Grantley Imason had intended to go down to Milldean that same evening, but a summons from Tom Courtland reached him, couched in such terms that he could not hesitate to obey it. He sought Tom at his club the moment he received the message. Tom had been sent for to his own house in the morning, and had heard what had happened there. He had seen the wounded child and the other two terrified little creatures. Suzette Bligh gave him her account. The doctor told him that Sophy was no longer in danger, but that the matter was a grave one—a very serious shock and severe local injury; the child would recover with care and with quiet, but would always bear a mark of the wound, an ineffaceable scar. That was the conclusion, half good, half bad, reached after a night of doubt whether Sophy would not die from the violence and the shock.
"Did you see your wife?" Grantley asked.
"See her? I should kill her if I saw her," groaned Tom.
"But—but what's being done?"
"She's in her room—she's been there ever since it happened. Suzette's seen her—nobody else. Nobody else will go near her. Of course, while there was a doubt about Sophy—well, the doctor made it a condition that she should confine herself to her room till the thing took a definite turn. I hope she's frightened at last. I don't know what to do. The woman ought to be hanged, Grantley."
But wrath and horror at his wife were not the only feelings in Tom's mind; the way the thing had happened raised other thoughts. He was prostrate under the sense that the fury which had smitten poor little Sophy had been aimed at him; his acts had inspired and directed it. He had made his children's love for him a crime in their mother's eyes. All his excuses, both false and real, failed him now. His own share in the tragedy of his home was heavy and heinous in his eyes.
"I ought to have remembered the children," he kept repeating desperately. He ought to have stayed and fought the battle for and with them, however hard the battle was. But he had run away—to Mrs. Bolton, and left them alone to endure the increased fury of Harriet's rage. "I've been a damned coward over it," he said, "and this is what comes of it, Grantley."
It was all true. Tom had not thought of the children. Even though he loved them, he had deserted them treacherously, because he had considered only his own wrongs, and had been wrapped up in his personal quarrel with his wife. What he had found unendurable himself he had left those helpless little creatures to endure. All the arguments which had seemed so strong to justify or to palliate his resort to the Bolton refuge sounded weak and mean to him now—and to Grantley too, who had been used to rely on them, lightly accepting them with a man of the world's easy philosophy. His friends had almost encouraged Tom in his treacherous desertion of his children; they too had looked at nothing but the merits of his quarrel with Harriet, putting that by itself in a false isolation from the total life of the family, of which it was in truth an integral indivisible part. So Grantley meditated as he listened to Tom's laments; and the meditation was not without meaning and light for him also.
Tom had a request to make of him—that he would go round to the house and spend the evening there.
"I daren't trust myself near Harriet," he said, "and I'm uneasy with only the servants there. They're all afraid of her. She was cowed, Suzette says, while there was danger; but she may break out again—anything might start her again. If you could stay till she's safely in bed——"
"I'll stay all night, if necessary, old fellow," said Grantley promptly.
"It'll take a weight off my mind—and I've got about enough to bear. I'm going to stay here, of course; so you'll know where to find me if I'm wanted, though I don't see what can happen now."
Terror brooded over the Courtlands' house. Grantley rejoiced to see how his coming did something to lift the cloud. The two children left Suzette's side (they loved her, but she seemed to them a defence all too frail), and came to him, standing on either side of his knee and putting their hands in his. The listening strained look passed out of their eyes as he talked to them. Presently little Vera climbed up and nestled on his knee, while Lucy leant against his shoulder, and he got them to prattle about happy things, old holidays and bygone treats, to which Tom had taken them. At last Lucy laughed merrily at some childish memory. The sound went straight to Grantley's heart; a great tenderness came upon him. As he kissed them, his thoughts flew to his own little son—the child who had now begun to know love, to greet it and to ask for it. How these poor children prized even a decent kindness! Grantley seemed to himself to have done a fine day's work—as fine a day's work as he had ever done in his life—when he sent them off to bed with smiling lips and eyes relieved of dread.
"You won't go away to-night, will you?" Lucy whispered as she kissed him good-night.
"Of course he's not going!" cried little Vera, bravely confident in the strength of her helplessness.
"No, I'll stay all night—all the whole night," Grantley promised.
He made his camp in the library on the ground floor, and there presently Suzette Bligh came to see him. She gave a good account of the wounded child. Sophy slept; the capable cheery woman who had come as nurse gave her courage to sleep.
"We must get her away to the seaside as soon as possible, and she'll get all right, I think; though there must be a mark always. And of course the permanent question remains. Isn't it all hopeless, Mr. Imason?"
"It's a terrible business for you to be involved in."
"Oh, I can only thank heaven I was here! But for me I believe she'd have killed the child."
"What state is she in now?"
"I really don't know. She won't speak to me. She sits quite still, just staring at me. I try to stay with her, but it's too dreadful. I can't help hating her—and I think she knows it."
Grantley had some experience of coming to know what people felt about him.
"I expect she does," he nodded.
"What will happen, Mr. Imason?"
"I don't know—except that the children mustn't stay with her. Is she afraid of being prosecuted, do you think?"
"She hasn't said anything about it. No, she doesn't seem afraid; I don't think that's her feeling. But—but her eyes look awful. When I had to tell her that the doctor had forbidden her to come near the children, and said he would send the police into the house if she tried to go to them—well, I've never seen such an expression on any human face before. She looked like—like somebody in hell, Mr. Imason."
"Ah!" groaned Grantley with a jerk of his head, as though he turned from a fearful spectacle.
"I've just been with her. I persuaded her to go to bed—she's not slept since it happened, I know—and got her to let me help her to undress. Her maid won't go to her; she's too frightened. I hope she'll go to sleep, or really I think she'll lose her senses." She paused and then asked: "Will this make any difference in—in the proceedings?"
"Well, it gives Tom something to bargain with, doesn't it? But you can't tell with her. The ordinary motives may not appeal to her, any more than the natural feelings. I hope it may be possible to frighten her."
"Anyhow the children won't have to stay—you're sure of that?"
"We must try hard for that," said Grantley.
But Tom had made even that more difficult, because he had considered only his own quarrel, and, not thinking of the children, had run away to refuge with Mrs. Bolton, saving his own skin by treacherous flight.
Suzette bade Grantley good-night. She too must sleep, or her strength would fail.
"You'll keep the door open?" she asked. "And her room is just over this. You'll hear if she moves, though I don't think she will. It is good of you, Mr. Imason. We shall all sleep quietly to-night. Oh, but how tired you'll be!"
"Not I!" he smiled. "I've often sat up till daylight on less worthy occasions. You're the hero! You've come through this finely."
Suzette's cheeks flushed at his praise.
"I do love the poor children," she said, as Grantley pressed her hand.
