Anthony Hope

“ She would not take even a great love if it came accompanied by utter condemnation; perhaps she could not have believed in it, or, believing in it for the time, would have seen no basis of permanence.
In the early days the ardour of love was all on his side; her heart was not so easily kindled again into flame. Only gradually did the woman's absolute faith and grateful affection for the man blossom into their natural fruit—even as by degrees Winnie's joy in life and delight in her own powers emerged from their eclipse. ”

“ But fuming up and down in his studio off Fitzroy Square (just like his father in the back room in Woburn Square) and lashing himself into impotent fury, he began to feel that he hated everybody else. They had all had a hand in his undoing—Bob Purnett and his lot with their easy-going moralities, Shaylor's Patch and its lot with their silly speculations and vapourings over things they knew nothing about, Cyril Maxon who did not stand by what he said nor by what he believed, Winnie with ridiculous exacting theories, Mabel Thurseley (poor blameless Mabel!) ”

“ Lady Rosaline's thoughts embraced the idea of Sir Axel as an ally, perhaps envisaged him as a shield. Possibly they went so far as to hazard the suggestion that a man who will not bow before a decision may be confronted with a situation which he cannot but accept. At any rate, when she went downstairs to the dining-room, Lady Rosaline's fretful frown had disappeared; passing Mrs. Lenoir and Winnie in the doorway, she smiled at them with no trace of grudge. ”

“ Winnie herself would have cried "No" with all her heart. Revelling in the peace about her, in the strange freedom from the ever-present horror of friction and wrangles, in the feeling that at last she could look out on the world with her own eyes, no man saying her nay, she reached out eagerly to the new things, not indeed conceiving that they could become her gospel, her faith, but with a half-guilty appreciation, a sense of courage and of defiance, and a genuine pleasure in the exercise of such wits as she modestly claimed to possess. ”

“ I was much more angry with Godfrey than I had any right to be. I was angry—yes, angry, not merely grieved—because he left me, as well as because he was afraid to do it in a straightforward way. I didn't live up to my theories there."
"I don't know that I think any theory easy to live up to," said Tora. "Is the ordinary theory of marriage easy to live up to either?"
"It's always interesting to see how few people live up to their theories." Stephen smiled. "It seems to me your husband isn't living up to his." ”

“ The most salient aspect of them alone catches our eye. To cover the whole ground we have neither time nor, generally, opportunity. They come to stand, to us, for one quality or characteristic—just as the persons in a novel or a play often, perhaps generally, do, however much the writer may have endeavoured to give the whole man on his canvas. Now the quality of lover—of even potential lover—had never seemed to associate itself at all necessarily or insistently with Dick Dennehy, as it did, at once and of necessity, with Godfrey Ledstone. So Winnie had just not thought of it. ”

“ What to Cyril was an indissoluble relationship (and more than that) , not even temporarily suspended, but rather defied and violated, was to his wife a thing now at last—by her final decision—over and done with so far as it affected her position towards Cyril himself. He was out of her life—at last. She had her life—at last. Not quite entirely free, this life she had won by her bold defiance. She still acknowledged limitations, even while she nibbled at the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that grew at Shaylor's Patch. Yet how incomparably more free than the old life! ”

“ Winnie's extraordinary power made it all the easier to forgive her son Godfrey. Probably few young men would have resisted, and (this deep down in the mother's heart) not so very many had occasion to resist.
Then came the thunderbolt—from which jubilation fled shrieking. Who hurled it? Human nature, Winnie, Lady Rosaline Deering—little as she either had meant to do anything unkind to the household in Woburn Square? Surely even the high moralists—or shall we say the high gods, who certainly cannot make less, and may perhaps make more, allowances?—would have pitied Mr. Ledstone. ”

“ At the church door Dennehy was waiting for her and Alice—his Mass heard and ten good miles of country road behind him; spiritually and physically fortified. He was not handsome, but middle-age on its approach found him clean in wind and limb—temperate, kindly (outside politics) , and really intensely happy.
"It's a concession for me to come as far as the door of this place," he said, smiling. Winnie glanced warningly at Alice. "You needn't mind her—the poor child hears everything! But it's my belief that Heaven has made her a fine old Tory, and they can't hurt her." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of course, the two men did not know what underlay Winnie's talk. Equally of course, Mrs. Lenoir did; she saw it in a minute, and her reading hardly needed the confirmation of Bertie's glum demeanour. Winnie was in rebellion—probably in irreconcilable rebellion. Mrs. Lenoir glanced across at her with a satirically protesting smile. Winnie smiled back, but her eyes were resolute—rather merrily resolute, as though she liked this new taste of her favourite cup of defiance.
"There are times and seasons," said Mrs. Lenoir. "Isn't there even a thing called the economy of truth? ”

