Double Harness

"They haven't been cruel to you?"

"Cruel? No! They've been most – most gentle. I've come to see how wrong it was."

"Yet you're here!" He could not resist the retort.

"For the last time – to say good-bye. And if you really care at all, you must do as I wish."

"But – I may write to you?"

"No, no, you mustn't."

"You can't stop me thinking about you."

"I shan't think of you. I shall pray to be able not to. I'm sure I can be strong."

She had got this idea in her head. It was just the sort of idea that Sibylla might have got. She wanted to immolate herself. For such views in Sibylla Jeremy had always had denunciations ready. He had no denunciation now – only a despairing puzzle.

"I can't accept that, and I won't! Do you love me?"

"I'm going to keep my promise to say nothing. I've told you what I must do and what you must. I made up my mind – and – and then I went to the Sacrament to-day."

Jeremy rubbed his wrinkled brow, eyeing this determined penitent very ruefully. A sudden return to rectitude is disconcerting in an accomplice. He did not know what to do. But his bulldog persistence was roused and his square jaw set obstinately.

"Well, I shall consider what to do. I believe you love me, and I shan't sit down under this."

"You must," she said. "And now, good-bye."

He came towards her, but her raised hand stopped him.

"Good-bye like this? You won't even shake hands?"

"No, I can't. Good-bye."

Of course he was sorry for her, but he was decidedly angry too. He perceived a case of the selfishness of spiritual exaltation. His doggedness turned to surliness.

"All right, then, good-bye," he said sulkily.

"You're not angry with me?"

"Yes, I am."

She accepted this additional cross, and bore it meekly.

"That hurts me very much. But I must do right. Good-bye."

And with that she went, firm to the last, leaving Jeremy almost as furious with women as in the palmiest days of his youth, almost as angry with her as he had ever been with the long-legged rectory girl.

Pursuing (though he did not know it) paths as well trodden as those which he had already followed, he formed an instant determination in his mind. She should be sorry for it! Whether she should sorrow with a lifelong sorrow or whether she should ultimately, after much grief and humiliation, find forgiveness, he did not decide for the moment; both ideas had their attraction. But at any rate she should be sorry, and that as soon as possible. How was it to be brought about? Jeremy conjectured that a remote and ill-ascertained success in original research would not make her sorry, and his conclusion may be allowed to pass; nor would a continuance of shabby clothes and an income of a hundred a year. This combination had once seemed all-sufficient. Nay, it would suffice now for true and whole-hearted love. But it was not enough to make a cruel lady repent of her cruelty, nor to convict a misguided zealot of the folly of her zeal. It was not dazzling enough for that. In an hour Jeremy threw his whole ideal of life to the winds, and decided for wealth and mundane fame – speedy wealth and speedy mundane fame (speed was essential, because Jeremy's feelings were in a hurry). Such laurels and fruits were not to be plucked in Milldean. That very night Jeremy packed a well-worn leather bag and a square deal box. He was going to London, to see Grantley and Sibylla, to make them acquainted with the state of the case, and to set about becoming rich and famous as speedily as possible. His mind o'erleapt the process and saw it already completed – saw his return to Milldean rich and famous – saw his renewed meeting with Dora, the confusion of the rector and Mrs. Hutting, the unavailing – or possibly at last availing – regret and humiliation of Dora. It cannot truthfully be said that he went to bed altogether unhappy. He had his dream, even as Dora had hers; he had his luxury of prospective victory as she had hers of unreserved and accepted penitence; and they shared the conviction of a very extraordinary and unprecedented state of things.

So to town came Jeremy, leaving Mrs. Mumple in Old Mill House. She was not idle. She was counting months now – not years now, but months; and she was knitting socks, and making flannel shirts, and hemming big red handkerchiefs, and picturing and wondering in her faithful old heart what that morning would be like for whose coming she had waited so many many years. Great hopes and great fears were under the ample breast of her unshapely merino gown.

