Double Harness

Sibylla nodded; she understood. She leant back in her chair now, regarding her husband thoughtfully.

Grantley's pale face was set in a fixed smile; he met her gaze steadily.

"It's madness – you'll be stopped!" Blake burst out. "I can't believe you mean it. Anyhow, you'll be stopped."

"By you? Will you send for a policeman? or will you come to my house and stop me? Nothing can stop me unless you kill me. Is that your choice?"

He spoke to Blake, but he looked still at Sibylla. Blake came near and scrutinised the pale face with eyes whose expression grew from wonder and incredulity into a horrified apprehension. The silence now seemed long.

"Yes," said Sibylla at last, "it's like you. That's what you'd do. I never thought of it; but I'm not surprised. It's you. It's just that in you which has made my life an impossible thing. You sacrificed me to it. You would sacrifice yourself and your son. Yes, it's you."

She put her hands up before her face for a moment, pressing her fingers on her eyelids. Then her eyes sought his face again.

"But, Sibylla – " cried Blake.

"Yes, he'd do it, Walter," she interrupted, not turning round.

Blake took two restless paces to and fro, and sank into his chair again.

"You understand now. It lies with you," said Grantley to his wife. "I've told you. I was bound to tell you. Now it lies with you."

Again passion seized her.

"No, no, that's false! It doesn't lie with me! It lies at your door, both the crime – the hideous crime – and, I pray God, the punishment!"

"I'm not talking about the crime or the punishment," he said coldly. "I take those on myself as much as you like. What depends on you is whether the thing happens. That's all I meant to say."

Young Blake was staring at him now as if fascinated by his firm and hideous resolve. Slowly it had been driven into Blake's brain that the man meant what he said, that he would do the thing. The man looked like it, and Sibylla believed he would. He would kill himself – yes, and the pretty child with whom Sibylla had been used to play. He could see the picture of that now – of Sibylla's beautiful motherhood. His heart turned sick within him as he began to believe Grantley's sombre pledge.

"It's a lie," said Sibylla in grim defiance. "Nothing depends on me. It's the evil of your own heart. I've nothing to do with it."

"It's with you to bring it about or to prevent it."

"No!" she cried, rising to her feet in the agonised strain of her heart – "no, no! That's a lie – a lie! On your head be it! Ah, but perhaps it would be best for him! God knows, perhaps it would be best!"

"So I think," said Grantley quietly. "And you accept that?"

"No, I acknowledge no responsibility – not a jot."

"Well, leave the question of responsibility. But it's your will that this shall happen sooner than that you should leave this man?"

"Sooner than that I should come back to you, that life of ours begin again, and Frank grow up to a knowledge of it!"

"And it's my will, sooner than that he should grow up to a knowledge of how his mother ended it. That's settled then?"

"It's no bargain!" she protested fiercely. "You have settled it."

"But it is settled?" he persisted.

"If you do it, may God never pardon you!"

"Perhaps. But you know that it is settled?"

She made no answer.

"You can't deny that you know. So be it."

He faced her for a moment longer; her figure swayed a little, but she stood her ground. She was not beaten down. And she knew the thing was settled, unless by chance, at the last, pity should enter Grantley's heart. But she did not believe pity could enter that heart; he had never shown her that there was a way.

The smile rested still on Grantley's face as he regarded his wife. She looked very beautiful in her fierce defiance, her loathing of him, her passionate protest, her refusal to be beaten down, her facing of the thing. She had a fine spirit; it did not know defeat or cravenness. She was mad with her ideas. Perhaps he was mad with his. And the ideas clashed – with ruin to her life, and his, and the child's. But she did not bow her head any more than he would bend his haughty neck.

"At least you have courage," he said to her. "It is settled. And now I'll say good-bye and go. I'll interrupt you no more."

It was his first taunt of that kind. It seemed to pass unheeded by Sibylla; but young Blake's face turned red, and he clenched his hands; but not in anger. A wave of horror passed over him. He would not interrupt longer what his coming had interrupted – that was what Grantley Imason meant. He would leave them to themselves while he went back alone to his home, and there found the sleeping child. But the idea of that – the picture of the one house and the other – was too fearful. How could the two bear to think of that? How could they stand there and decide on that? It was unnatural, revolting, alien from humanity. Yet they meant it. Blake doubted that no more, and the conviction of it unmanned him. He had been prepared for scandal, he had been ready to risk his life. Those things were ordinary; but this thing was not. Scandal is one thing, tragedy another. This grim unyielding pair of enemies threw tragedy in his appalled face. It was too much. A groan burst from his lips.

