Kitabı oku: «Double Harness», sayfa 22
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.
CHAPTER XXV
PICKING UP THE PIECES
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!"
