AT BAY.
It is evening. Stephen Trenchard has retired to his room immediately
after dinner, looking wan and wearied, worn out perhaps by that
interview with Joel Pilgrim in the study. Sibyl has offered to go to
his room and read to him, and has had her offer refused.
‘I am tired, my dear, and want sleep, if I can get it; but that seems
harder for me to obtain now than for a pauper to get gold. One would
think the voice of doom had cried out to me, as it cried to Macbeth,
“Sleep no more”!’
‘Macbeth was a murderer, uncle. You should not compare yourself to
him.’
‘No; I have never dipped my hands in blood. I have used the world
pretty much as it has used me, I believe--give and take.’
Sibyl is alone in a small sitting-room adjoining her bedroom; a
pretty little room which Mr. Trenchard has allowed her to appropriate
to herself, and which she has adorned with various elegant trifles
from the Redcastle shops--books, engravings, statuettes--the things
that women love.
Here she sits to-night, a prey to something very near despair. She is
now completely hemmed in. Only two modes of escape lie before her.
The first and more obvious is flight. She can leave Lancaster Lodge.
There is no constraint upon her. She is free to go away, penniless
as when she came, leaving fortune behind her. The second and more
hazardous alternative is to prevail upon Joel Pilgrim to abandon his
design; to induce him, of his own accord, to give up the idea of
marriage until he is able to return from Calcutta.
Ten o’clock strikes, and soon afterwards she hears the bell at
the lodge entrance, and then wheels grinding over the gravel, and
she knows that Mr. Pilgrim has returned with the licence. She has
breathed more freely during his absence, and his return seems to
bring an atmosphere of trouble and perplexity into the house. Will he
come to her, or send for her to tell her that his hateful errand has
been successfully accomplished? She sits listening for his detested
footstep. The ears of hate are as keen as those of love, and she
knows that footfall only too well.
Yes, there it comes along the carpeted corridor, slow and stealthy.
‘The jungle tigers walk like that, I dare say,’ thinks Sibyl.
Joel opens the door softly and comes in. The dull yellow of his
complexion is relieved by a crimson flush on the smooth cheeks. His
black eyes glitter with an unaccustomed light. Mr. Pilgrim has dined
more generously than usual at York, and has refreshed himself with
soda and brandy more than once during the homeward journey. He is
altogether a different man from that Joel Pilgrim who recoiled from
Sibyl this morning, abashed by her coldness.
‘I saw the light in your window, my pretty one,’ he says, seating
himself at the table where Sibyl is reading, and drawing his chair
close to hers, ‘and I knew where to find you.’
‘Hadn’t you better go downstairs and order some supper, Mr. Pilgrim?
It is nearly eleven o’clock, and the house will be going to bed
almost immediately.’
‘Let the house go to Gehenna,’ exclaims Joel; ‘I want nothing it can
give me. I only want to see your lovely eyes, Sibyl, to hear your
sweet voice, and to claim the kiss you denied me this morning. Look
here,’ taking a paper from his breast pocket; ‘the Archbishop of York
has given me permission to make you my wife; the knot is to be tied
next Saturday; in four days, Sibyl--only four days, you who have been
so cruel, you who have held me aloof so long, will be all my own.
Yes, Sibyl; you who have pretended to hate me----’
‘Pretended!’ cries Sibyl, with an angry flash from her dark eyes. ‘My
hatred has been very real.’
‘I am glad of that. They say extremes meet. It will be an easy
transition from hatred to love; both are fiery passions. It is your
lukewarm indifference that can never be kindled into affection.’
‘Now is the time,’ thinks Sibyl, ‘if I am to make an appeal to his
forbearance, his pity, his self-interest. I can but try him.’
‘Mr. Pilgrim,’ she begins falteringly.
‘What a formal mode of addressing your affianced lover--the man who
has his marriage licence in his pocket!’
‘I can call you by no other name,’ she answers. ‘I am going to
be more candid to-night than I have ever been. You may betray my
confidence, perhaps ruin me with my uncle; I cannot help it. Between
you, you have driven me to bay.’
‘Very cruel of us,’ murmurs Joel, leaning back in his chair and
looking at her with an admiring smile. She is very lovely in her
agitation; cheeks faintly flushed, eyes brilliant, parted lips of
carnation. Her suffering moves him not a jot.
‘You have seen how I have striven to avoid you. You have put my
avoidance down to hatred, and this perhaps has galled your pride--you
have felt a natural anger against me, and you have resolved to win me
in order to revenge yourself upon my insolence.’
‘A very subtle way of putting the case. No, Sibyl; I resolved to
win you because you are lovely, and I love you. I need no stronger
reasons than those two.’
