"I really think you have, rather, and without an atom of reason."
"Oh, entirely! I apologise. That sort of thing happens to be--to be in my thoughts."
Sibylla, in some anger, had risen to go. The last words arrested her movement, and she stood in the middle of the room, looking down on Christine"s little figure, nestling in a big armchair.
"Your thoughts? That sort of thing in your thoughts?"
"Oh, entirely in retrospect, my dear; and it generally comes of not being appreciated, and of wanting an outlet for--for--well, for something or other, you know."
"Are you going to speak plainly, Christine?"
"Not for worlds, my dear! Are you going to drop my acquaintance?"
"Why is it in your thoughts? You say it"s--it"s all in the past?"
"Really I"m beginning to doubt if there"s such a thing as the past; and if there isn"t, it makes everything so much worse! I thought it was all done with--done with long ago; and now it isn"t. It"s just all--all over my life, as it used to be. And I--I"m afraid again. And I"m lying again.
It means so many lies, you know." She looked up at Sibylla with a plaintiveness coloured by malice. "So if I"ve been impertinent, just put it down to what I happen to be thinking about, my dear."
Sibylla stood very quiet, saying nothing. Christine went on after a minute:
"Can"t you manage to be wrapped up in the baby, my dear?"
"No, I can"t." The answer was hard and unhesitating. "You"ve told me something people don"t generally tell. I"ll tell you something that I didn"t think I ever should tell. I love my baby--and sometimes I hate to have to see him." Her eyes were on Christine"s face, and there was distress--hopeless distress--in them. "Now I should think you"d drop my acquaintance," she ended with a laugh.
"Oh, I"ve never had a baby--I"m not shocked to death. But--but why, Sibylla?"
"Surely you can guess why! It"s horrible, but it"s not unintelligible, surely?"
"No, I suppose it"s not," Christine sighed.
Christine"s legs had been curled up on her chair; she let them down to the ground and rose to her feet.
"That"s all from both of us for to-day?" she asked, with a wry smile.
"All for to-day, I think," answered Sibylla, b.u.t.toning her glove.
"I meant to be--friendly."
"You have been. I never guessed anything--anything of what you"ve said--about you."
"n.o.body hinted it? Not even Harriet Courtland? She knew."
"I never see her. How did she know?"
"She was my great friend then. Rather funny, isn"t it? I"m told Tom"s getting quite regardless of appearances."
"Oh, I can"t bear to talk about that!"
"No? Well, you can think of it now and then, can"t you? It"s rather wholesome to reflect how other people look when they"re doing the things that you want----"
"Christine! Good-bye!"
"Oh, good-bye, my dear! And take care of yourself. Oh, I only mean the wind"s cold."
But her look denied the harmless meaning she claimed for her parting words.
Grantley"s att.i.tude admits of simpler definition than his wife"s. He attributed to her an abnormally prolonged and obstinate fit of sulks.
People who have been in the wrong are generally sulky; that went a long way to account for it. Add thereto Sibylla"s extreme expectations of a world and of an inst.i.tution both of which deal mostly with compromises and arrangements short of the ideal, and the case seemed to him clear enough and not altogether unnatural, however vexatious it might be. He flew to no tragical or final conclusion. He did not despair; but neither did he struggle. He made no advances; his pride was too wounded, and his reason too affronted for that. On the other hand he offered no provocation. The irreproachability of his manner continued; the inaccessibility of his feelings increased. He devoted his mind to his work, public and commercial; and he waited for Sibylla to come to her senses. Given his theory of the case, he deserved credit for much courtesy, much patience, and entire consistency of purpose. And he, unlike Sibylla, neither talked to intimate friends nor invited questions from them. Both pride and wisdom forbade. Finally, while he acknowledged great discomfort (including a disagreeable element of the ludicrous), the idea of danger never crossed his mind; he would have laughed at Christine Fanshaw"s warning, had it been addressed to him.
Whatever Sibylla"s faults, levity was not among them, and danger in Christine"s sense--danger of a break-up of the household, as distinguished from a continuance of it, however unsatisfactory that continuance might be--there would probably have been none, had not Walter Blake, after a lively, but not very profitable, youth, wanted to reform his life. He might have wanted to be wicked without creating any peril at all for the Imason household. But he wanted to be good, and he wanted Sibylla to make him good. This idea had occurred to him quite early in their acquaintance. He too had a faculty--even a facility--for idealising. He idealised Sibylla into the image of goodness and purity, which would turn him from sin and folly by making virtue and wisdom not better (which of course they were already), but more attractive and more pleasurable. If they were made more attractive and more pleasurable, he would be eager to embrace them. Besides he had had a good deal of the alternatives, without ever being really content with them. By this time he was firmly convinced that he must be good, and that Sibylla, and Sibylla alone, could make him good. He did not at all think out what the process was to be, nor whither it might lead. He had never planned much, nor looked where things led to. Until they led to something alarming, he did not consider the question much. How she was to reform him he seemed to leave to Sibylla, but his demand that she should do it grew more and more explicit.
