MRS. NOBODY
In spite of the untoward telegram, her visit to Shaylor's Patch
heartened up Winnie in two ways. It checked the searching of conscience
which is the natural and frequent result of threatened failure; by the
evidence it afforded her of Stephen's affection and Dick Dennehy's loyal
admiration, it strengthened her woman's confidence in her power to hold
her man. After all, Mabel Thurseley was not very pretty; with the sea
between Godfrey and Woburn Square, there would be full cause for hope.
She dreamed of Italian skies. Though she had recalled and recognized his
liberty, under their bargain, to leave her, it was not prominent in her
mind. The natural woman was fighting--and fights, it may be supposed,
much the same, whatever her status by law or her rights by agreement.
She had telegraphed to Godfrey the proposed time of her arrival at the
studio, and expected to find him there; for surely the slight chill
would be better by now? He was not there; yet apparently the chill was
better, for he had been there earlier in the day. The old Irish servant
gave her this news, looking at her in what Winnie felt to be rather an
odd way. The woman lingered by the door for a minute, glancing round the
room, seeming half in a mind to say something more, and half in a mind
not to. In the end she said nothing, and went out in silence--as a rule
she was loquacious--when her mistress told her that she would give any
necessary orders after she had unpacked. Winnie's mind was on the idea
of carrying Godfrey off that very night.
Short as her absence had been, the studio looked somehow unfamiliar; it
had less of the 'lived in' look which she associated with it as a
pleasant feature. She scanned it with awakening curiosity. The board on
which he stretched his drawing-paper--what had become of that? His
tobacco-jar was not in its usual place; technical books of his were
missing from their appointed shelf. He must have felt inclined for work
in spite of the chill, and come to fetch them; at least, that would
account for the board and books, if not as well for the tobacco-jar. She
moved towards the kitchen, to inquire of the servant, but suddenly came
to a full stop in the middle of the room. She stood there for a moment,
then turned sharp round and went up the stairs that led to the
bedrooms--not to unpack, for she left her own trunk and dressing-bag on
the floor of the studio.
She went upstairs slowly, determinedly calm, but with beating heart and
a touch of vivid colour on her cheeks. The door of his bedroom stood
wide open. The furniture was all in its place; the toilet table was no
barer than his visit to Woburn Square accounted for; the little clock
she had given him ticked away on the mantelpiece. But Winnie made
straight for the chest of drawers, and quickly opened and shut one after
another. They were all empty. The wardrobe yielded the same result. All
his clothes had gone, and his boots--all of them. She went back to the
landing and opened the door of a cupboard, where his portmanteau was
usually stowed away; it was gone. Preparation for a long
stay--somewhere! Yet the chill was so much better that he had been able
to visit the studio that morning, when, no doubt, he had carried off
all these things--all of them, not merely drawing-board, books, and
tobacco-jar.
She moved quickly into her own room. There all was as usual; but she had
thought that perhaps there would be a letter. None was visible. A
curious quiet, almost a desolation, seemed to brood over the little
room; it too took on, suddenly, an uninhabited air. She sank into a
wicker arm-chair and sat there quite still for some minutes. Then she
sprang briskly to her feet again, exclaiming, "Oh, but nonsense!"
She was seeking indignantly to repel the conviction which was mastering
her mind. Surely he would not, could not, do it like this? In her rare
contemplation of their possible parting, as bargained for, there had
always been not indeed argument, much less recrimination, but much
friendly discussion, a calm survey of the situation, probably an
agreement to 'try it again' for a longer or shorter time, till a mature
and wise decision, satisfactory to the reason, if not to the feelings,
of both, should be arrived at. But this would be sheer running
away--literal running away from her, from the problem, from the
situation. It could not be. There must be some explanation.
Sounds were easily audible in the small flimsy dwelling. She heard the
front door bell ring--and sat listening for his voice calling her, his
step across the studio floor, and then coming up the stairs. Neither
voice came, nor step; besides--odd she had not remembered it before--of
course he would have used his latchkey. She got up, took off her jacket,
unpinned her hat, laid it on the bed, looked to her hair, and then went
slowly downstairs again.
Amy Ledstone was standing in the middle of the studio; the knock had
been hers. Then in an instant Winnie knew, and in an instant she put on
her armour. Her tone was cool and her manner self-possessed; they need
not both be cowards--she and Godfrey!
"How do you do, Miss Ledstone? You've come to tell me something?"
"Yes." Amy Ledstone was neither cool nor self-possessed. Her voice
trembled violently; it was an evident effort for her not to break into
sobbing. "He--he still loves you; he told me to tell you that."
"Told you to tell me! Isn't that rather odd?--After all our--well, he's
been able to tell me for himself before. Won't you sit down?" She sat
herself as she spoke.
"No, thank you. But he can't bear to see you; he can't trust himself. He
told me to say that. He said you'd understand--that you had a--an
understanding. Only he couldn't bear to say good-bye."
"He's not coming back?"
"He was really rather seedy on Sunday--so he stayed. And--and on Sunday
night mother had a bad attack; we were really alarmed."
Winnie nodded. Always, from the very beginning, a dangerous
enemy--mother's weak heart!
"Mother had been with him all day--she wouldn't leave him. I suppose she
got over-tired, and there was the strain of--of the situation; and
daddy--my father--broke out on Godfrey the next morning; and I'd broken
out on him Christmas night."
