WANDERING WITS
Grantley's pride was eager to raise its crest again. It caught at the
result of the struggle and claimed it as a victory, crying out that
there was to be no pointing of scornful fingers, no chuckles and winks,
no shame open and before the world. The woman who walked by his horse
was a pledge to that. He was not to stand a plain fool and dupe in the
eyes of men. If that thought were not enough, look at the figure young
Walter Blake had cut! Who had played the man in the fight? Not the
lover, but the husband. Who had won the day and carried off the prize?
The woman who walked by his horse was the evidence of that. Who had
known his will, and stood by it, and got it? The woman answered that. He
bore her off with him; young Blake was left alone in the dingy inn,
baulked in his plan, broken in spirit, disappointed of his desire.
The night was still and clear now. Broad puddles in the low-lying road
by the sea, and the slipperiness of the chalky hill up to the cliffs,
witnessed to the heaviness of the recent downpour, as the flattened
bushes in the house gardens proved the violence of the tempest. But all
was over now, save the sulky heaving of big rollers. A clear moon shone
over all. They met nobody: the man who had vainly watched for the yacht
had gone home. Sibylla did not speak. Once or twice she caressed Rollo,
who knew her and welcomed her. For the rest she trudged steadily through
the puddles, and set her feet resolutely to climb the sticky road. She
never looked up at her companion. The brutality of his pride rejoiced
again to see her thus. Here was a fine revenge for her scornful words,
for the audacity with which she had dared to bring him within an ace of
irremediable shame--him and the child she had borne to him! She was well
punished; she came back to him perforce. Was she weary? Was she cruelly
weary? It was well. Did she suffer? It was just. Woe to the
conquered--his was the victory! Even in her bodily trial his fierceness
found a barbaric joy.
But deep within him some mocking spirit laughed at all this, and would
not let its gibes be silenced. It derided his victory, and made bitter
fun of his prancing triumph. "I'll go back to the child, but I will not
come back to you." "Going back is like going back to death." "Thank you
for having loved me, Walter." The mischievous spirit was apt at
remembering and selecting the phrases which stung sharpest. Was this
triumph? it asked. Was this victory? Had he conquered the woman? No,
neither her body nor her soul. He had conquered--young Blake! The spirit
made cheap of that conquest, and dared Grantley to make much of it.
"Rank, blank failure," said the spirit with acrid merriment. "And a
lifetime of it before you!" The world would not know, perhaps, though it
can generally guess. But his heart knew--and hers. It was a very fine
triumph that!--a triumph fine to win against the woman who had loved
him, and counted her life worth having because it was hers to give to
him! Through the blare of the trumpets of his pride came this piercing
venomous voice. Grantley could not but hear. Hearing it, he hated
Sibylla, and again was glad that she trudged laboriously and painfully
along the slimy oozing road. The instinct of cruelty spoke in him. She
had chosen to trudge. It was her doing. That was excuse enough. Whatever
the pain and labour, she had her way. Who was to blame for it?
They passed the red villas, and came where the Milldean road branched
off to the left at the highest point of the downs. From here they looked
over the cliffs that sloped towards their precipitous fall to the sea.
The moon was on the heaving waters; a broad band of silver cut the waves
in two. Grantley brought his horse to a stand, and looked. At the
instant Sibylla fell against the horse's shoulder, and caught at his
mane with her hands, holding herself up. Rollo turned his head and nosed
her cloak in a friendly fashion. A stifled sob proclaimed her exhaustion
and defeat. She could walk no more. The day had been long, full of
strain, compact of emotion and struggle; even despair could inspire no
more exertion. In a moment she would fall there by the horse's side.
Grantley looked down on her with a frowning face, yet with a new
triumph. Again she failed; again he was right.
"Of course you couldn't do it! Why did you try?" he asked coldly. "The
result is--here we are! What are we to do now?"
She made no answer; her clutch on Rollo's mane grew more tenacious--that
alone kept her up.
"You must ride. I'll get down," he said surlily. Then he gave a sudden
laugh. "No, he can carry us both--he's done it once before. Put your
feet on the stirrup here--I'll pull you up."
She made no sign of understanding his allusion. He saw that she was
dazed with weariness. He drew her up, and set her behind him, placing
her arm about his waist.
