THE UPPER AND THE NETHER STONE
"Then you must come back with me," said Grantley. Young Blake sprang
forward a step, crying--"By God, no!"
Neither of them heeded him; their eyes were on one another. Already the
fight was between the two, and the two only.
"Do you really think that?" she asked. "I don't know how you come to be
here--I suppose Christine warned you somehow; but it's by mere accident
that you are here, and that I haven't gone before now. It makes no
difference. You're not in time, as you call it. The thing is settled
already; it was settled when I planned to come, not when I came. What
you meant doesn't count. Do you really think I shall come back now?"
"Yes, you must come back now."
"Back to that life? Never! Of course you don't know what it was to me,
and I don't suppose I could tell you. You wouldn't understand."
Blake threw himself into a chair by the window. He was helplessly
impatient of the situation. Grantley came a little nearer the table and
stood there, to all seeming impassive. The appearance was not very
deceptive. He was not now dominated by emotion; he was possessed by a
resolve. His love for his wife was far buried in his heart; his set
purpose was all he knew.
"I don't see what you had to complain of," he said coldly. "The way we
lived was your choice, not mine. But I'm not going to discuss that. I'm
here to take you home to your husband's house and to your child."
"I've faced all that a thousand times, and answered it a thousand times.
It can't move me now. You'd better go away, Grantley."
Again Blake rose; he did not lack physical courage.
"I'll go with you. I'm at your service," he said. "But outside; you
shan't stay here."
He waited a moment for an answer, but, getting none, nor so much as a
look, sank awkwardly into his seat again.
Grantley spoke to his wife.
"I know what happened. Before you did this, you fogged your mind with
all sorts of fantastic ideas. You're not the woman to do this kind of
thing easily."
"Fantastic ideas! Yes, they seem so to you. The fantastic idea of having
something to live for, some life, something else than a prison, than
repression, than coldness. I had lots of those fantastic ideas,
Grantley."
"You had your child."
"I tell you I've faced it." She pressed her fingers hard into her cheek
and frowned. "The child made it worse," she jerked out fiercely. "Seeing
you with the child was----" She shook her head with a shiver.
Grantley raised his eyebrows.
"As bad as that?" he asked mockingly. He paused, and went on: "But this
is all beside the point. Supposing it was as bad as you say, what then?
You had made your bargain; you chose to take me; you relied on your own
opinion. Say it was a mistaken opinion--what difference does that make?"
"It does make a difference. I'm not called upon to throw away every
chance of happiness because of one mistake."
"That's just what you are called upon to do--in civilised society."
"You don't actually propose an abstract argument," she asked,
"now--under these circumstances?" She smiled derisively.
"Oh, no! But your point of view compelled a protest. I'm not here to
argue; I'm here to take you back--or, if you won't come, to tell you the
consequences."
"I'm prepared for the consequences."
That gave young Blake another chance. He rose and came forward.
"Yes, she is--and so am I," he said; "and that ought to end the matter
between us. We're prepared for the trouble and the scandal and all that;
and I'm prepared for anything else you may think proper to ask. We've
weighed all that, and made up our minds to it. That's the answer we have
to give."
He spoke in a low voice, but very quickly and with passion; evidently he
had hard work to keep control of himself. When he finished speaking,
there was a moment's silence. He looked from Grantley to Sibylla, then
went back to his chair; but he drew it nearer and listened intently.
"It is so," said Sibylla. "We've made up our minds to all that."
Grantley passed his hand across his brow--almost the first movement that
he had made. He was about to speak when another short fit of vehemence
caught hold of Sibylla.
"Yes," she cried, striking the table with her hand, "and it's better
than that life of sham and fraud and failure and heartbreak! Yes, a
thousand, thousand times better!"
He let the gust pass by, and then spoke slowly, as though he weighed his
words.
"Those are the consequences to you and your--your friend here," he said.
"Have you thought of the consequences to me?"
"To you? Am I so necessary?" She laughed bitterly.
"And to the boy?"
