Part 46 (1/2)
Mrs. Lenoir did not, as the phrase runs, ”do as much for” Winnie Maxon as she had been prepared to do for the prospective Mrs. Bertie Merriam.
Perhaps because, though she had accepted the decision, her disappointment over the issue persisted. Perhaps merely because, as matters now stood, her bounty would not go in the end to benefit her old friend's stock. After providing an annuity for her precious Emily, and bequeathing a few personal relics to the General, she left to Winnie the furniture of her flat and fifteen hundred pounds. The residue which was at her disposition she gave--it may be with a parting kick at respectability; it may be because she thought he would enjoy it most--to her favourite, and the least meritorious, of the General's sons--the one who went in for too much polo and private theatricals in India.
”There's no immediate need for you to hurry out of here,” the General added; he was the executor. ”The rent must be paid till the summer anyhow, and Clara told me that she wished you to stay till then if you liked. I've no doubt Emily will stay with you.”
”It was very kind of her, but I can't afford to live here long.”
”Oh, well, just while you look about you, anyhow. And if there's anything I can do for you, you won't hesitate to let me know, will you?”
Winnie promised to call upon his services if she required them, but again the feeling came over her that, however kind and obliging he might be, the General did in his heart--even if unwillingly--regard their connexion with one another as over. The bond which Mrs. Lenoir had made was broken; that other and closer bond had never come into existence. It would have been unjust to say that the General was was.h.i.+ng his hands of her. It was merely a recognition of facts to admit that fate--the course of events--was performing the operation for him. They had no longer any purchase on one another's lives, any common interest to unite them. His only surviving concern now was in his three sons, and it had been irrevocably decided that there Winnie was not to count.
The consciousness of this involuntary drifting apart from the old man whom she liked and admired for his gentleness and his loyalty intensified the loneliness with which Mrs. Lenoir's death afflicted Winnie. She was in no better case now than when her friend had rescued her from the empty studio and thereby seemed to open to her a new life.
The new life, too, was gone with the friend who had given it. Looking back on her career since she had left Cyril Maxon's roof, she saw the same thing happening again and again. She had made friends and lost them; she had picked them up, walked with them to the next fork in the road, and there parted company. ”Is it mere chance, or something in me, or something in my position?” she asked herself. A candid survey could not refuse the conclusion that the position had contributed largely to the result. The case of G.o.dfrey Ledstone, the more trivial instance of Bob Purnett, were there to prove it. The position had been a vital and practically exclusive factor in bringing about her parting from Bertie Merriam; she had an idea that its action was to be traced in the continued absence and silence of d.i.c.k Dennehy. The same thing which had parted her from her men-friends had forbidden her friends.h.i.+ps with women. She could, she felt, have made a friend of Amy Ledstone. To-day she would have liked to make a friend of kindly shrewd old Mrs. Ladd; but though Mrs. Ladd came to see her at the flat which had been Mrs.
Lenoir's, she received no invitation to Mrs. Ladd's house. The pressure of public opinion, the feelings of Mr. Attlebury's congregation, the 'awkwardness' which would arise with Mrs. Ladd's old, if too exacting, friend, Cyril Maxon, forbade. The one friends.h.i.+p which had proved able to resist the disintegrating influence was ended now by death.
Well, great benefits cannot reasonably be expected for nothing. If she was alone, she was also free--wonderfully free. And, of a certainty, complete freedom can seldom be achieved save at the cost of a voluntary or involuntary severing of ties. Must every one then be either a slave or a solitary? She was not so soured as to accept that conclusion. She knew that there was a way out--only she had not found it. The Aikenheads had, down at Shaylor's Patch! Thither--to her old haven--her thoughts turned longingly. While it stood, she did it injustice in calling herself friendless. Yet to retire to that pleasant seclusion went against pride; it seemed like a retreat, a confession that the world had been too much for her, that she was beaten. She was not prepared to acknowledge herself beaten--at least, not by the enemy in a fair square fight. Her disasters were due to the defection of her allies. So she insisted, as she sat long hours alone in the flat--ah, now so quiet indeed!
