Mrs. Maxon Protests Part 25

Amy twisted her gloved hands round one another. She was calmer now, but her face was drawn with pain. "Yes, that's true," she said. Then she came out abruptly with what had been behind her spoken words for the last ten minutes, with what she had to say before she could bring herself to leave Winnie. "At any rate, you've pluck. G.o.dfrey's a coward."

Winnie's lips bent in a queer smile. "Don't! Where does it leave me? Oh yes, it's true about him, I suppose. That's my blunder."

Amy walked back to the mantelpiece; she had left her m.u.f.f on it. She took it up and moved towards the door. "I'll go. You must have had enough of the lot of us!"

Winnie had an honest desire to be just, nay, to be kind, to reciprocate a friendliness obviously extended towards her, and extended in spite of a rooted disapproval. But those limits of endurance had been reached again. She had, indeed, had enough of the Ledstones; not even her husband could have suffered more strongly from the feeling. She made an effort.

"Oh, you and I part friends," she called after her visitor's retreating figure. Without turning round, Amy shook her head dolefully, and so pa.s.sed out. Her mission was accomplished.

Almost directly after Amy left, the servant, Dennehy's old Irish woman, came in with tea and b.u.t.tered toast. She drew a chair up to the gas stove, and a little table.

"Make yerself comfortable, me dear," she said.

"Did he say anything to you, Mrs. O'Leary?"

"Said he was going to visit his relations in the North for a bit." Then, after a pause, "Cheer up, mum. There's as good fish----!" And out the old woman shuffled.

Now that was a funny thing to say! 'There's as good fish----!' But Winnie's numb brain was on another tack; she did not pursue the implications of Mrs. O'Leary's remark. Nor did the tender mood, on whose advent she had speculated when she said, 'I wonder if I shall cry, when you've gone,' arrive. Nor was she girding against the Ledstones and Woburn Square any more. Her thoughts went back to her own parting from her husband. "Anyhow, I faced Cyril--we had it out," was the refrain of her thoughts, curiously persistent, as she sat before the stove, drinking her tea and munching her toast, enjoying the warmth, really (though it seemed strange) not so much miserable as intensely combative, with no leisure to indulge in misery, with her back to the wall, and the world--the Giant--advancing against her threateningly. Because her particular little rampart had collapsed entirely, the roof was blown off her shelter, her scheme of life in ruins--a situation cheerfully countered by Mrs. O'Leary's proverbial saying, but not in reality easy to deal with. Her boat was not out fishing; it was stranded, high and dry, on a barren beach. "I did face Cyril!" Again and again it came in pride and bitter resentment. Here she was faced with a _denoment_ typical of a weak mind--at once sudden, violent, and cowardly.

She smoked two or three cigarettes--Ledstone had taught her the habit, undreamed of in her Maxon days--and the hands of the clock moved round.

Half-past six struck. It acted as a practical reminder of immediate results. She had no dinner ordered; if she had, there was n.o.body to eat it with. There was n.o.body to spend the evening with. She would have to sleep alone in the house; Mrs. O'Leary had family cares, and got home to supper and bed at nine o'clock. She need not dine, but she must spend the evening and must sleep, with no company, no protective presence, in all the house. That seemed really rather dreadful.

Her luggage lay on the floor of the studio, still unpacked. She had not given another thought to it; she did now. "Shall I go back to Shaylor's Patch to-night?" It was a very tempting idea. She got up, almost determined; she would find sympathy there; even the tears might come.

She was on the point of making for her bedroom, to put on her hat and jacket again, when another ring came at the bell. A moment later she heard a cheery voice asking, "Mrs. Ledstone at home?"

"But I'm not Mrs. Ledstone any more. Nor Mrs. Maxon! I don't see that I'm anybody."

The thought had just time to flash through her mind before Bob Purnett was ushered in by Mrs. O'Leary.

"Mr. Purnett, mum. Ye'll find the whisky in the usual place, sor, and the soda." It was known that Bob did not affect afternoon tea.

"I thought you'd be back, Mrs. Ledstone. Where's G.o.dfrey? I've a free night, and I want you and him to come and dine and go to a Hall. Don't say no, now! I'm so lonely! Don't mind this cigar, do you, Mrs.

Ledstone?"

There seemed a lot of 'Mrs. Ledstone' about it; but she knew that was Bob's good manners. Besides, it was a minor point. How much candour was at the moment requisite? Even that was not the main point. The main point was--'Here's a friendly human being; in what way am I required by the situation to treat him?'

It was a point admitting of difficult consideration in theory; in practice it needed none whatever. Winnie clutched at the plank in her sea of desolation.

"G.o.dfrey's staying over the night with his people; he's got a chill. I didn't know it, so I came back all the same from the Aikenheads'."--How glib!--"And I'm rather lonely too, Mr. Purnett."

He sat down near her by the stove. "Well--er--old G.o.dfrey wouldn't object, would he?"

"You mean--that I should come alone? With you?"

"Hang it, if he will get chills and stay at Woburn Square! This doesn't strike one as very festive!" He looked round the studio and gave a burlesque shudder.

"It isn't!" said Winnie. "Shall I surprise you, Mr. Purnett, if I tell you that I have never in my life dined out or gone to the theatre alone with any man except Mr. Maxon and G.o.dfrey?"

She puzzled Bob to distraction, or, rather, would have, if he had not given up the problem long ago. "I believe it if you say so, Mrs.

