ASPIRATIONS AND COMMON SENSE
Rumour spoke truly. Young Walter Blake was back in town with an entirely
new crop of aspirations maturing in the ready soil of his mind. The
first crop had not proved fortunate. It had brought him into a position
most disagreeable and humiliating to reflect upon, and into struggles
for which he felt himself little fit. He had been given time to meditate
and to cool--to cool even to shuddering when he recalled that night in
the Sailors' Rest, and pictured the tragedy for which he had so nearly
become responsible. His old desires waning, his aspirations were
transfigured at the suggestion of a new attraction. He had been on the
wrong tack--that was certain. Again virtue seemed to triumph in this
admission. He no longer desired to be made good--it was (as he had
conceived and attempted it) such a stormy and soul-shaking process. Now
he desired to be kept good. He did not now want a guiding star which he
was to follow through every peril, over threatening waves and through
the trough of an angry sea. The night at the Sailors' Rest disposed of
that metaphor and that ideal. Now he wanted an anchor by whose help he
might ride out the storm, or a harbour whose placid bosom should support
his gently swaying barque. Strength, constancy, and common sense
supplanted imagination, ardour, and self-devotion as the requisites his
life demanded.
Again Caylesham showed tact. He would not ask the lady's name. But when
Blake next dined with him, he enjoyed the metamorphosis, and silently
congratulated Grantley Imason.
"So it's St. George's, Hanover Square, and everything quite regular this
time, is it?" he asked, with an indulgent humour. "Well, I fancy you're
best suited to that. Only take care!"
"You may be sure that the woman I marry will be----" Blake began.
"Perfection? Oh, of course! That's universal. But it's not enough." He
lay back comfortably in his armchair, enjoying his cigar. "Not enough,
my boy! I may have two horses, and you may have two horses, and each of
my horses may be better than either of your horses; but when we come to
driving them, you may have the better pair. Two good 'uns don't always
make a good pair." He grew quite interested in his subject--thanks,
perhaps, to the figure in which he clothed it. "They've got to
match--both their paces and their ways. They've got to go kindly
together, to like the feel of one another, don't you know? Each of 'em
may be as good as you like single, but they may make--by Jove, yes!--the
devil of a bad pair! It's double harness we're talking about, Blake, my
boy. Oh, you may think I know nothing about it, but I've seen a
bit---- Well, that's not a thing I boast about; but I have seen a bit,
you know."
"That's just what I've been thinking," said young Blake sagaciously. He
referred to Caylesham's doctrines, not his experiences.
"Oh, you've been thinking, have you?" smiled Caylesham. "Come a mucker
then, I suppose?"
"I--I miscalculated. Well, we must all learn by experience."
"Devilish lucky if we can!"
"There's no other way," Blake insisted.
"Have I said there is?" He looked at Blake in an amused knowledge.
"Going in for the straight thing this time?"
Half in pride, half in shame, Blake answered:
"Yes."
"Quite right too!" Caylesham was very approving.
"Well, if you say so----" began Blake, laughing.
"Quite right for you, I mean." There was a touch of contempt somewhere
in his tone. "But don't forget what I've been saying. It's double
harness, my boy! Pace, my boy, and temper, and the feel--the feel! All
the things a fellow never thinks about!"
"Well, you're a pretty preacher on this subject!"
"I've heard a lot of things you never have. Oh, well, you may have once,
perhaps." His glance was very acute, and Blake flushed under it. "You're
well out of that affair," Caylesham went on, dropping his mask of
ignorance. "Oh, I don't want to know how it happened. I expect I can
guess."
"What do you mean?" Blake's voice sounded angry.
"You funked it--eh?"
It was a strong thing to say to a man in your own house. But a sudden
gust of impatience had swept Caylesham away. The young man was in the
end so contemptible, so incapable of strength, such a blarney over his
weakness.
"Now don't glare at me; I'm not afraid. You tackled too big a job, I
fancy. Oh, I'm not asking questions, you know." He got up and patted
Blake's shoulder. "Don't mind me. You're doing quite right. Hope you
won't find it devilish dull!"
Blake's bad temper vanished. He began to laugh.
"That's right," said Caylesham. "I'm too old to convert, and nearly too
old to fight; but I'll be your best man, Walter."
"It'll keep me straight, Caylesham."