He sat down to his vigil. The house became very still. Once or twice steps passed to and fro in the room above; then there was silence. In a quarter of an hour, perhaps, there were steps again; then another interval of quiet. This alternation of movement and rest went on for a long time. If Harriet Courtland slept, her sleep was broken. But presently Grantley ceased to mark the sound—ceased even to think of the Courtlands or of the house where he was. Led by the experiences of the day and by the feelings they had evoked, his thoughts took their way to Milldean, to his own home, to his wife and son. How nearly tragedy had come there too! Nay, was it yet gone? Was not its shadow still over the house? And why? He looked back again at the Courtlands—at Harriet's unhallowed rage, at Tom's weakness and desertion, at the fate of the children—not thought of and forgotten by the one, ill-used and put in terror by the other. He recollected how once they used to joke about the Courtlands' being at any rate useful as a warning. That joke had taken on too keen an edge to sound mirthful now. But the serious truth in it came home to him, making plain what he had been groping after ever since that night at the Sailors' Rest at Fairhaven, ever since Sibylla had opened her mouth against him and spoken the bitterness of her heart. Yes, he thought he saw where the truth lay now. Calamity held up a torch to light his wandering feet.
No borrowed light had made plain the steps of the woman upstairs. The glare of her own ruin had been needed to illuminate the way she trod, so dense was the turbid darkness of her spirit. She saw now where she stood—and there seemed no going back. She had fallen into fits of remorse before—she had called herself cursed over her betrayal of Christine: that was nothing to this; yet she remembered it now, and it went to swell the wave of despair which overwhelmed her. Well might her eyes look like the eyes of one in hell, for she was cut off from all love and sympathy. She herself had severed all those bonds whereby a human being becomes other than a roving solitary brute. There was no re-binding them. Nobody would come near her; nobody could endure her presence; she was a thing of hatred and of fear. Even Suzette Bligh shrank while she served, and loathed while she ministered. Her husband could not trust himself in the house with her, and she could not be trusted in the room with her children. By the narrowest luck she was not a murderess; in the hearts of all, and in her own heart, she seemed a leper—a leper among people who were whole—an unclean thing—because of her bestial rage.
These thoughts had been in her mind all the night before and all the day. They did not consort with sleep nor make terms with peaceful rest. Sometimes they drove her to wild and passionate outbursts of weeping and imprecation; oftener they chained her motionless to her chair, so still that only her angry eyes showed life and consciousness. They left little room for fear of any external punishment, or for shame at any public exposure. They went deeper than that, condemning not the body but the soul, pronouncing not the verdict of the world, but of herself and of nature's inexorable law. They displayed the procession of evil—weakness growing to vice, vice turning to crime, crime throttling all the good—till she had become a thing horrible to those about her, horrible and incredible even to herself. And there was no going back, no going back at all. Her will was broken, and she had no hope in herself. The weights were on her feet, and dragged her down the abyss which now lay open and revealed before her eyes.
Suzette had persuaded her to undress and go to bed. She must sleep—yes, or she would go mad with the thoughts. But where was sleep with the agony of their sting? She had her chloral—an old ally—and had recourse to it. Then she would fling herself on the bed and try to think she could sleep. Exasperation drove her up again, and she paced the room in wrathful despair, cursing herself because she could not sleep, battling against the remorseless thoughts, exclaiming against their tortures, refusing the inquisition to which they subjected her. Then—back to bed again for another futile effort, another cry of despair, to be followed by another outburst of wild impatience, another fierce unavailing struggle against her tormentors, new visions of what she was and of what her life must be.
This was not a thing that she would endure; nobody could endure it and keep sanity. It should be ended! Her fierce defiant fury rose yet once more; the temper which had wrought all the calamity was not tamed by it in the end. She turned to her drug again. She knew there was danger in that, but she put the notion behind her scornfully. Why, the stuff would not even make her sleep! Could it hurt her when it could not even give her sleep? That was nonsense, stupid nonsense. She would have sleep! Nature fell victim to her rage now; she would beat nature down by her fury, as she had been wont to beat down all opposing wills. She had listened to nothing in her tempests. Now she rose again to the whirlwind of passion, denying what she knew, refusing to look at it. Kill herself? Not she! Yet if she did, what matter? Had she anything to look for in life? Would anybody grieve for her? It would be a riddance for all of them if she died. But she wouldn't die. No danger of that—and no such luck either! Each dose left her more pitiably wide-awake, more gruesomely alert in mind, more hideously acute to feel the sting of those torturing thoughts. An over-dose indeed! No dose, it seemed, could serve even to dull the sharpness of her mordant reflections. But she would have sleep—at all costs, sleep! She cursed herself vilely because she could not sleep.
Thus came, as of old, now for the last time, the madness and blindness of her rage, the rage which forgot all save itself, merged every other consciousness, spared nobody and nothing. It was turned against herself now, and neither did it spare herself. She drugged herself again, losing all measure, and then flung herself heavily on the bed. Ah! Yes, surely there was a change now? The horrid pictures grew mercifully dim, the sting of the torturing thoughts was drawn, the edge of conscience blunted. Her rage had had its way, it had beaten down nature. For a moment she grasped this triumph, and exulted in it in her old barbarous gloating over the victories of her fury. All things had been against her sleep. But now it came; she had won it. She ceased to move, to curse, even to think. The blessed torpor stole over her. Her life and what it must be passed from her mind; a compassionate blankness spread over her intellect. She was at peace! To-morrow—yes, to-morrow! All things could wait now till to-morrow. She would be better able to face them to-morrow—after a good night's sleep. Who had dared to say she could not sleep? Her eyes closed, and her heavy breathing sounded through the room. She stirred no more. Her rage had its way with her, as with all others. It had demanded sleep. She slept.
Dawn had broken when a hand laid on his shoulder roused Grantley Imason from an uneasy doze. He found Suzette by him in her dressing-gown and barefooted. Instinctively he listened for an instant to hear if there were any sound from the room above. There was none, and he asked her:
"Is anything wrong?"
"Yes," whispered Suzette, "Come upstairs!"
Not knowing what the evil chance might be, he followed her, and she led him into Harriet Courtland's room. She had already opened one of the shutters, and the early light streamed in on to the bed. Harriet lay on her side, with her head thrown back on the pillow and her eyes turned up to the ceiling. She lay above the clothes of the bed, and her nightgown was torn away from her throat. Suzette had thrown a dressing-gown over her body from breast to feet. She looked wonderfully handsome as she lay there, so still, so peaceful, like some splendid animal in a reaction of exhaustion after savage grand exertion. He drew near. The truth came home to him at once. The two stood and looked at Harriet. At last he turned to Suzette. He found her very pale, but quite calm.
"She's dead, Mr. Imason," Suzette said.
"How?" he asked.
"An over-dose of chloral. She often used to take it—and of course she would be very likely to want a sleeping-draught last night."
"Yes, yes, of course she would. Her nerves would be so much upset."
Their eyes met—Suzette's seemed puzzled.
"What do you think?" asked Grantley in a whisper.
"I really don't know. She would really have been quite likely to take too much. She would be impatient if it didn't act quickly, you know."
"Yes, yes, of course she would. Have you sent for a doctor?"
