Kitabı oku: «Double Harness», sayfa 24

"I couldn't risk seeming to try to make a claim, especially when – "

"Especially when making a claim on me might have saved me! Is that what you mean? When it might have made all the difference to me and to Frank? When it might have turned me back from my madness? All was to go to ruin sooner than that you should risk seeming to make a claim!"

He attempted no answer, but stood very still, listening and ready to listen. Her voice lost something of its hardness, and became more appealing as she went on.

"They're allowed to know your good side, the kind things you do, how you stand by your friends, how you help people, how you lavish gifts on my brother for my sake. You don't hide it from them. They know you can love, and love to give happiness. There are only two people who mayn't know – the two people in all the world who ought to know, whose happiness and whose trust in themselves and in one another lie in knowing. They must be hoodwinked and kept in the dark. They're to know nothing of you. For them you find the bad motive, the mean interpretation, the selfish point of view. And you're so ingenious in finding it for them! Grantley, to those two people you've done a great wrong."

He was silent a moment. Then he asked:

"To you and the little boy, you mean?"

"No: he's too young. Anyhow, I didn't mean him; I wasn't thinking of him. You know that sometimes I don't think of him – that sometimes, in love or in hatred, I can think of nothing in the world but you, but you and me. And it's to me and to yourself that you've done the wrong."

"To you – and myself?"

"Yes, yes! Oh, what's the use of doing fine things if you bury them from me, if you distort them to yourself, if you won't let either me or yourself think them generous and good? Why must you trick me and yourself, of all the world? Oughtn't we to know – oughtn't we of everybody in the world to know? What's the good of kindness if you dress it up as selfishness? What's the good of love if you call it malice?"

"I've spoken the truth as I believed it."

"No, I say no, Grantley! You've spoken it as you would have me believe it, as you try to make yourself believe it. But it's not the truth!" She came one step nearer to him. "I used to pray that you should change," she said imploringly. "I don't pray that now. It's impossible. And I don't think I want it. Don't change; but, oh, be yourself! Be yourself to me and to yourself. You haven't been to either of us. Open your heart to both of us; let us both know you as you are. Don't be ashamed either before me or before yourself. I know I'm difficult! Heavens, aren't you – even the real you – difficult too? But if you won't be honest in the end, then God help us! But if you'll be yourself to me and to yourself, then, my dear, I think it would be enough."

He came to her and took her hand.

"No man ever loved woman more than I love you," he said.

"Then try, then try, then try!" she whispered, and her eyes met his.

There seemed in them a far-off gleam of the light which once had blazed from them on the fairy ride.

CHAPTER XXVII
SAMPLES OF THE BULK

"You do think they'll be happy?" Mrs. Selford asked a little apprehensively. Her manner craved reassurance.

"Why put that question to me – to me, of all people? Is it on the principle of knowing the worst? If even a cynic like me thinks they'll be happy, the prospect will be very promising – is that it?"

"Goodness knows I don't expect the ideal! I've never had it myself. Oh, I don't see why I need pretend with you, and I shouldn't deceive you if I did. I've never had the ideal myself, and I don't expect it for Anna. We've seen too much in our set to expect the ideal. And sometimes I can't quite make Anna out." Mrs. Selford was evidently uneasy. "She gets on better with her father than with me now; and I think I get on better with Walter than Richard does."

"Young Walter has a way with him," smiled Caylesham.

"I hope we shan't get into opposite camps and quarrel. Richard and I have been such good friends lately. And then, of course – " She hesitated a little. "Of course there may be a slight awkwardness here and there."

Caylesham understood the covert allusion; the marriage might make matters difficult with the Imasons.

"The young folks will probably make their own friends. Our old set's rather broken up one way and the other, isn't it? Not that I was ever a full member of it."

"We've always been glad to see you," she murmured absently.

"On the whole I feel equal to encouraging you to a certain extent," he said, standing before the fire. "Anna will be angry pretty often, but I don't think she will be, or need be, unhappy. She doesn't take things to heart too readily, does she?"

"No, she doesn't."

The assent hardly sounded like praise of her daughter.

"Well, that's a good thing. And she's got lots of pluck and a will of her own."

"Oh, yes, she's got that!"

"From time to time he'll think himself in love with somebody. You're prepared for that, of course? But it's only his way. She'll have to indulge him a little – let the string out a little here and there; but she'll always have him under control. Brains do count, and she's got them all. And she won't expect romance all the time."

"You said you were going to be encouraging."

"I am being encouraging," Caylesham insisted.

