A FRIEND DEPARTS
Mrs. Lenoir and Winnie stayed at Bellaggio four or five days, during
which time their acquaintance with the other two ladies blossomed into
more intimate cordiality. Yet neither of the two who knew the position,
nor yet the one who confidently suspected it, thought it well to suggest
to Winnie the existence of any special situation or any urgent question
in which Lady Rosaline and Cyril Maxon were concerned. Such a disclosure
would, it was felt by all three, lead to awkwardness. But when once the
two parties had said farewell, and Winnie and she were on their way
home, Mrs. Lenoir saw no reason against mentioning the conclusion at
which she had arrived, or against conjecturing what, if any, bearing on
the state of affairs the arrival of Sir Axel Thrapston might have; he
had reached Bellaggio the day before their own departure, and had been
received by Lady Rosaline with much graciousness.
Winnie had not stumbled on the truth for herself; indeed her mind had
been occupied with the thought of another man than Cyril Maxon. She
heard it from her friend without surprise, and was not unable to
appreciate Mrs. Lenoir's grimly humorous embroidering of the situation.
Yet her native and intimate feeling was one of protest against that way
of the world which, under the pressure of her various experiences, she
was beginning to recognize and to learn that she would have to accept.
On the day she left Cyril Maxon's house for good and all, she had
conceived herself to be leaving Cyril Maxon also for good and all, to be
putting him out of her life, away from and behind her, without the right
or power to demand one backward glance from her as she trod a path
conditioned, indeed, in one respect by his existence, but, for the
future, essentially independent of him. The course of events had hardly
justified this forecast. Freedom from the thought of him had not proved
possible; he did more than impose conditions; he still figured as rather
a determining factor in life and her outlook on it. She seemed to take
him with her where she went, so to say, and thus to bring him into
contact with all those with whom she had relations herself. Both in
small things and in great it happened--as, for example, in this queer
encounter with Rosaline Deering, and in the moving episode of her
acquaintance with Bertie Merriam, no less than in the earlier history of
the West Kensington studio. She had not succeeded in disassociating her
destiny from his, in severing to the last link the tie which had once so
closely bound her to him. Complete freedom, and the full sense of it,
might come in the future; for the moment her feeling was one of scorn
for the ignorant young woman who had thought that a big thing could so
easily be undone--robbed of effect and made as if it had never been. And
suppose that complete freedom, now possible in action to her, should
really come, and with it a corresponding inward emancipation; yet there
stood and would stand the effect on those other lives--effects great or
small, transitory or permanent, but in the mass amounting to a
considerable sum of human experience, owing its shape and colour in the
end to her own action.
Though she had not loved Bertie Merriam, their intercourse, his
revelation of himself, and the manner of their parting had deeply
affected her. For the first time she had seen the enemy, convention--the
established order, the proper thing--in a form which she could not only
understand, but with which she was obliged to sympathize. What had
seemed to her hard dogmatism in her husband and Attlebury, and a mere
caste-respectability, external, narrow, and cowardly, in the denizens of
Woburn Square, took on a new shape when it was embodied in the loyalty
of a soldier and found its expression, not in demands upon another, but
in the sacrifice of self to an obligation and an ideal. Liberty had been
her god, and she would not desert the shrine at which Shaylor's Patch
had taught her to worship; but Merriam had shown her, had brought home
to her through the penetrating appeal of vivid emotion, that there were
other deities worthy of offerings and noble worshippers who made them.
It was a great revulsion of feeling which drove her to declare that
Merriam could do no other than sacrifice his hope of her to his sworn
service and to the regiment.
In justifying, or more than justifying, himself, in some sort Merriam
pleaded for Cyril Maxon. Winnie held herself to a stricter account of
her dealings with her husband. When she understood why he had deviated
from his strict conviction, and how it was likely that the deviation
would be in vain, she was anxious to rid her soul of any sense of
responsibility. She recalled just what she had said, as near as she
could; she listened carefully to Mrs. Lenoir's account of her own
conversation with Lady Rosaline.
"Do you think that we influenced her--that we stopped her?" she asked.
"Because I wouldn't have done that on purpose."
