'Et chacun croit fort aisément,Ce qu'il craint.'La Fontaine.
'Et chacun croit fort aisément,Ce qu'il craint.'La Fontaine.
Thenight of the masked ball had arrived. A large party had assembled at Wilderleigh, including Lady Pierpoint and her daughters, and Doll. It was Doll's first visit to Wilderleigh since Mr. Loftus's marriage, and as he looked down the dinner-table at Sibyl he wondered at his own folly in coming. He thought he had 'got over it,' but to-night he found that he had made a sufficiently grave mistake in supposing so. Unimaginative personsnever know when they have got over anything, because they have no fore-knowledge in absence of the stab which a certain presence can inflict. So Doll walked stolidly in—where Mr. Loftus in a remote but not forgotten passage of his own life had feared to tread—and then writhed and bit his lip at the hurt he had inflicted upon himself.
In the days when he had hoped to marry Sibyl, he had often pictured her to himself—his imagination could reach as far as tangible objects, such as furniture and food and raiment—sitting at the head of his table, talking to his guests, wearing the Wilderleigh diamonds, and looking as she looked now; for to-night Sibyl was beautiful. And it had all come about, except one thing—that she was married to Mr. Loftus instead of to him. Heturned to look fixedly at Mr. Loftus talking to Lady Pierpoint, and saw as in some new and arid light his thin stooping figure in the carved high-backed chair, the refined profile with the high thin nose and scant brushed-back gray hair, and the bloodless Vandyke hand holding his wine-glass. Mr. Loftus had a very beautiful hand. Doll had not seen Mr. Loftus and Sibyl together except at the altar-rails. And as he looked rage took him. It was a monstrous marriage. The blood rushed to his face, and beat in his temples. And a sudden bitter hatred surged up within him against Mr. Loftus as man against man. He looked at him again in his gray hair and his feebleness, and loathed him.
And Mr. Loftus's indifferent kindly glance met his, and he smiled quietly at him. And the cold fit came after the hotone, and poor Doll cursed himself, and told himself for the first time of many times—of how many times!—that the greatest evil that could befall him in life would be to become estranged from 'Uncle George.'
'What are you thinking of?' said Peggy's voice at his elbow. Peggy was often at Doll's elbow at other times besides dinner, a fact which did not escape Lady Pierpoint's maternal eye, but for which she did not reprimand Peggy, any more than for her slightly upturned nose and little upper lip, which turned up in sympathy too. But Peggy vaguely felt that on this occasion her dear 'mummy' was rather in the way, especially when the whole party assembled in the hall in their masks and dominoes, and Peggy could not sufficiently admire Doll's flame-coloured garment with a black devil outlined on theback and a hood with pointed ears. She had no eyes for Captain Charrington, the tallest man in the Guards, magnificent in crimson silk from head to foot, with crimson mask as well, or for another of Doll's companions in arms in a chessboard domino of black and white with an appalling white mask.
'Look, Peggy,' said Lady Pierpoint, 'at Mrs. Devereux. I think I have never seen any domino as pretty as her white one with little silver bees all over it.'
Mrs. Devereux protested, in a muffled manner, through the lace edge of her mask that Miss Pierpoint's and Mrs. Loftus's duplicate primrose ones edged with gold quite put her bees into the shade.
'Into a hive you mean,' said her husband, a dull young man in dove colour.'But how are we to know Mrs. Loftus and Miss Pierpoint apart?'
'You won't know us,' said Sibyl; 'that is just the point.'
* * * * *
'There is one thing I ought to have asked you before,' said Sibyl solemnly in her married-woman voice, as the brougham in which she and Mr. Loftus had driven together drew up in thequeue. 'Would you like me to dance or not?'
'Are you fond of dancing?'
'Very—at least, I mean I don't mind.'
'Then, dance by all means.'
'You are quite sure it is what you wish. I thought perhaps as a married woman——'
'Married goose,' said Mr. Loftus, laughing, perfectly aware that she would have liked him to be jealous.
* * * * *
'I'm going to dance,' whispered Sibyl to Peggy, as they followed Mr. Loftus and Lady Pierpoint, the only unmasked ones of the party, towards the ballroom. 'He says he wishes me to. He is always so unselfish.'
But Peggy's open eyes and mouth and whole attention were turned to the ballroom which they were entering.
