The house—a large, plain white building with no architectural pretensions—stood on a high swell of the downs and looked across the valley in which Milldean village lay, and thence over rolling stretches of close turf, till the prospect ended in the gleam of waves and the silver-grey mist that lay over the sea. It was a fine, open, free view. The air was fresh, with a touch of salt in it, and made the heat of the sun more than endurable—even welcome and nourishing. Tom Courtland, raising himself from the grass and sitting up straight, gave utterance to what his surroundings declared to be a very natural exclamation:
"What a bore to leave this and go back to town!"
"Stay a bit longer, old chap," urged his host, Grantley Imason, who lay full length on his back on the turf, with a straw hat over his eyes and nose, and a pipe, long gone out, between his teeth.
"Back to my wife!" Courtland went on, without noticing the invitation.
With a faint sigh Grantley Imason sat up, put his hat on his head, and knocked out his pipe. He glanced at his friend with a look of satirical amusement.
"You're encouraging company for a man who's just got engaged," he remarked.
"It's the devil of a business—sort of thing some of those fellows would write a book about. But it's not worth a book. A page of strong and indiscriminate swearing—that's what it's worth, Grantley."
Grantley sighed again as he searched for his tobacco-pouch. The sigh seemed to hover doubtfully between a faint sympathy and a resigned boredom.
"And no end to it—none in sight! I don't know whether it's legal cruelty to throw library books and so on at your husband's head——"
"Depends on whether you ever hit him, I should think; and they'd probably conclude a woman never would."
"But what an ass I should look if I went into court with that sort of story!"
"Yes, you would look an ass," Grantley agreed. "Doesn't she give you—well, any other chance, you know?"
"Not she! My dear fellow, she's most aggressively the other way."
"Then why don't you give her a chance?"
"What, you mean——?"
"Am I so very cryptic?" murmured Grantley as he lit his pipe.
"I'm a Member of Parliament."
"Yes, I forgot. That's a bit awkward."
"Besides, there are the children. I don't want my children to think their father a scoundrel." He paused, and added grimly: "And I don't want them to be left to their mother's bringing-up either."
"Then we seem to have exhausted the resources of the law."
"The children complicate it so. Wait till you have some of your own, Grantley."
"Look here—steady!" Grantley expostulated. "Don't be in such a hurry to give me domestic encumbrances. The bloom's still on my romance, old chap. Talking of children to a man who's only been engaged a week!" His manner resumed its air of languid sympathy as he went on: "You needn't see much of her, Tom, need you?"
"Oh, needn't I?" grumbled Courtland. He was a rather short, sturdily built man, with a high colour and stiff black hair which stood up on his head. His face was not wanting in character, but a look of plaintive worry beset it. "You try living in the same house with a woman—with a woman like that, I mean!"
"Thanks for the explanation," laughed Grantley.
"I must go and wire when I shall be back, or Harriet'll blow the roof off over that. You come too; a stroll'll do you good."
Grantley Imason agreed; and the two, leaving the garden by a little side gate, took their way along the steep road which led down to the village, and rose again on the other side of it, to join the main highway across the downs a mile and a half away. The lane was narrow, steep, and full of turns; the notice "Dangerous to Cyclists" gave warning of its character. At the foot of it stood the Old Mill House, backing on to a little stream. Farther on lay the church and the parsonage; opposite to them was the post-office, which was also a general shop and also had rooms to let to visitors. The village inn, next to the post-office, and a dozen or so of labourers' cottages exhausted the shelter of the little valley, though the parish embraced several homesteads scattered about in dips of the downs, and a row of small new red villas at the junction with the main road. Happily these last, owing to the lie of the ground, were out of sight from Grantley Imason's windows, no less than from the village itself.
"And that's the home of the fairy princess?" asked Courtland as they passed Old Mill House, a rambling, rather broken-down old place, covered with creepers.
"Yes; she and her brother moved there when the old rector died. You may have heard of him—the Chiddingfold who was an authority on Milton. No? Well, he was, anyhow. Rather learned all round, I fancy—Fellow of John's. But he took this living and settled down for life; and when he died the children were turned out of the rectory and took Old Mill House. They've got an old woman—well, she's not very old—with the uneuphonious name of Mumple living with them. She's been a sort of nurse-housekeeper-companion: a mixed kind of position—breakfast and midday dinner with the family, but didn't join his reverence's evening meal. You know the sort of thing. She's monstrously fat; but Sibylla loves her. And the new rector moved in a fortnight ago, and everybody hates him. And the temporary curate, who was here because the new rector was at Bournemouth for his health, and who lodged over the post-office, has just gone, and everybody's dashed glad to see the last of him. And that's all the news of the town. And, behold, Tom, I'm the squire of it, and every man, woman, or child in it is, by unbroken tradition and custom, entitled to have as much port wine out of my cellar as his, her, or its state of health may happen to require."