"Lord bless you, so it will!"
He chuckled in irrepressible amusement.
"The other thing's no go!"
"No more it is. It needs---- No, I'm not going to be immoral any more.
Go ahead! You're made for double harness, Walter. Choose her well!
you'll have to learn her paces, you know."
"Or she mine?"
Blake was a little on his dignity again.
"Have another whisky and soda," said Caylesham, with admirable tact.
His advice, meant as precautionary, proved provocative. Memory worked
with it--the carking memory of a failure of courage. Blake might blarney
as he would about awakened conscience, but Caylesham had put his finger
on the sore spot. Pleasure's potentiality of tragedy had asserted
itself. It had been supremely disconcerting to discover and recognise
its existence. Young Blake was for morality now--not so much because its
eyes were turned upwards as for the blameless security of its embrace.
He had suffered such a scare. He really wondered how Caylesham had
managed to stand the strain of pleasing himself--with the sudden tragic
potentialities of it. He paid unwilling homage to the qualities
necessary for vice--for candid unmasquerading vice; he knew all about
the other species.
Yet he was not hard on Sibylla. He recognised her temperament, her
unhappy circumstances, and his own personal attractions. What he did not
recognise was the impression of himself which that night in the Sailors'
Rest would leave on her. He conceived an idea of his own magnanimity
resting in her mind--yes, though such a notion could gain no comfortable
footing in his.
Caylesham let him go without more advice--though he had half a mind to
tell him not to marry a pretty woman.
"Oh, well, in his present mood he won't; and it would do him lots of
good if he did," the impenitent, clear-sighted, good-humoured sinner
reflected, with all the meaning which his experience could put into the
words. He was of opinion that for certain people the only chance of
salvation lay in suffering gross injustice. "If what a fellow brings on
himself is injustice," he used to say. He always maintained that fellows
brought it on themselves--an expiring gasp of conscience, perhaps.
Gossip and conjecture had played so much with Walter Blake's name that
Mrs. Selford had at first been shy of his approaches and chary of her
welcome. "We must think of Anna," she had said to her husband. But
thinking of or for Anna was rapidly becoming superfluous. The young
woman took that department to herself. Her stylishness grew
marvellously, and imposed a yoke of admiring submission. It was an
extraordinary change from the awkward, dowdy, suppressed girl to this
excellently appointed product. The liberty so tardily conceded was
making up for lost time, and bade fair to transform itself into a
tyranny. The parents were ready subjects, and cast back from the
theories of to-day a delusive light on the practices of the past. They
concluded that they had always indulged Anna, and that the result was
most satisfactory. Then they must indulge her still. So Blake's visits
went on, and the welcome became cordial. For Anna was quite clear that
she at least had nothing against Blake. His attraction for her was not
what had been his charm in Sibylla's eyes. Her impulse was not to
reform; it was to conquer. But gossip and conjectures as to his past
life were as good incentives to the one task as to the other. His good
looks, his air of fashion, his comfortable means, helped the work. He
widened the horizon of men for her, and made her out of conceit with her
first achievements. She was content that Jeremy should disappear from
her court; she became contemptuously impatient of Alec Turner's suit.
She was fastidious and worldly-wise.
Again Mrs. Selford rejoiced. She had been in some consternation over
Alec Turner's now obvious attachment, coming just at the time when Anna
had established the right to please herself. Suppose her first use of
liberty had been to throw herself away? For to what end be stylish if
you are going to marry on a hundred and fifty pounds a year? But Anna
was quite safe--strangely safe, Mrs. Selford thought in her heart,
though she rebuked the wonder. Almost unkindly safe, she thought
sometimes, as she strove to soften the blows which fell on poor
Alec--since, so soon as he ceased to be dangerous, he became an object
of compassion.
"Anna is so sensible," she said to Selford. "She's quite free from the
silliness that girls so often show"; but she sighed just a little as she
spoke.
"She'd make a good wife for any man," declared Selford proudly--a
general declaration in flat contradiction to Caylesham's theories about
double harness.
Anna paid no heed to opinions or comments. She went about her business
and managed it with instinctive skill. It sometimes puzzled poor Alec
Turner to think why his presence was so often requested, when his
arrival evoked so little enthusiasm. He did not realise the part he
played in Anna's scheme, nor how his visits were to appear to Walter
Blake. Anna's generalship had thought all this out. The exhibition of
Alec was a subsidiary move in the great strategic conception of
capturing Walter Blake on the rebound from Sibylla.