Lord and Lady Pontesbury were standing near the entrance solemnly shaking hands with the masked hooded figures who came silently towards them. No introductions were possible. Lord Pontesbury almost embraced Mr. Loftus, so relieved was he to see a human face. Lady Pontesbury beamed on Lady Pierpoint.
'Your girls here?' she whispered. No one seemed able to speak above a whisper.
'Yes,' said Lady Pierpoint below herbreath, looking helplessly round at the twenty muffled figures in her wake. And Captain Charrington came forward at once, and said he was the eldest, and produced Doll as his youngest sister, while Peggy and Molly wondered how anyone could be so funny and live.
The long ballroom, with its cedar-panelled walls outlined in gilding, was brilliantly lighted. The floor of pale polished oak shone like the pale walls. Banks of orchids rose in the bay-windows. In the brilliant light a vast crowd of spectral figures stalked about in silence, clad in every variety and incongruous mixture of colour.
'Like devils out on a holiday,' said a voice from the depths of a fool's cap and bells.
Mr. Loftus was at once surrounded bymasked figures who shook hands with him warmly. A Bishop was the centre of another group, ruefully responding to he knew not whom, half the young men in the room telling him that they had met him last at the Palace when they were ordained.
One mischievous couple were making the circuit of the room, conversing with the chaperons one after the other, who smiled helplessly at them and answered but little, for middle-aged ladies with daughters out have other things to think of besides repartee. Captain Charrington sustained his character of a wit by walking about growling at intervals in a mysterious and interesting manner.
The band took its courage in both hands, and broke the silence. A tremor passed through the crowd. There was a momentary pause, a momentary uncertainty as to the sex of the hooded figures, and then forty, fifty, seventy couples of demons were solemnly polkaing.
Mr. Loftus smiled. Sibyl, standing by him, laughed till he gently urged her to take it more quietly. Lord and Lady Pontesbury turned for a moment from the fresh arrivals, and their mournful faces relaxed. The Bishop, who seldom saw anything more enlivening than a confirmation or a diocesan gathering, shed tears. The trombone collapsed, the wind instruments wavered, and left the violins for a moment to make desperate music by themselves. Then the band pulled itself together, and the music and the flying feet rushed headlong on.
* * * * *
Doll, who had hardly spoken to Sibyl that day, came up to claim his dance.
'I can't dance any more,' she said plaintively. 'My domino weighs me down. Let us sit out.'
'Shall we go into the gallery,' said Doll, 'and watch the unmasking from there? It is a quarter to twelve now, and every one unmasks at twelve.'
He did not know whether to be glad or sorry that she would not dance with him. 'Better not,' he said to himself. But he had thought of the possibility of that dance many times before he reached the ballroom, and had decided that it was his duty to ask her.
They left the ballroom, and, passing numerous ghostly figures sitting in nooks and on the wide staircase, they made their way to the arched gallery which overhungthe ballroom. Every white arch had been lit by a pendent pink-shaded lamp, and the arches and Sibyl's primrose domino all took the same rosy hue. In nearly every arch a couple were already sitting, watching the crowd below. Doll secured one of the few vacant places, and Sibyl drew her chair forward and leaned her slender bare arms on the white stone balustrade. The couple in the adjoining archway were chattering volubly, but Doll and Sibyl did not talk. She did not notice the omission, for her eyes were following the quaint pageant with the delight of a child. Doll racked his brains for something to say, and found nothing.
Why had she married Uncle George? Why had she married Uncle George? So, as he could not ask her that, and tell her that he cared for her a hundred timesmore than her husband did, he said nothing.
Thepas de quatrewas in full swing. The men, annoyed by their long dominoes, and having one hand disengaged, raised their voluminous skirts and danced with long black legs, regardless of propriety. Captain Charrington's endless crimson domino had come open in front and displayed his high action to great advantage. A very elegant pink domino, which had been introduced by the eldest son of the house as an heiress to all the men whom he did not recognise, and which had danced only with masculine dominoes, was now seen to emulate its partner, and to have black trousers rolled up above its white-stockinged ankles, and rather large white satin shoes.
'Look!' said the girl in the next archway; 'that pink domino must be Mr. Lumley. He often acts as a woman.'
'Hang him for an impostor! I've danced with him as such,' said the man, with ill-concealed vexation. 'He knew me, and called me by name. I took him for——' He did not finish his sentence. 'By Jove! that black domino with a death's-head and cross-bones is a good idea,' he went on. 'Is it half-mourning, do you suppose?'
