FRUIT OF THE TREE
Hobart Gaynor undertook his embassy with reluctance. He was busily
occupied over his own affairs--he was to be married in a fortnight--and
he was only unwillingly convinced by Mr. Attlebury's suave demonstration
of where his duty lay, and by the fine-sounding promises which that
zealous diplomatist made in Cyril Maxon's name. Waiving the question
whether things had been all wrong in the past, Attlebury gave a pledge
that they should be all right in the future; all that a reasonable woman
could ask, with an ample allowance for whims into the bargain. That was
the offer, put briefly. Gaynor doubted, and, much as he wished well to
Winnie Maxon, he did not desire to become in any sense responsible for
her; he did not want to persuade or to dissuade. Indeed, at first, he
would undertake no more than a fair presentment of Maxon's invitation.
Attlebury persisted; the woman was young, pretty, not of a very stable
character; her only safety was to be with her husband. Her old friend
could not resist the appeal; he came into line. But when he asked Cicely
Marshfield's applause for his action, he could not help feeling that she
was, to use his own colloquial expression, rather "sniffy" about it; she
did not appear fully to appreciate his obligation to save Winnie Maxon.
He arrived at Shaylor's Patch before lunch. Stephen Aikenhead received
him with cordiality, faintly tinged, as it seemed to the visitor, with
compassion. Tora's manner enforced the impression; she treated him as a
good man foredoomed to failure. "Of course you must have your talk with
her," Stephen said. "You shall have it after lunch." He spoke of the
talk rather as a ceremony to be performed than as a conference likely to
produce practical results.
"I hope you'll back me up--and Mrs. Aikenhead too?" said the ambassador.
The Aikenheads looked at one another. Tora smiled. Stephen rubbed his
forehead. At the moment lunch was announced, and, the next, Winnie came
into the room, closely followed by Godfrey Ledstone.
When Hobart saw her, a new doubt smote him--a doubt not of the success
(he was doubtful enough about that already), but of the merits of his
mission. She looked a different woman from the despairing rebel who had
come to him in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Her eyes were bright, there was
colour in her cheeks; her manner, without losing its attractive quietude
and demureness, was gay and joyous. There might be something in what she
had said about being "crushed" at her husband's house! It might not be
merely a flourish of feminine rhetoric.
"The country has done wonders for you, Winnie," he said, as he shook
hands.
"I'm having a lovely rest." To Hobart she seemed to add, "Why need you
come and disturb it?"
Another omen unfavourable in the envoy's eyes was the obvious pleasure
she took in Ledstone's presence and conversation; and yet another was
the young man's unobtrusive but evident certainty that all he said and
did would be well received. On Ledstone's fascinating attentions, no
less than on the Aikenheads' affectionate and indulgent friendship, he
had to ask her to turn her back. For what? A parcel of promises made by
Attlebury in Maxon's name! Were they of much more practical value than
what godfathers and godmothers promise and vow at a baby's christening?
Could they change the natural man in Maxon and avail against his
original sin? But, on the other hand, were not indulgent friendships,
and, still more, charming attentions, exactly the dangers against which
he had come to warn her? She was young, pretty, and not of a very stable
character--Attlebury's words came back. The indulgent friendship would
mine her defences; then the charming attentions would deliver their
assault. No--Attlebury was right, his own mission was right; but it bore
hard on poor Winnie Maxon. A reluctant messenger, a prophet too sensible
of the other side of the argument (which prophets should never be), he
found himself no match for the forces which now moved and dominated
Winnie Maxon. She had been resolved when she was only crying for and
dreaming of liberty. Would she be less resolved now that she had tasted
it? And was now enjoying it, not amid frowns or reproofs, but with the
countenance of her friends and the generally, though not universally,
implied approval of all the people she met? Attlebury could make the
disapproval of the great world outside sound a terrible thing; sheltered
at Shaylor's Patch, Winnie did not hear its voice. Attlebury might hint
at terrible dangers; such men thought it "dangerous" for a woman to have
any pleasure in her life!
She listened to Hobart kindly and patiently enough, but always with
reiterated shakes of her pretty head. At some of the promises she fairly
laughed--they were so entirely different from the Cyril Maxon she knew.
"It's no use," she declared. "Whatever may be right, whatever may be
wrong, I'm not going back. The law ought to set me free (this was an
outcome of Shaylor's Patch!). Since it doesn't, I set myself free,
that's all."
"But what are you going to do?"
"Either take a cottage down here or a tiny flat in London."
"I didn't ask where you were going to live, but what you were going to
do." Hobart was a patient man, but few people's tempers are quite
unaffected by blank failure, by a serene disregard of their arguments.
"Do? Oh, I dare say I shall take up some movement. I hear a lot about
that sort of thing down here, and I'm rather interested."
"Oh, you're not the sort of woman who buries herself in a movement, as
you call it."
"I can make friends, like other people, I suppose. I needn't bury
myself."
