Transcriber's note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the
original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors
have been corrected.
DOUBLE HARNESS
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
A MAN OF MARK.
MR. WITT'S WIDOW.
FATHER STAFFORD.
A CHANGE OF AIR.
HALF A HERO.
THE PRISONER OF ZENDA.
THE GOD IN THE CAR.
THE DOLLY DIALOGUES.
COMEDIES OF COURTSHIP.
THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO.
THE HEART OF PRINCESS OSRA.
PHROSO.
SIMON DALE.
RUPERT OF HENTZAU.
THE KING'S MIRROR.
QUISANTÉ.
TRISTRAM OF BLENT.
THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.
DOUBLE HARNESS
BY ANTHONY HOPE
LONDON
HUTCHINSON AND CO.
PATERNOSTER ROW
1904
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. SOME VIEWS OF THE INSTITUTION 1
II. THE FAIRY RIDE 12
III. THE WORLDLY MIND 24
IV. INITIATION 36
V. THE BIRTH OF STRIFE 49
VI. NOT PEACE BUT A SWORD 62
VII. A VINDICATION OF CONSCIENCE 73
VIII. IDEALS AND ASPIRATIONS 85
IX. A SUCCESSFUL MISSION 98
X. THE FLINTY WALL 112
XI. THE OLIVE BRANCH 126
XII. IMAGES AND THEIR WORK 139
XIII. THE DEAD AND ITS DEAD 152
XIV. FOR HIS LOVE AND HIS QUARREL 165
XV. IN THE TEETH OF THE STORM 181
XVI. THE UPPER AND THE NETHER STONE 196
XVII. WANDERING WITS 210
XVIII. THE RISING GENERATION 224
XIX. IN THE CORNER 238
XX. THE HOUR OF WRATH 252
XXI. AN UNCOMPROMISING EXPRESSION 265
XXII. ASPIRATIONS AND COMMON SENSE 278
XXIII. A THING OF FEAR 293
XXIV. FRIENDS 304
XXV. PICKING UP THE PIECES 320
XXVI. THE GREAT WRONG 335
XXVII. SAMPLES OF THE BULK 351
XXVIII. TO LIFE AND LIGHT AGAIN 365
XXIX. WITH OPEN EYES 379
DOUBLE HARNESS
CHAPTER I
SOME VIEWS OF THE INSTITUTION
The house--a large, plain white building with no architectural
pretensions--stood on a high swell of the downs and looked across the
valley in which Milldean village lay, and thence over rolling stretches
of close turf, till the prospect ended in the gleam of waves and the
silver-grey mist that lay over the sea. It was a fine, open, free view.
The air was fresh, with a touch of salt in it, and made the heat of the
sun more than endurable--even welcome and nourishing. Tom Courtland,
raising himself from the grass and sitting up straight, gave utterance
to what his surroundings declared to be a very natural exclamation:
"What a bore to leave this and go back to town!"
"Stay a bit longer, old chap," urged his host, Grantley Imason, who lay
full length on his back on the turf, with a straw hat over his eyes and
nose, and a pipe, long gone out, between his teeth.
"Back to my wife!" Courtland went on, without noticing the invitation.
With a faint sigh Grantley Imason sat up, put his hat on his head, and
knocked out his pipe. He glanced at his friend with a look of satirical
amusement.
"You're encouraging company for a man who's just got engaged," he
remarked.
"It's the devil of a business--sort of thing some of those fellows would
write a book about. But it's not worth a book. A page of strong and
indiscriminate swearing--that's what it's worth, Grantley."
Grantley sighed again as he searched for his tobacco-pouch. The sigh
seemed to hover doubtfully between a faint sympathy and a resigned
boredom.
"And no end to it--none in sight! I don't know whether it's legal
cruelty to throw library books and so on at your husband's head----"
"Depends on whether you ever hit him, I should think; and they'd
probably conclude a woman never would."
"But what an ass I should look if I went into court with that sort of
story!"
"Yes, you would look an ass," Grantley agreed. "Doesn't she give
you--well, any other chance, you know?"
"Not she! My dear fellow, she's most aggressively the other way."
"Then why don't you give her a chance?"
"What, you mean----?"
"Am I so very cryptic?" murmured Grantley as he lit his pipe.
"I'm a Member of Parliament."
"Yes, I forgot. That's a bit awkward."
"Besides, there are the children. I don't want my children to think
their father a scoundrel." He paused, and added grimly: "And I don't
want them to be left to their mother's bringing-up either."
"Then we seem to have exhausted the resources of the law."