'How foolish you are! That is Lord Lutwyche. I have just been dancing with him.'
'Lord Lutwyche is not here. He sprained his ankle at hockey yesterday.'
The female domino appeared to be a prey to uneasy reflections.
'The primrose domino is the prettiest in the room,' she said presently. 'Andhow well she dances! I wonder who she is.'
'I happen to know that is Mrs. Loftus.'
Sibyl, with her back to the arch, could hear every word on the other side of it. Doll was not near enough. This was indeed delightful! How lucky that she and Peggy had come dressed alike!
'Which is Mr. Loftus?' said the woman's voice eagerly. 'I have heard so much about him.'
'That tall, thin, fine-looking old chap with his hands behind his back, standing by the Bishop. The Union Jack domino is speaking to him.'
'So that is he. I have always wished to see him. He looks tired todeath.'
'He always looks like that. Quite a character, though, isn't he?'
'He has an interesting face. But itwas a disgraceful thing, his marrying a pretty young girl, and an heiress, at his age.'
Sibyl made a sudden movement, and the other couple glanced round. They saw her, but her primrose domino had taken the pink of her surroundings, and they suspected nothing.
'I'm not so sure. His nephew stands up for him, though his uncle cut him out, and his nephew ought to know. I fancy there was more in that marriage than outsiders suspect. I've heard it said more than once that she fell head-over-ears in love with him, and he married her out of pity.'
The last words fell distinctly on Sibyl's ears, and at that second the music ceased with a crash, and a gong boomed out, engulfing all other sounds. It was twelveo'clock. A bell somewhere just above them was counting out twelve slow strokes, just too late—just ten seconds too late.
She leaned back sick and shivering.
She did not realize that the crash and the tolling bell were part of the evening's programme. They seemed to her the natural result of the words she had just heard. If she had been crossed in love at Lisbon before the earthquake, she would have regarded that upheaval as the immediate consequence of her lacerated feelings.
'Look, look!' said the woman; 'they are unmasking.'
A confused sound of laughter and surprise and recognition, and a widespread hum of conversation, came up to them.
Everyone was streaming out of the gallery, and in the ballroom there wasa vast turmoil, as of hiving bees, and a throng at every door.
'Shall I take you to the cloak-room to leave your mask and domino?' said Doll, turning to her at last, from watching without seeing it what was passing below. He took off his velvet mask as he spoke. The sullen wretchedness of his face fitted ill with the pointed rakish ears which still surmounted it.
She did not answer. He saw that the outstretched hand still on the balustrade was tightly clenched.
'Mrs. Loftus,' he said. 'Sibyl! what is it? Are you ill?'
She tore off her mask, and, as if she were suffocating, plucked with trembling hands at the gold ribbon that fastened her hood and domino.
He was alarmed, and clumsily helpedher to loosen them. Her small face, released from the mask, looked shrunk and pinched like a squirrel's in its thrown-back hood. The pink glow upon it from the lamp was in horrible contrast with its agonized expression.
'What is it? what is it?' said Doll, in distress nearly as great as her own, taking her little clenched hand, and holding it, still clenched, in his large grasp. 'Are you ill?'
She shook her head impatiently.
'Would you like—shall I—fetch Mr. Loftus?'
She winced as if she had been struck.
'No,' she gasped; 'I will not see him—I will not see him!'
A change came over Doll's face. Involuntarily, his hand tightened its clasp on hers.
* * * * *
'These entertainments,' said the Bishop to Mr. Loftus, as they paused for a moment in the gallery, and looked down into the ballroom, which was now rapidly refilling with gaily-dressed women and pink and black coats, 'are, I believe, typical of English country life. They are—ahem!—the gallery seems conducive to conversation; it is, in fact, a—er—whispering-gallery.' Here he turned, smiling, to Mr. Loftus. 'Perhaps Mr. Doll has hardly reached the stage at which he will call upon me to officiate—just so; we will go down by the other staircase—but I trust, though I might be in the way at present, that my services may be required a little later on.'
'I should like to see Doll married,' said Mr. Loftus, who had been not a little surprised at the eager manner in whichthe young man was bending towards the figure with her back towards them, whose fallen-back hood intercepted her features. He recognised the domino.
'I had no idea Peggy had made such an impression,' he said to himself.
As he re-entered the ballroom, he met Lady Pierpoint, also returning to it with her two plump little girls in tow, whom she had been tidying in the cloak-room. Captain Charrington and some of the other men from Wilderleigh were waiting near the doorway, claiming first dances as their party came in. The orchestra, who had been refreshing themselves, were remounting to their places.
