FRIENDS
The calamity at the Courtlands' struck on all their acquaintance like a
nip of icy wind, sending a shudder through them, making them, as it
were, huddle closer about them the protecting vesture of any hope or any
happiness that they had. The outrage on the child stood out horrible in
the light of the mother's death: the death of the mother found an
appalling explanation in the child's plight. Whether the death were by a
witting or an unwitting act seemed a small matter; darkness and
blindness had fallen on the unhappy woman before the last hours, and
somehow in the darkness she had passed away. There was not lacking the
last high touch of tragedy; the catastrophe which shocked and awed was
welcome too. It was the best thing that could have happened. Any end was
better than no end. To such a point of hopelessness had matters come, in
such a fashion Harriet Courtland had used her life. The men and women
who had known her, her kindred, her friends, and her household, all whom
nature had designed to love her, while they shuddered over the manner of
her going, sighed with relief that she was gone. The decree of fate had
filled the page, and it was finished; but their minds still tingled from
it as they turned to the clean sheet and prayed a kinder message.
Grantley Imason, so closely brought in contact with the drama, almost an
eye-witness of it, was deeply moved, stirred to fresh feelings, and
quickened to a new vision. The devastation Harriet had wrought, Tom's
cowardly desertion, the pitiable plight of the children, grouped
themselves together and took on, as another of their company, the
heightened and freshened impression of stale sentimentality, and a
self-delusion trivial to vulgarity, which he had carried away from his
encounter with Walter Blake. To all this there seemed one clue; through
it all one thread ran. He felt this in the recesses of his mind, and his
fingers groped after the guiding-line. That must be found, lest,
treading blindly through the labyrinth, he and his too should fall into
the pit whence there was no upward way. They had been half over the
brink once: a preternatural effort--so it might properly be called--had
pulled them back; but they were still on the treacherous incline.
Out of his sombre and puzzled reflections there sprang--suddenly as it
seemed, and in answer to his cry for guidance--an enlightening
pity--pity for his boy, lest he too should bear on his brow the scar of
hatred, almost as plain to see as the visible mark which was to stamp
little Sophy's for evermore--and pity for Sibylla, because her empty
heart had opened to so poor a tenant: in very hunger she had turned to
Blake. He no longer rejected the hope of communion with the immature
infantile mind of his son; he ceased to laugh scornfully at a love
dedicated to such a man as Walter Blake. A new sympathy with his
boy--even such as he had felt for Tom Courtland's little girls--spurred
him to fresh efforts to understand. Contempt for his wife's impulsive
affections gave way to compassion as his mind dwelt, not on what she had
done, but on what had driven her to do it--as he threw back his thoughts
from the unworthy satisfaction her heart had sought to the straits of
starvation which had made any satisfaction seem so good. This was to
look in the end at himself, and to the task of studying himself he was
now thrust back. If he could not do that, and do it to a purpose,
desolation and pitiableness such as he had witnessed and shuddered at
stood designated as the unalterable future of his own home.
Then, at last, he was impatient; his slow persevering campaign was too
irksome, and success delayed seemed to spell failure. The time comes
when no man can work. The darkness might fall on his task still
unperformed. He became afraid, and therefore impatient. He could not
wait for Sibylla to come to him. He must meet her--in something more
than civility, in something more than a formal concession of her
demands, more than an acquiescence which had been not untouched by irony
and by the wish to put her in the wrong. He must forget his claims and
think of his needs. His needs came home to him now; his claims could
wait. And as his needs cried out, there dawned in him a glow of
anticipation. What would it not mean if the needs could be satisfied?