"The children complicate it so. Wait till you have some of your own,
Grantley."
"Look here--steady!" Grantley expostulated. "Don't be in such a hurry to
give me domestic encumbrances. The bloom's still on my romance, old
chap. Talking of children to a man who's only been engaged a week!" His
manner resumed its air of languid sympathy as he went on: "You needn't
see much of her, Tom, need you?"
"Oh, needn't I?" grumbled Courtland. He was a rather short, sturdily
built man, with a high colour and stiff black hair which stood up on his
head. His face was not wanting in character, but a look of plaintive
worry beset it. "You try living in the same house with a woman--with a
woman like that, I mean!"
"Thanks for the explanation," laughed Grantley.
"I must go and wire when I shall be back, or Harriet'll blow the roof
off over that. You come too; a stroll'll do you good."
Grantley Imason agreed; and the two, leaving the garden by a little side
gate, took their way along the steep road which led down to the village,
and rose again on the other side of it, to join the main highway across
the downs a mile and a half away. The lane was narrow, steep, and full
of turns; the notice "Dangerous to Cyclists" gave warning of its
character. At the foot of it stood the Old Mill House, backing on to a
little stream. Farther on lay the church and the parsonage; opposite to
them was the post-office, which was also a general shop and also had
rooms to let to visitors. The village inn, next to the post-office, and
a dozen or so of labourers' cottages exhausted the shelter of the little
valley, though the parish embraced several homesteads scattered about in
dips of the downs, and a row of small new red villas at the junction
with the main road. Happily these last, owing to the lie of the ground,
were out of sight from Grantley Imason's windows, no less than from the
village itself.
"And that's the home of the fairy princess?" asked Courtland as they
passed Old Mill House, a rambling, rather broken-down old place, covered
with creepers.
"Yes; she and her brother moved there when the old rector died. You may
have heard of him--the Chiddingfold who was an authority on Milton. No?
Well, he was, anyhow. Rather learned all round, I fancy--Fellow of
John's. But he took this living and settled down for life; and when he
died the children were turned out of the rectory and took Old Mill
House. They've got an old woman--well, she's not very old--with the
uneuphonious name of Mumple living with them. She's been a sort of
nurse-housekeeper-companion: a mixed kind of position--breakfast and
midday dinner with the family, but didn't join his reverence's evening
meal. You know the sort of thing. She's monstrously fat; but Sibylla
loves her. And the new rector moved in a fortnight ago, and everybody
hates him. And the temporary curate, who was here because the new rector
was at Bournemouth for his health, and who lodged over the post-office,
has just gone, and everybody's dashed glad to see the last of him. And
that's all the news of the town. And, behold, Tom, I'm the squire of it,
and every man, woman, or child in it is, by unbroken tradition and
custom, entitled to have as much port wine out of my cellar as his, her,
or its state of health may happen to require."
He threw off this chatter in a gay self-contented fashion, and Tom
Courtland looked at him with affectionate envy. The world had been very
good to him, and he, in return, was always amiable to it. He had been
born heir and only child of his father; had inherited the largest share
in a solid old-fashioned banking-house; was now a director of the great
joint-stock undertaking in which the family business had consented to
merge itself on handsome terms; had just as much work to do as he liked,
and possessed, and always had enjoyed, more money than he needed. He was
thirty-three now, and had been a social favourite even before he left
school. If it was difficult to say what positive gain his existence had
been to society, there was no doubt that his extinction would at any
time have been considered a distinct loss.
"A country squire with a rosy-cheeked country girl for wife! That's a
funny ending for you, Grantley."
"She's not rosy-cheeked--and it's not an ending--and there's the
post-office. Go in, and be as civil as you can to Lady Harriet."
A smile of pity, unmistakably mingled with contempt, followed Courtland
into the shop. The tantrums of other men's wives are generally received
with much the same mixture of scepticism and disdain as the witticisms
of other parents' children. Both are seen large, very large indeed, by
sufferers and admirers respectively.
The obligation of being as civil as he could to his wife caused
Courtland to take three or four minutes in framing his telegram, and
when he came out he found Grantley seated on the bench that stood by the
inn and conversing with a young man who wore a very old coat and rough
tweed knickerbockers. Grantley introduced him as Mr. Jeremy
Chiddingfold, and Courtland knew that he was Sibylla's brother. Sibylla
herself he had not yet seen. Jeremy had a shock of sandy hair, a wide
brow, and a wide mouth; his eyes were rather protuberant, and his nose
turned up, giving prominence to the nostrils.