He threw off this chatter in a gay self-contented fashion, and Tom Courtland looked at him with affectionate envy. The world had been very good to him, and he, in return, was always amiable to it. He had been born heir and only child of his father; had inherited the largest share in a solid old-fashioned banking-house; was now a director of the great joint-stock undertaking in which the family business had consented to merge itself on handsome terms; had just as much work to do as he liked, and possessed, and always had enjoyed, more money than he needed. He was thirty-three now, and had been a social favourite even before he left school. If it was difficult to say what positive gain his existence had been to society, there was no doubt that his extinction would at any time have been considered a distinct loss.
"A country squire with a rosy-cheeked country girl for wife! That's a funny ending for you, Grantley."
"She's not rosy-cheeked—and it's not an ending—and there's the post-office. Go in, and be as civil as you can to Lady Harriet."
A smile of pity, unmistakably mingled with contempt, followed Courtland into the shop. The tantrums of other men's wives are generally received with much the same mixture of scepticism and disdain as the witticisms of other parents' children. Both are seen large, very large indeed, by sufferers and admirers respectively.
The obligation of being as civil as he could to his wife caused Courtland to take three or four minutes in framing his telegram, and when he came out he found Grantley seated on the bench that stood by the inn and conversing with a young man who wore a very old coat and rough tweed knickerbockers. Grantley introduced him as Mr. Jeremy Chiddingfold, and Courtland knew that he was Sibylla's brother. Sibylla herself he had not yet seen. Jeremy had a shock of sandy hair, a wide brow, and a wide mouth; his eyes were rather protuberant, and his nose turned up, giving prominence to the nostrils.
"No family likeness, I hope?" Courtland found himself thinking; for though Jeremy was a vigorous, if not a handsome, masculine type, the lines were far from being those of feminine beauty.
"And he's enormously surprised and evidently rather shocked to hear I'm going to marry his sister—oh, we can talk away, Jeremy; Tom Courtland doesn't matter. He knows all the bad there is about me, and wants to know all the good there is about Sibylla."
One additional auditor by no means embarrassed Jeremy; perhaps not a hundred would have.
"Though, of course, somebody must have married her, you know," Grantley went on, smiling and stretching himself luxuriously like a sleek indolent cat.
"I hate marriage altogether!" declared Jeremy.
Courtland turned to him with a quick jerk of his head.
"The deuce you do!" he said, laughing. "It's early in life to have come to that conclusion, Mr. Chiddingfold."
"Yes, yes, Jeremy, quite so; but——" Grantley began.
"It's an invention of priests," Jeremy insisted heatedly.
Courtland, scarred with fifteen years' experience of the institution thus roundly attacked, was immensely diverted, though his own feelings gave a rather bitter twist to his mirth. Grantley argued, or rather pleaded, with a deceptive gravity:
"But if you fall in love with a girl?"
"Heaven forbid!"
"Well, but the world must be peopled, Jeremy."
"Marriage isn't necessary to that, is it?"
"Oho!" whistled Courtland.
"We may concede the point—in theory," said Grantley; "in practice it's more difficult."
"Because people won't think clearly and bravely!" cried Jeremy, with a thump on the bench. "Because they're hidebound, and, as I say, the priests heaven-and-hell them till they don't know where they are."
"Heaven-and-hell them! Good phrase, Jeremy! You speak feelingly. Your father, perhaps——? Oh, excuse me, I'm one of the family now."
"My father? Not a bit. Old Mumples now, if you like. However that's got nothing to do with it. I'm going on the lines of pure reason. And what is pure reason?"
The elder men looked at one another, smiled, and shook their heads.
"We don't know; it's no use pretending we do. You tell us, Jeremy," said Grantley.
"It's just nature—nature—nature! Get back to that, and you're on solid ground. Why, apart from anything else, how can you expect marriage, as we have it, to succeed when women are what they are? And haven't they always been the same? Of course they have. Read history, read fiction (though it isn't worth reading), read science; and look at the world round about you."
He waved his arm extensively, taking in much more than the valley in which most of his short life had been spent.
"If I'd thought as you do at your age," said Courtland, "I should have kept out of a lot of trouble."
"And I should have kept out of a lot of scrapes," added Grantley.
"Of course you would!" snapped Jeremy.
That point needed no elaboration.
"But surely there are exceptions among women, Jeremy?" Grantley pursued appealingly. "Consider my position!"
"What is man?" demanded Jeremy. "Well, let me recommend you to read Haeckel!"
"Never mind man. Tell us more about woman," urged Grantley.
"Oh, lord, I suppose you're thinking of Sibylla?"
"I own it," murmured Grantley. "You know her so well, you see."
Descending from the heights of scientific generalisation and from the search after that definition of man for which he had been in the end obliged to refer his listeners to another authority, Jeremy lost at the same time his gravity and vehemence. He surprised Courtland by showing himself owner of a humorous and attractive smile.
"You'd rather define man, perhaps, than Sibylla?" suggested Grantley.
"Sibylla's all right, if you know how to manage her."
"Just what old Lady Trederwyn used to say to me about Harriet," Courtland whispered to Grantley.
"But it needs a bit of knowing. She's got the deuce of a temper—old Mumples knows that. Well, Mumples has got a temper too. They used to have awful rows—do still now and then. Sibylla used to fly out at Mumples, then Mumples sat on Sibylla, and then, when it was all over, they'd generally have a new and independent row about which had been right and which wrong in the old row."
