Double Harness

"But, by Jove, she'll take it out of those unhappy children, you know! I say, you don't know Harriet Courtland, or you'd never have done that!"

His concern seemed so great that Mrs. Bolton's heart was troubled. If she did not upbraid herself, at any rate she denounced Miss Henderson. But what was to be done? Nothing could be done. By now the letter must be almost in Harriet Courtland's hands. Caylesham said a few plain words about the matter, but his words could not help now. They had, however, one effect. They made Mrs. Bolton afraid to let Tom know what she had done: and she persuaded Caylesham not to betray her. When Tom next came she told him that she had accidentally burnt Sophy's letter in mistake for one of her own.

"Well, I've sent them an answer, poor little beggars – under cover to Suzette Bligh," said Tom. "But I'm sorry. I should have liked to keep that letter of theirs, Flora."

"I know. Of course you would. I'm sorry," said Mrs. Bolton, now feeling very uncomfortable, although she had not lost her pleasure at the idea of giving Harriet such a fine dig.

Tom's letter reached its destination first, and Suzette read it to the little girls. It was a kind and a good letter. He told them to behave well towards their mother, and to love her. He said he was obliged to be away from them now, but presently he would see them and hoped to see them very often, and that they were not to forget to go on loving him, because he loved them very much.

Suzette's voice broke a little over the letter, and the children listened in an intent and rather awed silence. They were divided between relief that an answer had come safely, and depression at what the answer was. But they understood – or thought they did – that if they were good they would presently be allowed to see their father very often.

"That's what he means, isn't it?" Lucy asked Suzette.

"Yes, dear, that's it," Suzette told her, not knowing what else to tell her.

"We'd better burn papa's letter," Sophy suggested.

There was no difference of opinion about that. Vera was accorded the privilege of putting it in the fire, and of stamping carefully on the ashes afterwards.

"Because," she said, justifying this precaution, "you remember the story where the man was found out just because he didn't stamp on it after he'd burnt it, Sophy!"

This was the last day on which Tom Courtland was entitled to put in a defence to his wife's suit. He had made no sign. Harriet was the fiercer against him. His ruin was not enough; she desired herself to see it made visible and embodied in a trial whose every word and proceeding should aggravate his shame and satisfy her resentment. She had nursed the thought of that, making pictures of him and of the woman undergoing the ordeal and being branded with guilt while all the world looked on. Now Tom refused her this delight; there would be no trial, because he would not fight.

It was a fine moment for the letter to arrive. The mine was all laid, only the match was wanting. Harriet was dressing for dinner when it came; her maid Garrett was doing her hair before the glass. As she read, Garret saw a sudden change come over her face – one quick flush, then a tight setting of her lips. Garrett knew the signs by experience. Something in that letter had upset her ladyship. Warily and gently Garrett handled her ladyship's hair; if she blundered in her task now, woe to her, for her ladyship's temper was upset.

"Dearest papa, do not make us stay here. Because we love you and want to come and live with you" – "Please do not make us stay here."

That was the truth of it, that was what they really thought, these little hypocrites who came and kissed her so obediently every morning and evening, those meek little creatures with their "Yes, mamma dear," "No, dear mamma," accepting all her commands so docilely, returning her kisses so affectionately. All that was a show, a sham, a device for deluding her, for keeping her quiet, while they laid their vile plots – none the less vile for being so idiotic – and sent their love to "dearest papa" – to that man, to Flora Bolton's lover – while they gave Flora Bolton the means of mocking and of triumphing over her.

She sat very still for awhile, but Garrett was not reassured. Garrett knew that the worst fits of all took a little time in coming. They worked themselves up gradually.

"Is that to your ladyship's satisfaction?" asked Garrett, as she put the last touches to her work.

"No, it isn't," snarled Harriet. "No, don't touch me again. Let it alone, you clumsy fool."

Garrett went and took up the evening dress. Harriet Courtland rose and stood for a moment with Sophy's letter to Tom in her hand.

"I'm going to the schoolroom for a few minutes. Wait here," she said to Garrett, and walked out of the room slowly, taking the letter with her. Another slip of paper she tore into shreds as she went; that was Mrs. Bolton's comment on the situation, as "spicy" and as vulgar as she and Miss Pattie Henderson could make it. Yet Harriet was not now thinking of Mrs. Bolton.