"No family likeness, I hope?" Courtland found himself thinking; for
though Jeremy was a vigorous, if not a handsome, masculine type, the
lines were far from being those of feminine beauty.
"And he's enormously surprised and evidently rather shocked to hear I'm
going to marry his sister--oh, we can talk away, Jeremy; Tom Courtland
doesn't matter. He knows all the bad there is about me, and wants to
know all the good there is about Sibylla."
One additional auditor by no means embarrassed Jeremy; perhaps not a
hundred would have.
"Though, of course, somebody must have married her, you know," Grantley
went on, smiling and stretching himself luxuriously like a sleek
indolent cat.
"I hate marriage altogether!" declared Jeremy.
Courtland turned to him with a quick jerk of his head.
"The deuce you do!" he said, laughing. "It's early in life to have come
to that conclusion, Mr. Chiddingfold."
"Yes, yes, Jeremy, quite so; but----" Grantley began.
"It's an invention of priests," Jeremy insisted heatedly.
Courtland, scarred with fifteen years' experience of the institution
thus roundly attacked, was immensely diverted, though his own feelings
gave a rather bitter twist to his mirth. Grantley argued, or rather
pleaded, with a deceptive gravity:
"But if you fall in love with a girl?"
"Heaven forbid!"
"Well, but the world must be peopled, Jeremy."
"Marriage isn't necessary to that, is it?"
"Oho!" whistled Courtland.
"We may concede the point--in theory," said Grantley; "in practice it's
more difficult."
"Because people won't think clearly and bravely!" cried Jeremy, with a
thump on the bench. "Because they're hidebound, and, as I say, the
priests heaven-and-hell them till they don't know where they are."
"Heaven-and-hell them! Good phrase, Jeremy! You speak feelingly. Your
father, perhaps----? Oh, excuse me, I'm one of the family now."
"My father? Not a bit. Old Mumples now, if you like. However that's got
nothing to do with it. I'm going on the lines of pure reason. And what
is pure reason?"
The elder men looked at one another, smiled, and shook their heads.
"We don't know; it's no use pretending we do. You tell us, Jeremy," said
Grantley.
"It's just nature--nature--nature! Get back to that, and you're on solid
ground. Why, apart from anything else, how can you expect marriage, as
we have it, to succeed when women are what they are? And haven't they
always been the same? Of course they have. Read history, read fiction
(though it isn't worth reading), read science; and look at the world
round about you."
He waved his arm extensively, taking in much more than the valley in
which most of his short life had been spent.
"If I'd thought as you do at your age," said Courtland, "I should have
kept out of a lot of trouble."
"And I should have kept out of a lot of scrapes," added Grantley.
"Of course you would!" snapped Jeremy.
That point needed no elaboration.
"But surely there are exceptions among women, Jeremy?" Grantley pursued
appealingly. "Consider my position!"
"What is man?" demanded Jeremy. "Well, let me recommend you to read
Haeckel!"
"Never mind man. Tell us more about woman," urged Grantley.
"Oh, lord, I suppose you're thinking of Sibylla?"
"I own it," murmured Grantley. "You know her so well, you see."
Descending from the heights of scientific generalisation and from the
search after that definition of man for which he had been in the end
obliged to refer his listeners to another authority, Jeremy lost at the
same time his gravity and vehemence. He surprised Courtland by showing
himself owner of a humorous and attractive smile.
"You'd rather define man, perhaps, than Sibylla?" suggested Grantley.
"Sibylla's all right, if you know how to manage her."
"Just what old Lady Trederwyn used to say to me about Harriet,"
Courtland whispered to Grantley.
"But it needs a bit of knowing. She's got the deuce of a temper--old
Mumples knows that. Well, Mumples has got a temper too. They used to
have awful rows--do still now and then. Sibylla used to fly out at
Mumples, then Mumples sat on Sibylla, and then, when it was all over,
they'd generally have a new and independent row about which had been
right and which wrong in the old row."
"Not content with a quiet consciousness of rectitude, as a man would
be?"
"Consciousness of rectitude? Lord, it wasn't that! That would have been
all right. It was just the other way round. They both knew they had
tempers, and Mumples is infernally religious and Sibylla's generous to
the point of idiocy in my opinion. So after a row, when Sibylla had
cheeked Mumples and told her to go to the devil (so to speak), and
Mumples had sent her to bed, or thumped her, or something, you know----"
"Let us not go too deep into family tragedies, Jeremy."
"Why, when it had all settled down, and the governor and I could hear
ourselves talking quietly again----"
"About marriage and that sort of question?"