"I certainly wouldn't have encouraged her on purpose. And, if you ask
me, I think that our attitude of--well, of reserve (Mrs. Lenoir was
smiling) will have its weight--combined, perhaps, with Sir Axel's
attractions."
"I'm sorry. If Cyril does want her, and it doesn't come off, he'll hate
me worse than ever."
"He won't guess you've had anything to do with it--supposing you have."
"No, but he'll trace the whole thing back to me, of course. He'll blame
me for having forced him into acting against his conscience."
"Tut, tut, he shouldn't have such a silly conscience," said Mrs. Lenoir
easily. To her, consciences were not things to be treated with an
exaggerated punctilio. "After all, if she'd asked you right out, what
would you have said?"
"I should have refused to say anything, of course."
"She probably thought as much, so she tried to pump you indirectly. I
think you seem to have been very moderate--and I'm sure I was. And, as
one woman towards another, you ought to be glad if Lady Rosaline does
prove quick at taking a hint. I shall be glad too, incidentally, because
I like her, and hope to see something of her in town--which I certainly
shouldn't do, if she became Lady Rosaline Maxon."
"Well, I had no idea how matters stood, and I said as little as I
could," Winnie ended, protesting against any new entry on the debit side
of her account with Cyril--a column about which she had not been wont
greatly to concern herself.
Winnie soon found distraction from curious probings of her conscience in
the care and tendance of her friend, in which she assisted the
invaluable Emily. As they travelled gradually homewards, Mrs. Lenoir
developed a severe and distressing cough, which made sleep very
difficult and reduced her none too great strength to dangerous weakness.
Yet home she would go, rejecting almost curtly any suggestion of a
return to a milder climate. She faced her position with a fatalistic
courage, and her attitude towards it was marked by her habitual
clearness of vision.
"If I'm going to die--and I rather think I am--I'd sooner die at home
than in a hotel."
"Oh, don't talk about dying!" Winnie implored. "What am I to do?" Indeed
she was now bound to her friend by a strong affection.
"Well, there's just you--and the General. But the General will die too
quite soon, and you'll go away anyhow. Oh yes, you'll have to, somehow;
it'll happen like that. There's nobody else who cares. And I don't know
that women like me do themselves any good by living to be old. I'm not
complaining; I chose my life and I've enjoyed it. Let me go home,
Winnie!"
The appeal could not be resisted, and the beginning of May found them at
home. A late cold spring filled Winnie with fears for her friend. Yet
Mrs. Lenoir neither would nor, as it now seemed, could make another
move. She lay on her sofa, her beautiful eyes steadily in front of her.
She moved and spoke little. She seemed just to be waiting. Often Winnie
wondered through what scenes of recollection, through what strains of
meditation, her mind was passing. But she preserved all that
defensiveness which her life had taught her--the power of saying nothing
about herself, of giving no opening either to praise or to blame, of
asking no outside support. Perhaps she talked to the General. He came
every day, and Winnie was at pains to leave them alone together. Towards
the rest of the world, including even Winnie, she was evidently minded
to maintain to the end her consistent reticence. Sickness puts a house
out of the traffic of the world; day followed day in a quiet isolation
and a sad tranquillity.
What had passed left its mark on Winnie's relations with the General. He
was, of course, courteous and more than that. He was uniformly kind,
even affectionate, and constituted himself her partner in all that could
be done or attempted for the patient whom they both loved. That link
between them held, and would hold till another power than theirs severed
it. But it was all that now kept them together; when it was gone, he
would be in effect a stranger to her. If she said to herself, with a
touch of bitterness, "He has lost all his interest in me," there was a
sense in which she spoke the truth. He had pictured her as coming into
the inner circle of his life, and had urgently desired the realization
of the picture. Now she was definitely relegated to the outskirts; she
was again just Mrs. Lenoir's young friend--with this change--that he
cherished a pathetically amiable grudge against her for the loss of the
picture. How much he knew of what had passed between herself and his son
on that last evening, she was not aware; but he knew the essence of it.
