She looked from Grantley to Raymore and back again, and read the answer in their faces. They knew where Tom Courtland had gone. Grantley patted her hand gently, and said to Raymore:
"Well, who could stand a savage like that?"
It was the recognition of a ruin inevitable and past cure.
CHAPTER V
THE BIRTH OF STRIFE
There are processes undergone which people hardly realise themselves, which another can explain by no record, however minute or laborious.
They are in detail as imperceptible, as secret, as elusive as the physical changes which pa.s.s upon the face of the body. From day to day there is no difference; but days make years, and years change youth to maturity, maturity to decay. So in matters of the soul the daily trifling sum adds up and up. A thousand tiny hopes nipped, a thousand little expectations frustrated, a thousand foolish fears proved not so foolish. Divide them by the days, and there is nothing to cry about at bedtime, nothing even to pray about, if to pray you are inclined. Yet as a month pa.s.ses, or two, or three, the atoms seem to join and form a cloud. The sunbeams get through here and there still, but the clear fine radiance is obscured. Presently the cloud thickens, deepens, hardens. It seems now a wall, stout and high; the gates are heavy and forbidding, and they stand where once there was ready and eagerly welcomed entrance and access. Think of what it is to look for a letter sometimes. It comes not on Monday--it"s nothing; nor on Tuesday--it"s nothing; nor on Wednesday--odd! nor on Thursday--strange! nor on Friday--you can"t think! It comes not for a week--you are hurt; for a fortnight--you are indignant. A month pa.s.ses--and maybe what you prized most in all your life is gone. You have been told the truth in thirty broken sentences.
Sibylla Imason took a reckoning--in no formal manner, not sitting down to it, still less in any flash of inspiration or on the impulse of any startling incident. As she went to and fro on her work and her pleasure, the figures gradually and insensibly set themselves in rows, added and subtracted themselves, and presented her with the quotient. It was against her will that all this happened. She would have had none of it; there was nothing to recommend it; it was not even unusual. But it would come--and what did it come to? Nothing alarming or vulgar or sensational. Grantley"s gallantry forbade that, his good manners, his affectionate ways, his real love for her. It was forbidden too by the moments of rapture which she excited and which she shared; they were still untouched--the fairy rides on fairy horses. But is not the virtue of such things to mean more than they are--to be not incidents, but rather culminations--not exceptions, but the very type, the highest expression, of what is always there? Even the raptures she was coming to doubt while she welcomed, to mistrust while she shared. Would she come at once to hate and to strive after them?
In the end it was not the ident.i.ty her soaring fancy had pictured--not the union her heart cried for, less even than the partnership which naked reason seemed to claim. She had not become his very self, as he was of her very self--nor part of him. She was to him--what? She sought a word, at least an idea, and smiled at one or two which her own bitterness offered to her. A toy? Of course not. A diversion? Much more than that. But still it was something accidental, something that he might not have had and would have done very well without; yet a something greatly valued, tended, caressed--yes, and even loved. A great acquisition perhaps expressed it--a very prized possession--a cherished treasure. Sometimes, after putting it as low as she could in chagrin, she put it as high as she could--by way of testing it. Put it how she would, the ultimate result worked out the same. She made much less difference to Grantley Imason than she had looked to make; she was much less of and in his life, much less of the essence, more of an accretion.
She was outside his innermost self--a stranger to his closest fastnesses. Was that the nature of the tie or the nature of the man? She cried out against either conclusion; for either ruined the hopes on which she lived. Among them was one mighty hope. Were not both tie and man still incomplete, even as she, the woman, was in truth yet incomplete, yet short of her great function, undischarged of her high natural office? Was there not that in her now which should make all things complete and perfect? While that hope--nay, that conviction--remained she refused to admit that she was discontent. She waited, trying meanwhile to smother the discontent.
Of course there was another side, and Grantley himself put it to Mrs.
Raymore when, in her sisterly affection for him and her motherly interest in Sibylla, she had ventured on two or three questions which, on the smallest a.n.a.lysis, resolved themselves into hints.
"In anything like a doubtful case," he complained humorously (for he was not taking the questions very seriously), "the man never gets fair play.
