Mrs. Maxon Protests Part 26

"Because I've got nothing for you to eat, and I think you finished even the whisky! Thanks for my evening, Mr. Purnett."

He walked through the little court up to the door with her. "And you look as tired as a dog," he remarked--with a successful suppression of 'Mrs. Ledstone.' "What you want is a good sleep, and--and it'll all look brighter in the morning. May I come and see you soon?"

"If I'm here, of course you may. But I haven't made up my mind. I may go back to the country, to the Aikenheads, my cousins--where I met G.o.dfrey, you know."

He could not resist a question. "I say, is there trouble? You know how I like you both. Has there been a row?"

She smiled at him. "G.o.dfrey avoided any danger of that. I don't want to talk about it, but you may as well know. G.o.dfrey has gone away."

"Oh, but he'll come back, Mrs.----He'll come back, I mean, you know."

"Never. And I don't want him. Don't ask me any more--to-night, anyhow."

She gave him her hand with a friendly pressure. "Good-night."

"Good Lord! Well, I'm sorry. I say, you won't cut me now, will you?"

"I haven't so many friends that I need cut a good one. Now, if you drive off at once, you'll be back in time to get some supper somewhere else."

She smiled again, and in a longing for comfort owned to him--and to herself--her childish fears. "And I want to be snug in bed before the spooks come out! I feel rather lonely. So, again, good-night." He had a last vision of her small pale face as she slowly, reluctantly it seemed to him, shut the door. A great rattle of bolts followed.

"Well, I'm left outside, anyhow," Bob reflected philosophically, as he walked back to the cab. But his mind was occupied with the picture of the proud forlorn woman, there alone in the empty house, very much alone in the world too, and rather afraid of 'spooks.' All his natural kindliness of heart was aroused in pity and sympathy for her. "I should like to give her a really good time," he thought. In that aspect his impulse was honestly unselfish. But the image of the pale delicate face abode with him also. The two aspects of his impulse mingled; he saw no reason why they should not, if it were really 'all off' between her and G.o.dfrey Ledstone. "I think she likes me well enough--I wonder if she does!" He did not, to do him justice, ask an extravagant degree of devotion in return for any 'good times' which he might find himself able to offer. When it is so easy for two people with good tempers, sound digestions, and plenty of ready cash to enjoy themselves, why spoil it all by asking too much? Surely he and Winnie could enjoy themselves? The idea stuck in his mind. Again, why--to him--should it not? His scrupulous behaviour hitherto had been based on loyalty to G.o.dfrey Ledstone. It appeared that he was released from the obligation by his friend's own act. "He can't say I didn't play the game, while the thing lasted," thought Bob, with justifiable self-satisfaction.

The morrow of a catastrophe is perhaps harder to bear than the hour in which it befalls us. The excitement of battling with fate is gone; but the wounds smart and the bruises ache. Physically refreshed by sleep--a sleep happily unbroken by a.s.saults from without or ghostly visitants within the house--Winnie braced her courage to meet the call on it. Her task, not easy, yet was plain. She would not weep for her G.o.dfrey Ledstone; she would try not to think of him, nor to let her thoughts stray back to the early days with him. She would and must think of the other G.o.dfrey, the one in Woburn Square. What woman would weep for such a man as that--except his mother? On him she would fix her thoughts, until she need think no more of either of them. She had to think of herself--of what she had done and of what she was now to do. On the first head she admitted a blunder, but no disgrace--a mistake not of principle or theory, only a mistake in her man; with regard to the second, she must make a decision.

Just before she had fairly settled down to this task, she had a visitor.

At half-past eleven--early hours for her to be out and about--Mrs.

Lenoir appeared.

"I was supping at the Carlton grill-room last night," she explained, "with a couple of girls whom I'd taken to the play, and Bob Purnett came in. He drove me back home, and--I don't know if he ought to have--but he told me about some trouble here. So, as I'm an interfering old woman, I came round to see if I could be of any use." Her manner to-day was less stately and more cordial. Also she spoke with a certain frankness. "You see, I know something about this sort of thing, my dear."

Winnie, of course, distinguished her 'sort of thing' very broadly from 'the sort of thing' to which Mrs. Lenoir must be a.s.sumed to refer, but she made no secret of the state of the case or of her own att.i.tude towards it. "I accept it absolutely, but I'm bitterly hurt by the way it was done."

"Oh, you can put it that way, my dear; but you're human like the rest of us, and, of course, you hate having him taken away from you. Now shall I try what I can do?"

"Not for the world! Not a word, nor a sign! It's my mistake, and I stand by it. If he came back, it would never be the same thing. It was beautiful; it would be shameful now."

Mrs. Lenoir smiled doubtfully; she had an imperfect understanding of the mode of thought.

"Very well, that's settled. And, for my part, I think you're well rid of him. A weak creature! Let him marry a Bloomsbury girl, and I hope she'll keep him in fine order. But what are you going to do?"

"I don't quite know. Stephen and Tora would let me go back to Shaylor's Patch for as long as I liked."

"Oh, Shaylor's Patch! To talk about it all, over and over again!"

A note of impatience in her friend's voice was amusingly evident to Winnie. "You mean the less I talk about it, the better?" she asked, smiling.

"Well, you haven't made exactly a success of it, have you?" The manner was kinder than the words.

"And I didn't make exactly a success of my marriage either," Winnie reflected, in a puzzled dolefulness. Because, if both orthodoxy and unorthodoxy go wrong, what is a poor human woman to do? "Well, if I mayn't go to Shaylor's Patch--at present, anyhow--I must stay here, Mrs.

Lenoir; that's all. The studio's in my name, because I could give better security than G.o.dfrey, and I can stay if I want to."

"Not very cheerful--and only that dirty old Irishwoman to do for you!"

"Oh, please don't abuse Mrs. O'Leary. She's my one consolation."

Mrs. Lenoir looked at her with something less than her usual self-confidence. It was in a decidedly doubtful and tentative tone that she put her question: "I couldn't persuade you to come and put up with me--in both senses--for a bit?"

Winnie was surprised and touched; to her despairing mood any kindness was a great kindness.

"That's really good of you," she said, pressing Mrs. Lenoir's hand for a moment. "It's--merciful."

"I'm an old woman now, my dear, and most of my cronies are getting old too. Still, some young folks look in now and then. We aren't at all gay; but you'll be comfortable, and you can have a rest while you look about you." There was a trace of the explanatory, of the rea.s.suring, about Mrs. Lenoir's sketch of her home life.

"What's good enough for you is good enough for me, you know," Winnie remarked, with a smile.

"Oh, I'm not so sure! Oh, I'm not speaking of creature comforts and so on. But you seem to me to expect so much of--of everybody."

Winnie took the hand she had pressed and held it. "And you?" she asked.

"Never mind me. You're young and attractive. Don't go on expecting too much. They take what they can."

"They? Who?"

"Men," said Mrs. Lenoir. Then out of those distant, thoughtful, no longer very bright eyes flashed for an instant the roguish twinkle for which she had once been famous. "I've given them as good as I got, though," said she. "And now--will you come?"

Winnie laughed. "Well, do you think I should prefer this empty tomb?"

she asked. Yes--empty and a tomb--apt words for what the studio now was.

"You weren't as nice as this at Shaylor's Patch--though you always said things that made me think."

"They've all got their heads in the air at Shaylor's Patch--dear creatures!"

"I shall enjoy staying with you. Is it really convenient?" Mrs. Lenoir smiled. "Oh, but that's a silly question, because I know you meant it.

When may I come?"

"Not a moment later than this afternoon."

"Well, the truth is I didn't fancy sleeping here again. I expect I should have gone to Shaylor's Patch."

Again Mrs. Lenoir smiled. "You're full of pluck, but you're scarcely hard enough, my dear. If I'm a failure, Shaylor's Patch will do later, won't it?"

"I shall disgrace you. I've nothing to wear. We were--I'm very poor, you know."

"I'd give every pound at my bank and every rag off my back for one line of your figure," said Mrs. Lenoir. "I was beautiful once, you know, my dear." Her voice took on a note of generous recognition. "You're very well--in the _pet.i.te_ style, Winnie." But by this she evidently meant something different from her 'beautiful.' Well, it was matter of history.

That afternoon, then, witnessed a remarkable change in Winnie's external conditions. Instead of the desolate uncomfortable studio, charged with memories too happy or too unhappy--there seemed nothing between the two, and the extremes met--peopled, also, with 'spooks' potential if not visualized, there was Mrs. Lenoir's luxurious flat in Knightsbridge, replete, as the auctioneers say, with every modern convenience. The difference was more than external. She was no longer a derelict--left stranded at the studio or to drift back to Shaylor's Patch. No doubt it might be said that she was received out of charity. Amply acknowledging the boon, Winnie had yet the wit to perceive that the charity was discriminating. Not for her had she been plain, not for her had she been uninteresting! In a sense she had earned it. And in a sense, too, she felt that she was in process of being avenged on G.o.dfrey Ledstone and on Woburn Square. A parallel might be traced here between her feelings and Cyril Maxon's. They had made her count for nothing; she felt that at Mrs. Lenoir's she might still count. The sorrow and the hurt remained, but at least this was not finality. She had suffered under a dread suspicion that in their different ways both Shaylor's Patch and the solitary studio were. Here she had a renewed sense of life, of a future possible. Yet here too, for the first time since G.o.dfrey left her, she lost her composure, and the tears came--quite soon, within ten minutes after Mrs. Lenoir's greeting.

Mrs. Lenoir understood. "There, you're not so angry any more," she said.

"You're beginning to see that it must have happened--with that fellow!

Now Emily will make you comfortable, and put you to bed till dinner-time. You needn't get up for that unless you like. There's only the General coming; it's one of his nights."