Kitabı oku: «Double Harness», sayfa 21
CHAPTER XXIII
A THING OF FEAR
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.
CHAPTER XXIV
FRIENDS
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.