"Not so bad as growing up in such a home as ours!" she flashed out
fiercely again.
"Oh, that's the way you argued that?" he said with a smile. "I was
rather wondering. However there are other consequences still." He came
yet a pace nearer to her, so that he was close to the table, and rested
one hand on it. "There will be other consequences still," he said. "I
don't accept the position you propose for me. I don't accept these
consequences which you have been so good as to face and decide upon. I
refuse them totally--both for myself and for my son I refuse them
utterly. It's fair you should understand that. I refuse them root and
branch."
Blake leant forward, ready to spring up. The idea of violence came into
his head, the idea that Grantley might be armed. Grantley noticed his
movement, and at last addressed a word to him.
"Don't be afraid. I don't mean that," he said with a short laugh.
Sibylla spoke to him, sadly now.
"You can't refuse. It's put out of your power. This thing must be. It
has become inevitable. There's no use in talking of refusing the
consequences. They won't be as bad as you think."
"It's not inevitable; it's not out of my power. It's entirely in my
power to accept your consequences or not to accept them, to face them or
not to face them; and I have decided. I won't be, and I won't be known
as, what you're making me; and your son shan't have to confess you his
mother before men."
Young Blake looked at him with a puzzled impatience; Sibylla with a slow
pondering glance. She twisted a ring on her finger as she asked:
"What do you mean by that?"
"In this world nothing need happen to us that we don't choose to bear,
and nothing to those who are in our power that we don't choose to accept
for them."
"What are you talking about?" asked Blake fretfully. "It sounds all
nonsense to me."
He leant back with a scornful toss of his head. This sort of thing had
lasted long enough, in his opinion.
"Tell me what you mean," said Sibylla, leaning forward across the table.
Grantley announced the resolve that possessed him, born of those bitter
meditations, of those intolerable pictures of the future which had
formed themselves in his mind as he battled through the storm to
Fairhaven. He uttered it not as a threat, but as a warning; it was, as
he had said, fair that she should understand.
"If you persist, I shall kill Frank and myself to-night."
Blake broke into a loud scornful laugh, sticking his hands in his
pockets. Grantley turned towards him, smiling slightly.
"Oh, this isn't a melodrama, you know," Blake said, "and we're not to be
bluffed like that. Don't be so damned absurd, Imason! On my soul, I've
had enough of this business without having to listen to stuff like
that!"
"Do you think it's bluff and melodrama?" Grantley asked Sibylla. "Do you
think I've no real intention of doing it?"
She looked up at him intently.
"You love yourself more than the boy, and your pride more than life or
happiness," she said slowly. He frowned, but heard her without
interruption. "So I think you might do it," she ended.
"Sibylla!" cried Blake, leaning forward again.
A gesture from her arrested his speech. He rose slowly to his feet and
stood listening.
"I may be made a fool of. I don't make a fool of myself. If I pledge
myself to you to do it, you know I shall do it, Sibylla?"
"Yes, then you would do it," she agreed.
"Oh, but it's nonsense, it's rank madness, it's--it's inconceivable!"
Blake broke out.
"I do now so pledge myself," said Grantley.
Sibylla nodded; she understood. She leant back in her chair now,
regarding her husband thoughtfully.
Grantley's pale face was set in a fixed smile; he met her gaze steadily.
"It's madness--you'll be stopped!" Blake burst out. "I can't believe you
mean it. Anyhow, you'll be stopped."
"By you? Will you send for a policeman? or will you come to my house and
stop me? Nothing can stop me unless you kill me. Is that your choice?"
He spoke to Blake, but he looked still at Sibylla. Blake came near and
scrutinised the pale face with eyes whose expression grew from wonder
and incredulity into a horrified apprehension. The silence now seemed
long.
"Yes," said Sibylla at last, "it's like you. That's what you'd do. I
never thought of it; but I'm not surprised. It's you. It's just that in
you which has made my life an impossible thing. You sacrificed me to it.
You would sacrifice yourself and your son. Yes, it's you."
