Kitabı oku: «Double Harness», sayfa 5

CHAPTER VI
NOT PEACE BUT A SWORD

No doubt the bodily shock, the laceration of her nerves, and the condition she was in had something to do with the way Sibylla looked at the matter and with the attitude which she took up. These accidental circumstances gave added force to what was the natural outcome of her disposition. A further current of feeling, sweeping her in the same direction, lay in the blame which she eagerly fastened on herself. Her wilfulness and heedlessness cried out to her for an atonement; she was eager to make an appeasing sacrifice and caught at the opportunity, embracing readily the worst view of the case, drawing from that view an unhesitating conclusion as to what her duty was. Thus deduced, the duty became a feverish desire, and her only fear was that she might be baulked of its realisation. She had risked her child's life; let her risk her life for her child. That idea was by itself, and by its innate propriety, enough to inspire her mind and to decide her will. It was but to accumulate reasons beyond need when she reminded herself that even before the accident all her weal had hung on the child, every chance that remained of overcoming certain failure, of achieving still the splendid success of which she had dreamed, in her life and marriage. The specialist was to arrive the next morning; she was reluctant to wait even for that. Old Gardiner was for her an all-wise all-sufficient oracle of the facts, because he had declared them to be such as fitted into the demands of her heart and of her mood. Left to herself, she would have constrained his fears, overborne his doubts, and forced him to her will; he would have stammered all in vain about what was the British medical practice. As it was, open-eyed, refusing to seek sleep, strung up by excitement, all through the evening she battled against her husband for her way.

If she had no hesitation in one view, Grantley never wavered from the other. The plain unreasonableness of not awaiting the specialist's verdict was not hard to enforce. Sibylla, professing to yield, yet still assumed what the verdict should be, and pressed for a promise. At first he evaded her urgency by every device of soothing counsels, of entreaties that she would rest, of affectionate reproofs. She would not allow evasion. Then when his refusal came, it came tenderly, inspired by his love for her, based on an appeal to that. It was on this that he had relied. He was puzzled that it failed of the full effect he had looked for; and, beyond the puzzle, gradually a sense of bitter hurt and soreness grew up in his mind. He did not know of the secret connection in her thoughts between the child and an ideal perfecting of the love between her and him; she was at once too centred on her own desire to make him see, and too persuaded that such hopes must be secret if they were to remain hopes at all. He saw only that when he persuaded, cajoled, flattered, and caressed as a lover he failed. His power seemed gone. Her appeal was to him in another character, and that very fact seemed to put him on a lower plane. He had not doubted, for a moment, what came first to him – it was her life, her well-being, his love of her. As she persisted in her battle, the feeling grew that she made an inadequate return, and showed an appreciation short of what was his due. Gradually his manner hardened, his decision was expressed more firmly; he stiffened into a direct antagonism, and interposed his will and his authority to effect what his love and his entreaties had failed to do. He never lacked courtesy; he could not, under such circumstances as these, desire to fail in gentleness. But it was his will against hers now, and what his will was he conveyed clearly.

A trained nurse had arrived from Fairhaven; but Sibylla vehemently preferred the presence of Mrs. Mumple, and it was Mrs. Mumple whom Grantley left with her when he came down to his study about midnight. He had not dined, and a cold supper was laid out on the table. Jeremy was there, trying to read, eyeing the supper ravenously, yet ashamed of being hungry. He fell on the beef with avidity when Grantley observed that anyhow starving themselves could serve no useful purpose. Grantley was worried, but not anxious; he had confidence in the specialist, and even in Gardiner's view there was no danger if the right course were followed. To the disappointment which that course involved he had schooled himself, accepting it almost gladly as by so far the lesser evil.

"If you were to talk to Sibylla now," he said, "I think you'd be reminded of those old days you once told me about. Fate has thumped her pretty severely for anything she did, but she's mortally anxious to be thumped more, and very angry with me because I won't allow it. Upon my word, I believe she'd be disappointed if Tarlton told us that the thing wasn't so bad after all, and that everything would go right without anything being done."

