Mrs. Maxon Protests. Anthony Hope

you go on talking about me?"

      "Mayn't I talk about the thing I'm thinking about? How can I help it?"

      Her smile, indulgent to him, pleaded for herself also.

      "It is horribly hard not to, isn't it? That's why I've told all about it, I suppose."

      Stephen Aikenhead, after the shake of his head, had drifted into the house, seeking a fresh fill for his pipe. He found the evening post in and, having nothing in the world else to do, brought out a letter to Mrs. Maxon.

      "For you," he said, making a sudden and somewhat disconcerting appearance at her elbow. He puffed steadily, holding the letter out to Winnie, while he looked at his friend Godfrey with a kindly if quizzical regard.

      "Good gracious, Stephen!"

      "Well, I always like letters worth a 'Good gracious,' Winnie."

      "Hobart Gaynor's coming here to-morrow."

      "Don't know the gentleman. Friend of yours? Very glad to see him."

      "Coming from—from Cyril!"

      "Oh!" The little word was significantly drawn out. "That's another pair of shoes!" it seemed to say.

      She sat up straight, and let her feet down to the ground.

      "To make me go back, I suppose!"

      "You could hardly expect him not to have a shot at it—Cyril, I mean."

      Her eyes had been turned up to Stephen. In lowering them to her letter again, she caught in transit Godfrey Ledstone's regard. For a second or two the encounter lasted. She swished her skirt round—over an ankle heedlessly exposed by her quick movement. Her glance fell to the letter. Godfrey's remained on her face—as well she knew.

      "I must see Hobart, but I won't go back. I won't, Stephen."

      "All right, my dear. Stay here—the longer, the better for us. Shall I wire Gaynor to come?"

      "Will you?"

      Stephen's last glance—considerably blurred by tobacco smoke—was rather recognisant of fact than charged with judgment. "I suppose all that will count," he reflected, as he went back once again to the house. It certainly counted. Godfrey Ledstone was doing nothing against the code. All the same he was introducing a complication into Winnie Maxon's problem. At the start freedom for her had a negative content—it was freedom from things—friction, wrangles, crushing. Was that all that freedom meant? Was not that making it an empty sterile thing?

      "You'll be firm, Mrs. Maxon?"

      Godfrey leant forward in his chair; the change of attitude brought him startlingly near to her. She sprang quickly to her feet, in instinctive retreat.

      "I must hear what Hobart has to say." She met his eyes once more, and smiled pleadingly. He shrugged his shoulders, looking sulky. Her lips curved in a broader smile. "That's only fair to Cyril. You're not coming to dinner? Then—good night."

CHAPTER VI

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FRUIT OF THE TREE

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      Hobart Gaynor undertook his embassy with reluctance. He was busily occupied over his own affairs—he was to be married in a fortnight—and he was only unwillingly convinced by Mr. Attlebury's suave demonstration of where his duty lay, and by the fine-sounding promises which that zealous diplomatist made in Cyril Maxon's name. Waiving the question whether things had been all wrong in the past, Attlebury gave a pledge that they should be all right in the future; all that a reasonable woman could ask, with an ample allowance for whims into the bargain. That was the offer, put briefly. Gaynor doubted, and, much as he wished well to Winnie Maxon, he did not desire to become in any sense responsible for her; he did not want to persuade or to dissuade. Indeed, at first, he would undertake no more than a fair presentment of Maxon's invitation. Attlebury persisted; the woman was young, pretty, not of a very stable character; her only safety was to be with her husband. Her old friend could not resist the appeal; he came into line. But when he asked Cicely Marshfield's applause for his action, he could not help feeling that she was, to use his own colloquial expression, rather "sniffy" about it; she did not appear fully to appreciate his obligation to save Winnie Maxon.

      He arrived at Shaylor's Patch before lunch. Stephen Aikenhead received him with cordiality, faintly tinged, as it seemed to the visitor, with compassion. Tora's manner enforced the impression; she treated him as a good man foredoomed to failure. "Of course you must have your talk with her," Stephen said. "You shall have it after lunch." He spoke of the talk rather as a ceremony to be performed than as a conference likely to produce practical results.

      "I hope you'll back me up—and Mrs. Aikenhead too?" said the ambassador.

      The Aikenheads looked at one another. Tora smiled. Stephen rubbed his forehead. At the moment lunch was announced, and, the next, Winnie came into the room, closely followed by Godfrey Ledstone.

      When Hobart saw her, a new doubt smote him—a doubt not of the success (he was doubtful enough about that already), but of the merits of his mission. She looked a different woman from the despairing rebel who had come to him in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Her eyes were bright, there was colour in her cheeks; her manner, without losing its attractive quietude and demureness, was gay and joyous. There might be something in what she had said about being "crushed" at her husband's house! It might not be merely a flourish of feminine rhetoric.

      "The country has done wonders for you, Winnie," he said, as he shook hands.

      "I'm having a lovely rest." To Hobart she seemed to add, "Why need you come and disturb it?"

      Another omen unfavourable in the envoy's eyes was the obvious pleasure she took in Ledstone's presence and conversation; and yet another was the young man's unobtrusive but evident certainty that all he said and did would be well received. On Ledstone's fascinating attentions, no less than on the Aikenheads' affectionate and indulgent friendship, he had to ask her to turn her back. For what? A parcel of promises made by Attlebury in Maxon's name! Were they of much more practical value than what godfathers and godmothers promise and vow at a baby's christening? Could they change the natural man in Maxon and avail against his original sin? But, on the other hand, were not indulgent friendships, and, still more, charming attentions, exactly the dangers against which he had come to warn her? She was young, pretty, and not of a very stable character—Attlebury's words came back. The indulgent friendship would mine her defences; then the charming attentions would deliver their assault. No—Attlebury was right, his own mission was right; but it bore hard on poor Winnie Maxon. A reluctant messenger, a prophet too sensible of the other side of the argument (which prophets should never be), he found himself no match for the forces which now moved and dominated Winnie Maxon. She had been resolved when she was only crying for and dreaming of liberty. Would she be less resolved now that she had tasted it? And was now enjoying it, not amid frowns or reproofs, but with the countenance of her friends and the generally, though not universally, implied approval of all the people she met? Attlebury could make the disapproval of the great world outside sound a terrible thing; sheltered at Shaylor's Patch, Winnie did not hear its voice. Attlebury might hint at terrible dangers; such men thought it "dangerous" for a woman to have any pleasure in her life!

      She listened to Hobart kindly and patiently enough, but always with reiterated shakes of her pretty head. At some of the promises she fairly laughed—they were so entirely different from the Cyril Maxon she knew.

      "It's no use," she declared. "Whatever may be right, whatever may be wrong, I'm not going back. The law ought to set me free (this was an outcome of Shaylor's Patch!). Since it doesn't, I set myself free, that's all."

      "But what are you going to do?"

      "Either