He stayed in London for Harriet Courtland's funeral, and in the evening
went down to Milldean, a sharper edge given to his thoughts by the sight
of Tom and the two little girls (Sophy could not come) following
Harriet's coffin to the grave. Christine Fanshaw was in the carriage
which met him at the station, and was his companion on the homeward
drive. The Courtland calamity had touched her deeply too, but touched
her to bitterness--if, indeed, her outward bearing could be taken as a
true index of her mind. She bore herself aggressively towards fate and
its lessons; an increased acidity of manner condemned the follies of her
friends; she dropped no tears over their punishment. Still there was
very likely something else beneath; she had not heard from John since
she came down to Milldean.
"How have you all been getting on?" Grantley asked, as he took the reins
and settled himself beside her.
"We've done excellently since you went away. Of course we've been upset
about this horrible business, but----"
"Otherwise you've done very well?" he smiled.
"Oh, yes, very!"
"Since I went away?"
"Yes, since you went away," Christine repeated.
"Perhaps it's not a very good thing for me to come back?"
"We can hardly banish you from your own house."
The concession was grudging. Grantley laughed, and the tone of his laugh
brought her eyes sharply round to his face.
"You seem very cheerful," she remarked with an accusing air.
"No, I'm not that exactly; but I've got an idea--and that brightens one
up a bit, you know."
"Any change does that," Christine admitted waspishly.
"I saw John for a minute. He looked a bit worried. Does he complain?"
"He hasn't complained to me."
"Oh, then it's all right, I suppose. And he says the business is all
right, anyhow. How's the boy?"
"As merry and jolly as he can be."
"And Sibylla?"
"Yes, Sibylla too, as merry as possible."
"They both have been, you mean?"
"Yes, of course I do."
"While I've been away?"
"Yes, while you've been away."
Grantley laughed again. Christine looked at him in dawning wonder. She
had expected nothing from this drive but a gloom deepening--or at least
a constraint increasing--with every yard they came nearer to Milldean.
But there was something new. With some regret she recognised that her
acidity, her harping on "Since you went away," had not been the best
prelude to questioning or much of an invitation to confidence; and it
had, moreover, failed in its primary purpose of annoying Grantley by its
implied comment on his conduct. Her voice grew softer, and, with one of
her coaxing little tricks, she edged herself closer to his side.
"Any good news among all the bad, Grantley?"
"There's no good news yet," said he.
She caught at his last word.
"Yet? Yet, Grantley?"
"I'm not going to talk any more. That off-horse is a young 'un, and----"
"It's something to have a 'yet' in life again," she half whispered.
"'Yet' seems to imply a future--a change, perhaps!"
"Do you want a change too?"
"Oh, come, you're not so dull as to have to ask that!"
"You've told me nothing."
"And I won't. But I'll ask you one question--if you'll leave it at
that."
"Well, what's the question?"
"Did John send his love to me?"
Grantley looked at her a moment, and smiled in deprecation.
"It would have been tactful to invent the message," smiled Christine.
"I'm getting a bit out of heart with tact, Christine."
"Quite so, my dear man. And get out of patience with some other things
too, if you can. Your patience would try Job--and not only from jealousy
either."
Grantley's only answer was a reflective smile.
"And what about Tom Courtland?" she went on. "Is he with the children?"
"No, he's living at the club."
"Hum! At the club officially?"
"You're malicious--and you outrage proper feeling. At the club really,
Christine. He feels a bit lost, I fancy. I think it rather depends on
somebody else now. He's a weak chap, poor old Tom."
"You're full of discoveries about people to-day. Any other news?"
"No, none."
"But, you see, I've heard from Janet Selford!"
"Will you consider my remarks about your remarks as repeated--with more
emphasis?"
"Oh, yes, I will! You're talking more as you used to before you were
married."
"That's a compliment? I expect so--coming from a woman. Christine, have
you read Sibylla Janet Selford's letter?"
"Parts of it."
"I wish you hadn't. I didn't want her to know. I saw the fellow
there--with Anna."
"Anna's a very clever girl. She does me great credit."
"I should wait a bit to claim it, if I were you. I'm sorry you told
Sibylla."
