THE REGIMENT
Had Bertie Merriam displayed righteous indignation or uncontrollable
grief, Winnie would have left him to digest his emotion in solitary
leisure. Since, however, he merely looked extremely thoughtful, as he
let the _Times_ flutter to the ground and took a long pull at his cigar,
it seemed natural to tell him the story. This she proceeded to do,
neither boastfully nor apologetically, but with sober veracity, tempered
by a humorous appreciation of how the various parties to it, herself
included, came out of their various ordeals. Now and then her auditor
nodded his understanding of the points--of the impossibility of life
with Cyril Maxon; of how Shaylor's Patch enlarged the horizon; of the
experiment with Godfrey Ledstone and its comico-tragic failure; of how
Maxon, for reasons unascertained, had found open to him a course which
he had always declared to be lawfully open to no man; finally, of the
considerations, sufficient or insufficient, which had led to the
incarnation of Miss Winnie Wilson. In fact, so far as it lies within a
human being's power to tell the truth about himself or herself, Winnie
told it; she had no dependents and she had a hundred and fifty pounds a
year.
As has been said, the Major was not an especially religious man. He had
himself lived an unusually steady and regular life, keeping himself in
strict training for the work to which his whole heart was devoted, but
his moral ideas were those of his class and generation. He was not
strait-laced. Moreover he was heavily biassed in favour of the lady who
now took him into her confidence, and not only had the advantage of
telling her side of the story without anybody to criticize or
contradict, but succeeded in telling it so as to carry conviction of her
sincerity, if not of her wisdom. He was ready to see with her eyes, at
least to the point of admitting excuse where she pleaded justification.
Though he imputed to her a great want of worldly wisdom in her dealings
with Godfrey Ledstone, her moral character did not suffer in his
estimation, nor (what was perhaps more remarkable) were his feelings
towards her perceptibly chilled. Neither did he cherish any personal
grievance. She was entitled to protect herself from the idle curiosity
of casual acquaintances. So soon as she had definite ground for
according to him a special treatment, she had dealt openly with him and
made a clean breast of it.
"Thank you," he said at the end. "I shall respect your confidence."
"What I've told you is meant for the General too, please."
"Thank you again. It's very straight of you. You must be glad to have it
all over at last?"
Winnie made the slightest grimace. "Isn't that rather a sanguine view?"
Her own views about things being 'all over' had become less sanguine
than of yore.
"Well, yes, I suppose it is." Even while he had been speaking, the same
idea was at the back of his own mind. Things have a way of never getting
'all over,' of possessing no absolute ends, of continuing, for good and
evil, to affect life till life itself ends--and even, after that, of
affecting other lives sometimes. Bertie Merriam himself, thoughtfully
considering, saw that the thing was by no means 'all over' with the
coming of the news contained in the _Times_ of the 26th.
"And now," said Winnie, rising from her chair, "I'm going to talk
nonsense with the Layton girl and the Anstruther boys, and forget all
about it for a bit." She stood looking at him for a moment in a very
friendly, rather puzzled, way. She wanted to convey to him that she
would consider it very natural for her disclosure to make all the
difference, but the assurance was not easy to frame without assuming
more than she was, by the forms of the game, entitled to assume. She got
as near to it as she could. "I've been prepared to accept the
consequences all through. If I claim liberty of opinion myself, I allow
it to others, Major Merriam."
"Yes, yes, I quite understand. You surely don't fear a harsh judgment
from me?" He added, after the briefest pause, "Or from my father?"
"I don't think I need. You've both been such kind good friends to me."
She broke into a smile. "And, of course, on my theory I don't admit that
I'm properly a subject of judgment at all."
"But you admit that I may think differently if I like?"
"Yes, I admit that. We may all think what we like, and do as we like, so
long as we do it sincerely."
"Wouldn't things get rather--well, chaotic--under that system?" he
asked, smiling in his turn.
"I knew I shouldn't convert you--you stickler for discipline!"
He heard the description with a laugh, but without protest or
disclaimer. To his ears it was a compliment. Nor did he think Winnie, so
far as he claimed to understand her, quite so scornful of all discipline
as her playful taunt implied, nor in practice so thoroughgoing an
anarchist as her theory of the unbridled liberty of private judgment
required in logic that she should be. She did not appear to him a
naturally lawless woman, nor even unusually volatile. She had had 'hard
luck' and had fought against it blindly and recklessly. But, given good
conditions, she would readily conform to the standards, since she would
not want to do anything else. Taking this view, he saw little reason to
revise his judgment or to alter his intentions, so far as the judgment
and intentions depended on his estimate of the woman herself. Her
candour was even a new point in her favour.
