Double Harness

John was waiting for her. His mind was full of how well things were going in the City. In the old days this would have been one of their merry, happy, united evenings. He would have told her of his success, and "stood" a dinner and a play, and brought her home in the height of glee and good companionship, laughing at her sharp sayings, and admiring her dainty little face. All this was just what he wanted to do now, and his life was as arid as hers for want of the comradeship. But he would not forgive; it seemed neither possible nor self-respecting. That very weak point in his case, with which Caylesham had dealt so trenchantly, made him a great stickler for self-respect; nothing must be done – nothing more – to make her think that he condoned her offence or treated it lightly. It was part of her punishment to hear nothing of the renewed prosperity in the City, to know nothing of his thoughts or his doings, to be locked out of his heart. This was one side; the other was that obligation to make full disclosure of all she did, and of how her time was spent. She must be made to feel the thing in these two ways every day. Yet he considered that he was treating her very mercifully; he was anxious to do that, because he was all the time in his heart afraid that she would throw Caylesham's money – the money which was bringing the renewed prosperity – in his face.

She faced the punishment with her usual courage and her unfailing humour. There was open irony in the minuteness with which she catalogued her day's doings; she did not sit down, but stood on the other side of his writing-table, upright, and with her hands actually behind her – because she liked the schoolgirl parallel which Caylesham had drawn. John saw the humour and felt the irony, but he was helpless. She did what she was told; he could not control the manner in which she did it.

"And then I walked home – yes, walked. Didn't take a bus, or a tram, or a steam-engine. I just walked on my two legs, going about three miles an hour, and oh, yes, taking one wrong turn, which makes me five minutes later than I ought to be. Quite a respectable turn – just out of the way, that's all. May I go and get myself some tea?"

He did so want to tell her about the successes in the City. And in fact he admired the courage and liked the irony. They were her own, and of her. Doing justice was very hard, with that provoking dainty face at once resenting and mocking at it. But justice must be done; his grievance should not be belittled.

"I'm not stopping you getting yourself tea. Is it a crime to ask where my wife's been?"

"It's mere prudence, I'm sure. Only what makes you think I should tell you the truth?"

She had her tea now – a second tea – and was sipping it leisurely.

"At any rate I know your account, and if I heard anything different – "

"That's the method? I see." Her tone softened. "Don't let's quarrel. What's the good? Had a good day in the City?"

"Just like other days," grunted John.

"Nothing particular?"

"No."

"There never is now, is there?"

He made no answer. Opening the evening paper, he began to read it. Christine knew what that meant. Saving what was unavoidable, he would talk no more to her that evening.

The wound to her vanity, her thwarted affection, her sense of the absurdity of such a way of living together, all combined to urge her to take Caylesham's view of the position, and to act upon it – to make the one reply, the one defence, which was open to her. The very words which she would use came into her mind as she sat opposite to John at dinner. Living on Caylesham's generosity – it would be scarcely an exaggeration to say that. And from what motive came the bounty? It would not be hard to find words – stinging words – to define that. John could have no answer to them; they must shame him to the soul. At every sullen short word, at every obstinate punitive silence, the temptation grew upon her. Knowing that she knew all, how could he have the effrontery to behave in this fashion? She steeled herself to the fight, she was ready for it by the time dinner was done and they were left alone, John sitting in glum muteness as he drank his port, Christine in her smart evening frock, displaying a prettiness which won no approving glances now. It was insufferable – she would do it!

Ah, but poor old John! He had been through so many worries, he had so narrowly escaped dire calamity. He had been forced into a position so terrible. And they had been through so many things together; they had been comrades in fair and foul weather. What would be the look in his eyes when he heard that taunt from her? He would say little, since there would be little to say – but he would give her a look of such hopeless fierce misery. No; in the end she was responsible for the thing, and she must bear the burden of it. Caylesham's view might be the man's view, perhaps the right view for a man to take. It could not be the woman's; the wife was not justified in looking at it like that. No, she couldn't do it.

