Double Harness

Grantley made no answer. After a pause the old woman went on--

"I've got some news."

"News have you? What news?"

He was suddenly on the alert.

She glanced at the door to make sure the servant was not within hearing.

"Very great news for me, Mr. Imason. My dear husband's to come home three months sooner than I thought. I got a letter to say so just after Sibylla started."

"Oh, really! Capital, Mrs. Mumple!"

"It's only a matter of six months now. You can't think what I feel about it--now it's as near as that. I haven't seen him for hard on ten years.

What will it be like? I'm full of joy, Mr. Imason; but somehow I'm afraid too--terribly afraid. The thought of it seems to upset me, and yet I can't think of anything else."

Grantley rubbed his hand across his brow. Old Mrs. Mumple's talk reached him dimly. He was thinking hard. This sleeping at Mrs. Valentine's sounded an unlikely story.

Mrs. Mumple, in her turn, forgot her chop. She leant back in her chair, clasping her fat hands in front of her.

"We shall have to pick up the old life," she went on, "after seventeen years! I was thirty-five when he left me, and nearly as slight as Sibylla herself. I'm past fifty now, Mr. Imason, and it's ten years since I saw him; and he's above sixty, and--and they grow old soon in there. It'll be very different, very different. And--and I'm half afraid of it, Mr. Imason. It's terribly hard to pick up a life that's once been broken."

The servant brought in Grantley's dinner, and Mrs. Mumple pretended to go on with her chop.

"Nurse said I was to tell you Master Frank is sleeping nicely," the servant said to Mrs. Mumple, as he placed a chair for Grantley.

That was a strange story about Mrs. Valentine.

"We must have patience, and love on," said Mrs. Mumple. "He's had a grievous trial, and so have I. But I don't lose hope. All's ready for him--his socks and his s.h.i.+rts and all. I'm ahead of the time. I've nothing to do but wait. These last months'll seem very long, Mr.

Imason."

Grantley came to the table.

"You're a good woman, Mrs. Mumple," he said.

She shook her head mournfully. He looked at the food, pushed it away, and drank another gla.s.s of sherry.

"Don't think I've no sympathy with you, but--but I'm worried."

"Nothing gone wrong in town, I hope, Mr. Imason?"

"No."

He stood there frowning. He did not believe the story about Mrs.

Valentine. He walked quickly to the bell and rang it loudly.

"Tell them to saddle Rollo, and bring him round directly."

"You're never going out on such a night?" she cried.

"I must"; and he added to the surprised servant, "Do as I tell you directly."

"Where are you going?" she asked wonderingly.

"I'm going to Mrs. Valentine's."

"But you've no cause to be anxious about Sibylla, Mr. Imason; and she'll be back to-morrow."

Grantley was convinced that she, at least, was innocent of any plot.

Simple sincerity spoke on her face, and all her thoughts were for herself and her dearly cherished fearful hopes.

"I must see Sibylla on a matter of urgent business to-night," he said.

"It'll be hardly safe up on the downs," she expostulated.

"It'll be safe enough for me," he answered grimly. "Don't sit up for me; and look after the baby." He smiled at her kindly, then came and patted her hand for a moment. "Yes, it would be hard to pick up a life that's once broken, I expect," he said.

She looked up at him with a sudden apprehension in her eyes. His manner was strangely quiet; he seemed to her gentler.

"There, I mean nothing but what I say," he told her soothingly. "I must go and get ready for my ride."

"But, Mr. Imason, you'll take something to eat first?"

"I can't eat." He laughed a little. "I should like to drink, but I won't. Good night, Mrs. Mumple."

Ten minutes later he was walking his horse down the hill to Milldean, on his way to Fairhaven. But he had little thought of Mrs. Valentine; he

He thought not much of Sibylla. He had taught himself to consider his wife incalculable--a prey to disordered whims, swept on by erratic impulses. This whim was more extraordinary, more disorderly, more erratic than any of the others; but it was of the same nature with them, the same kind of thing that she had done when she determined to hold herself aloof from him. This blow had fallen entirely and utterly unforeseen, but he acknowledged grimly that it had not been unforeseeable. He thought even less of young Blake, and thought of him without much conscious anger. The case there was a very plain one. He had known young Blake in the days when aspirations did not exist, and when the desire to be good was no part of his life. He took him as he had known him then, and the case was very simple. Whatever an attractive woman will give, men like Blake will take, recking of nothing, forecasting nothing, careless of themselves, merciless to her whom they are by way of loving. In regard to Blake the thing had nothing strange in it.

