"What boat is it?" he asked quietly.
"TheAriadne" ("Hairy Adny," he pronounced the name).
"Ah, yes! Mr. Blake's yacht?"
"You know him, sir? Well, you'll find him and his lady at the 'Rest' there; and if you're a friend of theirs, you tell 'em not to expect her to-night, and not to go on board her if she comes."
"Here's another shilling for you, and good-night."
Grantley rode on to the inn, thanking fate, realising now how narrow the chance had been. But for the storm, but for the wind that had buffeted and almost beaten him, no pride, no resolution, would have been of any avail. With fair weather the yacht would have come and gone. He saw why Christine Fanshaw was not to deliver his letter till the morrow. Without the storm, no pride, no resolution, no courage would have availed him. TheAriadnewould have put to sea, and Sibylla would have been gone for ever. Now, thanks to fate, she was not gone. Grantley drew a long breath—the breath of a man whom a great peril has narrowly passed by. The plan had been well laid, but the storm had thwarted it. There was time yet.
Was there? That question could not but rise in his mind. He faced it fairly and squarely, and jogged on to the Sailors' Rest.
"Praise to this fine storm!" he cried within himself—to the storm which beat and raged, which had feigned to hinder his coming, but was his ally and friend. Good luck to it! It had served his turn as nothing else could. And how it was attuned to his mood—to the fierce stern conflict which he had to wage! This was no night for gentleness. There were nights when nature's gentleness mocked the strife to which her own decrees condemned the race of men. But to-night she herself was in the fight. She incited, she cheered, she played him on; and she had given him his field of battle. The sense of helplessness passed from him. He was arrayed for the fight. He drank in the violent salt air as though it were a potion magic in power. His being tingled for the struggle.
There was a light in an upper window of the Sailors' Rest. The blinds were not drawn. No, the pair in that room were looking out to sea, looking for the boat which did not come, looking in vain over the tumbling riot of waves. But stay! Perhaps they looked no more now; perhaps they had abandoned that hope for the night. Christine was not to deliver his letter till the morrow; they would think that they had to-night. The thought brought back his pain and his fierceness. They would think that they had to-night! They were wrong there; but it was ten o'clock. "Ten o'clock!" he muttered, as he drew rein at the door of the Sailors' Rest and cast his eyes up to the light in the window over his head.
Within, young Blake was turning away from the window.
"She won't come to-night," he said. "I suppose they started, or I should have had a wire. They must have put back or put in for shelter somewhere. And if she did come, I couldn't take you to sea to-night." He came across to where Sibylla sat over the fire. "It's no use expecting her to-night. We must get away to-morrow morning. There's plenty of time." He meant time before Grantley Imason would receive Sibylla's letter and come to Fairhaven, seeking his wife.
"It's too perverse," Sibylla murmured forlornly.
Her vision of their flight was gone. The rush through the waves, the whistling wind, the headlong course, the recklessness, the remoteness from all the world, the stir, the movement, the excitement—all were gone. On the yacht, out in mid-sea, no land in sight, making for a new world, they two alone, with all that belonged to the old life out of view and out of thought—the picture had caught and filled her fancy. In her dream the sea had been as Lethe, the stretch of waters a flood submerging all the past and burying the homes of memory. She had stood arm in arm with him, revelling in the riot of the open seas. No further had the vision gone. The room in the inn was very different. It was small, stuffy, and not too clean. The smell of stale tobacco and of dregs of liquor hung about it. The fire smoked, sending out every now and then a thick dirty cloud that settled on her hands and hair. Her dainty cleanliness rose in revolt. It was a sordid little room. It was odious then; it would never be pleasant in retrospect. Somehow it carried a taint with it; it brought into prominence all that her thoughts had forgotten; its four dingy walls shut out the glowing picture which her fancy had painted.
Blake came and stood behind her chair, laying his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with a sad smile.
"Nothing's quite what you expect," she said. "I wanted my voyage! I suppose I didn't want—reality! But I'm not a child, Walter. I have courage. This makes no difference really."
"Of course it doesn't—so long as we're together."
"I didn't come to you to make the good times better, but to make the bad times good—to do away with the bad times. That's what you wanted me for; that's what I wanted to do." She rose and faced him. "So I'll always welcome trouble—because then I'm wanted, then I can do what I've come to do."
"Don't talk about trouble, Sibylla. We're going to be very happy."
"Yes, I think so," she said, looking at him with thoughtful eyes. "I think we shall be."
"By God, I love you so!" he burst out suddenly, and then walked off to the window again.
She spread out her hands in an instinctive gesture of deprecation, but her smile was happy.
"That's how I can do what I want to do for you," she said. "That's how I can change your life, and—and find something to do with mine."
He came slowly back towards her, speaking in a low restrained voice:
"It's really no use waiting for the boat. She won't come."
Sibylla stood very still; her eyes were fixed on his face. He met her gaze for a moment, then turned away, sat down by the table, and lit a cigarette—doing it just by habit, and because he was so restless, not because he wanted to smoke.
She stood there in silence for two or three minutes. Once she shuddered just perceptibly. She was striving to yield, to do what he asked, to live up to her gospel of giving everything so that she might make happy him whom she had chosen to receive her gifts—might make him happy, and so fill, enrich, and ennoble his life and hers. She had not thought there would be a struggle; that had got left out in the visions—the visions which were full of the swish of the wind, the dance of the waves, and the sailing to worlds new and beautiful. What struggled? Old teachings, old habits, instincts ingrained. She was acting in obedience to ideas, not to feeling. And feeling alone has power to blot such things out of being.
But for good and evil she was a fanatic—she owned her ideas as masters, and forced herself to bend to them as a slave. What they asked must be given—whatever the sacrifice, the struggle, the repulsion. That they might realise what her nature craved, they must be propitiated by what her nature did not love. On that condition alone would they deal with her. And now these ideas, with all their exacting relentless claims, had found embodiment in Walter Blake.
Blake turned his head and looked at her. She came quickly to him and fell on her knees by him. His hand rested on the table, and she laid hers lightly on it.
"Walter, it's hard!"
"If you love me——" he murmured.
She knew by now that love can be unmerciful. With a little sigh she raised his hand and kissed it. She was half reconciled to her surrender, because she hated it. Had anyone been there to interpose and forbid, her reluctant acceptance would have been turned into an ardent desire to complete her sacrifice.
Young Blake flung away his cigarette and sprang to his feet. He was not thinking of his aspirations now. Wanting to be good was not present to his mind, nor the leading of a new life. He was full of triumph. He forgot the yacht that had not come, and anything there might be uncongenial in the surroundings. He caught Sibylla's hands. She looked at him with a smile half of wonder, half of pity. She had put away her shrinking, though it might come back; but it was a little strange that good could be done only on conditions.
They were standing thus when they heard a voice, the loud gruff voice belonging to the retired merchant-skipper who kept the inn. He was rather a rough customer, as indeed the quality of his patrons rendered necessary; he did not hesitate to throw a man out or (as Fairhaven's report averred) to lay a stick across the back of the saucy buxom daughter who served the bar for him if her sauciness became too pronounced. On the whole he was the sort of character popular in the nautical quarter of Fairhaven.
