THE FLINTY WALL
There was one point about Jeremy Chiddingfold's system of philosophy--if
that name may be allowed to dignify the rather mixed assortment of facts
and inferences which he had gathered from his studies: This point was
that there was no appeal against facts. Nature was nature, feelings were
feelings, and change was development. One thing was right to-day; it
became wrong to-morrow without ceasing to have been right yesterday. Let
there be an end of ignorant parrot-like chatter about inconsistency. Is
evolution inconsistency? Inconsistency with what? He put this question
and kindred ones quite heatedly to Mrs. Mumple, who did not at all
understand them, and to whom they savoured of unorthodoxy; she had ever
distrusted a scientific education. If Jeremy could have put his case in
a concrete form, he would have won her sympathy. But she did not know
where such general principles would stop, and she had heard that there
were persons who impugned the authority of Moses.
Jeremy did not care much about Mrs. Mumple's approval, though he tried
his arguments on her as a boxer tries his fists on a stuffed sack (she
suggested the simile). He did not expect to convince her, and would have
been rather sorry if he had. In her present mental condition she was
invaluable as a warning and a butt. But it was exasperating that Mrs.
Hutting should hold antique, ludicrous, and (in his opinion) in the end
debased views about social intercourse between the sexes--in fact (to
descend to that concrete which Jeremy's soul abhorred) about girls of
seventeen taking walks with young men of twenty-two. Mrs. Hutting's
views on this point imposed on Jeremy proceedings which he felt to be
unbecoming to a philosopher. He had to scheme, to lie in wait, to plan
most unlikely accidents, on occasion to palter with truth, to slip
behind a waggon or to hide inside a barn. A recognition on Mrs.
Hutting's part of nature, of facts, and of development would have
relieved Jeremy from all these distasteful expedients.
But Mrs. Hutting was an old-fashioned woman. She obeyed her
husband--usually, however, suggesting on what points he might reasonably
require obedience. She expected her daughter to obey her. And she had
her views, which she had enforced in a very quiet but a very firm way.
Modern tendencies were not in favour at the rectory; that being
established as a premise, it followed that anything which was
disapproved of at the rectory was a modern tendency; wherefore
clandestine and spuriously accidental meetings between young men and
young women were a modern tendency, or, anyhow, signs of one--and of a
very bad one too. No ancient instances would have shaken Mrs. Hutting on
this point; the train of logic was too strong. Certainly Dora never
tried to shake her mother's judgment, or to break the chain. For Dora
was old-fashioned too. She admitted that clandestine and spuriously
accidental meetings were wrong. But sometimes the clandestine character
or the spuriousness of the accident could be plausibly questioned;
besides, a thing may be wrong, and yet not be so very, very bad. And the
thing may be such fun and so amusing that--well, one goes and tries not
to be found out. On these ancient but not obsolete lines Miss Dora
framed her conduct, getting thereby a spice of excitement and a fearful
joy which no duly licensed encounters could have given her. But she had
no doubt that Mrs. Hutting was quite right. Anna Selford's critical
attitude towards her parents was not in the rectory way.
"Suppose she'd seen us!" Dora whispered behind the barn, as the rectory
pony-chaise rolled slowly by.
"We're doing nothing wrong. I should like to walk straight out and say
so."
"If you do, I'll never speak to you again."
"I hate this--this dodging!"
"Then why don't you take your walks the other way? You know I come here.
Why do you come if you feel like that about it?"
Thus Dora fleshed her maiden sword. It was an added joy to make Jeremy
do things which he disliked. And all this time she was snubbing him and
his tentative approaches. Lovers? Certainly not--or of course she would
have told mamma! Accepted Jeremy? No--she liked to think that she was
trifling with him. In fine, she was simply behaving shamefully badly, in
a rapturously delightful way; and to see a pretty girl doing that is
surely a refreshing and rejuvenating sight!
Well, the word pretty is perhaps a concession to Jeremy. The only girl
in the place is always pretty. Dora was, at any rate, fresh and fair,
lithe and clean-limbed, gay and full of fun.