Though in charity he might refrain from censure, she had been an
occasion of sore distress to his best-beloved son. To her sensitive
mind, in spite of his kindness, there was a reserve in his bearing; he
now held their friendship to its limits. The love he had borne her was
wounded to death by the pain she had given him. She could imagine his
thoughts made articulate in the words, "You shan't have it in your power
to hurt mine and me again." She opened her eyes to the fact that she had
lost a good friend, in these days which menaced her, only too surely,
with the loss of a dear one. This chapter of her life seemed like to
come to its end--as other chapters had before.
One visitant from the outside world--the General seemed a part of the
household--made an appearance in the person of Mrs. Ladd. She came to
call on Mrs. Lenoir, unaware of her illness; it was one of the
patient's days of exhaustion, and Winnie had to entertain the good lady
and, after listening to her appropriate sympathy, to hear her news. She
had come back to England alone. Rosaline had gone to stay with friends
at Biarritz.
"I think she didn't want to come home just now," said Mrs. Ladd, with a
glance at Winnie which plainly fished for information.
"Mrs. Lenoir has told me a certain impression of hers, which I didn't
form for myself at Bellaggio," Winnie remarked. "Are you referring to
that, Mrs. Ladd?"
"Yes. Rosaline told me that you suspected nothing. But since it's all
settled, there's no harm in speaking of it now. Sir Axel is at Biarritz
too. I think they'll probably be married as they pass through Paris on
their way home."
"Oh, it's as settled as that, is it?" Winnie's speculations revived. How
much had she and Mrs. Lenoir between them contributed to the settlement?
"I think she's right to bring it to a point. It avoids all question."
Mrs. Ladd put her head on one side. "I've seen Mr. Maxon. Of course he
doesn't know that you've ever seen Rosaline since--since the old
days--much less that you had anything to do with it?"
"Had I? I never meant to have."
"Oh, I think so. Rosaline spoke vaguely, but I think something in your
manner--of course you couldn't help it, and you didn't know. And, as I
say, he has no notion of it."
"I'm glad. He'd be so angry with me, and I don't want him to be more
angry than he must."
"I don't think he's got any anger to spare for you. He never referred to
you. But her! Oh, my dear!" Mrs. Ladd's kindly old face assumed an
almost frightened expression. "Well, I just had to stop him. I told him
Rosaline was my friend, and that I wouldn't listen to it. He declared
that he had a promise from her, and that on the faith of it, and of it
alone, he--well, you know, don't you? Of course I said that there must
have been a complete misunderstanding, but he wouldn't have it. Really,
we all but quarrelled, if not quite."
How well Winnie knew! The domineering man, so sure both of his desires
and of his claims, so confident in his version of the facts, so
impervious to any other impression of them--from out the past the
picture of him rose complete.
"I knew, of course, that he liked his own way," said Mrs. Ladd. "But,
really, I was rather startled." She suddenly leant forward and patted
Winnie's hand. No words passed, but Winnie understood that Mrs. Ladd had
been, to some extent at least, revising a judgment, and wished her to
know it.
"He'll marry, though--mark my words! I know him, and I know something
about that sort of man. He'll marry in a twelvemonth, if it's only to
show Rosaline he can, and to hold up his end against Mr. Attlebury. I
told Mr. Attlebury so. 'He's taken his line, and he'll go through with
it,' I said, 'as soon as he finds a woman to help him.'"
"What did Mr. Attlebury say?"
"Nothing! He wouldn't talk about it. He just waved his hands in that way
he has. But you may take it from me that that's what will happen."
The prophecy, born of the old woman's amiable worldly wisdom, seemed
likely of fulfilment. There was nothing Cyril Maxon hated so much as
failure or the imputation of it, nothing he prized so dearly as proving
himself right, to which end it was ever necessary to refuse to admit
that he had been wrong. Winnie seemed to hear him grimly declaring
that, since he had taken his course, not Lady Rosaline, not a dozen
Attleburys, should turn him from it. He would follow it to the end, even
though he had little desire for it; antagonism was often to him stimulus
enough. Thus it was that he became an implacable enemy to the liberty of
those about him, warring with them if they asserted any independence,
tyrannizing if they submitted. Such people create resistance, as it were
out of a vacuum--even a wild and desperate resistance, which takes
little heed of what it may hurt or overthrow in its struggle against
domination. Venerable institutions, high ideals, personal loyalty may
have to pay the price. All go by the board when the limits of human
endurance are reached.