"My God!" he moaned.

They both turned and looked at him – Sibylla gravely, Grantley with his rigid smile.

"My God, I can't bear it!" He was writhing in his chair, as though in keen bodily pain. "It's too awful! We – we should think of it all our lives. I should never get rid of it. I should see the poor little beggar's face. I can't stand that. I never thought of anything like that. I never meant anything like that. Poor little Frank! My God, you can't mean it, Imason?"

"You know I mean it. It's nothing to you. The responsibility is ours. What do you count for? It was you or another – that's all. Neither my life nor my son's is anything to you."

"But it would – it would always be there. I could never sleep at nights. I should feel like – like a murderer. For pity's sake – "

He came towards Grantley, stretching out his hands for mercy. Grantley made no sign. Blake turned to Sibylla. She too was stiff and still, but her eyes rested on him in compassion. He turned away and threw himself into the chair again. A convulsive movement ran through his body, and he gave a loud sob.

Sibylla walked slowly away to the hearthrug, and stood looking at the agonised young man. Grantley waited in immovable patience. The thing was not finished yet.

"The horror of it!" Blake moaned almost inarticulately. He turned to weak rage for an instant and hissed across to Grantley: "If I had a revolver, I'd shoot you where you stand."

"That would be better for me, but not better for the boy," said Grantley.

"I can't understand you," Blake gasped, almost sobbing again.

"Why should you? My account is not to be rendered to you. If I've ruined my wife's life – and you've heard her say I have – if I take my own and my son's, what is it to you?"

In Grantley's slow measured words there breathed a great contempt. What, he seemed to say, were any great things, any stern issues, to this unmanned hysterical creature, who dressed up his desires in fine clothes, and let them beguile him whither he knew not, only to start back in feeble horror at the ruin that he had invited? What was it all to him, or he to it? It was he or another. The real battle was still between himself and Sibylla. With what eyes was she looking on this young man? He turned from the collapsed figure and faced his wife again.

But her eyes were now on Walter Blake, with a pleading, puzzled, pitying look. The next moment she walked quickly across the room and knelt down by his side, taking one of his hands in both of hers. She began to whisper consolation to him, praying him not to distress himself, to be calm and brave, tenderly reproaching his lack of self-control. She was with him as Grantley had seen her with the child. He wondered to see that, and his wonder kept his temper under command. There did not seem enough to make a man's passion rage or his jealousy run wild, even though she whispered close in Blake's ear, and soothingly caressed his hand.

"Don't be so distressed," he heard her murmur. "It's not your fault, dear. Don't be frightened about it."

He tried to shake her off with a childish petulance, but she persevered. Yet she could not calm him. He broke from her and sprang to his feet, leaving her kneeling.

"I can't face it! By God, I can't!" he cried.

"It will happen," said Grantley Imason. "If not to-night – if anything prevents me to-night – still very soon. You'll hear of it very soon."

The young man shuddered.

"The poor little chap – the poor innocent little chap!" he muttered hoarsely. He turned to Grantley. "For Heaven's sake, think again!"

"It's you who have to think. I have thought. I've little time for more thought. You've all your life to think about it – all your life with that woman, who is the mother of the child."

"Why do you torment him?" broke out Sibylla angrily.

But she rose slowly and drew away from Blake as she spoke.

Grantley shrugged his shoulders scornfully.

"The fellow has no business in an affair like this," he said. "He'd better get back to his flirtations."

"I never thought of anything like this."

The repetition came from Blake like some dull forlorn refrain.

He put his hand to his throat and gulped with a hard dry swallow. He looked round the room, made for a table where some whisky stood, and took a drink of it. Then he half staggered back to his chair, and sat down all in a heap. His limit was reached. He was crushed between the upper and the nether stone – between Grantley's flinty pride and the ruthless fanaticism of Sibylla's ideas. Between them they would make him, who had wanted to be good, who had had such fine aspirations, such high-coloured dreams, such facile emotions, so impulsive a love – between them they would make him a murderer – a murderer in his own eyes. Whatever hands did the deed, to the end of his days conscience would cry out that his were red.

