"It"s a terrible thing to have to say, but really his death--poor fellow!--ended a situation which had become almost unendurable to any woman of fine feelings. He was never rude or unkind to me, but one"s pride! And the solitude of the soul, Mr. Maxon!"
"Still you endured it bravely." His tone subtly asked sympathy, while his words gave it.
"I wonder if I could have gone on! I should shock Mr. Attlebury, I suppose, but I thought more than once of divorce. Our home--when we were at home--had always been in Scotland. That would have made it easier, and it needn"t have hurt his career anything like so much. He could just have left me and stayed away the necessary time, you see. After the last--the last trouble--he offered me that, if I wished it."
"You must have been under a considerable temptation."
"Yes. But then his health began to fail, and--and things were different.
I had to stay and look after him; and so we became better friends at the end. I really don"t bear malice now."
"I think with Attlebury on that question, you know."
"Yes, I suppose you do. But then, isn"t there--room for doubt?"
"I scarcely think so, Lady Rosaline."
"Oh, but it is hard sometimes, then!" she murmured, looking into the fire. "Do you think there"s nothing in the view that the offence itself is a dissolution?--That it"s the offender himself--or herself--who puts asunder, not the judge, who merely deals with the legal consequences?"
"No, I can"t see that." He paused, frowning, then went on: "I can understand a man maintaining that it"s given as a counsel of perfection, rather than an absolutely binding rule--I mean, that a man should try, but, if it proves beyond his strength, he might not be absolutely condemned."
"Does it hurt you to talk about it?"
"Not to people who understand."
"How strange she didn"t understand you better! Do you mind my saying that?"
"If I"d ever had any doubts about the substantial rights of the matter, her subsequent proceedings would have dispelled them completely."
"Yes, they throw a light back, don"t they?"
Cyril Maxon threw more light, setting forth the preposterous charges which his wife had levelled against him before she went away. He put them as honestly as he could; they were to him so unreasonable that he was not in the least afraid to submit them to an impartial judge. They seemed just as unreasonable to Lady Rosaline. She was as secure of herself as was Mrs. Lenoir; she was not afraid of being "crushed."
(Perhaps being "Lady Rosaline" helped her a little there.) And Winnie"s alleged grievances fell so short of her own tale of wrongs as to seem a ridiculously inadequate excuse.
"I can"t understand her any more than you can," she said.
"There"s really no use in saying any more about her, Lady Rosaline. It"s a matter of character."
"And she"s actually with this man Ledstone now?"
He spread out his hands and bowed his head. It was both answer and comment enough.
"They"d marry, I suppose, if they could?"
Cyril Maxon was not quick at marking the delicate shades of a woman"s mood; there at least Winnie was right. He did not now detect the underlying note of pity in Lady Rosaline"s voice. It was, indeed, no more than hinted. He made another gesture--this time of p.r.o.nounced impatience and distaste. Lady Rosaline smiled faintly, and changed the subject.
When he had left her, she sat on by the fire, musing. She was a widow with few happy memories and no fond regrets; she was childless; in spite of her high connections she was by no means rich; she could not afford to travel much in the style she desired, or to entertain much. And she was thirty-three. Surveying her position as a whole, she did not take a roseate view of it. "I"m bound to drop out in a few years"--that was how she summed up her prospects--not a cheerful summary, it must be admitted. She had not the contentment of a Mrs. Ladd nor the philanthropic zeal of a Miss Fortescue. She had a good deal of ambition, a love of luxury, and (as has been said) a commendable self-confidence.
Masterful herself under all her graceful gentleness, she liked rather than feared masterful men; Cyril Maxon attracted her none the less because he had "crushed" Winnie. "A poor little thing like that!" So ran her verdict on Winnie, whom she had met half a dozen times. And he was very rising. She found herself recalling the precise words that he had used about "a counsel of perfection."
It needs little acuteness to detect a congruity between the interpretation of a rule as a counsel of perfection, and the doctrine of the limits of human endurance. In fact they come to very much the same thing and are invoked, rightly or wrongly, plausibly or unplausibly, on much the same occasions and under very similar circ.u.mstances. If a man strikes you lightly on one cheek, you turn the other. But if he strikes the first cheek very hard? If he forces you to go a mile with him, will you go with him twain? Does the amenity of the road make no difference?
If he takes your coat, shall he take your cloak also? Something might turn on the relative value of the two garments. In such cases the human race makes accommodations; and accommodations are not confined to any one cla.s.s of thinkers.
Cyril Maxon had afforded scant countenance to Lady Rosaline"s suggestion that the offender himself severed the tie. She had picked it up from an article of Catholic complexion, which set out the authorities for it only to confute them. His logical mind saw that the position implied rather startling consequences; for if an act can sever, an act can bind.
But he did not so easily or readily reject his own idea of the counsel of perfection. Arguing before a Court, he could have made a good case for it. Argued in the forum of his own conscience, it found pleas and precedents. Yet it was slowly that it gained even a hearing from the judge, and only by much dexterous pleading; for at first sight the authorities to which he bowed were all against it. They had seemed absolutely and immediately conclusive on the morning when Mr. Ledstone called in the Temple. "No proceedings!" Save as a record of his own att.i.tude, Maxon attached no importance to the utterance so charged with relief to its auditor. It was in no sense a pledge; it was merely an expression of present intention. On what conceivable theory had that Ledstone family any right to pledges from him? If a pledge at all, it was one to himself and to the school of thought to which he belonged. To the Ledstones? Never!