The loud voice came from a distance—from the bottom of the stairs apparently. The landlord was talking to himself, for all that appeared—no other voice made itself heard. He was saying that he had made a promise, and that he was a man of his word. He said this several times. Blake and Sibylla stood hand in hand, their eyes turned in the direction of the door. Then the landlord observed that "times were hard, and that he was a poor man." Blake and Sibylla heard that too. Then the landlord's heavy step came half-way up the stairs. "A poor man," they heard him say with strong emphasis. Still they could hear no other voice and no other step. But they had dropped one another's hands by now, and stood quite still a couple of paces apart.
"Oh, he's bargaining with somebody for the price of a bed!" said young Blake, with an attempt at lightness.
The landlord's steps were heard descending the stairs again. And now another step drew near.
Suddenly young Blake darted towards the door and locked it. He turned a scared face round on Sibylla. The steps sounded along the passage. His eyes met hers. He did not know the step, but he knew the one thing that he feared, and his uneasy mind flew to the apprehension of it.
"Can it be—anybody?" he whispered.
"It's Grantley," she answered quietly. "Unlock the door. I'm not afraid to meet him. In the end I believe I'm glad."
"No, no! You're mad! You mustn't see him. I'll see him. You go into the other room." There was a communicating door which led to a bedroom. "I'll not let him come near you. I'll stand between you and him."
"I must see him. I'm not afraid, Walter. Unlock the door."
"Oh, but I shan't let him come in. I shall——"
"If it's Grantley, he'll come in. Unlock the door. At any rate we can't have the door broken in."
She smiled a little as she said this, and then sat down in the chair by the table where Blake had been sitting when she kissed his hand and gave him her surrender.
A knock came on the door. Young Blake unlocked it, and stood opposite to it. His face was pale now.
"He shan't come near you," he whispered to Sibylla over his shoulder.
She made no sign. She sat resting her clasped hands on the table and gazing intently towards the door. There was no sign of confusion or of guilt about her. Her face was composed and calm. Young Blake's fists were clenched. He seemed to keep himself still with an effort.
The door opened, and Grantley appeared on the threshold. He was very wet; the rain dripped from his hat as he took it off his head; salt spray hung on the hair over his ears. He shook himself as he shut the door behind him. Then he looked from Sibylla to Blake, and back to Sibylla, at last fixing his eyes on her.
"You can't come in here," said Blake. "I'll come outside with you, if you like, but you can't come in here."
Grantley took no notice. His eyes were on Sibylla.
"Am I too late, Sibylla?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered tranquilly, "too late."
A sudden flush swept over Grantley's face, but in an instant his usual pallor had returned.
"In the sense in which I spoke, is that true, Sibylla?"
She shrugged her shoulders a little. She seemed composed and almost careless as she answered, with a touch of contempt:
"No; but it is true, for all that."
"Then you must come back with me," said Grantley. Young Blake sprang forward a step, crying—"By God, no!"
Neither of them heeded him; their eyes were on one another. Already the fight was between the two, and the two only.
"Do you really think that?" she asked. "I don't know how you come to be here—I suppose Christine warned you somehow; but it's by mere accident that you are here, and that I haven't gone before now. It makes no difference. You're not in time, as you call it. The thing is settled already; it was settled when I planned to come, not when I came. What you meant doesn't count. Do you really think I shall come back now?"
"Yes, you must come back now."
"Back to that life? Never! Of course you don't know what it was to me, and I don't suppose I could tell you. You wouldn't understand."
Blake threw himself into a chair by the window. He was helplessly impatient of the situation. Grantley came a little nearer the table and stood there, to all seeming impassive. The appearance was not very deceptive. He was not now dominated by emotion; he was possessed by a resolve. His love for his wife was far buried in his heart; his set purpose was all he knew.
"I don't see what you had to complain of," he said coldly. "The way we lived was your choice, not mine. But I'm not going to discuss that. I'm here to take you home to your husband's house and to your child."
"I've faced all that a thousand times, and answered it a thousand times. It can't move me now. You'd better go away, Grantley."
Again Blake rose; he did not lack physical courage.
"I'll go with you. I'm at your service," he said. "But outside; you shan't stay here."
He waited a moment for an answer, but, getting none, nor so much as a look, sank awkwardly into his seat again.
Grantley spoke to his wife.
"I know what happened. Before you did this, you fogged your mind with all sorts of fantastic ideas. You're not the woman to do this kind of thing easily."
"Fantastic ideas! Yes, they seem so to you. The fantastic idea of having something to live for, some life, something else than a prison, than repression, than coldness. I had lots of those fantastic ideas, Grantley."
"You had your child."
"I tell you I've faced it." She pressed her fingers hard into her cheek and frowned. "The child made it worse," she jerked out fiercely. "Seeing you with the child was——" She shook her head with a shiver.
Grantley raised his eyebrows.
"As bad as that?" he asked mockingly. He paused, and went on: "But this is all beside the point. Supposing it was as bad as you say, what then? You had made your bargain; you chose to take me; you relied on your own opinion. Say it was a mistaken opinion—what difference does that make?"
"It does make a difference. I'm not called upon to throw away every chance of happiness because of one mistake."
"That's just what you are called upon to do—in civilised society."
"You don't actually propose an abstract argument," she asked, "now—under these circumstances?" She smiled derisively.
"Oh, no! But your point of view compelled a protest. I'm not here to argue; I'm here to take you back—or, if you won't come, to tell you the consequences."
"I'm prepared for the consequences."
That gave young Blake another chance. He rose and came forward.
"Yes, she is—and so am I," he said; "and that ought to end the matter between us. We're prepared for the trouble and the scandal and all that; and I'm prepared for anything else you may think proper to ask. We've weighed all that, and made up our minds to it. That's the answer we have to give."
He spoke in a low voice, but very quickly and with passion; evidently he had hard work to keep control of himself. When he finished speaking, there was a moment's silence. He looked from Grantley to Sibylla, then went back to his chair; but he drew it nearer and listened intently.
"It is so," said Sibylla. "We've made up our minds to all that."
Grantley passed his hand across his brow—almost the first movement that he had made. He was about to speak when another short fit of vehemence caught hold of Sibylla.
"Yes," she cried, striking the table with her hand, "and it's better than that life of sham and fraud and failure and heartbreak! Yes, a thousand, thousand times better!"
He let the gust pass by, and then spoke slowly, as though he weighed his words.
"Those are the consequences to you and your—your friend here," he said. "Have you thought of the consequences to me?"
"To you? Am I so necessary?" She laughed bitterly.
"And to the boy?"
"Not so bad as growing up in such a home as ours!" she flashed out fiercely again.
"Oh, that's the way you argued that?" he said with a smile. "I was rather wondering. However there are other consequences still." He came yet a pace nearer to her, so that he was close to the table, and rested one hand on it. "There will be other consequences still," he said. "I don't accept the position you propose for me. I don't accept these consequences which you have been so good as to face and decide upon. I refuse them totally—both for myself and for my son I refuse them utterly. It's fair you should understand that. I refuse them root and branch."
Blake leant forward, ready to spring up. The idea of violence came into his head, the idea that Grantley might be armed. Grantley noticed his movement, and at last addressed a word to him.
"Don't be afraid. I don't mean that," he said with a short laugh.