"If you're going to be generous as well as patient, there's an end of
any chance of your turning human, Grantley."
"You're quite good company to-day."
"I'm always ready to be; but one can't manage it without some help."
"Which you haven't found in my house?"
"Yes, I have--since you went away."
But she said it this time in a different way, with a hint, perhaps an
appeal, in her upturned eyes, and the slightest touch of her hand on his
sleeve--almost like the delicate soft pat of a kitten's paw, as quick,
as timid, and as venturous. Grantley turned his head to look at her. Her
eyes were bright and eager.
"We've actually begun to be pleasant," he said, smiling.
"Yes, almost to enjoy ourselves. Wonderful! But we're not at the house
yet!"
"Not quite!" he said.
His face set again in firm lines.
"You'd so much better not look so serious about it. That's as bad as
your old County Council!"
"Are you quite sure you understand the case?"
"Meaning the woman? Oh, no! She's difficult. But I understand that, when
one thing's failed utterly, you don't risk much by trying another."
They came to the top of the hill which runs down to Milldean. Christine
sighed.
"Poor old Harriet! She was a jolly girl once, you know, and so handsome!
I've had some good times with Harriet. Do you think she's at peace,
Grantley?"
"She has paid," said he. "She has paid for what she was and did. I hope
she's at peace."
Christine's eyes grew dreamy; her voice fell to a gentle murmur.
"I wonder if it's quite silly to fancy that she's paid something for
some of us too, Grantley? I was thinking something like
that--somehow--when I said, 'Poor old Harriet!'"
"I daresay it's silly, but I don't know that it seems so to me," he
answered.
Just once again he felt the tiny velvety touch. So they came to
Milldean.
The twofold pity which had roused Grantley from a lethargy of feeling,
misconceived as self-control, had its counterpart in the triple blow
with which the course of events assailed Sibylla's estimate of herself.
In the first place, the news about young Blake announced in Janet
Selford's letter--indirectly indeed, but yet with a confident
satisfaction--made her ask whether her great sacrifice had been offered
at a worthy shrine, and her great offering received with more than a
shallow and transitory appreciation. In the second, the thought and
image of the Courtland children spoke loud to the instinct which her
ideas had lulled to sleep, bitterly accusing her desertion of the child
and her indifference to his fate, rousing her ever underlying remorse to
quick and vengeful life. Lastly, she was stirred to see and recognise
the significance of the third turn of fate--the meaning of the nemesis
which had fallen on Harriet Courtland: how she had let her rage spare
nothing, neither self-respect, nor decency, nor love; and how, in the
end, thus enthroned in tyranny, it had not spared herself. The three
accusations, each with its special import, each taking up a distinct
aspect of the truth, and enforcing it with a poignant example, joined
their indictments into one, and, thus united, cried out their
condemnation of her, taking for their mouthpiece Christine Fanshaw's
pretty lips, using her daintily scornful voice, and the trenchant
uncompromising words from which the utterer herself had afterwards
recoiled as too coarse and crude to be a legitimate weapon of attack.
The logic of events was not so squeamish; it does not deal in glosses or
in paraphrase; it is blunt, naked, and merciless, and must be, since
only when all other appeals and warnings have failed does its appointed
work begin. It fastened with what almost seemed malicious glee on
Christine's biting word, and enforced it by a pitiless vividness of
memory, an unceasing echo in Sibylla's thoughts. Her emotions had gone
"sprawling" over everything. The description did not need elaboration.
It was abominably expressive and sufficient. And it did not admit of
pleading or of extenuation. It showed her touching, on one extreme,
Blake's shallow and spurious sentiment; on the other, Harriet
Courtland's licence of anger. It pointed her attention to the ruin of
Tom's life, to the piteous plight of his children, to Harriet's fate, to
Blake's facile forgetfulness of love too heedlessly and wantonly
offered. It stripped her fantastic ideas of their garish finery, leaving
them, in the revulsion of her feelings, bereft of all beauty and
attractiveness. Impelled to look back, she seemed to find the same trail
over everything--even in those childish days of which Jeremy
Chiddingfold had once given a description that would not have reassured
her; even in the beginning of her acquaintance with Grantley, in the
ready rapture of her first love, in the intoxication of the fairy ride.