In the Imason household the strain grew more intense. With rare tenacity, unimpaired confidence, and unbroken pride, Grantley maintained his attitude. He would tire out Sibylla's revolt; he would outstay the fit of sulks, however long it might be. But the strain told on him, though it did not break him: he was more away; more engrossed in his outside activities; grimmer and more sardonic when he was at home; careful to show no feeling which might expose him to rebuff; extending the scope of this conduct from his wife to his child, because his wife's grievance was bound up with the child. And Sibylla, seeing the attitude, seeing partially only and therefore more resenting the motives, created out of it and them a monster of insensibility, something of an inhuman selfishness, seeming the more horrible and unnatural from the unchanging, if cold, courtesy which Grantley still displayed. This image had been taking shape ever since their battle at Milldean. It had grown with the amused scorn which was on his face as he told her of the specialist's judgment, and made her see how foolish she had been, what an unnecessary fuss she had caused, how dangerous and silly it was to let one's emotions run away with one. It had defined itself yet more clearly through the months before and after the boy's birth, as Grantley developed his line of action and adhered to it, secure apparently from every assault of natural tenderness. Now the portentous shape was all complete in her imagination, and the monster she had erected freed her from every obligation. By her hypothesis it was accessible by no appeal and sensitive to no emotion. Why, then, labour uselessly? It would indeed be to knock your head – yes, and your heart too – against a flinty wall. As for trying to show or to cherish love for it – that seemed to her prostitution itself. And she had no tenacity to endure such a life as Grantley, or her image of Grantley, made for her. In her headlong fashion she had already pronounced the alternatives – death or flight.

And there was the baby boy in his helplessness; and there was young Blake with his ready hot passion, masked by those aspirations of his, and his fiery indignation seconding and applauding the despair of her own heart. For Blake knew the truth now – the truth as Sibylla's imaginings made it; and in view of that truth the thing his passion urged him to became a holy duty. His goddess must be no more misused; her misery must not be allowed to endure.

Knowing his thought and what his heart was towards her, Sibylla turned to him as a child turns simply from a hard to a loving face. Here was a life wanting her life, a love asking hers. She had always believed people when they said they loved and wanted her – why, she had believed even Grantley himself! – and was always convinced that their love for her was all they said it was. It was her instinct to believe that. She believed all – aye, more – about young Blake than he believed about himself, though he believed very much just now; and she would always have people all white or all black. Grantley was all black now, and Blake was very white, white as snow, while he talked of his aspirations and his love, and tempted her to leave all that bound her, and to give her life to him. He tempted well, for he offered not pleasure, but the power of doing good and bestowing happiness. Her first natural love seemed to have spent itself on Grantley; she had no passion left, save the passion of giving. It was to this he made his appeal; this would be enough to give him all his way. Yet there was the child. He had not yet ventured on that difficult uncertain ground. That was where the struggle would be; it was there that he distrusted the justice of his own demand on her, there that his passion had to drown the inward voices of protest.

It might have happened that Jeremy, with his fresh love and fresh ambitions, would have been a relief to such a position; that his appeal both to sympathy and to amusement would have done something to clear the atmosphere. So far as he himself went, indeed, he was irresistible; his frankness and his confidence were not to be denied. Trusting in the order of nature, he knew no bashfulness; trusting in himself, he had no misgivings. Without a doubt he was right. They all agreed that the old ideal of original research and a hundred a year must be abandoned, and that Jeremy must become rich and famous as soon as possible.

"Though whether you ought to forgive her in the end is, I must say, a very difficult point," remarked Grantley with a would-be thoughtful smile. "In cases of penitence I myself favour forgiveness, Jeremy."

"But there is the revelation of her character," suggested Sibylla, taking the matter more seriously, or treating its want of seriousness with more tenderness.

"I'm inclined to think the young lady's right at present," said Blake. "What you have to do is to give her ground for changing her views – and to give her mother ground for changing hers too."

Jeremy listened to them all with engrossed interest. Whatever their attitude, they all confirmed his view.

"You once spoke of a berth in the City?" he said to Grantley.

"Not much fame there; but perhaps you may as well take things by instalments."

"I don't like it, you know. It's not my line at all."