Ledstone," he rejoined submissively. "But G.o.dfrey and I are such good pals. Why shouldn't you?"

"I'm going to," said Winnie.

He rose with cheerful alacrity. "All right. I'll meet you at the Cafe Royal--eight sharp. Jolly glad I looked in! I say, what price poor old G.o.dfrey--with a chill at Woburn Square, while we're having an evening out?" He chuckled merrily.

"It serves G.o.dfrey quite right," she said, with her faintly flickering smile.

Mrs. O'Leary was delighted to be summoned to the task of lacing up one of Winnie's two evening frocks--the better of the two, it may be remarked in pa.s.sing.

"Ye might have moped, me dear, here all by yourself!" she said, and it certainly seemed a possible conjecture.

There was only one fault to be found with Bob Purnett's demeanour during dinner at the Cafe Royal. It was quite friendly and cheerful; it was not distant; but it was rather overwhelmingly respectful. It recognized and emphasized the fact of G.o.dfrey Ledstone's property in her (the thing can hardly be put differently), and of Bob's perfect acquiescence in it. It protested that not a trace of treason lurked in this little excursion.

He even kept on expressing the wish that G.o.dfrey were with them. And he called her 'Mrs. Ledstone' every other sentence. There never was anybody who kept the straitest rule of the code more religiously than Bob Purnett.

But he was in face of a situation of which he was ignorant, and of a nature which (as he was only too well aware) he very little comprehended. Winnie looked very pretty, but she smiled inscrutably. At least she smiled at first. Presently a touch of irritation crept into her manner. She gave him back copious 'Mr. Purnett's' in return for his 'Mrs. Ledstone's.' The conversation became formal, indeed, to Bob, rather dull. He understood her less and less.

It was, on Winnie's extremely rough and not less irritated computation, at the one hundred and fourth 'Mrs. Ledstone' of the evening--which found utterance as they were driving in a cab from the restaurant to the selected place of entertainment--that her patience gave as with a snap, and her bitter humour had its way.

"For heaven's sake don't call me 'Mrs. Ledstone' any more this evening!"

"Eh?" said Bob, removing his cigar from his mouth. "What did you say, Mrs. Led----Oh, I beg pardon!"

"I said, 'Don't call me "Mrs. Ledstone"'--or I shall go mad."

"What am I to call you, then?" He was trying not to stare at her, but was glancing keenly out of the corner of his eye.

"Let's be safe--call me Mrs. Smith," said Winnie.

On which words they arrived at the music hall.

CHAPTER XVI

A WORD TAKEN AT PLEASURE

The excellent entertainment provided for them acted as a palliative to Winnie's irritation and Bob Purnett's acute curiosity. There are no 'intervals' at music halls; they were switched too quickly from diversion to diversion for much opportunity of talk to present itself; and during the 'orchestral interlude,' half-way through the programme, Bob left his place in search of refreshment. When they came out, the subject of 'Mrs. Smith' had not advanced further between them.

Winnie refused her escort's offer of supper. By now she was tired out, and she felt, though reluctant to own it, a childish instinct--since she had to sleep in that desert of a house--to hide her head between the sheets before midnight. This aim a swift motor-cab might just enable her to accomplish.

Nor did the subject advance rapidly when the cab had started. Winnie lay back against the cushions in a languid weariness, not equal to thinking any more about her affairs that night. Bob sat opposite, not beside her, for fear of his cigar smoke troubling her. She often closed her eyes; then he would indulge himself in a cautious scrutiny of her face as the street lamps lit it up in their rapid pa.s.sage. She looked exceedingly pretty, and would look prettier still--indeed, 'ripping'--with just a little bit of make-up; for she was very pale, and life had already drawn three or four delicate but unmistakable lines about eyes and mouth. Bob allowed himself to consider her with more attention than he had ever accorded to her before, and with a new sort of attention--on his own account as a man, not merely as a respectful critic of G.o.dfrey Ledstone's taste. Because that remark of hers about not being called 'Mrs. Ledstone'--on pain of going mad--made a difference. Perhaps it meant only a tiff--or, as he called it, a 'row.' Perhaps it meant more; perhaps it was 'all off' between her and G.o.dfrey--a final separation.

Whatever the remark meant, the state of affairs it indicated brought Winnie more within her present companion's mental horizon. Tiffs and separations were phenomena quite familiar to his experience. The truth might be put higher; tiffs were the necessary concomitant, and separations the inevitable end, of sentimental friendships. They came more or less frequently, sooner or later; but they came. Growing frequency of tiffs usually heralded separations. But sometimes the 'big row' came all at once--a storm out of a blue sky, a sudden hurricane, in which the consort ships lost touch of one another--or one went under, while the other sailed away. All this was familiar ground to Bob Purnett; he had often seen it, he had experienced it, he had joked and, in his own vein, philosophized about it. The thing he had not understood--though he had punctiliously feigned to accept--was the sanct.i.ty and permanence of a tie which was, as everybody really must know, neither sacred nor likely to be permanent. There he was out of his depth; when tiffs and separations came on the scene, Bob felt his feet touch bottom. And he had always been of opinion, in his heart, that, whatever Winnie might believe, G.o.dfrey Ledstone felt just as he did. Of course G.o.dfrey had had to pretend otherwise--well, the face opposite Bob in the cab was worth a bit of pretending.

Winnie spoke briefly, two or three times, of the performance they had seen, but said nothing more about herself. When they arrived at her door, she told him to keep the cab.