Double Harness Part 27

"Well," answered Caylesham slowly, "you be jolly sure first before you act on that impression. You be jolly well sure first--that's all." He paused and laughed. "That's not moral advice, or I wouldn't set up to give it. But it's a prudential consideration."

"And if you are sure?"

"Sure for both, I mean, you know."

"Yes, sure for both."

"Well, then you're in such a bad way that you'd better pack up and go to the Himalayas or somewhere like that without an hour's delay, because nothing else'll save you, you know."

Blake laughed rather contemptuously.

"After all, there have been cases----"

"Perhaps--but I don't like such long odds."

"Well, we've had your gospel. Now let's hear how it's worked in your case. Are you satisfied with that, Caylesham?"

He spoke with a sneer that did not escape Caylesham's notice. It drew another smile from him.

"That's a home question--I didn't question you as straight as that.

Well, I'll tell you. I won't pretend to feel what I don't feel; I'll tell you as truly as I can." He paused a moment. "I've had lots of fun,"

he went on. "I've always had plenty of money; I've never had any work to do; and I took my fun--lots of it. I didn't expect to get it for nothing, and I haven't got it for nothing. Sometimes I got it cheap, and sometimes, one way and another, it mounted to a very stiff figure. But I didn't s.h.i.+rk settling day; and if there are any more settling days, I won't s.h.i.+rk them if I can help it. I don't think I've got anything to complain about." He put his cigar back into his mouth. "No, I don't think I have," he ended, twisting the cigar between his teeth.

What a contempt for him young Blake had! Was ever man so ignorant of his true self? Was ever man so sunk in degradation and so utterly unconscious of it? Caylesham could look back on a life spent as his had been--could look back from the middle-age to which he had now come, and find nothing much amiss with it! Blake surveyed his grovelling form from high pedestals of courage and of wisdom--absolutely of virtue pure and undefiled.

"Nothing very ideal about that!"

"Good Lord, no! You wanted the truth, didn't you?"

"Well, I suppose I thought like that once--I was contented with that once."

"You certainly used to give the impression of bearing up under it,"

smiled Caylesham. "But things are changed now, are they?"

"Yes, thank G.o.d! Imagine going on like that all your life!"

Caylesham threw himself into a chair with a hearty laugh.

"Now we've gone just as far as we can with discretion," he declared.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Blake rather angrily.

"Well, I'm not an idiot, am I, as well as a moral deformity?"

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"Yes, but I know what you've been talking about, Blake. I know it all except one thing--and that I don't propose to ask."

Blake rose with a sulky air and tossed away the end of his cigarette.

"And what's that?"

"The lady's name, my boy," said Caylesham placidly.

This talk was fuel to Blake's flame. It showed him the alternative--the only alternative. (He forgot that suggestion about the Himalayas, which did not, perhaps, deserve to be forgotten.) And the alternative was hideous to him now--hideous in its loss of all n.o.bility, of all the ideal, in its cynically open-eyed acceptance of what was low and base.

He would have come to that but for Sibylla. But for him, even Sibylla--Sibylla mated to Grantley--might have come to it also. It was from such a fate as this that they must rescue one another. One wise decision, one courageous stroke, and the thing was done. Very emotional, very exalted, he contrasted with the life Caylesham had led the life he and Sibylla were to lead. Could any man hesitate? With a new impetus and with louder self-applause he turned to his task of persuading Sibylla to the decisive step.

Part of the work was accomplished. Sibylla had cast Grantley out of her heart; she disclaimed and denied both her love and her obligation to him. The harder part remained: that had been half done in her vigil by the baby's cot. But it was ever in danger of being undone again. A cry from the boy's lips, the trustful clinging of his arms from day to day, fought against Blake. Only in those gusts of unnatural feeling, those spasms of repugnance born of her misery, was she in heart away from the child. On these Blake could not rely, nor did he seek to, since to speak of them brought her to instant remorse; but, left to be brooded over in silence, they might help him yet. He trusted his old weapons more--his need of her love and her need to give it. Caylesham's life gave him a new instance and added strength to his argument. He told her of the man, though not the man's name, sketching the life and the state of mind it brought a man to.

"That was my life till you came," he said. "That was what was waiting for me. Am I to go back to that?"

He could attack her on another side too.

"And will you lead the sort of life that man has made women live? Is that fit for you? You can see what it would do to you. You would get like what he's like. You would come down to his level. First you'd share his lies and his intrigues, perforce, while you hated them. Gradually you'd get to hate them less and less: they'd become normal, habitual, easy; they'd become natural. At last you'd see little harm in them. The only harm or hurt at last would be discovery, and you'd get cunning in avoiding that. Think of you and me living that life--aye, till each of us loathed the other as well as loathing ourselves. Is that what you mean?"

"Not that, anyhow not that," she said in a low voice, her eyes wide open and fixed questioningly on him.

"If not that and not the other, what then? Am I to go away?" But he put Caylesham's alternative in no sincerity. He put it to her only that she might thrust it away. If she did not, he would spurn it himself. "And where should I go? Back to where I came from--back to that life?"

She could not tell him to go away, nor to go back to that life. She sat silent, picturing what his life and what her own life would be through all the years, the lifelong years, when even the boy's love would be bitterness, and she could have a friend in n.o.body because of the great sad secret which would govern all her life.

"I can't tell you. I can't decide to-day."

Again and again she had told him that, fighting against the final and the irrevocable.

But Blake was urgent now, wrought up to an effort, very full of his theories and his aspirations, full too of a rude natural impatience which he called by many alien names, deceiving his very soul that he might have his heart's desire, and have it without let or hindrance. He launched his last argument, a last cruel argument, whose cruelty seemed justice to a mind absorbed in its own selfishness. But she had eyes for no form of selfishness save Grantley's. To ask all did not seem selfishness to her; it was asking nothing or too little that she banned.

"You've gone too far," he told her. "You can't turn back now. Look what you've done to me since you came into my life. Think what you've taught me to hope and believe--how you've let me count on you. You've no right to think of the difficulties or the distress now. You ought to have thought of all that long ago."

It was true, terribly true, that she ought to have thought of all that before. Was it true that she had lost the right to arrest her steps and the power to turn back?

"You're committed to it. You're bound by more than honour, by more than love. You'll be untrue to everybody in turn if you falter now."

It was a clever plea to urge on a distracted mind. Where decision is too difficult, there lies desperate comfort in being convinced that it is already taken, that facts have shaped it, and previous actions irrevocably committed the hara.s.sed heart.

"You've made my love for you my whole life. You knew you were doing it.

You did it with full knowledge of what it meant. I say you can't draw back now."

He had worked himself up to a pitch of high excitement. There was nothing wanting in his manner to enforce his words. His case was very exceptional indeed to him; and so it seemed to her--believing in his love because of the love she had herself to give, yearning to satisfy the hunger she had caused, to make happy the life which depended utterly on her for joy.

The long fight, first against Grantley, latterly against herself, had worn and almost broken her. She had no power left for a great struggle against her lover now. Her weariness served his argument well. It cried out to her to throw herself into the arms which were so eagerly ready for her. One way or the other anyhow the battle must be ended, or surely it would make an end of her.

But where was an end if she stayed with Grantley? That life was all struggle, and must be so long as it endured. Who could find rest on a flinty wall?

She was between that monstrous image she had made of her husband, and the shape which Blake presented to her as himself--far more alluring, not a whit less false. But for the falseness of either she had no eyes.

"I want your promise to-day," he said. "Your promise I know you will keep."

He had become quiet now. There was an air of grave purpose about him.