A dreadful peril threatened, with which Dora appalled her own fancy and
Jeremy's troubled heart. At seventeen school is still possible--a
finishing-school. Mrs. Hutting had brandished this weapon, conscious in
her own mind that the rectory finances would hardly suffice to put an
edge on it. Dora did not realise this difficulty.
"You remember that time we were seen? Well, there was an awful row, and
mamma said that if it happened once again I should go--for a year!"
Jeremy felt that something must be done, and said so.
"What could I do?"
That was a little more difficult for Jeremy.
"You must take pains to avoid me," said Dora, schooling her lips to
primness. "You don't want to get me sent away, do you?"
Certainly these spring months were very pleasant to Miss Dora. But,
alas, calamity came. It happened in Milldean just as it might have
happened in the West End of London. The school-teacher said something to
the post-mistress. There was nobody much else to say anything--for the
wise-eyed yokels, when they met the youth and the maid, gave a shrewd
kindly nod, and went on their way with an inarticulate but appreciative
chuckle. However the school-teacher did say something to the
post-mistress, whence the something came to Mrs. Hutting's ears. There
was another "row," no doubt even more "awful." The finishing-school was
brandished again, but, after a private consultation on finance, put
aside by the rector and Mrs. Hutting. Another weapon was chosen. Mrs.
Hutting dictated a note, the rector wrote and sealed it; it was sent
across to Old Mill House by the gardener, addressed to "Jeremy
Chiddingfold, Esq." In fact no circumstance of ceremony was omitted, and
Dora watched the messenger of tyranny from her bedroom window. In the
note (which began "Sir") Jeremy was plainly given to understand that he
was no gentleman, and that all relations between the rectory and himself
were at an end.
Jeremy stumped up and down the room, furiously exclaiming that he did
not care whether he was a gentleman or not. He was a man. That was
enough for him, and ought to be enough for anybody. Mrs. Mumple was
positively frightened into agreeing with him on this point. But however
sound the point may be, relations with the rectory were broken off! What
was to be done? Jeremy determined to go to town and lay before Grantley
and Sibylla the unparalleled circumstances of the case. But first there
was--well, there would be--one more stolen meeting. But it was not quite
of the sort which might have been anticipated. Dora's levity was gone;
she played with him no more. But neither did she follow the more
probable course, and, under the influence of grief and the pain of
separation, give the rein to her feelings, acknowledge her love, and
exchange her vows for his. The old-fashioned standards had their turn;
evidently the rectory upbraidings had been very severe. Every
disobedience, every trick, every broken promise rose up in judgment, and
declared the sentence to be just, however severe. Jeremy was at a loss
how to face this. He had been so convinced that nature was with them,
and that nature spelt rectitude. He was aghast at a quasi-theological
and entirely superstitious view that no good or happiness could come out
of a friendship (Dora adhered obstinately to this word) initiated in
such a way. He refused to recognise her wickedness and even his own.
When she announced her full acceptance of the edict, her determination
to evince penitence by absolute submission, he could only burst out:
"They haven't been cruel to you?"
"Cruel? No! They've been most--most gentle. I've come to see how wrong
it was."
"Yet you're here!" He could not resist the retort.
"For the last time--to say good-bye. And if you really care at all, you
must do as I wish."
"But--I may write to you?"
"No, no, you mustn't."
"You can't stop me thinking about you."
"I shan't think of you. I shall pray to be able not to. I'm sure I can
be strong."
She had got this idea in her head. It was just the sort of idea that
Sibylla might have got. She wanted to immolate herself. For such views
in Sibylla Jeremy had always had denunciations ready. He had no
denunciation now--only a despairing puzzle.
"I can't accept that, and I won't! Do you love me?"
"I'm going to keep my promise to say nothing. I've told you what I must
do and what you must. I made up my mind--and--and then I went to the
Sacrament to-day."
Jeremy rubbed his wrinkled brow, eyeing this determined penitent very
ruefully. A sudden return to rectitude is disconcerting in an
accomplice. He did not know what to do. But his bulldog persistence was
roused and his square jaw set obstinately.
"Well, I shall consider what to do. I believe you love me, and I shan't
sit down under this."
"You must," she said. "And now, good-bye."
He came towards her, but her raised hand stopped him.