"Yes, you can make friends fast enough! Winnie, you're avoiding the crux
of the matter."
"Oh, you're back to your dangers! Well, I think I can trust myself to
behave properly."
"You ought to be sure of it."
"Are you being polite?"
"Oh, hang politeness! This is a vital question for you."
The colour mounted in her cheeks; for the first time she showed some
sign of embarrassment. But the embarrassment and the feelings from which
it sprang--those new feelings of the last fortnight--could not make her
waver. They reinforced her resolution with all the power of emotion.
They made "going back" still more terrible, a renunciation now as well
as a slavery. Her eyes, though not her words, had promised Godfrey
Ledstone that she would not go back. What then, as Hobart Gaynor asked,
was she going to do? The time for putting that question had not come.
There was the pleasure now--not yet the perplexity.
She gave a vexed laugh. "Whether it's vital or not, at any rate it's a
question for me, as you say yourself, and for me only. And I must risk
it, Hobart. After all, there are different--well, ideas--on that sort of
subject, aren't there?" Here Shaylor's Patch showed its influence again.
"I rather wish you hadn't come to this house," he said slowly.
"I've been happier here than anywhere in the world. What have you
against it?"
"Well, I can't claim to know much about it, but don't some queer people
come?"
"Plenty!" she laughed. "It's very amusing."
He smiled, frowned, looked, and indeed felt, a little foolish--as the
average man does when he finds himself called upon to take the moral
line.
"Rather--er--unsettling?" he hazarded lamely.
"Very stimulating."
"Well, I can say no more. I've done my job. Take care of yourself,
Winnie."
"Oh yes, I will; you may be sure of that. Hobart, will you tell Cyril
that I'm very, very sorry, and that I hope he'll be happy, and wish him
splendid success and prosperity?"
"I'll tell him--if you won't write yourself."
"I couldn't. That would open it all again. I'll write to you, if there's
any business to be settled."
Hobart Gaynor, thinking over the conversation on his way back to town,
decided that Winnie had got on apace. Well, if she chose to take her
life into her own hands, she herself must make the best of it. He did
not pretend to feel quite easy--he could not get Godfrey Ledstone out of
his head--but he said nothing about such apprehensions when he reported
the failure of his mission. He also delivered Winnie's message to her
husband. Cyril Maxon's lips set hard, almost savagely, over it. "We
shall see," he said. He could not prevent her from doing what she had
done, but he would not acknowledge it as setting up a permanent or
recognized state of affairs. For the time disobedient, Winnie was still
his wife. He would not accept her valediction. His house was still open
to her and, after a decent period of penance, his heart.
A plain case of Stephen Aikenhead's "In solution"! What to Cyril was an
indissoluble relationship (and more than that), not even temporarily
suspended, but rather defied and violated, was to his wife a thing now
at last--by her final decision--over and done with so far as it affected
her position towards Cyril himself. He was out of her life--at last. She
had her life--at last. Not quite entirely free, this life she had won by
her bold defiance. She still acknowledged limitations, even while she
nibbled at the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that grew at Shaylor's
Patch. Yet how incomparably more free than the old life! She was amazed
to find with how little difficulty, with how slight a pang, and with how
immense a satisfaction she had broken the bond--or had broken bounds,
for she felt remarkably like a school-boy on a forbidden spree. What
great things a little courage will effect! How the difficulties vanish
when they are faced! Why, for five whole years, had she not seen that
the door was open and walked out of it? Here she was--out! And nothing
terrible seemed to happen.
"Well, I've done it now for good and all," she said to Stephen
Aikenhead.
"Oh yes, you've done it. And what are you going to do next?"
"Just what Hobart asked me! Why should he--or why should you? If a woman
doesn't marry, or becomes a widow, you don't ask her what she's going to
do next! Consider me unmarried, or, if you like, a widow."
"That's all very well--excellently put. I am rebuked!" Stephen smiled
comfortably and broadly. "You women do put things well. But may I
observe that, if you were the sort of woman you're asking me to think
about, you'd probably be living pretty contentedly with Cyril Maxon?"
The point was presented plainly enough for her. She smiled reflectively.
"I think I see. Yes!"
"People differ as well as cases."
She sat down by him, much interested. They were, it seemed, to talk
about herself.
"Hobart Gaynor's rather uneasy about me, I think."
"And you about yourself?"
"No, I'm just rather excited, Stephen."
"You're a small boat--and it's a big sea."
"That's the excitement of it. I've been--land-locked--for years. Oh,
beached--whatever's your best metaphor for somebody wasting all this
fine life!"
"Do you suppose you made your husband happy?"
The question was unexpected. But there was no side of a situation too
forlorn for Stephen's notice.
"I really don't know," said Winnie. "I always seemed to be rather--well,
rather a minor interest."
"I expect not--I really expect not, you know."
"Supposing I was, or supposing I wasn't--what does it amount to?"
"I was only just looking at it from his point of view for a minute."
"Did he make me happy?"
"Oh, certainly the thing wasn't successful all round," Stephen hastily
conceded.
