"There's no immediate need for you to hurry out of here," the General added; he was the executor. "The rent must be paid till the summer anyhow, and Clara told me that she wished you to stay till then if you liked. I've no doubt Emily will stay with you."
"It was very kind of her, but I can't afford to live here long."
"Oh, well, just while you look about you, anyhow. And if there's anything I can do for you, you won't hesitate to let me know, will you?"
Winnie promised to call upon his services if she required them, but again the feeling came over her that, however kind and obliging he might be, the General did in his heart—even if unwillingly—regard their connexion with one another as over. The bond which Mrs. Lenoir had made was broken; that other and closer bond had never come into existence. It would have been unjust to say that the General was washing his hands of her. It was merely a recognition of facts to admit that fate—the course of events—was performing the operation for him. They had no longer any purchase on one another's lives, any common interest to unite them. His only surviving concern now was in his three sons, and it had been irrevocably decided that there Winnie was not to count.
The consciousness of this involuntary drifting apart from the old man whom she liked and admired for his gentleness and his loyalty intensified the loneliness with which Mrs. Lenoir's death afflicted Winnie. She was in no better case now than when her friend had rescued her from the empty studio and thereby seemed to open to her a new life. The new life, too, was gone with the friend who had given it. Looking back on her career since she had left Cyril Maxon's roof, she saw the same thing happening again and again. She had made friends and lost them; she had picked them up, walked with them to the next fork in the road, and there parted company. "Is it mere chance, or something in me, or something in my position?" she asked herself. A candid survey could not refuse the conclusion that the position had contributed largely to the result. The case of Godfrey Ledstone, the more trivial instance of Bob Purnett, were there to prove it. The position had been a vital and practically exclusive factor in bringing about her parting from Bertie Merriam; she had an idea that its action was to be traced in the continued absence and silence of Dick Dennehy. The same thing which had parted her from her men-friends had forbidden her friendships with women. She could, she felt, have made a friend of Amy Ledstone. To-day she would have liked to make a friend of kindly shrewd old Mrs. Ladd; but though Mrs. Ladd came to see her at the flat which had been Mrs. Lenoir's, she received no invitation to Mrs. Ladd's house. The pressure of public opinion, the feelings of Mr. Attlebury's congregation, the 'awkwardness' which would arise with Mrs. Ladd's old, if too exacting, friend, Cyril Maxon, forbade. The one friendship which had proved able to resist the disintegrating influence was ended now by death.
Well, great benefits cannot reasonably be expected for nothing. If she was alone, she was also free—wonderfully free. And, of a certainty, complete freedom can seldom be achieved save at the cost of a voluntary or involuntary severing of ties. Must every one then be either a slave or a solitary? She was not so soured as to accept that conclusion. She knew that there was a way out—only she had not found it. The Aikenheads had, down at Shaylor's Patch! Thither—to her old haven—her thoughts turned longingly. While it stood, she did it injustice in calling herself friendless. Yet to retire to that pleasant seclusion went against pride; it seemed like a retreat, a confession that the world had been too much for her, that she was beaten. She was not prepared to acknowledge herself beaten—at least, not by the enemy in a fair square fight. Her disasters were due to the defection of her allies. So she insisted, as she sat long hours alone in the flat—ah, now so quiet indeed!
Shaylor's Patch had not forgotten her. The Aikenheads did not attend their friend Mrs. Lenoir's funeral—they had a theory antagonistic to graveside gatherings, which was not totally lacking in plausibility—but Stephen had written to her, promising to come and see her as soon as he could get to town. He came there very seldom—Winnie, indeed, had never met him in London—and it was above a fortnight before he made his appearance at the flat. Delighted as Winnie was by his visit, her glad welcome was almost smothered in amazement at his appearance. He wore the full uniform of a man about town, all in the latest fashion, from the curl of the brim of his silk hat to the exact cut of his coat-tails. Save that his hair was a trifle long and full, he was a typical Londoner, dressed for a ceremonial occasion. As it was, he would pass well for a poet with social ambitions.
"Good gracious!" said Winnie, holding up her hands. "You got up like that, Stephen!"
"Yes, I think I can hold my own in Piccadilly," said Stephen, complacently regarding himself in the long gilt mirror. "I believe I once told you I had atavistic streaks? This is one of them. I can mention my opinions if I want to—and I generally do; but there's no need for my coat and hat to go yelling them out in the street. That's my view; of course it isn't in the least Tora's. She thinks me an awful fool for doing it."
Winnie did not feel it necessary to settle this difficult point in the philosophy of clothes—on which eminent men hold widely varying opinions, as anybody who takes his walks abroad and keeps his eyes open for the celebrities of the day will have no difficulty in observing.