"Good-bye like this? You won't even shake hands?"
"No, I can't. Good-bye."
Of course he was sorry for her, but he was decidedly angry too. He
perceived a case of the selfishness of spiritual exaltation. His
doggedness turned to surliness.
"All right, then, good-bye," he said sulkily.
"You're not angry with me?"
"Yes, I am."
She accepted this additional cross, and bore it meekly.
"That hurts me very much. But I must do right. Good-bye."
And with that she went, firm to the last, leaving Jeremy almost as
furious with women as in the palmiest days of his youth, almost as angry
with her as he had ever been with the long-legged rectory girl.
Pursuing (though he did not know it) paths as well trodden as those
which he had already followed, he formed an instant determination in his
mind. She should be sorry for it! Whether she should sorrow with a
lifelong sorrow or whether she should ultimately, after much grief and
humiliation, find forgiveness, he did not decide for the moment; both
ideas had their attraction. But at any rate she should be sorry, and
that as soon as possible. How was it to be brought about? Jeremy
conjectured that a remote and ill-ascertained success in original
research would not make her sorry, and his conclusion may be allowed to
pass; nor would a continuance of shabby clothes and an income of a
hundred a year. This combination had once seemed all-sufficient. Nay, it
would suffice now for true and whole-hearted love. But it was not enough
to make a cruel lady repent of her cruelty, nor to convict a misguided
zealot of the folly of her zeal. It was not dazzling enough for that. In
an hour Jeremy threw his whole ideal of life to the winds, and decided
for wealth and mundane fame--speedy wealth and speedy mundane fame
(speed was essential, because Jeremy's feelings were in a hurry). Such
laurels and fruits were not to be plucked in Milldean. That very night
Jeremy packed a well-worn leather bag and a square deal box. He was
going to London, to see Grantley and Sibylla, to make them acquainted
with the state of the case, and to set about becoming rich and famous as
speedily as possible. His mind o'erleapt the process and saw it already
completed--saw his return to Milldean rich and famous--saw his renewed
meeting with Dora, the confusion of the rector and Mrs. Hutting, the
unavailing--or possibly at last availing--regret and humiliation of
Dora. It cannot truthfully be said that he went to bed altogether
unhappy. He had his dream, even as Dora had hers; he had his luxury of
prospective victory as she had hers of unreserved and accepted
penitence; and they shared the conviction of a very extraordinary and
unprecedented state of things.
So to town came Jeremy, leaving Mrs. Mumple in Old Mill House. She was
not idle. She was counting months now--not years now, but months; and
she was knitting socks, and making flannel shirts, and hemming big red
handkerchiefs, and picturing and wondering in her faithful old heart
what that morning would be like for whose coming she had waited so many
many years. Great hopes and great fears were under the ample breast of
her unshapely merino gown.
In the Imason household the strain grew more intense. With rare
tenacity, unimpaired confidence, and unbroken pride, Grantley maintained
his attitude. He would tire out Sibylla's revolt; he would outstay the
fit of sulks, however long it might be. But the strain told on him,
though it did not break him: he was more away; more engrossed in his
outside activities; grimmer and more sardonic when he was at home;
careful to show no feeling which might expose him to rebuff; extending
the scope of this conduct from his wife to his child, because his wife's
grievance was bound up with the child. And Sibylla, seeing the attitude,
seeing partially only and therefore more resenting the motives, created
out of it and them a monster of insensibility, something of an inhuman
selfishness, seeming the more horrible and unnatural from the
unchanging, if cold, courtesy which Grantley still displayed. This image
had been taking shape ever since their battle at Milldean. It had grown
with the amused scorn which was on his face as he told her of the
specialist's judgment, and made her see how foolish she had been, what
an unnecessary fuss she had caused, how dangerous and silly it was to
let one's emotions run away with one. It had defined itself yet more
clearly through the months before and after the boy's birth, as Grantley
developed his line of action and adhered to it, secure apparently from
every assault of natural tenderness. Now the portentous shape was all
complete in her imagination, and the monster she had erected freed her
from every obligation. By her hypothesis it was accessible by no appeal
and sensitive to no emotion. Why, then, labour uselessly? It would
indeed be to knock your head--yes, and your heart too--against a flinty
wall. As for trying to show or to cherish love for it--that seemed to
her prostitution itself. And she had no tenacity to endure such a life
as Grantley, or her image of Grantley, made for her. In her headlong
fashion she had already pronounced the alternatives--death or flight.