"Oh, yes, directly I found her—before I came to you. But I've done some nursing, and—and there's not the least——" She stopped suddenly, and was silent for several seconds. Then she said quietly and calmly: "There's not the least chance, Mr. Imason."
Grantley knew what word she had rejected in favour of "chance," and why the word had seemed inappropriate. He acknowledged the justice of the change with a mournful gesture of his hands.
"Well, we can never know whether it was accidental or not," he said, as he turned to leave the room.
"No, we can never know that," said Suzette.
How should they know? Harriet Courtland had not known herself. As always, so to the end, her fury had been blind, and had destroyed her blindly.
She had struck at herself as recklessly as at her child; and here her blow had killed. Her rage had run its final course, and for the last time had its way. She slept.
And while she slept, her home was waking to the life of a new day.
The calamity at the Courtlands' struck on all their acquaintance like a nip of icy wind, sending a shudder through them, making them, as it were, huddle closer about them the protecting vesture of any hope or any happiness that they had. The outrage on the child stood out horrible in the light of the mother's death: the death of the mother found an appalling explanation in the child's plight. Whether the death were by a witting or an unwitting act seemed a small matter; darkness and blindness had fallen on the unhappy woman before the last hours, and somehow in the darkness she had passed away. There was not lacking the last high touch of tragedy; the catastrophe which shocked and awed was welcome too. It was the best thing that could have happened. Any end was better than no end. To such a point of hopelessness had matters come, in such a fashion Harriet Courtland had used her life. The men and women who had known her, her kindred, her friends, and her household, all whom nature had designed to love her, while they shuddered over the manner of her going, sighed with relief that she was gone. The decree of fate had filled the page, and it was finished; but their minds still tingled from it as they turned to the clean sheet and prayed a kinder message.
Grantley Imason, so closely brought in contact with the drama, almost an eye-witness of it, was deeply moved, stirred to fresh feelings, and quickened to a new vision. The devastation Harriet had wrought, Tom's cowardly desertion, the pitiable plight of the children, grouped themselves together and took on, as another of their company, the heightened and freshened impression of stale sentimentality, and a self-delusion trivial to vulgarity, which he had carried away from his encounter with Walter Blake. To all this there seemed one clue; through it all one thread ran. He felt this in the recesses of his mind, and his fingers groped after the guiding-line. That must be found, lest, treading blindly through the labyrinth, he and his too should fall into the pit whence there was no upward way. They had been half over the brink once: a preternatural effort—so it might properly be called—had pulled them back; but they were still on the treacherous incline.
Out of his sombre and puzzled reflections there sprang—suddenly as it seemed, and in answer to his cry for guidance—an enlightening pity—pity for his boy, lest he too should bear on his brow the scar of hatred, almost as plain to see as the visible mark which was to stamp little Sophy's for evermore—and pity for Sibylla, because her empty heart had opened to so poor a tenant: in very hunger she had turned to Blake. He no longer rejected the hope of communion with the immature infantile mind of his son; he ceased to laugh scornfully at a love dedicated to such a man as Walter Blake. A new sympathy with his boy—even such as he had felt for Tom Courtland's little girls—spurred him to fresh efforts to understand. Contempt for his wife's impulsive affections gave way to compassion as his mind dwelt, not on what she had done, but on what had driven her to do it—as he threw back his thoughts from the unworthy satisfaction her heart had sought to the straits of starvation which had made any satisfaction seem so good. This was to look in the end at himself, and to the task of studying himself he was now thrust back. If he could not do that, and do it to a purpose, desolation and pitiableness such as he had witnessed and shuddered at stood designated as the unalterable future of his own home.
Then, at last, he was impatient; his slow persevering campaign was too irksome, and success delayed seemed to spell failure. The time comes when no man can work. The darkness might fall on his task still unperformed. He became afraid, and therefore impatient. He could not wait for Sibylla to come to him. He must meet her—in something more than civility, in something more than a formal concession of her demands, more than an acquiescence which had been not untouched by irony and by the wish to put her in the wrong. He must forget his claims and think of his needs. His needs came home to him now; his claims could wait. And as his needs cried out, there dawned in him a glow of anticipation. What would it not mean if the needs could be satisfied?
He stayed in London for Harriet Courtland's funeral, and in the evening went down to Milldean, a sharper edge given to his thoughts by the sight of Tom and the two little girls (Sophy could not come) following Harriet's coffin to the grave. Christine Fanshaw was in the carriage which met him at the station, and was his companion on the homeward drive. The Courtland calamity had touched her deeply too, but touched her to bitterness—if, indeed, her outward bearing could be taken as a true index of her mind. She bore herself aggressively towards fate and its lessons; an increased acidity of manner condemned the follies of her friends; she dropped no tears over their punishment. Still there was very likely something else beneath; she had not heard from John since she came down to Milldean.
"How have you all been getting on?" Grantley asked, as he took the reins and settled himself beside her.
"We've done excellently since you went away. Of course we've been upset about this horrible business, but——"
"Otherwise you've done very well?" he smiled.
"Oh, yes, very!"
"Since I went away?"
"Yes, since you went away," Christine repeated.
"Perhaps it's not a very good thing for me to come back?"
"We can hardly banish you from your own house."
The concession was grudging. Grantley laughed, and the tone of his laugh brought her eyes sharply round to his face.
"You seem very cheerful," she remarked with an accusing air.
"No, I'm not that exactly; but I've got an idea—and that brightens one up a bit, you know."
"Any change does that," Christine admitted waspishly.
"I saw John for a minute. He looked a bit worried. Does he complain?"
"He hasn't complained to me."
"Oh, then it's all right, I suppose. And he says the business is all right, anyhow. How's the boy?"
"As merry and jolly as he can be."
"And Sibylla?"
"Yes, Sibylla too, as merry as possible."
"They both have been, you mean?"
"Yes, of course I do."
"While I've been away?"
"Yes, while you've been away."
Grantley laughed again. Christine looked at him in dawning wonder. She had expected nothing from this drive but a gloom deepening—or at least a constraint increasing—with every yard they came nearer to Milldean. But there was something new. With some regret she recognised that her acidity, her harping on "Since you went away," had not been the best prelude to questioning or much of an invitation to confidence; and it had, moreover, failed in its primary purpose of annoying Grantley by its implied comment on his conduct. Her voice grew softer, and, with one of her coaxing little tricks, she edged herself closer to his side.
"Any good news among all the bad, Grantley?"
"There's no good news yet," said he.
She caught at his last word.
"Yet? Yet, Grantley?"
"I'm not going to talk any more. That off-horse is a young 'un, and——"
"It's something to have a 'yet' in life again," she half whispered. "'Yet' seems to imply a future—a change, perhaps!"
"Do you want a change too?"
"Oh, come, you're not so dull as to have to ask that!"
"You've told me nothing."
"And I won't. But I'll ask you one question—if you'll leave it at that."
"Well, what's the question?"
"Did John send his love to me?"
Grantley looked at her a moment, and smiled in deprecation.