Changing its form, now hostile to her husband instead of with him, the
same temper showed in all the events which led up to the birth of little
Frank: its presence proved that her madness over Blake was no isolated
incident, but rather the crown of her development and the truest
interpreter of a character empty of worth, strength, or stability. Many
bitter hours brought her to this recognition; but when light came, the
very temper which she condemned was in her still, and turned the
coolness of recognition and analysis into an extravagant heat of scorn
and self-contempt.
What was the conclusion? Was she to throw herself at Grantley's feet,
proclaiming penitence, imploring pardon, declaring love? "No, no!" she
cried. That would be so easy, so short a cut, so satisfying to her
roused feelings. She put the notion from her in horror; it was the
suggestion of her old devil in a new disguise. Her love for Grantley had
bitten too deep into her nature to be treated like that, with that
levity and frivolity of easy impulse, that violence of headstrong
emotion, those tempests of feeling so remote from true sincerity of
heart. The cure did not lie in pampering sick emotions into a plump
semblance of healthy life. Where did it lie, if it were possible at all?
It must lie in the most difficult of all tasks--a change not of other
people or of their bearing and feelings towards her, but a change of
herself and of her own attitude towards others and towards the world,
and in her judgment and her ruling of herself. If things were to go
differently with her, she must be different. The arrogance of her nature
must be abated, the extravagant claims she had made must be lowered. The
thought struck on her almost with despair. So hard seemed the lesson, so
rough the path. And it seemed a path which must be trodden alone. It was
not as the easy pleasant road of emotion, beguiled by enchanting
companionship, strewn with the flowers of fancy, carpeted with pleasure.
This way was hard, bleak, and solitary. Merely to contemplate it chilled
her. Even that happiness with her child, which had so struck Christine
and afforded matter for one of those keen thrusts at Grantley Imason,
appeared to her in a suspicious guise. She could not prevent it nor
forgo it--nature was too strong; but she yielded to it with qualms of
conscience, and its innocent delights were spoilt by the voice of
self-accusation and distrust. Could it be real, genuine, true in the
woman who had deserted the child and been indifferent to his fate?
Both penitents, both roused to self-examination, Grantley Imason and his
wife seemed to have exchanged parts. Each suffered an inversion, if not
of character, yet of present mood. Each sought and desired something of
what had appeared to deserve reprobation when displayed by the other.
Their own propensities and ideals, carried to an extreme, had threatened
ruin; they erected the opposite temper of mind into a standard, and
thereto sought to conform their conduct at the cost of violence to
themselves. It seemed strange, yet it was the natural effect of the
fates and the temperaments which they had seen worked out and displayed
before their eyes, in such close touch with them, impinging so sharply
on their own destinies.
Sibylla had not been at home when Grantley arrived. She met him first in
the nursery, when she went to see little Frank at his tea. No mood, be
it what it would, could make Grantley a riotous romping companion for a
tiny child: that effort was beyond him. But to-day he played with his
son with a new sympathy; talked to him with a pleasant gravity which
stirred the young and curious mind; listened to his broken utterances
with a kindly quizzical smile which seemed to encourage the little
fellow. Grantley had never before found so much answering intelligence.
He forgot the quick development which even a few weeks bring at such a
time of life. He set all the difference down to the fact that never
before had he looked for what he now found so ready and so obvious.
Anything he did not find for himself the nurse was eager to point out,
and with the aid of this enthusiastic signpost Grantley discovered the
road to understanding very readily. He and the boy were, without doubt,
enjoying one another's society when Sibylla came in.