So far then neither Winnie nor even Mrs. Lenoir need regret the
disclosure. The case, when fully explained, seemed to the Major
eminently pardonable--at worst, a piece of visionary folly in which an
ignorant young woman had rashly matched herself against the world. But
there was another aspect of the case. _Tout comprendre c'est tout
pardonner._ Perhaps. But some people shrink from understanding things
for that very reason; the consequences seem too alarming and even
revolutionary. And the great bulk of people, even if they were willing
to understand every case, have really no time to do it; it cannot be
expected of them in this busy life. They find themselves obliged to work
by generalizations and categories, to bind by rules and prohibitions
admitting of no exception. It is the only way by which people in a
society can tackle the job of estimating the conduct of other people, or
indeed of regulating their own. The world labels in rows and pronounces
judgment on squads, an inevitably rough-and-ready method, but--the world
pleads--the only practical alternative to a moral anarchy against which
it must protect itself, even though at the cost of constantly passing
the same sentence on offenders of widely different degrees of
criminality.
Now the world, or society, or public opinion, or whatever collective
term may be used for that force to which all gregarious animals, whether
they like it or not, are of necessity amenable--possessed for Major
Merriam a meaning which was to him all-important, but to which Winnie
and Mrs. Lenoir had accorded only the faintest, if indeed any,
consideration; it meant something not vague and distant, but near,
potent, with close and imperative claims on him. This thing it was which
occupied his mind as he walked through the garden to the annex in which
his father and he were lodged, and where he would find the General
reading on the verandah until it should be time to go to the casino. For
society at large, for the moralists or gossips of London, he had not
much regard. He was not a prominent man; few people would know, of those
few half would not care, and the thing would soon blow over. But neither
his life nor his heart was in London, and it was not about the feelings
or views of the great city that he went, with Winnie's copy of the
_Times_ in his hand, to consult his father.
The General had been reading, and was now dozing, on the verandah. He
woke up at the sound of his son's step. "Ready for the casino, my boy?"
he asked briskly.
"Well, I've something I want to talk about first, if you don't mind." He
laid the _Times_ on the table.
When the General heard the story, told more briefly than Winnie had
related it, but with no loss to its essential features, he conceived a
grudge against Mrs. Lenoir--Clara's silence, rendered more deceitful by
that delusive half-confidence of hers, seemed to him unkind--but, as
regards the prisoner at the bar herself, his judgment was even more
lenient than his son's, as perhaps might be expected from his more
various experience. The thing was annoying, distinctly annoying, but he
liked Winnie none the less. The poor girl had been in a fix!
"However it's really not our business to judge her," he concluded,
looking across at his son. "We've got nothing to do with that. That's
for her and her own conscience."
"She's had devilish hard luck," said Bertie.
"Yes, she has. Heavens, my boy, who am I to be hard on her?"
The Major gazed out over the garden. "As far as I'm concerned myself,
I'd take the chances and go on with it." He knew that his father would
understand what he meant by 'it.'
"Well, well, there are things to consider----"
Bertie turned sharply round again. Conviction rang in his voice as he
interrupted: "By Jove, there are! There's the regiment!"
The General pursed up his lips and gave two quick little nods of his
head. "Yes. In a few months you'll be in command."
"It might not get out, of course. There's always that chance."
"Next year you go to India. Everything gets out in India."
"Of course, if people could be got to understand the case as we do----"
"Don't you build on that, Bertie. The mere fact of this"--he tapped the
_Times_--"will be all they want; take my word for it. They wouldn't make
things comfortable for her."
For the moment at least Bertie's mind was not on that point; it was
directed towards the subject on which he had once discoursed to Winnie
herself--the influence which the wife of a commanding officer does and
ought to exercise on the tone of the small society over which she is
naturally called upon to exercise a sort of presidency. "Would it be
good for the regiment?"
The General wore a mournful air as he took out and lit a long lean
cheroot. He did not look at Bertie, as he murmured, "Must consider that,
in your position."