"Not content with a quiet consciousness of rectitude, as a man would be?"
"Consciousness of rectitude? Lord, it wasn't that! That would have been all right. It was just the other way round. They both knew they had tempers, and Mumples is infernally religious and Sibylla's generous to the point of idiocy in my opinion. So after a row, when Sibylla had cheeked Mumples and told her to go to the devil (so to speak), and Mumples had sent her to bed, or thumped her, or something, you know——"
"Let us not go too deep into family tragedies, Jeremy."
"Why, when it had all settled down, and the governor and I could hear ourselves talking quietly again——"
"About marriage and that sort of question?"
"They began to have conscience. Each would have it borne in on her that she was wrong. Sibylla generally started it. She'd go weeping to Mumples, taking all her own things and any of mine that were lying about handy, and laying them at Mumples' feet, and saying she was the wickedest girl alive, and why hadn't Mumples pitched into her a lot more, and that she really loved Mumples better than anything on earth. Then Mumples would weigh in, and call Sibylla the sweetest and meekest lamb on earth, and say that she loved Sibylla more than anything on earth, and that she—Mumples—was the worst-tempered and cruellest and unjustest woman alive, not fit to be near such an angel as Sibylla. Then Sibylla used to say that was rot, and Mumples said it wasn't. And Sibylla declared Mumples only said it to wound her, and Mumples got hurt because Sibylla wouldn't forgive her, when Sibylla, of course, wanted Mumples to forgive her. And after half an hour of that sort of thing, it was as likely as not that they'd have quarrelled worse than ever, and the whole row would begin over again."
Grantley lay back and laughed.
"A bit rough on you to give your things to—er—Mumples?" suggested Courtland.
"Just like Sibylla—just like any woman, I expect," opined Jeremy, but with a more resigned and better-tempered air. His reminiscences had evidently amused himself as well as his listeners.
"Wouldn't it have been better to have a preceptress of more equable temper?" asked Grantley.
"Oh, there's nothing really wrong with Mumples; we're both awfully fond of her. Besides she's had such beastly hard luck. Hasn't Sibylla told you about that, Imason?"
"No, nothing."
"Her husband was sent to quod, you know—got twenty years."
"Twenty years! By Jingo!"
"Yes. He tried to murder a man—a man who had swindled him. Mumples says he did it all in a passion; but it seems to have been a cold sort of passion, because he waited twelve hours for him before he knifed him. And at the trial he couldn't even prove the swindling, so he got it pretty hot."
"Is he dead?"
"No, he's alive. He's to get out in about three years. Mumples is waiting for him."
"Poor old woman! Does she go and see him?"
"She used to. She hasn't for years now. I believe he won't have her—I don't know why. The governor was high sheriff's chaplain at the time, so he got to know Mumples, and took her on. She's been with us ever since, and she can stay as long as she likes."
"What things one comes across!" sighed Tom Courtland.
Grantley had looked grave for a moment, but he smiled again as he said:
"After all, though, you've not told me how to manage Sibylla. I'm not Mumples—I can't thump her. I should be better than Mumples in one way, though. If I did, I should be dead sure to stick to it that I was right."
"You'd stick to it even if you didn't think so," observed Courtland.
For a moment the remark seemed to vex Grantley, and to sober him. He spent a few seconds evidently reflecting on it.
"Well, I hope not," he said at last. "But at any rate I should think so generally."
"Then you could mostly make her think so. But if it wasn't true, you might feel a brute."
"So I might, Jeremy."
"And it mightn't be permanently safe. She sees things uncommonly sharp sometimes. Well, I must be off."
"Going back to Haeckel?"
Jeremy nodded gravely. He was not susceptible to ridicule on the subject of his theories. The two watched him stride away towards Old Mill House with decisive vigorous steps.
"Rum product for a country parsonage, Grantley."
"Oh, he's not a product; he's only an embryo. But I think he's a promising one, and he's richly amusing."
"Yes, and I wonder how you're going to manage Miss Sibylla!"
Grantley laughed easily. "My poor old chap, you can't be expected to take a cheerful view. Poor old Tom! God bless you, old chap! Let's go home to tea."
As they walked by the parsonage a bicycle came whizzing through the open garden-gate. It was propelled by a girl of fifteen or thereabouts—a slim long-legged child, almost gaunt in her immaturity, and lamentably grown out of her frock. She cried shrill greeting to Grantley, and went off down the street, displaying her skill to whosoever would look by riding with her arms akimbo.
"Another local celebrity," said Grantley. "Dora Hutting, the new parson's daughter. That she should have come to live in the village is a gross personal affront to Jeremy Chiddingfold. He's especially incensed by her lengthy stretch of black stockings, always, as he maintains, with a hole in them."
Courtland laughed inattentively.
"I hope Harriet'll get that wire in good time," he said.
No remark came into Grantley's mind, unless it were to tell his friend that he was a fool to stand what he did from the woman. But what was the use of that? Tom Courtland knew his own business best. Grantley shrugged his shoulders, but held his peace.
