He returned from the water's edge and sat down on an outlying fold of Sibyl's gown.
In the sunny stillness a wild-duck, with cautious, advanced neck, and a little fleet of water-babies, paddled past, bobbing on the amber shallows. Crack raised his ears and watched them. His feelings were so entirely under control that he could scratch himself while observing an object of interest; and he did so now. But he did not move from his seat on Sibyl's gown. He was disillusioned about wild-ducks, who did not play fair and stick to one element, but would take to their wings when hard pressed in the water, like a woman who changes her ground when cornered in argument.
Presently the afternoon sun shifted, and all the larches on the steep hillside oppositeand all the broom along the bank stooped to gaze at a flickering fairyland of broom and larches in the wide water. The deep valley of the river was drowned in light. Only the bank on which Sibyl was sitting under the mountain-ash had fallen suddenly into shadow.
'Like my life,' she thought, and rose to go.
Who was this coming slowly towards her along the little path by the water's edge?
She stood still, trembling, her hands pressed against her breast.
It was he. It was Mr. Loftus. He was looking for her. He was coming to her. Joy and terror seized her.
He saw her standing motionless in her white gown under the white blossom-laden tree. And as he drew near and took hernerveless hands in silence, and looked into her face, he saw again in her deep eyes the shy, imploring glance which had met him once before—the mute entreaty of love to be suffered to live.
'Sibyl,' he said, and in his voice there was reverence as well as tenderness—reverence for her untarnished youth, and tenderness for the white flower of love which it had put forth, 'will you be my wife?'
'J'ai vu sous le soleil tomber bien d'autres chosesQue les feuilles des bois et l'écume des eaux,Bien d'autres s'en aller que le parfum des rosesEt le chant des oiseaux.'Alfred de Musset.
'J'ai vu sous le soleil tomber bien d'autres chosesQue les feuilles des bois et l'écume des eaux,Bien d'autres s'en aller que le parfum des rosesEt le chant des oiseaux.'Alfred de Musset.
'Mummy,'said Peggy, a few days later, coming into her mother's sitting-room and pressing her round, cool cheek against Lady Pierpoint's, 'why does Sibyl want to marry Mr. Loftus?'
'Because she thinks she loves him, Peggy, as many other women have done before her.'
'I think I love him, too, in a way,' saidPeggy. 'He is better than anybody. When I am with him, I feel—I don't know what I feel, only I know it's good, and I want to do something for him, or make him something really pretty for his handkerchiefs; but—I don't want to marry him.'
'That is as well, my treasure, as he is going to marry Sibyl.'
'I never thought he would marry anybody. I can't believe it. It seems as if it could not happen.'
'It will happen,' said Lady Pierpoint, 'if he lives.'
'Sibyl says,' continued Peggy, 'that he enters into her feelings as no one else does, and that she understands him, and that hardly anyone else does except her, because he is so superior.'
'Indeed!'
'And she says she can speak to him of aspirations and things that she can't even mention to Molly and me. She says it isn't our fault—it is only because we are different to her.'
'You are certainly very different,' said Lady Pierpoint, compressing her lips.
'And to think that she might have married Mr. Doll,' continued Peggy, as if Sibyl's actions were indeed inscrutable. 'Mr. Doll will be twenty-eight next August. He was twenty-seven when we were at Wilderleigh last year. If I had been Sibyl, I would have married him, and then I'll tell you, mummy, what I would have done. I would have asked Mr. Loftus to let us live with him at Wilderleigh, and I would have taken such care of him—oh! such care—and I would have spent whole bags of money on the farmsand fences and things, and he would have been happy, and Mr. Doll would have been happy, too.'
'Peggy,' said Lady Pierpoint, 'shall I tell you a secret? I think that is exactly what Mr. Loftus hoped Sibyl would do.'
Mr. Loftus returned to London a day or two later, and had an interview with Doll the day before the announcement of the engagement appeared in theMorning Post.
Mr. Loftus was attached to his nephew—people always looked upon Doll as his nephew, though he was in reality his first cousin—and to him and to him alone he told the circumstances which had led to his engagement.
What passed between the elder man and the young one during that interviewwill never be known. But when at last Mr. Loftus left him, Doll sat for a long time looking over the geraniums into the park. The somewhat dull, unimaginative soul that dwelt behind his handsome expressionless face was vaguely stirred.
'It's a mistake,' he said at last, half aloud. 'But Uncle George is on the square; he always is.'
And when he was ruthlessly twitted next day by his brother officers on being cut out by his uncle, he replied simply enough:
'He is a better man than me, as all you fellows know. She would not have looked at one of you any more than she would at me. I suppose she had a fancy for marrying a man who could spell, which none of us can.'