And there was the baby boy in his helplessness; and there was young
Blake with his ready hot passion, masked by those aspirations of his,
and his fiery indignation seconding and applauding the despair of her
own heart. For Blake knew the truth now--the truth as Sibylla's
imaginings made it; and in view of that truth the thing his passion
urged him to became a holy duty. His goddess must be no more misused;
her misery must not be allowed to endure.
Knowing his thought and what his heart was towards her, Sibylla turned
to him as a child turns simply from a hard to a loving face. Here was a
life wanting her life, a love asking hers. She had always believed
people when they said they loved and wanted her--why, she had believed
even Grantley himself!--and was always convinced that their love for her
was all they said it was. It was her instinct to believe that. She
believed all--aye, more--about young Blake than he believed about
himself, though he believed very much just now; and she would always
have people all white or all black. Grantley was all black now, and
Blake was very white, white as snow, while he talked of his aspirations
and his love, and tempted her to leave all that bound her, and to give
her life to him. He tempted well, for he offered not pleasure, but the
power of doing good and bestowing happiness. Her first natural love
seemed to have spent itself on Grantley; she had no passion left, save
the passion of giving. It was to this he made his appeal; this would be
enough to give him all his way. Yet there was the child. He had not yet
ventured on that difficult uncertain ground. That was where the struggle
would be; it was there that he distrusted the justice of his own demand
on her, there that his passion had to drown the inward voices of
protest.
It might have happened that Jeremy, with his fresh love and fresh
ambitions, would have been a relief to such a position; that his appeal
both to sympathy and to amusement would have done something to clear the
atmosphere. So far as he himself went, indeed, he was irresistible; his
frankness and his confidence were not to be denied. Trusting in the
order of nature, he knew no bashfulness; trusting in himself, he had no
misgivings. Without a doubt he was right. They all agreed that the old
ideal of original research and a hundred a year must be abandoned, and
that Jeremy must become rich and famous as soon as possible.
"Though whether you ought to forgive her in the end is, I must say, a
very difficult point," remarked Grantley with a would-be thoughtful
smile. "In cases of penitence I myself favour forgiveness, Jeremy."
"But there is the revelation of her character," suggested Sibylla,
taking the matter more seriously, or treating its want of seriousness
with more tenderness.
"I'm inclined to think the young lady's right at present," said Blake.
"What you have to do is to give her ground for changing her views--and
to give her mother ground for changing hers too."
Jeremy listened to them all with engrossed interest. Whatever their
attitude, they all confirmed his view.
"You once spoke of a berth in the City?" he said to Grantley.
"Not much fame there; but perhaps you may as well take things by
instalments."
"I don't like it, you know. It's not my line at all."
Blake came to the rescue. The Selfords drew their money from large and
important dyeing-works, although Selford himself had retired from any
active share in the work of the business. There was room for scientific
aptitude in dyeing-works, Blake opined rather vaguely. "You could make
chemistry, for instance, subserve the needs of commerce, couldn't you?"
"That really is a good suggestion," said Jeremy approvingly.
"Capital!" Grantley agreed. "We'll get at Selford for you, Jeremy; and,
if necessary, we'll club together, and send to Terra del Fuego, and buy
Janet Selford a new dog."
"I begin to see my way," Jeremy announced.
Whereat the men laughed, while Sibylla came round and kissed him,
laughing too. What a very short time ago, and she had been even as
Jeremy, as sanguine, as confident, seeing her way as clearly, with just
as little warrant of knowledge!
"Meanwhile you mustn't mope, old chap," said Grantley.
"Mope? I've no time for moping. Do you think I could see this Selford
to-morrow?"
"I'll give you a letter to take to him," laughed Grantley. "But don't
ask for ten thousand a year all at once, you know."
"I know the world. When I really want a thing, I can wait for it."