Courtland went off early next morning in the dog-cart to Fairhaven station—no railway line ran nearer Milldean—and Grantley Imason spent the morning lounging about his house, planning what improvements could be made and what embellishments provided against the coming of Sibylla. He enjoyed this pottering both for its own sake and because it was connected with the thought of the girl he loved. For he was in love—as much in love, it seemed to him, as a man could well be. "And I ought to know," he said, with a smile of reminiscence, his mind going back to earlier affairs of the heart, more or less serious, which had been by no means lacking in his career. He surveyed them without remorse, though one or two might reasonably have evoked that emotion, and with no more regret than lay in confessing that he had shared the follies common to his age and his position. But he found great satisfaction in the thought that Sibylla had had nothing to do with any of the persons concerned. She had known none of them; she was in no sense of the same set with any one of the five or six women of whom he was thinking; her surroundings had always been quite different from theirs. She came into his life something entirely fresh, new, and unconnected with the past. Herein lay a great deal of the charm of this latest, this final affair. For it was to be final—for his love's sake, for his honour's sake, and also because it seemed time for such finality in that ordered view of life and its stages to which his intellect inclined him. There was something singularly fortunate in the chance which enabled him to suit his desire to this conception, to find the two things in perfect harmony, to act on rational lines with such a full and even eager assent of his feelings.
He reminded himself, with his favourite shrug, that to talk of chance was to fall into an old fallacy; but the sense of accident remained. The thing had been so entirely unplanned. He had meant to buy a place in the North; it was only when the one he wanted had been snapped up by somebody else that the agents succeeded in persuading him to come and look at the house at Milldean. It happened to take his fancy, and he bought it. Then he happened to be out of sorts, and stayed down there an unbroken month, instead of coming only from Saturday to Monday. Again, Sibylla and Jeremy had meant to go away when the rector died, and had stayed on only because Old Mill House happened to fall vacant so opportunely. No other house was available in the village. So the chances went on, till chance culminated in that meeting of his with Sibylla: not their first encounter, but the one he always called his meeting with her in his own thoughts—that wonderful evening when all the sky was red, and the earth too looked almost red, and the air was so still. Then he had been with her in his garden, and she, forgetful of him, had turned her eyes to the heavens, and gazed and gazed. Presently, and still, as it seemed, unconsciously, she had stretched out her hand and caught his in a tight grip, silently but urgently demanding his sympathy for thoughts and feelings she could not express. At that moment her beauty seemed to be born for him, and he had determined to make it his. He smiled now, saying that he had been as impulsive as the merest boy, thanking fortune that he could rejoice in the impulse instead of condemning it—an end which a priori would have seemed much the more probable. In nine cases out of ten it would have been foolish and disastrous to be carried away in an instant like that. In his case it had, at any rate, not proved disastrous. From that moment he had never turned back from his purpose, and he had nothing but satisfaction in its now imminent accomplishment.
"Absolutely the right thing! I couldn't have done better for myself."
He stood still once in the middle of the room and said these words aloud. They exhausted the subject, and Grantley sat down at his writing-table to answer Mrs. Raymore's letter of congratulation. He had never been in love with Mrs. Raymore, who was his senior by ten years; but she was an old and intimate friend—perhaps his most intimate friend. She had been more or less in his confidence while he was wooing Sibylla, and a telegram apprising her of his success had called forth the letter to which he now owed a response.
"If I had been a poor man," he wrote in the course of his reply, "I wouldn't have married—least of all a rich wife. Even as a well-to-do man, I wouldn't have married a rich wife. You have to marry too much besides the woman! And I didn't want a society woman, nor anybody from any of the sets I've knocked about with. But I did want to marry. I want a wife, and I want the dynasty continued. It's come direct from father to son for five or six generations, and I didn't want to stand on record as the man who stopped it. I'm entirely contented, no less with the project than with the lady. It will complete my life. That's what I want—a completion, not a transformation. She'll do just this for me. If I had taken a child and trained her, I couldn't have got more exactly what I want; and I'm sure you'll think so when you come to know her. Incidentally, I am to acquire a delightful brother-in-law. He'll always be a capital fellow; but, alas, he won't long be the jewel he is now: just at that stage between boy and man—hobbledehoy, as you women used to make me so furious by calling me—breathing fury against all institutions, especially those commonly supposed to be of divine origin; learned in ten thousand books; knowing naught of all that falls under the categories of men, women, and things; best of all, blindly wrath at himself because he has become, or is becoming, a man, and can't help it, and can't help feeling it! How he hates women and despises them! You see, he has begun to be afraid! I haven't told him that he's begun to be afraid; it will be rich to watch him as he achieves the discovery on his own account. You'll enjoy him very much."
Grantley ended his letter with a warm tribute to Mrs. Raymore's friendship, assurances of all it had been to him, and a promise that marriage should, so far as his feelings went, in no way lessen, impair, or alter the affection between them.