"It would have been tactful to invent the message," smiled Christine.
"I'm getting a bit out of heart with tact, Christine."
"Quite so, my dear man. And get out of patience with some other things too, if you can. Your patience would try Job—and not only from jealousy either."
Grantley's only answer was a reflective smile.
"And what about Tom Courtland?" she went on. "Is he with the children?"
"No, he's living at the club."
"Hum! At the club officially?"
"You're malicious—and you outrage proper feeling. At the club really, Christine. He feels a bit lost, I fancy. I think it rather depends on somebody else now. He's a weak chap, poor old Tom."
"You're full of discoveries about people to-day. Any other news?"
"No, none."
"But, you see, I've heard from Janet Selford!"
"Will you consider my remarks about your remarks as repeated—with more emphasis?"
"Oh, yes, I will! You're talking more as you used to before you were married."
"That's a compliment? I expect so—coming from a woman. Christine, have you read Sibylla Janet Selford's letter?"
"Parts of it."
"I wish you hadn't. I didn't want her to know. I saw the fellow there—with Anna."
"Anna's a very clever girl. She does me great credit."
"I should wait a bit to claim it, if I were you. I'm sorry you told Sibylla."
"If you're going to be generous as well as patient, there's an end of any chance of your turning human, Grantley."
"You're quite good company to-day."
"I'm always ready to be; but one can't manage it without some help."
"Which you haven't found in my house?"
"Yes, I have—since you went away."
But she said it this time in a different way, with a hint, perhaps an appeal, in her upturned eyes, and the slightest touch of her hand on his sleeve—almost like the delicate soft pat of a kitten's paw, as quick, as timid, and as venturous. Grantley turned his head to look at her. Her eyes were bright and eager.
"We've actually begun to be pleasant," he said, smiling.
"Yes, almost to enjoy ourselves. Wonderful! But we're not at the house yet!"
"Not quite!" he said.
His face set again in firm lines.
"You'd so much better not look so serious about it. That's as bad as your old County Council!"
"Are you quite sure you understand the case?"
"Meaning the woman? Oh, no! She's difficult. But I understand that, when one thing's failed utterly, you don't risk much by trying another."
They came to the top of the hill which runs down to Milldean. Christine sighed.
"Poor old Harriet! She was a jolly girl once, you know, and so handsome! I've had some good times with Harriet. Do you think she's at peace, Grantley?"
"She has paid," said he. "She has paid for what she was and did. I hope she's at peace."
Christine's eyes grew dreamy; her voice fell to a gentle murmur.
"I wonder if it's quite silly to fancy that she's paid something for some of us too, Grantley? I was thinking something like that—somehow—when I said, 'Poor old Harriet!'"
"I daresay it's silly, but I don't know that it seems so to me," he answered.
Just once again he felt the tiny velvety touch. So they came to Milldean.
The twofold pity which had roused Grantley from a lethargy of feeling, misconceived as self-control, had its counterpart in the triple blow with which the course of events assailed Sibylla's estimate of herself. In the first place, the news about young Blake announced in Janet Selford's letter—indirectly indeed, but yet with a confident satisfaction—made her ask whether her great sacrifice had been offered at a worthy shrine, and her great offering received with more than a shallow and transitory appreciation. In the second, the thought and image of the Courtland children spoke loud to the instinct which her ideas had lulled to sleep, bitterly accusing her desertion of the child and her indifference to his fate, rousing her ever underlying remorse to quick and vengeful life. Lastly, she was stirred to see and recognise the significance of the third turn of fate—the meaning of the nemesis which had fallen on Harriet Courtland: how she had let her rage spare nothing, neither self-respect, nor decency, nor love; and how, in the end, thus enthroned in tyranny, it had not spared herself. The three accusations, each with its special import, each taking up a distinct aspect of the truth, and enforcing it with a poignant example, joined their indictments into one, and, thus united, cried out their condemnation of her, taking for their mouthpiece Christine Fanshaw's pretty lips, using her daintily scornful voice, and the trenchant uncompromising words from which the utterer herself had afterwards recoiled as too coarse and crude to be a legitimate weapon of attack. The logic of events was not so squeamish; it does not deal in glosses or in paraphrase; it is blunt, naked, and merciless, and must be, since only when all other appeals and warnings have failed does its appointed work begin. It fastened with what almost seemed malicious glee on Christine's biting word, and enforced it by a pitiless vividness of memory, an unceasing echo in Sibylla's thoughts. Her emotions had gone "sprawling" over everything. The description did not need elaboration. It was abominably expressive and sufficient. And it did not admit of pleading or of extenuation. It showed her touching, on one extreme, Blake's shallow and spurious sentiment; on the other, Harriet Courtland's licence of anger. It pointed her attention to the ruin of Tom's life, to the piteous plight of his children, to Harriet's fate, to Blake's facile forgetfulness of love too heedlessly and wantonly offered. It stripped her fantastic ideas of their garish finery, leaving them, in the revulsion of her feelings, bereft of all beauty and attractiveness. Impelled to look back, she seemed to find the same trail over everything—even in those childish days of which Jeremy Chiddingfold had once given a description that would not have reassured her; even in the beginning of her acquaintance with Grantley, in the ready rapture of her first love, in the intoxication of the fairy ride. Changing its form, now hostile to her husband instead of with him, the same temper showed in all the events which led up to the birth of little Frank: its presence proved that her madness over Blake was no isolated incident, but rather the crown of her development and the truest interpreter of a character empty of worth, strength, or stability. Many bitter hours brought her to this recognition; but when light came, the very temper which she condemned was in her still, and turned the coolness of recognition and analysis into an extravagant heat of scorn and self-contempt.
What was the conclusion? Was she to throw herself at Grantley's feet, proclaiming penitence, imploring pardon, declaring love? "No, no!" she cried. That would be so easy, so short a cut, so satisfying to her roused feelings. She put the notion from her in horror; it was the suggestion of her old devil in a new disguise. Her love for Grantley had bitten too deep into her nature to be treated like that, with that levity and frivolity of easy impulse, that violence of headstrong emotion, those tempests of feeling so remote from true sincerity of heart. The cure did not lie in pampering sick emotions into a plump semblance of healthy life. Where did it lie, if it were possible at all? It must lie in the most difficult of all tasks—a change not of other people or of their bearing and feelings towards her, but a change of herself and of her own attitude towards others and towards the world, and in her judgment and her ruling of herself. If things were to go differently with her, she must be different. The arrogance of her nature must be abated, the extravagant claims she had made must be lowered. The thought struck on her almost with despair. So hard seemed the lesson, so rough the path. And it seemed a path which must be trodden alone. It was not as the easy pleasant road of emotion, beguiled by enchanting companionship, strewn with the flowers of fancy, carpeted with pleasure. This way was hard, bleak, and solitary. Merely to contemplate it chilled her. Even that happiness with her child, which had so struck Christine and afforded matter for one of those keen thrusts at Grantley Imason, appeared to her in a suspicious guise. She could not prevent it nor forgo it—nature was too strong; but she yielded to it with qualms of conscience, and its innocent delights were spoilt by the voice of self-accusation and distrust. Could it be real, genuine, true in the woman who had deserted the child and been indifferent to his fate?
