"Cruel? No! They"ve been most--most gentle. I"ve come to see how wrong it was."
"Yet you"re here!" He could not resist the retort.
"For the last time--to say good-bye. And if you really care at all, you must do as I wish."
"But--I may write to you?"
"No, no, you mustn"t."
"You can"t stop me thinking about you."
"I shan"t think of you. I shall pray to be able not to. I"m sure I can be strong."
She had got this idea in her head. It was just the sort of idea that Sibylla might have got. She wanted to immolate herself. For such views in Sibylla Jeremy had always had denunciations ready. He had no denunciation now--only a despairing puzzle.
"I can"t accept that, and I won"t! Do you love me?"
"I"m going to keep my promise to say nothing. I"ve told you what I must do and what you must. I made up my mind--and--and then I went to the Sacrament to-day."
Jeremy rubbed his wrinkled brow, eyeing this determined penitent very ruefully. A sudden return to rect.i.tude is disconcerting in an accomplice. He did not know what to do. But his bulldog persistence was roused and his square jaw set obstinately.
"Well, I shall consider what to do. I believe you love me, and I shan"t sit down under this."
"You must," she said. "And now, good-bye."
He came towards her, but her raised hand stopped him.
"Good-bye like this? You won"t even shake hands?"
"No, I can"t. Good-bye."
Of course he was sorry for her, but he was decidedly angry too. He perceived a case of the selfishness of spiritual exaltation. His doggedness turned to surliness.
"All right, then, good-bye," he said sulkily.
"You"re not angry with me?"
"Yes, I am."
She accepted this additional cross, and bore it meekly.
"That hurts me very much. But I must do right. Good-bye."
And with that she went, firm to the last, leaving Jeremy almost as furious with women as in the palmiest days of his youth, almost as angry with her as he had ever been with the long-legged rectory girl.
Pursuing (though he did not know it) paths as well trodden as those which he had already followed, he formed an instant determination in his mind. She should be sorry for it! Whether she should sorrow with a lifelong sorrow or whether she should ultimately, after much grief and humiliation, find forgiveness, he did not decide for the moment; both ideas had their attraction. But at any rate she should be sorry, and that as soon as possible. How was it to be brought about? Jeremy conjectured that a remote and ill-ascertained success in original research would not make her sorry, and his conclusion may be allowed to pa.s.s; nor would a continuance of shabby clothes and an income of a hundred a year. This combination had once seemed all-sufficient. Nay, it would suffice now for true and whole-hearted love. But it was not enough to make a cruel lady repent of her cruelty, nor to convict a misguided zealot of the folly of her zeal. It was not dazzling enough for that. In an hour Jeremy threw his whole ideal of life to the winds, and decided for wealth and mundane fame--speedy wealth and speedy mundane fame (speed was essential, because Jeremy"s feelings were in a hurry). Such laurels and fruits were not to be plucked in Milldean. That very night Jeremy packed a well-worn leather bag and a square deal box. He was going to London, to see Grantley and Sibylla, to make them acquainted with the state of the case, and to set about becoming rich and famous as speedily as possible. His mind o"erleapt the process and saw it already completed--saw his return to Milldean rich and famous--saw his renewed meeting with Dora, the confusion of the rector and Mrs. Hutting, the unavailing--or possibly at last availing--regret and humiliation of Dora. It cannot truthfully be said that he went to bed altogether unhappy. He had his dream, even as Dora had hers; he had his luxury of prospective victory as she had hers of unreserved and accepted penitence; and they shared the conviction of a very extraordinary and unprecedented state of things.
So to town came Jeremy, leaving Mrs. Mumple in Old Mill House. She was not idle. She was counting months now--not years now, but months; and she was knitting socks, and making flannel shirts, and hemming big red handkerchiefs, and picturing and wondering in her faithful old heart what that morning would be like for whose coming she had waited so many many years. Great hopes and great fears were under the ample breast of her unshapely merino gown.
In the Imason household the strain grew more intense. With rare tenacity, unimpaired confidence, and unbroken pride, Grantley maintained his att.i.tude. He would tire out Sibylla"s revolt; he would outstay the fit of sulks, however long it might be. But the strain told on him, though it did not break him: he was more away; more engrossed in his outside activities; grimmer and more sardonic when he was at home; careful to show no feeling which might expose him to rebuff; extending the scope of this conduct from his wife to his child, because his wife"s grievance was bound up with the child. And Sibylla, seeing the att.i.tude, seeing partially only and therefore more resenting the motives, created out of it and them a monster of insensibility, something of an inhuman selfishness, seeming the more horrible and unnatural from the unchanging, if cold, courtesy which Grantley still displayed. This image had been taking shape ever since their battle at Milldean. It had grown with the amused scorn which was on his face as he told her of the specialist"s judgment, and made her see how foolish she had been, what an unnecessary fuss she had caused, how dangerous and silly it was to let one"s emotions run away with one. It had defined itself yet more clearly through the months before and after the boy"s birth, as Grantley developed his line of action and adhered to it, secure apparently from every a.s.sault of natural tenderness. Now the portentous shape was all complete in her imagination, and the monster she had erected freed her from every obligation. By her hypothesis it was accessible by no appeal and sensitive to no emotion. Why, then, labour uselessly? It would indeed be to knock your head--yes, and your heart too--against a flinty wall. As for trying to show or to cherish love for it--that seemed to her prost.i.tution itself. And she had no tenacity to endure such a life as Grantley, or her image of Grantley, made for her. In her headlong fashion she had already p.r.o.nounced the alternatives--death or flight.