"You?" There was a touch of reproach in the question.
"Yes, I told him he must choose. He really made love to Mabel all the
time. So I told him----"
"I see." She smiled faintly. "The poor boy can't have had a pleasant
Christmas, Miss Ledstone!"
"We were all at him, all three of us!" She stretched out her hands
suddenly. "Do try to understand that he had something to bear too. And
that we had--thinking as we do about it. It was hard for other people
besides you. Father's getting old, and Godfrey's all mother and I----"
Winnie nodded her understanding of the broken sentence.
"I haven't said a word against him or any of you. He had a right to do
what he has done, though he's done it in a way I didn't think he'd
choose."
"He doesn't trust himself, and mother--oh!" Her forlorn murmuring ended
hopelessly in nothing.
"Mother! Yes! What a lot of things there are to think of! I had just
made up my mind to take him right away from all of you, to take him
abroad. I could have done it if I'd found him here. Perhaps I could do
it still--I wonder?"
Amy shivered uncomfortably under the thoughtful gaze of her companion's
eyes.
"I might write letters too--as you used to--and contrive secret
meetings. He's said nothing about Miss Thurseley to me--I don't suppose
he'd say anything about me to Miss Thurseley. But he'd meet me all the
same, I think. That seems to be his way; only before your last visit I
didn't know it."
"Indeed he won't think of Mabel--not for a long while. He's so--so
broken up."
Winnie raised her brows slightly; she was beginning to form an opinion
of her own about that--an opinion not likely to be too generous to
Godfrey.
Amy spoke with obvious effort, with an air of shame. "Mother begged and
prayed me to--to try and persuade you----" She broke off again.
"To let him alone? I suppose she would. She thinks I've done all the
harm? As far as he's concerned, I suppose I have. If we'd gone about it
in the ordinary way, he really needn't have suffered at all."
Again came Amy's uncomfortable shiver; she was not at home with steady
contemplation of the ways of the world; it had not come across her path
any more than love-making had.
"You can tell your mother that I'll let him alone. Then, I hope, she'll
get better."
"Oh, I don't understand you!"
"No? Well, I didn't understand Godfrey. But in your case it doesn't
matter. Why should you want to? You can all put me out of your thoughts
from to-day."
"I can't!" cried Amy; "I shall never be able to!" Suddenly she came over
to Winnie, and, standing before her, rather awkwardly, burst into tears.
"How can you be so hard?" she moaned. "Don't you see that I'm terribly
unhappy for you? But it's hopeless to try to tell you. You're so--so
hard. And I've got to go back home, where they'll be----"
Winnie supplied the word--"Jubilant? Yes." She frowned. "You cry, and I
don't--it is rather funny. I wonder if I shall cry when you've gone!"
"Oh, do you love him, or don't you?"
Winnie's brows were raised again. In view of what had occurred that day,
of the sudden revelation of Godfrey, of the abrupt change his act had
wrought in her relations to him, the question seemed to imply an unreal
simplicity of the emotions, a falsely uncomplicated contrast between two
states of feeling, standing distantly over against one another. Such a
conception in no way corresponded with her present feelings about
Godfrey Ledstone. The man she loved had done the thing she could not
forgive--did she love him? Yet if she did not love him, why could she
not forgive him? Unless she loved him, it was small matter that he
should be ashamed and run away. But if he were ashamed and ran away, how
could she love? Love and contempt, tenderness and repulsion, seemed
woven into one fabric of intricate, almost untraceable pattern. How
could she describe that to Amy Ledstone?
"I suppose I love my Godfrey, but he seems not to be the same as yours.
I can't put it better than that. And you love yours, and not mine. I
think that's all we can say about it."
Amy had her complications of feeling too. She dried her eyes, mournfully
saying, "That's not true about me. I like yours best--if I know what you
mean. He was a man, anyhow. But then I know it's wicked to feel like
that."
Winnie looked up at her. "Of course you must think it wicked--I quite
see that--but you do understand more than I thought," she said. "And you
won't think I'm abusing him? It wouldn't seem wicked to me at all--if
I'd happened on the right man. But I didn't. That's all. And this way of
ending it seems somehow to--to defile it all. The end spoils it all.
That seems to me shamefully unfair. He had a right to go, but he had no
right to be ashamed. And he is ashamed, and almost makes me ashamed. I
could almost hate him for it."
"We've made him ashamed. You must hate us."
"I like you. And--no--how could I hate your father and mother? They made
me no promise; I've given nothing to them on the strength of a promise.
But to him I've given everything I had; not much, I know, but
still--everything."
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. Godfrey'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 muff 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
passed out. Her mission was accomplished.
Almost directly after Amy left, the servant, Dennehy's old Irish woman,
came in with tea and buttered 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 _dénoûment_
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 nobody to eat
it with. There was nobody 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 Godfrey? 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.
"Godfrey'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 Godfrey 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 Godfrey?"
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 Godfrey 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 Café
Royal--eight sharp. Jolly glad I looked in! I say, what price poor old
Godfrey--with a chill at Woburn Square, while we're having an evening
out?" He chuckled merrily.
"It serves Godfrey 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 passing.
"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 Café Royal. It was quite friendly and cheerful; it was not
distant; but it was rather overwhelmingly respectful. It recognized and
emphasized the fact of Godfrey 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 Godfrey 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.