"Dearest Papa," Sophy wrote,—"We all send our love, and, please, we do not want to stay here now that you have gone away. Please let us come and live with you. We promise not to be troublesome, and Suzette might come too, might not she, and look after us? Dearest papa, do not make us stay here. Because we love you, and we want to come and live with you. Please tell us where to meet you, and we will make Suzette bring us, and you can take us home with you. Please let it be soon. We do so want to see you. Please do not make us stay here. We each of us send you a kiss, and are your loving daughters."
"Dearest Papa," Sophy wrote,—
"We all send our love, and, please, we do not want to stay here now that you have gone away. Please let us come and live with you. We promise not to be troublesome, and Suzette might come too, might not she, and look after us? Dearest papa, do not make us stay here. Because we love you, and we want to come and live with you. Please tell us where to meet you, and we will make Suzette bring us, and you can take us home with you. Please let it be soon. We do so want to see you. Please do not make us stay here. We each of us send you a kiss, and are your loving daughters."
The signatures were attached, the letter closed and addressed to Tom's club; they knew where that was, because he had taken them to see it one Sunday morning, and they had admired the great armchairs and all the wonderful big books. The same afternoon Lucy broke away from Suzette, ran across to a pillar post, and dropped the important missive in. She came back with an air of devil-may-care triumph, nodding at her sisters, frankly refusing to tell Suzette anything about it.
"You'll see very soon," she promised in mysterious triumph, and that evening the three had a wonderful talk over the letter, speaking in low cautious tones, agreeing that their manner must be carefully guarded, that meekness and affection towards their mother must be the order of the day, and that one of them must always be on the watch for the postman's coming, lest by chance Tom's answer should fall into the hands of the enemy.
"Would she open it?" shuddered Vera.
"I expect she would," said Sophy.
They saw the danger, and the hours were anxious. But they tasted some of the delights of conspiracy too. And hope was on the horizon. One more "row" could be endured if after that the doors were open to freedom.
Tom's heart was touched by the little scrawl, written on a sheet torn from a copybook. In his broken-down state he was inclined to be maudlin over it. He carried it to Mrs. Bolton, and showed it to her, saying that he could not be such a bad chap after all if the little ones loved him like that, pitying them because they were exposed to Harriet's tempers, bewailing his own inability to help them, or to comply with their artless request.
"I shouldn't be allowed to keep them," he said ruefully, trying to smooth his bristly hair.
Mrs. Bolton made a show of sympathy, and was in fact sorry for him; but she did not encourage any idea of trying to take or keep them. He suggested smuggling them out of the jurisdiction. She was firm, if kindly, in asking how he meant to support them. Anyhow Lady Harriet could feed them! Tom was very much under her influence, and had no longer the strength of will needed for any venturous plan. The conclusion that he could do nothing was not long in coming home to him.
"But I must write to the poor little things," he said, "and tell them I shall come and see them sometimes. That'll comfort them. I'm glad they're so fond of me. By Jove, I haven't been a bad father, you know!" He read Sophy's letter over again and laid it down on Mrs. Bolton's mantelpiece; when he went back to the club he forgot it and left it there.
There Mrs. Bolton's friend, Miss Pattie Henderson (she was not married to Georgie Parmenter yet—negotiations were pending with his family), found it, and it was from her that a suggestion came which appealed strongly to Mrs. Bolton. As she drank her glass of port, Miss Henderson opined that it would be "a rare score" to send the letter to Harriet Courtland. "It'll make her properly furious," said Miss Pattie, finishing her port with hearty enjoyment.
Mrs. Bolton caught at the notion. Harriet was putting her to a great deal of annoyance, and so was Tom's refusal to stand up to Harriet. It was meet and right that any person who was in a position to give Harriet a dig should give it. Neither of them thought of what might be entailed on the little folk who had dared to send the letter; in the end they had a very inadequate idea of the terror Harriet inspired. Mrs. Bolton laughed as she contemplated the plan.
"Just stick in a word or two of your own," Miss Pattie advised. "Something spicy!"
Mrs. Bolton at once thought of several spicy little comments which would add point to Sophy's letter. One was so spicy, so altogether satisfying to Mrs. Bolton's soul, and to Miss Pattie Henderson's critical taste, that it was irresistible. It—and Sophy's letter—were posted to Harriet before lunch that day; and Mrs. Bolton's eyes were only opened at all to what she had done when she told Caylesham (who had dropped in in the afternoon), and heard him exclaim:
"But, by Jove, she'll take it out of those unhappy children, you know! I say, you don't know Harriet Courtland, or you'd never have done that!"
His concern seemed so great that Mrs. Bolton's heart was troubled. If she did not upbraid herself, at any rate she denounced Miss Henderson. But what was to be done? Nothing could be done. By now the letter must be almost in Harriet Courtland's hands. Caylesham said a few plain words about the matter, but his words could not help now. They had, however, one effect. They made Mrs. Bolton afraid to let Tom know what she had done: and she persuaded Caylesham not to betray her. When Tom next came she told him that she had accidentally burnt Sophy's letter in mistake for one of her own.
"Well, I've sent them an answer, poor little beggars—under cover to Suzette Bligh," said Tom. "But I'm sorry. I should have liked to keep that letter of theirs, Flora."
"I know. Of course you would. I'm sorry," said Mrs. Bolton, now feeling very uncomfortable, although she had not lost her pleasure at the idea of giving Harriet such a fine dig.
Tom's letter reached its destination first, and Suzette read it to the little girls. It was a kind and a good letter. He told them to behave well towards their mother, and to love her. He said he was obliged to be away from them now, but presently he would see them and hoped to see them very often, and that they were not to forget to go on loving him, because he loved them very much.
Suzette's voice broke a little over the letter, and the children listened in an intent and rather awed silence. They were divided between relief that an answer had come safely, and depression at what the answer was. But they understood—or thought they did—that if they were good they would presently be allowed to see their father very often.
"That's what he means, isn't it?" Lucy asked Suzette.
"Yes, dear, that's it," Suzette told her, not knowing what else to tell her.
"We'd better burn papa's letter," Sophy suggested.
There was no difference of opinion about that. Vera was accorded the privilege of putting it in the fire, and of stamping carefully on the ashes afterwards.
"Because," she said, justifying this precaution, "you remember the story where the man was found out just because he didn't stamp on it after he'd burnt it, Sophy!"