This was to attack Sibylla on her weak spot, to aim an arrow true at the joint in her harness. For (one is tempted to say, unfortunately) she knew the only way in which people could be reformed and made good, and caused to feel that wisdom and virtue were not only better (which of course they felt already), but also more pleasurable than folly and sin.
(People who want to be reformed are sometimes, it must be admitted, a little exacting.) That could be done only by sympathy and understanding.
And if they are thorough, sympathy and understanding compose, or depend on, or issue in love--in the best kind of love, where friend gives himself unreservedly to friend, entering into every feeling, and being privy to every thought. This close and intimate connection must be established before one mind can, lever-like, raise another, and the process of reformation be begun. So much is old ground, often trodden and with no pretence of novelty about it. But much of the power of a proposition may depend not on its soundness, but on the ardour with which it is seized upon, and the conviction with which it is held--which things, again, depend on the character and temper of the believer.
Sibylla"s character and temper made the proposition extraordinarily convincing. Her circ.u.mstances, as she conceived them, were equally provocative in the same direction. What was wrong with her? In the end that she was not wanted, or not wanted enough, that she had more to give than had been asked of her, and no outlet (as Christine had put it) sufficient to relieve the press of her emotions. It was almost inevitable that she should respond to Blake"s appeal. He was an outlet.
He was somebody who wanted her very much, whom she could help, with whom she could expand, to whom she could give what she had to give in such abundant measure.
Thus far the first stage. The next was not reached. There was plenty of time yet. Sibylla loved the child. Blake had set up his idol, but he had not yet declared that he was the only devotee who knew how properly to honour and to worship it.
He sat watching Sibylla as she played with her baby-boy. He took a hand in the game now and then, since, for a bachelor, he was at his ease with babies; but most of the time he watched. But he watched sympathetically; Sibylla did not fear to show her love before his eyes. The baby was very young for games--for any that a man could play. But Sibylla knew some that he liked; he gave evidence of a strangely dawning pleasure distinct from physical contentment--of wonder, of amus.e.m.e.nt, of an appreciation of fun, of delight in the mock a.s.saults and the queer noises which his mother directed at him. Sometimes he made nice, queer, gurgling noises himself, full of luxurious content, like a cat"s purring, and laden with a surprise, as though all this was very new. She had infinite patience in seeking these signs of approval; half a dozen attempts would miscarry before she succeeded in tickling the infant groping senses. When she hit the mark, she had infinite delight. She would give a cry of joy and turn round to Blake for approval and applause; it was a very difficult thing, but she had kept confidence in her instinct, and she had won the day!
Spurred to fresh effort, she returned to her loved work. A gurgle from the little parted lips, a movement of the wide-open little eyes--eyes of that marvellous transient blue--marked a new triumph.
"Isn"t he wonderful?" she called to Blake over her shoulder.
"Oh, yes, rather!" he laughed, and added, after a short moment: "And so are you."
Sibylla was not looking for compliments. She laughed gaily and went back to her work.
"But can"t he talk, Mrs. Imason?"
"How silly you are! But he"s just wonderful for his age as he is."
"Oh, they all are!"
He was so obviously feigning scorn that Sibylla only shook her head at him in merry glee.
Was not this the real, the great thing? Blake"s mind, disengaging from the past memories of what had once been its delights, and turning now in distaste from them, declared that it was. Nature had the secret of the keenest pleasure--it was to be found along nature"s way. There pleasure was true to a purpose, achieving a great end, concentrated in that, not dissipated in pa.s.sing and unfruitful joys. Blake was sure that he was right now, sure that he wanted to be reformed, more sure than ever that wisdom and virtue were more pleasurable (as well as being better) than their opposites. A man of ready sensibility and quick feeling, he was open to the suggestion and alive to the beauty of what he saw. It seemed to him holy--and the feelings it evoked in him seemed almost holy too.
"Motherhood!" he said to himself, not knowing, at least not acknowledging, that his true meaning was this woman as mother, motherhood incarnate in her. Yet that it was. If his aspirations were awake, his blood too was stirred. But the moment for that to come to light was not yet. The good seemed still unalloyed, his high-soaring aspirations were guiltless of self-knowledge.
Sibylla played with the child till she could play no more--till she feared to tire him, she would have said--in truth till the tenderness which had found a mask in the sport would conceal its face no more, and in a spasm of love she caught the little creature to her, pressing her face to his.
"Poor little darling!" Blake heard her say in a whisper full of pity as well as of love.
Whence came the pity? The mother"s natural fear that her sheltering may not avail against all the world? Most likely it was only that. But the pity was poignant, and he wondered vaguely.
They were thus, she and the child locked together, the young man dimly picturing the truth as he watched, when Grantley Imason came in. A start ran through Sibylla; she caught a last kiss from the little face, and then laid her baby down. Swiftly she turned round to her husband. Blake had risen, watching still--nay, more eagerly. For all he could do, his eyes sought her face and rested there, trying to trace what feeling found expression as she turned to her husband from her child.
"Glad to see you, Blake. Ah, you"ve got the little chap there!"