With a sense of listening to inevitable words, he heard her soft drowsy whisper again:
"Let"s ride straight into the gold, Grantley, straight into the gold, and let the gold----"
The faint happy murmur died away in a sigh, and her head, which had been raised a moment, nestled on his shoulder again.
It had come--the supreme touch of irony which he had foreseen and dreaded. The errant wits had overleapt the stupendous gulf; they crimsoned the cold rays of the moon into the glory of summer sunset; they coloured desolate ruins with the gleaming hues of splendid youth.
Her soul was again in the fairy ride, the fairy ride which had led whither? Which had led to this? Nothing that waking wits, or an ingenuity pointed by malice, might have devised, could have equalled this. She might have searched all her armoury in vain for so keen a weapon. Nay, she would have rejected this, the sharpest of all; no human being could have used it knowingly. It would have been too cruel. He listened in dull terror for a repet.i.tion of the words. They did not come again. What need? He heard them still, and a groan broke the seal of his lips.
"My G.o.d, must she do that?" he muttered to himself. "Get on, Rollo, get on!"
For now the triumph faded away, the unsubstantial pageant was no more.
There was no blare of trumpets to deaden the mocking voice. The little victory stood in its contemptible dwarfishness beside the magnitude of his great defeat. That the past had been, that the present was--that was enough. The fairy ride and the struggle in the inn--they stood side by side and bade him gaze on the spectacle. Beside this it seemed as though he had suffered nothing that day and night--nothing in the thought of ridicule and shame, nothing in the dishonour of his house and home, nothing in the jealousy and anger of a forsaken man. This thing alone seemed to matter--that the past had been that, and that the present was this, and that they had been so shaped in the hands of him, the fashioner of them.
Then suddenly, with a quick twist of thought, he was bitterly sorry for Sibylla: because words and memories which come back like that, unbidden and of themselves, when the wits are wandering, must have meant a great deal and had a great place once. At such a time the mind would not throw up trifles out of an unconscious recollection. The things which have been deepest in it, which have filled--yes, and formed it--those were the things that it would throw up. In themselves they might sound wild trifles, but they were knit to great deep things, towards which they stood as representatives. They expressed nethermost truths, however idle and light they sounded. When she babbled of riding into the gold, and sank her spirit in the memory of the fairy ride, she went back all unconsciously to the great moment of her life and to its most glorious promise. She spoke of the crown of all her being.
It was strange to him, this new sorrow for Sibylla. He had never felt that yet. It was odd he should feel it now--for the woman who had forsaken her child and sought to dishonour her husband and her son. But the feeling was very strong on him. It found its first utterance in words of constrained civility. He turned his head back, saying:
"I"m afraid you"re very tired?"
She answered nothing.
"I hope you"re not very cold?"
A little shiver of her body ran into his.
"We shall be home very soon."
"Home!" she murmured sleepily. "Yes, soon home now, Grantley!"
"G.o.d help me!" he muttered.
He could not make it out. Somehow his whole conception of her, of the situation, of himself, seemed shaken. This guilty woman behind him (was she not guilty in all that was of consequence, in every decision of her will and every impulse of her nature?) seemed to accuse not herself, but him. He was torn from the judgment-seat and set rudely in the dock, peremptorily bidden to plead, not to sentence, to beg mercy in lieu of p.r.o.nouncing doom. Her wandering wits and drowsy murmurs had inexplicably wrought this transformation. And why? And how?
Was it because she had been capable of the fairy ride and able to make it eternal? Capable--yes, and confident of her ability. So confident that, in the foolhardiness of strength, she had engaged herself to try it with young Blake--with that poor light-o"-love, who was all unequal to the great issues which he himself had claimed as the kernel of the fight. Where lay the failure of the fairy ride? Where resided its nullity? How came it that the bitter irony of contrast found in it so fair, so unmatched a field? Who had turned the crimson of the glorious sunset to the cold light of that distant unregarding moon?
On a sudden her grasp of him loosened; her arm slipped away. She gave a little groan. He wrenched himself round in the saddle, dropping the reins. Old Rollo came to a standstill; Grantley darted out his hands with a quick eager motion. Another second, and she would have fallen heavily to the ground. With a strain he held her, and brought her round and set her in front of him. She seemed deathly pale under the blue-white moon rays. Her lips opened to murmur "Grantley!" and with a comfortable sigh she wreathed her arms about his neck. He almost kissed her, but thought of young Blake, and took up his reins again with a muttered oath.
So they rode down the hill into Milldean, old Rollo picking his steps carefully, since the chalk was slimy and there were loose flints which it behoved a careful and trusted horse to beware of. The old scene dawned on Grantley, pallid and ghostly in the moonlight--the church and the post-office; Old Mill House, where she had lived when he wooed her; his own home on the hill beyond. Sibylla"s cold arms about his neck prayed him to see it again as he had seen it once--nay, in a new and intenser light; to see it as the place where his love had been born, whence the fairy ride had started and whither returned. He did not try to loosen her grasp about his neck. She seemed a burden that he must carry, a load he bore home from out the tempest of the winds and waves which he had faced and fought that night. And ever, as he went, he sought dimly, saying, "Why, why?" "How did it come about?" "Haven"t I loved her?" "Hasn"t she had everything?" Or exclaiming, "Blake!" Or again, "And the child!"--trying to a.s.sess, trying to judge, trying to condemn, yet ever feeling the inanimate grasp, looking on the oblivious face, returning to pity and to grieve.