She put her hands up before her face for a moment, pressing her fingers
on her eyelids. Then her eyes sought his face again.
"But, Sibylla----" cried Blake.
"Yes, he'd do it, Walter," she interrupted, not turning round.
Blake took two restless paces to and fro, and sank into his chair again.
"You understand now. It lies with you," said Grantley to his wife. "I've
told you. I was bound to tell you. Now it lies with you."
Again passion seized her.
"No, no, that's false! It doesn't lie with me! It lies at your door,
both the crime--the hideous crime--and, I pray God, the punishment!"
"I'm not talking about the crime or the punishment," he said coldly. "I
take those on myself as much as you like. What depends on you is whether
the thing happens. That's all I meant to say."
Young Blake was staring at him now as if fascinated by his firm and
hideous resolve. Slowly it had been driven into Blake's brain that the
man meant what he said, that he would do the thing. The man looked like
it, and Sibylla believed he would. He would kill himself--yes, and the
pretty child with whom Sibylla had been used to play. He could see the
picture of that now--of Sibylla's beautiful motherhood. His heart turned
sick within him as he began to believe Grantley's sombre pledge.
"It's a lie," said Sibylla in grim defiance. "Nothing depends on me.
It's the evil of your own heart. I've nothing to do with it."
"It's with you to bring it about or to prevent it."
"No!" she cried, rising to her feet in the agonised strain of her
heart--"no, no! That's a lie--a lie! On your head be it! Ah, but perhaps
it would be best for him! God knows, perhaps it would be best!"
"So I think," said Grantley quietly. "And you accept that?"
"No, I acknowledge no responsibility--not a jot."
"Well, leave the question of responsibility. But it's your will that
this shall happen sooner than that you should leave this man?"
"Sooner than that I should come back to you, that life of ours begin
again, and Frank grow up to a knowledge of it!"
"And it's my will, sooner than that he should grow up to a knowledge of
how his mother ended it. That's settled then?"
"It's no bargain!" she protested fiercely. "You have settled it."
"But it is settled?" he persisted.
"If you do it, may God never pardon you!"
"Perhaps. But you know that it is settled?"
She made no answer.
"You can't deny that you know. So be it."
He faced her for a moment longer; her figure swayed a little, but she
stood her ground. She was not beaten down. And she knew the thing was
settled, unless by chance, at the last, pity should enter Grantley's
heart. But she did not believe pity could enter that heart; he had never
shown her that there was a way.
The smile rested still on Grantley's face as he regarded his wife. She
looked very beautiful in her fierce defiance, her loathing of him, her
passionate protest, her refusal to be beaten down, her facing of the
thing. She had a fine spirit; it did not know defeat or cravenness. She
was mad with her ideas. Perhaps he was mad with his. And the ideas
clashed--with ruin to her life, and his, and the child's. But she did
not bow her head any more than he would bend his haughty neck.
"At least you have courage," he said to her. "It is settled. And now
I'll say good-bye and go. I'll interrupt you no more."
It was his first taunt of that kind. It seemed to pass unheeded by
Sibylla; but young Blake's face turned red, and he clenched his hands;
but not in anger. A wave of horror passed over him. He would not
interrupt longer what his coming had interrupted--that was what Grantley
Imason meant. He would leave them to themselves while he went back alone
to his home, and there found the sleeping child. But the idea of
that--the picture of the one house and the other--was too fearful. How
could the two bear to think of that? How could they stand there and
decide on that? It was unnatural, revolting, alien from humanity. Yet
they meant it. Blake doubted that no more, and the conviction of it
unmanned him. He had been prepared for scandal, he had been ready to
risk his life. Those things were ordinary; but this thing was not.
Scandal is one thing, tragedy another. This grim unyielding pair of
enemies threw tragedy in his appalled face. It was too much. A groan
burst from his lips.
"My God!" he moaned.
They both turned and looked at him--Sibylla gravely, Grantley with his
rigid smile.