"Take care you don't let go," he warned her curtly, as he jogged the
horse on again, taking now to the turf, where the going was better.
Her grasp of his waist was limp.
"Hold on, hold on!" he said testily, "or you'll be slipping off." There
was no hint of tenderness in his voice.
But Sibylla recked nothing of that now. With a long-drawn sigh she
settled herself in her place. It was so sweet to be carried along--just
to be carried along, to sit still and be carried along. She tightened
her grip on him, and sighed again in a luxury of content. She let her
head fall against his shoulder, and her eyes closed. She could think no
more and struggle no more; she fell into the blessed forgetfulness, the
embracing repose, of great fatigue.
The encircling of her arm, the contact of her head, the touch of her
hair on his neck moved him with a sudden shock. Their appeal was no less
strong because it was utterly involuntary, because the will had no part
in the surrender of her wearied-out body. Memory assailed him with a
thousand recollections, and with one above all. His face set in a sullen
obstinate resistance; he would not hear the voice of his heart answering
the appeal, saying that his enemy was also the woman whom he loved. He
moved the horse into a quicker walk. Then he heard Sibylla speaking in a
faint drowsy whisper: "Good Rollo, good Rollo, how he carries us
both--as easily as if we were one, Grantley!" She ended with another
luxurious sigh. It was followed by a little shiver and a fretful effort
to fold her cloak closer about her. She was cold. She drew nearer to
him, seeking the warmth of contact. "That's a little better," she
murmured in a childish grumbling voice, and sought more comfortable
resting for her head on his shoulder.
He knew that her wits wandered, and that the present was no more present
to her. She was in the past--in the time when to be near him was her
habit and her joy, the natural refuge she sought, her rest in weariness,
the end of her every journey, when his arms had been her home. Certainly
her wits must be wandering, or she would never rest her head on his
shoulder, nor suffer her hair to touch his neck, nor speak nor sigh like
that, nor deliver herself to his charge and care in this childish holy
contentment. Wandering wits, and they alone, could make her do anything
of this. So it was not to be regarded. How should any sane man regard it
from the woman who had forsaken her child and sought to dishonour her
home, whom he had but just torn from the arms of a lover?
He was afraid. Hence came his summoning of the hardest thoughts, his
resort to the cruellest names. He braced himself to disregard the appeal
she made, to recall nothing of all that her intimate presence thrust
upon his mind. He would not be carried back across the gulf of the last
year, across the chasm which those months had rent between them. For
here was no such willing submission as he asked. It was all unconscious;
it left her rebellion unquelled and her crime unexpiated. Yet he waited
fearfully to hear her voice again. Whither would the errant wits next
carry her? Whither must they carry her? He seemed to be able to answer
that question in one way only. They must go right back to the beginning.
With a sense of listening to inevitable words, he heard her soft drowsy
whisper again:
"Let's ride straight into the gold, Grantley, straight into the gold,
and let the gold----"
The faint happy murmur died away in a sigh, and her head, which had been
raised a moment, nestled on his shoulder again.
It had come--the supreme touch of irony which he had foreseen and
dreaded. The errant wits had overleapt the stupendous gulf; they
crimsoned the cold rays of the moon into the glory of summer sunset;
they coloured desolate ruins with the gleaming hues of splendid youth.
Her soul was again in the fairy ride, the fairy ride which had led
whither? Which had led to this? Nothing that waking wits, or an
ingenuity pointed by malice, might have devised, could have equalled
this. She might have searched all her armoury in vain for so keen a
weapon. Nay, she would have rejected this, the sharpest of all; no human
being could have used it knowingly. It would have been too cruel. He
listened in dull terror for a repetition of the words. They did not come
again. What need? He heard them still, and a groan broke the seal of his
lips.
"My God, must she do that?" he muttered to himself. "Get on, Rollo, get
on!"
For now the triumph faded away, the unsubstantial pageant was no more.
There was no blare of trumpets to deaden the mocking voice. The little
victory stood in its contemptible dwarfishness beside the magnitude of
his great defeat. That the past had been, that the present was--that was
enough. The fairy ride and the struggle in the inn--they stood side by
side and bade him gaze on the spectacle. Beside this it seemed as though
he had suffered nothing that day and night--nothing in the thought of
ridicule and shame, nothing in the dishonour of his house and home,
nothing in the jealousy and anger of a forsaken man. This thing alone
seemed to matter--that the past had been that, and that the present was
this, and that they had been so shaped in the hands of him, the
fashioner of them.