Garrett stood where she was for a moment, then stole cautiously after her mistress. She knew the signs, and a morbid curiosity possessed her. She would have a sensational story to retail downstairs, if she could manage to see or hear what happened – for beyond a doubt something had put her ladyship in one of her tantrums. Pity for the children struggled with Garrett's seductive anticipations of a "scene."

Suzette Bligh was reading a story aloud in the schoolroom when Harriet marched in. She held the letter in her hand. The children could make, and had leisure to make, no conjecture how the catastrophe had come about, but in a flash all the little girls knew that it was upon them. The letter and their mother's face told them. They sat looking at her with terrified eyes.

"So you don't want to stay here?" she said sneeringly. "You want to go to your dearest papa? And you dare to write that! Who wrote it? Was it you, Lucy?"

"I – I didn't write it, mamma dear," said Lucy.

Suzette rose in distress.

"Dear Lady Harriet – " she began.

"Hold your tongue. So you wrote it, Sophy. Yes, I see now it's your writing. Oh, but you were all in it, I suppose. So you love your papa?"

Garrett had stolen to within two or three yards of the door now, and it stood half open. She could hear all and see something of what happened.

"So you love your papa?"

Sophy had most courage. Desperate courage came to her now.

"Yes, we do."

"And you want to go to him?"

"Yes, mamma."

"And you don't love me? You don't want to stay with me?"

Sophy glanced for a moment at her sisters.

"Papa's so kind to us," she said.

"And I'm not kind?" asked Harriet with a sneering laugh. "When you're older, my dears, thank me for having been kind – really kind. It's really kind to teach you not to play these tricks – these mean and disgraceful little tricks."

All the children rose slowly and shrank back. They tried to get behind Suzette Bligh. Harriet laughed again when she saw the manœuvre.

"You needn't stay, Suzette," she said. "I know how to manage my own children."

Suzette was very white, and was trembling all over; it seemed as if her legs would hardly support her.

"What are you going to do?"

"It's no business of yours. They know very well. Leave me alone with them."

It was a terrible moment for timid Suzette. But love of the children had laid hold of her heart, and gave her strength.

"I can't go, Lady Harriet," she said in a low voice. "I can't leave you alone with them – not now."

"Not now?" cried Harriet fiercely.

"You're – you're not calm now. You're not fit – "

"You'd stand between me and my own children?"

"Dear Lady Harriet, I – I can't go away now." For she remembered so vividly all that the children's reminiscences, their nods and nudges, had hinted to her; she realised all the things which they had not told her; and she would not leave them now.

Her resistance set the crown to Harriet Courtland's rage. After an instant's pause she gave a half-articulate cry of anger, and rushed forward. Suzette tried to gather the children behind her, and to thrust the angry woman away. But Harriet caught Sophy by the arm and lifted her midway in the air. Garrett came right up to the door and peeped through.

"So you love papa and not me?"

Sophy turned her pale, terrified little face up to her mother's. The worst had happened, and the truth came out.

"No, we – we hate you. You're cruel to us; we hate you, and we love papa."

Harriet's grip tightened on the child's arm. Sophy's very audacity kept her still for a moment. But at the next she lifted her higher in the air. Suzette sprang forward with a cry, and Garrett dashed into the room, shrieking, "Don't, don't, my lady!"

They were too late. The child was flung violently down; her head struck the iron fender; she rolled over and lay quite still, bleeding from the forehead. Suzette and Garrett caught Harriet Courtland by the arms. A low, frightened weeping came from the other two little girls.

Harriet stood for a moment in the grasp of the two women who sought to restrain her and would have thrown themselves upon her had she tried to move. But restraint was no more necessary. Sophy had ransomed her sisters, and lay so quiet, bleeding from the head. In a loud voice Harriet Courtland cried, "Have I killed her? Oh, my God!" and herself broke into a tempest of hysterical sobbing. She fell back into Garrett's arms, shuddering, weeping, now utterly collapsed. Suzette went and knelt by Sophy.

"No, she's not dead, but it's no fault of yours," she said.

Harriet wrenched free from Garrett and flung herself on her knees by the table, stretching her arms across it and beating her forehead on the wood. The two children looked at her, wondering and appalled.