"They began to have conscience. Each would have it borne in on her that
she was wrong. Sibylla generally started it. She'd go weeping to
Mumples, taking all her own things and any of mine that were lying about
handy, and laying them at Mumples' feet, and saying she was the
wickedest girl alive, and why hadn't Mumples pitched into her a lot
more, and that she really loved Mumples better than anything on earth.
Then Mumples would weigh in, and call Sibylla the sweetest and meekest
lamb on earth, and say that she loved Sibylla more than anything on
earth, and that she--Mumples--was the worst-tempered and cruellest and
unjustest woman alive, not fit to be near such an angel as Sibylla. Then
Sibylla used to say that was rot, and Mumples said it wasn't. And
Sibylla declared Mumples only said it to wound her, and Mumples got hurt
because Sibylla wouldn't forgive her, when Sibylla, of course, wanted
Mumples to forgive her. And after half an hour of that sort of thing, it
was as likely as not that they'd have quarrelled worse than ever, and
the whole row would begin over again."
Grantley lay back and laughed.
"A bit rough on you to give your things to--er--Mumples?" suggested
Courtland.
"Just like Sibylla--just like any woman, I expect," opined Jeremy, but
with a more resigned and better-tempered air. His reminiscences had
evidently amused himself as well as his listeners.
"Wouldn't it have been better to have a preceptress of more equable
temper?" asked Grantley.
"Oh, there's nothing really wrong with Mumples; we're both awfully fond
of her. Besides she's had such beastly hard luck. Hasn't Sibylla told
you about that, Imason?"
"No, nothing."
"Her husband was sent to quod, you know--got twenty years."
"Twenty years! By Jingo!"
"Yes. He tried to murder a man--a man who had swindled him. Mumples says
he did it all in a passion; but it seems to have been a cold sort of
passion, because he waited twelve hours for him before he knifed him.
And at the trial he couldn't even prove the swindling, so he got it
pretty hot."
"Is he dead?"
"No, he's alive. He's to get out in about three years. Mumples is
waiting for him."
"Poor old woman! Does she go and see him?"
"She used to. She hasn't for years now. I believe he won't have her--I
don't know why. The governor was high sheriff's chaplain at the time, so
he got to know Mumples, and took her on. She's been with us ever since,
and she can stay as long as she likes."
"What things one comes across!" sighed Tom Courtland.
Grantley had looked grave for a moment, but he smiled again as he said:
"After all, though, you've not told me how to manage Sibylla. I'm not
Mumples--I can't thump her. I should be better than Mumples in one way,
though. If I did, I should be dead sure to stick to it that I was
right."
"You'd stick to it even if you didn't think so," observed Courtland.
For a moment the remark seemed to vex Grantley, and to sober him. He
spent a few seconds evidently reflecting on it.
"Well, I hope not," he said at last. "But at any rate I should think so
generally."
"Then you could mostly make her think so. But if it wasn't true, you
might feel a brute."
"So I might, Jeremy."
"And it mightn't be permanently safe. She sees things uncommonly sharp
sometimes. Well, I must be off."
"Going back to Haeckel?"
Jeremy nodded gravely. He was not susceptible to ridicule on the subject
of his theories. The two watched him stride away towards Old Mill House
with decisive vigorous steps.
"Rum product for a country parsonage, Grantley."
"Oh, he's not a product; he's only an embryo. But I think he's a
promising one, and he's richly amusing."
"Yes, and I wonder how you're going to manage Miss Sibylla!"
Grantley laughed easily. "My poor old chap, you can't be expected to
take a cheerful view. Poor old Tom! God bless you, old chap! Let's go
home to tea."
As they walked by the parsonage a bicycle came whizzing through the open
garden-gate. It was propelled by a girl of fifteen or thereabouts--a
slim long-legged child, almost gaunt in her immaturity, and lamentably
grown out of her frock. She cried shrill greeting to Grantley, and went
off down the street, displaying her skill to whosoever would look by
riding with her arms akimbo.
"Another local celebrity," said Grantley. "Dora Hutting, the new
parson's daughter. That she should have come to live in the village is a
gross personal affront to Jeremy Chiddingfold. He's especially incensed
by her lengthy stretch of black stockings, always, as he maintains, with
a hole in them."
Courtland laughed inattentively.
"I hope Harriet'll get that wire in good time," he said.
No remark came into Grantley's mind, unless it were to tell his friend
that he was a fool to stand what he did from the woman. But what was the
use of that? Tom Courtland knew his own business best. Grantley shrugged
his shoulders, but held his peace.