Mrs. Maxon Protests Part 32

"If he wasn't much in love, he'd be rather inclined to smile over your telling him, wouldn't he?"

The suggestion went home to Winnie. "I shouldn't want to risk that."

"Unless circ.u.mstances make it absolutely necessary, I should let things stay as they are till your case is over, at all events. It'll be so much pleasanter for you to be incog. till then."

There was something in that suggestion too. Not great on theory, Mrs.

Lenoir took good practical points.

"It's rather giving up my point of view," Winnie objected.

Mrs. Lenoir smiled in a slightly contemptuous kindness. "Oh, my poor child, take a holiday from your point of view, as well as from all the rest of it. And really it's quixotic of you to be so much afraid of giving some man or other a little shock, after all they've made you suffer."

Winnie felt the appeal to the cause of the s.e.x also. In short all Mrs.

Lenoir's points told; they seemed full of workaday wisdom and reasonable common-sense.

"Just don't think about it again till after the case. Promise me."

"That is best, I think, in the end. Yes, I promise, Mrs. Lenoir."

Mrs. Lenoir said nothing about the possibility of the two officers 'turning up' at Madeira--or at Southampton docks. Diplomacy forbade; the connection would have been too rudely obvious; it might have led Winnie to reconsider her pledge. In fact things were so managed--mainly by a policy of masterly inactivity, tempered by just one hint to the General--that the first Winnie heard of this idea came neither from Mrs.

Lenoir nor from the General, but from Bertie Merriam himself. Emanating from that quarter, the suggestion could not be brusquely repelled; it was bound to meet with courteous consideration. Indeed, to refuse to accept it would be extremely difficult. To Mrs. Lenoir Winnie might have avowed the only possible objection; she could not so much as hint at it to the Major. Mrs. Lenoir knew her way about, as the colloquial phrase has it.

Winnie's relations with Bertie Merriam had now reached the stage which a mature and retrospective judgment, though not, of course, the heat of youth, may perhaps declare to be the pleasantest that can exist between man and woman--a congenial friendship coloured into a warmer tint by admiration on the one side and a flattered recognition of it on the other. Winnie's recent experience raised recognition to the height of gratification, almost to that of grat.i.tude. Not only her theory had suffered at G.o.dfrey Ledstone's hands; deny it though she might, her vanity also had been wounded. She welcomed balms, and smiled kindly on any who would administer them. After an unfortunate experience in love, people are said often to welcome attentions from a new-comer 'out of pique'; it is likely that the motive is less often vexation with the offender than grat.i.tude to the successor, who restores pride and gives back to life its potentiality of pleasure. This was Winnie's mood. She was willing to take Mrs. Lenoir's advice not merely on the specific point on which it was offered. She was willing to accept it all round--willing, so far as she could, to forget her theories and her point of view, as well as what they had entailed upon her. She wanted to enjoy the pleasant things of life for awhile; one could not be playing apostle or martyr all the time! She was ready to see what this new episode, this journey and this holiday, had to offer; she was not unwilling to see how much she might be inclined to like Major Merriam.

Yet all this is to a.n.a.lyse her far more than she a.n.a.lysed herself. In her it was, in reality, the youthful blood moving again, the rebound from sorrow, the rea.s.sertion of the right of her charms and its unimpeded exercise. Such a mood is not one where the finer shades of scruple are likely to prevail; it is too purely a natural and primitive movement of mind and body. Besides, Winnie could always, as Mrs. Lenoir reminded her, soothe a qualm of conscience by a staggering _tu quoque_ launched against the male s.e.x in general.

Again, in an unconscious and blindly instinctive way, she was a student of human nature, and rather a head-strong one. She did not readily rest in ignorance about people, or even find repose in doubt. She liked to search, test, cla.s.sify, and be guided by the result. Her history showed it. She had tested Cyril Maxon, cla.s.sified him, and acted on her conclusion. She had experimented on G.o.dfrey Ledstone, cla.s.sified him, found that she had miscalculated, paid the expense of an unsuccessful experiment, and accepted the issue of it. Here, now, was new material--men of a kind to whom her experience had not previously introduced her in any considerable degree of intimacy. She might often have dined in the company of such; but under Maxon's roof real knowledge of other men was not easily come by.

Men of views and visions, men of affairs and ambitions, men of ease and pleasure--among these her lot had been cast since she left her father's house. The Merriams were pre-eminently men of duty. They had their opinions, and both took their recreations with a healthy zest; but the Service was as the breath of their nostrils. The General was the cleverer soldier of the two, as the Kala Kin Expedition bore witness.