Sibylla sighed. Her eyes were very mournful. She spoke, as it seemed, more to herself than to either of them.

"I wanted to make him happy, and I've made him very unhappy. I can do it, but he can't do it. I mustn't ask it of him. He would never be happy, I could never make him happy. Even if I could be happy, he couldn't; it's too hard for him. I don't know what to do now."

Grantley neither spoke nor moved.

"I've no right to ask it of any man. Nobody could agree to it, nobody could endure it. There's misery both ways now."

She went to Blake, who was sitting in the apathetic stupor which had followed his raving outburst. Again she knelt by him and whispered to him soothingly. At last Grantley spoke.

"It would be well if we were home before it's light and the servants up," he said.

She looked across at him from beside Blake's knee. She looked long and searchingly. His smile was gone; his manner and air were courteous, however peremptory.

"Yes, it would be well," she said. She rose and came a little way towards him. "There's no help for it. I can't escape from you. I'm bound to you in bonds I can't loosen. I've tried. I've stood at nothing. I wish to Heaven I could! Going back is like going back to death. But perhaps he's right. Better my living death than the thing you meant to do." She paused and ended: "I'll go back to the child, but I will not come back to you."

"You give all I've asked," said Grantley with cold politeness.

She looked round at young Blake with a pitiful smile.

"It's the only way, my dear. With this man what he is, it's the only way. I must leave you alone."

Blake leaned towards her with a passionate cry of pain. She reasoned gently with him.

"But you know the alternative – you've heard it. We can't help it. This man is capable of doing it, and he would find out a way. I don't see that we could do anything at all to stop him. Then when you heard it, it would be so terrible to you. You'd hate yourself. Oh, and, my dear, I think you'd hate me! And I couldn't bear that. No, you must be reasonable. There's no other way."

Blake hid his face in his hands. He made no further effort. He knew that her words were true.

Sibylla walked into the bedroom, leaving the two alone. Neither now moved nor spoke. The storm outside seemed to have abated, for the rain dashed no more against the windows, and the wind was not howling round the walls of the house. It was very still. Grantley Imason presently began to button his coat, and then to dust the wet off his hat with his coat sleeve.

Sibylla came back in her hat and cloak.

"We must get something to carry you," said Grantley. "I wonder if we could raise a cart here!"

"How did you come?"

"I rode over."

"I don't want a cart. I shall walk beside your horse."

"Impossible! At this time of night! And such a night!"

"I shall walk – I must walk! I can't sit in a cart and – "

Her gesture explained the rest. Struggling along on foot, she might keep her wits. Madness lay in sitting and thinking.

"As you will," said Grantley.

She had begun to draw on her gloves; but when she looked at Blake she drew them quickly off again, and thrust them into a pocket of her cloak. She walked past Grantley to Blake, and took hold of both his hands. Bending over him, she kissed him twice.

"Thank you for having loved me, Walter," she said. "Good-bye."

Blake said nothing. He held her hands and looked up imploringly in her face. Then she disengaged herself from his grasp and turned round to her husband.

"I'm ready," she said. "Let us go."

Grantley bowed slightly, went to the door, and opened it for her. She looked back once at Blake, murmuring:

"For having loved me, Walter," and kissed her hand to him.

With no sign of impatience Grantley waited. Himself he took no heed of Blake, but followed Sibylla out of the room in unbroken silence.

When he found himself alone, young Blake sprang towards the door, giving a cry like some beast's roar of rage and disappointment. But his feet carried him no more than half-way. Half-way was all he ever got. Then he reeled across to where the liquor was, and drank some more of it, listening the while to the paces of Grantley's horse on the stone flags outside the inn. As they died away, he finished his liquor and got back to his chair. He sat a moment in dull vacancy; then his nerves failed him utterly, and he began to sob helplessly, like a forsaken frightened child. As Grantley Imason said, he had no business in an affair like that.

