Mrs. Maxon Protests. Anthony Hope
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on this her first complete day of freedom.
At lunch Dick Dennehy could not get away from his victory at lawn-tennis. He started on an exposition of the theory of the game. He was heard in silence, till Tora Aikenhead observed in her dispassionate tones, "But you don't play at all well, Dick."
"What?" he shouted indignantly, trying to twist up a still humid moustache.
"Theory against practice—that's the way of it always," said Stephen.
"Well, in a sense ye're right there," Dennehy conceded. "It needs a priest to tell you what to do, and a man to do it."
"Let's put a 'not' in the first half of the proposition," said Ledstone.
"And a woman in the second half?" Mrs. Lenoir added.
"That must be why they like one another so much," Dennehy suggested. "Each makes such a fine justification for the existence of the other. They keep one another in work!" He rubbed his hands with a pleasantly boyish laugh.
"I always try to be serious, though it's very difficult with the people who come to my house." Stephen was hypocritically grave.
"Ye're serious because ye're an atheist," observed Dennehy.
"I'm not an atheist, Dick."
"The Pope'd call you one, and that's enough for a good Catholic like me. How shouldn't you behave yourself properly when you don't believe that penitence can do you any good?"
"The weak spot about penitence," remarked Tora, "is that it doesn't do the other party any good."
Winnie ventured a meek question: "The other party?"
"There always is one," said Mrs. Lenoir.
Stephen smiled. "I always like to search for a contradictory instance. Now, if a man drinks himself to death, he benefits the revenue, he accelerates the wealth of his heirs, promotes the success of his rivals, gratifies the enmity of his foes, and enriches the conversation of his friends. As for his work—if he has any—il n'y a pas d'homme nécessaire."
"It seems to me it would be all right if nobody wasted time and trouble over stopping him," said Dennehy—a teetotaller, and the next instant quaffing ginger-beer immoderately.
"He would be sure to be hurting somebody," said Mrs. Lenoir.
"And why not hurt somebody? I'm sure somebody's always hurting me," Dennehy objected hotly. "How would the world get on else? Don't I hold my billet only till a better man can turn me out?"
"Yes," said Stephen. "'The priest who slew the slayer, and shall himself be slain'—that system's by no means obsolete in modern civilization."
"Obsolete! It's the soul of it, its essence, its gospel." It was Mrs. Lenoir who spoke.
"A definition of competition?" asked Stephen.
"Yes, and of progress—as they call it."
Tora Aikenhead was consolatory, benign, undismayed. "To be slain when you're old and weak—what of that?"
"But ye don't think ye're old and weak. That's the shock of it," cried Dennehy.
"It is rather a shock," Mrs. Lenoir agreed. "The truth about yourself is always a shock—or even another person's genuine opinion."
Winnie Maxon remembered how she had administered to her husband his "awful facer"; she recollected also, rather ruefully, that he had taken it well. You always have to hurt somebody, even when you want so obvious a right as freedom! A definite declaration of incompatibility must be wounding—at any rate when it is not mutual.
It is an irksome thing to have—nay, to constitute in your own person—an apposite and interesting case, and to be forbidden to produce it. If only Winnie Maxon might lay her case before the company while they were so finely in the mood to deal with it! She felt not merely that she would receive valuable advice (which she could not bring herself to doubt would be favourable to her side), but also that she herself would take new rank; to provide these speculative minds with a case must be a passport to their esteem. Bitterly regretting her unfortunate promise, she began to arraign the justice of holding herself bound by it, and to accuse her husband's motives in extorting it. He must have wished to deprive her of what she would naturally and properly seek—the counsel of her friends. He must have wanted to isolate her, to leave her to fight her bitter battle all alone. To chatter in public was one thing, to consult two or three good friends surely another? Promises should be kept; but should they not also be reasonably interpreted, especially when they have been exacted from such doubtful motives?
Thus straying, probably for the first time in her life, in the mazes of casuistry, the adventurous novice was rewarded by a really brilliant idea. Why should she not put her case in general terms, as an imaginary instance, hypothetically? The promise would be kept, yet the counsel and comfort (for, of course, the counsel would be comfortable) would be forthcoming. No sooner conceived than executed! Only, unfortunately, the execution was attended with a good deal of confusion and no small display of blushes—a display not indeed unbecoming, but sadly compromising. It was just as well that they had got to the stage of coffee, and the parlour-maid had left the room.
Dennehy did not find her out. He was not an observant man, and he was more interested in general questions than in individual persons. Hence Winnie had the benefit of listening to a thoroughgoing denunciation of the course she had adopted and was resolved to maintain. Kingdoms might—and in most cases ought to—fall; that was matter of politics. But marriage and the family—that was matter of faith and morals. He bade Winnie's hypothetical lady endure her sufferings and look for her reward elsewhere. At the close of his remarks Tora Aikenhead smiled and offered him a candied apricot. He had certainly spoken rather hotly.
Stephen guessed the truth, and it explained what had puzzled him from the first—the sudden visit of his cousin, unaccompanied by her husband. He had suspected a tiff. But he had not divined a rupture. He was surprised at Winnie's pluck; it must be confessed that he was also rather staggered at being asked to consider Cyril Maxon as quite so impossible to live with. However, Winnie ought to know best about that.
"Oh, come, Dick, there are limits—there must be. You may be bound to take the high line, but the rest of us are free to judge cases on the merits. At this time of day you can't expect women to stand being sat upon and squashed all their lives."
Godfrey Ledstone had not talked much. Now he came forward on Winnie's side.
"A man must appreciate a woman, or how can he ask her to stay with him?"
"I don't see why she shouldn't do as she likes," said Tora. "Especially as you put a case where there are no children, Winnie."
Mrs. Lenoir was more reserved. "Let her either make up her mind to stand everything or not to stand it at all any more. Because she'll never change a man like that."
Only one to the contrary—and he a necessarily prejudiced witness! She claimed Mrs. Lenoir for her side, in spite of the reserve. The other three were obviously for her. Winnie was glad that she had put her case. Not only was she comforted; somehow she felt more important. No longer a mere listener, she had contributed to the debate. She would have felt still more important had she been free to declare that it was she herself who embodied the matter at issue.
For such added consequence she had not long to wait. After the guests had gone, Stephen Aikenhead came to her in the garden.
"I don't want to pry into what's not my business, but I think some of us had an idea that—well, that you were talking about yourself, really, at lunch. Don't say anything if you don't want to. Only, of course, Tora and I would like to help."
She looked up at him, blushing again. "I promised not to tell. But since you've guessed——"
"I'm awfully sorry about it."
"At least I promised not to tell till it was settled. Well—it is settled. So I've not broken the promise, really."
Stephen