He"s not nearly so picturesque. And if he becomes picturesque, if he goes through fits hot and cold, and ups and downs, and all sorts of convulsions, as the woman does and does so effectively, he doesn"t get any more sympathy, because it"s not the ideal for the man--not our national idea, anyhow. You see the dilemma he"s in? If he"s not emotional he"s not interesting; if he"s emotional he"s not manly. I"m speaking of a doubtful case all the time. Of course you may have your impeccable Still-Waters-Run-Deep sort of man--the part poor old Tom ought to have played. But then that is a part--a stage part, very seldom real. No; in a doubtful case the man"s nowhere. Take it how you will, the woman is bound to win."
"Which means that you don"t want to complain or criticise, but if I will put impertinent questions----"
"If you put me on my defence----" he amended, laughing.
"Yes, if I put you on your defence, you"ll hint----"
"Through generalities----"
"Yes, through generalities you"ll hint, in your graceful way, that Sibylla, of whom you"re very fond----"
"Oh, be fair! You know I am."
"Is rather--exacting--fatiguing?"
"That"s too strong. Rather, as I say, emotional. She likes living on the heights. I like going up there now and then. In fact I maintain the national ideal."
"Yes, I think you"d do that very well--quite well enough, Grantley."
"There"s a sting in the tail of your praise?"
"After all, I"m a woman too."
"We really needn"t fuss ourselves, I think. You see, she has the great saving grace--a sense of humour. If I perceive dimly that somehow something hasn"t been quite what it ought to have been, that I haven"t--haven"t played up somehow--you know what I mean?"
"Very well indeed," Mrs. Raymore laughed gently.
"I can put it all right by a good laugh--a bit of mock heroics, perhaps--some good chaff, followed by a good gallop--not at all a bad prescription! After a little of that, she"s laughing at herself for having the emotions, and at me for not having them, and at both of us for the whole affair."
"Well, as long as it ends like that there"s not much wrong. But take care. Not everything will stand the humorous aspect, you know."
"Most things, thank heaven, or where should we be?"
"Tom Courtland, for instance?"
"Oh, not any longer, I"m afraid."
"It won"t do for the big things and the desperate cases; not even for other people"s--much less for your own."
"I suppose not. If you want it always, you must be a looker-on; and you"ll tell me husbands can"t be lookers-on at their own marriages?"
"I tell you! Facts will convince you sooner than I could, Grantley."
He was really very reasonable from his own point of view, both reasonable and patient. Mrs. Raymore conceded that. And he was also quite consistent in his point of view. She remembered a phrase from his letter which had defined what he was seeking--"a completion, not a transformation." He was pursuing that scheme still--a scheme into which the future wife had fitted so easily and perfectly, into which the actual wife fitted with more difficulty. But he was dealing with the difficulty in a very good spirit and a very good temper. If the scheme were possible at all--given Sibylla as she was--he was quite the man to put it through successfully. But she reserved her opinion as to its possibility. The reservation did not imply an approval of Sibylla or any particular inclination to champion her; it marked only a growing understanding of what Sibylla was, a growing doubt as to what she could be persuaded or moulded into becoming. Mrs. Raymore had no prejudices in her favour.
And at any rate he was still her lover, as fully, as ardently as ever.
Deep in those fastnesses of his nature were his love for her, and his pride in her and in having her for his own. The two things grew side by side, their roots intertangled. Every glance of admiration she won, every murmur of approval she created, gave him joy and seemed to give him tribute. He eagerly gathered in the envy of the world as food for his own exultation; he laughed in pleasure when Christine Fanshaw told him to look and see how Walter Blake adored Sibylla.
"Of course he does--he"s a sensible young fellow," said Grantley gaily.
"So am I, Christine, and I adore her too."
"The captive of your bow and spear!" Christine sneered.
"Of my personal attractions, please! Don"t say of my money-bags!"
"She"s like a very laudatory testimonial?"
"I just wonder how John Fanshaw endures you."
He answered her with jests, never thinking to deny what she said. He did delight in his wife"s triumphs. Was there anything unamiable in that? If close union were the thing, was not that close? Her triumphs made his--what could be closer than that? At this time any criticism on him was genuinely unintelligible; he could make nothing of it, and reckoned it as of no account. And Sibylla herself, as he had said, he could always soothe.
"And she"s going on quite all right?" Christine continued.
"Splendidly! We"ve got her quietly fixed down at Milldean, with her favourite old woman to look after her. There she"ll stay. I run up to town two or three times a week--do my business----"
"Call on me?"
"I ventured so far--and get back as soon as I can."
"You must be very pleased?"
"Of course I"m pleased," he laughed, "very pleased indeed, Christine."