"I daresay she would; but there's no chance of that?"

"Well, I'm afraid not. One must believe one's medical man, I suppose, even if he's old Gardiner – and he seems quite sure of it." Grantley drank and sighed. "It's uncommonly perverse, when everything was so prosperous before."

The day had left its traces on Jeremy. Though he had not told Grantley so, yet when he saw Sibylla thrown he had made no doubt she was killed – and she was the one person in the world whom he deeply loved. That fear was off him now, but the memory of it softened him towards her – even towards her foolishness, which he had been wont to divide very distinctly from her, and to consider himself free to deal with faithfully.

"At best it'll be a most awful disappointment to her."

"Yes, it must be that – and to me too," said Grantley.

"She was just living in and for the thing, you know."

Grantley made no answer this time; a shade of annoyance passed over his face.

"She never could give herself to more than one thing at a time – with her that one thing was always the whole hog, and there was nothing else. That's just how it's been now."

Jeremy's words showed true sympathy, and, moreover, a new absence of shame in expressing it; but Grantley did not accord them much apparent welcome. They came too near to confirming his suspicions; they harmonised too well with the soreness which remained from his impotent entreaties and unpersuasive caresses. Again without answering, he got up and lit his cigar.

"Oh, by the way," Jeremy went on, "while you were with Sibylla that girl from the rectory came up – you know, Dora Hutting – to ask after Sibylla and say they were all awfully sorry and anxious, and all that, you know."

"Very kind of them. I hope you told her so, and said what you could?"

"Yes, that's all right. The girl seems awfully fond of Sibylla, Grantley. By Jove, when we got talking about her, she – she began to cry!"

Grantley turned round, smiling at the unaccustomed note of pathos struck by Jeremy's tone.

"Rather decent of her, wasn't it?" asked Jeremy.

"Very nice. Did you console her?"

"Oh, I didn't see what the devil I could say! Besides I didn't feel very comfortable – it was rather awkward."

"I believe the girl's afraid of me – she always seems to come here when I'm away. Is she a pleasant girl, Jeremy?"

"Oh, she – she seemed all right; and I – I liked the way she felt about Sibylla."

"So do I, and I'll thank her for it. Is she getting at all prettier?"

"Well, I shouldn't call her bad-looking, don't you know!"

"She used to be a bit spotty," yawned Grantley.

"I don't think she's spotty now."

"Well, thank heaven for that anyhow!" said Grantley piously. "I hate spots above anything, Jeremy."

"She hasn't got any, I tell you," said Jeremy, distinctly annoyed.

Grantley smiled sleepily, threw himself on to his favourite couch, laid down his cigar, and closed his eyes. After the strain he was weary, and soon his regular breathing showed that he slept. Jeremy had got his pipe alight and sat smoking, from time to time regarding his brother-in-law's handsome features with an inquiring gaze. There was a new stir of feeling in Jeremy. A boy of strong intellectual bent, he had ripened slowly on the emotional side, and there had been nothing in the circumstances or chances of his life to quicken the process thus naturally very gradual. To-day something had come. He had been violently snatched from his quiet and his isolation, confronted with a crisis that commanded feeling, probed to the heart of his being by love and fear. Under this call from life nascent feelings grew to birth and suppressed impulses struggled for liberty and for power. He was not now resisting them nor turning from them. He was watching, waiting, puzzling about them, hiding them still from others, but no longer denying them to himself. He was wondering and astir. The manhood which had come upon him was a strange thing; the life that called him seemed now full of new and strange things. Through his fear and love for Sibylla he was entering on new realms of experience and of feeling. He sat smoking hard and marvelling that Grantley slept.