But neither could she go on living like this. Her eyes rested thoughtfully on him. He was looking tired and old. Poor old John! He wanted livening up, some merriment, a little playful petting to which he might respond in his roughly jocose, affectionately homely fashion – with his "old girl" and "old lady" and so on. He never called her "old girl" now. Would she hate it as much now? She longed for it extraordinarily, since it would mark happiness and forgetfulness in him. But it seemed as if she would never hear it again. Suddenly she broke out with a passionate question:

"Are we to live like this always?"

He did not seem startled; he answered slowly and ponderously; "What have you to complain of? Do I say anything? Do I reproach you? Have I made a row? Look at what I might have done! Some people would think you were very lucky."

"It makes you miserable as well as me."

"You should have thought of all that before."

He took out a cigar and lit it, then turned his chair half-way round from the table, and began to read his paper again. Christine could not bear it; she began to sob softly. He took no visible notice of her; his eyes were fixed on a paragraph and he was reading it over and over again, not following in the least what it meant. She rose and walked towards the door; he remained motionless. She came back towards him in a hesitating way.

"I want to speak to you," she said, choking down her sobs and regaining composure.

He looked up now. There was fear in his eyes, a hunted look which went to her heart. At the least invitation she would have thrown herself on her knees by him and sought every means to comfort him. She was thinking only of him now, and had forgotten Caylesham's gay attractiveness. And in face of that look in his eyes she could not say a word about Caylesham's money.

"I'm going away for a little while, John. I'm going to ask Sibylla to let me come down to Milldean for a bit."

"What do you want to go away for?"

"A change of air," she answered, smiling derisively. "I can't bear this, you know. It's intolerable – and it's absurd."

"Am I to blame for it?"

"I'm not talking about who's to blame. But I must go away."

"How long do you want to stay away?"

"Till you want me back – till you ask me to come back." He looked at her questioningly. "It must be one thing or the other," she went on.

"It's for me to decide what it shall be."

"Yes; which of the two possible things. It's for you to decide that. But this state of things isn't possible. If you don't want me back, well, we must make arrangements. If you ask me to come back, you'll mean that you want to forget all this wretchedness and be really friends." Her feeling broke out. "Yes, friends again," she repeated, holding her arms out towards him.

"You seem to think things are very easily forgotten," he growled.

"God knows I don't think so," she said. "Do you really think that's what I've learnt from life, John?"

"At any rate I've got to forget them pretty easily!"

She would not trust herself to argue lest in the heat of contention that one forbidden weapon should leap into her hand.

"We can neither of us forget. But there's another thing," she said.

He would not give up his idea, his theory of what she deserved and of what morality demanded.

"You may go for a visit. I shall expect you back in two or three weeks."

"Not back to this," she insisted.

He shrugged his shoulders and held the paper up between them.

"If you don't want me back, well, I shall understand that. But I shan't come back to this." She walked to the door, and looked back; she could not see his face for the paper. She made a little despairing movement with her hands, but turned away again without saying more, and stole quietly out of the room.

John Fanshaw dashed his paper to the ground and sprang to his feet. He gave a long sigh. He had been in mortal terror – he thought she was going to talk about the money. That peril was past. He flung his hardly lighted cigar into the grate and walked up and down the room in a frenzy of unhappiness. Yes, that peril was past – she had said nothing. But he knew it was in her heart; and he knew how it must appear to her. Heavens, did it not appear like that to him? But she should never know that he felt like that about it. That would be to give up his grievance, to abandon his superiority, to admit that there was little or nothing to choose between them, – between her, the sinner, and him, who profited by the sin, whose salvation the sin had been, who knew it had been his salvation and had accepted salvation from it. No, no; he must never acknowledge that. He must stick to his position. It was monstrous to think he would own that his guilt was comparable to hers.