This was the last day on which Tom Courtland was entitled to put in a defence to his wife's suit. He had made no sign. Harriet was the fiercer against him. His ruin was not enough; she desired herself to see it made visible and embodied in a trial whose every word and proceeding should aggravate his shame and satisfy her resentment. She had nursed the thought of that, making pictures of him and of the woman undergoing the ordeal and being branded with guilt while all the world looked on. Now Tom refused her this delight; there would be no trial, because he would not fight.
It was a fine moment for the letter to arrive. The mine was all laid, only the match was wanting. Harriet was dressing for dinner when it came; her maid Garrett was doing her hair before the glass. As she read, Garret saw a sudden change come over her face—one quick flush, then a tight setting of her lips. Garrett knew the signs by experience. Something in that letter had upset her ladyship. Warily and gently Garrett handled her ladyship's hair; if she blundered in her task now, woe to her, for her ladyship's temper was upset.
"Dearest papa, do not make us stay here. Because we love you and want to come and live with you"——"Please do not make us stay here."
That was the truth of it, that was what they really thought, these little hypocrites who came and kissed her so obediently every morning and evening, those meek little creatures with their "Yes, mamma dear," "No, dear mamma," accepting all her commands so docilely, returning her kisses so affectionately. All that was a show, a sham, a device for deluding her, for keeping her quiet, while they laid their vile plots—none the less vile for being so idiotic—and sent their love to "dearest papa"—to that man, to Flora Bolton's lover—while they gave Flora Bolton the means of mocking and of triumphing over her.
She sat very still for awhile, but Garrett was not reassured. Garrett knew that the worst fits of all took a little time in coming. They worked themselves up gradually.
"Is that to your ladyship's satisfaction?" asked Garrett, as she put the last touches to her work.
"No, it isn't," snarled Harriet. "No, don't touch me again. Let it alone, you clumsy fool."
Garrett went and took up the evening dress. Harriet Courtland rose and stood for a moment with Sophy's letter to Tom in her hand.
"I'm going to the schoolroom for a few minutes. Wait here," she said to Garrett, and walked out of the room slowly, taking the letter with her. Another slip of paper she tore into shreds as she went; that was Mrs. Bolton's comment on the situation, as "spicy" and as vulgar as she and Miss Pattie Henderson could make it. Yet Harriet was not now thinking of Mrs. Bolton.
Garrett stood where she was for a moment, then stole cautiously after her mistress. She knew the signs, and a morbid curiosity possessed her. She would have a sensational story to retail downstairs, if she could manage to see or hear what happened—for beyond a doubt something had put her ladyship in one of her tantrums. Pity for the children struggled with Garrett's seductive anticipations of a "scene."
Suzette Bligh was reading a story aloud in the schoolroom when Harriet marched in. She held the letter in her hand. The children could make, and had leisure to make, no conjecture how the catastrophe had come about, but in a flash all the little girls knew that it was upon them. The letter and their mother's face told them. They sat looking at her with terrified eyes.
"So you don't want to stay here?" she said sneeringly. "You want to go to your dearest papa? And you dare to write that! Who wrote it? Was it you, Lucy?"
"I—I didn't write it, mamma dear," said Lucy.
Suzette rose in distress.
"Dear Lady Harriet——" she began.
"Hold your tongue. So you wrote it, Sophy. Yes, I see now it's your writing. Oh, but you were all in it, I suppose. So you love your papa?"
Garrett had stolen to within two or three yards of the door now, and it stood half open. She could hear all and see something of what happened.
"So you love your papa?"
Sophy had most courage. Desperate courage came to her now.
"Yes, we do."
"And you want to go to him?"
"Yes, mamma."
"And you don't love me? You don't want to stay with me?"
Sophy glanced for a moment at her sisters.
"Papa's so kind to us," she said.
"And I'm not kind?" asked Harriet with a sneering laugh. "When you're older, my dears, thank me for having been kind—really kind. It's really kind to teach you not to play these tricks—these mean and disgraceful little tricks."
All the children rose slowly and shrank back. They tried to get behind Suzette Bligh. Harriet laughed again when she saw the manœuvre.
"You needn't stay, Suzette," she said. "I know how to manage my own children."
Suzette was very white, and was trembling all over; it seemed as if her legs would hardly support her.
"What are you going to do?"
"It's no business of yours. They know very well. Leave me alone with them."
It was a terrible moment for timid Suzette. But love of the children had laid hold of her heart, and gave her strength.
"I can't go, Lady Harriet," she said in a low voice. "I can't leave you alone with them—not now."
"Not now?" cried Harriet fiercely.
"You're—you're not calm now. You're not fit——"
"You'd stand between me and my own children?"
"Dear Lady Harriet, I—I can't go away now." For she remembered so vividly all that the children's reminiscences, their nods and nudges, had hinted to her; she realised all the things which they had not told her; and she would not leave them now.
Her resistance set the crown to Harriet Courtland's rage. After an instant's pause she gave a half-articulate cry of anger, and rushed forward. Suzette tried to gather the children behind her, and to thrust the angry woman away. But Harriet caught Sophy by the arm and lifted her midway in the air. Garrett came right up to the door and peeped through.
"So you love papa and not me?"
Sophy turned her pale, terrified little face up to her mother's. The worst had happened, and the truth came out.
"No, we—we hate you. You're cruel to us; we hate you, and we love papa."
Harriet's grip tightened on the child's arm. Sophy's very audacity kept her still for a moment. But at the next she lifted her higher in the air. Suzette sprang forward with a cry, and Garrett dashed into the room, shrieking, "Don't, don't, my lady!"
They were too late. The child was flung violently down; her head struck the iron fender; she rolled over and lay quite still, bleeding from the forehead. Suzette and Garrett caught Harriet Courtland by the arms. A low, frightened weeping came from the other two little girls.
Harriet stood for a moment in the grasp of the two women who sought to restrain her and would have thrown themselves upon her had she tried to move. But restraint was no more necessary. Sophy had ransomed her sisters, and lay so quiet, bleeding from the head. In a loud voice Harriet Courtland cried, "Have I killed her? Oh, my God!" and herself broke into a tempest of hysterical sobbing. She fell back into Garrett's arms, shuddering, weeping, now utterly collapsed. Suzette went and knelt by Sophy.
"No, she's not dead, but it's no fault of yours," she said.
Harriet wrenched free from Garrett and flung herself on her knees by the table, stretching her arms across it and beating her forehead on the wood. The two children looked at her, wondering and appalled.