'Spelling or none,' said the youngestsub—'which is an indecent subject which should never be mentioned between gentlemen—anyhow, I mean to borrow a thousand or a fiver off him. Mr. Loftus always tipped me at school.'
One of Mr. Loftus's first actions was to stop the preliminary proceedings regarding the sale of Wilderleigh, which he had been arranging a month ago, on the afternoon when he had called on Lady Pierpoint. It was like awakening from a nightmare to realize that Wilderleigh would not be sold, after all. He almost wished that he might live long enough to set the place in order for Doll.
The engagement was a nine days' wonder, and those nine days were purposely spent by Mr. Loftus in London. He was aware that many cruel things would be said at his expense, and thatthe bare fact that a man of his years and in his state of health should marry a young heiress, and so great an heiress as Sibyl Carruthers, must call forth unfavourable comments. People who did not know him said it was perfectly shameful, and that it was just the sort of thing which those people who posed as being so extra good always did. How shocked Mr. Loftus had pretended to be when old Lord Bugbear, after his infamous life, married a girl of seventeen! And now he, Mr. Loftus, was doing exactly the same himself. Of course he had a very fascinating manner—just the kind of manner to impose on a young girl who, like Miss Carruthers, knew nothing of the world, and had been nowhere. And everyone knew he was desperately poor. Wilderleigh could hardly pay its way. Arumour had long been afloat that it would shortly be for sale. If he had not been so hard up for money it would have been different; but it was a most disgraceful thing, and Lady Pierpoint ought to be ashamed of having exposed the poor motherless girl left in her charge to his designs upon her. They wondered how much Lady Pierpoint, whose means were narrow, had been bought over for. The sums varied according to the sordidness of the different speculators, who of course named their own price.
Others who knew Mr. Loftus were puzzled and were silent. To know him at all was to believe him to be incapable of an ignoble action; yet this marriage had the appearance of being ignoble—not, perhaps, for another man, but certainly for him. His intimate friends were distressed, and greeted him with grave cordiality and affection, and hoped for an explanation. He gave none. And they remembered that never in his public or in his private life had he been known to give an explanation of his conduct, and came to the conclusion that they must trust him.
Mr. Loftus had recognised early in life that explanations explain nothing. If those who had had opportunities of knowing him well misjudged him after those opportunities, they were at liberty to do so as far as he was concerned. The weight of an enormous acquaintance oppressed him, and, though he had never been known to wound anyone by withdrawing from an unequal friendship, which he had not been the one to begin, and which was an effort to him to continue,still, he took advantage of being misunderstood to lay aside many such friendships. It was not pride which prompted this line of action on Mr. Loftus's part, though many put it down to pride, especially those who had held aloof from him at a certain doubtful moment, and in whose regard subsequent events had entirely reinstated him, and who complained that he expected to be considered infallible. It was, in reality, the natural inclination of a world-weary man of the world to lay aside, as far as he could courteously do so, the claims of the artificial side of life, its vain forms, its empty hospitalities.
He realized that for the purpose of winnowing its friendships the various events of life may be relied on to furnish the fitting occasions. Those who do notwish to offend others by leaving them need make no effort, for they will certainly be presently deserted by those who have never grasped the meaning of the character which has been the object of their transient admiration. 'If he is unequal he will presently pass away.' Mr. Loftus neither hurried the unequal, self-constituted friend, nor sought to detain him. But when he departed, shaking the dust from off his feet, the door was noiselessly closed behind him, and his knock, however loud, was not heard when he returned again.
A small batch of uneasy admirers left him on the occasion of his engagement. They said openly that they were much disappointed in him, and that he had shaken their belief in human nature.
'Will Sibyl also pass away?' Mr. Loftus wondered, as he sat on the terraceat Wilderleigh on his return from London. 'Yes, she, too, will presently pass away; but I shall not give her time to do so. She will be absorbed by her first love for a few years, and I shall only remain a few years at longest. By the time it wanes I shall be gone, and my departure will pain her but very slightly.'
His face softened as he thought of Sibyl. His nature, which, in its far-away youth, had been imaginative and romantic, had remained sympathetic. He gauged, as few others could have done had they been the object of it, the measure of her romantic attachment to himself. It was perhaps safer in his hands than in those of a younger man. For youth perpetrates many murders and mutilations in the name of love, as the schoolboy's love of a butterfly finds expression in a pin anda cork. But it would have cut Sibyl to the heart if she had even guessed that his tranquil mind took for granted that her adoration would not last until the stars fell from heaven and the earth fell into the sun. For 'Les esprits faibles ne sont jamais sincères.' That is a hard saying, but alas! and alas! that it is only the weak who believe that it is not true. The strong know better, but if they are merciful they are silent.