Sibylla spoke to him, sadly now.
"You can't refuse. It's put out of your power. This thing must be. It has become inevitable. There's no use in talking of refusing the consequences. They won't be as bad as you think."
"It's not inevitable; it's not out of my power. It's entirely in my power to accept your consequences or not to accept them, to face them or not to face them; and I have decided. I won't be, and I won't be known as, what you're making me; and your son shan't have to confess you his mother before men."
Young Blake looked at him with a puzzled impatience; Sibylla with a slow pondering glance. She twisted a ring on her finger as she asked:
"What do you mean by that?"
"In this world nothing need happen to us that we don't choose to bear, and nothing to those who are in our power that we don't choose to accept for them."
"What are you talking about?" asked Blake fretfully. "It sounds all nonsense to me."
He leant back with a scornful toss of his head. This sort of thing had lasted long enough, in his opinion.
"Tell me what you mean," said Sibylla, leaning forward across the table.
Grantley announced the resolve that possessed him, born of those bitter meditations, of those intolerable pictures of the future which had formed themselves in his mind as he battled through the storm to Fairhaven. He uttered it not as a threat, but as a warning; it was, as he had said, fair that she should understand.
"If you persist, I shall kill Frank and myself to-night."
Blake broke into a loud scornful laugh, sticking his hands in his pockets. Grantley turned towards him, smiling slightly.
"Oh, this isn't a melodrama, you know," Blake said, "and we're not to be bluffed like that. Don't be so damned absurd, Imason! On my soul, I've had enough of this business without having to listen to stuff like that!"
"Do you think it's bluff and melodrama?" Grantley asked Sibylla. "Do you think I've no real intention of doing it?"
She looked up at him intently.
"You love yourself more than the boy, and your pride more than life or happiness," she said slowly. He frowned, but heard her without interruption. "So I think you might do it," she ended.
"Sibylla!" cried Blake, leaning forward again.
A gesture from her arrested his speech. He rose slowly to his feet and stood listening.
"I may be made a fool of. I don't make a fool of myself. If I pledge myself to you to do it, you know I shall do it, Sibylla?"
"Yes, then you would do it," she agreed.
"Oh, but it's nonsense, it's rank madness, it's—it's inconceivable!" Blake broke out.
"I do now so pledge myself," said Grantley.
Sibylla nodded; she understood. She leant back in her chair now, regarding her husband thoughtfully.
Grantley's pale face was set in a fixed smile; he met her gaze steadily.
"It's madness—you'll be stopped!" Blake burst out. "I can't believe you mean it. Anyhow, you'll be stopped."
"By you? Will you send for a policeman? or will you come to my house and stop me? Nothing can stop me unless you kill me. Is that your choice?"
He spoke to Blake, but he looked still at Sibylla. Blake came near and scrutinised the pale face with eyes whose expression grew from wonder and incredulity into a horrified apprehension. The silence now seemed long.
"Yes," said Sibylla at last, "it's like you. That's what you'd do. I never thought of it; but I'm not surprised. It's you. It's just that in you which has made my life an impossible thing. You sacrificed me to it. You would sacrifice yourself and your son. Yes, it's you."
She put her hands up before her face for a moment, pressing her fingers on her eyelids. Then her eyes sought his face again.
"But, Sibylla——" cried Blake.
"Yes, he'd do it, Walter," she interrupted, not turning round.
Blake took two restless paces to and fro, and sank into his chair again.
"You understand now. It lies with you," said Grantley to his wife. "I've told you. I was bound to tell you. Now it lies with you."
Again passion seized her.
"No, no, that's false! It doesn't lie with me! It lies at your door, both the crime—the hideous crime—and, I pray God, the punishment!"
"I'm not talking about the crime or the punishment," he said coldly. "I take those on myself as much as you like. What depends on you is whether the thing happens. That's all I meant to say."
Young Blake was staring at him now as if fascinated by his firm and hideous resolve. Slowly it had been driven into Blake's brain that the man meant what he said, that he would do the thing. The man looked like it, and Sibylla believed he would. He would kill himself—yes, and the pretty child with whom Sibylla had been used to play. He could see the picture of that now—of Sibylla's beautiful motherhood. His heart turned sick within him as he began to believe Grantley's sombre pledge.
"It's a lie," said Sibylla in grim defiance. "Nothing depends on me. It's the evil of your own heart. I've nothing to do with it."
"It's with you to bring it about or to prevent it."
"No!" she cried, rising to her feet in the agonised strain of her heart—"no, no! That's a lie—a lie! On your head be it! Ah, but perhaps it would be best for him! God knows, perhaps it would be best!"
"So I think," said Grantley quietly. "And you accept that?"
"No, I acknowledge no responsibility—not a jot."
"Well, leave the question of responsibility. But it's your will that this shall happen sooner than that you should leave this man?"
"Sooner than that I should come back to you, that life of ours begin again, and Frank grow up to a knowledge of it!"
"And it's my will, sooner than that he should grow up to a knowledge of how his mother ended it. That's settled then?"
"It's no bargain!" she protested fiercely. "You have settled it."
"But it is settled?" he persisted.
"If you do it, may God never pardon you!"
"Perhaps. But you know that it is settled?"
She made no answer.
"You can't deny that you know. So be it."
He faced her for a moment longer; her figure swayed a little, but she stood her ground. She was not beaten down. And she knew the thing was settled, unless by chance, at the last, pity should enter Grantley's heart. But she did not believe pity could enter that heart; he had never shown her that there was a way.
The smile rested still on Grantley's face as he regarded his wife. She looked very beautiful in her fierce defiance, her loathing of him, her passionate protest, her refusal to be beaten down, her facing of the thing. She had a fine spirit; it did not know defeat or cravenness. She was mad with her ideas. Perhaps he was mad with his. And the ideas clashed—with ruin to her life, and his, and the child's. But she did not bow her head any more than he would bend his haughty neck.
"At least you have courage," he said to her. "It is settled. And now I'll say good-bye and go. I'll interrupt you no more."
It was his first taunt of that kind. It seemed to pass unheeded by Sibylla; but young Blake's face turned red, and he clenched his hands; but not in anger. A wave of horror passed over him. He would not interrupt longer what his coming had interrupted—that was what Grantley Imason meant. He would leave them to themselves while he went back alone to his home, and there found the sleeping child. But the idea of that—the picture of the one house and the other—was too fearful. How could the two bear to think of that? How could they stand there and decide on that? It was unnatural, revolting, alien from humanity. Yet they meant it. Blake doubted that no more, and the conviction of it unmanned him. He had been prepared for scandal, he had been ready to risk his life. Those things were ordinary; but this thing was not. Scandal is one thing, tragedy another. This grim unyielding pair of enemies threw tragedy in his appalled face. It was too much. A groan burst from his lips.
"My God!" he moaned.
They both turned and looked at him—Sibylla gravely, Grantley with his rigid smile.
"My God, I can't bear it!" He was writhing in his chair, as though in keen bodily pain. "It's too awful! We—we should think of it all our lives. I should never get rid of it. I should see the poor little beggar's face. I can't stand that. I never thought of anything like that. I never meant anything like that. Poor little Frank! My God, you can't mean it, Imason?"