"He's very nice about me," said Mrs. Raymore when she had finished reading; "and he says a good deal about the brother-in-law, and quite a lot about himself. But really, he says hardly one word about Sibylla!"
Now it was, of course, about Sibylla that Mrs. Raymore had wanted to hear.
Late afternoon found Grantley cantering over the downs towards Fairhaven. Sibylla had been staying the night there with a Mrs. Valentine, a friend of hers, and was to return by the omnibus which plied to and from Milldean. Their plan was that he should meet her and she should dismount, leaving her luggage to be delivered. He loved his horse, and had seized the opportunity of slipping in a ride. When she joined him he would get off and walk with her. As he rode now he was not in the calm mood which had dictated his letter. He was excited and eager at the prospect of meeting Sibylla again; he was exulting in the success of his love, instead of contemplating with satisfaction the orderly progression of his life. But still he had not, and knew he had not, quite the freedom from self-consciousness which marks a youthful passion. The eagerness was there, but he was not surprised, although he was gratified, to find it there. His ardour was natural enough to need no nursing; yet Grantley was inclined to caress it. He laughed as he let his horse stretch himself in a gallop; he was delighted, and a trifle amused, to find his emotions so fresh: none of the luxury, none of the pleasure-giving power, had gone out of them. He was still as good a lover as any man.
He was cantering over the turf thirty or forty yards from the road when the omnibus passed him. The driver cried his name, and pointed back with his whip. Grantley saw Sibylla a long way behind. He touched his horse with the spur, and galloped towards her. Now she stood still, waiting for him. He came up to her at full speed, reined in, and leapt off. Holding his bridle and his hat in one hand, with the other he took hers, and, bowing over it, kissed it. His whole approach was gallantly conceived and carried out.
"Ah, you—you come to me like Sir Galahad!" murmured Sibylla.
"My dear, Sir Galahad! A banker, Sir Galahad!"
"Well, do bankers kiss the hands of paupers?"
"Bankers of love would kiss the hands of its millionaires."
"And am I a millionaire of love?"
Grantley let go her hand and joined in her laugh at their little bout of conceits. She carried it on, but merrily now, not in the almost painful strain of delight which had made her first greeting sound half-choked.
"Haven't I given it all to you—to a dishonest banker, who'll never let me have it back?"
"We pay interest on large accounts," Grantley reminded her.
"You'll pay large, large interest to me?"
She laid her hand on his arm, and it rested there as they began to walk, the good horse Rollo pacing soberly beside them.
"All the larger if I've embezzled the principal! That's always the way, you know." He stopped suddenly, laughing, "It's quite safe!", and kissed her.
He held her face a moment, looking into the depths of her dark eyes. Now he forgot to be amused at himself or even gratified. If he was not as a boy-lover, it was not because he advanced with less ardour, but that he advanced with more knowledge; not because he abandoned himself less, but that he knew to what the self-abandonment was.
She walked along with a free swing under her short cloth skirt; evidently she could walk thus for many a mile with no slackening and no fatigue. The wind had caught her hair, and blew it from under, and round about, and even over the flat cap of red that she wore; her eyes gazed and glowed and cried joy to him. There under the majestic spread of sky, amid the exhilaration of the salt-tasting air, on the green swell of the land, by the green and blue and white of the sea, she was an intoxication. Grantley breathed quickly as he walked with her hand on his wrist.
"It's so new," she whispered in a joyful apology. "I've never been in love before. You have! Oh, of course you have! I don't mind that—not now. I used to before—before you told me. I used to be very jealous! I couldn't be jealous now—except of not being allowed to love you enough."
"When I'm with you I've never been in love before."
"I don't believe you ever have—not really. I don't believe you could—without me to help you!" She laughed at her boast as she made it, drumming her fingers lightly on his arm; his blood seemed to register each separate touch with a beat for each. "When we're married, Grantley, you shall give me a horse, such a good horse, such a fast horse—as good and as fast as dear old Rollo. And we'll ride—we'll ride together—oh, so far and so fast, against the wind, right against it breathlessly! We'll mark the setting sun, and we'll ride straight for it, never stopping, never turning. We'll ride straight into the gold, both of us together, and let the gold swallow us up!"
"A bizarre ending for a respectable West End couple!"
"No ending! We'll do it every day!" She turned to him suddenly, saying, "Ride now. You mount—I'll get up behind you."
"What? You'll be horribly uncomfortable!"
"Who's thinking of comfort? Rollo can carry us easily. Mount, Grantley, mount! Don't go straight home. Ride along the cliff. Come, mount, mount!"
She was not to be denied. When he was mounted she set her foot lightly on his, and he helped her up.
"My arm round your waist!" she cried. "Why, I'm splendid here! Gallop, Grantley, gallop! Think somebody's pursuing us and trying to take me away!"
"Must poor Rollo drop down dead?"
"No, but we'll pretend he will!"