'And so my second wife is also to be anesprit faible,' said Mr. Loftus to himself, looking at the past through half-closed eyes. 'But in the meanwhile I have learnt a lesson in natural history. I shall not expect my butterfly to hew wood and draw water. And this time I shall not break my heart because pretty wings are made to flutter with.'
And the remembrance slid through his mind of Millais's picture of the dying cavalier, and the butterfly perched upon the drawn sword in the ardent sunshine. And he thought of the drawn sword of Damocles hanging over his own life, and Sibyl's love preening itself for one brief second upon it. And at the thought he smiled.
'Je suis l'amante, dit-elle.Cueillez la branche de houx.'Victor Hugo.
'Je suis l'amante, dit-elle.Cueillez la branche de houx.'Victor Hugo.
'When all the world like some vast tidal wave withdraws.'—Buchanan.
Manypersons prophesied that the marriage between Mr. Loftus and Sibyl would not take place, but it did.
On a burning day late in July they were married in London, for Sibyl's country place, where Mr. Loftus had hoped the wedding might have taken place, was shut up.
Lady Pierpoint did all in her power tomake the wedding a quiet one, for his sake. Very few invitations were sent out, and there was no reception afterwards. But, nevertheless, though the season was at its last gasp, when the day came the unfashionable London church was crammed with that 'smart' world, half of which had condemned Mr. Loftus, while it showered invitations upon him.
Many hundreds of eyes were fixed upon his stately feeble figure as he moved slowly forward to place himself beside the young girl, whose emotion was plainly visible, and whose bouquet shook in her hand. The contrast between the two, as they stood together, was of that glaring description which appeals to the vulgar and conventional mind, on which shades of difference are lost.
Mr. Loftus went through the ceremonywith equanimity. His grave face betrayed nothing except fatigue and the fact that he was suffering from a severe headache. Lady Pierpoint and Doll watched him with anxiety, while Peggy, standing close behind the bride, wept silently, she knew not why.
'Oh, mummy,' she said afterwards when it was all over, and Sibyl, anxious, preoccupied, had left Lady Pierpoint and Peggy and Molly, who had been mother and sisters to her, without a tear, without a regret, without a backward look, absorbed in the one fact that Mr. Loftus was ill—'oh, mummy, you say Sibyl loves him so much. Is that why she did not mind going away from all of us a bit? I know he had a headache, but she never used to mind when you had a headache, and when she was ill, do you remember how shealways sent for you, even when I told her you were resting? And yet she used to be a little fond of us. But since he came she does not seem to care for us any more. If one loves anybody, does one forget the others?'
'Some women do,' said Lady Pierpoint, taking Peggy's red, tear-stained face in her hands and kissing it. She could not bear to own, even to Peggy, how wounded her warm maternal heart had been because Sibyl, whose delicacy had given her so many anxious hours, had shown no feeling at parting with her. Mr. Loftus had shown much more, when he had come to speak to her alone for a few minutes in her sitting-room, when the carriage was at the door.
'Some women,' said Lady Pierpoint, looking wistfully at her daughter, 'forgeteveryone else when they marry, and are very proud of it. They think it shows how devoted they are. A little cup is soon full, Peggy, and a shallow heart, if it takes in a new love, has no room left for the old ones. The new love is like the cuckoo in the nest—it elbows out everything else.'
'I will not be like that,' said Peggy, crushing her mother and her mother's bonnet in an impulsive embrace. 'I will have a deep, deep heart, mummy, and no one shall ever go out that once comes in—and—oh, mummy, you shall have the best bedroom in my heart always!'
'I have a very foolish girl for a daughter,' said Lady Pierpoint, somewhat comforted, smiling through her tears, 'and one who has no respect for my best bonnet.'
* * * * *
At Sibyl's wish she and Mr. Loftus went straight to Wilderleigh. They reached it after several hours' journey on the evening of their wedding-day. And gradually the nervous exhaustion and acute headache from which he had been suffering, and which had become almost unbearable in the train, relaxed their hold upon him. They were sitting in the cool, scented twilight on the terrace. Through the half-darkness came the low voice of the river talking to itself. Noise and light and other voices, and this dreadful day, were gone at last.
He gave a sigh of relief and smiled deprecatingly at her. They had hardly spoken since they were married. She was sitting near him, a slender figure in her pale gown, that shimmered in the feeble light. But there was light enough for herto see him smile, and she smiled back at him with her whole heart in her lovely eyes. No thought of self lurked in those clear depths, and Mr. Loftus, looking into them, and remembering how, on this her wedding day, her whole mind had been absorbed, to the entire oblivion of a bride's divided feelings, in the one fact that he was suffering, was touched, but not with elation.
The long listless hand lying palm upwards on his knee made a slight movement, and in instant response to it her hand was placed in his. His closed over it. Perhaps nothing could have endeared her more to him than the mute response that had waited on his mute appeal, and had not forestalled it.