CHAPTER XXI

AN UNCOMPROMISING EXPRESSION

On the morrow of her attempted flight and enforced return a leaden heaviness had clogged Sibylla's brain and limbs. Her body was quick to recover; her thoughts were for long drowsy and numb. She seemed to have died to an old life without finding a new one. Blake was to her as a dead friend; she would see and hear of him no more; she harboured no idea of meeting him again. The bonds between them were finally rent. This attitude towards him saved his character from criticism and his weakness from too close an examination, while it left her free to brood in the security of despair on all that she had thought to find in him and on the desolation his loss had made. The instinctive love for her child, which had asserted itself while her intellect was dormant, could not prevail against the sullen preoccupation of re-awaking thoughts, or, if it could penetrate into them, came no more fresh and pure, but tainted with the sorrow and the anger which circled round that innocent head. She was tender, but in pity, not in pride; she loved, but without joy. The shadows hung so dark about the child's cot. They hid from her eyes still the sin of her own desertion, and hindered the remorse which might best lead her back to love unalloyed. Still she arraigned not herself but only Grantley and the inevitable. Grantley was the inevitable; there stood the truth of it; she bowed her head to the knowledge, but did not incline her heart to the lesson it had to teach.

Yet the knowledge counted; she looked on Grantley with different eyes. The revelation of himself, wrung from him by overpowering necessity, did its work. The resolve he had then announced, presumptuous beyond the right of mortal man, less than human in its cruelty, almost more than human in its audacity of successful revolt against destiny, might leave him hateful still, but showed him not negligible. He could not be put on one side, discarded, eliminated from her life. He was too big for that. Against her will he attracted her attention and constrained her interest. The thought of what lay beneath his suave demeanour sometimes appalled, sometimes amused, and always fascinated her now. She saw that her old conception had erred; it had been too negative in character; what he could not do or be or give had seemed the whole of the matter to her. In the light of the revelation that was wrong. The positive – a very considerable positive – must be taken into account. The pride she had loathed was not a barren self-conceit, nor merely a sterile self-engrossment. It had issue in an assurance almost supernatural and a courage above morality. Sibylla's first relief came in the reflection that though she might have married a monster, at least she had not given herself to a stick or a stone; she was clear as to her preference when the choice was reduced to that alternative.

His behaviour appealed to her humour too – that humour which could not save her from running away with Blake under the spell of her ideas, but would certainly have made her want to run away from him when the glamour of the ideas had worn off. The old perfection of manner found a new ornament in his easy ignoring of the whole affair. He referred to it once only, then indirectly and because he had a reason. He suggested apologetically that it would be well for them to exchange remarks more freely when the servants were waiting on them at meals.

"It will prevent comment on recent events," he added, as though that were his only reason.

Sibylla was deceived at first, but presently detected another and more important motive. The suggestion marked the beginning of a new campaign on which his inexhaustible perseverance engaged. He understood that his wife accused him of not taking her into his confidence, and of not making her a partner in his life. He was no more minded than before that she should have even plausible grounds for complaint. Starting, then, from general topics and subjects arising out of the journals of the day, he slid placidly and dexterously into frequent discussions of his own plans and doings, his business, his work on the County Council, his Parliamentary ambitions, his schemes for improving the property at Milldean. Sibylla acknowledged the cleverness of these tactics with a rueful smile. She had claimed to share his life; yet most of these topics happened to seem to her rather tedious. But she was debarred from saying that to Grantley; his retort was so obvious. She was often bored, but she was amused that boredom should be the first result of the new method.

"I hope all this interests you?" Grantley would inquire politely.

"Of course, since it concerns you," equal politeness obliged her to reply – and not politeness only. She had to be interested; it had been her theory that she would be, her grievance that she had been denied the opportunity of being. Nor could she make out whether Grantley had any inkling of her suppressed indifference to the County Council and so forth. Was he exercising his humour too? She could not tell, but curiosity and amusement tempered the coldness of her courtesy. They got on really very well at dinner, and especially while the servants were in the room; there was sometimes an awkward pause just after they were left alone. But on the whole the trifling daily intercourse went better than before Sibylla's flight – went indeed fairly well, as it can generally be made to if people are well bred and moderately humorous.

