Although I had from motives of policy given up the idea of making
Sibella my wife, I was none the less somewhat overcome at receiving an
invitation to her wedding. Grahame Hallward and I had lunch together
in the City the day I received it.
“What do you think, Israel? Lionel has asked me to be his best man,”
he said.
“Are you going to?”
“Well, I told him that I thought it was rather silly for the bride’s
brother to be best man, and I asked him whether there was not someone
else. He got quite annoyed, and so did Sibella. He was angry, I
believe, chiefly because he could not think of a friend as a
substitute. As a matter of fact, I don’t think he has many friends.”
“I don’t understand him,” I said. “He goes about a great deal, and
knows some very decent people, and yet the men don’t like him.”
“Women do, though, don’t they?”
“I suppose so.”
“I’m sorry for Sibella, Israel—I am really. Of course, she won’t
suffer so much as other women might when she finds him out, because
she has no heart.”
“Do you really think that, Grahame?”
“Sorry to say I do. Of course, I would not say such a thing to anybody
else, but you’re almost like one of us.”
I gave him an affectionate glance. I was certainly very fond of
Grahame.
“You should ask him if he would not like me to be his best man,” I
said.
We both laughed.
“I should think he rather objects to my coming to the wedding at all.
I’m coming, all the same.”
Grahame said nothing, and I guessed that there had been some
discussion on the subject. I knew that Lionel Holland was not by any
means above the vulgarity of showing temper should I be asked against
his wish.
“Come and see us on Sunday. Lionel won’t be there, and Sibella
particularly told me to ask you.”
“I’ll come,” I said. I wondered why Sibella was anxious to see me.
“You’ll be awfully dull at home without her,” I added.
“Yes; she may not have much heart, but at the same time she’s jolly
good company.”
“Yes, that’s exactly the expression. Even when we were children she
always kept things going.”
We both grew a little quiet and thoughtful. I had had delightful times
in the Hallward schoolroom with Grahame and Sibella, but I had
travelled far since then. I was fighting also against a great and
torturing jealousy. I was by practice enabled to keep this feeling
well under control, but it had a habit of having a hasty nibble at my
heart-strings when I was not on the alert.
Sibella received me with more subdued sweetness than I had ever known
her display.
“You are getting on, Israel, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I don’t know; I’m just making a living, that is all.”
“Why, you know that you are quite an important person now.”
I was surprised to find that no one else came in, and more surprised
when she proposed that we three should spend the evening round the
schoolroom fire, as we used to do. I began to gather from Sibella’s
manner that she was not looking forward to her marriage without
misgivings. That she was in love with Lionel in a sort of way I had no
doubt, but the price that was to be paid for a few months of ecstasy
had begun to dawn upon her. Woman-like, she could not forbear to count
the cost. She had never been ignorant of my feelings towards her, and
from the day Lionel first entered the house there had been a
constraint whenever we were left alone. Such a constraint fell upon us
when Grahame, having remembered that he had a message for a friend who
lived a little way off, left us for half an hour.
I believe it was at that moment that Sibella began to develop a vague
feeling that from every point of view she had made a mistake. In fact,
the unexpected happened, as it always does. The absolutely—from the
worldly point of view—immoral and incongruous came about as if swiftly
driven forward by some occult forces, and she was in my arms sobbing
hysterically and erotically, without either of us quite knowing how it
had happened.
I had thirsted for her lithe, sweet figure and the caressing of her
golden hair so long that I was swept away and found myself murmuring:
“I have not given you up, Sibella.”
She hardly gathered what I meant, and I put her arms round my neck.
Her mouth had always been to my mind her chief charm, and when I found
my lips pressed against its large, sweet lines—which should have
ciphered a broad, generous nature—I lost my head—that is, if I had had
any desire to keep it.
Old Mr. and Mrs. Hallward dozed away in their armchairs by the
drawing-room fire. Miss Hallward was writing her interminable Sunday
letters in the library. I have no doubt the house outside looked just
as respectable and unemotional to Grahame when he returned to it as
when he went out of it, but, all the same, I was wondering when he
rejoined us if Sibella would think it necessary to break off her
marriage at the last moment rather than marry a man she had betrayed.
She might do so, although in my wildest delirium I had kept some vague
powers of caution and calculation, and had concluded that morality
with Sibella meant self-interest.
I drove home to my rooms in St. James’s laughing with triumph. Poor
Lionel Holland would have all the appearance of victory with none of
its reality.
Had Sibella been a woman of ordinary susceptibilities, I might have
received a letter from her the next morning imploring me to bury the
incident, accusing herself wildly, and vowing to make a model wife;
but the elusive one—as I had named her to myself—was too clever to
commit herself to paper, and if her marriage took place she would have
it conducted without risks.
The marriage did take place, and I went as a guest. If it was bad
taste on my part, it was entirely a question between Sibella and
myself. She certainly betrayed no resentment. She had the grace to be
very pale and subdued, which gave indications that there might be a
certain leaven of conscience somewhere. Holland took my
congratulations civilly enough. I think he was feeling really happy,
so much are human beings capable of being imposed on, and so little
can we make sure of appearances.
They evidently both looked forward to emerging from suburban society,
for they were to return from their honeymoon to a flat in Mount
Street, although Mr. and Mrs. Holland had wished them to settle down
close to their house at Clapham.
“I was not going to agree to that,” Sibella had said. “I want to say
good-bye to Clapham for good and for all. If it had been Hampstead, I
should not have minded so much, but Clapham—ugh! it gets more and more
sordid every year.”
I did not suppose I should have the entrée to their establishment if
Lionel could help it, but I meant to make an attempt, all the same.
Sibella was necessary to me.
I suffered a good deal from jealousy the first few days of her married
life, but there is a merciful dispensation of Providence which blunts
the keenest pangs of wounded love very rapidly when the inevitable has
taken place, however sharp they may remain when sustained by hope.