She stood in the doorway, waiting with an aching heart for the usual
thing, for a withdrawal of even such sign of interest as Grantley had
ever shown in old days. It did not come. He gave her a cheery
recognition, and went on playing with Frank. Irresistibly drawn, she
came near to them. Something was signalled in Frank's struggling speech
and impatiently waving arms. Grantley could not follow, and now turned
his eyes to Sibylla, asking for an explanation. The nurse had gone into
the other room, busied about the preparations for the meal. Sibylla took
Frank in her arms.
"I know what he means," she said proudly.
Her eyes met Grantley's. His were fixed very intently on her.
"I don't," he said. "Is it possible for a man to learn these mysteries?"
His tone and words were light; they were even mocking, but not now with
the mockery which hurts.
She flushed a little.
"You'd like to learn?" she asked. "Shall we try to teach him, Frank--to
teach him your code?"
"I'll watch you with him."
For a moment she looked at him appealingly, and then knelt on the floor
and arranged the toys as Frank had wanted them. The little fellow
laughed in triumph.
"How did you know?" asked Grantley.
"I've not lost that knowledge--no, I haven't," she answered almost in a
whisper.
The scene was a spur to his newly stirred impulses. He had rejoiced in
his wife before now; but the clouds had always hung about the cot, so
that he had not rejoiced nor gloried in the mother of his child. His
heart was full as he sat and watched the mother and the child.
"You've got to watch him very carefully still; but he's getting ever so
much more--more----"
"Lucid?" Grantley suggested, smiling.
"Yes," she laughed, "and, if possible, more imperious still. I believe
he's going to be like you in that."
"Oh, not like me, let's hope!"
He laughed, but there was a look of pain on his face.
Sibylla turned round to him and spoke in a low voice, lest by chance the
nurse should hear.
"You mustn't be sure I agree altogether with that," she said, and turned
swiftly away to the child again.
Grantley rose.
"Lift him up to me and let me kiss him," he said.
With grave eyes Sibylla obeyed.
But the natural man is not easily subdued, nor does he yield his place
readily. In the end Grantley was not apt at explanations or apologies.
The evening fell fair and still, a fine October night, and he joined
Sibylla in the garden. Christine remained inside--from tact perhaps,
though she was very likely chilly too. Grantley smoked in silence, while
Sibylla looked down on the little village below.
"This thing has shaken me up dreadfully," he said at last. "The
Courtlands, I mean."
"Yes, I know." She turned and faced him. "And isn't there something else
that concerns you and me?"
"I know of nothing. And you can hardly say the Courtlands concern us
exactly."
"They do; and there is something else, Grantley. I know what Janet
Selford wrote."
"That's nothing at all to me."
"But it is something to me. You know it is."
"I won't talk of that. It's nothing." He put his hand out suddenly to
her. "Let's be friends, Sibylla."
She did not take his hand, but she looked at him with a friendly gaze.
"We really ought to try to manage that, oughtn't we? For Frank's sake,
if for nothing else. Or do you think I've no right to talk about Frank?"
"Suppose we don't talk about rights at all? I'm not anxious to."
"It'll be hard; but we'll try to be friends for his sake--that he may
have a happy home."
Grantley's heart was stirred within him.
"That's good; but is that all?" he asked in a low voice full of feeling.
"Is it all over for ourselves? Can't we be friends for our own sakes?"
"Haven't we lost--well, not the right--if you don't like that--but the
power?"
"I'm an obstinate man; you know that very well."
"It'll be hard--for both of us; but, yes, we'll try."
She gave him her hand to bind the bargain; he gripped it with an
intensity that surprised and alarmed her. She could see his eyes through
the gloom. Were they asking friendship only? There was more than that in
his heart and in his eyes--a thing never dead in him. It had sprung to
fresh vigour now, from the lessons of calamity, from the pity born in
him, from the new eyes with which he had looked on the boy in his
mother's arms. She could not miss the expression of it.