CHAPTER XVII

WANDERING WITS

Grantley's pride was eager to raise its crest again. It caught at the result of the struggle and claimed it as a victory, crying out that there was to be no pointing of scornful fingers, no chuckles and winks, no shame open and before the world. The woman who walked by his horse was a pledge to that. He was not to stand a plain fool and dupe in the eyes of men. If that thought were not enough, look at the figure young Walter Blake had cut! Who had played the man in the fight? Not the lover, but the husband. Who had won the day and carried off the prize? The woman who walked by his horse was the evidence of that. Who had known his will, and stood by it, and got it? The woman answered that. He bore her off with him; young Blake was left alone in the dingy inn, baulked in his plan, broken in spirit, disappointed of his desire.

The night was still and clear now. Broad puddles in the low-lying road by the sea, and the slipperiness of the chalky hill up to the cliffs, witnessed to the heaviness of the recent downpour, as the flattened bushes in the house gardens proved the violence of the tempest. But all was over now, save the sulky heaving of big rollers. A clear moon shone over all. They met nobody: the man who had vainly watched for the yacht had gone home. Sibylla did not speak. Once or twice she caressed Rollo, who knew her and welcomed her. For the rest she trudged steadily through the puddles, and set her feet resolutely to climb the sticky road. She never looked up at her companion. The brutality of his pride rejoiced again to see her thus. Here was a fine revenge for her scornful words, for the audacity with which she had dared to bring him within an ace of irremediable shame – him and the child she had borne to him! She was well punished; she came back to him perforce. Was she weary? Was she cruelly weary? It was well. Did she suffer? It was just. Woe to the conquered – his was the victory! Even in her bodily trial his fierceness found a barbaric joy.

But deep within him some mocking spirit laughed at all this, and would not let its gibes be silenced. It derided his victory, and made bitter fun of his prancing triumph. "I'll go back to the child, but I will not come back to you." "Going back is like going back to death." "Thank you for having loved me, Walter." The mischievous spirit was apt at remembering and selecting the phrases which stung sharpest. Was this triumph? it asked. Was this victory? Had he conquered the woman? No, neither her body nor her soul. He had conquered – young Blake! The spirit made cheap of that conquest, and dared Grantley to make much of it. "Rank, blank failure," said the spirit with acrid merriment. "And a lifetime of it before you!" The world would not know, perhaps, though it can generally guess. But his heart knew – and hers. It was a very fine triumph that! – a triumph fine to win against the woman who had loved him, and counted her life worth having because it was hers to give to him! Through the blare of the trumpets of his pride came this piercing venomous voice. Grantley could not but hear. Hearing it, he hated Sibylla, and again was glad that she trudged laboriously and painfully along the slimy oozing road. The instinct of cruelty spoke in him. She had chosen to trudge. It was her doing. That was excuse enough. Whatever the pain and labour, she had her way. Who was to blame for it?

They passed the red villas, and came where the Milldean road branched off to the left at the highest point of the downs. From here they looked over the cliffs that sloped towards their precipitous fall to the sea. The moon was on the heaving waters; a broad band of silver cut the waves in two. Grantley brought his horse to a stand, and looked. At the instant Sibylla fell against the horse's shoulder, and caught at his mane with her hands, holding herself up. Rollo turned his head and nosed her cloak in a friendly fashion. A stifled sob proclaimed her exhaustion and defeat. She could walk no more. The day had been long, full of strain, compact of emotion and struggle; even despair could inspire no more exertion. In a moment she would fall there by the horse's side. Grantley looked down on her with a frowning face, yet with a new triumph. Again she failed; again he was right.

"Of course you couldn't do it! Why did you try?" he asked coldly. "The result is – here we are! What are we to do now?"

She made no answer; her clutch on Rollo's mane grew more tenacious – that alone kept her up.

"You must ride. I'll get down," he said surlily. Then he gave a sudden laugh. "No, he can carry us both – he's done it once before. Put your feet on the stirrup here – I'll pull you up."

She made no sign of understanding his allusion. He saw that she was dazed with weariness. He drew her up, and set her behind him, placing her arm about his waist.

"Take care you don't let go," he warned her curtly, as he jogged the horse on again, taking now to the turf, where the going was better.