Both penitents, both roused to self-examination, Grantley Imason and his wife seemed to have exchanged parts. Each suffered an inversion, if not of character, yet of present mood. Each sought and desired something of what had appeared to deserve reprobation when displayed by the other. Their own propensities and ideals, carried to an extreme, had threatened ruin; they erected the opposite temper of mind into a standard, and thereto sought to conform their conduct at the cost of violence to themselves. It seemed strange, yet it was the natural effect of the fates and the temperaments which they had seen worked out and displayed before their eyes, in such close touch with them, impinging so sharply on their own destinies.
Sibylla had not been at home when Grantley arrived. She met him first in the nursery, when she went to see little Frank at his tea. No mood, be it what it would, could make Grantley a riotous romping companion for a tiny child: that effort was beyond him. But to-day he played with his son with a new sympathy; talked to him with a pleasant gravity which stirred the young and curious mind; listened to his broken utterances with a kindly quizzical smile which seemed to encourage the little fellow. Grantley had never before found so much answering intelligence. He forgot the quick development which even a few weeks bring at such a time of life. He set all the difference down to the fact that never before had he looked for what he now found so ready and so obvious. Anything he did not find for himself the nurse was eager to point out, and with the aid of this enthusiastic signpost Grantley discovered the road to understanding very readily. He and the boy were, without doubt, enjoying one another's society when Sibylla came in.
She stood in the doorway, waiting with an aching heart for the usual thing, for a withdrawal of even such sign of interest as Grantley had ever shown in old days. It did not come. He gave her a cheery recognition, and went on playing with Frank. Irresistibly drawn, she came near to them. Something was signalled in Frank's struggling speech and impatiently waving arms. Grantley could not follow, and now turned his eyes to Sibylla, asking for an explanation. The nurse had gone into the other room, busied about the preparations for the meal. Sibylla took Frank in her arms.
"I know what he means," she said proudly.
Her eyes met Grantley's. His were fixed very intently on her.
"I don't," he said. "Is it possible for a man to learn these mysteries?"
His tone and words were light; they were even mocking, but not now with the mockery which hurts.
She flushed a little.
"You'd like to learn?" she asked. "Shall we try to teach him, Frank—to teach him your code?"
"I'll watch you with him."
For a moment she looked at him appealingly, and then knelt on the floor and arranged the toys as Frank had wanted them. The little fellow laughed in triumph.
"How did you know?" asked Grantley.
"I've not lost that knowledge—no, I haven't," she answered almost in a whisper.
The scene was a spur to his newly stirred impulses. He had rejoiced in his wife before now; but the clouds had always hung about the cot, so that he had not rejoiced nor gloried in the mother of his child. His heart was full as he sat and watched the mother and the child.
"You've got to watch him very carefully still; but he's getting ever so much more—more——"
"Lucid?" Grantley suggested, smiling.
"Yes," she laughed, "and, if possible, more imperious still. I believe he's going to be like you in that."
"Oh, not like me, let's hope!"
He laughed, but there was a look of pain on his face.
Sibylla turned round to him and spoke in a low voice, lest by chance the nurse should hear.
"You mustn't be sure I agree altogether with that," she said, and turned swiftly away to the child again.
Grantley rose.
"Lift him up to me and let me kiss him," he said.
With grave eyes Sibylla obeyed.
But the natural man is not easily subdued, nor does he yield his place readily. In the end Grantley was not apt at explanations or apologies. The evening fell fair and still, a fine October night, and he joined Sibylla in the garden. Christine remained inside—from tact perhaps, though she was very likely chilly too. Grantley smoked in silence, while Sibylla looked down on the little village below.
"This thing has shaken me up dreadfully," he said at last. "The Courtlands, I mean."
"Yes, I know." She turned and faced him. "And isn't there something else that concerns you and me?"
"I know of nothing. And you can hardly say the Courtlands concern us exactly."
"They do; and there is something else, Grantley. I know what Janet Selford wrote."
"That's nothing at all to me."
"But it is something to me. You know it is."
"I won't talk of that. It's nothing." He put his hand out suddenly to her. "Let's be friends, Sibylla."
She did not take his hand, but she looked at him with a friendly gaze.
"We really ought to try to manage that, oughtn't we? For Frank's sake, if for nothing else. Or do you think I've no right to talk about Frank?"
"Suppose we don't talk about rights at all? I'm not anxious to."
"It'll be hard; but we'll try to be friends for his sake—that he may have a happy home."
Grantley's heart was stirred within him.
"That's good; but is that all?" he asked in a low voice full of feeling. "Is it all over for ourselves? Can't we be friends for our own sakes?"
"Haven't we lost—well, not the right—if you don't like that—but the power?"
"I'm an obstinate man; you know that very well."
"It'll be hard—for both of us; but, yes, we'll try."
She gave him her hand to bind the bargain; he gripped it with an intensity that surprised and alarmed her. She could see his eyes through the gloom. Were they asking friendship only? There was more than that in his heart and in his eyes—a thing never dead in him. It had sprung to fresh vigour now, from the lessons of calamity, from the pity born in him, from the new eyes with which he had looked on the boy in his mother's arms. She could not miss the expression of it.
"Is that the best we can try for?" he whispered. "There was something else once, Sibylla."
He had not moved, yet she raised her hands as though to check or beat off his approach. She was afraid. All that the path he again beckoned her on had meant to her came to her mind. If she followed him along it, would it not be once more to woo disillusion, to court disaster, to invite that awful change to bitterness and hatred?
"You are you, and I am I," she protested. "It—it is impossible, Grantley."
His face assumed its old obstinate squareness as he heard her.
"I don't want that," she murmured. "I'll try to be friends. We can understand one another as friends, make allowances, give and forgive. Friendship's charitable. Let's be friends, Grantley."
"You have no love left for me?" he asked, passing by her protests.
"For months past I've hated you."
"I know that. And you have no love left for me?"
She looked at him again, with fear and shrinking in her eyes.
"Have you forgotten what I did? No, you can't have forgotten! How can you wish me to love you now? It would be horrible for both of us. You may forgive me, as I do you—what I may have to forgive; but how can we be lovers again? How can we—with that in the past?"
"The past is the past," he said calmly.
She walked away from him a little. When she came back in a minute or so, he saw that she was in strong agitation.
"That's enough to-night—enough for all time, if you so wish," he said gently. "Only I had to tell you what was in my heart."
"How could you, Grantley?"
"I haven't said it was easy. I'm coming to believe that the easy things aren't worth much."
"You could love me again?"
"I've never ceased to love you—only I hope I know a bit more about how to do it now."