"Oh, I shouldn't think it so bad if we were talking about myself. But when it's a question of one's child – "

"One is always unreasonable? Precisely. The nature of the business isn't going to change in the next generation. But I maintain that I'm encouraging – for Anna, anyhow. I rather fancy Master Blake will miss his liberty more than he thinks. But that'll be just what he needs. So from a moral point of view I'm encouraging there too."

"Of course you don't understand the feeling of responsibility, the fear that if she's the – the least bit hard, it may be because of her bringing up."

"Don't be remorseful, Mrs. Selford. It's the most unprofitable of emotions."

He had preached the same doctrine to Christine.

"When it's too late to go back?"

"And that's always." He looked down at her with a cheerful smile. "That's for your private ear. Don't tell the children. Walter Blake's quite great on remorse."

Mrs. Selford laughed rather ruefully.

"I suppose it'll turn out as well as most things. Do you know any thoroughly happy couples?"

"Very hard to say. One isn't behind the scenes. But I'm inclined to think I do. Oh, ecstasies aren't for this world, you know – not permanent ecstasies. You might as well have permanent hysterics! And, as you're aware, there are no marriages in heaven. So perhaps there's no heaven in marriages either. That would seem to be plausible reasoning, wouldn't it? But they'll be all right; they'll learn one another's paces."

"I can't help wishing she seemed more in love."

"Perhaps she will be when she flirts with somebody else. Don't frown! I'm not a pessimist. If I don't always look for happiness by the ordinary roads, I often discern it along quite unexpected routes."

"It's pleasant to see people start by being in love."

"How eternally sentimental we are! Well, yes, it is. But capacities differ. I daresay she doesn't know she's deficient, and she certainly won't imagine that her mother has given her away."

"I suppose I deserve that, but I had to talk to somebody. And really it's best to choose a man; sometimes it stops there then."

"Why not your husband? No? Ah, he has too many opportunities of reminding you of the indiscretion! You were quite right to talk to me. We shall look on at what happens with all the greater interest because we've discussed it. And, as I've said, I'm decidedly hopeful."

"We might have developed her affections when she was a child. I'm sure we might."

"Oh, I shall go! You send for a clergyman!"

Mrs. Selford shook her head sadly, even while she smiled. She could not be beguiled from her idea, nor from the remorse that it brought. The pictures, the dogs, and sentimental squabbling with her husband had figured too largely in the household; she connected with this fact the disposition which she found in Anna.

"Being a bit hard isn't a bad thing for your happiness," Caylesham added as a last consolation.

Anna herself came in. No consciousness of deficiency seemed to afflict her; she felt no need of a development of her affections or of being more in love with Walter Blake. On the contrary she exhibited to Caylesham's shrewd eyes a remarkable picture of efficiency and of contentment. She had known what she wanted, she had discerned what means to use in order to get it, and she had achieved it. A perfect self-confidence assured her that she would be successful in dealing with it; her serene air, her trim figure and decisive movements gave the impression that here at least was a mortal who, if she did not deserve success, could command it. Caylesham looked on her with admiration – rather that than liking – as he acknowledged her very considerable qualities. The thing which was wanting was what in a picture he would have called "atmosphere." But here again her luck came in, or, rather, her clear vision; it was not fair to call it luck. The man she had pitched upon – that was fair, and Caylesham declined to withdraw the expression – at the time when she pitched upon him, was in a panic about "atmosphere." He had found too much of it elsewhere, and was uneasy about it in himself. He was not asking for softness, for tenderness, for ready accessibility to emotion or to waves of feeling. Her cleverness had turned to account even the drawback which made Caylesham, in the midst of his commendation, conscious that he would not choose to be her husband – or perhaps her son either.

"You'll make a splendid head of the family," he told her cheerfully. "You'll keep them all in most excellent order."

She chose to consider that he had exercised a bad influence over Walter Blake, and treated him distantly. Caylesham supported the entire injustice of her implied charge with good-humour.

"You're not fond of excellent order, I suppose?" she asked.

"In others," said he, smiling. "May I come and see it in your house sometimes? I promise not to disturb it."

"I don't think you could."

"She taunts me with my advancing years," he complained to Mrs. Selford.

Anna's disapproval of him was marked; it increased his amusement at the life which lay before Walter Blake. Blake would want to disturb excellent order sometimes; he would be indulged in that proclivity to a strictly limited extent. If Grantley Imason were a revengeful man, this marriage ought to cause him a great deal of pleasure. Caylesham, while compelled to approve by his reason, could not help deploring in his heart. He saw arising an ultra-British household, clad in the very buckram of propriety. Who could say that morality did not reign in the world when such a nemesis as this awaited Walter Blake, or that morality had not a humour of its own when Walter Blake accepted the nemesis with enthusiasm? Yet the state of things was not unusual – a fair sample of a bulk of considerable size. Caylesham went away smiling at it, wondering at it, in the depths of his soul a trifle appalled at it. It seemed to him rather inhuman; but perhaps his idea of humanity had gone a trifle far in the opposite direction.