'Then, where is Sibyl?' said Mr. Loftus, looking at Peggy.
'She went to the gallery a long time ago,' replied Peggy promptly, 'with Mr.Doll, to see the people unmask at twelve o'clock.'
Mr. Loftus smiled. 'It was a horrible sight as seen from below,' he said; 'half the men's faces were black, and the hair of every one of them stood up at the back.'
The band struck up a swaying, languorous valse such as tears the hearts out of young persons in their teens.
* * * * *
'I must go home,' Sibyl kept repeating feverishly. 'Doll, you must get the carriage. I must go home.'
Doll was engaged to Peggy for this valse, but he had forgotten it. Sibyl was engaged to Captain Charrington, but she had forgotten it.
He was terrified, as only reticent persons can be, lest her loss of self-control shouldbe observed. He helped her to her feet, and took her to the cloak-room, she clinging convulsively to him. Her entire disregard of appearances filled him with apprehension. The cloak-room was empty, even of attendants, for it had been thronged till within the last ten minutes, and now the wave had surged back to the ballroom, and the maids, their duties finished, had slipped away to see the spectacle.
Sibyl cast herself down on a chair, shivering. Her little Grecian crown of diamonds fell crooked.
'Let me fetch Lady Pierpoint,' said Doll urgently.
'No, no,' she said imploringly; 'I want to go home. Oh, Doll, get the carriage, and take me home. Is it so much to ask?'
He looked at her in doubt. She was not fit to return to the ballroom. Evidently she would make no attempt to conceal her despair, whatever its cause might be, from the first chance comer.
'I will take you,' he said; and he rushed out to the stables, found the Wilderleigh coachman, and himself helped to put the horses into the brougham.
'It was ordered for one o'clock especially for Mr. Loftus,' said the coachman, hesitating, 'and the landau, and the fly, and the homnibus for half-past three.'
'You will be back in time for Mr. Loftus,' said Doll. 'Mrs. Loftus is ill, and must go home immediately.'
He had the brougham at the door in ten minutes, and returned to the cloak-room to find a maid standing by Sibyl with a glass of water. Sibyl was stillshivering, holding on to the chair with both hands, her eyes half closed, her face ghastly.
'I am afraid the lady is ill,' said the servant.
It was very evident that she was ill.
'The carriage is here,' said Doll. 'Can you manage to walk to it?'
She rose unsteadily, and the maid wrapped her in her white cloak. It annoyed Doll that the maid evidently looked upon them as an interesting young married couple.
He gave Sibyl his arm, and she staggered against him. He hesitated, and then compressed his lips, put his arm round her, and, half carrying, half leading her, helped her to the carriage.
It was a white night with snow upon the ground. The band was playing oneof Chevalier's songs. Out into the solemn night came the urgent appeal of ''Enery 'Awkins' to his Eliza not to die an old maid, accompanied by the dull, threshing sound of many feet.
As the carriage began to move, Sibyl seemed to revive, and a moan broke from her.
'Oh, Doll,' she said suddenly, turning towards him and catching his hand and wringing it. 'It isn't true, is it? It is only a horrible lie.'
'What isn't true?' he said fiercely, almost hating her for the pain she was causing him, not his hand.
'It isn't true what that man said in the next arch, that—that Mr. Loftus married me out of pity?' And she swayed herself to and fro.
She had asked the only person to whomMr. Loftus had confided his real reasons for his marriage.
It had been on the tip of Doll's tongue all the evening to say: 'Why did you marry him?Iwould have married you for love.' But he mastered himself.
'It isn't true, is it?' gasped Sibyl.
Doll set his teeth.
'No,' he said. 'It's a lie. He married you for love. He—told me so!'
'Pour connaître il faut savoir ignorer.'—Amiel.
'Doll,'said Mr. Loftus, the morning after the ball, when all the guests had departed, except the Pierpoints, 'I do not expect absolute perfection in my fellow-creatures, but it appeared to me that you fell rather below your usual near approach to it last night. What doyouthink?'
Doll answered nothing.
'You see,' went on Mr. Loftus, 'after twelve o'clock, when everyone unmasked, was the time when I should naturally have introduced Sibyl to many of our friendsand neighbours, as this was her first public appearance since her marriage, and I could not do so on our arrival. The fact that she had left the house without me, and—without my knowledge—was unfortunate.'