"Is that the best we can try for?" he whispered. "There was something
else once, Sibylla."
He had not moved, yet she raised her hands as though to check or beat
off his approach. She was afraid. All that the path he again beckoned
her on had meant to her came to her mind. If she followed him along it,
would it not be once more to woo disillusion, to court disaster, to
invite that awful change to bitterness and hatred?
"You are you, and I am I," she protested. "It--it is impossible,
Grantley."
His face assumed its old obstinate squareness as he heard her.
"I don't want that," she murmured. "I'll try to be friends. We can
understand one another as friends, make allowances, give and forgive.
Friendship's charitable. Let's be friends, Grantley."
"You have no love left for me?" he asked, passing by her protests.
"For months past I've hated you."
"I know that. And you have no love left for me?"
She looked at him again, with fear and shrinking in her eyes.
"Have you forgotten what I did? No, you can't have forgotten! How can
you wish me to love you now? It would be horrible for both of us. You
may forgive me, as I do you--what I may have to forgive; but how can we
be lovers again? How can we--with that in the past?"
"The past is the past," he said calmly.
She walked away from him a little. When she came back in a minute or so,
he saw that she was in strong agitation.
"That's enough to-night--enough for all time, if you so wish," he said
gently. "Only I had to tell you what was in my heart."
"How could you, Grantley?"
"I haven't said it was easy. I'm coming to believe that the easy things
aren't worth much."
"You could love me again?"
"I've never ceased to love you--only I hope I know a bit more about how
to do it now."
She stood there the picture of distress and of fear. At last she broke
out:
"Ah, I've not told you the real thing! I'm afraid Grantley, I'm afraid!
I dare not love you. Because I loved you so beyond all reason and
all--all sanity, all this came upon us. And--and I daren't love you
again now, even if I could. Yes, I ought to have learnt something too;
perhaps I have. But I daren't trust myself with my knowledge." She came
a step nearer to him, holding out her hands beseechingly. "Friends,
friends, Grantley!" she implored. "Then we shall be safe. And our love
shall be for Frank. You'll get to love Frank, won't you?"
"Frank and I are beginning to hit it off capitally," said Grantley
cheerfully. "Well, I shall go in now: we mustn't leave Christine alone
all the evening." He took her hand and kissed it. "So we're friends?" he
asked.
"I'll try," she faltered. "Yes, surely we can manage that!"
He turned away and left her again gazing down on the village and Old
Mill House. He lounged into the drawing-room where Christine sat, with
an easy air and a smile on his face.
"A beautiful evening, isn't it?" asked Christine with a tiny shudder, as
she hitched her chair closer to the bit of bright fire and threw a
faintly protesting glance at the open window.
"Beautiful weather--and quite settled. I shall enjoy my holiday down
here."
"Oh, you're going to stay down here, and going to have a holiday, are
you?" she asked with a lift of her brows.
"Well, hardly a holiday, after all. I've got a job to do," he answered
as he lit his cigarette--"rather a hard job at my time of life."
"Is it? What is the job?"
"I'm going courting again--and a very pretty woman too," he said.
A rather tremulous smile came on Christine's face as she looked at him.
"It's rather a nice amusement, isn't it?" she asked. "And you always had
plenty of self-conceit."
"Why, hang it, I thought it was just the opposite this time!" exclaimed
Grantley in whimsical annoyance.
Christine laughed.
"I won't be unamiable. I'll call it self-confidence, if you insist."
He took a moment to think over her new word.
"Yes, in the end I suppose it does come to that. Look here, Christine; I
wish the people who tell you you ought to change your nature would be
obliging enough to tell you how to do it."
Christine's answer might be considered encouraging.
"After all there's no need to overdo the change," she said. "And there's
one thing in which you'll never change: you'll always want the best
there is."
"No harm in having a try for it--as soon as you really see what it is,"
he answered, as he strolled off to the smoking-room.