Double Harness Part 26

From the first moment John Fanshaw had not doubted the truth of what she said. Things forced out by pa.s.sion in that way were true. Her stormy remorse added a proof--a remorse which did not even attempt retractation or evasion. And his memory got to work. He knew now why Christine had been so reluctant to go to Caylesham. There were things back in the past too, which now became intelligible--how that acquaintance had grown and grown, how constant the companions.h.i.+p had been, one or two little things which had seemed odd, and then how there had been a sudden end, and they had come to see very little of Caylesham, how neither of them had seen him for a long while, till John had sent Christine to borrow fifteen thousand pounds.

"For G.o.d's sake, go!" she cried.

He rose to his feet slowly, and her fascinated eyes watched his face.

His eyes were dull, and his face seemed to have gone grey. He asked her one question:

"How long ago?"

"Oh, all over years ago," she answered, with an impatient groan, drumming her fingers on the arms of her chair.

He nodded his head in a thoughtful way.

"Good-bye, Lady Harriet," he said.

"Good-bye, John." Suddenly she sprang up. "Stop! What are you going to say to Christine?"

He looked bewildered still.

"I don't know. Oh, really I don't know! My G.o.d, I never had any idea of this, and I don't know! I can't--can't realise it all, you know--and Caylesham too!"

"Are you going to tell her I told you?"

"I don't know what I'm going to do, Lady Harriet--I don't know."

"Ah!"

With a cry of exasperation she turned away and sat down in her chair again.

"Good-bye," he muttered, and slouched awkwardly out of the room.

She sat on where she was, very still, frowning, her hand holding her chin, only her restless eyes roving about the room. She was like some handsome, fierce, caged beast. There she sat for close on an hour, thinking of what she was and of what she had done--of how he had shown her the picture of herself, and of how, from malice and in her wrath, she had betrayed Christine. Once only in all this time her lips moved; they moved to mutter:

"What a cursed woman I am!"

CHAPTER XII

IMAGES AND THEIR WORK

By this time young Walter Blake had not only clearly determined what he wanted and meant to do, he had also convinced himself of his wisdom and courage in wanting and meaning to do it. He was not blind, he declared, to the disagreeable and distressing incidents. There were painful features. There would be a scandal, and there would be an awkward and uncomfortable period--a provisional period before life settled down on its new and true lines. That was inevitable, since this case--the case of himself and Sibylla--was exceptional, whereas laws and customs were made for the ordinary cases. He did not condemn the laws and customs wholesale, but he was capable of seeing when a case was exceptional, and he had the wisdom and the courage to act on what he perceived. He even admitted that very few cases were really exceptional, and took the more credit for perceiving that this one really was. He did not take Grantley into account at all, neither what he was nor what he might do. Grantley seemed to him negligible. He confined his consideration to Sibylla and himself--and the exceptional nature of the case was obvious. He was a prey to his ready emotions and to his facile exaltation. Desires masqueraded as reasons, and untempered impulses wore the decent cloak of a high resolve. If he could have put the case like that to himself, it might not have seemed so plainly exceptional.

He was never more convinced of his wisdom and courage than when he listened to Caylesham's conversation. They were racecourse and club acquaintances, and had lunched together at Caylesham's flat on the Sunday on which John Fanshaw went to Lady Harriet's house in order to show her the error of her ways. Blake glowed with virtue as he listened to his friend's earthly views and measured his friend's degraded standards against his own.

"The one duty," said Caylesham, somewhat circ.u.mscribing the domain of morality, as his habit was, "is to avoid a row. Don't get the woman into a sc.r.a.pe." From gossiping about Tom Courtland they had drifted into discussing the converse case. "That really sums it all up, you know." It was a chilly day, and he warmed himself luxuriously before the fire. "I don't set myself up as a pattern to the youth, but I've never done that, anyhow."

Virtuous Blake would have liked to rehea.r.s.e to him all the evil things he had done--the meanness, the hypocrisy, the degradation he had caused and shared; but it is not possible to speak quite so plainly to one's friends.

"Yes, that's the gospel," he said sarcastically. "Avoid a row. Nothing else matters, does it?"

"Nothing else matters in the end, I mean," smiled Caylesham, good-naturedly conscious of the sarcasm and rather amused at it. "As long as there's no row, things settle down again, you see. But if there's a row, see where you're left! Look what you've got on your hands, by Jove! And the women don't want a row either, really, you know.

They may talk as if they did--in fact they're rather fond of talking as if they did, and they may think they do sometimes. But when it comes to the point, they don't. And what's more, they don't easily forgive a man who gets them into a row. It means too much to them, too much by a deal, Blake."

"And what does it mean when there's no row?"

"Oh, well, there, of course, in a certain sense you have me," Caylesham admitted with a candid smile. "If you like to take the moral line, you do have me, of course. I was speaking of the world as we know it; and I don't suppose it's ever been particularly different. Not in my time anyhow, I can answer for that."

"You're wrong, Caylesham, wrong all through. If the thing has come to such a point, the only honest thing is to see it through, to face it, to undo the mistake, to put things where they ought to have been from the beginning."

"Capital! And how are you going to do it?"

"There's only one way of doing it."

Caylesham's smile broadened; he pulled his long moustache delicately as he said:

"Bolt?"

Blake nodded sharply.

"Oh, my dear boy!"

He laughed in a gentle comfortable way, and drew his coat right up into the small of his back.

"Oh, my dear boy!" he murmured again.

Nothing could have made Walter Blake feel more virtuous and more courageous.

"The only honest and honourable thing," he insisted--"the only self-respecting thing for both."

"You convert the world to that, and I'll think about it."

"What do I care about the world? It's enough for me to know what I think and feel about it. And I've no shadow of doubt."

His face flushed a little and he spoke rather heatedly.

"I wouldn't interfere with your convictions for the world, and, as I'm a bachelor, I don't mind them." He was looking at Blake rather keenly now, wondering what made the young man take the subject so much to heart.

"But if I were you I'd keep them in the theoretical stage, I think."

He laughed again, and turned to light a cigar. Blake was smoking too, one cigarette after another, quickly and nervously. Caylesham looked down on him with a good-humoured smile. He liked young Blake in a half-contemptuous fas.h.i.+on, and would have been sorry to see him make a fool of himself out and out.

"I'm not going to ask you any questions," he said, "though I may have an idea about you in my head. But I'm pretty nearly twenty years older than you, I fancy, and I've knocked about a good bit, and I'll tell you one or two plain truths. When you talk like that, you a.s.sume that these things last. Well, in nine cases out of ten, they don't. I don't say that's nice, or amiable, or elevated, or anything else. I didn't make human nature, and I don't particularly admire it. But there it is--in nine cases out of ten, you know. And if you think you know a case that's the tenth----"

This was exactly what Blake was sure he did know.

"Yes, what then?" he asked defiantly.