Here too it was unexpected, but again by no means unforeseeable.

No, nothing had been unforeseeable; and in what light did that fact leave him? What flavour should that give to his meditations? For though he rode as quickly as he could against the gale and the rain which now blinded and scorched his eyes, his mind moved more quickly still. Why, it set him down as a fool intolerable--as the very thing he had always laughed at and despised, as a dullard, a simpleton, a dupe. He could hear the mocking laughter and unashamed chuckling, he could see the winking eyes. He knew well enough what men had thought of him. They had attributed to him successes with women; they had joked when he married, saying many husbands would feel safer; they had liked him and admired him, but they had been of opinion that he wanted taking down a peg. How they would laugh to think that he of all men had made such a mess of it, that he had let young Blake take away his wife--young Blake, whom he had often chaffed for their amus.e.m.e.nt or instructed for their entertainment!

Imason had got a pretty wife, but he couldn't keep her, poor old boy!

That would be the comment--an ounce of pity to a hundredweight of contempt, and--yes, a pound of satisfaction. And it would be all true.

Somehow--even allowing for Sibylla's vagaries and unaccountable whims, he could not tell how--somehow he had been a gross dupe, a blockhead blindly self-satisfied, a dullard easily deluded, a fool readily abandoned and left, so intolerable that not all his money, nor his houses, nor his carriages could make it worth while even to go on with the easy task of deceiving him. He was not worth deceiving any more; it was simpler to be rid of him. In the eyes of the world that fact would be very significant of what he was. And that same thing he was in his own eyes now. The stroke of this sharp sword had cloven in two the armour of his pride; it fell off him and left him naked.

Could he endure this fate for all his life? It would last all his life; people have long memories, and the tradition does not die. It would not die even with his life. No, by heaven, it would not! A new thought seized him. There was the boy to whom he had given life. What had he given to the boy now? What a father would the boy have to own! And what of the boy's mother? The story would last the boy's life too. It would always be between him and the boy. And the boy would never dare speak of his mother. The boy would be kept in ignorance till ignorance yielded, perforce, to shame. His son's life would be bitterness to him, if it meant that--and bitterness surely to the boy too. As he brooded on this his face set into stiffness. He declared that it was not to be endured.

He came to where Milldean road joined the main road by the red villas, and turned to the right towards Fairhaven. Here he met the full force of the gale. The wind was like a moving rus.h.i.+ng wall; the rain seemed to hit him viciously with whips; there was a great confused roar from the sea below the cliffs. He could hardly make headway or induce his horse to breast the angry tempest. But his face was firm, his hand steady, and his air resolute as he rode down to Fairhaven, sore in the eyes, dripping wet, cold to the very bone. His purpose was formed. Fool he might be, but he was no coward. He had been deluded, he was not beaten.

His old persistence came to his rescue. All through, though he might have lost everything else, he had never lost courage. And now, when his pride fell from him, and his spirit tasted a bitterness as though of death, his courage rose high in him--a desperate courage which feared nothing save ridicule and shame. These he would not have, neither for himself nor for his boy. His purpose was taken, and he rode on. His pride was broken, but no man was to behold its fall. In this hour he asked one thing from himself--courage unfearing, unflinching. It was his, and he rode forward to the proof of it. And there came in him a better pride. In place of self-complacency there was fort.i.tude; yet it was the fort.i.tude of defiance, not of self-knowledge.

He rode through the gale into Fairhaven, thinking nothing of Mrs.

Valentine's house, waiting on fate to show him the way. Just where the town begins, the road comes down to the sea, and runs along by the harbour where a sea-wall skirts deep water. A man enveloped in oilskins stood here, glistening through the darkness in the light of a gas-lamp.

He was looking out to sea, out on the tumble of angry waves, stamping his feet and blowing on his wet fingers now and then. It was no night for an idle man to be abroad; he who was out to-night had business.

"Rough weather!" called Grantley, bringing his horse to a stand.

The man answered, not in the accents of the neighbourhood, but with a c.o.c.kney tw.a.n.g and a turn of speech learnt from board schools and newspapers. He was probably a seaman then, and from London.