"He said marriage wasn't invented solely to make people happy."
"Well, I suppose he's got an argument there. But you probably thought
that the institution might chuck in a little more of that ingredient
incidentally?"
"Rather my feeling--yes. You put things well too, now and then,
Stephen."
"You suffer under the disadvantage of being a very attractive woman."
"We must bear our infirmities with patience, mustn't we?"
She was this evening in a rare vein of excited pleasure, gay,
challenging, admirably provoking, exulting in her freedom, dangling
before her own dazzled eyes all its possibilities. Stephen gave a deep
chuckle.
"I think I'll go in and tell Tora that I'm infernally in love with you,"
he remarked, rising from his chair.
"It would be awfully amusing to hear what she says. But--are you?"
A rolling laugh, full of applause, not empty of pity, rumbled over the
lawn as Stephen walked back to the house.
No, Stephen was not in love with her; that was certain. He admitted
every conceivable doubt as to his duty, but harboured none as to his
inclination. That trait of his might, to Winnie's present mood, have
been vexatious had he chanced to be the only man in the world, or even
the only one in or near Shaylor's Patch. Winnie sat in the twilight,
smiling roguishly. She had no fears for herself; far less had she
formed any designs. She was simply in joyful rebound from long
suppression. Her spirit demanded plenty of fun, with perhaps a spice of
mischief--mischief really harmless. So much seemed to her a debt long
overdue from life and the world. Yet peril was there, unseen by herself.
For there is peril when longings for fun and mischief centre
persistently round one figure, finding in it, and in it only, their
imagined realization.
But was peril the right word--was it the word proper to use at Shaylor's
Patch? Being no fool, Stephen Aikenhead saw clearly enough the chance
that a certain thing would happen--or was happening. But how should this
chance be regarded? The law--formed by this and that influence,
historical, social, and religious--had laid upon this young woman a
burden heavier than she was able to bear. So Stephen started his
consideration of the case. Retort--she ought to have been stronger! It
did not seem a very helpful retort; it might be true, but it led
nowhere. The law then had failed with the young woman. Now it said,
"Well, if you won't do that, at least you shan't do anything else with
my sanction--and my sanction is highly necessary to your comfort,
certainly here, and, as a great many people believe, hereafter." That
might be right, because it was difficult to deny the general proposition
that laws ought to be kept, under pain of penalties. Yet in this
particular instance there seemed something rather vindictive about it.
It was not as if the young woman wanted to rob churches or pick
pockets--things obviously offensive and hurtful to her neighbours. All
she would want (supposing the thing did happen) would be to behave in a
perfectly natural and normal fashion. All she would be objecting to
would be a law-enjoined sterilization of a great side of her nature. She
would be wronging her husband? If wrong there were, surely the
substantial wrong lay in deserting him, not in making the best of her
own life afterwards? She might have children--would they suffer? Living
in the social world he did, Stephen could not see that they need suffer
appreciably; and they were, after all, hypothetical--inserted into the
argument for the sake of logical completeness. She would wound other
people's convictions and feelings? No doubt, but that argument went too
far. Every innovator, every reformer, nay, every fighting politician,
does as much. The day for putting ring-fences round opinions, and
threatening trespassers with prosecution, was surely over.
Well, then, would she hurt herself? The argument descended abruptly from
the general to the particular. It left principle, and came to prudence,
asking no longer what she had a right to do, but what she would be wise
to do in her own interests. A man may hold a thing not wrong, and yet be
a fool if he does it in a place where the neighbours are so sure of its
iniquity that they will duck him in the horse-pond. But suppose him to
be a mighty man of valour, whom nobody cares to tackle! He can snap his
fingers at the neighbours and follow his own conscience or inclination,
free from fear and heedless of disapprobation.
"That's as far as I can get," Stephen concluded, rubbing his forehead,
as his habit was in moments of meditation. The conclusion did not seem
wholly moral, or wholly logical, but it might work out fairly well in
practice; government by the law--that is, the opinion of the
majority--for the weak (themselves the majority), government by their
own consciences and inclinations for the strong. Probably it was a rough
statement of what generally happened, if the terms weak and strong might
be taken to sum up the complex whole of a man's circumstances and
character; both must by all means be considered.
But who are the strong? How can they judge of their prowess until they
are in the thick of the fray? If it fails them then, it's too late--and
away to the horse-pond! You do poor service to a friend if you flatter
him in this matter. When he finds himself in the pond, he will not be so
grateful for your good opinion.
Winnie came in, bright-eyed, softly singing, making for upstairs at a
hasty pace.
"I shall be late for dinner!" she cried. "I met Mr. Ledstone, and he
made me go for a little walk."
"Did you enjoy it?" asked Stephen politely.
"Yes, thank you, Stephen, very much."
She was gone. Stephen sighed. She had only one life--that was the
unspoken plea of her youth, her beauty, and her new-born zest in living.
Say what you like, the plea was cogent.