A groom was waiting up for him. Grantley roused himself from his ponderings to give the man a brief explanation. Mrs. Imason had meant to stay at Mrs. Valentine"s, but he had wanted to talk to her on business, and she had insisted on coming back with him. Unfortunately she had attempted to walk, and it had been too much for her; her bag would be sent home to-morrow. He had arranged this with the gruff innkeeper, and paid him a good sum to hold his tongue. But he was conscious that tongues would not be held altogether, and that the groom was puzzled by the story, and certainly not convinced. This seemed to matter very little now--as little as young Blake had mattered. Let them guess and gossip--what was that compared to the great unexplained thing between himself and Sibylla, compared to the great questioning of himself by himself which had now taken possession of him? What the outside world might think seemed now a small thing--yes, although he had been ready to kill himself and the child because of it.
He bore Sibylla into the hall of the house. One lamp burned dimly there, and all was quiet--save for a shrill fractious cry. The child was crying fretfully. The next moment old Mrs. Mumple came to the top of the stairs, carrying a bedroom candle and wrapped in a shabby voluminous dressing-gown.
"You"re back, Mr. Imason?" She did not see Sibylla, and held up her hand. "Hark to poor little Frank!" she said. "He"s been crying all the evening. I can"t quiet him. He misses his mummy so."
Could words more sorely condemn Sibylla--the woman who had forsaken her child? But Grantley gathered her gently into his arms and began to carry her upstairs. Then Mrs. Mumple saw, and turned on him eyes full of wonder.
"She"s unconscious, I think," he said. "She can do nothing for herself.
I"ll take her to her room, and you must put her to bed. She"s very cold too. You must make her warm, Mrs. Mumple."
The old woman followed him into the bedroom without a word. He laid Sibylla down on the bed. For an instant she opened her eyes and smiled tenderly at him; then she fell into oblivion again. Mrs. Mumple moved quickly to her. Standing by her, ranged on her side in a moment by some subtle instinct, she faced Grantley with an air of defiance.
"Leave her to me, Mr. Imason. Leave the poor child to me."
"Yes," he answered. "Get her to bed as soon as you can. Good night."
Mrs. Mumple was feeling Sibylla"s face, her hands, her ankles. She began to unb.u.t.ton the wet boots hastily.
"What have you done to her?" she asked in motherly indignation. "Poor lamb!"
She pulled off the boots, and felt the damp stockings with low exclamations of horror. She was in her element, fussing over somebody she loved. She got a rough towel, and knelt down to strip off the stockings.
"I can leave her to you now," said Grantley, and he walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
In the stillness of the house he heard the little peevish cry again; the complaint in it was more intense, as though the child missed old Mrs.
Mumple"s care and feared to be alone. Grantley went along the pa.s.sage and into the nursery. A night-light burned by the cot. The door of the adjoining room stood open a few inches, but all was dark and quiet in there. When Grantley came near, the child saw him, and stretched out his little arms to him in a gesture which seemed to combine welcome and entreaty. Grantley shook his head, smiling whimsically.
"I wonder what the little beggar wants! I"m devilish little use," he murmured. But he lifted little Frank from the cot, wrapped him in a blanket, and carried him to the fireside. "I wonder if I ought to feed him?" he thought. "What"s the nurse up to? Oh, I suppose she"s left him to old Mumple. Why didn"t she feed him?"
Then it struck him that perhaps Frank had been fed too much, and he shook his head gravely over such a trying situation as that. Frank was lamenting still--more gently, but in a remarkably persevering way. "He must want something," Grantley concluded; and his eye fell on a cup which stood just within the fender. He stooped down and stuck his finger into it, and found it half-full of a warm, thick, semi-liquid stuff.
"Got it!" he said in lively triumph, picking up the cup and holding it to Frank"s lips. The child sucked it up. "Well, he likes it anyhow; that"s something. I hope it won"t kill him!" mused Grantley, as he gently drew the cup away from the tenacious little fingers.
Frank stuck one of the fingers in his mouth, stopped crying, and in an instant, seemingly, was sound asleep. Grantley got him into a position that he guessed would be comfortable, and lay back in the chair, nursing him on his knees.
In half an hour Mrs. Mumple came in and found them both sound asleep in front of the fire. She darted to them, and shook Grantley by the shoulder. He opened his eyes with a start.
"My gracious, you might have dropped him!"
"Not a bit of it! Look how he"s holding on!" He showed the little hand clenched tightly round his forefinger. "He could hang like that, I believe!"
"Hang indeed!" muttered Mrs. Mumple resentfully. "Give him to me, Mr.
Imason."
"Oh, by all means! But, by Jove, he doesn"t want to go, you know!"
He did not want to go, apparently, and Grantley was quite triumphant about it. Mrs. Mumple was merely cross, and grumbled all the time till she got the little fingers unlaced and Frank safe in his cot again.
"It"s a mercy he didn"t fall into the fire," she kept repeating, with a lively and aggressive thankfulness for escape from a danger excessively remote. But she made Grantley ashamed of not having thought of it. At last she spoke of Sibylla.
"She"s warm and comfortable and sleeping now, poor lamb!" she said.
"It"s time we all were," said Grantley, making for the door.
"You won"t disturb her, Mr. Imason?"
He turned round to her, smiling.
"No," he said.