Certainly that had to be considered; for here the two men touched what
was their real effective religion--the thing which in truth shaped their
lives, to which they were both loyal and uncompromising adherents, in
regard to which the son was almost a fanatic. What was important to the
regiment was of vital importance to Bertie Merriam and to his life's
work. One of the things important to the regiment was the wives of its
officers; most important was their influence on the 'young chaps'--as he
had said to Winnie. It ought to be, if not motherly, at least
'elder-sisterly.' Viewed in this connection, there was evidently matter
for consideration, assuming that everything got out in India, as
according to the General it did. To present to the 'young chaps' such an
'elder sister' as Winnie--certainly consideration was needed.
Later in the afternoon Mrs. Lenoir sat in a wicker chair on the casino
terrace which overlooks, from a respectable and precipitous height, the
roadstead and the sea. She had spent a lonely afternoon, she had seen
none of her three friends, and by herself had drifted down to a solitary
cup of tea at this resort, which she was at the moment feeling to be
insecurely entitled to be called one of pleasure. She had an instinct
that something was happening, that things were being settled behind her
back. The feeling made her fretful; when she was fretful, the lines on
her face showed a deeper chiselling. And by a very human instinct,
because she thought that her friend the General was going to be angry
with her, she began to get angry with him--so as not to start the
quarrel at a disadvantage. They were making a fuss; now what in heaven's
name was there to make a fuss about? Hugh to make a fuss! A smile more
acrid, less kind, than usual, bent Mrs. Lenoir's lips; it made her look
older.
Suddenly, without seeing where he came from, she found the General
beside her--rather a stiff General, raising his hat very ceremoniously.
"You've had your tea, Clara? May I sit down by you?"
"Yes, I've had my tea, thank you. And you?"
"No, thank you. I--in fact I've had a whisky and soda."
The indulgence was unusual. It confirmed Mrs. Lenoir's instinct.
"Where's Bertie?"
"He's gone for a walk to Camara de Lobos."
The instinct was proved infallibly correct. A stride along the one level
road--clearly a case of mental disturbance needing physical treatment!
The General sat down. He was not even smoking; he rested the big silver
knob of his stick against his lips. She looked at him out of the corner
of her eye. Oh yes, certainly yes!
When he spoke, it was abruptly. "I don't know exactly how long you mean
to stay here, Clara, but I'm afraid Bertie and I must take the next boat
home. We must get back to London."
"Who's inconsolable in London?"
"I've had a letter which makes it advisable----"
"Oh, nonsense!" She did not disguise her impatience. "She's told him,
has she?"
"I don't think you've treated me quite fairly."
The sun began to sink below the promontory which bounded the view on the
right. The growing sombreness of the atmosphere seemed to spread over
Mrs. Lenoir's face. Her voice was hard too, when she spoke.
"I've treated you absolutely fairly. You men always want to play with
your cards held up, and ours down on the table. That's the masculine
idea of an even game! Oh, I know it! For my part I think she's silly to
have told him so soon. I wouldn't have. And so she's not good enough for
him, isn't she?"
Mrs. Lenoir had certainly done well to whip up her anger. It enabled her
to deliver the assault, and forestall the General's more deliberate
offensive movement. Also by her plainness she exposed ruthlessly her
friend's tactful invention of a letter from London making it advisable
for him and his son to take the next boat back to England.
"It's not quite a question of that," said the General, his pale-brown
old cheek flushing under the roughness of her scornful words. "You know
how much I like her, and how much Bertie likes her too. But we must look
facts in the face--take things as they are, Clara. It's not so much a
matter of his own feelings. There's the regiment."
Mrs. Lenoir grew more annoyed--because she perceived in a flash that,
old student of men as she was, she had neglected an important factor in
the case. Being annoyed, and being a woman, she hit out at the other
women who, as she supposed, stood in her way.
"A parcel of nobodies, in a garrison or cantonment somewhere!" Whatever
the judgment on her life, she was always conscious that she herself had
been famous.
"I suppose you're referring to the women? I wasn't thinking so much of
them. It'd be sure to get out, and it wouldn't do with the youngsters."
She turned to him almost fiercely, but his next words struck a new note.
"And it'd prejudice my boy's career, Clara."
The sun had set. There was an interval of cold light before the glories
of the afterglow. Mrs. Lenoir's face looked wan and hard. "Yes, it would
follow them all over the world," she said. "Now a mail ahead of them,
now a mail behind--always very close. Yes, the women would chatter and
lift their skirts; the old men would snigger and the youngsters make
jokes. Is there anything at all to choose between us, Hugh--between you
men and us women? Anything at all?"