The great quarrel remained untouched, no span bridged the great chasm. Grantley might consent to talk about his County Council; that was merely a polite concession, involving no admission of guilt, and acknowledging no such wrong to his wife as could for a moment justify her action. When it came to deeper matters, he was afflicted with a shame and helplessness which seemed to paralyse him. To gloss over the absence of love, or even of friendship, was a task at which he was apt and tactful; to gain it back was work of the heart – and here he was as yet at a standstill. His instinct had told him to work through the child. But if he caressed the child in order to conciliate Sibylla, he would do a mean thing, and yet not succeed in his deception; he would admit a previous fault and gain no absolution by a calculated and interested confession. He could not bring himself to it. His manner to the child was as carelessly kind as ever; and when Sibylla was there the carelessness was almost more apparent than the kindness. Grantley's nature was against him; to do violence to it was a struggle. Ever ready to be kind, he disliked to show emotion. He felt it was being false to himself; being a sham and a hypocrite. To be gushing was abhorrent to him; to pretend to gush surely touched a more profound depth? His efforts achieved no success; and he did not let Sibylla perceive even the efforts themselves. For once his will, strong as it was, and his clear perception were both powerless before his temper and the instincts of his nature. The result was a deadlock. Matters could not move.

Such was the juncture of affairs when Christine Fanshaw came to Milldean. Her resolve to escape from the atmosphere of disgrace at home perhaps alone could have brought her; for she came in some trepidation, rather surprised that Sibylla had welcomed her, wondering whether the welcome was of Sibylla's own free will. Had she not betrayed Sibylla? Was she not responsible for the frustration of the great plan? Yet an acute curiosity mingled with and almost overpowered her apprehensions, and she was prepared to defend herself. The rumours about Walter Blake would be a weapon, if she needed one – a weapon effective, if cruel. As regards her own treachery, she made haste to throw herself on Sibylla's mercy.

"Of course you must have known it was through me?" she ended.

"Oh, yes, I knew that, of course."

"Here's your letter – the one you sent me to hand on to Grantley. He wired me not to send it."

"Oh, I thought he'd read it," said Sibylla thoughtfully.

She took it and put it in her pocket.

Christine looked at her with a smile.

"And yet you ask me to stay!" she remarked.

Sibylla smiled mockingly.

"Since this household owes all its happiness to you, it's only fair that you should come and look on at it."

"That's not at all a comfortable thing to say, Sibylla."

"No, it isn't, and it departs from our principle, which is to say nothing."

"That's not always very comfortable either."

Christine was giving a thought to her own affairs here.

"And we won't say anything more about what you did," Sibylla went on. "We won't discuss whether you were right, or whether I'm grateful, or anything of that sort."

"You ought to be."

"Or even whether I ought to be – though, of course, you'd want to think that."

Christine was disappointed. In her heart she had rather hoped to be put on her defence just enough to entitle her to use her weapon, and to tell some of the truth about Walter Blake. Sibylla's attitude gave her no excuse.

Though she would say nothing more about what Christine had done, Sibylla was easily persuaded to break the principle of silence about the main affair. Christine's curiosity lost the zest of difficult satisfaction; she had the whole history for the asking. She heard it, marvelling at the want of reticence her friend displayed, seeking how to reconcile this seeming immodesty with the rest of her impression of Sibylla. She recollected being very shy and ashamed (in the midst of her exultation) when she had let Harriet Courtland worm out the secret of her love for Caylesham. Sibylla was not ashamed – she was candid. Sometimes she was excited, sometimes she played the judge; but she was never abashed. Christine's wits sought hard for an explanation of this. Suddenly it came to her as she gazed on Sibylla's pure face and far-away eyes.

"My dear, you were never in love with him!" she cried.

If she hoped to surprise, or even to win a compliment on her penetration, she was utterly deceived.

"Oh, no!" said Sibylla. "In the way you mean I've never been in love with anybody except Grantley."

"Then why did you? Oh, tell me about it!" Christine implored.

"He appealed to my better feelings," Sibylla smiled back to her, mocking again. "I'd give the world that we hadn't been stopped! No, I can't say that, because – "

"Well?"

"I think Grantley would have done what he said."

Christine was the last woman in the world to rest ignorant of what Grantley had said. Sibylla was again disappointingly ready to tell the whole thing without any pressure worth mentioning.