"You know I mean it. It's nothing to you. The responsibility is ours. What do you count for? It was you or another—that's all. Neither my life nor my son's is anything to you."
"But it would—it would always be there. I could never sleep at nights. I should feel like—like a murderer. For pity's sake——"
He came towards Grantley, stretching out his hands for mercy. Grantley made no sign. Blake turned to Sibylla. She too was stiff and still, but her eyes rested on him in compassion. He turned away and threw himself into the chair again. A convulsive movement ran through his body, and he gave a loud sob.
Sibylla walked slowly away to the hearthrug, and stood looking at the agonised young man. Grantley waited in immovable patience. The thing was not finished yet.
"The horror of it!" Blake moaned almost inarticulately. He turned to weak rage for an instant and hissed across to Grantley: "If I had a revolver, I'd shoot you where you stand."
"That would be better for me, but not better for the boy," said Grantley.
"I can't understand you," Blake gasped, almost sobbing again.
"Why should you? My account is not to be rendered to you. If I've ruined my wife's life—and you've heard her say I have—if I take my own and my son's, what is it to you?"
In Grantley's slow measured words there breathed a great contempt. What, he seemed to say, were any great things, any stern issues, to this unmanned hysterical creature, who dressed up his desires in fine clothes, and let them beguile him whither he knew not, only to start back in feeble horror at the ruin that he had invited? What was it all to him, or he to it? It was he or another. The real battle was still between himself and Sibylla. With what eyes was she looking on this young man? He turned from the collapsed figure and faced his wife again.
But her eyes were now on Walter Blake, with a pleading, puzzled, pitying look. The next moment she walked quickly across the room and knelt down by his side, taking one of his hands in both of hers. She began to whisper consolation to him, praying him not to distress himself, to be calm and brave, tenderly reproaching his lack of self-control. She was with him as Grantley had seen her with the child. He wondered to see that, and his wonder kept his temper under command. There did not seem enough to make a man's passion rage or his jealousy run wild, even though she whispered close in Blake's ear, and soothingly caressed his hand.
"Don't be so distressed," he heard her murmur. "It's not your fault, dear. Don't be frightened about it."
He tried to shake her off with a childish petulance, but she persevered. Yet she could not calm him. He broke from her and sprang to his feet, leaving her kneeling.
"I can't face it! By God, I can't!" he cried.
"It will happen," said Grantley Imason. "If not to-night—if anything prevents me to-night—still very soon. You'll hear of it very soon."
The young man shuddered.
"The poor little chap—the poor innocent little chap!" he muttered hoarsely. He turned to Grantley. "For Heaven's sake, think again!"
"It's you who have to think. I have thought. I've little time for more thought. You've all your life to think about it—all your life with that woman, who is the mother of the child."
"Why do you torment him?" broke out Sibylla angrily.
But she rose slowly and drew away from Blake as she spoke.
Grantley shrugged his shoulders scornfully.
"The fellow has no business in an affair like this," he said. "He'd better get back to his flirtations."
"I never thought of anything like this."
The repetition came from Blake like some dull forlorn refrain.
He put his hand to his throat and gulped with a hard dry swallow. He looked round the room, made for a table where some whisky stood, and took a drink of it. Then he half staggered back to his chair, and sat down all in a heap. His limit was reached. He was crushed between the upper and the nether stone—between Grantley's flinty pride and the ruthless fanaticism of Sibylla's ideas. Between them they would make him, who had wanted to be good, who had had such fine aspirations, such high-coloured dreams, such facile emotions, so impulsive a love—between them they would make him a murderer—a murderer in his own eyes. Whatever hands did the deed, to the end of his days conscience would cry out that his were red.
Sibylla sighed. Her eyes were very mournful. She spoke, as it seemed, more to herself than to either of them.
"I wanted to make him happy, and I've made him very unhappy. I can do it, but he can't do it. I mustn't ask it of him. He would never be happy, I could never make him happy. Even if I could be happy, he couldn't; it's too hard for him. I don't know what to do now."
Grantley neither spoke nor moved.
"I've no right to ask it of any man. Nobody could agree to it, nobody could endure it. There's misery both ways now."
She went to Blake, who was sitting in the apathetic stupor which had followed his raving outburst. Again she knelt by him and whispered to him soothingly. At last Grantley spoke.
"It would be well if we were home before it's light and the servants up," he said.
She looked across at him from beside Blake's knee. She looked long and searchingly. His smile was gone; his manner and air were courteous, however peremptory.
"Yes, it would be well," she said. She rose and came a little way towards him. "There's no help for it. I can't escape from you. I'm bound to you in bonds I can't loosen. I've tried. I've stood at nothing. I wish to Heaven I could! Going back is like going back to death. But perhaps he's right. Better my living death than the thing you meant to do." She paused and ended: "I'll go back to the child, but I will not come back to you."
"You give all I've asked," said Grantley with cold politeness.
She looked round at young Blake with a pitiful smile.
"It's the only way, my dear. With this man what he is, it's the only way. I must leave you alone."
Blake leaned towards her with a passionate cry of pain. She reasoned gently with him.
"But you know the alternative—you've heard it. We can't help it. This man is capable of doing it, and he would find out a way. I don't see that we could do anything at all to stop him. Then when you heard it, it would be so terrible to you. You'd hate yourself. Oh, and, my dear, I think you'd hate me! And I couldn't bear that. No, you must be reasonable. There's no other way."
Blake hid his face in his hands. He made no further effort. He knew that her words were true.
Sibylla walked into the bedroom, leaving the two alone. Neither now moved nor spoke. The storm outside seemed to have abated, for the rain dashed no more against the windows, and the wind was not howling round the walls of the house. It was very still. Grantley Imason presently began to button his coat, and then to dust the wet off his hat with his coat sleeve.
Sibylla came back in her hat and cloak.
"We must get something to carry you," said Grantley. "I wonder if we could raise a cart here!"
"How did you come?"
"I rode over."
"I don't want a cart. I shall walk beside your horse."
"Impossible! At this time of night! And such a night!"
"I shall walk—I must walk! I can't sit in a cart and——"
Her gesture explained the rest. Struggling along on foot, she might keep her wits. Madness lay in sitting and thinking.
"As you will," said Grantley.
She had begun to draw on her gloves; but when she looked at Blake she drew them quickly off again, and thrust them into a pocket of her cloak. She walked past Grantley to Blake, and took hold of both his hands. Bending over him, she kissed him twice.
"Thank you for having loved me, Walter," she said. "Good-bye."
Blake said nothing. He held her hands and looked up imploringly in her face. Then she disengaged herself from his grasp and turned round to her husband.
"I'm ready," she said. "Let us go."
Grantley bowed slightly, went to the door, and opened it for her. She looked back once at Blake, murmuring:
"For having loved me, Walter," and kissed her hand to him.
With no sign of impatience Grantley waited. Himself he took no heed of Blake, but followed Sibylla out of the room in unbroken silence.
When he found himself alone, young Blake sprang towards the door, giving a cry like some beast's roar of rage and disappointment. But his feet carried him no more than half-way. Half-way was all he ever got. Then he reeled across to where the liquor was, and drank some more of it, listening the while to the paces of Grantley's horse on the stone flags outside the inn. As they died away, he finished his liquor and got back to his chair. He sat a moment in dull vacancy; then his nerves failed him utterly, and he began to sob helplessly, like a forsaken frightened child. As Grantley Imason said, he had no business in an affair like that.