‘You could not be determined to make me miserable unless I had
provoked your anger. Forgive me for my seeming hatred of you; it was
not really hatred of you, but love for another. My heart has long
been given to another. I have pledged myself to be faithful to him to
the end of my life, no matter what obstacles might intervene to keep
us asunder. There are reasons why I can never tell my uncle of this
engagement, reasons why I must keep it faithfully in spite of the
world.’
‘No reason can stand against the archbishop’s licence, and the fact
that you and I are to be married on Saturday,’ replies Joel, with the
same insolent smile--the smile of a schemer who has brought his plot
to a triumphant issue.
Sibyl has one argument still to offer. The strongest.
‘You tell me that my uncle has made a will in my favour, that he will
leave me all his fortune,’ she says.
‘Yes, that is a settled thing. You heard him say that we were to have
his wealth--you and I.’
‘I did. And we can share it. Share it honourably and equally, without
the hateful tie which would bring us nothing but misery. Release me
from this entanglement, Mr. Pilgrim. Tell my uncle that you would
rather defer our marriage until you return from Calcutta. He is not
likely to see that day. Do this, and I will pledge myself in any way
that you may consider most binding. I will sign any document you
choose to put before me, engaging myself to deliver over to you half
my uncle’s fortune, whatever it may be, the day I become possessed of
it.’
‘A very liberal and business-like offer,’ exclaims Joel, with a
quiet sneer, which freezes all hope. It is so pitiless! ‘But I would
rather have the pretty wife and the whole of the fortune, as by the
existing arrangement I shall. Of course I shall knock off a handsome
sum for pin-money. Your uncle hints that your tastes are somewhat
extravagant, and Calcutta is not a place to teach economy. I shall
not be a severe husband, and I shall like to see my wife the queen
of taste and fashion.’
Sibyl sits with her hands clasped on the table before her, unhearing,
unheeding. She has made her last appeal, and she might as usefully
have made it to stone. There is nothing for her now but flight. Yes,
one alternative. She may confess all to Stephen Trenchard--tell him
that she has been an impostor--that she has duped him into giving
her his affection--that the wealth he has bequeathed to her will be
shared by the son of his unforgiven foe.
No hope lies that way. She has played her desperate game to the last,
and she must throw up the cards.
Once resolved, courage and calmness return together. She glances at
the Swiss toy clock on the chimney-piece.
‘Eleven o’clock, Mr. Pilgrim, and I am very tired. I really must wish
you good night.’
She rises, gathers together her dainty fancy work, closes her book,
and holds out her hand to Joel Pilgrim.
But there is more of his native sunshine in Mr. Pilgrim’s veins
to-night than there was at noon to-day, and he is not to be satisfied
with so cold a salutation from his affianced bride.
‘You refused me my kiss this morning, Sibyl. I must exercise my
privilege to-night.’
His arm is round her, he tries to draw her towards him, but that slim
form recoils from him as from something more hateful than death.
‘Do not touch me,’ exclaims Sibyl, in a voice that is scarcely above
a whisper. ‘You cannot guess how much I would dare to escape such
pollution. Look at this,’ taking a small glass phial from her pocket,
and holding it up before him. ‘Do you know what this is? Sure and
instant death. I would rather this should pass my lips than that your
lips should touch them.’
‘I did not know you were a member of the Borgia family, or that such
delightful customs prevailed among young ladies in England,’ says Mr.
Pilgrim, letting her go, and contemplating her excited countenance
with a gloomy look. ‘But perhaps you are only playing with me, and
that bottle of yours contains one of those homœopathic preparations
so fashionable now-a-days, a globule of poison diluted with a gallon
of water.’
‘It contains prussic acid, which I took from my uncle’s surgery a few
days ago, so that I might have one resource against all evils, even
the horror of your touch.’
‘Not very complimentary to the man who is to be your husband next
Saturday. Don’t be foolish, Sibyl. Give me that bottle, and let me
throw it under the grate.’
‘No, you shall not take it from me,’ exclaims Sibyl, clenching her
hand upon the phial, so tightly that it would need some exercise of
Mr. Pilgrim’s brute force to take it from her.
‘Keep it then,’ he cries savagely. ‘Keep it, and reconcile yourself
to all the evil it may do you. You are a heartless and unreasonable
woman, and deserve to suffer for your folly. Keep your deadly
poison, but remember your English proverb which tells you that it
is dangerous to play with edged tools. And so good night, Miss
Faunthorpe. I’m afraid I shall have a vixen for a wife, and get the
worst of it in our domestic quarrels.’
Thus, with a sneer, he leaves her.
‘No resource,’ murmurs Sibyl, ‘none but flight--or--’ she looks at
the little bottle, full of a colourless liquid--‘or this.’