Double Harness Part 37

Grantley pa.s.sed his hand across his brow--almost the first movement that he had made. He was about to speak when another short fit of vehemence caught hold of Sibylla.

"Yes," she cried, striking the table with her hand, "and it's better than that life of sham and fraud and failure and heartbreak! Yes, a thousand, thousand times better!"

He let the gust pa.s.s by, and then spoke slowly, as though he weighed his words.

"Those are the consequences to you and your--your friend here," he said.

"Have you thought of the consequences to me?"

"To you? Am I so necessary?" She laughed bitterly.

"And to the boy?"

"Not so bad as growing up in such a home as ours!" she flashed out fiercely again.

"Oh, that's the way you argued that?" he said with a smile. "I was rather wondering. However there are other consequences still." He came yet a pace nearer to her, so that he was close to the table, and rested one hand on it. "There will be other consequences still," he said. "I don't accept the position you propose for me. I don't accept these consequences which you have been so good as to face and decide upon. I refuse them totally--both for myself and for my son I refuse them utterly. It's fair you should understand that. I refuse them root and branch."

Blake leant forward, ready to spring up. The idea of violence came into his head, the idea that Grantley might be armed. Grantley noticed his movement, and at last addressed a word to him.

"Don't be afraid. I don't mean that," he said with a short laugh.

Sibylla spoke to him, sadly now.

"You can't refuse. It's put out of your power. This thing must be. It has become inevitable. There's no use in talking of refusing the consequences. They won't be as bad as you think."

"It's not inevitable; it's not out of my power. It's entirely in my power to accept your consequences or not to accept them, to face them or not to face them; and I have decided. I won't be, and I won't be known as, what you're making me; and your son shan't have to confess you his mother before men."

Young Blake looked at him with a puzzled impatience; Sibylla with a slow pondering glance. She twisted a ring on her finger as she asked:

"What do you mean by that?"

"In this world nothing need happen to us that we don't choose to bear, and nothing to those who are in our power that we don't choose to accept for them."

"What are you talking about?" asked Blake fretfully. "It sounds all nonsense to me."

He leant back with a scornful toss of his head. This sort of thing had lasted long enough, in his opinion.

"Tell me what you mean," said Sibylla, leaning forward across the table.

Grantley announced the resolve that possessed him, born of those bitter meditations, of those intolerable pictures of the future which had formed themselves in his mind as he battled through the storm to Fairhaven. He uttered it not as a threat, but as a warning; it was, as he had said, fair that she should understand.

"If you persist, I shall kill Frank and myself to-night."

Blake broke into a loud scornful laugh, sticking his hands in his pockets. Grantley turned towards him, smiling slightly.

"Oh, this isn't a melodrama, you know," Blake said, "and we're not to be bluffed like that. Don't be so d.a.m.ned absurd, Imason! On my soul, I've had enough of this business without having to listen to stuff like that!"

"Do you think it's bluff and melodrama?" Grantley asked Sibylla. "Do you think I've no real intention of doing it?"

She looked up at him intently.

"You love yourself more than the boy, and your pride more than life or happiness," she said slowly. He frowned, but heard her without interruption. "So I think you might do it," she ended.

"Sibylla!" cried Blake, leaning forward again.

A gesture from her arrested his speech. He rose slowly to his feet and stood listening.

"I may be made a fool of. I don't make a fool of myself. If I pledge myself to you to do it, you know I shall do it, Sibylla?"

"Yes, then you would do it," she agreed.

"Oh, but it's nonsense, it's rank madness, it's--it's inconceivable!"

Blake broke out.

"I do now so pledge myself," said Grantley.

Sibylla nodded; she understood. She leant back in her chair now, regarding her husband thoughtfully.

Grantley's pale face was set in a fixed smile; he met her gaze steadily.

"It's madness--you'll be stopped!" Blake burst out. "I can't believe you mean it. Anyhow, you'll be stopped."

"By you? Will you send for a policeman? or will you come to my house and stop me? Nothing can stop me unless you kill me. Is that your choice?"

He spoke to Blake, but he looked still at Sibylla. Blake came near and scrutinised the pale face with eyes whose expression grew from wonder and incredulity into a horrified apprehension. The silence now seemed long.

"Yes," said Sibylla at last, "it's like you. That's what you'd do. I never thought of it; but I'm not surprised. It's you. It's just that in you which has made my life an impossible thing. You sacrificed me to it.

You would sacrifice yourself and your son. Yes, it's you."

She put her hands up before her face for a moment, pressing her fingers on her eyelids. Then her eyes sought his face again.

"But, Sibylla----" cried Blake.

"Yes, he'd do it, Walter," she interrupted, not turning round.

Blake took two restless paces to and fro, and sank into his chair again.

"You understand now. It lies with you," said Grantley to his wife. "I've told you. I was bound to tell you. Now it lies with you."

Again pa.s.sion seized her.

"No, no, that's false! It doesn't lie with me! It lies at your door, both the crime--the hideous crime--and, I pray G.o.d, the punishment!"

"I'm not talking about the crime or the punishment," he said coldly. "I take those on myself as much as you like. What depends on you is whether the thing happens. That's all I meant to say."

Young Blake was staring at him now as if fascinated by his firm and hideous resolve. Slowly it had been driven into Blake's brain that the man meant what he said, that he would do the thing. The man looked like it, and Sibylla believed he would. He would kill himself--yes, and the pretty child with whom Sibylla had been used to play. He could see the picture of that now--of Sibylla's beautiful motherhood. His heart turned sick within him as he began to believe Grantley's sombre pledge.

"It's a lie," said Sibylla in grim defiance. "Nothing depends on me.

It's the evil of your own heart. I've nothing to do with it."