But I had to tell Sibella.
I looked forward to this task with little relish. I had never seen her
in a really bad temper, but I was certain that she could be violent.
That was not all. She might break off our little affair, and my heart
almost stopped beating as I thought of the possibility. It was
essential, however, that I should tell her before she learned it from
anyone else. A woman can always bear unpleasant news from the man she
loves.
I found her alone and in a bad temper, complaining loudly of her woes.
She was being dunned for some bills Lionel knew nothing about. They
were living too extravagantly, she declared. They knew far too many
rich people. Why were old Mr. and Mrs. Holland such a long time dying?
She did not suppose for one moment they enjoyed their life. How could
they?
She then wanted to know almost fiercely why I was not rich. I ought to
pay some of her debts. It was only fair. Other people made money, why
could not I?
I explained that I was doing my best—that on the whole I did not think
I had done badly, and that I thought I should do better as time went
on.
That was just it, she retorted, with some attempt at wit, time did go
on.
I explained with almost brutal frankness—for the sooner she knew the
longer time I should have in which to conciliate her—that I proposed
to marry money in the person of Miss Gascoyne.
I was quite right; Sibella could be violent. At first she did not
believe me; then with white, quivering lips she implored me to tell
her it was not true. She was sorry she had been angry. She would
retract everything she had said if I would only tell her that it was
not true. It was intensely flattering to me to see how acutely she
suffered. Most certainly the days of misery I had endured for her sake
were amply avenged. I explained as gently as I could that it was
necessary for my welfare that I should marry. It was such a chance as
might not come again, and after all it need not make the least
difference to us—although on this point I was in my own mind by no
means sure. I saw looming up on the far distant horizon a very
unpleasant and nerve-testing state of things.
Poor Sibella realised with feminine quickness that the woman who has
the man in her house, and who, figuratively speaking, washes, cooks,
and cleans up for him, stands the best chance of securing his
heart—that part of a man’s body being inextricably bound up with other
and less romantic organs. Indeed, there is a community of dependence
on the same flow of blood, and an identity of relation to the same
scheme of physical machinery, which renders the fact inevitable.
She realised the possibilities involved in my having children, and in
the mutual interests which were sure to draw us together more and more
as time went on. As a consequence of these deductions, she wept
dismally.
She was not philosophic enough to reckon with my plurality of
disposition. As a woman, she might be forgiven for not being able to
do so. Neither was she philosophical enough to reckon with the time
when she would look back with amazement on that period when my
presence meant a certain ecstasy, a solution which nearly always comes
about if two people do not bind their lives together by a material
interest, or that more iron bond, usage. It is profitable to the man
who wishes to live by reason and not by mere feeling to reflect how
many millions of the couples who think themselves indispensable the
one to the other would have got on perfectly well with somebody else.
If Mrs. Brown had married Mr. Jones, would she not say in later years,
if she met Mr. Brown in the street:—“Fancy that old frump having made
love to me!” The sentimentalist fancies she would still look at Mr.
Brown with romantic eyes; not a bit of it. She would entirely have
forgotten how very slim his waist had been, how very bright his eye.
Believe me, we are not the individuals we think ourselves to be, but
are fish swimming in a sea of condition and circumstance of which we
all partake necessarily as we do of the air, the food, the ground
beneath our feet, the whole world around us. Brown, Jones, and
Robinson are much the same people, and the differentiation is largely
illusory.
Poor Sibella passed from pleading to violence. If I did not at once
break off my engagement she would know how to act. Lionel should know
all, and if he turned her out she would insist on coming to me. The
idea of Sibella’s worldly soul playing ducks and drakes with her
prosperity in that way out of mere revenge made me smile. Very well, I
could smile, but we should see. Miss Gascoyne should know how I had
betrayed my friend’s wife. I looked at her in surprise, and she
corrected herself; if Lionel was not my friend, Grahame was, and to
betray your friend’s sister was just as bad as betraying your friend’s
wife. As Sibella had no morals whatever on the subject, this was all
very amusing. My amusement, which I could not wholly conceal, enraged
her. People should know me for what I was, she declared. There had
always been something about me that she did not like, had never liked,
even when I was a boy. She had always suspected me of being a fraud in
some way or other.