Connected with this upheaval of mental conceptions which had hitherto maintained an aspect so boldly fundamental, and claimed to be the veritable rock of thought whereon Jeremy built his church, was the curious circumstance that he suddenly found himself rather sensitive about Grantley's careless criticism of Miss Dora Hutting's appearance. He had not denied the fact alleged about it, though he had the continuance of it. But he resented its mention even as he questioned the propriety of Grantley's sleeping. The reference assorted ill with his appreciation of Dora's brimming eyes and over-brimming sympathies. That he could not truthfully have denied the fact increased his annoyance. It seemed mean to remember the spots that had been on the face to which those brimming eyes belonged – as mean as it would have been in himself to recall the bygone grievances and the old – the suddenly old-grown – squabbles which he had had with the long-legged rectory girl. That old epithet too! A sudden sense of profanity shot across him as it came into his mind; he stood incomprehensively accused of irreverence in his own eyes.

Yet the spots had existed; and Sibylla had been wrong – had been wrong, and was now, it appeared, unreasonable. Moreover, beyond question, Mumples was idiotic. Reason was alarmed in him, since it was threatened. He told himself that Grantley was very sensible to sleep. But himself he could not think of sleep, and his ears were hungry for every sound from the floor above.

The stairs creaked – there was a sniff. Mrs. Mumple was at the door. Jeremy made an instinctive gesture for silence because Grantley slept. He watched Mrs. Mumple as she turned her eyes on the peacefully reposing form. The eyes turned sharp to him, and Mrs. Mumple raised her fat hands just a little and let them fall softly.

"He's asleep?" she whispered.

"You see he is. Best thing for him to do, too." His answering whisper was gruff.

"She's not sleeping," said Mrs. Mumple; "and she's asking for him again."

"Then we'd better wake him up." He spoke irritably as he rose and touched Grantley's shoulder. "He must be tired out, don't you see?"

Mrs. Mumple made no answer. She raised and dropped her hands again.

Grantley awoke lightly and easily, almost unconscious that he had slept.

"What were we talking about? Oh, yes, Dora Hutting! Why, I believe I've been asleep!"

"You've slept nearly an hour," said Jeremy, going back to his chair.

Grantley's eyes fell on Mrs. Mumple; a slight air of impatience marked his manner as he asked:

"Is anything wrong, Mrs. Mumple?"

"She's asking for you again, Mr. Imason."

"Dear me, Gardiner said she should be kept quiet!"

"The doctor's lying down. But she'll not rest without seeing you; she's fretting so."

"Have you been letting her talk about it and excite herself? Have you been talking to her yourself?"

"How can we help talking about it?" Mrs. Mumple moaned.

"It's infernally silly – infernally!" he exclaimed in exasperation. "Well, I must go to her, I suppose." He turned to Jeremy. "It'll be better if you'll keep Mrs. Mumple with you. We'll get the nurse to go to Sibylla."

"I can't leave her as she is," said Mrs. Mumple, threatening a fresh outburst of tears.

Grantley walked out of the room, muttering savagely.

The strain of irritation, largely induced by Mrs. Mumple's lachrymosely reproachful glances and faithful doglike persistency, robbed him of the tenderness by which alone he might possibly have won his wife's willing obedience and perhaps convinced her reason through her love. He used his affection now, not in appeal, but as an argumentative point. He found in her a hard opposition; she seemed to look at him with a sort of dislike, a mingling of fear and wonder. Thus she listened in silence to his cold marshalling of the evidences of his love and his deliberate enforcing of the claims it gave him. Seeing that he made no impression, he grew more impatient and more imperious, ending with a plain intimation that he would discuss the question no further.

"You'll make me the murderess of my child," she said.

The gross irrational exaggeration drove him to worse bitterness.

"I've no intention of running even the smallest risk of being party to the murder of my wife," he retorted.

Lying among her pillows, very pale and weary, she pronounced the accusation which had so long brooded in her mind.