Then suddenly, with a quick twist of thought, he was bitterly sorry for
Sibylla: because words and memories which come back like that, unbidden
and of themselves, when the wits are wandering, must have meant a great
deal and had a great place once. At such a time the mind would not throw
up trifles out of an unconscious recollection. The things which have
been deepest in it, which have filled--yes, and formed it--those were
the things that it would throw up. In themselves they might sound wild
trifles, but they were knit to great deep things, towards which they
stood as representatives. They expressed nethermost truths, however idle
and light they sounded. When she babbled of riding into the gold, and
sank her spirit in the memory of the fairy ride, she went back all
unconsciously to the great moment of her life and to its most glorious
promise. She spoke of the crown of all her being.
It was strange to him, this new sorrow for Sibylla. He had never felt
that yet. It was odd he should feel it now--for the woman who had
forsaken her child and sought to dishonour her husband and her son. But
the feeling was very strong on him. It found its first utterance in
words of constrained civility. He turned his head back, saying:
"I'm afraid you're very tired?"
She answered nothing.
"I hope you're not very cold?"
A little shiver of her body ran into his.
"We shall be home very soon."
"Home!" she murmured sleepily. "Yes, soon home now, Grantley!"
"God help me!" he muttered.
He could not make it out. Somehow his whole conception of her, of the
situation, of himself, seemed shaken. This guilty woman behind him (was
she not guilty in all that was of consequence, in every decision of her
will and every impulse of her nature?) seemed to accuse not herself, but
him. He was torn from the judgment-seat and set rudely in the dock,
peremptorily bidden to plead, not to sentence, to beg mercy in lieu of
pronouncing doom. Her wandering wits and drowsy murmurs had inexplicably
wrought this transformation. And why? And how?
Was it because she had been capable of the fairy ride and able to make
it eternal? Capable--yes, and confident of her ability. So confident
that, in the foolhardiness of strength, she had engaged herself to try
it with young Blake--with that poor light-o'-love, who was all unequal
to the great issues which he himself had claimed as the kernel of the
fight. Where lay the failure of the fairy ride? Where resided its
nullity? How came it that the bitter irony of contrast found in it so
fair, so unmatched a field? Who had turned the crimson of the glorious
sunset to the cold light of that distant unregarding moon?
On a sudden her grasp of him loosened; her arm slipped away. She gave a
little groan. He wrenched himself round in the saddle, dropping the
reins. Old Rollo came to a standstill; Grantley darted out his hands
with a quick eager motion. Another second, and she would have fallen
heavily to the ground. With a strain he held her, and brought her round
and set her in front of him. She seemed deathly pale under the
blue-white moon rays. Her lips opened to murmur "Grantley!" and with a
comfortable sigh she wreathed her arms about his neck. He almost kissed
her, but thought of young Blake, and took up his reins again with a
muttered oath.
So they rode down the hill into Milldean, old Rollo picking his steps
carefully, since the chalk was slimy and there were loose flints which
it behoved a careful and trusted horse to beware of. The old scene
dawned on Grantley, pallid and ghostly in the moonlight--the church and
the post-office; Old Mill House, where she had lived when he wooed her;
his own home on the hill beyond. Sibylla's cold arms about his neck
prayed him to see it again as he had seen it once--nay, in a new and
intenser light; to see it as the place where his love had been born,
whence the fairy ride had started and whither returned. He did not try
to loosen her grasp about his neck. She seemed a burden that he must
carry, a load he bore home from out the tempest of the winds and waves
which he had faced and fought that night. And ever, as he went, he
sought dimly, saying, "Why, why?" "How did it come about?" "Haven't I
loved her?" "Hasn't she had everything?" Or exclaiming, "Blake!" Or
again, "And the child!"--trying to assess, trying to judge, trying to
condemn, yet ever feeling the inanimate grasp, looking on the oblivious
face, returning to pity and to grieve.