“ Gibbons opened the door. "Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Maxon." Maxon's silence was unbroken as his visitor shuffled out.
Maxon's nature, hard and proud, not tender in affection, very tenacious of dignity, found now no room for any feeling save of disgust—a double disgust at the wickedness and at the absurdity—at the thing itself and at the despicable pretence in which the pair sought to cloak it. Ledstone's intrusion—so he regarded the visit of Godfrey's father—intensified his indignant distaste for the whole affair. To have to talk about it to a man like that! ”

“ Winnie and he were wholesome for one another. She forgot her theories; he kept better company than was his wont. They became good comrades and great friends. Godfrey was delighted; his absences on Sunday seemed in a way condoned; he was not haunted by the picture of a lonely Winnie. He ceased to accuse himself because he enjoyed being in Woburn Square, and therefore enjoyed it the more and the more freely. To be glad your lover can be happy in your absence is a good and generous emotion—whether characteristic of the zenith of passion is another question. ”

“ The old pair showed diplomacy; they made no direct attack on Winnie nor upon his present mode of life; they only tried to let him see what a much pleasanter mode of life was open to him, and what joy he would give those who loved him best in the world if only he would adopt it. Bringing grey hairs with sorrow to the grave—not a pleasant thing for a son to feel that he is doing! Without scruple they used Mabel Thurseley in their game; without scruple they risked the girl's happiness ”

“ Don't let those people up at the Patch get at you again, Winnie—for pity's sake, don't! Take care of yourself, my dear. My heart bleeds to see you where you stand to-day, and if you got into any other trouble—you don't understand that you're a woman a man might do bad as well as good things for."
Emotion was strong in his voice; Winnie lightly attributed it to his nationality.
"Don't fret about me. I've got to pay for my blunders, and, if I've any sense at all, I shall be wiser in future."
"If ye're ever inclined to another man, for God's sake try him, test him, prove him. ”

“ It was not that he had conceived any passionate love for Mabel. An amiable, steady, rather colourless girl, and (as Amy Ledstone said) not very pretty, she was hardly likely to engender that. He had not for her—and probably never could have—the torrent of feeling which carried him off his feet at Shaylor's Patch, and made him dare everything because of Winnie's bidding. And he was still very fond of Winnie herself. But the pull of the world—of his old world—was strong upon him; Mabel embodied it. Bob Purnett had been right about him ”

“ There is mystery in latent forces; there is a challenge in composed inactivity. Not every woman who refuses to get hot is painted; not every woman who declines to scamper about is tight-laced. The matter goes deeper. This kind is not idle and lazy; it is about its woman's business; it is looking tranquil, reserved, hard to rouse or to move—with what degree of consciousness or of unconsciousness, how far by calculation, how far by instinct, heaven knows! Of this kind was Winnie Maxon. ”

“ Then gradually he began to seek society again, to show his face at his old resorts, to meet the women who admired him, who gushed over him as interesting, clever, and rising. They gushed still more now, hinting, each with what degree of delicacy nature had given her, their sympathy with him, and their unlimited astonishment at the folly and perverseness of Mrs. Maxon. He found this the most effective specific that he had tried.
It would be unpardonably rash to generalize, but it may be hazarded that in some cases the man who treats his wife worst misses her most. ”

“ People will, when they are allowed, go to see other people hanged, or to see murderers in their cells, or to watch a woman battling in open court for her fame as for her life. It was something of this sort of interest that fastened Amy's thoughts on Winnie Maxon. There is some admiration, some pity, in the feeling—and certainly a high curiosity about such people in the average mind, the law-keeping, the non-speculative mind, the mind trained to regard conventions as eternities and national customs as laws divine.
Suddenly a smile came on her lips. ”

“ His wife did not consciously or explicitly dissent from it. As she had told him, she was bred to it. Her plea was simply that, be it right or be it wrong, she could not live up to it. She could observe the prohibitions it implied—she had kept and would keep her restraining vows—but she could no longer fulfil the positive injunctions. If she sought at all for an intellectual or speculative justification, it was as an afterthought, as a plea to conciliate such a friend as Hobart Gaynor, or as a weapon of defence against her husband. To herself her excuse was necessity. ”

“ Dennehy gently patted Alice's shoulder. "In God's good time!" he murmured.
"What do you mean?" Winnie asked, in a low voice.
"True people will find truth, and sweet people do sweet things," he answered. Then he laughed and snapped his fingers. "And the Divvle take the rest of humanity!"
"Everybody except the Irish, you mean?"
"I mustn't be supposed to let in Ulster," he warned her with a twinkle. "But there's an English soul or two I'd save, Mrs. Ledstone."
"I don't like your being false to your convictions. I've one name that I've not denied and that nobody denies me. It's Winnie." ”