"It's not because you love me so much; you do love me in a way: I please you, you're proud of me, you like me to be there, you like to make love to me, you like taking all I have to give you, and God knows I liked to give it – but you haven't given the same thing back to me, Grantley. I don't know whether you've got it to give to anybody, but at any rate you haven't given it to me. I haven't become part of you, as I was ready to become – as I've already become of my little unborn child. Your life wouldn't be made really different if I went away. In the end you've been apart from me. I thought the coming of the child must make all that different; but it hasn't: you've been about the child just as you've been about me."

"Oh, where on earth do you get such notions?" he exclaimed.

"Just the same as about me. You wanted me and you wanted a child too. But you wanted both with – well, with the least disturbance of your old self and your old thoughts: with the least trouble – it almost comes to that really. I don't know how to put it, except like that. You enjoyed the pleasant parts very much, but you take as little as you can of the troublesome ones. I suppose a lot of people are – are like that. Only it's a – a little unfortunate that you should have happened on me, because I – I can't understand being like that. To me it seems somehow rather cruel. So, knowing you're like that, I can't believe you when you tell me that you think of nothing but your love for me. I daresay you think it's true – I know you wouldn't say it if you didn't think it true; and in a way it's true. But the real, real truth is – " She paused, and for the first time turned her eyes on him. "The real truth is not that you love me too much to do what I ask."

"What else can it be?" he cried desperately, utterly puzzled and upset by her accusation.

"What else can it be? Ah, yes, what else?" Her voice grew rather more vehement. "I can answer that. What have I been doing these five months but learning the answer to that? I'll tell you. It's not that you love me so much, it's that you don't care about the child."

The words brought a suspicion into his mind.

"That old fool Mrs. Mumple has been talking to you? She's been repeating something I said? Well, I expressed it carelessly, awkwardly, but – "

"What does it matter what Mumples has repeated? I knew it all before."

"Meddlesome old idiot!" he grumbled fiercely.

To him there was no reason in it all. The accusation angered him fiercely and amazed him even more; he saw no shadow of justice in it. He put it all down to Sibylla's exaggerated way of talking and thinking. He was conscious of no shortcomings; the accusation infuriated the more for its entire failure to convince. "When two women put their heads together and begin to talk nonsense, there's no end to it; bring a baby, born or unborn, into the case, and the last chance of any limit to the nonsense is gone." He did not tell her that (though it expressed what he felt) in a general form; he fell back on the circumstances of the minute.

"My dear Sibylla, you're not fit to discuss things rationally at present. We'll say no more now; we shall only be still more unjust to one another if we do. Only I must be obeyed."

"Yes, you shall be obeyed," she said. "But since it's like that, I think that, whatever happens now, I – I won't have any more children, Grantley."

"What?"

He was startled out of the cold composure which he had achieved in his previous speech.

She repeated her words in a low tired voice, but firmly and coolly.

"I think I won't have any more children, you know."

"Do you know what you're saying?"

"Oh, surely, yes!" she answered, with a faint smile.

Grantley walked up and down the room twice, and then came and stood by her bed, fixing his eyes on her face in a long sombre contemplation. The faint smile persisted on her lips as she looked up at him. But he turned away without speaking, with a weary shrug of his shoulders.

"I'll send the nurse to you," he said as he went towards the door.

"Send Mumples, please, Grantley."

Mrs. Mumple had done all the harm she could. "All right," he replied. "Try to sleep. Good-night."

He shut the door behind him before her answer came.

On the stairs he met Mrs. Mumple. The fat woman shrank out of his path, but he bade her good-night not unkindly, although absently; she needed no bidding to send her to Sibylla's room. He found Jeremy still in the study, still wide awake.

"Oh, go home to bed, old fellow!" he exclaimed irritably, but affectionately too. "What good can you do sitting up here all night?"

"Yes, I suppose I may as well go – it's half-past two. I'll go out by the garden." He opened the window which led on to the lawn. The fresh night air came in. "That's good!" sniffed Jeremy.