On the morrow of her attempted flight and enforced return a leaden heaviness had clogged Sibylla's brain and limbs. Her body was quick to recover; her thoughts were for long drowsy and numb. She seemed to have died to an old life without finding a new one. Blake was to her as a dead friend; she would see and hear of him no more; she harboured no idea of meeting him again. The bonds between them were finally rent. This attitude towards him saved his character from criticism and his weakness from too close an examination, while it left her free to brood in the security of despair on all that she had thought to find in him and on the desolation his loss had made. The instinctive love for her child, which had asserted itself while her intellect was dormant, could not prevail against the sullen preoccupation of re-awaking thoughts, or, if it could penetrate into them, came no more fresh and pure, but tainted with the sorrow and the anger which circled round that innocent head. She was tender, but in pity, not in pride; she loved, but without joy. The shadows hung so dark about the child's cot. They hid from her eyes still the sin of her own desertion, and hindered the remorse which might best lead her back to love unalloyed. Still she arraigned not herself but only Grantley and the inevitable. Grantley was the inevitable; there stood the truth of it; she bowed her head to the knowledge, but did not incline her heart to the lesson it had to teach.
Yet the knowledge counted; she looked on Grantley with different eyes. The revelation of himself, wrung from him by overpowering necessity, did its work. The resolve he had then announced, presumptuous beyond the right of mortal man, less than human in its cruelty, almost more than human in its audacity of successful revolt against destiny, might leave him hateful still, but showed him not negligible. He could not be put on one side, discarded, eliminated from her life. He was too big for that. Against her will he attracted her attention and constrained her interest. The thought of what lay beneath his suave demeanour sometimes appalled, sometimes amused, and always fascinated her now. She saw that her old conception had erred; it had been too negative in character; what he could not do or be or give had seemed the whole of the matter to her. In the light of the revelation that was wrong. The positive—a very considerable positive—must be taken into account. The pride she had loathed was not a barren self-conceit, nor merely a sterile self-engrossment. It had issue in an assurance almost supernatural and a courage above morality. Sibylla's first relief came in the reflection that though she might have married a monster, at least she had not given herself to a stick or a stone; she was clear as to her preference when the choice was reduced to that alternative.
His behaviour appealed to her humour too—that humour which could not save her from running away with Blake under the spell of her ideas, but would certainly have made her want to run away from him when the glamour of the ideas had worn off. The old perfection of manner found a new ornament in his easy ignoring of the whole affair. He referred to it once only, then indirectly and because he had a reason. He suggested apologetically that it would be well for them to exchange remarks more freely when the servants were waiting on them at meals.
"It will prevent comment on recent events," he added, as though that were his only reason.
Sibylla was deceived at first, but presently detected another and more important motive. The suggestion marked the beginning of a new campaign on which his inexhaustible perseverance engaged. He understood that his wife accused him of not taking her into his confidence, and of not making her a partner in his life. He was no more minded than before that she should have even plausible grounds for complaint. Starting, then, from general topics and subjects arising out of the journals of the day, he slid placidly and dexterously into frequent discussions of his own plans and doings, his business, his work on the County Council, his Parliamentary ambitions, his schemes for improving the property at Milldean. Sibylla acknowledged the cleverness of these tactics with a rueful smile. She had claimed to share his life; yet most of these topics happened to seem to her rather tedious. But she was debarred from saying that to Grantley; his retort was so obvious. She was often bored, but she was amused that boredom should be the first result of the new method.
"I hope all this interests you?" Grantley would inquire politely.
"Of course, since it concerns you," equal politeness obliged her to reply—and not politeness only. She had to be interested; it had been her theory that she would be, her grievance that she had been denied the opportunity of being. Nor could she make out whether Grantley had any inkling of her suppressed indifference to the County Council and so forth. Was he exercising his humour too? She could not tell, but curiosity and amusement tempered the coldness of her courtesy. They got on really very well at dinner, and especially while the servants were in the room; there was sometimes an awkward pause just after they were left alone. But on the whole the trifling daily intercourse went better than before Sibylla's flight—went indeed fairly well, as it can generally be made to if people are well bred and moderately humorous.
The great quarrel remained untouched, no span bridged the great chasm. Grantley might consent to talk about his County Council; that was merely a polite concession, involving no admission of guilt, and acknowledging no such wrong to his wife as could for a moment justify her action. When it came to deeper matters, he was afflicted with a shame and helplessness which seemed to paralyse him. To gloss over the absence of love, or even of friendship, was a task at which he was apt and tactful; to gain it back was work of the heart—and here he was as yet at a standstill. His instinct had told him to work through the child. But if he caressed the child in order to conciliate Sibylla, he would do a mean thing, and yet not succeed in his deception; he would admit a previous fault and gain no absolution by a calculated and interested confession. He could not bring himself to it. His manner to the child was as carelessly kind as ever; and when Sibylla was there the carelessness was almost more apparent than the kindness. Grantley's nature was against him; to do violence to it was a struggle. Ever ready to be kind, he disliked to show emotion. He felt it was being false to himself; being a sham and a hypocrite. To be gushing was abhorrent to him; to pretend to gush surely touched a more profound depth? His efforts achieved no success; and he did not let Sibylla perceive even the efforts themselves. For once his will, strong as it was, and his clear perception were both powerless before his temper and the instincts of his nature. The result was a deadlock. Matters could not move.
Such was the juncture of affairs when Christine Fanshaw came to Milldean. Her resolve to escape from the atmosphere of disgrace at home perhaps alone could have brought her; for she came in some trepidation, rather surprised that Sibylla had welcomed her, wondering whether the welcome was of Sibylla's own free will. Had she not betrayed Sibylla? Was she not responsible for the frustration of the great plan? Yet an acute curiosity mingled with and almost overpowered her apprehensions, and she was prepared to defend herself. The rumours about Walter Blake would be a weapon, if she needed one—a weapon effective, if cruel. As regards her own treachery, she made haste to throw herself on Sibylla's mercy.
"Of course you must have known it was through me?" she ended.
"Oh, yes, I knew that, of course."
"Here's your letter—the one you sent me to hand on to Grantley. He wired me not to send it."
"Oh, I thought he'd read it," said Sibylla thoughtfully.
She took it and put it in her pocket.
Christine looked at her with a smile.
"And yet you ask me to stay!" she remarked.
Sibylla smiled mockingly.
