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.