Now and then he cried something back to her as they rode; but for the most part he knew only her arm about him, the strands of her hair brushing against his cheek as the wind played with them, her short quick breathing behind him. The powerful horse seemed to join in the revel, so strong and easy was his gait as he pulled playfully and tossed his head. They were alone in the world, and the world was very simple—the perfect delight of the living body, the unhindered union of soul with soul—all nature fostering, inciting, applauding. It was a great return to the earliest things, and nothing lived save those. They rode more than king and queen; they rode god and goddess in the youth of the world, descended from High Olympus to take their pleasure on the earth. They rode far and fast against the wind, against it breathlessly. They rode into the gold, and the gold swallowed them up.
The blood was hot in him, and when first he heard her gasp "Stop!" he would pay no heed. He turned the horse's head towards home, but they went at a gallop still. He felt her head fall against his shoulder. It rested there. Her breath came quicker, faster; he seemed to see her bosom rising and falling in the stress. But he did not stop. Again her voice came, strangled and faint:
"I can't bear any more. Stop! Stop!"
One more wild rush, and he obeyed. He was quivering all over when they came to a stand. Her hold round him grew loose; she was about to slip down. He turned round in his saddle and caught her about the waist with his arm. He drew her off the horse and forward to his side. He held her thus with his arm, exulting in the struggle of his muscles. He held her close against him and kissed her face. When he let her go and she reached earth, she sank on the ground and covered her face with both hands, all her body shaken with her gasps. He sat on his horse for a moment, looking at her. He drew a deep inspiration, and brushed drops of sweat from his brow. He was surprised to find that there seemed now little wind, that the sun was veiled in clouds, that a waggon passed along the road, that a dog barked from a farmhouse, that the old ordinary humdrum world was there.
He heard a short stifled sob.
"You're not angry with me?" he said. "I wasn't rough to you? I couldn't bear to stop at first."
She showed him her face. Her eyes were full of tears; there was a deep glow on her cheeks, generally so pale. She sprang to her feet and stood by his horse, looking up at him.
"I angry? You rough? It has been more than I knew happiness could be. I had no idea joy could be like that, no idea life had anything like that. And you ask me if I'm angry and if you were rough! You're opening life to me, showing me why it is good, why I have it, why I want it, what I'm to do with it. You're opening it all to me. And all the beauties come out of your dear hand, Grantley. Angry! I know only that you're doing this for me, only that I must give you in return, in a poor return, all I have and am and can be—must give you my very, very self."
He was in a momentary reaction of feeling; his earnestness was almost sombre as he answered:
"God grant you're doing right!"
"I'm doing what I must do, Grantley."
He swung himself off his horse, and the ready smile came to his face.
"I hope you'll find the necessity a permanent one," he said.
She too laughed joyfully as she submitted to his kiss.
It was her whim, urged with the mock imperiousness of a petted slave, that he should mount again, and she walk by his horse. Thus they wended their way home through the peace of the evening. She talked now of how he had first come into her life, of how she had begun to—— She hesitated, ending, "How I began first to feel you——" and of how, little by little, the knowledge of the feeling had disclosed itself. She was wonderfully open and simple, very direct and unabashed; yet there was nothing that even his fastidious and much-tested taste found indelicate or even forward. In glad confidence she told all, careless of keeping any secrets or any defences against him. The seed had quickened in virgin soil, and the flower had sprung up in a night—almost by magic, she seemed to fancy. He listened tenderly and indulgently. The flame of his emotion had burnt down, but there was an after-glow which made him delightfully content with her, interested and delighted in her, still more thoroughly satisfied with what he had done, even more glad that she was different from all the others with whom he had been thrown. While she displayed to him at once the joy and the spontaneity of her abandonment of her whole existence and self to him, she made him surer of his wisdom in taking her and all she offered, more convinced of the excellence of this disposition of his life. She could give him all he pictured as desirable—the stretches of tranquillity, the moments of strong feeling. She had it in her to give both, and she would give all she had to give. In return he gave her his love. No analysis seemed needful there. He gave her the love of his heart and the shelter of his arm; what more he could give her the afternoon had shown. But in the end it was all contained and summed up in a word—he gave his love.
They came to the crest of the hill where the road dipped down to Milldean, and paused there.
"What a wonderful afternoon it's been!" she sighed.
The enchantment of it hung about her still, expressing itself in the gleam of her eyes and in her restlessness.
"It's been a very delightful one," he leaned down and whispered to her. "It's given us something to look back on always."
"Yes, a great thing to look back on. But even more to look forward to. It's told us what life is going to be, Grantley. And to think that life used to mean only that!"
She waved her hand towards Milldean.
Grantley laughed in sheer enjoyment of her. Amusement mingled with his admiration. His balance had quite come back to him. A review of the afternoon, of their wild ride, made him give part of his amusement to his own share in the proceedings. But who expects a man, or need expect himself, to be wise when he is in love? If there be a chartered season for sweet folly, it is there.
"Can we always be careering over the downs in the teeth of the wind, riding into the gold, Sibylla?" he asked her in affectionate mockery.
She looked up at him, answering simply:
"Why not?"
He shook his head with a whimsical smile.
"Whatever else there is, our hearts can be riding together still."
"And when we're old folks? Isn't it only the young who can ride like that?"