She stood there the picture of distress and of fear. At last she broke out:
"Ah, I've not told you the real thing! I'm afraid Grantley, I'm afraid! I dare not love you. Because I loved you so beyond all reason and all—all sanity, all this came upon us. And—and I daren't love you again now, even if I could. Yes, I ought to have learnt something too; perhaps I have. But I daren't trust myself with my knowledge." She came a step nearer to him, holding out her hands beseechingly. "Friends, friends, Grantley!" she implored. "Then we shall be safe. And our love shall be for Frank. You'll get to love Frank, won't you?"
"Frank and I are beginning to hit it off capitally," said Grantley cheerfully. "Well, I shall go in now: we mustn't leave Christine alone all the evening." He took her hand and kissed it. "So we're friends?" he asked.
"I'll try," she faltered. "Yes, surely we can manage that!"
He turned away and left her again gazing down on the village and Old Mill House. He lounged into the drawing-room where Christine sat, with an easy air and a smile on his face.
"A beautiful evening, isn't it?" asked Christine with a tiny shudder, as she hitched her chair closer to the bit of bright fire and threw a faintly protesting glance at the open window.
"Beautiful weather—and quite settled. I shall enjoy my holiday down here."
"Oh, you're going to stay down here, and going to have a holiday, are you?" she asked with a lift of her brows.
"Well, hardly a holiday, after all. I've got a job to do," he answered as he lit his cigarette—"rather a hard job at my time of life."
"Is it? What is the job?"
"I'm going courting again—and a very pretty woman too," he said.
A rather tremulous smile came on Christine's face as she looked at him.
"It's rather a nice amusement, isn't it?" she asked. "And you always had plenty of self-conceit."
"Why, hang it, I thought it was just the opposite this time!" exclaimed Grantley in whimsical annoyance.
Christine laughed.
"I won't be unamiable. I'll call it self-confidence, if you insist."
He took a moment to think over her new word.
"Yes, in the end I suppose it does come to that. Look here, Christine; I wish the people who tell you you ought to change your nature would be obliging enough to tell you how to do it."
Christine's answer might be considered encouraging.
"After all there's no need to overdo the change," she said. "And there's one thing in which you'll never change: you'll always want the best there is."
"No harm in having a try for it—as soon as you really see what it is," he answered, as he strolled off to the smoking-room.
Mrs. Bolton was very much upset by what had happened at the Courtlands'. An unwonted and irksome sense of responsibility oppressed her. She discussed the matter with Miss Henderson and made Caylesham come to see her—Miss Pattie Henderson, who knew all about how Sophy's letter had reached her mother's hands; and Caylesham, whom Mrs. Bolton had made a party to the joke. It did not seem so good a joke now. She and Pattie were both frightened when they saw to what their pleasantry had led. Little Sophy's suffering was not pleasant to think of, and there was an uncomfortable uncertainty about the manner of Harriet's death. A scheme may prove too successful sometimes. Caylesham had warned Mrs. Bolton that she was playing with dangerous tools. He was not now inclined to let her down too easily, nor to put the kindest interpretation on the searchings of her conscience.
"You always time your fits of morality so well," he observed cynically. "I don't suppose poor old Tom's amusing company just now, and he's certainly deuced hard up."
Mrs. Bolton looked a very plausible picture of injured innocence, but of course there was something in what Frank Caylesham said; there generally was, though it might not be what you would be best pleased to find. Tom was not lively nor inclined for gaiety, and he had just made a composition with his creditors. On the other hand, Miss Henderson was in funds (having completed her negotiations with the Parmenter family), and had suggested a winter on the Riviera, with herself for hostess. There are, fortunately, moments when the good and the pleasant coincide; the worst of it is that such happy harmonies are apt to come rather late in the day.
"It's all different now that woman's gone," observed Mrs. Bolton. "It's the children now, Frank."
"Supposing it is, why am I to be dragged into it?"
"We must get him to go back to them."
Various feelings combined to make Mrs. Bolton very earnest.
"He wants to stay here, does he?"
"No, he hates being here now. Yes, he does. He only comes because he's got nobody else to speak to. And he's in awful dumps all the time. It's not very cheerful for me."
"I daresay not, Flora. But why doesn't he go back then?"
Mrs. Bolton had been moving about the room restlessly. Her back was to Caylesham as she answered:
"He won't. He says he can't. He says——"
Caylesham threw a glance at her, his brows raised.
"What does he say, Flora?"
"Oh, it's nonsense—and he needn't say it to me, anyhow. It really isn't particularly pleasant for me. Oh, well, then, he says he's not fit to go near them." She turned round to him; there was a flush on her face. "Such nonsense!" she ended impatiently.
Caylesham pulled his moustache, and smiled reflectively.
"I suppose it might take him like that," he observed, with an impartial air.
"Oh, I know you're only laughing at me! But I tell you, I don't like it, Frank."
"These little incidents are—well, incidental, Flora. Innocent children, you know! And I shouldn't be surprised if he even made excuses for Harriet now?"
"No, he doesn't do that. It's the children. Stop smiling like that, will you?"
"Certainly, my dear Flora. My smile was a pure oversight."
"It was all I could do to get him to go to the funeral. Do you think she killed herself, Frank?"
"I've not the least intention of examining the question. What can it matter?"
Mrs. Bolton shrugged her shoulders impatiently. It did seem to her to matter, but she would not let Caylesham think that it mattered much. She returned to her point about the children.
"He's miserable thinking about them, and yet he won't go near them. I call it idiotic."
"So do I. But then they aren't our children."
"Well, I'm not going to stand his saying it again and again to me."
"I really agree. There can't be any reason for saying such a thing more than once."
She broke into a vexed laugh.
"When you've had all the fun you can get out of me, perhaps you'll begin to help me. You see, I want it settled. I want to be off to Monte with Pattie."
"I see. You want to go with Pattie and——?"
Mrs. Bolton shook her head.
"Just you and Pattie?"
"She's going to stand it to me: I haven't got a farthing. And, I say, Frank, he ought to go back to those poor little wretches now. You can make him do it if you like, you know."
"I? Well, I'm an odd sort of party for such a job."
"Not a bit. He'll listen to you just because—well, because——"
"I haven't spared your feelings, Flora, don't mind mine."
"Because he knows you don't talk humbug or cant."
"You're being complimentary after all—or at any rate you're meaning to be. And you'd never see him again?"
"He'll never want to see me." She was facing Caylesham now. "I've been fond of poor old Tom. Come, you know I have? Say that for me."
"Yes, I know you have. I've reproved you for it myself."
"But he'll not want to see me—and soon I shan't want to see him either."
She looked a little distressed for a minute, then shrugged her shoulders with a laugh.
"That's the way of the world."
"Of part of it," Caylesham murmured as he lit a cigar.