Grantley stepped into the garden with him, and lit a cigarette.

"But is it all right, Grantley? Is Sibylla reasonable now?"

"All right? Reasonable?" Grantley's innermost thoughts had been far away.

"I mean, will she agree to what you wish – what we wish?"

"Yes, it's all right. She's reasonable now."

His face was still just in the light of the lamp which stood on a table in the window. Jeremy saw the paleness of his cheeks and the hard set of his eyes. There was no sign of relief in him or of anxiety assuaged.

"Well, thank heaven for that much, anyhow!" Jeremy sighed.

"Yes, for that much anyhow," Grantley agreed, pressing his arm in a friendly way. "And now, old boy, good-night."

Jeremy left him there in the garden smoking his cigarette, standing motionless. His face was in the dark now, but Jeremy knew the same look was in the eyes still. It was hard for the young man, even with the new impulses and the new sympathies that were alive and astir within him, to follow, or even to conjecture, what had been happening that night. Yet as he went down the hill it was plain even to him, plain enough to raise a sharp pang in him, that somehow the little child, unborn or whether it should yet be born, had brought not union, but estrangement to the house; not peace but a sword.

CHAPTER VII
A VINDICATION OF CONSCIENCE

It was a dull chilly afternoon in March. Christine Fanshaw huddled her slight little figure – she looked as if the cold would cut right through her – over a blazing fire in her boudoir. She held a screen between the flames and her face, and turned her eyes on Anna Selford, who was paying her a call. Anna was a plump dark girl, by no means pretty, but with a shrewd look about her and an air of self-confidence rather too assured for her years; she was dressed in a would-be artistic fashion, not well suited to her natural style.

"Awfully sad, isn't it?" she was saying. "But mamma says Mrs. Raymore is splendid about it. Mr. Raymore was quite upset, and was no good at all at first. It was Mrs. Raymore who went and got Charley away from the woman, and hushed up all the row about the money – oh, he had taken some from the office: he was in a solicitor's office, you know – and arranged for him to be sent out to Buenos Ayres – did the whole thing in fact. She's quite heart-broken about it, mamma says, but quite firm and brave too. How awful to have your son turn out like that! He was only nineteen, and Mrs. Raymore simply worshipped him."

"He used to be a very pretty little boy. A little boy! And now!" Christine plucked idly at the fringes of her hand-screen.

"And mamma says the woman was thirty, and not very good-looking either!"

"What a lot you know, Anna! You're hardly seventeen, are you? And Suzette Bligh's twenty-seven! But she's a baby compared to you."

"Oh, mamma always tells me things – or else I hear her and papa talking about them. When I'm washing the dogs, they forget I'm there, especially if they're squabbling at all. And I keep my ears open."

"Yes, I think you do."

"But generally mamma tells me. She always must talk to somebody, you see. When I was little she used to tell me things, and then forget it and box my ears for knowing them!"

Anna spoke without rancour; rather with a sort of quiet amusement, as though she had given much study to her mother's peculiarities and found permanent diversion in them.

"Poor Kate Raymore! So they're in trouble too!"

"Charley was awfully sorry; and they hope he'll come back some day, if he behaves well out there."

"Poor Kate Raymore! Well, there's trouble everywhere, isn't there, Anna?" She shivered and drew yet a little nearer the fire. "How are things at home with you?"

"Just as usual; nothing ever happens with us."

"It might be much worse than that."

"I suppose it might. It's only just rather dull; and I suppose I shall have to endure it for a long while. You see, I'm not very likely to get married, Mrs. Fanshaw. No men ever come to our house – they can't stand it. Besides I'm not pretty."

"Oh, come and meet men here; and never mind not being pretty; I could dress you to look quite smart. That's it! You should go in for smartness, not prettiness. I really believe it pays better nowadays. Get Janet – get your mother to give you an allowance, and we'll put our heads together over it."

