Mrs. Maxon Protests. Anthony Hope

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СКАЧАТЬ ask now if your husband has any great woman-friend."

      "That's just as ridiculous. I could be wicked enough to wish he had. Let somebody else have a try at it!"

      "Can't you—somehow—get back to what made you like him at first? Do you understand what I mean?"

      "Yes, I do—and I've tried." Her eyes looked bewildered, even frightened. "But, Hobart, I can't realize what it was. Unless it was just his looks—he is very handsome, you know."

      "He stands well at the Bar. He's getting on fast, he's very straight, and I don't think he's unpopular, from what I hear."

      She caught his hint quickly. "A lot of people will say it's my fault? That I'm unreasonable, and all in the wrong?"

      "You'd have to reckon with a good deal of that."

      "I don't care what people say."

      "Are you sure of that?" he asked quietly. "It's a pretty big claim to make for oneself, either for good or for evil."

      "It's only his friends, after all. Because I've got none. Well, I've got you." She came and stood by him. "You're against me, though, aren't you?"

      "I admit I think a wife—or a husband—ought to stand a lot."

      "It's not as if my baby had lived. I might have gone on trying then. It wouldn't have been just undiluted Cyril."

      "That makes some difference, I agree. Still, in the general interest of things——"

      "I must be tortured all my life?" Her challenge of the obligation rang out sharply.

      With a restless toss of his head, he sat down at his table again. She stood where she was, staring at the dingy ornament in the grate.

      "Life the other way mayn't turn out particularly easy. You'll have troubles, annoyances—temptations, perhaps."

      "I can face those. I can trust myself, Hobart. Can he prevent my going if I want to?"

      "No."

      "Can he make me come back?"

      "No. He can, if he chooses, get a formal order for you to go back, but it won't be enforced. It will only give him a right to a legal separation—not to a divorce, of course—just a separation."

      "You're sure they can't make me go back?"

      "Oh, quite. That's settled."

      "That's what I wanted to be quite clear about." She stepped up to his chair and laid her hand on his shoulder. "You're still against me?"

      "Oh, how can I tell? The heart knows its own bitterness—nobody else can."

      She pressed his shoulder in a friendly fashion; she was comforted by his half-approval. At least it was not a condemnation, even though it refused the responsibility of sanction.

      "Of course he needn't give you any money."

      "I've got my own. You got it settled on me and paid to myself."

      "It's very little—about a hundred and fifty a year. I want you to look at all sides of the business."

      "Of course you're right. But there's only one to me—to get away, away, away!"

      "It's just about five years since you came here with your mother—about the marriage-settlement. I thought it rather rough you should come to me, I remember."

      "Mother didn't know about the—the sentimental reason against it, Hobart—and it doesn't matter now, does it? And poor mother's beyond being troubled over me."

      "Where will you go—if you do go?"

      "I am going. I shall stay with the Aikenheads for a bit—till I'm settled on my own."

      "Have you hinted anything about it to—him?"

      "To Cyril? No. I must tell him. Of course he knows that I'm silly enough to think that I'm unhappy."

      "It'll be an awful facer for him, won't it?"

      She walked round the table and stood looking at him squarely, yet with a deprecatory droop of her mouth.

      "Yes, it will," she said. "Awful! But, Hobart, I not only have no love left, I've no pity left. He has crushed a great deal in me, and he has crushed that with the rest."

      Gaynor's hands played feebly with his big pad of blotting-paper.

      "That it should happen to you of all people!" he mumbled. His air expressed more than a lament for unhappiness; as well as regretting sorrow, he deplored something distasteful. But Winnie Maxon was deaf to this note; she saw only sympathy.

      "That's your old dear kindness for me," she smiled, with tears in her eyes. "You won't turn against me, anyhow, will you, Hobart?"

      He stretched out his hand to meet hers. "No, my dear. Didn't I love you once?"

      "And I do love your dear round face and your honest eyes. Yes, and the nose you used to be unhappy about—because it was a pug—in those very old days; and if my ship gets wrecked, I know you'll come out with the life-boat. Good-bye now, I'll write to you about it."

      The tender note struck at the end of their talk, old-time memories, the echo of her soft pleading voice, availed for some minutes after his visitor's departure to blind Hobart Gaynor's shrewd eyes to the fact that she had really put before him no case that could seem at all substantial in the eyes of the world. To her, no doubt, everything might be as bad, as intolerable and hopeless, as she declared; he did not question her sincerity. But as the personal impression of her faded, his hard common sense asserted forcibly that it all amounted to no more than that she had come not to like her husband; that was the sum of what the world would see in it. May women leave their husbands merely because they have come not to like them? Some people said yes, as he was aware. They were not people whom he respected, nor their theory one which he approved. He was of conservative make in all things, especially in questions of sex. He was now uneasily conscious that but for her personal fascination, but for his old tenderness, her plea would not have extorted even a reluctant semi-assent. The next moment he was denying that he had given even so much. Certainly the world in general—the big, respectable, steady-going world—would not accord her even so much. Talk about being "crushed" or having things crushed in you, needs, in the eyes of this world, a very solid backing of facts—things that can be sworn to in the box, that can be put in the "particulars" of your petition, that can be located, dated, and, if possible, attested by an independent witness. Now Mrs. Maxon did not appear to possess one single fact of this order—or surely she would have been eager to produce it?

      Comedians and cynics are fond of exhibiting the spectacle of women hounding down a woman on the one hand, and, on the other, of men betraying their brethren for a woman's favour. No exception can be taken to such presentments; the things happen. But when they are not happening—when jealousy and passion are not in the field—there is another force, another instinct, which acts with powerful effect. The professed students of human nature call it sex-solidarity; it is the instinct of each sex to stand together against the other. This is not a matter of individual liking or disliking; it is sex politics, a conflict between rival hosts, eternally СКАЧАТЬ