But he was really sorry for Mrs. Bolton. Notwithstanding a notable mixture of motives, in which the condition of her purse and the opportunity of going to the Riviera figured largely, she was grieved at the way in which her friendship with Tom was ending—grieved that it must end, and hurt that Tom should desire to have it ended. She had always suffered from this unfortunate tendency to kindly emotions which the exigencies of her position did not permit her to indulge. Indeed it was very likely the kindly emotions which had originally produced the position. That did not make the matter any better; the ultimate incongruity was none the less undesirable. With his indifference to accepted codes, Caylesham thought it rather lamentable too. Still she did want, above all things, to go to the Riviera with Pattie Henderson. One must compromise with life, and it was not clear that she was getting the worst of the bargain.
With Flora Bolton set aside (and of course she had no reasonable title to consideration), the case seemed a simple one to Caylesham, and his mission an obvious utterance of common sense. He could not enter fully into Tom Courtland's mind. Tom was not naturally a lawless man; desperation had made him break loose. The bygone desperation was forgotten now in pity for his children and for the woman whom, after all, he had once loved; and he looked with shame on the thing he had done, attributing to it all the results which Harriet's fury had engrafted on it. Broken in fortune and in career, broken too in self-respect, he had been likely to drift on in a life which he had come to abhor. He felt his presence an outrage on his children. If the death of his wife had seemed to save him from a due punishment, here was a penalty different, but hardly less severe. While he was in this mood Caylesham was the best man to carry the message to him. The only chance with Tom was to treat what he had done as natural, but to insist that the sequence of events was utterly unexpected and essentially unconnected with it. To urge the gravity of his offence would have been to make reparation and atonement impossible. Caylesham took a very strong and simple line. He declined to discuss the state of Tom's conscience, or the blackness of Tom's mind, or even the whiteness of the minds of the children. Everybody was very much alike, or would be in a few years anyhow, and Tom was not to be an ass. The line of argument was not exalted, but it was adapted to the needs of the case.
"My dear chap, if you come to that, what man is fit to look his children in the face?" he asked impatiently.
But then it occurred to him that he was idealising—a thing he hated.
"Not that children aren't often wicked little beggars themselves," he added cheerfully. "They steal and lie like anything, and torment one another devilishly. I know I did things as a boy that I'd kick any grown man for doing, and so did my brothers and sisters. I tell you what it is, Tom, the devil's there all the time; he shows himself in different ways—that's all."
Tom could not swallow this gospel; he would give up neither his own iniquity nor the halo of purity to which his mind clung amid the sordid ruin of his life and home.
"If I could pull straight——" he murmured despairingly.
"Why shouldn't you? You're getting on in life, you know, after all."
"They—they guess something about it, I expect, Frank. It's not pleasant for a man to be ashamed before his own children. And Miss Bligh—I thought she looked at me very queerly at the funeral."
"You'll find they'll be as nice as possible to you. The children won't understand anything, and Suzette's sure to be on your side. Women always are, you know. They're not naturally moral—we've imposed it on them, and they always like to get an excuse for approving of the other thing."
Tom grew savage.
"I know what I've done, but anyhow I'm glad I don't think as you do."
"Never mind my thoughts, old chap. You go home to your kids," said Caylesham cheerfully.
He was very good-humoured over the matter; neither all the unnecessary fuss nor Tom's aspersions on his own character and views disturbed him in the least; and he did not leave Tom until he had obtained the assurance that he desired. This given, he went off to his club, thanking heaven that he was quit of a very tiresome business. If he did his bad deeds without misgiving, he did his good without arrogance; perhaps they were not numerous enough to give that feeling a plausible excuse for emergence.
"It's all right," he wrote to Mrs. Bolton in reporting his success. "I made him promise not to be an ass. So you can go off with Pattie with a mind free of care. Good luck to you, and lots of plunder!"
The immoral friendliness of this wish for her success quite touched Mrs. Bolton.
"Frank's a really good-hearted fellow," she told Miss Henderson as she settled herself in the train and started on her journey, the fortunes of which it is not necessary to follow.
For days Lucy and little Vera had crept fearfully through the silent house, knowing that a dreadful thing had happened, not allowed to put questions, and hardly daring to speculate about it between themselves. When Sophy began to be about again, pale and shaken, with the bandage still round her head, she took the lead as she was wont to do, and her bolder mind fastened on the change in the situation. There was no need to be afraid any more; that was the great fact which came home to her, and which she proclaimed to her sisters. It might be proper to move quietly and talk low for a little while, but it was a tribute to what was becoming, not a sign of terror or a precaution against danger. It was Sophy too who ventured to question Suzette, and to elicit instructions as to their future conduct. They were to think very kindly of mamma and love her memory, said Suzette, but they were not to talk about her to papa when he came back, because that would distress him. And they were not to ask him why he had gone away, or where he had been. Of course he had had business; and, anyhow, little girls ought not to be inquisitive. A question remained in Sophy's mind, and was even canvassed in private schoolroom consultations. What about that portentous word which had been whispered through the household—what about the divorce? None of them found courage to ask that, or perhaps they had pity on poor Suzette Bligh, who was so terribly uncomfortable under their questioning. At any rate nothing more was heard about the divorce. Since it had appeared to mean that papa was to go away, and since he was coming back now, presumably it had been put on the shelf somehow. All the same, their sharp instincts told them that their father would not have come back unless their mother had died, and that he was coming back now—well, in a sort of disgrace; that was how they put it in their thoughts.
A committee consisting of Kate Raymore, Janet Selford, and John Fanshaw (a trustee under the Courtland marriage settlement, and so possessing a status), had sat to consider Suzette Bligh's position. Suzette loved the children, and it would be sad if she had to leave them; moreover she was homeless, and a fixed salary would be welcome to her. Lastly—and on this point Janet Selford laid stress—she was not exactly a girl; she was just on thirty. John nodded agreement, adding that nobody outside of an asylum could connect scandal with the name of Suzette Bligh. So it was decided that she should stay, for the present at all events, in the capacity of companion or governess. The children wondered to find Suzette so gently radiant and affectionate one evening. She had not told them of the doubt which had arisen, nor how great a thing it was to her to stay. They had never doubted that she would stay with them now.
It was late one afternoon when Tom Courtland slunk home. He had sent no word of his coming, because he did not know till the last minute whether he would have courage to come. Then he had made the plunge, given up his room at the club, packed his luggage, and left it to be called for. But the plunge was very difficult to him—so that his weak will would not have faced it unless that other door at Mrs. Bolton's had been firmly shut in his face. He was uncomfortable before the man who let him in; he was wretchedly apprehensive of Suzette Bligh and of the children. He needed—very badly needed—Caylesham at his elbow again, to tell him "not to be an ass." But Caylesham had gone back to employments more congenial than he ever professed to find works of benevolence. Tom had to endure alone, and he could find no comfort. Against Harriet he could have made a case—a very good case in the judgment of half the world. But he seemed to have no excuse to offer to the little girls, nor any plea to meet the wondering disapprobation of Suzette Bligh.
He was told that the children were in the schoolroom with Suzette, and thither he bent his steps, going slowly and indecisively. He stopped outside the door and listened. He could hear Suzette's mild voice; apparently she was reading to them, for nothing except the continuous flow of her words was audible, and in conversation she was not so loquacious as that. Well, he must go in; perhaps it would be all right when once the ice was broken. He opened the door and stood on the threshold, blushing like a schoolboy.