But it was evident that he did not mean to wait very long. Grantley said
ten thousand a year: a thousand would seem riches to the Milldean
rectory folk.
"That's right. If you want a thing, you must be ready to wait for it,"
agreed Grantley, with smiling lips and a pucker on his brow.
"So long as there's any hope," added Sibylla.
These hints of underlying things went unheeded by Jeremy, but Blake
marked them. They were becoming more frequent now as the tension grew
and grew.
"There's always a hope with reasonable people."
"Opinions differ so much as to what is reasonable."
"Dora's not reasonable at present, anyhow."
Jeremy's mind had not travelled beyond his own predicament.
The contrast he pointed, the mocking memories he stirred, made his
presence accentuate and embitter the strife, confirming Sibylla's
despair, undermining even Grantley's obstinate self-confidence; while to
Blake his example, however much one might smile at it, seemed to cry,
"Courage!" He who would have the prize must not shrink from the
struggle.
That night Sibylla sat long by her boy's cot. Little Frank slept quietly
(he had been named after his godfather, Grantley's friend, that Lord
Caylesham who was also the Fanshaws' friend), while his mother fought
against the love and the obligation that bound her to him--a sad fight
to wage. She had some arguments not lacking speciousness. To what life
would he grow up in such a home as theirs! Look at the life the
Courtland children led! Would not anything be better than that--any
scandal in the past, any loss in present and future? She called to her
help too that occasional pang which the helpless little being gave her,
he the innocent cause and ignorant embodiment of all her perished hopes.
Might not that come oftener? Might it not grow and grow till it
conquered all her love, and she ended by hating because she might have
loved so greatly? Horrible! Yes, but had it not nearly come to pass with
one whom she had loved very greatly? It could not be called impossible,
however to be loathed the idea of it might be. No, not impossible! Her
husband was the child's father. Did he love him? No, she cried--she had
almost persuaded herself that his indifference screened a positive
dislike. And if it were not impossible, any desperate thing would be
better than the chance of it. But for Grantley she could love, she could
go on loving, the child. Then why not make an end of her life with
Grantley--the life that was souring her heart and turning all love to
bitterness? Grantley would not want the child, and, not wanting it,
would let her have it. She did not believe that he would burden himself
with the boy for the sake of depriving her of him. She admitted with a
passing smile that he had not this small spitefulness--his vices were on
a larger scale. She could go to Grantley and say she must leave him. No
law and no power could prevent her, and she believed that she could take
the boy with her.
Why not do that? Do that, and let honour, at least, stand pure and
unimpeached?
The question brought her to the issue she had tried to shirk, to the
truth she had sought to hide. Her love for the boy was much, but it was
not enough, it did not satisfy. Was it even the greatest thing? As it
were with a groan, her spirit answered, No. The answer could not be
denied, however she might stand condemned by it. Of physical passion she
acquitted herself--and now she was in no mood for easy self-acquittal;
but there was the greater passion for intercourse of soul, for union,
for devotion, for abandonment of the heart. These asked a responding
heart, they asked knowledge, feelings grown to full strength, a
conscious will, an intellect adult and articulate. They could be found
in full only where she had thought to find them--in the love of woman
and man, of fit man for fit woman, and of her for him. They could not be
found in the love for her child. Christine Fanshaw had asked her if she
could not be wrapped up in the baby. No. She could embrace it in her
love, but hers was too large for its little arms to enfold. She cried
for a wider field and what seemed a greater task.
And for what was wrong, distasteful, disastrous in the conclusion? She
had the old answer for this. "It's not my fault," she said. It was not
her fault that her love had found no answering love, had found no sun to
bloom in, and had perished for want of warmth. Not on her head lay the
blame. So far as human being can absolve human being from the commands
of God or of human society, she declared that by Grantley's act she
stood absolved. The contract in its true essence had not been broken
first by her.
Ah, why talk? Why argue? There were true things to be said, valid
arguments to use. On this she insisted. But in the end the imperious cry
of her nature rang out over all of them and drowned their feebler
voices. Come what might, and let the arguments be weak or strong, she
would not for all her life, that glorious life Heaven had given her,
beat her heart against the flinty wall.