"Oh, well, those are the two attitudes of conservatism. Always have been—and, I suppose, always with a good deal of excuse. We do blunder, and we have a knack of attracting ridiculous people. It sets us back, but it can't be helped. We win in the end." He took up his hat again. "And the Synopsis is going to leaven the lump. Send me a wire to-morrow, Winnie, and the whitewashing shall begin!"
Faith, patience, candour—these were the three great qualities; these composed the temper needed for the work. Stephen Aikenhead had them, and, even though he never put himself to the ordeal of experience, nay, even though he never finished the Synopsis (a contingency likely enough), encouragement radiated from him, and thus his existence was justified and valuable. There were bigots on both sides, and every cause counted some fools among its adherents. Probably, indeed, every individual in the world, however wise and open-minded in the sum, had his spot of bigotry and his strain of folly. After Stephen's departure Winnie did much moralizing along these and similar lines, but her moralizing was at once more cheerful and more tolerant than it had been before he came. She had a greater charity towards her enemy the world—even towards the shudders and the sniggers. Why, the regiment would have been divided between shudders and sniggers—exactly the attitudes which Bertie Merriam had sketched—and yet she had felt, under his inspiration, both liking and respect for the regiment. Why not then for that greater regiment, the world? Liking and respect, yes—but not, therefore, assent or even acquiescence. And on her own proceedings, too, Stephen enabled her to cast new eyes—eyes more open to the humorous aspect, taking a juster view of how much she might have expected to do and could reasonably consider herself to have done. Both seemed to come to very little compared with the wear and tear of the effort. But, then, if everybody did even a very little—why, the lump would be leavened, as Stephen said.
Three days later—just after she had made up her mind for Shaylor's Patch and the Synopsis, and had given notice to the General—and to Emily—of her approaching departure, there came a short note from the obstinately absent and invisible Dick Dennehy. It was on the official notepaper of the great journal:
"I hear from Tora that you're going back to Shaylor's Patch, to settle down there quietly. Thank God for it! Perhaps I shall see you there before very long, but I'm still very busy.—Yours, R. D."
She read with a mixture of affection and resentment. She had been arriving at her own verdict on her efforts and adventures. Here was Dick Dennehy's! He thanked God that efforts and adventures were at an end, and that she was going to settle down quietly—in fact, to take care of herself, as he had put it that evening when he walked with her to the railway station. A very unjust verdict, thought Winnie, but then—she added, smiling—"It's only old Dick Dennehy's!" What else was to be expected from him—from him who liked her so much and disapproved of her 'goings-on' so strenuously? What about his own? How was he settling that question of his? Or how had he settled it? That problem which was 'not serious'! "Perhaps I shall see you"! Only 'perhaps'? Yet she was going to settle down at Nether End, and he was building his house there. The probabilities of an encounter between them seemed to warrant more than 'perhaps.' The atmosphere of the railway waiting-room, the look on his face, that shout, muffled by engine-snorts, about somebody being a fool—they all came back to her. "But I'm very busy"—meaning thereby—Winnie took leave to add the innuendo—"I shan't be able to see you often!" Irresistibly her lips curved into a smile. It looked as if the problem weren't quite settled yet! If it were finally settled either way, why should Dick be so busy, so entirely unable to give reasonable attention to his house, or—as Stephen had told her—to care a hang about it?
"Oh, nonsense!" Winnie contrived to say to herself, though not with absolute conviction. "If it ever was that, he must have got over it by now, and I shall bury myself in the Synopsis."
It was really rather soon to find herself pitted against another Institution!