SUBVERSIVE
Embedded in his own conceptions as in a rock, Cyril Maxon refused to
believe that his wife would not soon "have had enough of it." He refused
to accept the failure of the envoy through whose mouth he had been
induced to make such great concessions and such generous promises. Could
they, in the end, fail to move her?
His duty towards her--that inexorable duty from which no act of hers
could free him--called upon him for another effort. Attlebury was with
him in this view, though now with less hope of a favourable issue; he
detected the fact that his disciple's desire for self-vindication was no
less strong than his hope of saving Mrs. Maxon, and feared for the
result of this admixture of objects. He ventured on a reminder.
"Of course you want to be able to feel you've done all you could, but
the great thing is to do it successfully. As we regard it, she has more
at stake than you."
"I believe I can persuade her, if I go and see her."
Did he really mean persuade--or did he mean frighten? Attlebury doubted,
and, because he doubted that, doubted yet more of the issue. The
disciple did not give the cause fair play; a teacher has often to
complain of that.
In whatever shape Cyril Maxon may have forecast in his own mind the
interview that he proposed, there was no question as to how Winnie
received the notice of his intention to seek her out in her asylum at
Shaylor's Patch. It filled her with sheer panic; it drove her to what
seemed now her only refuge. Her terror must surely make an appeal
irresistible alike to the ardour and to the chivalry of her lover? Or he
was no lover. Tora and she were at one on the point, though it was not
put too bluntly between them.
"I can't see him; I won't," she declared to Stephen Aikenhead, running
to the man of the house at last, rebel against male domination as she
was.
"Rather difficult to refuse, if he comes here!"
"Then I won't be here when he comes, that's all." Her fright made her
unjust. "If you won't protect me--or can't--I must act for myself." She
flung out of the room, leaving Stephen no chance of protesting that the
bolts and bars of Shaylor's Patch were at her service, and a siege by an
angry lawyer all in the day's work.
She was afraid of herself; she distrusted her courage. She wanted to
have a motive compulsory in its force; her instinct was to do something
which should make a return home irrevocably impossible. Her husband's
insistence hastened the crisis, though his patience could hardly have
averted it.
Godfrey Ledstone had the news first from Tora Aikenhead. Her calm eyes
asked him plainly enough what part it was his to play. Tora had taken
her line and at once conceived hesitation to be impossible. His native
idea would have been to comfort her before Maxon came, and again after
he had gone, and to lie by in snug hiding when he was there. So ran the
code, discreet and elastic. By now he knew--only too well--that this was
not what these uncompromising people expected of him. In their odd view
he had already gone too far for that convenient expedient. Social
liberty might, it seemed, be more exacting than social bondage. For if
you were always free to do as you liked, it was obviously necessary to
be very careful about intimating too unreservedly what it was that you
would like to do; since there could be no such thing as pleading
impossibility in defence of a pledge unfulfilled.
"She's terribly unhappy. She declares that she must be gone before he
comes. She daren't meet him."
"Why not?" he asked sharply. Another feeling was stirred in him.
"Well, he's always dominated her. He might break down her will again."
"You mean she might go back? Cave in, and go back?"
"That seems to be what she's afraid of, herself."
Tora entertained no more doubt of the soundness of her ideas than Cyril
Maxon of his. Why should she, she would have asked, merely because hers
were new, while his were old? To her mind newness was a presumption of
merit in a view, since the old views had produced a world manifestly so
imperfect all round. Holding her opinion strongly, she did not hesitate
to use the weapons best suited to secure its triumph. If Godfrey's
jealousy helped to that end, why was it illegitimate to let it play its
part? Never was a woman less afraid of what men call responsibility.
"It's just awful to think of the poor little lady going back to that
brute of a fellow," he said.
"Oh, don't abuse him. I dare say he's as unhappy as she is. And he
thinks he's right. I'm not sure you don't think he's right, really."
Tora smiled over her shrewd thrust. "So you're the last person who ought
to abuse him."
"Oh, what does it matter what I think?" he cried impatiently.
There was still enough of his old mood and his old ideas in him to stir
a resentment against Tora, to make him feel that she was forcing his
hand and constraining him to accept a bigger liability than he had
bargained for. Theorists must always be up to that! They seem to take a
positive pleasure in proving that you are bound to go to lengths--to all
lengths! That the comfortable half-way will never serve! Perhaps they do
not enough reflect that the average man is not thereby encouraged to
start at all.
But Winnie herself had genuine power to stir his heart--and now, indeed,
as never before, since she seemed helpless save for him, and hopeless
save in him, yet in and through him both brave and confident--the most
profound, the most powerful, flattery from sex to sex. Mere friends
could not help now; mere convictions, a naked sense of being in the
right, would not avail. These she had, but she must have love too. To
this mood all the man in him responded.
"It only needed this final trouble to--to make me speak."