Blake came to the rescue. The Selfords drew their money from large and important dyeing-works, although Selford himself had retired from any active share in the work of the business. There was room for scientific aptitude in dyeing-works, Blake opined rather vaguely. "You could make chemistry, for instance, subserve the needs of commerce, couldn't you?"

"That really is a good suggestion," said Jeremy approvingly.

"Capital!" Grantley agreed. "We'll get at Selford for you, Jeremy; and, if necessary, we'll club together, and send to Terra del Fuego, and buy Janet Selford a new dog."

"I begin to see my way," Jeremy announced.

Whereat the men laughed, while Sibylla came round and kissed him, laughing too. What a very short time ago, and she had been even as Jeremy, as sanguine, as confident, seeing her way as clearly, with just as little warrant of knowledge!

"Meanwhile you mustn't mope, old chap," said Grantley.

"Mope? I've no time for moping. Do you think I could see this Selford to-morrow?"

"I'll give you a letter to take to him," laughed Grantley. "But don't ask for ten thousand a year all at once, you know."

"I know the world. When I really want a thing, I can wait for it."

But it was evident that he did not mean to wait very long. Grantley said ten thousand a year: a thousand would seem riches to the Milldean rectory folk.

"That's right. If you want a thing, you must be ready to wait for it," agreed Grantley, with smiling lips and a pucker on his brow.

"So long as there's any hope," added Sibylla.

These hints of underlying things went unheeded by Jeremy, but Blake marked them. They were becoming more frequent now as the tension grew and grew.

"There's always a hope with reasonable people."

"Opinions differ so much as to what is reasonable."

"Dora's not reasonable at present, anyhow."

Jeremy's mind had not travelled beyond his own predicament.

The contrast he pointed, the mocking memories he stirred, made his presence accentuate and embitter the strife, confirming Sibylla's despair, undermining even Grantley's obstinate self-confidence; while to Blake his example, however much one might smile at it, seemed to cry, "Courage!" He who would have the prize must not shrink from the struggle.

That night Sibylla sat long by her boy's cot. Little Frank slept quietly (he had been named after his godfather, Grantley's friend, that Lord Caylesham who was also the Fanshaws' friend), while his mother fought against the love and the obligation that bound her to him – a sad fight to wage. She had some arguments not lacking speciousness. To what life would he grow up in such a home as theirs! Look at the life the Courtland children led! Would not anything be better than that – any scandal in the past, any loss in present and future? She called to her help too that occasional pang which the helpless little being gave her, he the innocent cause and ignorant embodiment of all her perished hopes. Might not that come oftener? Might it not grow and grow till it conquered all her love, and she ended by hating because she might have loved so greatly? Horrible! Yes, but had it not nearly come to pass with one whom she had loved very greatly? It could not be called impossible, however to be loathed the idea of it might be. No, not impossible! Her husband was the child's father. Did he love him? No, she cried – she had almost persuaded herself that his indifference screened a positive dislike. And if it were not impossible, any desperate thing would be better than the chance of it. But for Grantley she could love, she could go on loving, the child. Then why not make an end of her life with Grantley – the life that was souring her heart and turning all love to bitterness? Grantley would not want the child, and, not wanting it, would let her have it. She did not believe that he would burden himself with the boy for the sake of depriving her of him. She admitted with a passing smile that he had not this small spitefulness – his vices were on a larger scale. She could go to Grantley and say she must leave him. No law and no power could prevent her, and she believed that she could take the boy with her.

Why not do that? Do that, and let honour, at least, stand pure and unimpeached?

The question brought her to the issue she had tried to shirk, to the truth she had sought to hide. Her love for the boy was much, but it was not enough, it did not satisfy. Was it even the greatest thing? As it were with a groan, her spirit answered, No. The answer could not be denied, however she might stand condemned by it. Of physical passion she acquitted herself – and now she was in no mood for easy self-acquittal; but there was the greater passion for intercourse of soul, for union, for devotion, for abandonment of the heart. These asked a responding heart, they asked knowledge, feelings grown to full strength, a conscious will, an intellect adult and articulate. They could be found in full only where she had thought to find them – in the love of woman and man, of fit man for fit woman, and of her for him. They could not be found in the love for her child. Christine Fanshaw had asked her if she could not be wrapped up in the baby. No. She could embrace it in her love, but hers was too large for its little arms to enfold. She cried for a wider field and what seemed a greater task.