His hand clasping hers, he drew her slightly, and, obeying its pressure, she leaned towards him.
'My Sibyl!' he said, and she involuntarily drew closer to him, for something in his voice and manner, in spite of their exceeding gentleness and tenderness, seemed to remove him from her. 'Fate has been hard upon you that I should have been ill on your wedding-day.'
'No,' she said, timidly pushing off from shore into the new world upon her little raft. 'Fate was kind, because to-day has been the first day when I could be with you and take care of you.'
'You take too much care of me.'
'I care for nothing else,' she said, her voice faltering, adoration in her eyes.
One white star peered low in the western heaven through the violet dusk.
'Once long ago, before you were born,' said Mr. Loftus, 'I loved someone, and she said she loved me, and we weremarried. But after a time she brought trouble upon me, Sibyl.'
The great current had caught the little raft, and was hurrying it out to sea.
'I will never bring trouble upon you,' said the young girl, her lips trembling as she stooped to kiss his hand. 'When you are tired you shall lean on my arm. When your eyes are tired I will read to you. I will take care of you, and keep all trouble from you.'
'Till I die,' he said below his breath, more to himself than to her.
'Till you die,' she answered.
And so, but this time very lightly, Mr. Loftus leaned once again, or made as if he leaned, on the fragile reed of human love.
'He has nae mair sense o' humour than an owl, and a' aye haud that a man withoot humour sudna be allowed intae a poopit.'—Ian Maclaren.
Thearrival of Sibyl at Wilderleigh was the occasion of many anxious surmises at the little Vicarage on the part of the young Vicar and his young and adoring wife.
It had long been a great grief to them that Mr. Loftus only came to church once on Sunday. It was vaguely understood that he had yielded himself to doubts on religious subjects, which alone could account for this 'laxity'—doubts which theyoung Vicar felt could not have shaken himself or Mrs. Gresley, and which he was convinced he could dispel. But he could never obtain an opportunity to wage war against these ghostly enemies, for though he had preached during Lent a course of sermons calculated to pulverize the infidel tendencies of the age, which his wife had pronounced to be all-conclusive and to place the whole affair in a nutshell—it certainly did that—unfortunately the person for whose spiritual needs they were concocted did not hear them.
Mr. Gresley had several times called upon Mr. Loftus with a view to giving the conversation a deeper turn, but when he was actually in his presence, and Mr. Loftus's steel-gray attentive eye was upon him, the younger man found it difficult, not to say impossible, to force conversation onsubjects which Mr. Loftus had no intention to discuss.
'If he would only meet me in fair argument!' Mr. Gresley said on his return from a futile attempt to approach Mr. Loftus on the subject of public worship; 'but when I had thoroughly explained my own views on the importance of regular attendance at both services on Sunday, he only said that those being my opinions, he considered that I was fully justified in having daily services as well. If he would only meet me fairly and hear reason,' said the young clergyman; 'but he won't. The other day when I pressed him on the subject of the devil—I know he is lax on the devil—I said: "But, Mr. Loftus, do you not believe in him?" If he had only owned what I am sure was the case—namely, that he did not believe in him—I could have confuted him in a moment. I was quite ready. But he slipped out of it by saying, "Believe in him! I would not trust him for a moment." There is no arguing with a man who scoffs or is silent.'
'My dear,' said Mrs. Gresley, 'infidels are all like that, and their only refuge is to be silent or profane. Don't you remember when that professor from Oxford, whom we met at Dr. Pearson's, said something about history and the Bible—I forget what, but it was perfectly unorthodox—and Dr. Pearson was so interested, and you spoke up at once, and he made no reply whatever, and then asked me the name of our Virginia creeper, and talked about flowers. I often think of that, and how he had to turn the subject.'
'But he was not convinced,' said Mr. Gresley, frowning; 'that is the odd part ofit. He brought out a book on the Bible with things in it much worse than what he said in my presence, and which I positively refuted. And it went through six editions, and the Bishop actually read it.'
'You see,' said Mrs. Gresley, with the acumen which pervades the atmosphere of so many country vicarages, 'a man like the professor does notwantto be convinced, or his books would not be read, any more than Mr. Loftus wants to be convinced he ought to come to church regularly, because then he would have no excuse for staying away. But perhaps his wife may be a Christian, James. They say she is quite a young girl, and that her aunt has brought her up well.'
And when Sibyl's sweet face and black velvet hat, and a wonderful flowing gown of white and lilac, appeared in the carvedWilderleigh pew beside Mr. Loftus's familiar profile, the Gresleys hoped many things; though Mrs. Gresley expressed herself, after service, as much shocked at the bride's style of dress, which she pronounced to be too showy. Mrs. Gresley's views on dress were exclusively formed at the two garden-parties and the one private ball to which she went in the course of the year. The Gresleys thought it wrong to go to public balls, and—which was quite another matter—they thought it wrong for other clergymen and their wives to go also.
