"You begin to hate her----you?--and why?"
"Are you so blind that you cannot perceive why?" she retorted, the
little malign smile I knew so well playing round her lips--"Because she
is happy! Because she has no scandals in her life, and because she dares
to be content! One longs to make her miserable! But how to do it? She
believes in a God,--she thinks all He ordains is right and good. With
such a firm faith as that, she would be happy in a garret earning but a
few pence a day. I see now perfectly how she has won her public,--it is
by the absolute conviction she has herself of the theories of life she
tries to instil. What can be done against her? Nothing! But I understand
why the critics would like to 'quash' her,--if I were a critic, fond of
whiskey-and-soda, and music-hall women, I should like to quash her
myself for being so different to the rest of her sex!"
"What an incomprehensible woman you are, Sibyl!" I exclaimed with real
irritation,--"You admire Miss Clare's books,--you have always admired
them,--you have asked her to become your friend,--and almost in the same
breath you aver you would like to 'quash' her or to make her miserable!
I confess I cannot understand you!"
"Of course you cannot!" she responded tranquilly, her eyes resting upon
me with a curious expression, as we paused for an instant under the deep
shade of a chestnut tree before entering our own grounds--"I never
supposed you could, and unlike the ordinary _femme incomprise_, I have
never blamed you for your want of comprehension. It has taken me some
time to understand myself, and even now I am not quite sure that I have
gauged the depths or shallownesses of my own nature correctly. But on
this matter of Mavis Clare, can you not imagine that badness may hate
goodness? That the confirmed drunkard may hate the sober citizen? That
the outcast may hate the innocent maiden? And that it is possible that
I,--reading life as I do, and finding it loathsome in many of its
aspects,--distrusting men and women utterly,--and being destitute of any
faith in God,--may hate,--yes _hate_,"--and she clenched her hand on a
tuft of drooping leaves and scattered the green fragments at her
feet--"a woman who finds life beautiful, and God existent,--who takes no
part in our social shams and slanders,--and who in place of my
self-torturing spirit of analysis, has secured an enviable fame and the
honour of thousands, allied to a serene content? Why it would be
something worth living for, to make such a woman wretched for once in
her life!--but, as she is constituted, it is impossible to do it."
She turned from me and walked slowly onward,--I following in a pained
silence.
"If you do not mean to be her friend, you should tell her so,"--I said
presently--"You heard what she said about pretended protestations of
regard?"
"I heard,"--she replied morosely--"She is a clever woman, Geoffrey, and
you may trust her to find me out without any explanation!"
As she said this, I raised my eyes and looked full at her,--her
exceeding beauty was becoming almost an agony to my sight, and in a
sudden fool's paroxysm of despair I exclaimed--
"O Sibyl, Sibyl! Why were you made as you are!"
"Ah, why indeed!" she rejoined, with a faint mocking smile--"And why,
being made as I am, was I born an Earl's daughter? If I had been a drab
of the street, I should have been in my proper place,--and novels would
have been written about me, and plays,--and I might have become such a
heroine as should cause all good men to weep for joy because of my
generosity in encouraging their vices! But as an Earl's daughter,
respectably married to a millionaire, am a mistake of nature. Yet nature
does make mistakes sometimes Geoffrey, and when she does they are
generally irremediable!"
We had now reached our own grounds, and I walked, in miserable mood,
beside her across the lawn towards the house.
"Sibyl,"--I said at last--"I had hoped you and Mavis Clare might be
friends."
She laughed.
"So we shall be friends I daresay,--for a little while"--she
replied--"But the dove does not willingly consort with the raven, and
Mavis Clare's way of life and studious habits would be to me
insufferably dull. Besides, as I said before, she, as a clever woman and
a thinker, is too clear-sighted not to find me out in the course of
time. But I will play humbug as long as I can. If I perform the part of
'county lady' or 'patron,' of course she won't stand me for a moment. I
shall have to assume a much more difficult rôle,--that of an honest
woman!"
Again she laughed,--a cruel little laugh that chilled my blood, and
paced slowly into the house through the open windows of the
drawing-room. And I, left alone in the garden among the nodding roses
and waving trees, felt that the beautiful domain of Willowsmere had
suddenly grown hideous and bereft of all its former charm, and was
nothing but a haunted house of desolation,--haunted by an all-dominant
and ever victorious Spirit of Evil.