He sank back into his chair again and looked round the empty room. He thought of Christine upstairs, alone too. What a state of things! "Why did she? My God, why did she?" he muttered, and then fell to lashing himself once more into a useless fury, pricking his anger lest it should sleep, setting imagination to work on recollection, torturing himself, living again through the time of her treachery, elaborating all his grievance – lest by chance she should seem less of a sinner than before, lest by chance his own act should loom too large, lest by chance he might be weak and open his heart and find forgiveness for his wife and comrade.

"By God, she had no excuse!" he muttered, striking the table with his fist. "And I – why, the thing was settled before I knew. It was settled, I say!" Then he thought that if things went on doing well he would be able to pay Caylesham sooner than the letter of his bond demanded. Then, when he had paid Caylesham off – ah, then the superiority would be in no danger, there would be no taunt to fear. Why, yes, he would pay Caylesham off quite soon. Because things were going so well. Now to-day, in the City, what a stroke he had made! If he were to tell Christine that – ! For a moment he smiled, thinking how she would pat his cheek and say, "Clever old John!" in her pretty half-derisive way; how she would —

He broke off with a groan. No; by heaven, he'd tell her nothing. His life was nothing to her – thanks to what she'd done – to what she had done. Oh, he did well to be angry! – Even to think of what she had done – !

So he struggled, lest perchance forgiveness and comradeship should win the day.

CHAPTER XX

THE HOUR OF WRATH

As soon as the first shot was fired, Tom Courtland struck his flag. There was no fight in him. His career was compromised, and by now his affairs were seriously involved. He resigned his seat; he wasn't going to wait to be turned out, he said, either by divorce or by bankruptcy, or by both at once. He never went home now. As a last concession to appearances, he took a room at his club. Mrs. Bolton now urged him to fight – since things had gone so far. Of course he would have to tell lies! But there were circumstances in which everybody told lies! She was ready to back him through thick and thin. If they could get Lady Harriet into the box and cross-examine her thoroughly, they could rely on a great deal of sympathy from a jury of husbands. It was really a good fighting case – given the lies, of course. She urged fighting, which was unselfish of her from one point of view, since an undefended case would do her little real harm, while a cross-examination in open Court could not be a pleasant ordeal for her, any more than it ought to be for Harriet Courtland. But she liked Tom – although incurable habit had caused her to make his affairs so involved – and she hated that Harriet should "have a walk over." She was angry with Tom because he gave in directly, and took it all "lying down," as she said. But Tom was broken; he could only mutter that he did not "care a damn" what they did; it was all over for him. His bristly hair began to turn a dull grey in these troublesome days. When he was not with Mrs. Bolton he was haunting the streets and parks, hoping he might meet his girls taking their walk with the maid or with Suzette Bligh. Such stray encounters were his only chance of ever seeing them now – the only chance of ever seeing them in the future, he supposed, unless the Court gave him "access." And much pleasure there would be in access, with Harriet to tell them the sort of man he was before every such visit as the law might charingly dole out to him! He grumbled disconsolately about everything – the suit, his affairs, his children, the access, all of it – to Mrs. Bolton; but he did and tried to do nothing. He was in a condition of moral collapse.