It had been more than unfortunate in reality. Mr. Loftus, whose marriage had made a great sensation in his own county, had been begged on all sides, as soon as the masks were off, to introduce his wife, and, though he had not shown any surprise at her non-appearance and Doll's, he had at last been obliged to retire to the men's cloak-room and wait there till his carriage came, so as to obscure the fact that she had departed without him. He had been annoyed at what he took to be Doll's heedlessness of appearances.
'She felt ill, and wished to go home,'said Doll, reddening, and not perceiving that he was offering an explanation which did not cover the ground. He would have been perfectly satisfied with it himself.
'I greatly fear that sheisill,' said Mr. Loftus; 'but she was quite well when she went to the ball last night. She is very delicate and excitable. Is it possible that anything occurred to upset her?'
Mr. Loftus fixed his keen steel-gray eyes on Doll. He had seen, as he saw everything, Doll's momentary jealousy of him the evening before.
For the life of him Doll could not think what to say. It seemed impossible to tell Mr. Loftus the truth, and he had but little of that inventive talent which envious persons with a small vocabulary call lying. That little had been used up the nightbefore. Yet, perhaps, if he had been aware that Mr. Loftus had seen him with Sibyl in the gallery in an attitude which allowed of but few interpretations, his slow mind might have grasped the nettly fact that he must explain.
Mr. Loftus waited.
'My boy,' he said at last, 'I am not only Sibyl's husband'—he saw Doll wince—'but I am also, I verily believe, her best friend.'
There was no answer.
A slight, almost imperceptible, change came over Mr. Loftus's face. He paused a moment, and then went on quietly:
'Sibyl is most generous about money—too generous. I am almost afraid of taking an unfair advantage of it, though she presses me to do so. But I am pushing on the repairs everywhere; and I am rebuilding Greenfields and Springlands from the ground. They will get to work again directly the frost is over. I have the plans here, if you would like to look at them.'
He drew a roll out of the writing-table drawer, and spread it on the table. Doll perceived with intense relief that the subject was dropped, and he knew Mr. Loftus well enough to be certain that it would never under any circumstances be reopened. But as he looked at the plans, and Mr. Loftus pointed out the new well and the various advantages of the designs, it dawned upon Doll's consciousness that he was losing something which he had always regarded as a secure possession, and which nothing could replace—Mr. Loftus's confidence.
He had seen it withdrawn in this gentlefashion from other people, who did not find out for years afterwards that it was irrevocably gone. And he became aware that he could not bear to lose it.
'Here,' said Mr. Loftus, puttingon his silver-rimmed pince-nez, 'is, or ought to be, the new private road leading out on to the H—— highroad. I decided to make it, Doll, not only for the convenience of the farm, but also because I cannot let that row of cottages with any certainty until there is an easier means of access to them. My father always intended to make a road there. I only hope,' he said at last, letting the map fly back into a roll, 'that I shall live to pay for all I am doing, but I can't pay for unfinished contracts. If I don't, Doll, you will have to raise a mortgage on the property to pay for the actual improvements on it. Sibyl has left all herfortune to me, I believe; but as I am certain to go first, Wilderleigh will not be the gainer.'
And it passed through Mr. Loftus's mind for the first time that perhaps, after all, Sibyl might still marry Doll some day. How he had once wished for that marriage he remembered with a sigh.
'It may be. Youth turns to youth,' said Mr. Loftus to himself, as he went up to his wife's room after Doll had left.
Sibyl was ill. A chill, or a shock, or excitement—who shall say which?—had just touched the delicate balance of her health and overset it. It toppled over suddenly without warning, without any of the preliminary struggles by which a strong constitution or a strong will staves off the advance of illness. She gave way entirely and at once, and the night afterthe night of the ball it would have been difficult to recognise, in the sunk, colourless face and motionless figure, the brilliant, lovely young girl in her little diamond crown.
Sibyl's illness did not prove dangerous, but it was long. Lady Pierpoint, who had nursed her before, sent her daughters home, and took her place again by the bedside, with the infinite patience which she had learned in helping her husband down the valley towards the death which at last became the one goal of all their longing, and which had receded before them with every toiling step towards it, till they had both wept together because he could not, could not die. Perhaps it was because her husband had gone through the slow mill of consumption that Lady Pierpoint's heart had so much tenderness for Sibyl,for whom only a year ago she had dreaded the same fate.