But the pawn was not docile, and objected violently so soon as its
function began to be apparent. Anna precipitated what she did not
desire--a passionate avowal in which the theme of her own gifts and
fascination was intermingled with the ideal of influencing the trend of
public opinion from a modest home and on a modest income. She was told
that she could be removed from the vanities of life and be her true, her
highest self. When she showed no inclination to accept the path in life
thus indicated, Alec passed through incredulity to anger. Had he cast
his pearls before---- Well, at inappreciative feet? At this tone Anna
became excusably huffy; to refuse a young man is not to deny all the
higher moral obligations. Besides Alec annoyed her very much by assuming
persistently that the dictates of her heart called her towards him, and
that worldly considerations alone inspired her refusal.
"Oh, you're silly!" she cried. "I tell you it's nothing of the sort."
The dusk of the afternoon softened her features; the light of the fire
threw up in clear outline the stylish well-gowned figure. Poor Alec, in
his shabby mustard suit, stood opposite her, his hands in his pockets,
in dogged misery and resentment, with all the helpless angry surprise of
a first experience of this kind, fairly unable to understand how it was
that love did not call forth love, obstinate in clinging to the theory
of another reason as the sole explanation. Things did not exist in vain.
For what was his love?
"But--but what am I to do?" he stammered.
Rather puzzled--after all rather flattered, Anna prayed him to be
sensible and friendly. He consented to hope for her happiness, though he
was obviously not sanguine about it. For himself all was over! So he
said as he flung out of the room, knowing nothing of what lay before him
on the path of life; discerning nothing of a certain daughter of a poor
old political writer--a little round woman who made her own gowns, was
at once very thrifty and very untidy, was inclined to think that the
rulers of the earth should be forcibly exterminated, and lavished an
unstinted affection on every being, human or brute, with which she was
ever brought into contact. And if she did not greatly influence the
trend of public opinion--well, anyhow she tried to. Just now, however,
Alec knew nothing about her; he was left to think hopelessly of the trim
figure and the lost ideals--the two things would mix themselves up in
his mind.
To his pathetic stormy presence there succeeded Walter Blake, with all
his accomplishment in the art of smooth love-making, with his
aspirations again nicely adjusted to the object of his desires (he was
so much cleverer than poor Alec over that!), with his power to flatter
not only by love but still more by relative weakness. He, of course, did
not run at the thing as Alec had done. That would be neither careful of
the chances nor economical of the pleasure. Many a talk was needed
before his purpose became certain or Anna could show any sign of
understanding it.
He dealt warily with her; he was trying, unconsciously perhaps, to
perform the task Caylesham had indicated to him--the task of learning
her paces and adapting his thereto. It was part of his theory about her
that she must be approached with great caution; and of course he knew
that there was one very delicate bit of ground. How much had she heard
about himself and Sibylla? It was long before he mentioned Sibylla's
name. At last he ventured on throwing out a feeler. Anna's unruffled
composure persuaded him that she knew nothing of the facts; but her
shrewd analysis of Sibylla showed, in his judgment, that she quite
understood the woman. It was the dusk of the afternoon again (Anna
rather affected that time of day), and Blake, with a sigh which might be
considered in the nature of a confession, ventured to say:
"I wish I could read people as you can. I should have avoided a lot of
trouble."
"You can read yourself anyhow, can't you?" asked Anna.
"By Jove, that's good--that's very good! No, I don't know that I can.
But I expect you can read me, Miss Selford. I shall have to come to you
for lessons, shan't I?"
"I'll tell you all the hard bits," she laughed.
"You'll have to see a lot of me to do that!"
Anna was not quite so sure of the need, but she did not propose to stop
the game.
"Do I seem so very reluctant to see a lot of you?" she inquired.
Blake's eyes caught hers through the semi-darkness. She was aware of the
emotion with which he regarded her. It found an answer in her, an answer
which for the moment upset both her coolness and her sense of mastery.
She had a revelation that her dominion, not seriously threatened, yet
would be pleasantly chequered by intervals of an instinctive submission.
This feeling almost smothered the element of contempt which had hitherto
mingled in her liking for him and impaired the pride of her conquest.