She stood silent for a moment or two. Then she turned her eyes up to his in silence still, with the colour shining bright on her cheeks. She took his hand and kissed it. He knew the thought that his words had called into her mind. He had made the girl think that, when they were old, the world would not be; there would be young hearts still to ride, young hearts in whom their hearts should be carried still in the glorious gallop, young hearts which had drawn life from them.
They parted at the gate of Old Mill House. Grantley urged her to come up to his house in the evening and bring Jeremy with her, and laughed again when she said, "Bring Jeremy?" She was confused at the hint in his laughter, but she laughed too. Then growing grave, she went on:
"No, I won't come to-night. I won't see you again to-night. I want to realise it, to think it all over."
"Is it so complicated as that? You're looking very serious!"
She broke into a fresh laugh, a laugh of joyful confession.
"No, I don't want to think it over. I really want to live it over, to live it over alone, many, many times. To be alone with you again up on the downs there."
"Very well. Send Jeremy up. By now he must be dying for an argument; and he's probably not on speaking terms with Mrs. Mumple."
He gave her his hand; any warmer farewell there in the village street was quite against his ways and notions. He observed a questioning look in her eyes, but it did not occur to him that she was rather surprised at his wanting Jeremy to come up after dinner. She did not propose to spend any time with Jeremy.
"I'll tell him you want him," she said; and added in a whisper, "Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!"
He walked his horse up the hill, looking back once or twice to the gate where she stood watching him till a turn of the lane hid him from her sight. When that happened, he sighed in luxurious contentment, and took a cigarette from his case.
To her the afternoon had been a wonder-working revelation; to him it seemed an extremely delightful episode.
For a girl of ardent temper and vivid imagination, strung to her highest pitch by a wonderful fairy ride and the still strange embrace of her lover, it may fairly be reckoned a trial to listen to a detailed comparison of the hero of her fancy with another individual—who has been sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude for attempted murder! Concede circumstances extenuating the crime as amply as you please (and My Lord in scarlet on the Bench had not encouraged the jury to concede any), the comparison is one that gives small pleasure, unless such as lies in an opportunity for the exercise of Christian patience. This particular virtue Jeremy Chiddingfold suspected of priestly origin; neither was it the strongest point in his sister's spiritual panoply. He regarded Sibylla's ill-repressed irritation and irrepressible fidgeting with a smile of malicious humour.
"You might almost as well come up to Imason's," he whispered.
"She can't go on much longer!" moaned Sibylla.
But she could. For long years starved of fruition, her love revelled luxuriantly in retrospect and tenderly in prospect; and she was always good at going on, and at going on along the same lines. Mrs. Mumple's loving auditors had heard the tale of Luke's virtues many a time during the period of his absence (that was the term euphemistically employed). The ashes of their interest suddenly flickered up at the hint of a qualification which Mrs. Mumple unexpectedly introduced.
"He wasn't the husband for every woman," she said thoughtfully.
"Thank heaven!" muttered Jeremy, glad to escape the superhuman.
"Eh, Jeremy?"
She revolved slowly and ponderously towards him.
"Thank heaven he got the right sort, Mumples."
"He did," said Mrs. Mumple emphatically; "and he knew it—and he'll know it again when he comes back, and that's only three years now."
A reference to this date was always the signal for a kiss from Sibylla. She rendered the tribute and returned to her chair, sighing desperately. But it was some relief that Mrs. Mumple had finished her parallel, with its list of ideal virtues, and now left Grantley out of the question.
"Why wasn't he the husband for every woman, Mumples?" inquired Jeremy as he lit his pipe. "They're all just alike, you know."
"You wait, Jeremy!"
"Bosh!" ejaculated Jeremy curtly.
"He liked them good-looking, to start with," she went on; "and I was good-looking." Jeremy had heard this so often that he no longer felt tempted to smile. "But there was more than that. I had tact."
"Oh, come now, Mumples! You had tact? You? I'm—well, I'm——"
"I had tact, Jeremy." She spoke with overpowering solidity. "I was there when he wanted me, and when he didn't want me I wasn't there, Sibylla."
"Didn't he always want you?" Brother and sister put the question simultaneously, but with a quite different intention.
"No, not always, dears.—Is that your foot on my table? Take it off this instant, Jeremy!"
"Quite a few thousand years ago there was no difference between a foot and a hand, Mumples. You needn't be so fussy about it."
Sibylla got up and walked to the window. From it the lights in Grantley's dining-room were visible.
"I haven't seen him for ten years," Mrs. Mumple went on; "and you've known that, my dears, though you've said nothing—no, not when you'd have liked to have something to throw at me. But I never told you why."
Sibylla left the window and came behind Mrs. Mumple, letting her hand rest on the fat shoulder.
"He broke out at me once, and said he couldn't bear it if I came to see him. It upset him so, and the time wouldn't pass by, and he got thinking how long the time was, and what it all meant. Oh, I can't tell you all he said before he was stopped by the—the man who was there. So I promised him I wouldn't go any more, unless he fell ill or wanted me. They said they'd let me know if he asked for me and was entitled to a visit. But word has never come to me, and I've never seen him."