Mr. Loftus had the nervous horror of, and repugnance to, every form of illness which as often accompanies a refined and sympathetic nature as it does an obtuse and selfish one. And his lonely existence had not brought him into contact with that inevitable side of domestic life. He was extraordinarily ignorant about it, and his natural impulse was to avoid it.
But he stood by his wife's bedside, adjusted his pince-nez, and accepted the situation. For many days Sibyl would take nothing unless given it by himself, would rouse herself for no voice but his. Lady Pierpoint marvelled to see him come into Sibyl's room at night in his long gray dressing-gown, to administer the food or medicine which the nurse put into hishand. His patience and his kindness did not flag, but it seemed to Lady Pierpoint as if at this eleventh hour they should not have been demanded of him; and it wounded her—why, it would be hard to say—to watch him do for Sibyl with painstaking care the little things which in her own youth her young husband had done for her, the little things which in wedded life are the great things.
Mr. Loftus sometimes made a mistake, and once he forgot that he was married, and was found pacing in the rose-garden oblivious of everything except a political crisis—but only once. He was faithful in that which is least.
Lady Pierpoint felt with a twinge of conscience that when she had endeavoured to bring about this marriage she had beenselfishly engrossed in Sibyl's welfare. She had not thought enough of his.
And gradually Sibyl recovered, and went about the house again, wan and feeble, and Lady Pierpoint left Wilderleigh.
'Dark is the world to thee? Thyself art the reason why.'Tennyson.
'Dark is the world to thee? Thyself art the reason why.'Tennyson.
Convalescenceis often accompanied by a depression of spirits rarely experienced during the illness itself. A weak nature seeks for a cause for this depression in its surroundings, and when it finds one, as it invariably does, it hugs it. These causes, thanks to the assiduity of one whom we are given to understand has seen better days, are seldom far to seek; and it requires a very strong will to hold fast the conviction that these paroxysms of depression arise from physical weakness, and not from some secret woe. Sibyl had not a very strong will. After the first novelty of convalescence was past, and she had been installed in her sitting-room in a cascade of lace and ribbons, which her dressmaker called asaut du lit, and after Mr. Loftus had gravitated back towards the library on the ground-floor and his article for theMillennium, Sibyl began to experience that vague weariness and distaste of life which all know who know ill health.
It is at this stage that the unprincipled invalid becomes 'the terror of the household and its shame.' It is at this stage that lengths of felt are laid down in passages by tender and injudicious parents, because no sound can be borne by sensitive ears, that the children are'hushed,' the blinds are drawn down, and doctors who encourage exercise and light are speedily discovered to have misunderstood the delicate constitution with which they have to deal.
If Sibyl had not had a cause for depression, she would most certainly have manufactured one. But unfortunately she had a real one. The incident of the masked ball rankled. Doll had lied. He had done his poor best, but he had not lied well. His eyes had not quite looked her in the face when he told her that Mr. Loftus had married her for love. His voice had not that emphatic ring which the crude mind ever recognises as the ring of truth, and which in consequence the progressive one applies itself to acquire.
Her mind, dulled by illness and narcotics, had half forgotten that she hadbeen momentarily distressed. But now the remembrance came back like a nightmare. The grain of sand, blown by chance into her eye, pricked, and she sedulously rubbed it into an inflammation.
She remembered now that there had been an earlier incident in his courtship which had not been satisfactorily explained,when he proposed to her the second time. Sibyl always regarded his offer under the mountain-ash asthe second time. She had a vague feeling that he had proposed before. She had said as much to one or two friends in confidence. But now that she came to think of it, she remembered that it was she who had proposedthe first time, and had been refused. This minor detail of an uncomfortable incident had until now almost slipped out of her memory, which, like that of many womenwhose buoyancy depends on the conviction of the admiration of others, seldom harboured anything likely to prove a worm in that bud.
But now she applied to the whole subject that mental friction which morbid minds believe to be reflection, until it became, so to speak, inflamed.
Why had he sworn before the altar and the Bishop to love her, if he did not love her? She became tearful, listless, apathetic. She sat for hours looking into the fire, unemployed, uninterested. The evil spirit which ever lurks in sofas and couches whispered in her ear, when it pressed the cushions, that she was indeed miserable, that her husband avoided her, that she was an unloved martyr, that no one felt for her or sympathized with her. It did not tell her that she had beenmarried for her money, simply because no sane person could look at Mr. Loftus and believe that. But she changed in manner towards him. She was cold, formal. She turned away her head when he came into the room, and then when he had left it wept in secret because she had been married out of pity.