"That's awfully kind of you, Mrs. Fanshaw."

"Oh, I like dressing people; and I do think girls ought to have their chances. But in those things she makes you wear – oh, my dear Anna!"

"Yes, I know. I'll ask her. And – "

Anna hesitated, then rose, and came over to Christine. Suddenly she kissed her.

"It's nothing, my dear," said Christine, amused but annoyed; she was very ready to help Anna, but did not care in the least for being kissed by her.

Anna sat down again, and there ensued a long pause.

"And as for not marrying," Christine resumed, "it's six of one and half a dozen of the other, I think. Oh, I should have hated to be an old maid; but still one would have avoided so much worry. Look at these poor Raymores! They've always got on so well too, up to now!"

She laid down her screen and pulled up her dress, to let the warmth get to her ankles. Anna looked at her dainty face lit up by the glow.

"I wish I was like you, Mrs. Fanshaw!"

Christine did not refuse the compliment; she only denied the value of the possession which won it for her.

"Much good it's done me, my dear!" she sighed. "But people who've not got looks never will believe how little good they are. Oh, I didn't mean to be rude, Anna! I believe in you, you know. I can do something with you. Only – " She stopped, frowning a little and looking vaguely unhappy. "Well," she resumed, "if it turns out that I can't take you under my wing, we must get hold of Sibylla. She's always ready to do things for people – and they've got lots of money, anyhow."

Anna's curiosity was turned in the direction of Sibylla.

"What was the truth about Mrs. Imason, Mrs. Fanshaw?"

"I made sure you'd know that too!" smiled Christine. "And if you don't, I suppose I oughtn't to tell you."

"I know she – she had an accident."

"Oh, well, everybody knows. Yes, she had, and they thought it was worse than it was. The country doctor down at Milldean made a mistake – took too serious a view, you know. And – and there was a lot of bother. But the London man said it would be all right, and so it turned out. The baby came all right, and it's a splendid boy."

"It all ended all right, then?"

Christine looked a little doubtful.

"The boy's all right, and Sibylla's quite well," she answered.

"But mamma said Mrs. Raymore hinted – "

"Well, Sibylla wouldn't believe the London man, you see. She thought that he – that he'd been persuaded to say she needn't have the operation she wanted to have, and that they meant to – Well, really, Anna, I can't go into details. It's quite medical, my dear, and I can't express myself discreetly. Anyhow Sibylla made a grievance of it, you know, and relations were a little strained, I think."

"Oh, well, I suppose that's over now, since everything's gone right, Mrs. Fanshaw?"

"It ought to be," said Christine, shy of asserting the positive fact. "But very often fusses about nothing do just as much harm as fusses about something big. It's the way one looks at them."

"Yes, I ought to know that, living in our house," remarked Anna Selford.

"You do give your parents away so!" Christine complained, with a smile in which pity was mingled.

The pity, however, was not for the betrayed, but for the traitor. Anna's premature knowingness and the suggestion of hardness it carried with it were the result of a reaction against the atmosphere of her home, against the half-real gush and the spasmodic emotionality of the family circle. In this revolt truth asserted itself, but sweetness suffered, and freshness lost its bloom. Christine was sorry when that sort of thing happened to young girls. But there it was. Anna was not the ingénue, and it was no good treating her as if she were.

"I'm really half glad you don't live in this house. I'm sure John and I couldn't bear the scrutiny – not just now, anyhow." She answered Anna's questioning eyes by going on: "Oh, it's terrible, my dear. We've no money – now, really, don't repeat that! And John's full of business worries. It's positively so bad that I have to try to be amiable about it!"

"I'm so sorry, and I really won't talk about it, Mrs. Fanshaw."

"No, don't, my dear – not till we're in the bankruptcy court. Then everybody'll know. And I daresay we shall have some money again; at least bankrupts seem to have plenty generally."

"Then why don't you?"