"Since this household owes all its happiness to you, it's only fair that you should come and look on at it."
"That's not at all a comfortable thing to say, Sibylla."
"No, it isn't, and it departs from our principle, which is to say nothing."
"That's not always very comfortable either."
Christine was giving a thought to her own affairs here.
"And we won't say anything more about what you did," Sibylla went on. "We won't discuss whether you were right, or whether I'm grateful, or anything of that sort."
"You ought to be."
"Or even whether I ought to be—though, of course, you'd want to think that."
Christine was disappointed. In her heart she had rather hoped to be put on her defence just enough to entitle her to use her weapon, and to tell some of the truth about Walter Blake. Sibylla's attitude gave her no excuse.
Though she would say nothing more about what Christine had done, Sibylla was easily persuaded to break the principle of silence about the main affair. Christine's curiosity lost the zest of difficult satisfaction; she had the whole history for the asking. She heard it, marvelling at the want of reticence her friend displayed, seeking how to reconcile this seeming immodesty with the rest of her impression of Sibylla. She recollected being very shy and ashamed (in the midst of her exultation) when she had let Harriet Courtland worm out the secret of her love for Caylesham. Sibylla was not ashamed—she was candid. Sometimes she was excited, sometimes she played the judge; but she was never abashed. Christine's wits sought hard for an explanation of this. Suddenly it came to her as she gazed on Sibylla's pure face and far-away eyes.
"My dear, you were never in love with him!" she cried.
If she hoped to surprise, or even to win a compliment on her penetration, she was utterly deceived.
"Oh, no!" said Sibylla. "In the way you mean I've never been in love with anybody except Grantley."
"Then why did you? Oh, tell me about it!" Christine implored.
"He appealed to my better feelings," Sibylla smiled back to her, mocking again. "I'd give the world that we hadn't been stopped! No, I can't say that, because——"
"Well?"
"I think Grantley would have done what he said."
Christine was the last woman in the world to rest ignorant of what Grantley had said. Sibylla was again disappointingly ready to tell the whole thing without any pressure worth mentioning.
"And you really believe he would have?" Christine half whispered when she had heard the story.
"If I didn't believe it with my whole heart, I shouldn't be here. I should be—well, somewhere—with Walter Blake."
"Thank God you're not!"
"Why do you say that? The proprieties, Christine?"
"Oh, only partly; but don't you think lightly of them, all the same. And the rest of the reasons don't matter." Christine got up and walked across the room and back again before she came to a stand opposite Sibylla. "I call that a man worth being in love with," she said.
"Walter?"
"Heavens, no! Grantley Imason! Oh, I know he's your husband! But still——"
Sibylla broke into a gentle laugh.
"It has the attraction of the horrible," she admitted. "He'd have done it, you know."
"It's mediæval," said Christine fondly. "And you were going away with Walter Blake!" She drew her little figure up straight. "Sibylla, you're no woman if you don't manage a man like that in the end. He's worth it, you know."
"You mean—if I don't let him manage me?" Sibylla was a little contemptuous. "I don't care about tyranny, even tempered by epigrams," she explained.
"Well, not when you only do the epigrams," smiled Christine.
"That's not true. I only ask a real partnership."
"You must begin by contributing all you have."
"I did. But Grantley——"
"Paid a composition? Oh yes, my dear; men do. That's as old as Byron anyhow." She came suddenly to Sibylla and kissed her. "And you'd be adorable, properly deluded."
"You shan't put it like that, Christine."
"Yes, I will—and I know he loves you."
"He can't love anything—not really."
"I shall watch him. Oh, my dear, what a comfort to watch anybody except John! Oh yes, yes, I suppose you'd better have my story too. You've had most of it before—without the name. But look away. I've no theories, you know—and—well, I was in love."
She laughed a little, blushing red. But her composure returned when she had finished her confession.
"And now what do we think of one another?" she asked, with her usual satirical little smile. "You don't know? Oh yes! You think me rather wicked, and I think you very silly; that's about what it comes to."
"I suppose that is about it," Sibylla laughed reluctantly.
"But I've repented, and you're only going to repent."
"Never!"
"Yes, you are. I take no credit for having done it first. It's much easier to repent of wickedness than of nonsense. The wickedness is much pleasanter at the time, and so seems much worse afterwards."
"And now you're in love with John?"
"Good heavens, no!" She pulled herself up. "Well, I don't know. If I'm in love now, it's not what I used to mean by it. One gets to use words so differently as time goes on."
"I don't think I shall ever learn that."
Destiny assumed Christine's small neat features for a moment in order to answer sternly:
"But you must!"
It was the worst way of dealing with Sibylla.
"I won't!" she answered in overt rebellion, her cheek flushing now as her confession had not availed to make it flush.
Christine did not fail to perceive the comic element in the case—strong enough, at all events, to serve as a relief to conversation, almost piquant when Grantley conscientiously related all manner of uninteresting things in order that Sibylla might be at liberty to take an interest in them. But this aspect did not carry matters very far or afford much real consolation. Substantially no progress was made. The failure endured, and seemed to Christine as complete as the devastation wrought in her own life. Nay, here there was an aggravation. In her home—she almost smiled to use the word now—there was no child. Here there was the boy. Her thoughts flew forward to the time when he would wonderingly surmise, painfully guess, at last grow into knowledge.
And already the mind stirred in little Frank. His intelligence grew, his affection blossomed as the first buds of a flower. He was no more merely a passive object of love and care. He began to know more than that he was nursed and fed, more than that his right was to these ministrations. The idea of the reason dawned in him. He stretched forth his hand no longer for bounty only, but for the inspirer of bounty—for love. Strung to abnormal sensitiveness, Christine deluded herself with the fancy that already he felt the shadow over the house, that his young soul was already chilled by the clouds of anger, and vainly cried for the sunshine of sympathy. If she did not truly see, yet she foresaw truly. Seeing and foreseeing, then, she asked where was the hope. And on this, with a bound, her thoughts were back to her own sorrow, and back to poor lonely old John in London, all by himself, with nobody to talk to, nobody to congratulate him on the success of his business, nobody to open his heart to, alone with his grievance against her, alone with the thought that, notwithstanding his grievance, he had taken Frank Caylesham's money, and grew prosperous again by the aid of it.
