Mrs. Maxon Protests Part 24

Her elbow rested on the mantelpiece, her face on her hand; her mouth was hidden. But unseen by him a smile bent her lips. His words were entirely decorous--from a man still married--but they were explicit enough. "I can have him if I want him," probably sums up pretty accurately the lady's comfortable conclusion.

CHAPTER XV

MRS. n.o.bODY

In spite of the untoward telegram, her visit to Shaylor's Patch heartened up Winnie in two ways. It checked the searching of conscience which is the natural and frequent result of threatened failure; by the evidence it afforded her of Stephen's affection and d.i.c.k Dennehy's loyal admiration, it strengthened her woman's confidence in her power to hold her man. After all, Mabel Thurseley was not very pretty; with the sea between G.o.dfrey and Woburn Square, there would be full cause for hope.

She dreamed of Italian skies. Though she had recalled and recognized his liberty, under their bargain, to leave her, it was not prominent in her mind. The natural woman was fighting--and fights, it may be supposed, much the same, whatever her status by law or her rights by agreement.

She had telegraphed to G.o.dfrey the proposed time of her arrival at the studio, and expected to find him there; for surely the slight chill would be better by now? He was not there; yet apparently the chill was better, for he had been there earlier in the day. The old Irish servant gave her this news, looking at her in what Winnie felt to be rather an odd way. The woman lingered by the door for a minute, glancing round the room, seeming half in a mind to say something more, and half in a mind not to. In the end she said nothing, and went out in silence--as a rule she was loquacious--when her mistress told her that she would give any necessary orders after she had unpacked. Winnie's mind was on the idea of carrying G.o.dfrey off that very night.

Short as her absence had been, the studio looked somehow unfamiliar; it had less of the 'lived in' look which she a.s.sociated with it as a pleasant feature. She scanned it with awakening curiosity. The board on which he stretched his drawing-paper--what had become of that? His tobacco-jar was not in its usual place; technical books of his were missing from their appointed shelf. He must have felt inclined for work in spite of the chill, and come to fetch them; at least, that would account for the board and books, if not as well for the tobacco-jar. She moved towards the kitchen, to inquire of the servant, but suddenly came to a full stop in the middle of the room. She stood there for a moment, then turned sharp round and went up the stairs that led to the bedrooms--not to unpack, for she left her own trunk and dressing-bag on the floor of the studio.

She went upstairs slowly, determinedly calm, but with beating heart and a touch of vivid colour on her cheeks. The door of his bedroom stood wide open. The furniture was all in its place; the toilet table was no barer than his visit to Woburn Square accounted for; the little clock she had given him ticked away on the mantelpiece. But Winnie made straight for the chest of drawers, and quickly opened and shut one after another. They were all empty. The wardrobe yielded the same result. All his clothes had gone, and his boots--all of them. She went back to the landing and opened the door of a cupboard, where his portmanteau was usually stowed away; it was gone. Preparation for a long stay--somewhere! Yet the chill was so much better that he had been able to visit the studio that morning, when, no doubt, he had carried off all these things--all of them, not merely drawing-board, books, and tobacco-jar.

She moved quickly into her own room. There all was as usual; but she had thought that perhaps there would be a letter. None was visible. A curious quiet, almost a desolation, seemed to brood over the little room; it too took on, suddenly, an uninhabited air. She sank into a wicker arm-chair and sat there quite still for some minutes. Then she sprang briskly to her feet again, exclaiming, "Oh, but nonsense!"

She was seeking indignantly to repel the conviction which was mastering her mind. Surely he would not, could not, do it like this? In her rare contemplation of their possible parting, as bargained for, there had always been not indeed argument, much less recrimination, but much friendly discussion, a calm survey of the situation, probably an agreement to 'try it again' for a longer or shorter time, till a mature and wise decision, satisfactory to the reason, if not to the feelings, of both, should be arrived at. But this would be sheer running away--literal running away from her, from the problem, from the situation. It could not be. There must be some explanation.

Sounds were easily audible in the small flimsy dwelling. She heard the front door bell ring--and sat listening for his voice calling her, his step across the studio floor, and then coming up the stairs. Neither voice came, nor step; besides--odd she had not remembered it before--of course he would have used his latchkey. She got up, took off her jacket, unpinned her hat, laid it on the bed, looked to her hair, and then went slowly downstairs again.

Amy Ledstone was standing in the middle of the studio; the knock had been hers. Then in an instant Winnie knew, and in an instant she put on her armour. Her tone was cool and her manner self-possessed; they need not both be cowards--she and G.o.dfrey!

"How do you do, Miss Ledstone? You've come to tell me something?"

"Yes." Amy Ledstone was neither cool nor self-possessed. Her voice trembled violently; it was an evident effort for her not to break into sobbing. "He--he still loves you; he told me to tell you that."

"Told you to tell me! Isn't that rather odd?--After all our--well, he's been able to tell me for himself before. Won't you sit down?" She sat herself as she spoke.