Grantley's pride was eager to raise its crest again. It caught at the result of the struggle and claimed it as a victory, crying out that there was to be no pointing of scornful fingers, no chuckles and winks, no shame open and before the world. The woman who walked by his horse was a pledge to that. He was not to stand a plain fool and dupe in the eyes of men. If that thought were not enough, look at the figure young Walter Blake had cut! Who had played the man in the fight? Not the lover, but the husband. Who had won the day and carried off the prize? The woman who walked by his horse was the evidence of that. Who had known his will, and stood by it, and got it? The woman answered that. He bore her off with him; young Blake was left alone in the dingy inn, baulked in his plan, broken in spirit, disappointed of his desire.
The night was still and clear now. Broad puddles in the low-lying road by the sea, and the slipperiness of the chalky hill up to the cliffs, witnessed to the heaviness of the recent downpour, as the flattened bushes in the house gardens proved the violence of the tempest. But all was over now, save the sulky heaving of big rollers. A clear moon shone over all. They met nobody: the man who had vainly watched for the yacht had gone home. Sibylla did not speak. Once or twice she caressed Rollo, who knew her and welcomed her. For the rest she trudged steadily through the puddles, and set her feet resolutely to climb the sticky road. She never looked up at her companion. The brutality of his pride rejoiced again to see her thus. Here was a fine revenge for her scornful words, for the audacity with which she had dared to bring him within an ace of irremediable shame—him and the child she had borne to him! She was well punished; she came back to him perforce. Was she weary? Was she cruelly weary? It was well. Did she suffer? It was just. Woe to the conquered—his was the victory! Even in her bodily trial his fierceness found a barbaric joy.
But deep within him some mocking spirit laughed at all this, and would not let its gibes be silenced. It derided his victory, and made bitter fun of his prancing triumph. "I'll go back to the child, but I will not come back to you." "Going back is like going back to death." "Thank you for having loved me, Walter." The mischievous spirit was apt at remembering and selecting the phrases which stung sharpest. Was this triumph? it asked. Was this victory? Had he conquered the woman? No, neither her body nor her soul. He had conquered—young Blake! The spirit made cheap of that conquest, and dared Grantley to make much of it. "Rank, blank failure," said the spirit with acrid merriment. "And a lifetime of it before you!" The world would not know, perhaps, though it can generally guess. But his heart knew—and hers. It was a very fine triumph that!—a triumph fine to win against the woman who had loved him, and counted her life worth having because it was hers to give to him! Through the blare of the trumpets of his pride came this piercing venomous voice. Grantley could not but hear. Hearing it, he hated Sibylla, and again was glad that she trudged laboriously and painfully along the slimy oozing road. The instinct of cruelty spoke in him. She had chosen to trudge. It was her doing. That was excuse enough. Whatever the pain and labour, she had her way. Who was to blame for it?
They passed the red villas, and came where the Milldean road branched off to the left at the highest point of the downs. From here they looked over the cliffs that sloped towards their precipitous fall to the sea. The moon was on the heaving waters; a broad band of silver cut the waves in two. Grantley brought his horse to a stand, and looked. At the instant Sibylla fell against the horse's shoulder, and caught at his mane with her hands, holding herself up. Rollo turned his head and nosed her cloak in a friendly fashion. A stifled sob proclaimed her exhaustion and defeat. She could walk no more. The day had been long, full of strain, compact of emotion and struggle; even despair could inspire no more exertion. In a moment she would fall there by the horse's side. Grantley looked down on her with a frowning face, yet with a new triumph. Again she failed; again he was right.
"Of course you couldn't do it! Why did you try?" he asked coldly. "The result is—here we are! What are we to do now?"
She made no answer; her clutch on Rollo's mane grew more tenacious—that alone kept her up.
"You must ride. I'll get down," he said surlily. Then he gave a sudden laugh. "No, he can carry us both—he's done it once before. Put your feet on the stirrup here—I'll pull you up."
She made no sign of understanding his allusion. He saw that she was dazed with weariness. He drew her up, and set her behind him, placing her arm about his waist.
"Take care you don't let go," he warned her curtly, as he jogged the horse on again, taking now to the turf, where the going was better.
Her grasp of his waist was limp.
"Hold on, hold on!" he said testily, "or you'll be slipping off." There was no hint of tenderness in his voice.
But Sibylla recked nothing of that now. With a long-drawn sigh she settled herself in her place. It was so sweet to be carried along—just to be carried along, to sit still and be carried along. She tightened her grip on him, and sighed again in a luxury of content. She let her head fall against his shoulder, and her eyes closed. She could think no more and struggle no more; she fell into the blessed forgetfulness, the embracing repose, of great fatigue.
The encircling of her arm, the contact of her head, the touch of her hair on his neck moved him with a sudden shock. Their appeal was no less strong because it was utterly involuntary, because the will had no part in the surrender of her wearied-out body. Memory assailed him with a thousand recollections, and with one above all. His face set in a sullen obstinate resistance; he would not hear the voice of his heart answering the appeal, saying that his enemy was also the woman whom he loved. He moved the horse into a quicker walk. Then he heard Sibylla speaking in a faint drowsy whisper: "Good Rollo, good Rollo, how he carries us both—as easily as if we were one, Grantley!" She ended with another luxurious sigh. It was followed by a little shiver and a fretful effort to fold her cloak closer about her. She was cold. She drew nearer to him, seeking the warmth of contact. "That's a little better," she murmured in a childish grumbling voice, and sought more comfortable resting for her head on his shoulder.
He knew that her wits wandered, and that the present was no more present to her. She was in the past—in the time when to be near him was her habit and her joy, the natural refuge she sought, her rest in weariness, the end of her every journey, when his arms had been her home. Certainly her wits must be wandering, or she would never rest her head on his shoulder, nor suffer her hair to touch his neck, nor speak nor sigh like that, nor deliver herself to his charge and care in this childish holy contentment. Wandering wits, and they alone, could make her do anything of this. So it was not to be regarded. How should any sane man regard it from the woman who had forsaken her child and sought to dishonour her home, whom he had but just torn from the arms of a lover?
He was afraid. Hence came his summoning of the hardest thoughts, his resort to the cruellest names. He braced himself to disregard the appeal she made, to recall nothing of all that her intimate presence thrust upon his mind. He would not be carried back across the gulf of the last year, across the chasm which those months had rent between them. For here was no such willing submission as he asked. It was all unconscious; it left her rebellion unquelled and her crime unexpiated. Yet he waited fearfully to hear her voice again. Whither would the errant wits next carry her? Whither must they carry her? He seemed to be able to answer that question in one way only. They must go right back to the beginning. With a sense of listening to inevitable words, he heard her soft drowsy whisper again:
"Let's ride straight into the gold, Grantley, straight into the gold, and let the gold——"
The faint happy murmur died away in a sigh, and her head, which had been raised a moment, nestled on his shoulder again.