“ No difference to a man like Godfrey Ledstone, whom he knew so well? Submerged by his remorse for having hurt her, yet the question lay there in the bottom of his mind. People neither regular nor irregular, people shifting the boundaries (really so well settled!) —how puzzling they were! What traps they laid for the heedless conversationalist, for the traditional moralist—or immoralist!
"Oh, I don't expect you to understand!" Winnie exclaimed petulantly. ”

“ The rule emerged triumphant from the test—so declared Stephen Aikenhead, very anxious to find a clue to the labyrinth and fast colours in the shifting web of human nature. When it came to a pitched battle, the views and theories were worsted; the man himself won the day, calling to his aid reserves ordinarily hidden in the depths of his nature. By a pardonable instinct they all made the best case they could for their failures and deviations—explanations, excuses, bridges ”

“ He did not, to do him justice, ask an extravagant degree of devotion in return for any 'good times' which he might find himself able to offer. When it is so easy for two people with good tempers, sound digestions, and plenty of ready cash to enjoy themselves, why spoil it all by asking too much? Surely he and Winnie could enjoy themselves? The idea stuck in his mind. Again, why—to him—should it not? His scrupulous behaviour hitherto had been based on loyalty to Godfrey Ledstone. ”

“ Neither was Winnie—in the little church at Nether End—convicted of sin; after all, that is not the particular note sought to be struck by a Christmas service—the Church has its seasons. But she was overcome by an unnerving sense of insignificance. The sermon dwelt on the familiar, yet ever striking, theme that all over the world, in well-nigh every tongue, this service was being held in honour of, and in gratitude for, the great Event of this day. That seemed a tremendous thing to stand up against. There is majesty in great organizations, be they spiritual or secular. ”

“ Tora's partner was her husband; she was very agile, he was a trifle slow, but a good placer. Against them Dennehy rather raged than played—a shortish thick-built man of five-and-thirty, with bristling sandy hair and a moustache of like hue, whose martial upward twist was at the moment subdued by perspiration. He could not play anywhere—and he would play at the net. Yet the match was a tight one, for his partner, Godfrey Ledstone, was really a player, though he was obviously not taking this game seriously. ”

“ She rose and walked to one of the tall windows that looked on to Lincoln's Inn Fields. "I declare I envy the raggedest hungriest child playing there in the garden," she said. "At least it may be itself. Didn't God make me just as much as He made Cyril?"
It was high summer, and the grate held nothing more comforting than a dingy paper ornament; yet Hobart Gaynor got up and stood with his back to it, as men are wont to do in moments of perplexity. ”

“ Thus began Winnie's cure, from love and anger, and from Godfrey Ledstone. Change of surroundings, new interests, kindness, and, above all perhaps, appreciation—it was a good treatment. Something must also be credited to Mrs. Lenoir's attitude towards life. She had none of the snarl of the cynic; she thought great things of life. But she recognized frankly certain of its limitations—as that, if you do some things, there are other things that you must give up; that the majority must be expected to demand obedience to its views on pain of penalties ”

“ In truth she had greater cause for fear than she knew, more enemies than she realized. There was her lover's native and deeply rooted way of looking at things, very different from the way into which she had forced or cajoled him. There was the fact that it was not always only the members of the family whom he met in Woburn Square.
In spite of Godfrey's absence and Hobart Gaynor's defection, Winnie was not without friends and distractions on her Sundays. Sometimes Dick Dennehy would come, quite unshaken in his disapproval, but firm also in his affection, and openly scornful of Woburn Square. ”

“ Perhaps they do not enough reflect that the average man is not thereby encouraged to start at all.
But Winnie herself had genuine power to stir his heart—and now, indeed, as never before, since she seemed helpless save for him, and hopeless save in him, yet in and through him both brave and confident—the most profound, the most powerful, flattery from sex to sex. Mere friends could not help now; mere convictions, a naked sense of being in the right, would not avail. These she had, but she must have love too. To this mood all the man in him responded. ”

“ He heard the description with a laugh, but without protest or disclaimer. To his ears it was a compliment. Nor did he think Winnie, so far as he claimed to understand her, quite so scornful of all discipline as her playful taunt implied, nor in practice so thoroughgoing an anarchist as her theory of the unbridled liberty of private judgment required in logic that she should be. She did not appear to him a naturally lawless woman, nor even unusually volatile. She had had 'hard luck' and had fought against it blindly and recklessly. ”