"I was judging you by myself. Compared with me, you seem reluctant," he
said in a low voice, coming a little nearer to her. "But then it does me
such a lot of good to come and see you. It's not only the pleasure I
come for, though that's very great. You keep up my ideals."
"I'm so glad. The other day I was told I'd ruined all somebody's ideals.
Well, I oughtn't to have told you that, I suppose; but it slipped out."
Things will slip out, if one takes care to leave the door open.
She was standing by the table, and Blake was now close by her.
"Since I've known you----"
"Why, you've known me for years, Mr. Blake!"
"No, I only knew a little girl till--till I came back to town this
time." He referred to that yachting cruise on which he had ultimately
started alone. "But since then I've been a different sort of fellow. I
want to go on being different, and you can help me." His voice trembled;
he was wrapped up in his emotion, and abundantly sure of its sincerity.
Anna moved away a little, now rather nervous, since no instinct, however
acute, can give quite the assurance that practice brings. But she was
very triumphant too, and, moreover, a good deal touched. That break in
young Blake's voice had done him good service before: it never became
artificial or overdone, thanks to his faculty of coming quite fresh to
every new emotional crisis; it was always most happily natural.
"Anna!" he said, holding out his hands, with those skilfully appealing
eyes of his just penetrating to hers.
With a long-drawn breath she gave him her hand. He pressed it, and began
to draw her gently towards him. She yielded to him slowly, thinking at
the last moment of what she had decided she would never think about and
would show no wisdom in recalling. The vision of another woman had shot
into her mind, and for a few seconds gave her pause. Her hesitation was
short, and left her self-confidence unbroken. What she had won she would
keep. The dead should bury its dead--a thing it had declined to do for
Christine Fanshaw.
"Anna!" he said again. "Do you want me to say more? Isn't that saying it
all? I can't say all of it, you know."
She let him draw her slowly to him; but she had spoken no word, and was
not yet in his arms, when the door opened, and she became aware of a man
standing on the threshold. Young Blake, all engrossed, had noticed
nothing, but he had perceived her yielding.
"Ah, my Anna!" he whispered rapturously.
"Hush!" she hissed, drawing her hand sharply away. "Is that you,
Richards?"
Richards was the Selfords' manservant.
The man laughed.
"If you'd turn the light on, you couldn't mistake me for anybody so
respectable as Richards," he said. "I've been with your father in the
study, and he told me I should find your mother here."
Anna recognised the voice.
"Mr. Imason! I didn't know you were in London."
"Just up for the day, and I wanted to see your father."
Anna moved to the switch, and turned on the light. She glanced hastily
at young Blake. He had not moved; his face was rather red, and he looked
unhappy. Anna's feeling was one of pronounced anger against Grantley
Imason. His appearance had all the effect of purposed malice; it made
her feel at once jealous and absurd. But it was on her own behalf that
she resented it. She was not free from a willingness that Blake should
be made uncomfortable; so much discipline would be quite wholesome for
him. For her own part, though, she wanted to get out of the room.
"May I ring for the real Richards, and---- Oh, I beg your pardon, Blake,
how are you? May I ring for the real Richards, and send word to your
mother, Anna?"
Grantley was, as usual, urbane and unperturbed.
"I'll go and find her for you. I think she's lying down."
"Oh, well, then----"
"No, I know she'll want to see you," and Anna ran lightly out of the
room.
Grantley strolled to an armchair and sank into it. He did not look at
Blake, nor, his formal greeting given, appear conscious of his presence.
Young Blake was in a turmoil. He hated to see Grantley; all the odious
thought of his failure and defeat was brought back. He hated that
Grantley should have seen him making love to Anna Selford, for in his
heart he was conscious that he could not cheat an outside vision as he
could manage to cheat himself. But both these feelings, if not swallowed
up in fear, were at least outdone by it. His great desire had been to
settle this matter finally and irrevocably before a hint of it came to
the ears either of Grantley or of Sibylla. What would Grantley do now?
"You saw us?" he asked in a sullen anxious voice.
"I couldn't help it. I'm sorry," said Grantley in colourless politeness.
"Well?"
"I really don't understand your question, Blake. At least, you seem to
mean it for a question."
"You do know what I mean. I'm not going to ask any favours of you. I
only want to know what you intend to do?"
"About what?"