It had come—the supreme touch of irony which he had foreseen and dreaded. The errant wits had overleapt the stupendous gulf; they crimsoned the cold rays of the moon into the glory of summer sunset; they coloured desolate ruins with the gleaming hues of splendid youth. Her soul was again in the fairy ride, the fairy ride which had led whither? Which had led to this? Nothing that waking wits, or an ingenuity pointed by malice, might have devised, could have equalled this. She might have searched all her armoury in vain for so keen a weapon. Nay, she would have rejected this, the sharpest of all; no human being could have used it knowingly. It would have been too cruel. He listened in dull terror for a repetition of the words. They did not come again. What need? He heard them still, and a groan broke the seal of his lips.
"My God, must she do that?" he muttered to himself. "Get on, Rollo, get on!"
For now the triumph faded away, the unsubstantial pageant was no more. There was no blare of trumpets to deaden the mocking voice. The little victory stood in its contemptible dwarfishness beside the magnitude of his great defeat. That the past had been, that the present was—that was enough. The fairy ride and the struggle in the inn—they stood side by side and bade him gaze on the spectacle. Beside this it seemed as though he had suffered nothing that day and night—nothing in the thought of ridicule and shame, nothing in the dishonour of his house and home, nothing in the jealousy and anger of a forsaken man. This thing alone seemed to matter—that the past had been that, and that the present was this, and that they had been so shaped in the hands of him, the fashioner of them.
Then suddenly, with a quick twist of thought, he was bitterly sorry for Sibylla: because words and memories which come back like that, unbidden and of themselves, when the wits are wandering, must have meant a great deal and had a great place once. At such a time the mind would not throw up trifles out of an unconscious recollection. The things which have been deepest in it, which have filled—yes, and formed it—those were the things that it would throw up. In themselves they might sound wild trifles, but they were knit to great deep things, towards which they stood as representatives. They expressed nethermost truths, however idle and light they sounded. When she babbled of riding into the gold, and sank her spirit in the memory of the fairy ride, she went back all unconsciously to the great moment of her life and to its most glorious promise. She spoke of the crown of all her being.
It was strange to him, this new sorrow for Sibylla. He had never felt that yet. It was odd he should feel it now—for the woman who had forsaken her child and sought to dishonour her husband and her son. But the feeling was very strong on him. It found its first utterance in words of constrained civility. He turned his head back, saying:
"I'm afraid you're very tired?"
She answered nothing.
"I hope you're not very cold?"
A little shiver of her body ran into his.
"We shall be home very soon."
"Home!" she murmured sleepily. "Yes, soon home now, Grantley!"
"God help me!" he muttered.
He could not make it out. Somehow his whole conception of her, of the situation, of himself, seemed shaken. This guilty woman behind him (was she not guilty in all that was of consequence, in every decision of her will and every impulse of her nature?) seemed to accuse not herself, but him. He was torn from the judgment-seat and set rudely in the dock, peremptorily bidden to plead, not to sentence, to beg mercy in lieu of pronouncing doom. Her wandering wits and drowsy murmurs had inexplicably wrought this transformation. And why? And how?
Was it because she had been capable of the fairy ride and able to make it eternal? Capable—yes, and confident of her ability. So confident that, in the foolhardiness of strength, she had engaged herself to try it with young Blake—with that poor light-o'-love, who was all unequal to the great issues which he himself had claimed as the kernel of the fight. Where lay the failure of the fairy ride? Where resided its nullity? How came it that the bitter irony of contrast found in it so fair, so unmatched a field? Who had turned the crimson of the glorious sunset to the cold light of that distant unregarding moon?
On a sudden her grasp of him loosened; her arm slipped away. She gave a little groan. He wrenched himself round in the saddle, dropping the reins. Old Rollo came to a standstill; Grantley darted out his hands with a quick eager motion. Another second, and she would have fallen heavily to the ground. With a strain he held her, and brought her round and set her in front of him. She seemed deathly pale under the blue-white moon rays. Her lips opened to murmur "Grantley!" and with a comfortable sigh she wreathed her arms about his neck. He almost kissed her, but thought of young Blake, and took up his reins again with a muttered oath.
So they rode down the hill into Milldean, old Rollo picking his steps carefully, since the chalk was slimy and there were loose flints which it behoved a careful and trusted horse to beware of. The old scene dawned on Grantley, pallid and ghostly in the moonlight—the church and the post-office; Old Mill House, where she had lived when he wooed her; his own home on the hill beyond. Sibylla's cold arms about his neck prayed him to see it again as he had seen it once—nay, in a new and intenser light; to see it as the place where his love had been born, whence the fairy ride had started and whither returned. He did not try to loosen her grasp about his neck. She seemed a burden that he must carry, a load he bore home from out the tempest of the winds and waves which he had faced and fought that night. And ever, as he went, he sought dimly, saying, "Why, why?" "How did it come about?" "Haven't I loved her?" "Hasn't she had everything?" Or exclaiming, "Blake!" Or again, "And the child!"—trying to assess, trying to judge, trying to condemn, yet ever feeling the inanimate grasp, looking on the oblivious face, returning to pity and to grieve.
A groom was waiting up for him. Grantley roused himself from his ponderings to give the man a brief explanation. Mrs. Imason had meant to stay at Mrs. Valentine's, but he had wanted to talk to her on business, and she had insisted on coming back with him. Unfortunately she had attempted to walk, and it had been too much for her; her bag would be sent home to-morrow. He had arranged this with the gruff innkeeper, and paid him a good sum to hold his tongue. But he was conscious that tongues would not be held altogether, and that the groom was puzzled by the story, and certainly not convinced. This seemed to matter very little now—as little as young Blake had mattered. Let them guess and gossip—what was that compared to the great unexplained thing between himself and Sibylla, compared to the great questioning of himself by himself which had now taken possession of him? What the outside world might think seemed now a small thing—yes, although he had been ready to kill himself and the child because of it.
He bore Sibylla into the hall of the house. One lamp burned dimly there, and all was quiet—save for a shrill fractious cry. The child was crying fretfully. The next moment old Mrs. Mumple came to the top of the stairs, carrying a bedroom candle and wrapped in a shabby voluminous dressing-gown.
"You're back, Mr. Imason?" She did not see Sibylla, and held up her hand. "Hark to poor little Frank!" she said. "He's been crying all the evening. I can't quiet him. He misses his mummy so."
Could words more sorely condemn Sibylla—the woman who had forsaken her child? But Grantley gathered her gently into his arms and began to carry her upstairs. Then Mrs. Mumple saw, and turned on him eyes full of wonder.
"She's unconscious, I think," he said. "She can do nothing for herself. I'll take her to her room, and you must put her to bed. She's very cold too. You must make her warm, Mrs. Mumple."
The old woman followed him into the bedroom without a word. He laid Sibylla down on the bed. For an instant she opened her eyes and smiled tenderly at him; then she fell into oblivion again. Mrs. Mumple moved quickly to her. Standing by her, ranged on her side in a moment by some subtle instinct, she faced Grantley with an air of defiance.
"Leave her to me, Mr. Imason. Leave the poor child to me."
"Yes," he answered. "Get her to bed as soon as you can. Good night."
Mrs. Mumple was feeling Sibylla's face, her hands, her ankles. She began to unbutton the wet boots hastily.
