Mrs. Maxon Protests Part 16

"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 s.p.a.ce 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.

G.o.dfrey 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, G.o.dfrey's Sundays at Woburn Square firmly re-established themselves as a weekly custom. Winnie could hardly deny that in the circ.u.mstances of the case they const.i.tuted 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 G.o.dfrey 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 amus.e.m.e.nts for Sunday, and G.o.dfrey, in loyalty, perhaps in penitence, dedicated Sat.u.r.day'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 G.o.dfrey's absence and Hobart Gaynor's defection, Winnie was not without friends and distractions on her Sundays. Sometimes d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sion 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 "crus.h.i.+ng." 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 compa.s.sion 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. G.o.dfrey 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 G.o.dfrey 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.

Winnie and he were wholesome for one another. She forgot her theories; he kept better company than was his wont. They became good comrades and great friends. G.o.dfrey was delighted; his absences on Sunday seemed in a way condoned; he was not haunted by the picture of a lonely Winnie. He ceased to accuse himself because he enjoyed being in Woburn Square, and therefore enjoyed it the more and the more freely. To be glad your lover can be happy in your absence is a good and generous emotion--whether characteristic of the zenith of pa.s.sion is another question.

Accustomed rather to lavishness than to a thrifty refinement, Bob marvelled at the daintiness of Winnie's humble establishment. He admired--and in his turn pitied. His friend's circ.u.mstances were no secret to him.

"I wonder how you do it!" he would exclaim. "Do you have to work awfully hard?"

"Well, it sometimes seems hard, because I didn't used to have to do it.

In fact I used to be scolded if I did do it." She laughed. "I'm not pretending to like being poor."

"But you took it on fast enough, Mrs. Ledstone. You knew, I mean?"

"Oh yes, I knew, and I took it on, as you call it. So I don't complain."

"I tell you what--some day you and G.o.dfrey must come for a spree with me. Go to Monte Carlo or somewhere, and have a high old time!"

"I don't believe I should like Monte Carlo a bit."

"Not like it? Oh, I say, I bet you would."

"I suppose it's prejudice to condemn even Monte Carlo without seeing it.

Perhaps we shall manage to go some day. I think G.o.dfrey would like it."

"Oh, I took him once, all right, with--with some other friends."

"And all you men gambled like anything, I suppose?"

"Yes, we did a bit." Bob was inwardly amused at her a.s.sumption of the nature of the party--amused, yet arrested by a sudden interest, a respect, and a touch of Mrs. Lenoir's pity. If there had been only himself to confess about, he would have confessed.

"You want keeping in order, Mr. Purnett," she said, smiling. "You ought to marry, and be obliged to spend your money on your wife."

She puzzled Bob. Because here she was, not married herself! He could not get away from that rigid and logical division of his--and of many other people's, such as Dennehy and the like.

"I'm not a marrying man. Heaven help the woman who married me!" he said, in whimsical sincerity.

She saw the sincerity and met it with a plump "Why?"

Bob was not good at a.n.a.lysis--of himself or other people (though he was making a rudimentary effort over Winnie). "The way a chap's built, I suppose."

"What a very conclusive sort of argument!" she laughed. "How's G.o.dfrey built, Mr. Purnett?"

"G.o.dfrey's all right. He'd settle down if he ever got married."

The theories came tumbling in through the open door. Cowardly theories, had they refused an opening like that!

"Well, isn't he?" asked Winnie, with dangerously rising colour.

Bob Purnett was a picture of shame and confusion.

"I could bite my tongue out, Mrs. Ledstone--hang it, you don't think I'm--er--what you'd call an interfering chap? It's nothing to me how my friends choose to--to settle matters between themselves. Fact is, I just wasn't thinking. Of course you're right. He--well, he feels himself married all right. And so he is married all right--don't you know? It's what a chap feels in the end, isn't it? Yes, that's right, of course."

The poor man was terribly fl.u.s.tered. Yet behind all his aghastness at his blunder, at the back of his overpowering penitence, lay the obstinate question--could she really think it made no difference? No difference to a man like G.o.dfrey Ledstone, whom he knew so well?

Submerged by his remorse for having hurt her, yet the question lay there in the bottom of his mind. People neither regular nor irregular, people s.h.i.+fting the boundaries (really so well settled!)--how puzzling they were! What traps they laid for the heedless conversationalist, for the traditional moralist--or immoralist!