And, after all, could not Walter Blake supply the other element? There was plenty of softness about him, and the waves of feeling were by no means wanting in frequency or volume. Considering this question, Caylesham professed himself rather at a loss. He would have to wait and look on. But would he hear or see much? Anna had evidently put him under a ban, and he believed that her edicts would obtain obedience in the future. So far as he could see now, he had a vision of the waves stilled to rest, of the gleam of frost forming upon them, of an ice-bound sea. Now he felt it in his heart to be sorry for young Blake. Not because there was any injustice. The nemesis was eminently, and even ludicrously, just. He felt sorry precisely because it was so just. He was always sorry for sinners who had to pay the penalty of their deeds; then a fellow-feeling went out to them. Of course they were fools to grumble. The one wisdom he claimed for himself was not grumbling at the bill.

He paid another visit that day, under an impulse of friendliness, and perhaps of curiosity too. He went to Tom Courtland's, and found himself repaid for his trouble by Tom's cordiality of greeting. The Courtland family was in the turmoil of moving; they had to go to a much smaller house, and to reduce the establishment greatly. But the worries of a move and the prospect of comparative poverty – there was very little left besides Harriet's moderate dowry – were accepted by Tom very cheerfully, and by the children with glee; they were delighted to be told that there would be no more menservants and fewer maids, and that they would have to learn to shift for themselves as much and as soon as possible. They were glad to be rid of "this great gloomy house," over which the shadow of calamity still brooded.

"The children don't like to pass Lady Harriet's door at night," Suzette whispered in an aside to Caylesham.

Tom himself seemed younger and more sprightly; and he was the slave of his little girls. His grey hair, the lines on his face, and the enduring scar on Sophy's brow spoke of the sorrow which had been; but the sorrow had given place to peace – and it might be that some day peace would turn to joy. For there was much youth there, and, where youth is, joy must come, if only it be given a fair chance.

"We're rather in narrow circumstances, of course," Tom explained when Suzette and the children were out of earshot. "That's because I made such an ass of myself."

"Well, don't be hard on Flora. She was a good friend to you."

"I'm not blaming her; it's myself, Frank. I ought to have remembered the children. But we can rub along, and perhaps I shall get a berth some day."

Caylesham did not think that prospect a very probable one, but he dissembled and told Tom that his old political friends ought certainly to do something for him:

"Because it never came to an absolute public row, did it?"

"Everybody knew," sighed Tom, with a relapse into despondency.

"Anyhow you won't starve," Caylesham said with a laugh. "I reckon you must have above a thousand a year?"

"It's not much; but – well, I tell you what, Frank, Suzette Bligh's pretty nearly as good as another five hundred, and I only pay her seventy pounds a year. You wouldn't believe what a manager that little woman is! She makes everything go twice as far as it did, and has the house so neat too. Upon my soul, I don't notice any difference, except that I've dropped my champagne."

"Well, with champagne what it mostly is nowadays, that's no great loss, my boy, and I'm glad you've struck it rich with Miss Bligh."

"We should be lost without her. I don't know what the children would do, or what I should do with them, but for her. One good thing poor Harriet did, anyhow, was to bring her here."

Yes; but if Harriet had known how it was to fall out, had foreseen how Suzette was to reign in her stead, and with what joy the change of government would be greeted! Caylesham imagined, with a conscious faintness of fancy, the tempest which would have arisen, and how short a shrift would have been meted out to Suzette and all her adherents. He really hoped that poor Harriet, who had suffered enough for her faults, was not in any position in which she could be aware of what had happened; it would be to her (unless some great transformation had been wrought) too hard and unendurable a punishment.

"The children are changed creatures, Frank," Tom went on. "We don't try to repress them, you know. That would be hypocrisy, wouldn't it, under the circumstances? The best thing is for them to forget. Suzette says so, and I quite agree."

Suzette, it seemed, could achieve an epitaph of stinging quality – quite without meaning it, of course. Caylesham agreed that the best thing the girls could do was to forget their mother.

"So we let them make a row, and they're to go out of mourning very soon. That's what Suzette advises."

A merciful Providence must spare even poor Harriet this! She was to be forgotten – almost by a violent process of obliteration; and this by Suzette's decree – an all-powerful decree of gentle inconspicuous Suzette's.