When Christine had been at Milldean a fortnight or so, business carried Grantley to town. The change his departure made was instantaneous and striking. A weight was off the house, the clouds dispersed. Sibylla was full of gaiety, and in that mood she could make all about her share her mirth. Above all, her devotion to Frank was given full rein. The child was always with her, and she knew no happiness save in evoking and responding to his love. She was now open and ostentatious about it, fearing no frigid glances and no implied criticism of her fond folly. Christine might well have found new ground for despair, so plainly did Sibylla display to her the blighting influence of Grantley's presence. He it was who froze up love—so Sibylla declared with an impetuous aggressive openness. But Christine would not despair. A wholesome anger rose in her heart and forbade despair. Her manner took on a coldness exceeding Grantley's indifference. She would not be a sharer in the games, a partner in the merriment, a sympathiser in the love. Sibylla was not slow to see how she stood off and drew herself away. Quickly she sought for reasons. Was it that Christine would not join in what seemed to be a league against Grantley; or was there another reason? She had told Christine how it was through Walter Blake's weakness and not through her scruples that little Frank had not been left to his fate. Did her love then seem hypocrisy? That was not true—though it might be true that remorse now had a share in it. The more the child grew to life, the more horrible became the thought that he might have died. After a day or two of smouldering protest, she broke out on Christine.
"You think I've no right to love him," she asked, "after what I was ready to do? Is that what you think? Oh, speak out plainly! I see you've got something against me."
Christine was cold and composed. Never had her delicately critical manner been more pronounced.
"I'm sure I hope you repent," she observed meditatively; "and I hope you thank heaven that man was what he turned out to be."
"Well, call it repentance, then. I suppose I've a right to repent? You can't understand how I really feel. But if it is repentance, why need you discourage it?"
"I don't discourage repentance, and I'm glad you're beginning to see that you ought to repent. But it's not that I'm thinking of."
"What are you thinking of, then?" cried Sibylla in unrestrained impatience.
"You're prepared for an open quarrel?"
"Oh, I shan't quarrel with you!" Her smile was rather disdainful.
"No, you won't quarrel with me; I'm not of enough importance to you! I'm very glad I'm not, you know. Being important to you doesn't seem to be consistent with being an independent creature."
Sibylla glanced at her in arrested attention.
"What do you mean by that?" she asked in low quick tones. The charge was so strangely like that which she was for ever formulating against Grantley. Now Christine levelled it at her.
"You call Grantley selfish," Christine went on. "You're just as bad yourself—yes, worse! He is trying to be different, I believe. Oh, I admit the poor man doesn't do it very well: he gets very little encouragement! But are you trying? No! You're quite content with yourself. You've done no wrong—— Well, perhaps it was a little questionable to be ready to leave Frank to die! But even that would be all right if only I could understand it!"
"You'd better go on now," said Sibylla quietly.
"Yes, I will go on; I am going on. You were ready to leave the child to die sooner than go on living as you'd been living. Isn't that how you put it? You were willing to give his life to prevent that? Well, are you willing to give any of your own life, any of your way of thinking, any of what you call your nature, or your temperament, or what not? Not a bit of it! You can love Frank when there's no danger of Grantley's thinking it may mean that you could forgive him! As soon as there's any danger of that, you draw back. You use the unhappy child as a shield between Grantley and yourself, as a weapon against Grantley. Yes you do, Sibylla. Whenever you're inclined to relent towards Grantley, you go and sit by that child's cot and use your love for him to fan your hatred against Grantley. Isn't that true?"
Sibylla sat silent, with attentive frightened eyes. This was a new picture—was it a true one? One feature of it at least struck home with a terribly true-seeming likeness of her own mind. She used her love for her child to fan her hatred against Grantley!
"You complain," Christine went on in calm relentlessness, "of what Grantley is to the child. That's a sham most of the time. You're thinking of what he is to you. And even where it's true, don't you do all you can to make him feel as he does? How is he to love what you make the stalking-horse of your grievances?" She turned on Sibylla scornfully, almost fiercely now. "Your husband, your son, the whole world, aren't made for your emotions to go sprawling over, Sibylla! You must have caught that idea from young Blake, I think."
She walked off to the window and stood there, looking out. No sound came from Sibylla. Presently Christine looked round rather nervously. She had gone a little too far perhaps. That phrase about emotions "sprawling" was—well, decidedly uncompromising. She met Sibylla's eyes. They wore a hunted look—as though some peril walled her in and she found no way of escape. Her voice trembled as she faltered:
"Is that what you really think of me, Christine?"
"A bruised reed thou shalt not break." Christine had the wisdom to remember that. Remorse must fall short of despair, self-knowledge of self-hatred, or there remains no possibility of a rebound to hope and effort. Christine came across to her friend with hands outstretched.
"No, no, dear," she said, "not you—not yourself! But this mood of yours, the way you're going on. And, true or false, isn't it what you must make Grantley think?"
Sibylla moved her hands in a restless gesture, protesting against the picture of herself—even thus softened—denying its truth, fascinated by it.
"I don't know," she murmured, "I don't know. Christine, it's a horrible idea!"
Christine fell on her knees beside her.
"If only you hadn't been so absurdly in love with him, my dear!" she whispered.
Rumour spoke truly. Young Walter Blake was back in town with an entirely new crop of aspirations maturing in the ready soil of his mind. The first crop had not proved fortunate. It had brought him into a position most disagreeable and humiliating to reflect upon, and into struggles for which he felt himself little fit. He had been given time to meditate and to cool—to cool even to shuddering when he recalled that night in the Sailors' Rest, and pictured the tragedy for which he had so nearly become responsible. His old desires waning, his aspirations were transfigured at the suggestion of a new attraction. He had been on the wrong tack—that was certain. Again virtue seemed to triumph in this admission. He no longer desired to be made good—it was (as he had conceived and attempted it) such a stormy and soul-shaking process. Now he desired to be kept good. He did not now want a guiding star which he was to follow through every peril, over threatening waves and through the trough of an angry sea. The night at the Sailors' Rest disposed of that metaphor and that ideal. Now he wanted an anchor by whose help he might ride out the storm, or a harbour whose placid bosom should support his gently swaying barque. Strength, constancy, and common sense supplanted imagination, ardour, and self-devotion as the requisites his life demanded.
Again Caylesham showed tact. He would not ask the lady's name. But when Blake next dined with him, he enjoyed the metamorphosis, and silently congratulated Grantley Imason.
"So it's St. George's, Hanover Square, and everything quite regular this time, is it?" he asked, with an indulgent humour. "Well, I fancy you're best suited to that. Only take care!"
