Part 4 (1/2)

”I can think--and act--for myself,” she had said. Perhaps, but both would be new and strange exercises. She had walked on lines very straightly ruled; she had moved to orders peremptorily conveyed. A fear mingled with the relief of emanc.i.p.ation. They say that men who have been long in prison are bewildered by the great free bustling world. It may be as true of prisons of the mind as of the Bastille itself.

Stephen interrupted his reading to give another statement of his att.i.tude. ”It's like the two horses--the one in the stable-yard and the wild one. The one gets oats and no freedom, the other freedom and no oats. Now different people put very various values on freedom and on oats. And at any rate the wild horse must have fodder of some kind.”

His face vanished behind the book again, and she heard him chuckling merrily over something in it. If he did not get oats, he certainly seemed to thrive excellently on such other fodder as he found. But then it was undeniable that Cyril Maxon throve equally well--successful, rising, with no doubts as to his own opinions or his own conduct. Or had her resolve shaken him into any questionings? He had shown no signs of any when she parted from him that morning. ”I shall be glad to see you back at the end of your fortnight,” he had said. The words were an order.

Tora Aikenhead, on her way to the rose-beds, with a basket and scissors in her hand, came up to them.

”Resting?” she asked Winnie, in her low pleasant voice.

In the telegram in which she had proposed her visit, Winnie had said that she was a little ”knocked up” with the gaieties of town, but she fancied that her hostess's question referred, though distantly, to more than these, that she had discerned traces of distress, the havoc wrought by the pa.s.sing of a storm.

”Beautifully!” Winnie answered, with a grateful smile.

”d.i.c.k Dennehy is week-ending with G.o.dfrey Ledstone, and they're coming to lunch and tennis to-morrow; and Mrs. Lenoir is motoring down to lunch too,” Tora went on to her husband.

”Mrs. Lenoir?” He looked up from his book with that droll twinkle behind his big spectacles again.

”Yes. Quite soon again, isn't it? She must like us, Stephen.”

Stephen laughed. His wife had not in the least understood the cause of the twinkle. She would not, he reflected. It never occurred to her that any human being could object to meeting any other, unless, indeed, actual a.s.sault and battery were to be feared. But Stephen was awake to the fact that it might be startling to Winnie Maxon to meet Mrs.

Lenoir--if she knew all about her. Naturally he attributed rigid standards to Mrs. Cyril Maxon, in spite of her proud avowal of open-mindedness, which indeed had seemed to him rather amusing than convincing.

”Ledstone's our neighbour,” he told Winnie, ”the only neighbour who really approves of us. He's taken a cottage here for the summer. You'll like him; he's a jolly fellow. Dennehy's an Irish London correspondent to some paper or other in the States, and a Fenian, and all that sort of thing, you know. Very good chap.”

”Well, I asked no questions about your guests, but since you've started posting me up--who's Mrs. Lenoir?”

”Tora, who is Mrs. Lenoir?”

”Who is she? Who should she be? She's just Mrs. Lenoir.”

Tora was obviously rather surprised at the question, and unprovided with an illuminating answer. But then there are many people in whose case it is difficult to say who they are, unless a repet.i.tion of their names be accepted as sufficient.

”I must out with it. Mrs. Lenoir was once mixed up in a very famous case--she intervened, as they call it--and the case went against her.

Some people thought she was unjustly blamed in that case, but--well, it couldn't be denied that she was a plausible person to choose for blame.

It's all years ago--she must be well over fifty by now. I hope you--er--won't feel it necessary to have too long a memory, Winnie?”

”I don't exactly see why it's necessary to tell at all,” remarked Tora.

”Why is it our business?”

”But Winnie does?” The question was to Winnie herself.

”I know why you told me, of course,” she answered. She hesitated, blushed, smiled, and came out with ”But it doesn't matter.”

”Of course not, dear,” remarked Tora, as she went off to her roses.

All very well to say ”Of course not,” but to Mrs. Cyril Maxon it was not a case of ”Of course” at all. Quite the contrary. The concession she had made was to her a notable one. She had resolved to fall in with the ways of Shaylor's Patch in all possible and lawful matters--and it was not for her, a guest, to make difficulties about other guests, if such a thing could possibly be avoided. None the less, she was much surprised that Mrs. Lenoir should be coming to lunch--she had, in fact, betrayed that. In making no difficulties she seemed to herself to take a long step on the road to emanc.i.p.ation. It was her first act of liberty; for certainly Cyril Maxon would never have permitted it. She felt that she had behaved graciously; she felt also that she had been rather audacious.