A groom was waiting up for him. Grantley roused himself from his
ponderings to give the man a brief explanation. Mrs. Imason had meant to
stay at Mrs. Valentine's, but he had wanted to talk to her on business,
and she had insisted on coming back with him. Unfortunately she had
attempted to walk, and it had been too much for her; her bag would be
sent home to-morrow. He had arranged this with the gruff innkeeper, and
paid him a good sum to hold his tongue. But he was conscious that
tongues would not be held altogether, and that the groom was puzzled by
the story, and certainly not convinced. This seemed to matter very
little now--as little as young Blake had mattered. Let them guess and
gossip--what was that compared to the great unexplained thing between
himself and Sibylla, compared to the great questioning of himself by
himself which had now taken possession of him? What the outside world
might think seemed now a small thing--yes, although he had been ready to
kill himself and the child because of it.
He bore Sibylla into the hall of the house. One lamp burned dimly there,
and all was quiet--save for a shrill fractious cry. The child was crying
fretfully. The next moment old Mrs. Mumple came to the top of the
stairs, carrying a bedroom candle and wrapped in a shabby voluminous
dressing-gown.
"You're back, Mr. Imason?" She did not see Sibylla, and held up her
hand. "Hark to poor little Frank!" she said. "He's been crying all the
evening. I can't quiet him. He misses his mummy so."
Could words more sorely condemn Sibylla--the woman who had forsaken her
child? But Grantley gathered her gently into his arms and began to carry
her upstairs. Then Mrs. Mumple saw, and turned on him eyes full of
wonder.
"She's unconscious, I think," he said. "She can do nothing for herself.
I'll take her to her room, and you must put her to bed. She's very cold
too. You must make her warm, Mrs. Mumple."
The old woman followed him into the bedroom without a word. He laid
Sibylla down on the bed. For an instant she opened her eyes and smiled
tenderly at him; then she fell into oblivion again. Mrs. Mumple moved
quickly to her. Standing by her, ranged on her side in a moment by some
subtle instinct, she faced Grantley with an air of defiance.
"Leave her to me, Mr. Imason. Leave the poor child to me."
"Yes," he answered. "Get her to bed as soon as you can. Good night."
Mrs. Mumple was feeling Sibylla's face, her hands, her ankles. She began
to unbutton the wet boots hastily.
"What have you done to her?" she asked in motherly indignation. "Poor
lamb!"
She pulled off the boots, and felt the damp stockings with low
exclamations of horror. She was in her element, fussing over somebody
she loved. She got a rough towel, and knelt down to strip off the
stockings.
"I can leave her to you now," said Grantley, and he walked out of the
room, closing the door behind him.
In the stillness of the house he heard the little peevish cry again; the
complaint in it was more intense, as though the child missed old Mrs.
Mumple's care and feared to be alone. Grantley went along the passage
and into the nursery. A night-light burned by the cot. The door of the
adjoining room stood open a few inches, but all was dark and quiet in
there. When Grantley came near, the child saw him, and stretched out his
little arms to him in a gesture which seemed to combine welcome and
entreaty. Grantley shook his head, smiling whimsically.
"I wonder what the little beggar wants! I'm devilish little use," he
murmured. But he lifted little Frank from the cot, wrapped him in a
blanket, and carried him to the fireside. "I wonder if I ought to feed
him?" he thought. "What's the nurse up to? Oh, I suppose she's left him
to old Mumple. Why didn't she feed him?"
Then it struck him that perhaps Frank had been fed too much, and he
shook his head gravely over such a trying situation as that. Frank was
lamenting still--more gently, but in a remarkably persevering way. "He
must want something," Grantley concluded; and his eye fell on a cup
which stood just within the fender. He stooped down and stuck his finger
into it, and found it half-full of a warm, thick, semi-liquid stuff.
"Got it!" he said in lively triumph, picking up the cup and holding it
to Frank's lips. The child sucked it up. "Well, he likes it anyhow;
that's something. I hope it won't kill him!" mused Grantley, as he
gently drew the cup away from the tenacious little fingers.
Frank stuck one of the fingers in his mouth, stopped crying, and in an
instant, seemingly, was sound asleep. Grantley got him into a position
that he guessed would be comfortable, and lay back in the chair, nursing
him on his knees.
In half an hour Mrs. Mumple came in and found them both sound asleep in
front of the fire. She darted to them, and shook Grantley by the
shoulder. He opened his eyes with a start.
"My gracious, you might have dropped him!"