"You may be sure that the woman I marry will be——" Blake began.
"Perfection? Oh, of course! That's universal. But it's not enough." He lay back comfortably in his armchair, enjoying his cigar. "Not enough, my boy! I may have two horses, and you may have two horses, and each of my horses may be better than either of your horses; but when we come to driving them, you may have the better pair. Two good 'uns don't always make a good pair." He grew quite interested in his subject—thanks, perhaps, to the figure in which he clothed it. "They've got to match—both their paces and their ways. They've got to go kindly together, to like the feel of one another, don't you know? Each of 'em may be as good as you like single, but they may make—by Jove, yes!—the devil of a bad pair! It's double harness we're talking about, Blake, my boy. Oh, you may think I know nothing about it, but I've seen a bit—— Well, that's not a thing I boast about; but I have seen a bit, you know."
"That's just what I've been thinking," said young Blake sagaciously. He referred to Caylesham's doctrines, not his experiences.
"Oh, you've been thinking, have you?" smiled Caylesham. "Come a mucker then, I suppose?"
"I—I miscalculated. Well, we must all learn by experience."
"Devilish lucky if we can!"
"There's no other way," Blake insisted.
"Have I said there is?" He looked at Blake in an amused knowledge. "Going in for the straight thing this time?"
Half in pride, half in shame, Blake answered:
"Yes."
"Quite right too!" Caylesham was very approving.
"Well, if you say so——" began Blake, laughing.
"Quite right for you, I mean." There was a touch of contempt somewhere in his tone. "But don't forget what I've been saying. It's double harness, my boy! Pace, my boy, and temper, and the feel—the feel! All the things a fellow never thinks about!"
"Well, you're a pretty preacher on this subject!"
"I've heard a lot of things you never have. Oh, well, you may have once, perhaps." His glance was very acute, and Blake flushed under it. "You're well out of that affair," Caylesham went on, dropping his mask of ignorance. "Oh, I don't want to know how it happened. I expect I can guess."
"What do you mean?" Blake's voice sounded angry.
"You funked it—eh?"
It was a strong thing to say to a man in your own house. But a sudden gust of impatience had swept Caylesham away. The young man was in the end so contemptible, so incapable of strength, such a blarney over his weakness.
"Now don't glare at me; I'm not afraid. You tackled too big a job, I fancy. Oh, I'm not asking questions, you know." He got up and patted Blake's shoulder. "Don't mind me. You're doing quite right. Hope you won't find it devilish dull!"
Blake's bad temper vanished. He began to laugh.
"That's right," said Caylesham. "I'm too old to convert, and nearly too old to fight; but I'll be your best man, Walter."
"It'll keep me straight, Caylesham."
"Lord bless you, so it will!"
He chuckled in irrepressible amusement.
"The other thing's no go!"
"No more it is. It needs—— No, I'm not going to be immoral any more. Go ahead! You're made for double harness, Walter. Choose her well! you'll have to learn her paces, you know."
"Or she mine?"
Blake was a little on his dignity again.
"Have another whisky and soda," said Caylesham, with admirable tact.
His advice, meant as precautionary, proved provocative. Memory worked with it—the carking memory of a failure of courage. Blake might blarney as he would about awakened conscience, but Caylesham had put his finger on the sore spot. Pleasure's potentiality of tragedy had asserted itself. It had been supremely disconcerting to discover and recognise its existence. Young Blake was for morality now—not so much because its eyes were turned upwards as for the blameless security of its embrace. He had suffered such a scare. He really wondered how Caylesham had managed to stand the strain of pleasing himself—with the sudden tragic potentialities of it. He paid unwilling homage to the qualities necessary for vice—for candid unmasquerading vice; he knew all about the other species.
Yet he was not hard on Sibylla. He recognised her temperament, her unhappy circumstances, and his own personal attractions. What he did not recognise was the impression of himself which that night in the Sailors' Rest would leave on her. He conceived an idea of his own magnanimity resting in her mind—yes, though such a notion could gain no comfortable footing in his.
Caylesham let him go without more advice—though he had half a mind to tell him not to marry a pretty woman.
"Oh, well, in his present mood he won't; and it would do him lots of good if he did," the impenitent, clear-sighted, good-humoured sinner reflected, with all the meaning which his experience could put into the words. He was of opinion that for certain people the only chance of salvation lay in suffering gross injustice. "If what a fellow brings on himself is injustice," he used to say. He always maintained that fellows brought it on themselves—an expiring gasp of conscience, perhaps.
Gossip and conjecture had played so much with Walter Blake's name that Mrs. Selford had at first been shy of his approaches and chary of her welcome. "We must think of Anna," she had said to her husband. But thinking of or for Anna was rapidly becoming superfluous. The young woman took that department to herself. Her stylishness grew marvellously, and imposed a yoke of admiring submission. It was an extraordinary change from the awkward, dowdy, suppressed girl to this excellently appointed product. The liberty so tardily conceded was making up for lost time, and bade fair to transform itself into a tyranny. The parents were ready subjects, and cast back from the theories of to-day a delusive light on the practices of the past. They concluded that they had always indulged Anna, and that the result was most satisfactory. Then they must indulge her still. So Blake's visits went on, and the welcome became cordial. For Anna was quite clear that she at least had nothing against Blake. His attraction for her was not what had been his charm in Sibylla's eyes. Her impulse was not to reform; it was to conquer. But gossip and conjectures as to his past life were as good incentives to the one task as to the other. His good looks, his air of fashion, his comfortable means, helped the work. He widened the horizon of men for her, and made her out of conceit with her first achievements. She was content that Jeremy should disappear from her court; she became contemptuously impatient of Alec Turner's suit. She was fastidious and worldly-wise.
Again Mrs. Selford rejoiced. She had been in some consternation over Alec Turner's now obvious attachment, coming just at the time when Anna had established the right to please herself. Suppose her first use of liberty had been to throw herself away? For to what end be stylish if you are going to marry on a hundred and fifty pounds a year? But Anna was quite safe—strangely safe, Mrs. Selford thought in her heart, though she rebuked the wonder. Almost unkindly safe, she thought sometimes, as she strove to soften the blows which fell on poor Alec—since, so soon as he ceased to be dangerous, he became an object of compassion.
"Anna is so sensible," she said to Selford. "She's quite free from the silliness that girls so often show"; but she sighed just a little as she spoke.