And yet in her heart of hearts, if she had such a thing, had she not partly guessed that fact long ago, and wilfully shut her eyes to it? The chance words she had overheard were only the confirmation of a latent misgiving. Does any woman ever really remain in ignorance if she is not loved, or if she has been married for other reasons than love? What constant props and supports she had given to Mr. Loftus's love for her! It had never been allowed to stand alone.Why had she from the first always bolstered it up by continually saying to herself and others, until she almost believed it: 'My husband is so devoted to me. My love is such a little thing beside his. What have I done to deserve such a great devotion?' How often she had said all these things that tepidly-loved women say!
Seeming to observe nothing, Mr. Loftus saw all, and pondered over the reason of her altered appearance, and her visibly changed feeling towards himself since the night of the masked ball. If it were that her health was threatened as it had been before her marriage, why should her affection towards himself have undergone this change? Could it be anything to do with Doll? And in these days Sibyl was more frequently in his thoughts than in the early days of his marriage with her. Thethought of her came between him and the political article which the editor of theMillenniumhad asked for.
'Time will show,' he would say to himself, with a sigh, taking up his pen again.
One afternoon soon afterwards he came into her sitting-room, and found her in tears.
'Has Crack said anything unkind?' he asked gently, while Crack beat his tail in the depths of the fur rug in courteous recognition of his own name.
'No,' she said, turning her head away.
'Have I, then?' sitting down by her.
'No.'
'Then, my child, what is it?'
'Nothing,' she said faintly.
There was a pause.
'Is it the same nothing that troubled you the night of the ball?'
He saw her start and shrink away from him.
'Oh! did Doll tell you?' she gasped, turning crimson.
'My dear, he told me nothing,' said Mr. Loftus gently, moving slightly away from her, and looking at her with grave attention. He greatly feared that unhappiness was before her in some form or other. He waited in the hope that she would speak to him of her own accord. But she only began to cry again. She was still weak. Was it possible that she was afraid of him? What could be troubling her that she, who did not know what reticence meant, could fear to tell him, which yet Doll knew? Doll was in love with her. Had he lost his head on the night of the ball? Hadshe discovered that she and Doll were young?
'Crack,' said Mr. Loftus, 'I have a very neglectful wife. I come to ask for something for my headache, and she pays no attention to me at all.'
In earlier days Sibyl would have been on the alert in a moment if Mr. Loftus's sacred head confessed an ache. Now she moved slowly to the writing-table and produced certain innocuous remedies which he had brought to her and asked her to apply for him after that terrible time when he had had an attack of the heart and had repulsed her.
Presently the headache was better, and Mr. Loftus went back to the library and lit his pipe, which was remarkable, because he was as a rule unable to smoke after a headache.
He sat motionless a long time, his eyes fixed.
'I hope,' he said at last, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, 'that I shall not live to become Sibyl's natural enemy, for I think I am about the only real friend she has in the world.'
And the small seed that would have quickened in another man's heart into a deep-rooted jealousy remained upon the surface of his mind as a misgiving, which took the form of anxiety for her.
'Oui, sans doute, tout meurt; ce monde est un grand rêve,Et le peu de bonheur qui nous vient en chemin,Nous n'avons pas plus tôt ce roseau dans la main,Que le vent nous l'enlève.'Alfred De Musset.
'Oui, sans doute, tout meurt; ce monde est un grand rêve,Et le peu de bonheur qui nous vient en chemin,Nous n'avons pas plus tôt ce roseau dans la main,Que le vent nous l'enlève.'Alfred De Musset.
Sibylcontinued pale and listless, and presently Mr. Loftus found fault with her gowns. They were not new enough. The colours of her tea-gowns did not suit her. He suggested that she should go to London to Lady Pierpoint's house for a few days to see her dressmaker, and added, as an afterthought, that he should like herto consult the specialist to whom she had gone on former occasions, and whose name he had reason to remember.
Sibyl received the suggestion of this visit in silence. She did not oppose herself to it, but left the room to shed a torrent of angry tears in private. The truth, which seldom visited her feeble judgment, did not tell her that Mr. Loftus was anxious about her health. Hysteria took up the tale instead, and officiously informed her that he was tired of her. He wanted to get rid of her. Men were always like that after they had been married a little time. What was a woman's love and devotion to them when the first novelty had worn off? She would go. She would certainly go; and when she was gone she would write to him, telling him that she saw only too plainly that his love for her was dead,and that she had decided never to return, and at the same time making over to him her entire fortune, reserving only for herself a pittance, on which she would live in seclusion in a cottage in some remote locality.