Shaylor's Patch had not forgotten her. The Aikenheads did not attend their friend Mrs. Lenoir's funeral--they had a theory antagonistic to graveside gatherings, which was not totally lacking in plausibility--but Stephen had written to her, promising to come and see her as soon as he could get to town. He came there very seldom--Winnie, indeed, had never met him in London--and it was above a fortnight before he made his appearance at the flat. Delighted as Winnie was by his visit, her glad welcome was almost smothered in amazement at his appearance. He wore the full uniform of a man about town, all in the latest fas.h.i.+on, from the curl of the brim of his silk hat to the exact cut of his coat-tails.
Save that his hair was a trifle long and full, he was a typical Londoner, dressed for a ceremonial occasion. As it was, he would pa.s.s well for a poet with social ambitions.
”Good gracious!” said Winnie, holding up her hands. ”You got up like that, Stephen!”
”Yes, I think I can hold my own in Piccadilly,” said Stephen, complacently regarding himself in the long gilt mirror. ”I believe I once told you I had atavistic streaks? This is one of them. I can mention my opinions if I want to--and I generally do; but there's no need for my coat and hat to go yelling them out in the street. That's my view; of course it isn't in the least Tora's. She thinks me an awful fool for doing it.”
Winnie did not feel it necessary to settle this difficult point in the philosophy of clothes--on which eminent men hold widely varying opinions, as anybody who takes his walks abroad and keeps his eyes open for the celebrities of the day will have no difficulty in observing.
”Well, at any rate, I think you look awfully nice--quite handsome! I expect Tora's just afraid of your being too fascinating in your best clothes.”
He sat down with a laugh and looked across at her inquiringly. ”Pretty cheerful, Winnie?”
”Not so very particularly. I do feel her loss awfully, you know. I was very fond of her, and it seems to leave me so adrift. I had an anchorage here, but the anchor won't hold any more.”
”Come and anchor at Shaylor's Patch. The anchor always holds there for you.”
Winnie both made her confession and produced her objection. ”I can't deny I've been thinking of you rather wistfully in these melancholy days, but it seems like--like giving up.”
”Not a bit of it. You can be absolutely in the thick of the fight there, if you like.” He looked across at her with his whimsical smile. ”I'm actually going to do something at last, Winnie. I'm about to start on my life's work. I'm going to do a Synopsis of Social Philosophy.”
”It sounds like a life's work,” Winnie remarked. His society always cheered her, and already her manner showed something of its normal gaiety.
”Yes, it's a big job, but I'm a healthy man. You see, I shall take all the great fellows from the earliest time down to to-day, and collect from them everything that bears on the questions that we of to-day have to face--not worrying about their metaphysics and that sort of stuff, but taking what bears on the things we've really got to settle--the live things, you know. See the idea? There'll be a section on Education, for instance, one on Private Property, one on Marriage, one on Women and Labour. I want it to reach the ma.s.ses, so all the excerpts will be in English. Then each section will have an appendix, in which I shall collate the excerpts, and point out the main lines of agreement and difference. Perhaps I shall add a few suggestions of my own.”
”I think you very likely will, Stephen.”
”Now don't you think it's a ripping idea? Of course I shall take in poetry and novels and plays, as well as philosophers and historians. A comparison between Lecky and Ibsen, for instance! Bound to be fruitful!
Oh, it'll be a big job, but I mean to put it through.” He leant forward to her. ”That's not giving up, is it? That's fighting! And the point is--you can help me. You see, there'll be no end of books to read, just to see if there's anything of possible use in them. You can do lots of spade-work for me. Besides, you've got very good judgment.”
”Wouldn't Tora help you better than I could?”
His eyes twinkled. ”I wouldn't trust Tora, and I've told her so plainly.