"No, thank you. But he can't bear to see you; he can't trust himself. He told me to say that. He said you'd understand--that you had a--an understanding. Only he couldn't bear to say good-bye."

"He's not coming back?"

"He was really rather seedy on Sunday--so he stayed. And--and on Sunday night mother had a bad attack; we were really alarmed."

Winnie nodded. Always, from the very beginning, a dangerous enemy--mother's weak heart!

"Mother had been with him all day--she wouldn't leave him. I suppose she got over-tired, and there was the strain of--of the situation; and daddy--my father--broke out on G.o.dfrey the next morning; and I'd broken out on him Christmas night."

"You?" There was a touch of reproach in the question.

"Yes, I told him he must choose. He really made love to Mabel all the time. So I told him----"

"I see." She smiled faintly. "The poor boy can't have had a pleasant Christmas, Miss Ledstone!"

"We were all at him, all three of us!" She stretched out her hands suddenly. "Do try to understand that he had something to bear too. And that we had--thinking as we do about it. It was hard for other people besides you. Father's getting old, and G.o.dfrey's all mother and I----"

Winnie nodded her understanding of the broken sentence.

"I haven't said a word against him or any of you. He had a right to do what he has done, though he's done it in a way I didn't think he'd choose."

"He doesn't trust himself, and mother--oh!" Her forlorn murmuring ended hopelessly in nothing.

"Mother! Yes! What a lot of things there are to think of! I had just made up my mind to take him right away from all of you, to take him abroad. I could have done it if I'd found him here. Perhaps I could do it still--I wonder?"

Amy shivered uncomfortably under the thoughtful gaze of her companion's eyes.

"I might write letters too--as you used to--and contrive secret meetings. He's said nothing about Miss Thurseley to me--I don't suppose he'd say anything about me to Miss Thurseley. But he'd meet me all the same, I think. That seems to be his way; only before your last visit I didn't know it."

"Indeed he won't think of Mabel--not for a long while. He's so--so broken up."

Winnie raised her brows slightly; she was beginning to form an opinion of her own about that--an opinion not likely to be too generous to G.o.dfrey.

Amy spoke with obvious effort, with an air of shame. "Mother begged and prayed me to--to try and persuade you----" She broke off again.

"To let him alone? I suppose she would. She thinks I've done all the harm? As far as he's concerned, I suppose I have. If we'd gone about it in the ordinary way, he really needn't have suffered at all."

Again came Amy's uncomfortable shiver; she was not at home with steady contemplation of the ways of the world; it had not come across her path any more than love-making had.

"You can tell your mother that I'll let him alone. Then, I hope, she'll get better."

"Oh, I don't understand you!"

"No? Well, I didn't understand G.o.dfrey. But in your case it doesn't matter. Why should you want to? You can all put me out of your thoughts from to-day."

"I can't!" cried Amy; "I shall never be able to!" Suddenly she came over to Winnie, and, standing before her, rather awkwardly, burst into tears.

"How can you be so hard?" she moaned. "Don't you see that I'm terribly unhappy for you? But it's hopeless to try to tell you. You're so--so hard. And I've got to go back home, where they'll be----"

Winnie supplied the word--"Jubilant? Yes." She frowned. "You cry, and I don't--it is rather funny. I wonder if I shall cry when you've gone!"

"Oh, do you love him, or don't you?"

Winnie's brows were raised again. In view of what had occurred that day, of the sudden revelation of G.o.dfrey, of the abrupt change his act had wrought in her relations to him, the question seemed to imply an unreal simplicity of the emotions, a falsely uncomplicated contrast between two states of feeling, standing distantly over against one another. Such a conception in no way corresponded with her present feelings about G.o.dfrey Ledstone. The man she loved had done the thing she could not forgive--did she love him? Yet if she did not love him, why could she not forgive him? Unless she loved him, it was small matter that he should be ashamed and run away. But if he were ashamed and ran away, how could she love? Love and contempt, tenderness and repulsion, seemed woven into one fabric of intricate, almost untraceable pattern. How could she describe that to Amy Ledstone?

"I suppose I love my G.o.dfrey, but he seems not to be the same as yours.

I can't put it better than that. And you love yours, and not mine. I think that's all we can say about it."

Amy had her complications of feeling too. She dried her eyes, mournfully saying, "That's not true about me. I like yours best--if I know what you mean. He was a man, anyhow. But then I know it's wicked to feel like that."

Winnie looked up at her. "Of course you must think it wicked--I quite see that--but you do understand more than I thought," she said. "And you won't think I'm abusing him? It wouldn't seem wicked to me at all--if I'd happened on the right man. But I didn't. That's all. And this way of ending it seems somehow to--to defile it all. The end spoils it all.

That seems to me shamefully unfair. He had a right to go, but he had no right to be ashamed. And he is ashamed, and almost makes me ashamed. I could almost hate him for it."

"We've made him ashamed. You must hate us."

"I like you. And--no--how could I hate your father and mother? They made me no promise; I've given nothing to them on the strength of a promise.

But to him I've given everything I had; not much, I know, but still--everything."