"What have you done to her?" she asked in motherly indignation. "Poor lamb!"
She pulled off the boots, and felt the damp stockings with low exclamations of horror. She was in her element, fussing over somebody she loved. She got a rough towel, and knelt down to strip off the stockings.
"I can leave her to you now," said Grantley, and he walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
In the stillness of the house he heard the little peevish cry again; the complaint in it was more intense, as though the child missed old Mrs. Mumple's care and feared to be alone. Grantley went along the passage and into the nursery. A night-light burned by the cot. The door of the adjoining room stood open a few inches, but all was dark and quiet in there. When Grantley came near, the child saw him, and stretched out his little arms to him in a gesture which seemed to combine welcome and entreaty. Grantley shook his head, smiling whimsically.
"I wonder what the little beggar wants! I'm devilish little use," he murmured. But he lifted little Frank from the cot, wrapped him in a blanket, and carried him to the fireside. "I wonder if I ought to feed him?" he thought. "What's the nurse up to? Oh, I suppose she's left him to old Mumple. Why didn't she feed him?"
Then it struck him that perhaps Frank had been fed too much, and he shook his head gravely over such a trying situation as that. Frank was lamenting still—more gently, but in a remarkably persevering way. "He must want something," Grantley concluded; and his eye fell on a cup which stood just within the fender. He stooped down and stuck his finger into it, and found it half-full of a warm, thick, semi-liquid stuff.
"Got it!" he said in lively triumph, picking up the cup and holding it to Frank's lips. The child sucked it up. "Well, he likes it anyhow; that's something. I hope it won't kill him!" mused Grantley, as he gently drew the cup away from the tenacious little fingers.
Frank stuck one of the fingers in his mouth, stopped crying, and in an instant, seemingly, was sound asleep. Grantley got him into a position that he guessed would be comfortable, and lay back in the chair, nursing him on his knees.
In half an hour Mrs. Mumple came in and found them both sound asleep in front of the fire. She darted to them, and shook Grantley by the shoulder. He opened his eyes with a start.
"My gracious, you might have dropped him!"
"Not a bit of it! Look how he's holding on!" He showed the little hand clenched tightly round his forefinger. "He could hang like that, I believe!"
"Hang indeed!" muttered Mrs. Mumple resentfully. "Give him to me, Mr. Imason."
"Oh, by all means! But, by Jove, he doesn't want to go, you know!"
He did not want to go, apparently, and Grantley was quite triumphant about it. Mrs. Mumple was merely cross, and grumbled all the time till she got the little fingers unlaced and Frank safe in his cot again. "It's a mercy he didn't fall into the fire," she kept repeating, with a lively and aggressive thankfulness for escape from a danger excessively remote. But she made Grantley ashamed of not having thought of it. At last she spoke of Sibylla.
"She's warm and comfortable and sleeping now, poor lamb!" she said.
"It's time we all were," said Grantley, making for the door.
"You won't disturb her, Mr. Imason?"
He turned round to her, smiling.
"No," he said.
Mrs. Mumple moved her fat shoulders in a helpless shrug. She had made out nothing about the matter; she was clear only that Sibylla had somehow been disgracefully ill-used, and that Frank might very well have fallen into the fire. Of these two things she was unalterably convinced. But she spoke of one of them only; the other was declared in her hostile eyes.
Against his will—perhaps against his promise—Grantley was drawn to his wife's bedside. He trod very softly. The only light in the room came from the bright flickering flames of the fire. They lit up her face and her throat where she had torn her nightgown apart. He felt the white neck very lightly with his hand. It was warm—healthily warm, not feverish. She had taken no hurt either from storms within or from storms without. She slept deeply now; she would awake all well on the morrow. She would be herself again on the morrow. He thanked Heaven for that, and then recollected what it meant. Herself was not the woman who murmured "Grantley!" and dreamed of the gold and the fairy ride. Herself was the woman who could not live with him, who had forsaken the child, who had gone to Walter Blake. To that self she would awake to-morrow. Then was it not better that she should never awake? Ought he not to be praying Heaven for that—praying that the death which had passed by him and his son should, in its mercy, take her now?
Aye, that was the easiest way—and from his heart and soul Grantley despised the conclusion. His face set as it had when he faced her in the dingy inn and tore her from her lover's ready arms. His courage rose unbroken from the ruins of his pride. He would fight for her and for himself. But how? There must be a way.
Suddenly she raised herself in the bed. In an instant he had drawn back behind the curtains. She neither saw him nor heard. For a moment she supported herself on her hand, with the other flinging back her hair over her shoulders. Then, with one of her splendid, lithe, easy movements, she was out of bed and had darted quickly across to the door.
Grantley watched her, holding his breath, in a strange terror lest she should discover him, fearful that in such a case her delusion might still keep its hold on her—fearful too of the outrage his presence would seem if it had left her. She opened the door wider, and stood listening for fully a couple of minutes; it seemed to him that the time would never end. Then she carefully set the door half-way ajar, and turned to come back to her bed. She walked slowly now, and looked towards the fire, stretching out her hands towards it for a moment as she came opposite to it. The flames illuminated her face again, and he saw on her lips a smile of perfect happiness. All was well; there was no crying in the house; the child slept. That was all she thought of, all she cared about; her brain was dormant, but her instinct could not sleep. Now that it was satisfied, with a buoyant spring she leapt on the bed and cuddled the clothes about her happily.
In a few seconds Grantley stole silently from the room. He went downstairs, and he ate and drank: he had touched next to nothing for twelve hours. His blood stirred as warmth and vigour came back to him. He thanked Heaven that he lived, and the boy lived, that she lived and was with him still. His head was high and his courage unbroken. He looked on what he had been, and understood; yet he was not dismayed. Guided by the smile on her lips, he had found the way. He had been right to bring her back, or she could not have smiled like that—in all the plenitude of love for the little child, a love that waked while reason slept, but would not let her sleep till it was satisfied. If that was in her who had forsaken the child, so her love for him was in her who had left him to go to Walter Blake. If that were true, then there must be a way.
Somehow, he knew not how, salvation should come through the child. His mind leapt on to a vision of bonds of love joined anew by the link of those little hands.
The Raymores were holding up their heads again—such good reports came from Buenos Ayres. The head of Charley's department had written a letter to Raymore, speaking highly of the lad's good conduct and ability, and promising him early promotion. Raymore showed it to Kate, and she read it with tears in her eyes.
"You see he's going to give him a holiday at Christmas, and let him spend a month with us," said Raymore, pointing out a passage in the letter.
"Come on a visit, he says." She looked up with a questioning glance.
Raymore understood the question.
"Yes, my dear," he said gently. "He'll pay us a visit—many visits, I hope—but his career must lie over there. That's inevitable, and best on all grounds, I think." He came and took her hand, adding, "We must be brave about that."
"I'll try," said Kate.
She knew that was the penalty which must be paid. Over here the past would never be utterly buried. Charley would never be quite safe from it. He must buy safety and a fresh start at the price of banishment. His mother faced the bitter conclusion.
"We must make the most of the visits," she sighed. "And, yes, I will be brave."
"We must give him a splendid time while he's with us," said Raymore, and kissed her. "You've been fine about it," he whispered: "keep it up."