"I don't think I need speak," she whispered, with her delicately
quavering smile. "You know it all--all the great thing it is. I'm not
ashamed of it, Godfrey. And you won't be ashamed of me, will you?"
The question did not disconcert him now. For the time he had lost that
vision of the future which had once disquieted and alarmed him. His
phrases might be well-worn, but they were heartily sincere when he told
her he would face the world, if only she were by his side.
"It shall all be just as you said you wished it to be, if ever you
joined your life to a man's again." He quoted almost verbally, just
missing her poetic "link."
Winnie kissed him in warm and pretty gratitude. "That takes away my last
doubt," she told him. "I shall be proud now, as proud as any woman! And
to-day--just for a few hours--let's forget everything, except that we're
plighted lovers." She put her arm through his. "You'll kill the giant,
take his ring, and mend the Princess' Broken Heart!"
"I say, are you making me a Prince in disguise, Winnie?"
"Well, don't you feel like a Prince now?" she asked, with the sweet
audacity of a woman who knows that she is loved, and for her lover
boldly takes herself at her lover's valuation.
Obedient to her wish, the outside world effected one of its
disappearances--very obliging, if not of long duration. Even Woburn
Square made tactful exit, without posing the question as to what its
opinion of the proceedings might likely be. Of course, that point could
be held immaterial for the present at least.
For the second time then, in Winnie Maxon's recent experience, with a
little courage things proved easy; difficulties vanished when faced; you
did what you held you had a right to do, and nothing terrible happened.
Certainly nothing terrible happened that evening at Shaylor's Patch.
There was a romantic, an idyllic, bit of courting, with the man ardent
and gallant, the woman gay but shy; it was all along orthodox lines,
really conventional. He had undertaken that the affair should be carried
through on Winnie's lines; this was his great and fine concession--or
conversion. He observed it most honourably; she grew more and more
gratefully tender.
"Another man than you--yes, even another man I loved--might have wounded
me to-night," she murmured, as they parted at the door after dinner.
"I could never wound you--even with my love."
She took his hand and kissed it. "I'm trusting you against all the
world, Godfrey."
"You may trust me."
Her heart sang, even while her lover left her.
For what followed in the two or three days during which she still abode
at Shaylor's Patch people shall find what names they please, since her
history is, of necessity, somewhat concerned with contentious matters.
Some may speak of unseemly travesty, some of idle farce; others may find
a protest not without its pathos--a protest that she broke with the old
order only because she must, that she would fain carry over into her new
venture what was good in the old spirit, that her enterprise was to her
a solemn and high thing. They were to be man and wife together; he must
buy her the ring that symbolised union; they must have good and true
witnesses--nothing was to be secret, all above-board and unashamed.
There must even be a little ceremonial, a giving and taking before
sympathetic friends, a declaration that she held herself his, and him
hers, in all love and trust, and to the exclusion of all other people in
the world. For ever? Till death did them part? No--the premises
peremptorily forbade that time-honoured conclusion. But so long as the
love that now bound them together still sanctified the bond which it had
fastened. Satisfied in her heart that the love could never die, she
defined without dismay the consequences of its death. At all events, she
would have answered to an objector, could they be worse than what had
befallen her when her love for Cyril Maxon died a violent death by
crushing--died and yet was, in the name of all that is holy, denied
decent burial?
And yet there were qualms. "Will people understand?" was her great
question.
Tora--uncompromising, level-headed--answered that most of them would not
even try to, and added, "What matter?" Stephen asked, "Well, so long as
your friends do?" Her lover vowed that, whether her action were approved
or not, no tongue could wag against her honour or her motives.
The last day came--the day when the pair were to set out together,
Godfrey from his summer cottage in the village of Nether End, near
Shaylor's Patch, Winnie from her haven under the Aikenheads' friendly
roof. A home has been taken in London, but they were to have a week's
jaunt--a honeymoon--in North Wales first. Winnie was now putting the
finishing touch to her preparations by writing her luggage labels. The
name she wrote seemed happily to harmonize personal independence with a
union of hearts and destinies--Mrs. Winifred Ledstone.
The sound of a man's footstep made her look up. She saw Dick Dennehy
before her. He had come in from the garden, and was just clutching off
his hat at the sight of her.
"Mr. Dennehy! I didn't know you were coming here to-day."
"No more did I, Mrs. Maxon, till a couple of hours ago. I found I had
nothing to do, so I ran down to see how you were all getting on."
"Some of us are just getting off," smiled Winnie. "You're in time to say
good-bye."
"Why, where are you off to? I'm sorry you're going."
With a saucy glance Winnie pushed a luggage label across the table
towards him. He took it up, studied it, and laid it down again without a
word.
"Well?" said Winnie.
He spread out a pair of pudgy splay-fingered hands and shook his
shock-haired head in sincere if humorous despair.
"You're all heathens here, and it's no good talking to you as if you
were anything else."