Had Winnie Maxon received a classical education--the absence of which
had not in her case proved a panacea against all forms of failure--she
might have found in wise old Mrs. Ladd a good embodiment of the Greek
Chorus--usually people with little business of their own (as would
appear for all that appears to the contrary) and bent on settling other
people's on lines safely traditional; yet with a salt of shrewdness, not
revolutionaries, but brave enough to be critics, admitting that
acceptance and submission present their difficulties--but you may go
further, and far worse by a great deal! Those limits of endurance must
be stretched as far as possible.
On the next day but one, the expected blow fell. Pneumonia
declared itself; the patient took the doctor's diagnosis as a
death-sentence--final, hardly unwelcome. Her nights were pain; day
brought relief, yet increasing weakness. Now the General could not
endure much of the sick-room; he came, but his visits were briefer.
Besides his grief for his friend, some distress was upon him--distress
still for her sake, perhaps also for the sake of others who had gone
before, even for himself, it may be. He knew so much more than Winnie
did. Infinitely tender to his dying friend, he said but one word to
Winnie. "When I suggest that she might see somebody, she only smiles."
Winnie understood the suggestion. "We must all of us settle that for
ourselves in the end, mustn't we? I think she seems happy--at least,
quite at peace."
He made a fretful gesture of protest. She had no right to be quite at
peace. He lived in the ideas in which he had been bred. If he had
offended a gentleman, let him apologize before it was too late.
Insensibly he applied the parallel from the seen world to the
unseen--as, indeed, he had been taught. His mind stuck in particular
categories of conduct; for some credit was to be given, for some
penalties had to be paid; it was a system of marks good and bad. Even in
the education of the young this is now held to be a disputable theory.
He thought that he had known very intimately his dear old friend who now
lay dying. He found that he knew her very little; he could not get close
to her mind at the end. For Winnie Maxon she had one more revelation.
Mrs. Lenoir would not 'see anybody'--she also detected the special
meaning, and, with a tired smile, repelled the suggestion--but in hints
and fragments she displayed to Winnie in what mood she was facing death.
Courageously--almost indifferently; the sun was set, and at night people
go to bed--tired people they are generally. She had not thought much of
responsibility, of a reckoning; she suffered or achieved none of the
resulting impulse to penitence; she even smiled again at the virtue of a
repentance become compulsory, because it was possible to sin no more.
"Some women I've known became terribly penitent at forty," she said to
Winnie. "I never knew one do it at twenty-five." Her attitude seemed to
say that she had been born such and such a creature, and, accordingly,
had done such and such things--and thus had lived till it became time
for the conditioned, hardly voluntary, life of the creature to end. On
the religious side it was pure negation, but on the worldly there was
something positive. As verily as the General, as Bertie Merriam himself,
she had 'played the game.' Her code was intact; her honour, as judged by
it, unsmirched. "I've been straight, Winnie," she said, in almost the
last conscious minute.
Then came oblivion; the soul was rid of its burden many hours before the
body was. She passed from the life in which she had been so great an
offender against the rules, had played so interesting a part, had done
so many kind things, had been such a good friend, even on occasion so
resolute a resister of temptation--and a woman not to be mentioned. As
Winnie wept over her and paid her the last offices of love--for she, at
least, had received the purest gold of unseeking love--her heart
suffered a mighty searching pang of tenderness. Old words, of old time
familiar, came back. "I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was
thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in."
Such things had her dead friend done for her.
An exaltation and a confidence took hold on her after she had kissed the
cold brow. But outside the room stood the old General, sad, grey, heavy
of face. His voice was broken, his hands tremulous.
"I wish--I wish she'd have seen somebody, Winnie!"
Winnie threw herself into his arms, and looked up at him, her eyes
streaming with tears. "Dear General, she sees nothing or she sees God.
Why are we to be afraid?"