"And you really believe he would have?" Christine half whispered when she had heard the story.

"If I didn't believe it with my whole heart, I shouldn't be here. I should be – well, somewhere – with Walter Blake."

"Thank God you're not!"

"Why do you say that? The proprieties, Christine?"

"Oh, only partly; but don't you think lightly of them, all the same. And the rest of the reasons don't matter." Christine got up and walked across the room and back again before she came to a stand opposite Sibylla. "I call that a man worth being in love with," she said.

"Walter?"

"Heavens, no! Grantley Imason! Oh, I know he's your husband! But still – "

Sibylla broke into a gentle laugh.

"It has the attraction of the horrible," she admitted. "He'd have done it, you know."

"It's mediæval," said Christine fondly. "And you were going away with Walter Blake!" She drew her little figure up straight. "Sibylla, you're no woman if you don't manage a man like that in the end. He's worth it, you know."

"You mean – if I don't let him manage me?" Sibylla was a little contemptuous. "I don't care about tyranny, even tempered by epigrams," she explained.

"Well, not when you only do the epigrams," smiled Christine.

"That's not true. I only ask a real partnership."

"You must begin by contributing all you have."

"I did. But Grantley – "

"Paid a composition? Oh yes, my dear; men do. That's as old as Byron anyhow." She came suddenly to Sibylla and kissed her. "And you'd be adorable, properly deluded."

"You shan't put it like that, Christine."

"Yes, I will – and I know he loves you."

"He can't love anything – not really."

"I shall watch him. Oh, my dear, what a comfort to watch anybody except John! Oh yes, yes, I suppose you'd better have my story too. You've had most of it before – without the name. But look away. I've no theories, you know – and – well, I was in love."

She laughed a little, blushing red. But her composure returned when she had finished her confession.

"And now what do we think of one another?" she asked, with her usual satirical little smile. "You don't know? Oh yes! You think me rather wicked, and I think you very silly; that's about what it comes to."

"I suppose that is about it," Sibylla laughed reluctantly.

"But I've repented, and you're only going to repent."

"Never!"

"Yes, you are. I take no credit for having done it first. It's much easier to repent of wickedness than of nonsense. The wickedness is much pleasanter at the time, and so seems much worse afterwards."

"And now you're in love with John?"

"Good heavens, no!" She pulled herself up. "Well, I don't know. If I'm in love now, it's not what I used to mean by it. One gets to use words so differently as time goes on."

"I don't think I shall ever learn that."

Destiny assumed Christine's small neat features for a moment in order to answer sternly:

"But you must!"

It was the worst way of dealing with Sibylla.

"I won't!" she answered in overt rebellion, her cheek flushing now as her confession had not availed to make it flush.

Christine did not fail to perceive the comic element in the case – strong enough, at all events, to serve as a relief to conversation, almost piquant when Grantley conscientiously related all manner of uninteresting things in order that Sibylla might be at liberty to take an interest in them. But this aspect did not carry matters very far or afford much real consolation. Substantially no progress was made. The failure endured, and seemed to Christine as complete as the devastation wrought in her own life. Nay, here there was an aggravation. In her home – she almost smiled to use the word now – there was no child. Here there was the boy. Her thoughts flew forward to the time when he would wonderingly surmise, painfully guess, at last grow into knowledge.

And already the mind stirred in little Frank. His intelligence grew, his affection blossomed as the first buds of a flower. He was no more merely a passive object of love and care. He began to know more than that he was nursed and fed, more than that his right was to these ministrations. The idea of the reason dawned in him. He stretched forth his hand no longer for bounty only, but for the inspirer of bounty – for love. Strung to abnormal sensitiveness, Christine deluded herself with the fancy that already he felt the shadow over the house, that his young soul was already chilled by the clouds of anger, and vainly cried for the sunshine of sympathy. If she did not truly see, yet she foresaw truly. Seeing and foreseeing, then, she asked where was the hope. And on this, with a bound, her thoughts were back to her own sorrow, and back to poor lonely old John in London, all by himself, with nobody to talk to, nobody to congratulate him on the success of his business, nobody to open his heart to, alone with his grievance against her, alone with the thought that, notwithstanding his grievance, he had taken Frank Caylesham's money, and grew prosperous again by the aid of it.