"I'm not a heathen, but if the Church backs up the State in unjust
laws----"
He wagged a broad forefinger. "Even a heathen tribe has its customs. Any
customs better than none! Ye can't go against the custom of the tribe
for nothing. I speak as heathen to heathen."
"Can't customs ever be changed?" Winnie was back at her old point.
"You're not strong enough for the job, Mrs. Maxon." His voice was full
of pity.
But Winnie was in no mood to accept pity. "You call me a heathen.
Suppose it was A.D. 50 or 100, and not A.D. 1909. I think you'd be a
heathen, and I--well, at any rate I should be trying to screw up my
courage to be a Christian martyr."
He acknowledged a hit. "Oh, you're all very clever!" he grumbled. "I'll
bet Stephen taught you that. That's from his mint, if I know the stamp!
Take it as you say then--are you looking forward to your martyrdom?"
Perhaps she was, and in what must be admitted to be the proper
spirit--thinking more of the crown than of the stake. "I don't look very
unhappy, do I?" she asked radiantly.
"Going off with him to-day, are you?" She nodded gaily. The natural man
suddenly asserted itself in Dennehy. He smiled. "It's more than the
young dog deserves, sure it is!"
"Oh, well, you're being a heathen now!" laughed Winnie, distinctly
well-pleased.
"I'm wondering what Mrs. Lenoir will say about it."
Winnie's pleasure suffered a slight jar.
"Why should Mrs. Lenoir be any judge of a case like mine?" she asked
rather coldly.
"Oh, I'm not making comparisons," he murmured vaguely. Still there was a
point of comparison in his mind. Mrs. Lenoir, too, had been a rebel
against the custom of the tribe, and, though the motives of rebellion
differ, the results may be the same. "Well, I'll wish you luck anyhow,"
he continued, holding out his hand. "I hope he'll make you happy, for
you're giving him a lot, by the powers, you are!"
"I hope I'm giving anything like as much as I'm getting."
He grumbled something inarticulate as he passed by her and out of the
door into the garden. Winnie looked after him with a smile still on her
lips. If this were the worst she had to expect, it was nothing very
dreadful. It was even rather amusing; she did not conceive that she had
come off in any way second-best in the encounter.
Stephen came in a moment later and, on her report of Dennehy's arrival,
went to look for his friend in the garden. But Dennehy was nowhere to be
found; he was seen no more that day. He went straight back to London; he
could not stop the deed, but he would not be an accomplice.
"Well, if he doesn't agree with what we're doing, I think he's right not
to stay," said Tora. Yet Winnie felt a little hurt.
Then came the travesty, or the farce, or the protest, or whatever it may
be decided to call it, in which Winnie formally--to a hostile eye
perhaps rather theatrically--in the presence of her witnesses, did for
herself what the powers that be would not do for her--declared her union
with Cyril Maxon at an end and plighted her troth to Godfrey Ledstone.
Godfrey would rather have had this little ceremony (if it had to be
performed at all) take place privately, but he played his part in it
with a good grace. It would be over soon--and soon he and she would set
out together.
What of little Alice during all this? She had been sent to play with the
gardener's daughter. It would be a portentous theory indeed that forced
a child to consider the law of marriage and divorce before she attained
the age of eleven. Even Tora Aikenhead did not go so far, and, as has
been seen, Stephen's theorizing tendencies were held in check in his
child's case.
Then off they went, and, on their arrival in London, they were met by
Bob Purnett, who gave them a hearty welcome and a champagne luncheon,
where all was very merry and gay. There was indeed a roguish twinkle in
Bob Purnett's eye, but perhaps it was no more than custom allows even in
the case of the most orthodox of marriages--and in any event Bob
Purnett's was not that class of opinion to which Winnie's views could
most naturally be expected to appeal. He treated Winnie most politely
and called her Mrs. Ledstone. She did not realize that he would have
done just the same if--well, in the case of any lady for whom a friend
claimed the treatment and the title.
The next morning two letters duly and punctually reached their
respective destinations. All was to be open, all above-board! Winnie had
not found hers hard to write, and Godfrey had said nothing to her about
how extraordinarily difficult he had found his. One was addressed to
Cyril Maxon, Esquire, K.C., at the Temple; the other to William J.
Ledstone, Esquire, at Woburn Square. Now in neither of these places were
the views of Shaylor's Patch likely to find acceptance, or even
toleration. No, nor Bob Purnett's either. Though, indeed, if a choice
had to be made, the latter might have seemed, not more moral, but at
least less subversive in their tendency. A thing that is subversively
immoral must be worse, surely, than a thing that is merely immoral?
Granting the immorality in both cases, the subversive people have not a
leg to stand on. They are driven to argue that they are not immoral at
all--which only makes them more subversive still.
And the dictionary defines "subversion" in these terms: "The act of
overturning, or the state of being overturned; entire overthrow; an
overthrow from the foundation; utter ruin; destruction"--anyhow, clearly
a serious matter, and at that we may leave it for the moment.