He would not enter on that. "You don't quite understand. I may think
about his interest--well, I'm his father, and he's my eldest. He sees it
in the light of his duty to the Service."
"My poor little Winnie!" Gradually the afterglow was coming and seemed
to soften the hard lines of her face.
"You know I--why, I fairly love her myself!" His voice trembled for a
moment. "Pretty nearly as much, I believe, in the end, as the boy does.
But--could I tell him anything different? I'd give a year's pay not to
hurt her feelings."
"A year's pay! You old goose, Hugh! You'd give your life--but you
wouldn't give one button off the tunic of one of the soldiers in your
blessed regiment." She held out her hand to him, smiling under misty
eyes. "You men are queer," she ended.
After a stealthy look round, the General raised her hand to his lips.
They were friends again, and he was glad. Yet she would not forgo her
privilege of ridicule and irony--the last and only weapon of the
conquered.
"I don't know that anything need be said----"
"So you two valiant soldiers have decided that I had better say it?" she
interrupted.
"How could either of us so much as hint that she--that she was the least
interested in our movements?"
"Not even in your retreats? Oh, I'll tell her you're going by the next
boat. Nearly a week off, though, isn't it?" She hinted maliciously that
the week might be difficult--even dangerous. Whether it would be
depended on how Winnie took their decision. Mrs. Lenoir's unregenerate
impulse would have been to make that week rather trying to the Major,
had she been in Winnie's place. By being disagreeable to him? No, she
would have found a better way than that.
A merry laugh sounded from the door of the casino. Winnie was there, in
animated conversation with the Anstruther boys. A great event had
happened, calculated to amuse the whole hotel. 'Dolly' had come down
with his usual half-dollar--and had lost it as usual. He walked round
the room, then up and down the concert-room adjoining. He went to the
other table, he came back to the one at which he had played. He fidgeted
about, behind the second Anstruther boy, for some minutes. Then he
fished out another half-dollar, and put it on a single number--twenty!
Could Winnie, his confidante, doubt what was in his mind? The number
twenty was the gage of Dame Fortune; he would wear it on his sleeve!
Number twenty came up; the little man, with a quick gasp for breath,
pounced on his handful of money.
"Well, any of us may win after that!" said the elder Anstruther boy, who
had been strongly for the view that Mr. Wigram was a 'hoodoo' to the
whole hotel.
With rapid yet gracious dexterity Winnie got rid of her companions. She
had caught sight of the General's tall figure as he left Mrs. Lenoir's
side. She came down to her friend's chair, and laid a hand on her
shoulder.
"Not cold?" Mrs. Lenoir shook her head. "Well, let's go home,
anyhow--shall we? I've had a long afternoon with those boys--I'm tired."
"Sit down for a minute, child. So you let the cat out of the bag?"
"I told you I had to. Has he been here? I haven't seen him."
"Bertie? No--only the General. Bertie's gone for a walk by himself. But,
before he went, he told the General."
"Well?" Winnie was drawing on the gloves she had taken off to count out
her money in the room.
"They're going home by the next boat." Winnie gave no sign, made no
movement. "A letter from London--if you want to observe the usual
fiction." Her malice, her desire that her sex should fight for itself
and avenge its injuries, twinkled in her eyes again. "But they can't go
till Tuesday!"
Winnie's eyes turned out to sea. "Tuesday, or Tuesday twelvemonth--what
difference does it make?" She gave a little sigh; she had liked the idea
of it--of the life it meant, of seeing the world, of a fresh start, of
his great courtesy and kindness. "I don't think that we need consider
ourselves responsible for a broken heart," she added suddenly.
"No, but he'd have gone on, even after you told him." Her voice took on
its ironical inflexion. "He'd have gone on but for the regiment."
Winnie had been leaning back in her chair. She sat up straight, almost
with a jerk. "Gone on but for what?" she asked, in a tone of genuine
amazement.
Mrs. Lenoir's acrid smile penetrated the twilight. After a moment's
blank staring, Winnie's parted lips met in a smile too. To both of them,
in the end, it seemed funny--rather unaccountable.
"The regiment, Winnie!" Mrs. Lenoir repeated, as she rose from her seat.
"It really never entered my head," said Winnie.