Mrs. Maxon Protests Part 29

He got up from the chair into which he had plunged himself when he came in.

"Pretty gay here, isn't it? Oh, you do know how to rub it in, all of you! I should think living in this house would drive any man to drink and blue ruin in a fortnight."

Amy sewed on. She had offered to talk, but what he said seemed to call for no comment. He strode to the door and opened it violently. "I'm off to bed."

"Good-night, G.o.dfrey," said Amy; her speech was smothered by the banging of the door.

Poor sinner! Poor creature! Winnie Maxon might indeed plead that her theory had not been fairly tried; she had chosen the wrong man for the experiment.

Here, then--save for the one formality on which Cyril Maxon now insisted--Winnie and the Ledstone family were at the parting of the ways. Their concurrence had been fortuitous--it was odd what people met one another at Shaylor's Patch, Stephen's appet.i.te for humanity being so voracious--fortuitous, and ill-starred for all parties. They would not let her into their life; they would not rest till they had ejected her from her tainted connexion with it. Now they went out of hers. She remembered G.o.dfrey as her great disappointment, her lost illusion, her blunder; Amy as it were with a friendly stretching-out of hands across a gulf impa.s.sable; the old folk with understanding and toleration--since they did no other than what they and she herself had been taught to regard as right. How could the old change their ideas of right?

Their memory of her was far harder--naturally, perhaps. She was a raider, a brigand, a sadly disturbing and destructive invader. At last she had been driven out, but a track of desolation spread behind her retreating steps. Indeed there were spots where the herbage never grew again. The old folk forgave their son and lived to be proud of him once more. But Amy Ledstone had gauged her brother with an accuracy destructive of love; and within twelve months Mabel Thurseley married a stockbroker, an excellent fellow with a growing business. She never knew it, but she, at least, had cause for grat.i.tude to Winnie Maxon.

G.o.dfrey returned to the obedience of the code. He was at home there. It was an air that he could breathe. The air of Shaylor's Patch was not--nor that of the Kensington studio.

CHAPTER XVIII

NOTHING SERIOUS

"By the law came sin----" quoted Stephen Aikenhead.

"He only meant the Jewish law. Man, ye're hopeless." Dennehy tousled his hair.

The February afternoon was mild; Stephen was a fanatic about open air, if about nothing else. The four sat on the lawn at Shaylor's Patch, well wrapped up--Stephen, Tora, and Dennehy in rough country wraps, Winnie in a stately sealskin coat, the gift of Mrs. Lenoir. She had taken to dressing Winnie, in spite of half-hearted remonstrances and with notable results.

"But the deuce is," Stephen continued--this time on his own account and, therefore, less authoritatively--"that when you take away the law, the sin doesn't go too."

Winnie's story was by now known to these three good friends. Already it was being discussed more as a problem than as a tragedy. Some excuse might be found in Winnie's air and manner. She was in fine looks and good spirits, interested and alert, distinctly resilient against the blows of fortune and the miscarriage of theoretical experiments. So much time and change had done for her.

"And it seems just as true of any other laws, even if he did mean the Jewish, d.i.c.k," Stephen ended.

"Don't lots of husbands, tied up just as tight as anything or anybody can tie them, cut loose and run away just the same?" asked Tora.

"And wives," added Winnie--who had done it, and had a right to speak.

"It's like the old dispute about the franchise and the agricultural labourer. I remember my father telling me about it somewhere in the eighties--when I was quite a small boy. One side said the labourer oughtn't to have the vote till he was fit for it, the other said he'd never be fit for it till he had it."

"Oh, well, that's to some extent like the woman question," Tora remarked.

"Are we to change the law first or people first? Hope a better law will make better people, or tell the people they can't have a better law till they're better themselves?"

"Stephen, you've a glimmer of sense in you this afternoon."

"Well, d.i.c.k, we don't want to end by merely making things easier for brutes and curs--male or female."

"I think you're a little wanting in the broad view to-day, Stephen.

You're too much affected by Winnie's particular case. Isn't it better to get rid of brutes and curs anyhow? The quicker and easier, the better."

Tora was, as usual, uncompromising.

"Everybody seems to put a good point. That's the puzzle," said Stephen, who was obviously enjoying the puzzle very much.

"Oh, ye're not even logical to-day, Tora," Dennehy complained, "which I will admit you sometimes are, according to your wrong-headed principles.

Ye call the man a brute or a cur, and this and that--oh, ye meant G.o.dfrey! What's the man done that he hadn't a right to do on your own showing? His manners were bad, maybe."

"It's our own showing that we're now engaged in examining, if you'll permit us, d.i.c.k," Stephen rejoined imperturbably. "When a man's considering whether he's been wrong, it's a pity to scold him; because the practice is both rare and laudable."

"Oh, you mustn't even consider whether I've been wrong, Stephen," Winnie cried. "Wrong in principle, I mean. As to the particular person--but I don't want to abuse him, poor fellow. His environment----"

"That's a d.a.m.nable word, saving your presence," Dennehy interrupted.

"Nowadays whenever a scoundrel does a dirty trick, he lays it to the account of his environment."

"But that's just what I meant, d.i.c.k."

"Say the devil, and ye're nearer the mark, Winnie."

"Environment's more hopeful," Stephen suggested. "You see, we may be able to change that. Over your _protege_ we have no jurisdiction."

"He may have over you, though, some day! Oh, I'll go for a walk, and clear my head of all your nonsense."

"Don't forget you promised to take me to the station after tea," said Winnie.

"Forget it!" exclaimed d.i.c.k Dennehy in scorn indescribable. "Now will I forget it--is it likely, Winnie?" He swung off into the house to get his walking-stick.

Tora Aikenhead shook her head in patient reproof. No getting reason into d.i.c.k's, no hope of it at all! It was just d.i.c.k's opinion of her.

A short silence followed Dennehy's departure. Then Stephen Aikenhead spoke again.

"You've had a rough time, Winnie. Are you sorry you ever went in for it?"

"No, it was the only thing to try; and it has resulted--or is just going to--in my being free. But I did fail in one thing. I was much more angry with G.o.dfrey than I had any right to be. I was angry--yes, angry, not merely grieved--because he left me, as well as because he was afraid to do it in a straightforward way. I didn't live up to my theories there."

"I don't know that I think any theory easy to live up to," said Tora.

"Is the ordinary theory of marriage easy to live up to either?"

"It's always interesting to see how few people live up to their theories." Stephen smiled. "It seems to me your husband isn't living up to his."

"No, he isn't, and it's rather consoling. I don't fancy it ever entered his head that he would have to try it in practice himself. Rather your own case, isn't it, Stephen? You've never really found what any--any difficulty could mean to you."

"Oh, I know I'm accused of that. I can't help it; it's absolutely impossible to get up a row with Tora. And even I don't say that you ought to walk out of the house just for the fun of it!"

"We prove our theory best by the fact of the theory making no difference," said Tora.

"I suppose that in the end it's only the failures who want theories at all," Winnie mused.