So the slow hidden current of his feelings began to bore for itself a new channel--a way round the rock of principle that barred direct advance. Another change there was in him. A woman--his wife--had gibbeted him as a man impossible to live with. He was secretly, almost unconsciously, afraid of the world"s agreeing with her. Seeking sympathy, he tried to manifest it; afraid of being misunderstood, he embarked on an effort to be understanding. He made a fair success of it.
People said that he was human after all, and that Mrs. Maxon ought to have seen it. The work which Winnie had done redounded to her discredit; it is not an uncommon case. The rebels are shot, flogged, or have to fly the kingdom. But reforms are introduced into the administration, and these make the rebels seem more guilty still--because, of course, the reforms were just going to be introduced anyhow, if only the rebels would have had a little faith, a little patience. Who has not read it a score of times in the newspapers?
"That little wife of his can"t have known how to manage a man," said old Mrs. Ladd, who had owned two husbands, the first an over-festive soul, the second a hypochondriac.
"The Vicar has the highest opinion of him," remarked Miss Fortescue.
Mrs. Ladd smiled. "He won"t have such a high opinion of him if he goes gadding after Rosaline Deering."
Miss Fortescue was shocked and interested. "My dear, is there any chance of that?"
Mrs. Ladd pursed up her lips. "I don"t see much harm in it myself," she said.
"Oh, Mrs. Ladd! If the Vicar heard you!"
"If you may marry again when your husband"s dead----"
"It"s allowed, but it"s--it"s not exactly recommended, is it?"
"Well, on the Vicar"s theory, I don"t see in the end any difference between the two cases--or, at any rate, not much." Mrs. Ladd destroyed her logic by a concession to her friend"s pained surprise. She ought to have stuck to there being no difference at all. Then on Attlebury"s theory she had an argument; "not much" came perilously near to cutting the roots of it.
Speculation as to Mr. Attlebury"s att.i.tude was not confined to these good members of his flock. It had a place in Cyril Maxon"s own mind, so soon as he began to consider the idea of freeing himself from the legal bond of marriage--and of reviewing his situation after that was done.
But here the idiosyncrasy of the man came in, and cut across the loyalty of the Churchman. He had given to Attlebury a voluntary allegiance. But if Attlebury tried to extort a forced obedience? Cyril"s face set at the thought. Winnie"s great offence had been that she would not "adapt herself." In his heart he demanded that the priest and the Church should adapt themselves also, should recognize his services and his value, and find a way out for him, if necessary. The "counsel of perfection" theory seemed more and more, on consideration, to be a possible way out, and already he began to feel, in antic.i.p.ation, a resentment against the man or the inst.i.tution that should say the contrary. He chafed beforehand at such dictation, such interference with a view conscientiously held by a man whom all must admit to be sincere and devout--and, moreover, an adherent very much worth having.
Among the various influences which caused the project of freeing himself to take definite shape in his mind, Rosaline Deering had to be reckoned first, no doubt, but she was not the only woman who counted. Done with as she was, out of his life, yet Winnie Maxon also had her share in the work. He felt a primitive desire to "show her," as children say--to show her that she had not the power to destroy his life, that there were women wiser than she, women who did not think him impossible to live with, but would hold it high fortune to become his wife. As soon as he began to think of Rosaline Deering, he thought oftener of his wife, setting the two women in opposition as it were, and endowing Rosaline with all the virtues which Winnie had so conspicuously lacked. Even such an advent.i.tious thing as Rosaline"s courtesy t.i.tle counted in this connexion; it would help to convince Winnie of her own insignificance, of what a much greater career than her own she had tried--vainly tried--to spoil. When she was little better than a vagabond--he did not put things mercifully--Mr. Justice and Lady Rosaline Maxon might be entertaining in Devonshire Street--or perhaps Berkeley Square.
When the Law Courts rose for the Christmas vacation he went to Paris, and Lady Rosaline was gracious enough to make no secret of the fact that his presence there had a share in determining her also on a short visit.
They did some of the sights together, they had many talks over the fire, and it was there--on the same Christmas Eve whereon Winnie had gone to Shaylor"s Patch and G.o.dfrey Ledstone to Woburn Square--that he told her that he had made up his mind to seek legal dissolution of his ill-starred marriage.
"I have looked at the question from all sides, and I have satisfied my conscience," he said. "Now I must act on my own responsibility."
In the last words there sounded antic.i.p.atory defiance of Mr.
Attlebury--a defiance which indicated that the satisfaction of his conscience was not quite complete. The case rather was that his conscience had come to terms with the other influences, and under their pressure had accepted the way out.
"I think I may justly plead that the circ.u.mstances are exceptional." He leant forward towards her and asked, "You don"t condemn me?"
"What"s my opinion worth? You know much more about it; you"re much more able to form a judgment."
"But I want to know that I haven"t forfeited your good opinion, your regard, if I may hope that I have ever gained it."
"No, I don"t condemn you, if your own conscience doesn"t, Mr. Maxon."
She rose and stood--leaning her elbow on the mantelpiece, her back half turned towards him. The pose displayed well the grace of her tall figure; his eyes rested on her in satisfaction.
"Thank you," he said. "That--that means a great deal to me, Lady Rosaline."