The man of experience foresaw. Weak kindly Tom Courtland must always have a woman to fend for him. Because Harriet had not filled that part, ruin had come. The children must have a guardian and a guide in feminine affairs. The bonds were becoming too strong to be broken – so strong that the very idea of their ever being broken would cause terror, and impel steps to make them formally permanent. Here was another sample from a bulk of goodly dimensions, one of those by no means rare cases where a woman who would not otherwise have got a husband – or perhaps taken one – passes through the stage of the indispensable spinster to the position of the inevitable wife. Caylesham saw the process begun, and he was glad to see it. It was the best thing that could happen to Tom, and for the girls the best way of piecing together the fragments of that home-life which Harriet's cruel rage had shattered. Only they were all still so delightfully unconscious of what seemed so obvious to an outsider with his eyes about him. Caylesham smiled at their blindness, and took care not to disturb Tom's mind, or to rally him about his harping on Suzette's name and Suzette's advice. He was quite content to leave the matter to its natural course. But coming, as it did, on the top of his visit to the Selfords' and of his impressions of what he had seen there, it raised another reflection in his mind. How many roads there were to Rome! And most of them well trodden. Primitive instinct or romantic passion was only one of many – anyhow if the test of predominating influence were taken. It was not the prevailing factor with Anna Selford; it would hardly count at all with Tom and Suzette. Since then the origin was so various, what wonder the result was various too! Various results were even expected, aimed at, desired. Add to that cause of variation human error and the resources of the unexpected, and the field of chance spread infinitely wide. Save for the purpose of being amusing – an end to which all is justifiable that is not actually unseemly – only a fool or a boy would generalise about the legal state which was the outcome of such heterogeneous persons, aims, and tempers. But then at the end old nature – persistent old nature – would come back and give the thing a twist in her direction, with her babies and her nursery. She made confusion worse confounded, and piled incongruity on incongruity. But she would do it, and a pretty mixture was the general result. To make his old metaphor of double harness at all adequate to the subject which it sought to express, you must suppose many breeds of horses, and a great deal of very uneven and very unsuitable pairing of them by the grooms. It was probably all necessary, but the outcome was decidedly odd.

"It's all been pretty bad. I can't bear to think of poor Harriet, and I'm not fond of thinking about myself," said Tom Courtland, rubbing his bristly hair. "But the worst of it's over now. There's peace anyhow, Frank, and at least the children were always fond of me."

"You're going to get along first-rate," Caylesham assured him. "And mind you make Miss Suzette stick to you. She's a rare woman; I can see that."

"You're a good chap, Frank. You stick to your friends. You stuck to me all through."

"Much less trouble than dropping you, old fellow."

"That's rot!"

"Well, perhaps it is. After all, if I hadn't some of the minor virtues, I should be hardly human, should I? They're just as essential as the minor vices."

"If you ever see Flora, tell her – well, you'll know what to tell her."

"I'll say something kind. Good-bye, Tom. I'm glad to find you so cheerful."

The girls came round him to say good-bye. He kissed them, and gave each of them half a crown. He used to explain that he always tipped children because in after years he was thus made sure of finding somebody to defend his character in pretty nearly any company. Since, however, this was absolutely the only step he ever took with any such end in view, the explanation was often received with scepticism. His action was more probably the outcome of one of his minor virtues.

"How kind you are to children! What a pity you're a bachelor!" smiled Suzette.

"Thanks! I don't often get such a testimonial," he said, risking a whimsical lift of his brows for Tom Courtland's eye.

He had been seeking impressions of marriage. Chance gave him one more than he had looked for or desired. Just outside Tom Courtland's, as he was going away, he ran plump into John Fanshaw, who was making for the house. There was no avoiding him this time. The men had not met since Caylesham lent John money and John learnt from Harriet Courtland the truth of what the man from whom he took the money had done. But there had been no rupture between them. Civil notes had been written – on John's side even grateful notes – as the business transaction between them necessitated. And both had a part to play – the same part, the part of ignorance. Caylesham must play it for Christine. John had to assume it on his own account, for his own self-respect. The last shred of his pride hung on the assumption that, though he knew, and though Christine was aware of his knowledge, Caylesham at least believed him ignorant.

But heavy John Fanshaw was a clumsy hand at make-believe. His cordiality was hesitating, fumbling, obviously insincere; his unhappiness in his part very apparent. Caylesham cut short his effort to express gratitude, saying, "You shall do anything in the world except thank me!" and went on to ask after Christine in the most natural manner in the world.