"Well, my dears, here I am," he said. "I've come home."
He caught Suzette's eye. She was blushing too, blushing a very vivid pink—rather a foolish pink somehow. He felt that both he and Suzette were looking very silly. For quite a long time, as it seemed, he looked at Suzette before he looked at the little girls. After that there was, or seemed to be, another long silence while the little girls looked first at him, then at Suzette, then at one another. Tom stood there through it all—in the doorway, blushing.
The next moment all the three were upon him, clinging to his hands and his coat, kissing him, crying out their gladness in little excited exclamations, the two elder taking care to give Vera a fair chance to get at him, Vera insisting that the chance was not a fair one, all the three dragging him to an armchair, and sitting him down in it. Two of them got on his knees, and Lucy stood by his side with her arm round his neck.
"My dears!" Tom muttered, and found he could say no more.
His eyes met Suzette Bligh's. She was standing by the table, looking on, and her eyes were misty.
"See how they love you, Mr. Courtland!" she said.
Yes! And he had forsaken them, and the bandage was about Sophy's head.
"You won't go away again, will you?" implored Lucy.
"No, I shan't go away again."
"And Suzette'll stay too, won't she?" urged Vera.
"I hope she will, indeed!"
"You will, Suzette?"
"Yes, dear."
"We shall be happy," said Sophy softly, with a note of wonder in her voice.
It really seemed strange to have the prospect of being happy—permanently, comfortably, without fear; the prospect of happiness, not snatched at intervals, not broken by terror, but secure and without apprehension.
Tom Courtland pressed his little children to him. Where were the reproaches he had imagined, where the shame he had feared? They were annihilated by love and swallowed up in gladness.
"We do love you so!" whispered Lucy.
Vera actually screamed in happiness.
"Oh, Vera!" said Suzette, rather shocked.
That set them all laughing, the little girls, Tom, presently even Suzette herself. They were all laughing, though none of them could have told exactly why. Their joy bubbled over in mirth, and the sound of gladness was in the house. Tom Courtland held his head up and was his own man again. Here was something to live for, and something to show that even his broken life had not been lived in vain. The ghosts of the past were there; he could not forget them. But the clasp of the warm little arms which encircled him would keep their chilling touch away from his heart. Freed from torments that he had not deserved, rescued from pleasures that he had not enjoyed, he turned eagerly to the delights of his home which could now be his. His glad children and kindly Suzette were a picture very precious in his eyes. Here were golden links by which the fragments of his life could be bound together, though the fractures must always show—even as the scar would show always on Sophy's brow, however much her lips might smile or her eyes sparkle beneath it.
They were roused by a voice from the door.
"It's not hard to tell where you all are! Why, I heard you at the bottom of the stairs! What a hullabaloo!"
John Fanshaw's bulky figure stood there, solid and bowed with weight and his growing years. He looked on the scene—on the happy little folk in their gloomy black frocks—with a kindly smile, and the mock reproof of his tone hid more tenderness than he cared to show.
"Papa's come back—back to stay!" they cried exultantly. "Isn't that splendid, Mr. Fanshaw?"
"I hoped I should find you here, Tom; but I came to call on Miss Bligh."
"I hope you'll always find her here too," said Tom.
Suzette was flattered, and fell to blushing again. She was acutely grateful to anybody who wanted her. She took such a desire as a free and lavish gift of kindness, never making out any reason which could account for it.
"I'm only too happy to stay if—if I can be of any use," she murmured.
John sat down and made one of the party. They all chattered cheerfully till the time grew late. Sophy, still treated as an invalid, had to go to bed. She kissed John, who held her closely for a moment; then threw herself in Tom's arms, and could hardly be persuaded to let him go.
"I shall write to Mr. Imason and tell him you've come back," she whispered as a great secret. "He was so kind to Lucy and Vera when—— You know, papa?"
Tom passed his hand over her flaxen hair.
"Sleep quietly, darling," he said.
For quiet and peace were possible now.
There had been no expectation that Tom would be home to dinner; and though Suzette assured him that something could easily be prepared (and that homely sort of attention was new and pleasant to Tom), he accepted John Fanshaw's invitation to take pot-luck with him. They walked off together, rather silent, each full of his own thoughts. They did not speak until they had almost reached John's door.
"That's the sort of sight that makes a man wish he had children," said John slowly.
"I've often wished I had none. Poor Harriet!"
"But you're glad of them now?"
"Why, I've nothing else! It just makes the difference to life." He paused a moment, and then broke out: "And they've nothing but love for me. Not a word, not a thought of reproach! Just because I've never been cruel to them, whatever else I've been! Poor little beggars! We can't keep like that when we grow up. We're too fond of our grievances—eh?"
John looked at him for a moment, but said nothing. They went into the house in renewed silence. It seemed very large, empty, and dreary.
"Your wife not back yet? I heard she was staying with the Imasons."
"She's there still. I don't know when she's coming back."
"Rather dull for you, isn't it? You know you always depended on her a lot."
John made no answer, but led the way into his study. He gave Tom an evening paper, and began to open his letters. But his thoughts were not on the letters. They were occupied with what he had seen that afternoon and with the words which had fallen from Tom Courtland's lips. The children forgave with that fine free forgiveness which will not even recognise the need for itself or the existence of any fault towards which it should be exercised. It is there that forgiveness rises to and is merged in love. But when people grow up, Tom had said, they are too fond of their grievances. John had been very fond of his grievance. It was a fine large one—about the largest any man could have, everybody must admit that; and John had declined to belittle it or to shear off an inch or two of its imposing stature. All it demanded he had given. But had he? What about Frank Caylesham's money? Had it not demanded there something which he had refused? But he had given all it asked so far as the sinner who had caused it was concerned. Against her he had nursed and cosseted it; for its sake he had made his home desolate and starved his heart. Aye, he had always depended on Christine. Tom was right. But because of his grievance he had put her from him. He was fond of his grievance indeed! If Tom's children had been old enough to recognise the true value and preciousness of a big grievance, they would never have received Tom as they had that afternoon; they would have made him feel what he had been guilty of. He would have been made to feel it handsomely before he was forgiven. Children were different, as Tom Courtland said.
John got up and poked the fire fiercely.
"The house is beastly cold!" he grumbled.
"Ah, it wouldn't be if Mrs. John was at home!" laughed Tom. "She always looks after the fire, doesn't she?"
John Fanshaw bitterly envied him his peace and happiness. He forgot how hardly they had been achieved. The vision of the afternoon was before his eyes, and he declared that fate was too kind to Tom. A heavy dulness was over his face, and a forlorn puzzled look in his eyes. He must have done right, he must be doing right! How could a self-respecting man do otherwise? And yet he was so desolate, so starved of human love, in the end so full of longing for Christine—for her gracious presence and her dainty little ways.