This made me curious, and I encouraged her to go on. It was as well to
know what lay at the back of Sibella’s mind, especially if it were not
very flattering to what I had believed to be my powers of concealment,
but after all a woman with whom one has an illicit love affair sees
the worst side of one. I had no fear of Sibella telling Miss Gascoyne.
She might in a round-about way try and injure me in the latter’s eyes,
but I did not think she was likely to go further.
It was a trying scene, however. No man likes to see a woman whom he
loves suffer, and Sibella displayed a quite extraordinary amount of
resentment, considering that physical jealousy cannot in the nature of
things be as strong a passion with woman as with man.
“You will kiss her, and make love to her,” she moaned.
“My sweetheart,” I murmured, taking her in my arms, “you know
perfectly well that I do not love anyone in the wide world as well as
I do you—but just think what this marriage will do for me.”
“I have sacrificed so much for you, Israel; you might at least
sacrifice something for me.”
“My darling, I will make any sacrifice that you can show me is
necessary.”
“This is the end of everything between us, you will see. I shall never
be happy again.”
She was softening; the danger was over. I pointed out that she had
made the marriage she wanted to; she might at least allow me the same
privilege.
“I did not know that I was in love with you,” she whimpered.
I reasoned with her in the most winning way. I would send her a little
French novel, one of the most philosophical works I had ever read,
although presented as the lightest of fiction, a pill coated like a
sugar-plum. In it there were two people who had loved each other all
their lives, and kept their romance evergreen because they did not
marry. Marriage spoilt so many things. It was the microscope turned on
to the apparently limpid waters of romance. It showed a mass of
horrid, swirling, swimming, ugly things that there was no need to see.
Why use a microscope? She must have learned the evil of the
matrimonial microscope from Lionel. Delusions were as good as
realities if one were consistent. If we had been rich we might have
married each other. Therefore, poverty knew what was best for us, and
had been our most sincere friend.
I think I left her pacified; at least, to the extent of not being
dangerous. Lionel came in, and I was obliged to go.
I was compelled of course to spend a great deal of time at South
Kensington. Edith was radiantly happy, and her romance had brought
something into her face which it had hitherto lacked. I was very proud
of her. Poor Sibella, who had seen her at some public function, had
evidently not expected anything so beautiful, for she declared that I
must surely love so exquisite a creature better than herself. As a
matter of fact, Miss Gascoyne’s beauty, although of a higher type, was
not so dazzling as Sibella’s, and I could honestly say, “One admires
Miss Gascoyne, but one does not love her,” which had a very good
effect on Sibella. It was put authoritatively, and it convinced her.
I was now the son of the house at the Gascoynes’, and there was
Satanic humour in the situation. I moved among all these good people
as in some measure a substitute for the dead young man. Where
ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise, is true sometimes, and what
did it matter to them if I were responsible for the son’s death? How
could it affect my filial attitude, providing they remained in
ignorance?
Mr. Gascoyne doubled my salary, and introduced me to the employés of
the firm as his successor. He began by degrees to leave the management
of affairs to me, and he did well, for he had grown just a little
old-fashioned, and the business certainly improved under my care; in
fact, it regained ground which it had lost.
About this time I had another piece of good fortune. It was not much,
but such as it was it was encouraging. Old Henry Gascoyne died,
leaving only the parson between me and the main branch—of course, with
the exception of my benefactor, Mr. Gascoyne.
Lord and Lady Gascoyne called in person to congratulate us on our
engagement. They welcomed me as cousin, and asked us all to Hammerton
for Christmas. Lady Gascoyne wanted to revive the good old-fashioned
Yule-tide. As she justly observed, “What is the use of having an
old-fashioned hall if you don’t use it as such?”