Harriet Courtland's state was even worse. She was almost unapproachable by the children and Suzette Bligh – and none other tried to approach her. She had no friends left. Not one of Tom's set was on her side; she had wearied them all out. The last to keep up the forms of friendship was Christine Fanshaw. Now that was at an end too. She had heard nothing from Christine. From the day of John's visit there had been absolute silence. She knew well what that meant. She brooded fiercely over what she had done to Christine – her one remaining friend – had done not because she wanted to hurt Christine or to lose her friendship, had done with no reasonable motive at all, but just in blind rage, because in her fury she wanted to strike and wound John, and this had been the readiest and sharpest weapon. She could not get what she had done out of her head; she was driven to see what a light it cast on the history of her own home; it showed her the sort of woman she was. But she held on her way, and pressed on her suit. Realising what she was bred in her no desire to change. There was no changing such a woman as she was – a cursed woman, as she called herself again and again. So there she sat, alone in her room, save when her nervous children came perforce to cower before her – alone with the ruin she had made, in bitter wrath with all about her, in bitterest wrath with herself. She was a terror in the house, and knew it. Nobody in the house loved her now – nay, nobody in the world. It had come to this because of her evil rage. And the rage was not satiated; it had an appetite still for every misfortune and every shame which was to afflict and disgrace her husband. In that lay now her only pleasure; her sole joy was to give pain. Yet the thought that her girls had ceased to love her, or had come to hate her, drove her to a frenzy of anger and wretchedness. What had they to complain of? How dared they not love her! She exacted signs of love from them. They dared not refuse a kiss for fear of a blow being given in its place; but Harriet knew now why they kissed her and accepted her kisses. "Little hypocrites!" she would mutter when they went out, accusing the work of her own hands. But they should love her – aye, and they should hate their father. She swore they should at least hate their father, even if they only pretended to love her. The woman grew half mad at the idea that in their hearts they loved their father, pitied him, thought him ill-used, grieved because he came no more; that they were in their hearts on their father's side and against her. She wished they were older, so that they could be told all about the case. Well, they should be told even now, if need be, if that proved the only way of rooting the love of their father out of their hearts.

An evil case for these poor children! They had no comfort save in gentle colourless Suzette Bligh. To all her friends she had seemed a superfluous person. She used to be invited just to balance dinner-parties, or on a stray impulse of kindness. But fate had found other work for her now. The once useless superfluous woman was all the consolation these three children had; any love they got she gave them. She stood between them and desolation. She warned them what temper their mother was in, whether it were safe to approach her, and with what demeanour. More than once her love gave the meek creature courage, and she stood between them and wrath. Lamentable as the state of affairs was, Suzette had found a new joy in life. She took these children into her life and her heart, and became as a mother to them. Gradually they grew to love her.

But none the less – perhaps all the more – they tormented her, bringing to her all the doubts and questions which were rife in their minds. The portentous word "divorce" had come to their ears – Harriet was not careful in her use of it. They connected it quickly with their father's now continuous absence. Whatever else it might mean – and they thought it meant something bad for their father, to be suffered at the hands of their mother – they understood it at least to mean that he would be with them no more. Suzette knew nothing at all about "access," and could only fence feebly with their questions; they ventured to put none to Harriet. They grew clear that their father had gone, and that they were to be left to their mother.

One and all they declined such a conclusion. They loved Tom; they did not love Harriet. Tom had always been a refuge, sometimes a buffer. They had no doubt of what they wanted. They wanted to go to their father, and to take Suzette Bligh with them. That scheme conjured up the vision of a happy home, free from fear, where kisses would be volunteered, not exacted, and the constant dread would be no more.

"But we daren't tell mamma that," said Sophy, in a tremble at the bare idea.

Lucy shook her head; Vera's eyes grew wide. They certainly dared not go to Harriet with any such communication as that. They had been shrewd enough to see that they were expected to hate their father: Vera had been roughly turned out of the room merely for mentioning his name.

After much consultation, carried on in a secrecy to which not even Suzette was privy, a plan was laid. They would write to their father and tell him that, whether he were sentenced to divorce or not, they wanted to come and live with him – and to bring Suzette if they might.

"We won't say anything about mamma. He'll understand," Sophy observed.

Vera piped out in terror:

"But when mamma finds out?"

"We shall be gone, don't you see?" cried Lucy. "We shall ask papa to meet us somewhere, and he'll take us with him, and then just write and tell mamma."

"He can say we're sorry when he writes to tell mamma."

"Oh, yes, I see," said Vera. "It will be splendid, won't it? I wish we could tell Suzette!"

The elder girls were dead against that. Suzette was a dear, but she was too much afraid of mamma; the great secret would not be safe with her, and if it were discovered before they were out of reach – significant nods expressed that situation with absolute lucidity.

So Sophy – who wrote the best hand – squared her elbows and sat down to her task in the schoolroom. A scout was posted at the foot of the stairs, another at the top. On the least alarm the letter was to be destroyed, and the scribe would be discovered busy on a French exercise.