It was fortunate that Mr. Loftus admired his wife's style of dress, as he had always admired Sibyl herself, from her graceful, fringeless head to her slender, low-heeled shoes. She pleased his fastidious taste as perhaps no other woman could have done. She was one of the fewEnglishwomen who can wear French gowns as if they are part of them, and not put on for the occasion.
After a becoming interval Mr. and Mrs. Gresley called, and this time Mrs. Gresley was somewhat mollified by what she called the very 'suitable' costume of brown holland in which Sibyl received them. Mr. Loftus did not appear, and in the course of conversation the young couple were further pleasantly impressed with the perfect orthodoxy and sound Church teaching of the bride, whose natural gift of platitude was enhanced by the subject under discussion.
They also made the discovery that Mr. Loftus was, in his wife's opinion, infallible. And Mrs. Gresley looked with some astonishment at a bride who actually entertained towards a 'layman' the uniquesentiments which she did for her apostolic James.
'She is a nice young creature,' said Mrs. Gresley, half an hour later, as, with her hands full of orchids, she accompanied her lord back to the Vicarage, 'and her views, James, are beautiful—just what I think myself. She agreed with everything we said. She must have been very well brought up. But I can't understand her infatuation for Mr. Loftus. Really, from the way she spoke of him, and how he knew best, one might have supposed he was priest as well as squire here. It almost made one smile.'
Mr. Loftus and Crack had, in the meanwhile, remained in the gardens, he leaning back in a long deck-chair, looking dreamily up into the perspective of moving green above him, while Crack, who hadonly just arrived from Scotland, snapped mournfully at the English flies, which tasted very much the same as those of Strathspey, so few new things are there under the sun.
Sibyl had wished to bring Peter, the poodle, also to Wilderleigh, but nothing would induce Mr. Loftus to invite him. He told Sibyl that he himself hoped to replace Peter in her affections, and he had certainly succeeded.
She returned to him now, and sat down on a low stool at his feet. In these early days she was much addicted to footstools and the lowest of seats, provided they were properly placed. They were in harmony with her sentiments, and facilitated an upward gaze.
'They were so pleasant. I wish you had come in,' she said.
'I find the clergy as fatiguing as Anderson's beetle found cleanliness,' said Mr. Loftus, his eyes dwelling on her. 'But that is not their fault. It is because I happen to be a beetle.'
'I was a little tired, too,' said Sibyl hastily. 'They stayed rather long.'
'And did you like them?'
'Yes; I thought them very nice. And I am glad they are High Church. I think it is so much nicer, don't you?'
'Do you mean to tell me, now that we are married and it is too late to go back, that you are High Church?'
'Oh, not very high!' said Sibyl anxiously, yet reassured by his look of amusement. 'Which are you?'
'I am the same as Mr. Gresley,' said Mr. Loftus slowly, 'with a difference.'
'I thought you were different,' saidSibyl, gratified at her own powers of observation.
'I know,' continued Mr. Loftus, 'that he thinks I have no principles at all, because he believes they are not the same as his; but in reality they are very much the same as his, only they are carried further afield, and he loses sight of them, while he has a neat little ring-fence round his own. I like Mr. Gresley very much. He is an exemplary young man. But some people become very narrow by walking in the narrow path, and I fear he is one of them. Remember this, my Sibyl, that there is no barrier in your own character against which someone, sooner or later, will not stumble to his hurt. No boundary in ourselves will serve to shut God in, as this good young man thinks, but every boundary will at lastshut out some fellow-creature from us, and be to one, whom perhaps we might have helped, an occasion of stumbling. And now let us show Crack the brook. I am afraid he will think but little of it after the Spey, but he will be too polite to say so. As he only arrived yesterday, it is premature to put it into words, but I have an intuition that Crack and I shall become friends. If I had any influence over him, I would encourage him to bathe in the brook, for he brought into the house with him this morning an odour that convinced me that we were on the eve of some great chemical discovery.'
So they wandered down by the brook, across the lengthening shadows. A cock pheasant was clearing his throat in the wood near the gardens. The low sun had become entangled in the rookery. Apair of sandpipers were balancing their slender selves on a tiny beach of sand. A little black and white water-ousel darted upstream with rapid, bee-like flight. Crack followed, gravely investigating the bank point by point, as if on the look-out for some fallacy in it.
And Sibyl registered the conclusion in her own mind that one must be 'wide,' like Mr. Loftus, not narrow, like Mr. Gresley. After this conversation she always spoke of her religious convictions as 'wide.'