And there was the baby boy in his helplessness; and there was young Blake with his ready hot pa.s.sion, masked by those aspirations of his, and his fiery indignation seconding and applauding the despair of her own heart. For Blake knew the truth now--the truth as Sibylla"s imaginings made it; and in view of that truth the thing his pa.s.sion urged him to became a holy duty. His G.o.ddess must be no more misused; her misery must not be allowed to endure.
Knowing his thought and what his heart was towards her, Sibylla turned to him as a child turns simply from a hard to a loving face. Here was a life wanting her life, a love asking hers. She had always believed people when they said they loved and wanted her--why, she had believed even Grantley himself!--and was always convinced that their love for her was all they said it was. It was her instinct to believe that. She believed all--aye, more--about young Blake than he believed about himself, though he believed very much just now; and she would always have people all white or all black. Grantley was all black now, and Blake was very white, white as snow, while he talked of his aspirations and his love, and tempted her to leave all that bound her, and to give her life to him. He tempted well, for he offered not pleasure, but the power of doing good and bestowing happiness. Her first natural love seemed to have spent itself on Grantley; she had no pa.s.sion left, save the pa.s.sion of giving. It was to this he made his appeal; this would be enough to give him all his way. Yet there was the child. He had not yet ventured on that difficult uncertain ground. That was where the struggle would be; it was there that he distrusted the justice of his own demand on her, there that his pa.s.sion had to drown the inward voices of protest.
It might have happened that Jeremy, with his fresh love and fresh ambitions, would have been a relief to such a position; that his appeal both to sympathy and to amus.e.m.e.nt would have done something to clear the atmosphere. So far as he himself went, indeed, he was irresistible; his frankness and his confidence were not to be denied. Trusting in the order of nature, he knew no bashfulness; trusting in himself, he had no misgivings. Without a doubt he was right. They all agreed that the old ideal of original research and a hundred a year must be abandoned, and that Jeremy must become rich and famous as soon as possible.
"Though whether you ought to forgive her in the end is, I must say, a very difficult point," remarked Grantley with a would-be thoughtful smile. "In cases of penitence I myself favour forgiveness, Jeremy."
"But there is the revelation of her character," suggested Sibylla, taking the matter more seriously, or treating its want of seriousness with more tenderness.
"I"m inclined to think the young lady"s right at present," said Blake.
"What you have to do is to give her ground for changing her views--and to give her mother ground for changing hers too."
Jeremy listened to them all with engrossed interest. Whatever their att.i.tude, they all confirmed his view.
"You once spoke of a berth in the City?" he said to Grantley.
"Not much fame there; but perhaps you may as well take things by instalments."
"I don"t like it, you know. It"s not my line at all."
Blake came to the rescue. The Selfords drew their money from large and important dyeing-works, although Selford himself had retired from any active share in the work of the business. There was room for scientific apt.i.tude in dyeing-works, Blake opined rather vaguely. "You could make chemistry, for instance, subserve the needs of commerce, couldn"t you?"
"That really is a good suggestion," said Jeremy approvingly.
"Capital!" Grantley agreed. "We"ll get at Selford for you, Jeremy; and, if necessary, we"ll club together, and send to Terra del Fuego, and buy Janet Selford a new dog."
"I begin to see my way," Jeremy announced.
Whereat the men laughed, while Sibylla came round and kissed him, laughing too. What a very short time ago, and she had been even as Jeremy, as sanguine, as confident, seeing her way as clearly, with just as little warrant of knowledge!
"Meanwhile you mustn"t mope, old chap," said Grantley.
"Mope? I"ve no time for moping. Do you think I could see this Selford to-morrow?"
"I"ll give you a letter to take to him," laughed Grantley. "But don"t ask for ten thousand a year all at once, you know."
"I know the world. When I really want a thing, I can wait for it."
But it was evident that he did not mean to wait very long. Grantley said ten thousand a year: a thousand would seem riches to the Milldean rectory folk.
"That"s right. If you want a thing, you must be ready to wait for it,"
agreed Grantley, with smiling lips and a pucker on his brow.
"So long as there"s any hope," added Sibylla.
These hints of underlying things went unheeded by Jeremy, but Blake marked them. They were becoming more frequent now as the tension grew and grew.