"About what you saw--and heard too, I suppose?"
Grantley rose from his chair in a leisurely fashion, and stood with his
back to the fire. He was looking at young Blake with a slight smile;
Blake grew redder under it.
"Oh, I can't beat about the bush!" Blake went on impatiently. "You
might, if you chose, tell Miss Selford what you know."
"Well?" said Grantley in his turn.
"And--and---- Oh, you see what might happen as well as I do. I--I meant
to--to explain at my own time; but----"
"I shouldn't let the time come in a hurry, Blake. It'll be a very
awkward quarter of an hour for both of you, and quite unnecessary."
"Unnecessary?"
There was a ring of hope in Blake's voice; he liked to be told that any
such confession was unnecessary, and would have welcomed such an
assurance even from Grantley's hostile lips.
"Certainly; and equally unnecessary that I should tell Anna anything."
He paused a moment, and then went on. "In a different case I might think
I had a different duty--though, being what you might call an interested
party, I should consider carefully before I allowed myself to act on
that view. But as matters stand, you yourself have made any action on my
part superfluous."
"I have?"
"Oh yes! You so far injured the fame of the woman for whom you hadn't
afterwards the pluck to fight, that it's not necessary for me to tell
Selford that you were in love with her a few months before you made love
to his daughter, nor that you tried to run away with her, but that in
the end you funked the job. I needn't tell him, because he knows--and
his wife knows. You took care of that."
Young Blake said nothing, though he opened his lips as if to speak.
"And I needn't tell Anna either. That's unnecessary, for the same
reason. She knows just as well as her father and mother know."
"She knows nothing, I tell you. She hasn't an idea----"
"Did you see her face when she saw that I wasn't Richards?"
"I tell you---- She was embarrassed, of course---- But----"
"She knows quite well, Blake. Oh, not the details, but the main thing.
She knows that quite well. And she will have made her decision. There's
no duty incumbent on me."
"You'll say nothing then?"
"I shall say nothing at all."
Grantley relapsed into silence--a most easy self-possessed silence. His
eyes were on young Blake no more, but rested placidly on one of
Selford's best pictures on the opposite wall. Blake cleared his throat,
and shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.
"Why do you stay?" asked Grantley mildly. "Wouldn't it be better to
continue your interview with Anna elsewhere? Mrs. Selford's coming in
here, you see."
Blake broke out:
"God knows, Imason, it's difficult for me to say a word to you, but----"
Grantley raised his hand a little.
"It's impossible," he said. "There can be no words between you and me
about that. And what does it matter to you what I think? I shall hold my
tongue. And you'll feel sure I've no real cause of complaint--quite sure
if only I hold my tongue. And I think Anna will hold her tongue. Then
you'll forget she knows, and go on posturing before her with entire
satisfaction to yourself." He turned his eyes on him and laughed a
little. "As long as you can humbug yourself or anybody else, or even get
other people to let you think you're humbugging them, you're quite
happy, you know."
Blake looked at him once and twice, but his tongue found no words. He
turned and walked towards the door.
"Wait in the dining-room," said Grantley.
Blake went out without turning or seeming to hear. After a moment or two
Anna's step came down the stairs.
"Mamma'll be down directly, Mr. Imason," she called as she reached the
door. Then her eyes took in the room. "Mr.--Mr. Blake?" she asked, with
a sudden quick rush of colour in her cheeks.
"I think you'll find him in the dining-room," said Grantley gravely.
She understood--and she did not lack courage. She had enough for
two--for herself and for Blake. She met Grantley's look fair and square,
drawing up her trim stylish figure to a stiff rigidity, and setting her
lips in a resolute line. Grantley admired her attitude and her open
defiance of him. He smiled at her in a confidential mockery.
"Thanks, Mr. Imason, I'll look for him. You'll be all right till mamma
comes?"
"Oh yes, I shall be all right, thanks, Anna."
He smiled still. Anna gave him another look of defiance.
"I intend to go my own way; I know what I'm about. I don't care a pin
what you think." The glance seemed to Grantley as eloquent as Lord
Burghley's nod. And no more than Lord Burghley did she spoil its effect
by words. She gave it to Grantley full and square, then turned on her
heel and swung jauntily out of the room.
Grantley's smile vanished. He screwed up his lips as if he had tasted
something rather sour.