"My God, I can't bear it!" He was writhing in his chair, as though in
keen bodily pain. "It's too awful! We--we should think of it all our
lives. I should never get rid of it. I should see the poor little
beggar's face. I can't stand that. I never thought of anything like
that. I never meant anything like that. Poor little Frank! My God, you
can't mean it, Imason?"
"You know I mean it. It's nothing to you. The responsibility is ours.
What do you count for? It was you or another--that's all. Neither my
life nor my son's is anything to you."
"But it would--it would always be there. I could never sleep at nights.
I should feel like--like a murderer. For pity's sake----"
He came towards Grantley, stretching out his hands for mercy. Grantley
made no sign. Blake turned to Sibylla. She too was stiff and still, but
her eyes rested on him in compassion. He turned away and threw himself
into the chair again. A convulsive movement ran through his body, and he
gave a loud sob.
Sibylla walked slowly away to the hearthrug, and stood looking at the
agonised young man. Grantley waited in immovable patience. The thing was
not finished yet.
"The horror of it!" Blake moaned almost inarticulately. He turned to
weak rage for an instant and hissed across to Grantley: "If I had a
revolver, I'd shoot you where you stand."
"That would be better for me, but not better for the boy," said
Grantley.
"I can't understand you," Blake gasped, almost sobbing again.
"Why should you? My account is not to be rendered to you. If I've ruined
my wife's life--and you've heard her say I have--if I take my own and my
son's, what is it to you?"
In Grantley's slow measured words there breathed a great contempt. What,
he seemed to say, were any great things, any stern issues, to this
unmanned hysterical creature, who dressed up his desires in fine
clothes, and let them beguile him whither he knew not, only to start
back in feeble horror at the ruin that he had invited? What was it all
to him, or he to it? It was he or another. The real battle was still
between himself and Sibylla. With what eyes was she looking on this
young man? He turned from the collapsed figure and faced his wife again.
But her eyes were now on Walter Blake, with a pleading, puzzled, pitying
look. The next moment she walked quickly across the room and knelt down
by his side, taking one of his hands in both of hers. She began to
whisper consolation to him, praying him not to distress himself, to be
calm and brave, tenderly reproaching his lack of self-control. She was
with him as Grantley had seen her with the child. He wondered to see
that, and his wonder kept his temper under command. There did not seem
enough to make a man's passion rage or his jealousy run wild, even
though she whispered close in Blake's ear, and soothingly caressed his
hand.
"Don't be so distressed," he heard her murmur. "It's not your fault,
dear. Don't be frightened about it."
He tried to shake her off with a childish petulance, but she persevered.
Yet she could not calm him. He broke from her and sprang to his feet,
leaving her kneeling.
"I can't face it! By God, I can't!" he cried.
"It will happen," said Grantley Imason. "If not to-night--if anything
prevents me to-night--still very soon. You'll hear of it very soon."
The young man shuddered.
"The poor little chap--the poor innocent little chap!" he muttered
hoarsely. He turned to Grantley. "For Heaven's sake, think again!"
"It's you who have to think. I have thought. I've little time for more
thought. You've all your life to think about it--all your life with that
woman, who is the mother of the child."
"Why do you torment him?" broke out Sibylla angrily.
But she rose slowly and drew away from Blake as she spoke.
Grantley shrugged his shoulders scornfully.
"The fellow has no business in an affair like this," he said. "He'd
better get back to his flirtations."
"I never thought of anything like this."
The repetition came from Blake like some dull forlorn refrain.
He put his hand to his throat and gulped with a hard dry swallow. He
looked round the room, made for a table where some whisky stood, and
took a drink of it. Then he half staggered back to his chair, and sat
down all in a heap. His limit was reached. He was crushed between the
upper and the nether stone--between Grantley's flinty pride and the
ruthless fanaticism of Sibylla's ideas. Between them they would make
him, who had wanted to be good, who had had such fine aspirations, such
high-coloured dreams, such facile emotions, so impulsive a love--between
them they would make him a murderer--a murderer in his own eyes.
Whatever hands did the deed, to the end of his days conscience would cry
out that his were red.