"She'd make a good wife for any man," declared Selford proudly—a general declaration in flat contradiction to Caylesham's theories about double harness.
Anna paid no heed to opinions or comments. She went about her business and managed it with instinctive skill. It sometimes puzzled poor Alec Turner to think why his presence was so often requested, when his arrival evoked so little enthusiasm. He did not realise the part he played in Anna's scheme, nor how his visits were to appear to Walter Blake. Anna's generalship had thought all this out. The exhibition of Alec was a subsidiary move in the great strategic conception of capturing Walter Blake on the rebound from Sibylla.
But the pawn was not docile, and objected violently so soon as its function began to be apparent. Anna precipitated what she did not desire—a passionate avowal in which the theme of her own gifts and fascination was intermingled with the ideal of influencing the trend of public opinion from a modest home and on a modest income. She was told that she could be removed from the vanities of life and be her true, her highest self. When she showed no inclination to accept the path in life thus indicated, Alec passed through incredulity to anger. Had he cast his pearls before—— Well, at inappreciative feet? At this tone Anna became excusably huffy; to refuse a young man is not to deny all the higher moral obligations. Besides Alec annoyed her very much by assuming persistently that the dictates of her heart called her towards him, and that worldly considerations alone inspired her refusal.
"Oh, you're silly!" she cried. "I tell you it's nothing of the sort."
The dusk of the afternoon softened her features; the light of the fire threw up in clear outline the stylish well-gowned figure. Poor Alec, in his shabby mustard suit, stood opposite her, his hands in his pockets, in dogged misery and resentment, with all the helpless angry surprise of a first experience of this kind, fairly unable to understand how it was that love did not call forth love, obstinate in clinging to the theory of another reason as the sole explanation. Things did not exist in vain. For what was his love?
"But—but what am I to do?" he stammered.
Rather puzzled—after all rather flattered, Anna prayed him to be sensible and friendly. He consented to hope for her happiness, though he was obviously not sanguine about it. For himself all was over! So he said as he flung out of the room, knowing nothing of what lay before him on the path of life; discerning nothing of a certain daughter of a poor old political writer—a little round woman who made her own gowns, was at once very thrifty and very untidy, was inclined to think that the rulers of the earth should be forcibly exterminated, and lavished an unstinted affection on every being, human or brute, with which she was ever brought into contact. And if she did not greatly influence the trend of public opinion—well, anyhow she tried to. Just now, however, Alec knew nothing about her; he was left to think hopelessly of the trim figure and the lost ideals—the two things would mix themselves up in his mind.
To his pathetic stormy presence there succeeded Walter Blake, with all his accomplishment in the art of smooth love-making, with his aspirations again nicely adjusted to the object of his desires (he was so much cleverer than poor Alec over that!), with his power to flatter not only by love but still more by relative weakness. He, of course, did not run at the thing as Alec had done. That would be neither careful of the chances nor economical of the pleasure. Many a talk was needed before his purpose became certain or Anna could show any sign of understanding it.
He dealt warily with her; he was trying, unconsciously perhaps, to perform the task Caylesham had indicated to him—the task of learning her paces and adapting his thereto. It was part of his theory about her that she must be approached with great caution; and of course he knew that there was one very delicate bit of ground. How much had she heard about himself and Sibylla? It was long before he mentioned Sibylla's name. At last he ventured on throwing out a feeler. Anna's unruffled composure persuaded him that she knew nothing of the facts; but her shrewd analysis of Sibylla showed, in his judgment, that she quite understood the woman. It was the dusk of the afternoon again (Anna rather affected that time of day), and Blake, with a sigh which might be considered in the nature of a confession, ventured to say:
"I wish I could read people as you can. I should have avoided a lot of trouble."
"You can read yourself anyhow, can't you?" asked Anna.
"By Jove, that's good—that's very good! No, I don't know that I can. But I expect you can read me, Miss Selford. I shall have to come to you for lessons, shan't I?"
"I'll tell you all the hard bits," she laughed.
"You'll have to see a lot of me to do that!"
Anna was not quite so sure of the need, but she did not propose to stop the game.
"Do I seem so very reluctant to see a lot of you?" she inquired.
Blake's eyes caught hers through the semi-darkness. She was aware of the emotion with which he regarded her. It found an answer in her, an answer which for the moment upset both her coolness and her sense of mastery. She had a revelation that her dominion, not seriously threatened, yet would be pleasantly chequered by intervals of an instinctive submission. This feeling almost smothered the element of contempt which had hitherto mingled in her liking for him and impaired the pride of her conquest.
"I was judging you by myself. Compared with me, you seem reluctant," he said in a low voice, coming a little nearer to her. "But then it does me such a lot of good to come and see you. It's not only the pleasure I come for, though that's very great. You keep up my ideals."
"I'm so glad. The other day I was told I'd ruined all somebody's ideals. Well, I oughtn't to have told you that, I suppose; but it slipped out."
Things will slip out, if one takes care to leave the door open.
She was standing by the table, and Blake was now close by her.
"Since I've known you——"
"Why, you've known me for years, Mr. Blake!"
"No, I only knew a little girl till—till I came back to town this time." He referred to that yachting cruise on which he had ultimately started alone. "But since then I've been a different sort of fellow. I want to go on being different, and you can help me." His voice trembled; he was wrapped up in his emotion, and abundantly sure of its sincerity.
Anna moved away a little, now rather nervous, since no instinct, however acute, can give quite the assurance that practice brings. But she was very triumphant too, and, moreover, a good deal touched. That break in young Blake's voice had done him good service before: it never became artificial or overdone, thanks to his faculty of coming quite fresh to every new emotional crisis; it was always most happily natural.
"Anna!" he said, holding out his hands, with those skilfully appealing eyes of his just penetrating to hers.
With a long-drawn breath she gave him her hand. He pressed it, and began to draw her gently towards him. She yielded to him slowly, thinking at the last moment of what she had decided she would never think about and would show no wisdom in recalling. The vision of another woman had shot into her mind, and for a few seconds gave her pause. Her hesitation was short, and left her self-confidence unbroken. What she had won she would keep. The dead should bury its dead—a thing it had declined to do for Christine Fanshaw.
"Anna!" he said again. "Do you want me to say more? Isn't that saying it all? I can't say all of it, you know."
She let him draw her slowly to him; but she had spoken no word, and was not yet in his arms, when the door opened, and she became aware of a man standing on the threshold. Young Blake, all engrossed, had noticed nothing, but he had perceived her yielding.