And for what was wrong, distasteful, disastrous in the conclusion? She had the old answer for this. "It's not my fault," she said. It was not her fault that her love had found no answering love, had found no sun to bloom in, and had perished for want of warmth. Not on her head lay the blame. So far as human being can absolve human being from the commands of God or of human society, she declared that by Grantley's act she stood absolved. The contract in its true essence had not been broken first by her.

Ah, why talk? Why argue? There were true things to be said, valid arguments to use. On this she insisted. But in the end the imperious cry of her nature rang out over all of them and drowned their feebler voices. Come what might, and let the arguments be weak or strong, she would not for all her life, that glorious life Heaven had given her, beat her heart against the flinty wall.

CHAPTER XI

THE OLIVE BRANCH

Suzette Bligh was staying at the Courtlands' – that Suzette who had been at Mrs. Raymore's party, and was, according to Christine Fanshaw, a baby compared with Anna Selford, although ten years her senior. She had neither father nor mother, and depended on her brother for a home. He had gone abroad for a time, and Lady Harriet had taken her in, partly from kindness (for Lady Harriet had kind impulses), partly to have somebody to grumble to when she was feeling too conscientious to grumble to the children. This did happen sometimes. None the less the children heard a good deal of grumbling, and in Suzette's opinion knew far too much about the state of the household. They were all girls, Lucy, Sophy, and Vera, and ranged in age from thirteen to nine. They took to Suzette, and taught her several things about the house before she had been long in it; and she relieved Lady Harriet of them to a certain extent, thereby earning gratitude no less than by her readiness to listen to grumblings. Tom was little seen just now; he came home very late and went out very early; he never met his wife; he used just to look in on the children at schoolroom breakfast, which Suzette had elected to share with them, Lady Harriet taking the meal in her own room. It was not a pleasant house to stay in, but it was tolerably comfortable, and Suzette, not asking too much of life, was content enough to be there, could tell herself that she was of use, and was happy in performing an act of friendship.

Of course the question was how long Lady Harriet would stand it. The little girls knew that this was the question; they were just waiting for mamma to break out. They had not disliked their mother in the past; occasional fits of temper are not what children hate most. They endure them, hoping for better times, or contrive to be out of the way when the tempest arises. Cracks with any implement that came handy were the order of the day when the tempest had risen; but on calm days Lady Harriet had been carelessly indulgent, and, in her way, affectionate to the girls. But now the calm days grew rarer, the tempests more frequent and violent. Fear grew, love waned, hatred was on its way to their hearts. They had never disliked their father; though they had no great respect for him, they loved him. They regarded him with compassionate sympathy, as the person on whom most of the cracks fell; and they quite understood why he wanted to keep out of the way. This was a bond of union. They had even vague suspicions as to where he went in order to get out of the way. They had listened to their mother's grumbling; they had listened to the talk of the servants too. Suzette was no check on their speculations; they liked her very much, but they were not in the least in awe of her.

"Will you take us for a walk this afternoon, Miss Bligh?" asked Sophy, at schoolroom breakfast on Sunday. "Because Garrett says mamma's not well to-day, and we'd better not go near her – she's going to stay in her own room till tea-time."

"Of course I will, dears," said Suzette Bligh.

"Oh, there's nothing the matter with mamma, really," declared Lucy – "only she's in an awful fury. I met Garrett coming out of her room, and she looked frightened to death."

"Ah, but you don't know why!" piped up Vera's youthful voice in accents of triumph. "I do! I was in the hall, just behind the curtain of the archway, and I heard Peters tell the new footman. Papa was expected last night, and mamma had left orders that she should be told when he came in. But he didn't – "

"We know all that, Vera," Sophy interrupted contemptuously. "He sent word that he'd been called out of town and wouldn't be back till Monday."

"And the message didn't get here till twelve o'clock. Fancy, Miss Bligh!"

"Well, I'm glad you're going to take us to church, and not mamma, Miss Bligh."