Her grasp of his waist was limp.

"Hold on, hold on!" he said testily, "or you'll be slipping off." There was no hint of tenderness in his voice.

But Sibylla recked nothing of that now. With a long-drawn sigh she settled herself in her place. It was so sweet to be carried along – just to be carried along, to sit still and be carried along. She tightened her grip on him, and sighed again in a luxury of content. She let her head fall against his shoulder, and her eyes closed. She could think no more and struggle no more; she fell into the blessed forgetfulness, the embracing repose, of great fatigue.

The encircling of her arm, the contact of her head, the touch of her hair on his neck moved him with a sudden shock. Their appeal was no less strong because it was utterly involuntary, because the will had no part in the surrender of her wearied-out body. Memory assailed him with a thousand recollections, and with one above all. His face set in a sullen obstinate resistance; he would not hear the voice of his heart answering the appeal, saying that his enemy was also the woman whom he loved. He moved the horse into a quicker walk. Then he heard Sibylla speaking in a faint drowsy whisper: "Good Rollo, good Rollo, how he carries us both – as easily as if we were one, Grantley!" She ended with another luxurious sigh. It was followed by a little shiver and a fretful effort to fold her cloak closer about her. She was cold. She drew nearer to him, seeking the warmth of contact. "That's a little better," she murmured in a childish grumbling voice, and sought more comfortable resting for her head on his shoulder.

He knew that her wits wandered, and that the present was no more present to her. She was in the past – in the time when to be near him was her habit and her joy, the natural refuge she sought, her rest in weariness, the end of her every journey, when his arms had been her home. Certainly her wits must be wandering, or she would never rest her head on his shoulder, nor suffer her hair to touch his neck, nor speak nor sigh like that, nor deliver herself to his charge and care in this childish holy contentment. Wandering wits, and they alone, could make her do anything of this. So it was not to be regarded. How should any sane man regard it from the woman who had forsaken her child and sought to dishonour her home, whom he had but just torn from the arms of a lover?

He was afraid. Hence came his summoning of the hardest thoughts, his resort to the cruellest names. He braced himself to disregard the appeal she made, to recall nothing of all that her intimate presence thrust upon his mind. He would not be carried back across the gulf of the last year, across the chasm which those months had rent between them. For here was no such willing submission as he asked. It was all unconscious; it left her rebellion unquelled and her crime unexpiated. Yet he waited fearfully to hear her voice again. Whither would the errant wits next carry her? Whither must they carry her? He seemed to be able to answer that question in one way only. They must go right back to the beginning. With a sense of listening to inevitable words, he heard her soft drowsy whisper again:

"Let's ride straight into the gold, Grantley, straight into the gold, and let the gold – "

The faint happy murmur died away in a sigh, and her head, which had been raised a moment, nestled on his shoulder again.

It had come – the supreme touch of irony which he had foreseen and dreaded. The errant wits had overleapt the stupendous gulf; they crimsoned the cold rays of the moon into the glory of summer sunset; they coloured desolate ruins with the gleaming hues of splendid youth. Her soul was again in the fairy ride, the fairy ride which had led whither? Which had led to this? Nothing that waking wits, or an ingenuity pointed by malice, might have devised, could have equalled this. She might have searched all her armoury in vain for so keen a weapon. Nay, she would have rejected this, the sharpest of all; no human being could have used it knowingly. It would have been too cruel. He listened in dull terror for a repetition of the words. They did not come again. What need? He heard them still, and a groan broke the seal of his lips.

"My God, must she do that?" he muttered to himself. "Get on, Rollo, get on!"

For now the triumph faded away, the unsubstantial pageant was no more. There was no blare of trumpets to deaden the mocking voice. The little victory stood in its contemptible dwarfishness beside the magnitude of his great defeat. That the past had been, that the present was – that was enough. The fairy ride and the struggle in the inn – they stood side by side and bade him gaze on the spectacle. Beside this it seemed as though he had suffered nothing that day and night – nothing in the thought of ridicule and shame, nothing in the dishonour of his house and home, nothing in the jealousy and anger of a forsaken man. This thing alone seemed to matter – that the past had been that, and that the present was this, and that they had been so shaped in the hands of him, the fashioner of them.