'We form not our affections. It is theyThat do form us; and form us in despiteOf our poor protests.'Lytton.
'We form not our affections. It is theyThat do form us; and form us in despiteOf our poor protests.'Lytton.
Summerslid into autumn, and autumn into winter. The first few months of married life had been difficult to Mr. Loftus, but he had brought his whole attention and an infinite patience to bear on them, and gradually his reward came to him. Sibyl could learn because she loved. She learned slowly, but still she did learn, to read, not her husband's thoughts—those were far from her—but his wishes. She discovered, with a pang which costher many secret tears—but still she did discover—that he often wished to be alone, and that she must not go into his study unless she were asked to do so. She learned gradually when to join him when he paced in the rose-garden, and when it vexed and wearied him to have her by him. And she learned, too, after the first horrible experience, which neither could remember without anguish, when, with blue lips, he had begged her not to touch him; that when he had an attack of the heart she must not betray her agony of mind, if she was to be allowed to remain in the room, and she must not ignorantly try to apply the remedies, but must leave it to Mr. Loftus's valet, whose imperturbable calm and promptitude had often ministered to his master before. Sibyl's terror of death and violent emotion atits approach were peculiarly trying to Mr. Loftus, who had long since ceased to regard death with horror, and only wished to be allowed to meet it quietly, without a scene.
All intimacy was difficult to his solitary nature. It was alien while it was courteously welcomed. It was the natural instinct of hers. She had to learn to suppress her tenderness—or, at any rate, its expression—a hard lesson for an over-demonstrative nature, not long out of its teens. But Sibyl learned even that for his sake. And there her knowledge stopped. It never reached beyond his wishes to his mind. She was merged entirely in her love of her husband, but if he had been unworthy of the exalted pedestal on which she had placed him, she would not have discovered it.
'It might just as well have been Doll.' Mr. Loftus thought occasionally, half amused, when he had the barbarity to try a platitude of the first water upon her—one of Doll's best, such as the young man, after diving into the recesses of his being, could produce, and found she received it with as much interest as the thoughts for which he had dug deep. For hero-worship was necessary to Sibyl, but not a hero—only that she should consider him one. The sham was to her the same as the real. She saw no difference. Like many another woman, she would have adored an ass's ears, wondering at the blindness of the rest of mankind. But if the truth about those ears had been forced upon her, rubbed into her, tattooed upon her, her entire belief in human nature would have fallen with the fall of one fellow-creature. The heights and depths of human nature had never awed her, nor its great forces moved her to reverence or compassion. She was of the stuff out of which the female cynic, as well as the female devotee, is made.
Mr. Loftus did not marvel at an adoration which has been the birthright of his fortunate sex since the world began, but his perennial wonder at the enigma of feminine human nature had a new element added to it—that of amusement. She played with his tools, as a robin perches on a spade, thinking it is stuck in the earth for that purpose, and for the turning up of worms.
The struggles, the despair, the hope and the aspiration, through which his youth had climbed, and out of which it had forged its tools, were not a part of Sibyl's youth. She liked the tools now that they weremade, and desired them for her own small uses. She was naturally drawn to those of deeper convictions and larger faiths. She liked the luxury of being moved by them, stirred by them, lifted beyond herself by a power outside of herself. She loved to nibble the edge of their hard-earned bread and feel that she, too, was of them, and make believe that she had helped to grind the flour; and to make believe with Sibyl was the same thing as to believe. Her insolvent nature clung to the rich one, ostensibly because it was sympathetic, but really because it was rich.
This unconscious audacity was a novel source of entertainment to Mr. Loftus, a bubbling wayside spring which he had hardly hoped to meet with on the dry highroad of married life. It is greatly to be feared that his conscience, usually atender one, was hardly as watchful as it should have been on this subject. It certainly had lapses when Sibyl conversed with him seriously, especially when she coupled his feelings with her own on the greatest subjects, never doubting that they were identical. But after a short time he dared not speak to her of anything really dear to him. She had a gift for making sacred things common by touching them, and age had not tarnished reverence in Mr. Loftus's soul, though it had tarnished many things which youth holds in reverence. He talked to her, instead, on subjects which he had not much at heart, and that did quite as well.
And she, on her side, would bring to him the inferior religious books, and superficial unorthodox works which she believed to be deep because they were unorthodox,which were the natural food of her little soul, and he received them and her remarks upon them, as he received a flower when she gave him one, with courtesy and gratitude.
So absorbed was she in her devotion to her husband, and in the interchange of beautiful sentiments, that her other duties, increased by her position at Wilderleigh, were not even perceived. Unobservant persons are sometimes surprised at the real devotion—and Sibyl's was real—of which a shallow and cold-hearted nature shows itself capable. But those who look closer perceive at what heavy expense to others that one link is held, which is in reality only a new and more subtle form of selfishness.