"She's been a little – a little seedy, and has gone down to stay with the Imasons for a bit," John explained, taking care not to look at Caylesham.

"Oh, I hope she'll be all right soon! Give her my remembrances when you write – or perhaps you'll be running down?"

"I don't know. It depends on business."

"Come, you'll take Christmas off, anyhow?"

Then John took refuge in talking about Tom Courtland. But his mind was far from Tom. He managed at last to look Caylesham in the face, and grew more amazed at his perfect ease and composure. He was acutely conscious of giving exactly the opposite impression himself, acutely fearful that he was betraying that hidden knowledge of his. Actuated by this fear, he tried to increase his cordiality, hitting wildly at the mark, and indulging in forced friendliness and even forced jocosity.

Caylesham met every effort with just the right tone, precisely the right amount of effusiveness. He had taken a very hard view of what John had done – harder than he could contrive to take of what he himself had – and had expressed it vigorously to Christine. But now he found himself full of pity for poor John. The sight of the man fighting for the remnant of his pride and self-respect was pathetic. And John did it so lamentably ill.

"You're a paragon of a debtor," Caylesham told him, when he harked back to the money again. "My money's a deal safer in your hands than in my own. I'm more in your debt than you are in mine."

"You shall have every farthing the first day I can manage it."

His eagerness told Caylesham what a burden on his soul the indebtedness was. It was impossible to ignore altogether what was so plainly shown; but he turned the point of it, saying:

"I know how punctilious you men of business are. I wish fellows were always the same in racing. I'm ready to take it as soon as you're ready to pay, and to wait till you're ready."

"I shan't ask you to wait a day," John assured him.

Enough had passed for civility; Caylesham was eager to get away – not for his own sake so much as for John's.

"By Jove, I've got an appointment!" he exclaimed suddenly, diving for his watch. "Half-past six! Oh, I must jump into a cab!" He held the watch in one hand, and hailed a cab with his stick. "Good-bye, old fellow," he said, turning away. He had seen John begin to put out his hand in a hesitating reluctant way. He would have liked to shake hands himself, but he knew John hated to do it. John made a last demonstration of ignorance.

"Come and see us some day!" he called almost jovially.

"Yes, I will some day before long," Caylesham shouted back from the step of his hansom.

As he drove off, John was still standing on the pavement, waving a hand to him. Caylesham drove round the corner, then got down again, and pursued his way on foot.

He was quite clear in his own mind that John took the thing unnecessarily hard, but he was genuinely sorry that John should so take it. Indeed John's distress raised an unusually acute sense of discomfort in him. Nor could he take any pride in the tact with which he himself had steered the course of the interview. He could not avoid the conclusion that to John he must have seemed a hypocrite more accomplished than one would wish to be considered in the arts of hypocrisy. He had hitherto managed so well that he had not been forced into such situations; he had been obliged to lie only in his actions, and had not come so near having to lie in explicit words. He did not like the experience, and shook his head impatiently as he walked along. It occurred to him that since marriage was in its own nature so difficult and risky a thing as he had already decided, it was hardly fair for third persons to step in and complicate it more. He had to get at any state of mind resembling penitence by roads of his own; the ordinary approaches were overgrown and impassable from neglect. But in view of John's distress and of the pain which had come on Christine, and on a realisation of the unpleasant perfection of art which he himself had been compelled (and able) to exhibit, he achieved the impression that he had better have left such things alone – well, at any rate where honest old duffers as John Fanshaw were involved in the case. Having got so far, he might not unnaturally have considered whether he should remodel his way of life.

But he was not the man to suffer a sudden conversion under the stress of emotion or of a particular impression. His unsparing clearness of vision and honesty of intellect forbade that.

"I shall get better when I'm too old for anything else," he told himself with a rather bitter smile. "I suppose I ought to thank God that the time's not far off now."

It was not much of an effort in the way of that unprofitable emotion against which he had warned Christine Fanshaw and Janet Selford; but it was enough to make him take a rather different view, if not of himself, at least of old John Fanshaw. He decided that he had been too hard on John; and at the back of his mind was a notion that he had been rather hard on Christine too. In this case it seemed to him that he was getting off too cheaply. John and Christine were paying all the bill – at least a disproportionate amount. The upshot of it all was expressed in his exclamation:

"I don't want the money. I wish to heaven old John wouldn't pay me back!"

He would have felt easier for a little more demerit in John. It is probable, though his philosophising did not lead him so far as this conclusion, that he too was a sample, and from a bulk not inconsiderable in quantity. Where it is possible, we prefer that the people we have injured should turn out to have deserved injury from somebody.