What an awfully good friend he would think her if--if she did not treat Mrs. Maxon as dirt! If she--Amy trembled intellectually as the speculation developed itself--without saying anything about it at home, went to see her, made friends, tried to understand her point of view--called her "Winnie"! Calling her "Winnie" seemed the supreme point, the pivot on which her att.i.tude turned.

Then came a cold doubt. "Will she care to be called Winnie?" "Will she care about seeing me?" "She's pretty, she's smart, she has been in society." Falling in love with a man may not involve a concern about the opinion of his maiden sister. How pretty was Mrs. Maxon, how smart?

Interest in Winnie Maxon acc.u.mulated from source after source. Yes, and on Amy Ledstone's part, interest in herself accrued also, mingled with a little uneasiness. She seemed to have travelled far in her meditations--and she had almost forgotten Snip. Yet it was hardly likely that these speculations would in the end issue in much. Amy herself recognized that. They would probably produce nothing save a touch of sympathy, treacherous to her home, in regard to Winnie barren and unexpressed. They could not prevent her from being against Winnie; they could only make her sorry that she had to be. Even so much was a victory--hard won against the prepossessions of her mind and the canons of her life.

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 cla.s.ses 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 G.o.dfrey Ledstone's establishment--just fulfilled according to Winnie's ideas, and no more.

She had a hundred and fifty pounds a year; G.o.dfrey'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 Devons.h.i.+re 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 G.o.dfrey 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?