"I hope she won't send for any of us about anything!"

"I hope she won't send for me, anyhow," said Vera, "because I haven't done my French, and – "

"Then I shouldn't like to be you if you have to go to her," said Lucy, in a manner far from comforting.

Lady Harriet was by way of teaching the children French, and had not endeared the language to them.

"I wonder what called papa away!" mused Sophy.

"Now, Sophy, that's no business of yours," said poor Suzette, endeavouring to do good. "You've no business to – "

"Well, I don't see any harm in it, Miss Bligh. Papa's always being called away now."

"Especially when mamma's – "

"I can't listen to any more, dears. Does the vicar or the curate preach in the morning, Lucy dear?"

"Don't know, Miss Bligh. I say, Vera, suppose you go and ask mamma to let us have some of that strawberry jam at tea."

"Yes, let's make her go," Sophy chimed in gleefully.

"You may do anything you like," declared Vera, "but you can't make me go – not if you kill me, you can't!"

The two elder girls giggled merrily at her panic.

Poor Suzette was rather in despair about these children – not because they were unhappy. On the whole they had not been very unhappy. Their mother's humours, if alarming, were also the cause of much excitement. Their father's plight, if sorrowful, was by no means wanting in the comic aspect. The suspense in which they waited to see how long Lady Harriet would stand it had a distinct spice of pleasure in it. But the pity of it all! Suzette's training, no less than her fidelity to Lady Harriet, inclined her to lay far the heavier blame on Tom Courtland. But she did have a notion that Lady Harriet must be very trying – and the more she listened to the children the more that idea grew. And, between them, the mother and the father were responsible for such a childhood as this. The children were not bad girls, she thought, but they were in danger of being coarsened and demoralised; they were learning to laugh where they had better have cried. It was Suzette's way to be rather easily shocked, and she was very much shocked at this.

They were just starting for their afternoon walk, when John Fanshaw arrived and found them all in the hall. He was an old friend – Vera's godfather – and was warmly welcomed. John was very cheery to-day; he joked with the children, and paid Suzette Bligh a compliment. Then Vera wanted to know why he had called:

"Because papa's not at home, you know."

"Never mind that, puss. I've come to see your mamma."

"You've come to see mamma!" exclaimed Lucy.

Glances were exchanged between the three – humorous excited glances; admiring amused eyes turned to John Fanshaw. Here was the man who was going to enter the lion's den.

"Shall we start, dears?" suggested Suzette Bligh apprehensively.

No notice was taken. Sophy gave John a direct and friendly warning.

"You'd better look out, you know," she said; "mamma's just furious because papa's not come back."

"But it's not my fault, pussie," said John. "She can't put me in the corner for it."

"Well, if you happen to be there – " began Lucy, with an air of experience.

"We must really start, Lucy dear," urged Suzette.

"What have you come to see mamma about?" asked Vera shrilly.

"To find out how to keep little girls in order," answered John, facetiously rebuking curiosity.

"I expect you've come about papa," observed Vera, with disconcerting calmness and an obvious contempt for his joke.

"I'm going to start, anyhow," declared poor Suzette. "Come along, dears, do!"

"Well, if there's a great row, Garrett'll hear some of it and tell us," said Sophy, consoling herself and her sisters as they reluctantly walked away from the centre of interest.

John Fanshaw's happiness was with him still – the happiness which Caylesham's cheque had brought. It was not banked yet, but it would be to-morrow; and in the last two days John had taken steps to reassure everybody, to tell everybody that they would be paid without question or difficulty, to scatter the cloud of gossip and suspicion which had gathered round his credit in the City. It was now quite understood that John's firm had weathered any trouble which had threatened it, and could be trusted and fully relied on again. Hence John's happy mind, and, a result of the happy mind, a sanguine and eager wish to effect some good, to bring about some sort of reconciliation and a modus vivendi in the Courtland family. His hopes were not visionary or unreasonable: he did not expect to establish romantic bliss there; a modus vivendi commended itself to him as the best way of expressing what he was going to suggest to Lady Harriet. In this flush of happy and benevolent feeling he was really glad that he had consented to undertake the embassy.