She dropped the other links without even knowing that she had dropped them.She had no tender, watchful gratitude for Lady Pierpoint, no interest in Peggy's new gowns and lovers, or as to whether Molly had enjoyed her first season. If this had been pointed out to her, she would have glibly ascribed the result to marriage, which, according to some women, is the death-bed of all sympathy and impersonal love. It is like ascribing sin to temptation.
The Gresleys were much disappointed in her, and they had reason to be so, for Sibyl had changed over after her discovery of Mr. Loftus's convictions, or, rather, her interpretation of them, and, instead of being rather High Church, had now decided to be 'wide,' which state, it soon appeared, was not compatible with being an efficient helper to the earnest hard-working young couple at her gate. Mr. Loftus, who nowhad command of money, was far more considerate than his wife.
'She,' Mrs. Gresley complained, 'did not seem to care to do anything with her life, for she would neither sing in the choir nor teach in the Sunday-school.'
She did consent to give prizes for needlework in the schools, but when the day came it was discovered that she had forgotten all about it, and, as she had a cold, Mr. Loftus drove into the nearest town and brought a mind weighted with political matter to bear upon the requisite number of prizes suited to girls of from seven to fourteen years, and hurried back just in time to prevent disappointment by distributing them himself.
'Have you written lately to Lady Pierpoint?' he sometimes asked, and Sibyl generally had to confess, 'Not lately,' andthen she would write and then forget again.
'I suppose Lady Pierpoint is less well off now that you are married?' he asked one day tentatively. 'No doubt your guardians made her an allowance while you lived with her.'
'Yes,' said Sibyl, who was sitting on the hearthrug, trying to make Crack do his trick of sitting up. It was his only trick, and he could not do that unless he happened to be sitting down when called upon to perform it. If he were on all fours at the moment, he could not remember how it began. 'Aunt Marion often said it was a very handsome allowance.'
'And have you continued it, or part of it?' asked Mr. Loftus gravely.
Sibyl owned that she had never thought of doing so.
'Everything I have is yours now,' she said, looking up at him.
'And I am spending it,' he said, 'freely. Thousands of yours are being put into the estate, in repairs, and new farms and buildings. I am like the man in Scripture who pulled down his barns to build greater—at least, who intended to do so if he had had time.'
Mr. Loftus stopped. For the first time for many years a faint wish crossed his mind that his soul might not be required of him till all those expensive improvements were paid for, which would make Doll's position as landlord easier than his own had been.
'Even in these bad times,' he went on, 'Wilderleigh will come round. You have taken a great weight off my mind, Sibyl.'
'That is what I wish,' she said, turningher face, as he put back a little ring of hair behind her ear, so that her lips met his hand.
'But Lady Pierpoint? I am afraid, Sibyl, her husband left her very badly off.'
'I will write now,' said Sibyl, springing to her feet.
Crack rose too, and jumped on Mr. Loftus's knees, quietly pushing his hands off them with his strong nose, and accommodating his long, thin body by a few jerks into the groove which a masculine lap presents. Mr. Loftus did not want him, and it tired him to keep his knees together; but he knew there was a draught on the floor, and he allowed him to remain.
'How much shall I say? A thousand a year or fifteen hundred for her life?' asked Sibyl, dipping her pen in the ink. It was all one to her. She always gavefreely of what cost her nothing—namely, money.
'It must not be too much, or she won't feel able to take it,' said Mr. Loftus, considering. 'And if it is an annuity, it does not help the children.' And he wondered how far he dared go.
And when, a few days later, Lady Pierpoint received a note from Sibyl, very delicately and affectionately expressed, and offering, in such a manner as to make refusal almost impossible, a sum of money more than sufficient to provide for both her daughters, she guessed immediately whose tact had dictated the letter.
'Sibyl would never have thought of it,' she said to herself, as she wrote a note of acceptance. 'It never crossed her mind when she left us, or even to offer to payfor Peggy's and Molly's bridesmaids' gowns, although she chose such expensive ones. And if it had occurred to her since, she would not have put it like that.'
'Le monde est plein de gens qui ne sont pas plus sages.'—La Fontaine.
Withthe winter came many invitations, but they were nearly all refused, for Mr. Loftus had long since dispensed himself from attending county festivities, and Sibyl, though she had recovered her health, was always delicate. Lady Pierpoint had had doubts as to whether she ought to winter in England, but not only was Sibyl herself determined so to do, but when Lady Pierpoint saw her in London before Christmas with a vividcolour and an elasticity of bearing which made a marked contrast to the drooping, listless demeanour of the previous winter, her doubts were at once set at rest.