"Dearest Papa," Sophy wrote, —

"We all send our love, and, please, we do not want to stay here now that you have gone away. Please let us come and live with you. We promise not to be troublesome, and Suzette might come too, might not she, and look after us? Dearest papa, do not make us stay here. Because we love you, and we want to come and live with you. Please tell us where to meet you, and we will make Suzette bring us, and you can take us home with you. Please let it be soon. We do so want to see you. Please do not make us stay here. We each of us send you a kiss, and are your loving daughters."

The signatures were attached, the letter closed and addressed to Tom's club; they knew where that was, because he had taken them to see it one Sunday morning, and they had admired the great armchairs and all the wonderful big books. The same afternoon Lucy broke away from Suzette, ran across to a pillar post, and dropped the important missive in. She came back with an air of devil-may-care triumph, nodding at her sisters, frankly refusing to tell Suzette anything about it.

"You'll see very soon," she promised in mysterious triumph, and that evening the three had a wonderful talk over the letter, speaking in low cautious tones, agreeing that their manner must be carefully guarded, that meekness and affection towards their mother must be the order of the day, and that one of them must always be on the watch for the postman's coming, lest by chance Tom's answer should fall into the hands of the enemy.

"Would she open it?" shuddered Vera.

"I expect she would," said Sophy.

They saw the danger, and the hours were anxious. But they tasted some of the delights of conspiracy too. And hope was on the horizon. One more "row" could be endured if after that the doors were open to freedom.

Tom's heart was touched by the little scrawl, written on a sheet torn from a copybook. In his broken-down state he was inclined to be maudlin over it. He carried it to Mrs. Bolton, and showed it to her, saying that he could not be such a bad chap after all if the little ones loved him like that, pitying them because they were exposed to Harriet's tempers, bewailing his own inability to help them, or to comply with their artless request.

"I shouldn't be allowed to keep them," he said ruefully, trying to smooth his bristly hair.

Mrs. Bolton made a show of sympathy, and was in fact sorry for him; but she did not encourage any idea of trying to take or keep them. He suggested smuggling them out of the jurisdiction. She was firm, if kindly, in asking how he meant to support them. Anyhow Lady Harriet could feed them! Tom was very much under her influence, and had no longer the strength of will needed for any venturous plan. The conclusion that he could do nothing was not long in coming home to him.

"But I must write to the poor little things," he said, "and tell them I shall come and see them sometimes. That'll comfort them. I'm glad they're so fond of me. By Jove, I haven't been a bad father, you know!" He read Sophy's letter over again and laid it down on Mrs. Bolton's mantelpiece; when he went back to the club he forgot it and left it there.

There Mrs. Bolton's friend, Miss Pattie Henderson (she was not married to Georgie Parmenter yet – negotiations were pending with his family), found it, and it was from her that a suggestion came which appealed strongly to Mrs. Bolton. As she drank her glass of port, Miss Henderson opined that it would be "a rare score" to send the letter to Harriet Courtland. "It'll make her properly furious," said Miss Pattie, finishing her port with hearty enjoyment.

Mrs. Bolton caught at the notion. Harriet was putting her to a great deal of annoyance, and so was Tom's refusal to stand up to Harriet. It was meet and right that any person who was in a position to give Harriet a dig should give it. Neither of them thought of what might be entailed on the little folk who had dared to send the letter; in the end they had a very inadequate idea of the terror Harriet inspired. Mrs. Bolton laughed as she contemplated the plan.

"Just stick in a word or two of your own," Miss Pattie advised. "Something spicy!"

Mrs. Bolton at once thought of several spicy little comments which would add point to Sophy's letter. One was so spicy, so altogether satisfying to Mrs. Bolton's soul, and to Miss Pattie Henderson's critical taste, that it was irresistible. It – and Sophy's letter – were posted to Harriet before lunch that day; and Mrs. Bolton's eyes were only opened at all to what she had done when she told Caylesham (who had dropped in in the afternoon), and heard him exclaim: