Mrs. Maxon Protests Part 21

But she resolved to take her brief rest and be thankful for her respite.

Tora's benignant calm, Stephen's boyish gaiety, the simplicity of the child, Dennehy's loyal friendship--here were anodynes. For the moment nothing could be done; why then fret and worry about what to do? And if she spoke of or hinted at trouble, might it not seem to be in some sense like imputing a responsibility to her hosts? Yet she was asking much of herself in this resolve. She could hold her tongue, but she could not bind her thoughts.

In the morning Dennehy was off early on a five-mile walk to the nearest town, to hear Ma.s.s. The question of attending church Stephen referred to Alice's arbitrament; she decided in the affirmative.

"Whose turn?" asked Stephen of his wife.

"Mine," said Tora, with the nearest approach to an expression of discontent that Winnie had ever seen on her face.

Winnie stepped into the breach. "Oh, you look rather tired, and we've a busy day before us! Let me take Alice." So it was agreed, and Alice ran off to get ready.

"Do you always leave the question to her?"

"What else could we do? We say nothing against it, but how could we force her?"

"She's forced at school, I suppose?"

"I don't think any doubts suggest themselves. It's just part of the discipline. As a fact, I think the child's naturally religious. If so----" He waved his hands tolerantly.

Winnie laughed. "If so, she'll soon be rather shocked at her parents."

"It's quite arguable, Winnie, that it's a good thing for children to see their parents doing some things which they would naturally think--or at any rate be taught to think--wrong. They know by experience that the parents are on the whole a decent sort--kind and so on--and they learn not to condemn other people wholesale on the strength of one or two doubtful or eccentric practices. Do you see what I mean? It promotes breadth of view."

"I dare say it's arguable--most things are here--but I won't argue it, or we shall be late for church."

When G.o.dfrey Ledstone attended church with his family on the same day, he went without any questioning, not conscious of any peculiarity in his att.i.tude towards the Church, though well aware of what the Church's att.i.tude would be towards him, if its notice happened to be called to the facts. What of that? One compromised with the Church just as one compromised with the world; the code had provisions as applicable to the one negotiation as to the other. He did not go to church regularly, but, when he did, he took part in the service with an untroubled gratification, if not with any particular spiritual benefit. On this occasion he achieved what was, considering the worries which oppressed him, a very creditable degree of attention.

Neither was Winnie--in the little church at Nether End--convicted of sin; after all, that is not the particular note sought to be struck by a Christmas service--the Church has its seasons. But she was overcome by an unnerving sense of insignificance. The sermon dwelt on the familiar, yet ever striking, theme that all over the world, in well-nigh every tongue, this service was being held in honour of, and in grat.i.tude for, the great Event of this day. That seemed a tremendous thing to stand up against. There is majesty in great organizations, be they spiritual or secular. Are insignificant atoms to flout them? Or can the argument from insignificance be turned, and the rebel plead that he is so small that it does not matter what he does? The organizations will not allow the plea. Insignificant as you are, they answer, little as your puny dissent affects us, yet it is of bad example, and if you persist in it we will, in our way, make you unhappy and uncomfortable. Now mankind has been, in the course of its eventful history, from time to time convinced that many things do matter and that many do not, and opinions have varied and shall vary thereanent. But n.o.body has had any real success in convincing mankind that it does not matter whether it is happy or not--in the long run. Mankind is obstinately of the contrary opinion.

At the church door Dennehy was waiting for her and Alice--his Ma.s.s heard and ten good miles of country road behind him; spiritually and physically fortified. He was not handsome, but middle-age on its approach found him clean in wind and limb--temperate, kindly (outside politics), and really intensely happy.

"It's a concession for me to come as far as the door of this place," he said, smiling. Winnie glanced warningly at Alice. "You needn't mind her--the poor child hears everything! But it's my belief that Heaven has made her a fine old Tory, and they can't hurt her."

"You approving of Tories! Mr. Dennehy!" She turned to the child. "You liked it, Alice?"

"Didn't you hear me singing?" It seemed a good retort. Alice had sung l.u.s.tily. She did not seem inclined to talk. She walked beside them in a demure and absent gravity. Over her head they looked at one another; the child was thinking of the story of the Child, and finding it not strange, but natural and beautiful, the greatest of all her beloved fairy stories--and yet true.

Dennehy gently patted Alice's shoulder. "In G.o.d's good time!" he murmured.

"What do you mean?" Winnie asked, in a low voice.

"True people will find truth, and sweet people do sweet things," he answered. Then he laughed and snapped his fingers. "And the Divvle take the rest of humanity!"

"Everybody except the Irish, you mean?"

"I mustn't be supposed to let in Ulster," he warned her with a twinkle.

"But there's an English soul or two I'd save, Mrs. Ledstone."

"I don't like your being false to your convictions. I've one name that I've not denied and that n.o.body denies me. It's Winnie."

"Winnie it shall be on my lips too henceforth," he answered. "And I thank you."

Respect for his convictions? Yes. But there was more behind her permission, her request. There was a great friendliness, and, with it, a new sense that 'Mrs. Winifred Ledstone' might prove to be a transitory being, that the t.i.tle was held precariously. Why need her chosen friends be bound to the use of it?

Richard Dennehy was by now one of that small band. He was so loyal and sympathetic, though he was also very c.o.c.ksure in his condemnations, and terribly certain that he and his organization alone had got hold of the right end of the stick. Yet the c.o.c.ksureness was really for the organization only; it left him in himself a humble man, not thinking himself so clever as the emanc.i.p.ated persons among whom he moved, rather regretting that such able minds should be so led astray. One habit indeed he had, of which Stephen Aikenhead would humorously complain; he used emotion as an argumentative weapon. There are words and phrases which carry an appeal independent of the validity of the idea they express, a strength born of memory and a.s.sociation. They can make a man feel like a child again, or make him feel a traitor, and either against his reason.

"Spells and incantations I call them," said Stephen, "and I formally protest against their use in serious discussion."

"And why do you call them that?"

"Because they depend for their effect on a particular form of words--either a particularly familiar or a particularly beautiful formula. If you expressed the same idea in different language, its power would be gone; at least it would seem just as legitimately open to question as any profane statement that I may happen to make. Now to depend for its efficacy on the exact formula and not on the force of the idea is, to my mind, the precise characteristic of a spell, charm, or incantation, d.i.c.k."

"I dare say the holy words make you uncomfortable, my boy!"

"Exactly! And is it fair? Why am I, a candid inquirer, to be made uncomfortable? Prove me wrong, convince me if you can, but why make me uncomfortable?"

Winnie, an auditor of the conversation, laughed gently. "I think that's what you tried to do to me, coming back from church--when you talked about 'G.o.d's good time,' I mean."

Dennehy scratched his head. "I don't do it on purpose. They just come to my lips. And who knows?--It might be good for you!"

Alice ran in, announcing that it was time for the Christmas tree. Even at Shaylor's Patch discussion languished for the rest of the day, and Winnie had her hours of respite.

Indeed, it was a matter of hours only; peace was not to endure for her even over the Sunday. Early in the morning the maid brought her a telegram from G.o.dfrey Ledstone: "Caught slight chill. Think better not travel. Don't interrupt visit. Shall stay Woburn Square.--G.o.dFREY."

It was significant of how far her mind had forecast probabilities that she brushed aside the excuse without a moment's hesitation. Does an hour's journey on a mild morning frighten a strong man if he really wants to go? At any rate Winnie was not inclined to give G.o.dfrey the benefit of that doubt. He did want to stay in Woburn Square, or he did not want to come to Shaylor's Patch. Whichever way it was put, it came to much the same thing. It was another defeat for her, another victory for the family. And for Mabel Thurseley? That, too, seemed very likely.

Her heart quailed in grief and apprehension, as it looked into a future forlorn and desolate; but not for a moment did she think of giving up the struggle. Instead of that, she would fight more resolutely, more fiercely. This was not the common case of a variable man's affections straying from one woman to another. She knew that it was his courage which had failed first, and by its failure undermined the bastion of his love. He had been ashamed of her first; if he had now ceased--or begun to cease--to love her, it was because she made him ashamed before his family and friends, because she put him "in a false position" and made things awkward and uncomfortable. That he felt like that was in part--nay, largely--her own fault. Either from mistaken confidence, or chivalry, or scruple, or a mixture of the three, she had exposed him, unsupported, to the fullest a.s.sault of Woburn Square, and of all it represented. She had been wrong; she should have stood on her rights and forbidden him to go there unless she were received also. At the beginning she could have done it; she ought to have done it. Was it too late to do it now?

She formed a plan of campaign. She would take him away, put the sea between him and his people, the sea between him and Mabel Thurseley.

There was money in the till sufficient for a holiday. His very weakness, his responsiveness to his surroundings, favoured success. He would recover his courage, and hence-forward a ban should rest on his family till his family removed its ban from her.

There was no church for her that morning; she was not in the mood.

Stephen had to go, since Tora sophistically maintained that she had attended by proxy the day before. Winnie strolled with d.i.c.k Dennehy, when he came back from his early expedition.

"It's funny we're such friends, when you think me so wicked," she said.

"You're not wicked, though you may do a wicked thing--through wrong-headedness."

"You can't understand that I look on myself as G.o.dfrey's wife for all my life or his."

"Didn't you once think the same about Mr. Maxon?"

"Oh, you really are----!" Winnie laughed irritably.

"And you ran away from him. What happens if Master G.o.dfrey runs away from you?"

Winnie glanced at him sharply. Rather odd that he should put that question! Was there any suspicion among her friends, any at Shaylor's Patch?

"Because," Dennehy continued, "you wouldn't go on from man to man, being married to each of 'em for life temporarily, would you?"

Winnie laughed, if reluctantly. But there is hardly anything that a ready disputant cannot turn to ridicule.