Presently, however, an invitation came for a masked ball in the immediate neighbourhood, which Mr. Loftus decided could not be refused.
'But why should we go?' said Sibyl, 'if we don't care about it. And I hate balls, and I hate society. I was saying so to the Gresleys only yesterday. I love my own fireside and a book.'
Sibyl had no idea how much these occasional mild flourishes, which found great favour at the Vicarage, annoyed Mr. Loftus. She put them forth, poor thing! with a view to showing him how much she had in common with him.
'It is a mistake to say you hate society,'said Mr. Loftus, 'because you are not in a position to hate what you have never seen. Personally, I can see nothing peculiarly obnoxious in my fellow-creatures when they have their diamonds and white ties on. I do not even discover that they are more worldly in ball-gowns than on other occasions.'
'But it is all so empty and vain,' said Sibyl; 'and though I dare say I have not seen much, still, the small-talk is so wearying, and I suppose that is the same everywhere. I should not mind society if there was any real conversation, anythingdeep.'
Sibyl loved the word 'deep.' She used it on the occasions when others use the word 'trite,' she meaning the same as they did, but looking at the trite from a different angle. From her point ofvantage, eccentricity was originality, and a wholesale contradiction of established facts a new view.
Mr. Loftus was so close on the verge of annoyance that he was obliged to be amused instead.
'I have heard many people say they hated society,' he said, smiling, and Sibyl smiled back at him, delighted at having won his approbation by the nobility and originality of her sentiments.
'I have generally found that they are persons to whom, probably for some excellent reason, society has shown the cold shoulder, or those, like the Gresleys, who have never seen anything of it, and who call garden-parties, and flower-shows, and bazaars, and all those dismal local functions, society.'
'She is not going to this masked ball,'said Sibyl. 'I asked her, and she said, "Of course not. Her husband being a clergyman made it quite impossible." I wonder why she always says things are quite impossible for the clergy that most of the other clergy do. She said the same about the Hunt Ball.'
'That was because of the pink coats of the men and the new gowns of the women, and also partly because they were not asked. It happened to be a good ball, consequently it was dangerous. Dowdiness has from a very early date of this world's history been regarded as a sacrifice acceptable to the Deity, so naturally pretty gowns and electric light are considered to be the perquisites of the Evil One.'
'But are we really going to this ball?'
'We are. It would be unneighbourlynot to do so. I met Lady Pontesbury yesterday in D——, and she begged us to support her, and to bring even numbers. People cannot give balls in the country, Sibyl, if none of the neighbours will take the trouble to fill their houses. I have seen very cruel things of that kind done. Ours is the largest house in the neighbourhood, and, as it now has a mistress, we must fill it.'
The idea of society having any claim on her was a new light to Sibyl. She had always considered herself superior to its blandishments. But now that she discovered that Mr. Loftus actually regarded certain social acts as a duty, and this masked ball as one in particular, she immediately changed her opinion, and forthwith looked upon it as a duty also. It was a duty which, as its fulfilment drewnear, became less and less unpleasant to anticipate.
She had until now lent a sympathetic ear to the Gresleys when they talked of society as a snare, and had echoed Mr. Gresley's remarks on the same.
'Balls are not wrong in themselves,' Mr. Gresley would say in his chest voice, keeping his hand in before Sibyl and his admiring wife. 'It is only the abuse of them that is blameworthy. Use the world as not abusing it. A carpet dance among young people I should be the last to blame. We cannot keep the bow always at full stretch. But when it comes to ball after ball, party after party, and pleasure is made a business, instead of a recreation, by which I mean that which restores elasticity to the exhausted faculties, recreates us in fact, and renews our energyfor our work, then indeed——' And Mr. Gresley would express himself at that length which is apparently the one great compensation of the teacher who has no pupils.
Sibyl enjoyed his conversation very much. She thought Mr. Gresley a very sensible person, and his opinions were in harmony with her own.
Mrs. Gresley had also declared, after a brief visit to Kensington in July during the 'sales,' that she had neither the means nor the inclination to throw herself into the social whirlpool which she and Mr. Gresley had dispassionately viewed from two green chairs in the Row, and which Mr. Gresley had estimated 'at its true worth.' If she had possessed both the means and the inclination, she would perhaps have discovered that she was nonearer to that vortex than the many thousands who annually make a pilgrimage to London only to be tossed on the outermost ripple of the whirlpool, and who revolve for ever on the rim of society like Saturn's rings, without approaching the central luminary. But that it is difficult to be loved of Society and ensnared by her the Gresleys and Sibyl did not know, any more than that certain crimes require great qualities in order to commit them.
Mr. Loftus might have been able to relieve their ignorance, but, as Sibyl told the Gresleys, he did not care much for conversation.
A habit of silence was certainly growing upon him since his marriage.