The penalty was high, or seemed so to a mother, but the banishment was not all evil. The boy's absence united them as his presence had never done. At home he had been an anxiety often, and sometimes a cause of distress to them. All that was gone now. He was a bond of union, and nothing else. And his own love for them came out. When he was with them, a lad's shamefacedness, no less than the friction of everyday life, had half hidden it. His heart spoke out now from across the seas; he wrote of home with longing; it seemed to grow something holy to him. He recounted artlessly the words of praise and the marks of confidence he had won; he was pleading that they made him worthy to pay his Christmas visit home. Whenever his letters came, Raymore and Kate had a good talk together over them; the boy's open heart opened their hearts also to one another—yes, and to Eva too. They paid more attention to Eva, and were quicker to understand her growth, to see how she reached forward to womanhood, and to be ready to meet her on this new ground. She responded readily, with the idea that she must do all she could to lighten the sorrow and to make Charley's absence less felt. In easy-going times people are apt to be reserved. The trouble and the worry broke up the crust which had formed over their hearts. All of them—even the boy so far away—were nearer together.
This softened mood and the gentler atmosphere which reigned in the Raymores' household, had its effect on Jeremy Chiddingfold's fortunes. It caused both Kate and Raymore to look on at his proceedings with indulgence. They were constantly asking themselves whether they had not been too strict with Charley, and whether the calamity might not have been prevented if they had encouraged him to confide in them more, and to bring his difficulties to them. They were nervously anxious to make no such mistake in regard to Eva. They were even in a hurry to recognise that Eva must consider herself—and therefore be considered—a young woman. A pretty young woman, to boot! And what did pretty young women like—and attract? Eva was not repressed; she was encouraged along her natural path. And it was difficult to encourage Eva without encouraging Jeremy too—that at least was Kate Raymore's opinion, notwithstanding that she had been made the repository of the great secret about Dora Hutting. "A boy and girl affair!" she called it once to Raymore, and made no further reference to it.
Kate was undoubtedly in a sentimental mood; the small number and the distant advent of the hundreds a year from the dyeing works did not trouble her. Half unconsciously, in the sheer joy of giving Eva pleasure, in the delight of seeing her girl spread her wings, she threw the young folk together, and marked their mutual attraction with furthering benevolence.
"We've been happy, after all," she said to Raymore; "and I should like to see Eva happily settled too."
"No hurry!" he muttered: "she's a child still."
"Oh, my dear!" said Kate, with a smile of superior knowledge; fathers were always like that.
Eva exulted in the encouragement and the liberty, trying her wings, essaying her power with timid tentative flights. Yet she remained very young; her innocence and guilelessness did not leave her. She did not seek to shine, she did not try to flirt. She had not Anna Selford's self-confidence, nor her ambition. Still, she was a young woman, and since Jeremy was very often at hand, and seemed to be a suitable subject, she tried her wings on him. Then Kate Raymore would nod secretly and significantly at her husband. She also observed that Eva was beginning to show a good deal of character. This might be true in a sense, since all qualities go to character, but it was hardly true in the usual sense. Christine Fanshaw used always to say that Eva was as good as gold—and there she would leave the topic, without further elaboration.
Well, that was the sort of girl Jeremy liked! He saw in himself now a man of considerable experience. Had he not grown up side by side with Sibylla, her whims and her tantrums? Had he not watched the development of Anna Selford's distinction, and listened to her sharp tongue? Had he not cause to remember Dora Hutting's alternate coquettishness and scruples, the one surely rather forward (Jeremy had been revising his recollections), the other almost inhuman? Reviewing this wide field of feminine variety, Jeremy felt competent to form a valid judgment; and he decided that gentleness, trustfulness, and fidelity were what a man wanted. He said as much to Alec Turner, who told him, with unmeasured scorn, that his ideas were out of date and sadly retrograde.
"You want a slave," said Alec witheringly.
"I want a helpmeet," objected Jeremy.
"Not you! A helpmeet means an equal—an intellectual equal," Alec insisted hotly. He was hot on a subject which did not seem necessarily to demand warmth because he too had decided what he wanted. He had fallen into a passion which can be described only as unscrupulous. He wanted to marry clever, distinguished, brilliant Anna Selford—to marry her at a registry office and take her to live on two pounds a week (or thereabouts) in two rooms up two pairs of stairs in Battersea. Living there, consorting with the people who were doing the real thinking of the age, remote from the fattedbourgeoisie, she would really be able to influence opinion and to find a scope for her remarkable gifts and abilities. He sketched thisménagein an abstract fashion, not mentioning the lady's name, and was much annoyed when Jeremy opined that he "wouldn't find a girl in London to do it."
"Oh, as for you, I know you're going to become a damned plutocrat," Alec said, with a scornful reference to the dyeing works.
"Rot!" remarked Jeremy, but he was by no means so annoyed at being accused of becoming a damned plutocrat as he would have been a year earlier, before he had determined to seek speedy riches and fame in order to dazzle Dora Hutting, and when he had not encountered the gentle admiring eyes of Eva Raymore. Whatever else plutocrats (if we may now omit theepiphetus ornans) may or may not do in the economy and service of the commonwealth, they can at least give girls they like fine presents, and furnish beautiful houses (and fabrics superbly dyed) for their chosen wives. There are, in short, mitigations of their lot, and possibly excuses for their existence.
Jeremy's state of mind may easily be gauged. The dye works were prominent, but the experience of life was to the front too. He was working hard—and had his heart in his play besides. For his age it was a healthy, and a healthily typical, existence. The play part was rich in complications not unpleasurable. The applause of large admiring brown eyes is not a negligible matter in a young man's life. There was enough of the old Jeremy surviving to make the fact that he was falling in love seem enough to support an excellent theory on the subject. But on the other hand he had meant the fame and riches for Dora Hutting—to dazzle her anyhow—whether to satisfy or to tantalise her had always been a moot point. In imagination Jeremy had invariably emerged from the process of making wealth and fame either unalterably faithful or indelibly misogynistic, Dora being the one eternal woman, though she might be proved unworthy. It had never occurred to him that he should label the fame and riches to another address. To be jilted may appear ludicrous to the rest of the world, but the ardent mind of the sufferer contrives to regard it as tragic. A rapid transference of affection tends to impair the dignity of the whole matter. Still, large brown admiring eyes will count—especially if one meets them every day. Jeremy was profoundly puzzled about himself, and did not suppose that just this sort of thing had ever occurred before.
Then a deep sense of guilt stole over him. Was he trifling with Eva? He hoped not. But of course there is no denying that the idea of trifling with girls has its own attractions at a certain age. At any rate to feel that you might—and could—is not altogether an unpleasing sensation. However Jeremy's moral sense was very strong—the stronger (as he was in the habit of assuring Alec Turner) for being based on pure reason and the latest results of sociology. Whenever Eva had been particularly sweet and admiring, he felt that he ought not to go to Buckingham Gate again until he had put his relations with Dora Hutting on an ascertained basis. He would knit his brow then, and decline to be enticed from his personal problems by Alec's invitations to general discussion. At this stage of his life he grew decidedly more careful about his dress, not aiming at smartness, but at a rich and sober effect. And all the while he started for Romford at eight in the morning. He was leading a very fine existence.