The son was not likely ever to command more than a regiment or, at most, a brigade; higher distinctions must be left to the second brother.

Bertie's enthusiasm corresponded nicely with his gifts. He adored the regiment, and in due course a few months would see him Lieutenant-Colonel; if only the regiment could see service under his command, how joyously would he sing his _Nunc dimittis_, with duty done and his name on an honourable roll!

Winnie sat regarding his pleasant tanned face, his sincere pale blue eyes, and his very well-made clothes, with a calm satisfaction. She had been hearing a good deal about the regiment, but the gossip amused her.

"And where do the officers' wives--I suppose some of you have wives?--come in?" she asked.

"Oh, they're awfully important, Miss Wilson. The social tone depends so much on them. You see, with a parcel of young chaps--the subalterns, you know--well, you do see, don't you?"

"Well, I think I can see that, Major Merriam. They mustn't flirt with the subalterns? At any rate, not too much?"

"That's rotten. But they ought to teach them their manners."

"Ought to be motherly? You don't look as if that sounded quite right!

Elder-sisterly?"

"That's more like it, Miss Wilson."

He said 'Miss Wilson' rather often, or so it struck Winnie--just as Bob Purnett used to say 'Mrs. Ledstone' much too often. He gave her another little jar the next moment. He left the subject of officers' wives, and leant forward to her with an ingratiating yet rather apologetic smile.

"I say, do you know what the General has had the cheek to suggest to your cousin?"

Winnie had forgotten her cue. "My cousin?" she exclaimed in surprise.

"Why, Mrs. Lenoir! She is your cousin, isn't she?"

The lie direct Winnie disliked. Yet could she betray her benefactress?

"It's so awfully distant that I forget the cousin in the friend," she said, with an uneasy little laugh. "But what has the General had the cheek--your phrase, not mine--to suggest to Mrs. Lenoir?" She seemed to have forgotten the cousin again, for she said 'Mrs. Lenoir,' not 'Cousin Clara.' As, however, the Major had never heard her say anything else, the point did not attract his notice.

"Why, that we four might make a party of it as far as Madeira. Nice little place, though I suppose it won't be as lively now as it was when the war was going on."

"It sounds delightful."

"I've got a paper to read to the Naval and Military Inst.i.tute in six weeks' time. I could just fit it in--and write the thing out there, you know."

"We'd all help you," said Winnie.

The Major detected raillery. "I should have a go at it before you were up in the morning."

"Oh, well, then I must be content with the humble function of helping to relax your mind afterwards."

"But you wouldn't mind our coming?"

"You don't appreciate how fond I am of the General."

"Well, he half-worships you, Miss Wilson. And you'll put up with my company for his sake?"

"He's too distinguished a man to carry the rugs and cushions."

"You can f.a.g me as much as you like on board. The difficulty is to get enough moving about."

"On that distinct understanding, I won't veto the party, Major Merriam."

She laughed. "But, of course, I've really got nothing to say to it. It's for Mrs. Lenoir to decide, isn't it?"

Bertie Merriam felt that he had obtained permission, but hardly encouragement--just as the General was convinced that he had made a suggestion and not received one. But permission was enough.

"I shall tell the General I've squared you," he said, beaming. "There are jolly excursions to be made, you know. You can either ride, or be carried in a hammock----"

"I wonder if Mrs. Lenoir will care for the excursions!"

"Well, if the seniors want to take it easy, we could do them together, couldn't we, Miss Wilson?"

"To be sure we could," smiled Winnie. "More rugs and cushions for you!

Won't it be what you call fatigue duty?"

"I'll take it on," he declared. "I don't shirk work in a good cause, you know."

One thing about him surprised Winnie, while it also pleased her.

Obviously he considered her witty. She had never been accustomed to take that view of herself. Cyril Maxon would have been amazed at it. Though Stephen Aikenhead now and then gave her credit for a hit, her general att.i.tude towards him was that of an inquirer or a disciple, and disciples may not becomingly bandy witticisms with their masters.

Because Bertie Merriam visibly enjoyed--without attempting to equal--her fencing, she began to enjoy it herself. Nay, more, she began to rely on it. No less than her staggering _tu quoque_ to the male s.e.x, it might serve, at a pinch, to quiet a qualm of conscience. "I can always keep him at his distance." That notion in her mind helped to minimize any scruples to which his admiration, the expedition, the excursions, the rugs and the cushions, might give rise. For if fencing can accord permission, it can surely also refuse it? If the Merriams were anything in this world, they were gentlemen. In matters of the heart a gentleman need not be very clever to take a hint; he feels it.