Part 45 (1/2)
”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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.sisted 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 att.i.tude 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sing. 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 pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tuted 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 pa.s.sed 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.s 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.”