right to the end. We"ve changed one another, d.i.c.k. I you, you me--and life both of us! And so we can make terms with one another."
"Terms of perfect peace," he answered. He knew what was in her mind. "I give you my honour--in my soul I"m at peace."
"Then so be it, dear old d.i.c.k. For neither am I ashamed." She turned round to face him, and, putting her hands on his shoulders, kissed his lips. "Now let"s go over to your house, and see that this eventuality really has been properly borne in view. Dear Stephen! He"ll philosophize over us, d.i.c.k!"
That was, of course, only to be expected. Yet it did not happen when Stephen and his wife were told the great news after dinner. On the contrary, after brief but hearty congratulations, the host and hostess disappeared. Winnie thought that she had detected a glance pa.s.sing between them.
"They needn"t be so very tactful!" she said laughing.
They were very tactful; for even to lovers the time they stayed away was undeniably long. There could be no illusion about the progress of the hands of the clock. Yet when Tora and Stephen came in and were accused of an excessive display of the useful social quality in question, Tora blushed, denied the charge rather angrily, and bade them all a brief good night. Stephen glared through his spectacles in mock fury.
"You two think yourselves everybody! As a matter of fact, for the last hour or so--how late is it? Eleven! Oh, I say! Yes, of course! Well, for the last two hours or so, Tora and I have forgotten your very existence; and, if I may use the candour of an old friend, it"s rather a jar to find you here. You"d better escort your friend home, Mr. Dennehy."
"Well, what have you been doing then?" laughed Winnie.
"It"s one of Tora"s theories that I should propose to her all over again about once a year--and somehow to-night seemed rather a suitable opportunity," Stephen explained. "She"s at perfect liberty to refuse me, and, as a matter of fact, she"s generally rather difficult about it.
That"s why it"s so late." His eyes twinkled again. "She imposes all sorts of conditions as to my future conduct. I argue a bit, or she wouldn"t respect me. Then I give in--but, of course, I don"t observe them all, or what fun would it be next year? She"s accepted me this time, but she says it"s the last time, unless I mend my ways considerably."
A spark of d.i.c.k Dennehy"s old scorn blazed out. "So that"s the way she gets round her precious theory, is it? And the woman a respectable wife and mother all the time!"
Winnie laid her hand on his arm. "There is one thing that can get round everything, d.i.c.k."
"A fact which, in all its bearings for good and evil, must be carefully brought out in the Synopsis," said Stephen Aikenhead.
They left him twinkling luminously at them through clouds of tobacco smoke.
"Hang the man, is he in earnest about his old Synopsis, as he calls the thing?" asked d.i.c.k Dennehy, as they started for the cottage.
Winnie considered. "I don"t quite know. That"s the fun of Stephen! But, anyhow"--she pressed his arm--"if this thing--our thing--doesn"t end before the Synopsis does, we"re all right! It"ll last our lives, I think, and be still unfinished." Her laugh ended in a sigh, her sigh again in a smile. "Oh, I"m talking as if it were a fairy-tale ending, out of one of Alice"s stories. Well, just for to-night! But it isn"t really--it can"t be, d.i.c.k. It"s not an ending at all. It"s a beginning, and a beginning of something difficult. Look what you"re giving up for me--the great thing I"m accepting from you! And it"s not a thing to be done once and for all. It"ll be a continuing thing, always cropping up over other things great and small. Oh, it"s not an ending; it"s only a start. Is it even a fair start, d.i.c.k?"
"It"s a matter of faith, like everything else in the world that"s worth a rap," said d.i.c.k Dennehy. "At all events, we know this about one another--that we"re equal to putting up a fight for what we believe in and love. And odds against don"t frighten us! I call that a fair start.
What do you make of life, anyhow, unless it"s a fight? We"ll fight our fight to a finish!"
His voice rang bravely confident; his sanguine spirit soared high in hope. When she opened the cottage door, and the light from a hanging lamp in the narrow pa.s.sage fell on him, his face was happy and serene.
With a smile he coaxed her apprehensions. "Ah, now, you"re not the girl you were if ye"re afraid of an experiment!"
She put her hands in his. "Not the girl I was, indeed! How could I be, after it all? But here"s my life--am I to be afraid of it? Any use I am, any joy I have--am I to turn tail? I won"t, d.i.c.k!"
"Always plucky! As plucky as wrong-headed, Winnie!"
"Wrongheaded still?" she laughed, now gaily. "That question, like everything else, is, as Stephen says, "in solution." It"s not my fate to settle questions, but it seems as if I couldn"t help raising them!"
To those who would see design in such matters--in the interaction of lives and minds--it might well seem that here she put her finger on a function to which she had never aspired, but for which she had been effectually used in several cases. She had raised questions in unquestioning people. Her management of her life put them on inquiry as to the foundations and the canons of their own. For d.i.c.k Dennehy even her chimney-pots had streaked the sky with notes of interrogation! She had been, as it were, a touchstone, proving true metal, detecting the base, revealing alloy; a test of quality, of courage, of faith; an explorer"s shaft sunk deep in the ore of the human heart. She had struck strata scantily auriferous, she had come upon some sheer dross, yet the search left her not merely hopeful, but already enriched. Twice she had found gold--in the soldier who would not desert his flag even for her sake, in the believer who, for her soul"s sake and his love of her, flung himself on the mercy of an affronted Heaven. Both could dare, sacrifice, and dedicate. They obeyed the call their ears heard, though it were to their own hurt--in this world or, mayhap, in another. There was the point of union between the man who forswore her for his loyalty"s sake and the man who sheltered her against his creed.
In the small circle of those with whom she had shared the issues of destiny she had unsettled much; of a certainty she had settled nothing.
Things were just as much "in solution" as ever; the welter was not abated. Man being imperfect, laws must be made. Man being imperfect, laws must be broken or ever new laws will be made. Winnie Maxon had broken a law and asked a question. When thousands do the like, the Giant, after giving the first-comers a box on the ear, may at last put his hand to his own and ponderously consider.