"Ah, my Anna!" he whispered rapturously.
"Hush!" she hissed, drawing her hand sharply away. "Is that you, Richards?"
Richards was the Selfords' manservant.
The man laughed.
"If you'd turn the light on, you couldn't mistake me for anybody so respectable as Richards," he said. "I've been with your father in the study, and he told me I should find your mother here."
Anna recognised the voice.
"Mr. Imason! I didn't know you were in London."
"Just up for the day, and I wanted to see your father."
Anna moved to the switch, and turned on the light. She glanced hastily at young Blake. He had not moved; his face was rather red, and he looked unhappy. Anna's feeling was one of pronounced anger against Grantley Imason. His appearance had all the effect of purposed malice; it made her feel at once jealous and absurd. But it was on her own behalf that she resented it. She was not free from a willingness that Blake should be made uncomfortable; so much discipline would be quite wholesome for him. For her own part, though, she wanted to get out of the room.
"May I ring for the real Richards, and—— Oh, I beg your pardon, Blake, how are you? May I ring for the real Richards, and send word to your mother, Anna?"
Grantley was, as usual, urbane and unperturbed.
"I'll go and find her for you. I think she's lying down."
"Oh, well, then——"
"No, I know she'll want to see you," and Anna ran lightly out of the room.
Grantley strolled to an armchair and sank into it. He did not look at Blake, nor, his formal greeting given, appear conscious of his presence.
Young Blake was in a turmoil. He hated to see Grantley; all the odious thought of his failure and defeat was brought back. He hated that Grantley should have seen him making love to Anna Selford, for in his heart he was conscious that he could not cheat an outside vision as he could manage to cheat himself. But both these feelings, if not swallowed up in fear, were at least outdone by it. His great desire had been to settle this matter finally and irrevocably before a hint of it came to the ears either of Grantley or of Sibylla. What would Grantley do now?
"You saw us?" he asked in a sullen anxious voice.
"I couldn't help it. I'm sorry," said Grantley in colourless politeness.
"Well?"
"I really don't understand your question, Blake. At least, you seem to mean it for a question."
"You do know what I mean. I'm not going to ask any favours of you. I only want to know what you intend to do?"
"About what?"
"About what you saw—and heard too, I suppose?"
Grantley rose from his chair in a leisurely fashion, and stood with his back to the fire. He was looking at young Blake with a slight smile; Blake grew redder under it.
"Oh, I can't beat about the bush!" Blake went on impatiently. "You might, if you chose, tell Miss Selford what you know."
"Well?" said Grantley in his turn.
"And—and—— Oh, you see what might happen as well as I do. I—I meant to—to explain at my own time; but——"
"I shouldn't let the time come in a hurry, Blake. It'll be a very awkward quarter of an hour for both of you, and quite unnecessary."
"Unnecessary?"
There was a ring of hope in Blake's voice; he liked to be told that any such confession was unnecessary, and would have welcomed such an assurance even from Grantley's hostile lips.
"Certainly; and equally unnecessary that I should tell Anna anything." He paused a moment, and then went on. "In a different case I might think I had a different duty—though, being what you might call an interested party, I should consider carefully before I allowed myself to act on that view. But as matters stand, you yourself have made any action on my part superfluous."
"I have?"
"Oh yes! You so far injured the fame of the woman for whom you hadn't afterwards the pluck to fight, that it's not necessary for me to tell Selford that you were in love with her a few months before you made love to his daughter, nor that you tried to run away with her, but that in the end you funked the job. I needn't tell him, because he knows—and his wife knows. You took care of that."
Young Blake said nothing, though he opened his lips as if to speak.
"And I needn't tell Anna either. That's unnecessary, for the same reason. She knows just as well as her father and mother know."
"She knows nothing, I tell you. She hasn't an idea——"
"Did you see her face when she saw that I wasn't Richards?"
"I tell you—— She was embarrassed, of course—— But——"
"She knows quite well, Blake. Oh, not the details, but the main thing. She knows that quite well. And she will have made her decision. There's no duty incumbent on me."
"You'll say nothing then?"
"I shall say nothing at all."
Grantley relapsed into silence—a most easy self-possessed silence. His eyes were on young Blake no more, but rested placidly on one of Selford's best pictures on the opposite wall. Blake cleared his throat, and shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.
"Why do you stay?" asked Grantley mildly. "Wouldn't it be better to continue your interview with Anna elsewhere? Mrs. Selford's coming in here, you see."
Blake broke out:
"God knows, Imason, it's difficult for me to say a word to you, but——"
Grantley raised his hand a little.
"It's impossible," he said. "There can be no words between you and me about that. And what does it matter to you what I think? I shall hold my tongue. And you'll feel sure I've no real cause of complaint—quite sure if only I hold my tongue. And I think Anna will hold her tongue. Then you'll forget she knows, and go on posturing before her with entire satisfaction to yourself." He turned his eyes on him and laughed a little. "As long as you can humbug yourself or anybody else, or even get other people to let you think you're humbugging them, you're quite happy, you know."
Blake looked at him once and twice, but his tongue found no words. He turned and walked towards the door.
"Wait in the dining-room," said Grantley.
Blake went out without turning or seeming to hear. After a moment or two Anna's step came down the stairs.
"Mamma'll be down directly, Mr. Imason," she called as she reached the door. Then her eyes took in the room. "Mr.—Mr. Blake?" she asked, with a sudden quick rush of colour in her cheeks.
"I think you'll find him in the dining-room," said Grantley gravely.
She understood—and she did not lack courage. She had enough for two—for herself and for Blake. She met Grantley's look fair and square, drawing up her trim stylish figure to a stiff rigidity, and setting her lips in a resolute line. Grantley admired her attitude and her open defiance of him. He smiled at her in a confidential mockery.
"Thanks, Mr. Imason, I'll look for him. You'll be all right till mamma comes?"
"Oh yes, I shall be all right, thanks, Anna."
He smiled still. Anna gave him another look of defiance.
"I intend to go my own way; I know what I'm about. I don't care a pin what you think." The glance seemed to Grantley as eloquent as Lord Burghley's nod. And no more than Lord Burghley did she spoil its effect by words. She gave it to Grantley full and square, then turned on her heel and swung jauntily out of the room.
Grantley's smile vanished. He screwed up his lips as if he had tasted something rather sour.