She was somewhat consoled as she thought over the dignified, the harrowing letter which she would compose in London. Parts of it, as she repeated them to herself, moved her to tears. A new sullenness was added to the previous listlessness of her demeanour. She parted from Mr. Loftus with studied indifference.
Mr. Loftus missed her, not altogether unpleasantly, when she left him. It was the first time that she had been a day away from him since their marriage. Life was certainly very tranquil without her. He wrote her a charming little letterevery day of the three days she was away.
Doll was with him on business. Now that Sibyl was absent, something of the old affection and confidence returned between them, which shrank away in her presence; but not quite all. At times, as they were talking, the younger man longed to break down the slight, almost imperceptible barrier that his stupid untimely silence had raised. But he could not do it. He could not take the plunge. Mr. Loftus, however, who would not have done such a thing for worlds, unwittingly gave him a push.
'The spring coppice wants thinning,' he said to Doll the third morning. 'We will go up and mark the trees this afternoon.'
'I am going away to-day,' said Doll sullenly.
'Stay another day,' said Mr. Loftus. 'Mrs. Gresley tells me that the sight of her happy home, and Mr. Gresley, and the church-tower as viewed from the spare bedroom of the Vicarage, have proved a turning-point in the lives of many wild young men. Stay another day, Doll, and I will emulate Mrs. Gresley. It will do you good.'
'Uncle George,' stammered the young man with sudden anger, 'will you never, never understand? Have you forgotten that it is not a year ago since I told you—in this very room—and you said you would help me. I can't meet Sibyl; and—and she is coming back to-day. I tried in the winter, and—it was a failure.'
Mr. Loftus had momentarily forgotten Sibyl, as he had done once before when she was ill.
'I beg your pardon, Doll,' he said, his pale face reddening. 'I ought to have remembered.'
There was a constrained silence.
'It need not come between us,' said Mr. Loftus at last. 'You must not let it do that.'
'I can't help it,' said Doll. 'It does. It must.'
'Sibyl's happiness,' said Mr. Loftus sadly, 'seems to be a costly article. A great deal has been spent upon it, apparently without making it secure. If we have any real regard for her, we must manage to save that between us, Doll, whatever else goes by the board.'
'What do you take me for?' said Doll fiercely.
'A good man,' said Mr. Loftus, 'and the person I care for most in the world.'
Sibyl's letter to Mr. Loftus was never written. At least it was written, as, indeed, were several, and read over and retouched at night in her own room; but even the best of the assortment remained unposted. Sibyl brought back her wan face and limp figure to Wilderleigh a few hours after Doll had left it, and heard with bitterness that he had been staying there. She had pictured to herself Mr. Loftus alone, missing her at every moment of the day, realizing the withdrawal of the sunshine of her presence. This was a 'high jump,' on the bar of which, it must be owned, even her practised imagination caught its toe. And now she found that Doll had been with him all the time—Doll, whom he cared for more than for his wife. He had not missed her, after all. Probably he and Doll had been discussingher. She had been jealous of Doll ever since she had seen Mr. Loftus take his arm during her first visit to Wilderleigh before she was married.
Her jealousy revived now. For the remainder of the day Sibyl met Mr. Loftus with averted eyes and monosyllabic answers, rehearsing in her mind parting scenes with him which were to prove more poignantly distressing to him than the best of the letters, and in which he was to appeal in vain (imagination caught its toe once more) against her irrevocable determination to leave for ever one who had married her for other motives than love.
She could see herself in evening dress, pale as the jasmine flower in her breast, mournful but unflinching, withdrawing her hand, and saying, in reply to the movingrepresentation which he would of course make of his loneliness:
'You have Doll!'
She decided that she would not say more than that. No reproach should pass her lips.
'You have Doll!'
What words for a young wife to be forced to use to her husband! Her hands clenched in an agony of self-pity. What a cruel situation was hers!
So Sibyl walked in her waking dream, and her husband watched her.
'Is it the body that is ill, or is it the mind?' he asked himself.
Later in the day the doctor's letter to himself—Mr. Loftus had written to him asking for a frank statement of Sibyl's condition—confirmed his worst fears for her.