'Oui, sans doute, tout meurt; ce monde est un grand rêve,
Et le peu de bonheur qui nous vient en chemin,
Nous n'avons pas plus tôt ce roseau dans la main,
Que le vent nous l'enlève.'
ALFRED DE MUSSET.
Sibyl continued pale and listless, and presently Mr. Loftus found fault
with her gowns. They were not new enough. The colours of her tea-gowns
did not suit her. He suggested that she should go to London to Lady
Pierpoint's house for a few days to see her dressmaker, and added, as an
afterthought, that he should like her to consult the specialist to whom
she had gone on former occasions, and whose name he had reason to
remember.
Sibyl received the suggestion of this visit in silence. She did not
oppose herself to it, but left the room to shed a torrent of angry tears
in private. The truth, which seldom visited her feeble judgment, did not
tell her that Mr. Loftus was anxious about her health. Hysteria took up
the tale instead, and officiously informed her that he was tired of her.
He wanted to get rid of her. Men were always like that after they had
been married a little time. What was a woman's love and devotion to them
when the first novelty had worn off? She would go. She would certainly
go; and when she was gone she would write to him, telling him that she
saw only too plainly that his love for her was dead, and that she had
decided never to return, and at the same time making over to him her
entire fortune, reserving only for herself a pittance, on which she
would live in seclusion in a cottage in some remote locality.
She was somewhat consoled as she thought over the dignified, the
harrowing letter which she would compose in London. Parts of it, as she
repeated them to herself, moved her to tears. A new sullenness was added
to the previous listlessness of her demeanour. She parted from Mr.
Loftus with studied indifference.
Mr. Loftus missed her, not altogether unpleasantly, when she left him.
It was the first time that she had been a day away from him since their
marriage. Life was certainly very tranquil without her. He wrote her a
charming little letter every day of the three days she was away.
Doll was with him on business. Now that Sibyl was absent, something of
the old affection and confidence returned between them, which shrank
away in her presence; but not quite all. At times, as they were talking,
the younger man longed to break down the slight, almost imperceptible
barrier that his stupid untimely silence had raised. But he could not do
it. He could not take the plunge. Mr. Loftus, however, who would not
have done such a thing for worlds, unwittingly gave him a push.
'The spring coppice wants thinning,' he said to Doll the third morning.
'We will go up and mark the trees this afternoon.'
'I am going away to-day,' said Doll sullenly.
'Stay another day,' said Mr. Loftus. 'Mrs. Gresley tells me that the
sight of her happy home, and Mr. Gresley, and the church-tower as viewed
from the spare bedroom of the Vicarage, have proved a turning-point in
the lives of many wild young men. Stay another day, Doll, and I will
emulate Mrs. Gresley. It will do you good.'
'Uncle George,' stammered the young man with sudden anger, 'will you
never, never understand? Have you forgotten that it is not a year ago
since I told you--in this very room--and you said you would help me. I
can't meet Sibyl; and--and she is coming back to-day. I tried in the
winter, and--it was a failure.'
Mr. Loftus had momentarily forgotten Sibyl, as he had done once before
when she was ill.
'I beg your pardon, Doll,' he said, his pale face reddening. 'I ought to
have remembered.'
There was a constrained silence.
'It need not come between us,' said Mr. Loftus at last. 'You must not
let it do that.'
'I can't help it,' said Doll. 'It does. It must.'
'Sibyl's happiness,' said Mr. Loftus sadly, 'seems to be a costly
article. A great deal has been spent upon it, apparently without making
it secure. If we have any real regard for her, we must manage to save
that between us, Doll, whatever else goes by the board.'
'What do you take me for?' said Doll fiercely.
'A good man,' said Mr. Loftus, 'and the person I care for most in the
world.'
Sibyl's letter to Mr. Loftus was never written. At least it was written,
as, indeed, were several, and read over and retouched at night in her
own room; but even the best of the assortment remained unposted. Sibyl
brought back her wan face and limp figure to Wilderleigh a few hours
after Doll had left it, and heard with bitterness that he had been
staying there. She had pictured to herself Mr. Loftus alone, missing her
at every moment of the day, realizing the withdrawal of the sunshine of
her presence. This was a 'high jump,' on the bar of which, it must be
owned, even her practised imagination caught its toe. And now she found
that Doll had been with him all the time--Doll, whom he cared for more
than for his wife. He had not missed her, after all. Probably he and
Doll had been discussing her. She had been jealous of Doll ever since
she had seen Mr. Loftus take his arm during her first visit to
Wilderleigh before she was married.
Her jealousy revived now. For the remainder of the day Sibyl met Mr.
Loftus with averted eyes and monosyllabic answers, rehearsing in her
mind parting scenes with him which were to prove more poignantly
distressing to him than the best of the letters, and in which he was to
appeal in vain (imagination caught its toe once more) against her
irrevocable determination to leave for ever one who had married her for
other motives than love.
She could see herself in evening dress, pale as the jasmine flower in
her breast, mournful but unflinching, withdrawing her hand, and saying,
in reply to the moving representation which he would of course make of
his loneliness:
'You have Doll!'
She decided that she would not say more than that. No reproach should
pass her lips.
'You have Doll!'
What words for a young wife to be forced to use to her husband! Her
hands clenched in an agony of self-pity. What a cruel situation was
hers!
So Sibyl walked in her waking dream, and her husband watched her.
'Is it the body that is ill, or is it the mind?' he asked himself.
Later in the day the doctor's letter to himself--Mr. Loftus had written
to him asking for a frank statement of Sibyl's condition--confirmed his
worst fears for her.
'Mrs. Loftus's health is endangered, not by her recent illness, of which
no trace appears, but by some anxiety. She does not deny that she is
suffering from great depression. Unless that anxiety, whatever it may
be, can be removed, her morbid condition, if prolonged, will give rise
to grave apprehension as to her future.'
Mr. Loftus had heard something very like this before--about nine months
ago. He had removed a mountain in order to remove with it the first
cause of her unhappiness, and now unhappiness had reappeared. No one had
guessed--no one had been allowed to guess--what an effort his marriage
had been to him. And it had availed nothing. He dropped the letter into
the fire, and, as he did so, exhaustion and an intense weariness of
life laid hold upon him. He knew well the touch of those stern hands,
but this evening, as he sat alone in the library, it seemed to him as if
he had never endured their full pressure until now.