"Anna! John would cut his throat first. Oh, I really believe he would! You've no idea what a man like him thinks of his business and of his firm's credit. It's like – well, it's like what we women ought to think (again Christine avoided asserting the actual fact) about our reputations, you know. So you may imagine the state of things. The best pair is being sold at Tattersall's this very day. That's why I'm indoors – cabs are so cold and the other pair will have to go out at night."

Shiveringly she nestled to the fire again.

"I'm so awfully sorry, Mrs. Fanshaw! It'll all come right, won't it?"

"It generally does; but I don't know. And John says I've always been so extravagant – and I suppose I have. Well, I thought it was just that John was stingy. He had a splendid business, you know." She paused and smiled at Anna. "So now you know all of everybody's troubles," she ended.

Christine was not in the habit of giving praise beyond measure or without reservation either to herself or to other people, and she had done no more than justice to her present effort to be amiable. Money was the old cause of quarrel between her husband and herself; the alternation of fat and lean years had kept it always alive and intermittently active. But hitherto, while the fat seasons had meant affluence, the lean had never fallen short of plenty or of solvency. It had been a question of more or less lavish expenditure; that was all. Christine was afraid there was more now. Her husband was worried as he had never been before; he had dropped hints of speculations gone wrong and of heavy commitments; and Christine, a constant glancer at City articles and an occasional dabbler in stocks, had read that there was a crisis in the market in which he mainly dealt. Things were black; she knew it almost as well as he. Both showed courage, and the seriousness of the matter forbade mere bickering. Nor was either invulnerable enough to open the battle. Her extravagance exposed her to attack; he was conscious of hazardous speculations which had wantonly undermined the standing, and now threatened the credit, of a firm once strong and of excellent repute. Each needed at once to give and to receive charity. Thus from the impending trouble they had become better friends, and their underlying comradeship had more openly asserted itself. This amount of good there was in it, Christine thought to herself; and John, in his blunt fashion, had actually said as much to her.

"We're in the same boat, and we must both pull at our oars, old girl," he said, and Christine was glad he should say it, although she hated being called "old girl." John had a tendency towards plebeian endearments, she thought.

So the best pair went to Tattersall's, and some of the diamonds to a corresponding establishment in the jewellery line; and various other things were done or attempted with the view of letting free a few thousand pounds and of diminishing expenditure in the future. But John Fanshaw's brow grew no clearer. About these sacrifices there hung the air of doing what was right and proper – what, given the worst happening, would commend itself to the feelings of the creditors and the Official Receiver – rather than of achieving anything of real service. Christine guessed that the speculations must have been on a very large scale and the commitments very heavy. Could it be that ruin – real ruin – was in front of them? She could hardly realise that – either its coming or what life would be after it had come. And in her heart – here too she had said no more than truth – she did doubt whether John would stay in the world to see. Well, what could she do? She had three hundred a year of her own tied up, and (since they had no children) to go back to her people on her death. If the ruin came, she could find crusts for herself and John – if John were there. These were the thoughts which had kept intruding into her mind as she talked to Anna Selford and shivered now and then over the blazing fire. Yet she could face them better than John, thanks to a touch of fatalism in her nature. She would think of no violent step to avoid what she feared. Hating it, she would sit shivering by the fire, and wait for it all the same. She knew this of herself, and therefore was even more sorry for John than on her own account. This state of mind made the amiability easier. It also awoke her conscience from a long sleep with regard to the way in which she had treated John in the past. Against this, however, she struggled not only fiercely, but with a conviction of justice. Here conscience was overdoing its part, and passing from scrupulousness to morbidity. The thing in question, the thing conscience had awoken about, belonged to the far past; it had been finished off and written off, enjoyed and deplored, brooded over and violently banished from thought, ever so long ago. Hardly anybody knew about it; it was utterly over. None the less, the obstinate irrational digs which conscience – awake again – gave her about it increased as John's face grew gloomier.