Sibylla sighed. Her eyes were very mournful. She spoke, as it seemed,
more to herself than to either of them.
"I wanted to make him happy, and I've made him very unhappy. I can do
it, but he can't do it. I mustn't ask it of him. He would never be
happy, I could never make him happy. Even if I could be happy, he
couldn't; it's too hard for him. I don't know what to do now."
Grantley neither spoke nor moved.
"I've no right to ask it of any man. Nobody could agree to it, nobody
could endure it. There's misery both ways now."
She went to Blake, who was sitting in the apathetic stupor which had
followed his raving outburst. Again she knelt by him and whispered to
him soothingly. At last Grantley spoke.
"It would be well if we were home before it's light and the servants
up," he said.
She looked across at him from beside Blake's knee. She looked long and
searchingly. His smile was gone; his manner and air were courteous,
however peremptory.
"Yes, it would be well," she said. She rose and came a little way
towards him. "There's no help for it. I can't escape from you. I'm bound
to you in bonds I can't loosen. I've tried. I've stood at nothing. I
wish to Heaven I could! Going back is like going back to death. But
perhaps he's right. Better my living death than the thing you meant to
do." She paused and ended: "I'll go back to the child, but I will not
come back to you."
"You give all I've asked," said Grantley with cold politeness.
She looked round at young Blake with a pitiful smile.
"It's the only way, my dear. With this man what he is, it's the only
way. I must leave you alone."
Blake leaned towards her with a passionate cry of pain. She reasoned
gently with him.
"But you know the alternative--you've heard it. We can't help it. This
man is capable of doing it, and he would find out a way. I don't see
that we could do anything at all to stop him. Then when you heard it, it
would be so terrible to you. You'd hate yourself. Oh, and, my dear, I
think you'd hate me! And I couldn't bear that. No, you must be
reasonable. There's no other way."
Blake hid his face in his hands. He made no further effort. He knew that
her words were true.
Sibylla walked into the bedroom, leaving the two alone. Neither now
moved nor spoke. The storm outside seemed to have abated, for the rain
dashed no more against the windows, and the wind was not howling round
the walls of the house. It was very still. Grantley Imason presently
began to button his coat, and then to dust the wet off his hat with his
coat sleeve.
Sibylla came back in her hat and cloak.
"We must get something to carry you," said Grantley. "I wonder if we
could raise a cart here!"
"How did you come?"
"I rode over."
"I don't want a cart. I shall walk beside your horse."
"Impossible! At this time of night! And such a night!"
"I shall walk--I must walk! I can't sit in a cart and----"
Her gesture explained the rest. Struggling along on foot, she might keep
her wits. Madness lay in sitting and thinking.
"As you will," said Grantley.
She had begun to draw on her gloves; but when she looked at Blake she
drew them quickly off again, and thrust them into a pocket of her cloak.
She walked past Grantley to Blake, and took hold of both his hands.
Bending over him, she kissed him twice.
"Thank you for having loved me, Walter," she said. "Good-bye."
Blake said nothing. He held her hands and looked up imploringly in her
face. Then she disengaged herself from his grasp and turned round to her
husband.
"I'm ready," she said. "Let us go."
Grantley bowed slightly, went to the door, and opened it for her. She
looked back once at Blake, murmuring:
"For having loved me, Walter," and kissed her hand to him.
With no sign of impatience Grantley waited. Himself he took no heed of
Blake, but followed Sibylla out of the room in unbroken silence.
When he found himself alone, young Blake sprang towards the door, giving
a cry like some beast's roar of rage and disappointment. But his feet
carried him no more than half-way. Half-way was all he ever got. Then he
reeled across to where the liquor was, and drank some more of it,
listening the while to the paces of Grantley's horse on the stone flags
outside the inn. As they died away, he finished his liquor and got back
to his chair. He sat a moment in dull vacancy; then his nerves failed
him utterly, and he began to sob helplessly, like a forsaken frightened
child. As Grantley Imason said, he had no business in an affair like
that.