"Not a bit of it! Look how he's holding on!" He showed the little hand
clenched tightly round his forefinger. "He could hang like that, I
believe!"
"Hang indeed!" muttered Mrs. Mumple resentfully. "Give him to me, Mr.
Imason."
"Oh, by all means! But, by Jove, he doesn't want to go, you know!"
He did not want to go, apparently, and Grantley was quite triumphant
about it. Mrs. Mumple was merely cross, and grumbled all the time till
she got the little fingers unlaced and Frank safe in his cot again.
"It's a mercy he didn't fall into the fire," she kept repeating, with a
lively and aggressive thankfulness for escape from a danger excessively
remote. But she made Grantley ashamed of not having thought of it. At
last she spoke of Sibylla.
"She's warm and comfortable and sleeping now, poor lamb!" she said.
"It's time we all were," said Grantley, making for the door.
"You won't disturb her, Mr. Imason?"
He turned round to her, smiling.
"No," he said.
Mrs. Mumple moved her fat shoulders in a helpless shrug. She had made
out nothing about the matter; she was clear only that Sibylla had
somehow been disgracefully ill-used, and that Frank might very well have
fallen into the fire. Of these two things she was unalterably convinced.
But she spoke of one of them only; the other was declared in her hostile
eyes.
Against his will--perhaps against his promise--Grantley was drawn to his
wife's bedside. He trod very softly. The only light in the room came
from the bright flickering flames of the fire. They lit up her face and
her throat where she had torn her nightgown apart. He felt the white
neck very lightly with his hand. It was warm--healthily warm, not
feverish. She had taken no hurt either from storms within or from storms
without. She slept deeply now; she would awake all well on the morrow.
She would be herself again on the morrow. He thanked Heaven for that,
and then recollected what it meant. Herself was not the woman who
murmured "Grantley!" and dreamed of the gold and the fairy ride. Herself
was the woman who could not live with him, who had forsaken the child,
who had gone to Walter Blake. To that self she would awake to-morrow.
Then was it not better that she should never awake? Ought he not to be
praying Heaven for that--praying that the death which had passed by him
and his son should, in its mercy, take her now?
Aye, that was the easiest way--and from his heart and soul Grantley
despised the conclusion. His face set as it had when he faced her in the
dingy inn and tore her from her lover's ready arms. His courage rose
unbroken from the ruins of his pride. He would fight for her and for
himself. But how? There must be a way.
Suddenly she raised herself in the bed. In an instant he had drawn back
behind the curtains. She neither saw him nor heard. For a moment she
supported herself on her hand, with the other flinging back her hair
over her shoulders. Then, with one of her splendid, lithe, easy
movements, she was out of bed and had darted quickly across to the door.
Grantley watched her, holding his breath, in a strange terror lest she
should discover him, fearful that in such a case her delusion might
still keep its hold on her--fearful too of the outrage his presence
would seem if it had left her. She opened the door wider, and stood
listening for fully a couple of minutes; it seemed to him that the time
would never end. Then she carefully set the door half-way ajar, and
turned to come back to her bed. She walked slowly now, and looked
towards the fire, stretching out her hands towards it for a moment as
she came opposite to it. The flames illuminated her face again, and he
saw on her lips a smile of perfect happiness. All was well; there was no
crying in the house; the child slept. That was all she thought of, all
she cared about; her brain was dormant, but her instinct could not
sleep. Now that it was satisfied, with a buoyant spring she leapt on the
bed and cuddled the clothes about her happily.
In a few seconds Grantley stole silently from the room. He went
downstairs, and he ate and drank: he had touched next to nothing for
twelve hours. His blood stirred as warmth and vigour came back to him.
He thanked Heaven that he lived, and the boy lived, that she lived and
was with him still. His head was high and his courage unbroken. He
looked on what he had been, and understood; yet he was not dismayed.
Guided by the smile on her lips, he had found the way. He had been right
to bring her back, or she could not have smiled like that--in all the
plenitude of love for the little child, a love that waked while reason
slept, but would not let her sleep till it was satisfied. If that was in
her who had forsaken the child, so her love for him was in her who had
left him to go to Walter Blake. If that were true, then there must be a
way.
Somehow, he knew not how, salvation should come through the child. His
mind leapt on to a vision of bonds of love joined anew by the link of
those little hands.