She paused and stitched at her work for a minute or two.
"You must leave men alone sometimes," she said.
"But, Mumples, you?" whispered Sibylla.
Mrs. Mumple looked up at her, but made no answer. Jeremy flung down his book with an impatient air; he resented the approaches of emotion—especially in himself.
"He'll be old when he comes out—comes back—old and broken; they break quickly there. He won't so much mind my being old and stout, and he won't think so much of the time when I was young and he couldn't be with me; and he'll find me easier to live with: my temper's improved a lot these last years, Sibylla."
"You silly old thing!" said Sibylla.
But Jeremy welcomed a diversion.
"Rot!" he said. "It's only because you can't sit on us quite so much now. It's not moral improvement; it's simply impotence, Mumples."
Mrs. Mumple had risen in the midst of eulogising the improvement of her temper, and now passed by Jeremy, patting his unwilling cheek. She went out, and the next moment was heard in vigorous altercation with their servant as to the defects of certain eggs.
"I couldn't have done that," said Sibylla.
"Improved your temper?"
"No, stayed away."
"No, you couldn't. You never let a fellow alone, even when he's got toothache."
"Have you got it now?" cried Sibylla, darting towards him.
"Keep off! Keep off! I haven't got it, and if I had I shouldn't want to be kissed."
Sibylla broke into a laugh. Jeremy relit his pipe with a secret smile.
"But I do call it fine of Mumples."
"Go and tell her you've never done her justice, and cry," he suggested. "I'm going up to Imason's now, so you can have it all to yourselves."
"I don't want to cry to-night," Sibylla objected, with a plain hint of mysterious causes for triumph.
Jeremy picked up his cap, showing a studious disregard of any such indications.
"You're going up the hill now? I shall sit up for you."
"You'll sit up for me?"
"Yes. Besides I don't feel at all sleepy to-night."
"I shall when I come back."
"I shan't want to talk."
"Then what will you want? Why are you going to sit up?"
"I've ever so many things to do."
Jeremy's air was weary as he turned away from the inscrutable feminine. While mounting the hill he made up his mind to go to London as soon as he could. A man met men there.
No air of emotion, no atmosphere of overstrained sentiment, hung, even for Jeremy's critical eye, round Grantley Imason's luxurious table and establishment. They suggested rather the ideal of comfort lovingly pursued, a comfort which lay not in gorgeousness or in mere expenditure, but in the delicate adjustment of means to ends and a careful exclusion of anything likely to disturb a dexterously achieved equipoise. Though Jeremy admired the absence of emotion, his rough vigorous nature was challenged at another point. He felt a touch of scorn that a man should take so much trouble to be comfortable, and should regard the achievement of his object as so meritorious a feat. In various ways everything, from the gymnastic apparatus in the hall to the leg-rest in front of the study fire, sought and subserved the ease and pleasure of the owner. That, no doubt, is what a house should be—just as a man should be well dressed. It is possible, however, to be too much of a dandy. Jeremy found an accusation of unmanliness making its way into his mind; he had to banish it by recalling that, though his host might be fond of elegant lounging, he was a keen sportsman too, and handled his gun and sat his horse with equal mastery. These virtues appealed to the English public schoolboy and to the amateur of Primitive Man alike, and saved Grantley from condemnation. But Jeremy's feelings escaped in an exclamation:
"By Jove, you are snug here!"
"I don't pretend to be an ascetic," laughed Grantley, as he stretched his legs out on the leg-rest.
"Evidently."
Grantley looked at him, smiling.
"I don't rough it unless I'm obliged. But I can rough it. I once lived for a week on sixpence a day. I had a row with my governor. He wanted me to give up—— Well, never mind details. It's enough to observe, Jeremy, that he was quite right and I was quite wrong. I know that now, and I rather fancy I knew it then. However, his way of putting it offended me, and I flung myself out of the house with three-and-six in my pocket. Like the man in Scripture, I couldn't work and I wouldn't beg, and I wouldn't go back to the governor. So it was sixpence a day for a week and very airy lodgings. Then it was going to be the recruiting-sergeant; but, as luck would have it, I met the dear old man on the way. I suppose I looked a scarecrow; anyhow, he was broken up about it, and killed the fatted calf—killed it for an unrepentant prodigal. And I could do that again, though I may live in a boudoir."
Jeremy rubbed his hands slowly against one another—a movement common with him when he was thinking.
"I don't tell you that to illustrate my high moral character—as I say, I was all in the wrong—but just to show you that, given the motive——"
"What was the motive?"
"Pride, obstinacy, conceit—anything you like of that kind," smiled Grantley. "I'd told the fellows about my row, and they'd said I should have to knuckle down. So I made up my mind I wouldn't."
"Because of what they'd say?"
"Don't be inquisitorial, Jeremy. The case is, I repeat, not given as an example of morality, but as an example of me—quite different things. However, I don't want to talk about myself to-night; I want to talk about you. What are you going to do with yourself?"
"Oh, I'm all right!" declared Jeremy. "I've got my London B.A. (It didn't run to Cambridge, you know), and I'm pegging away." A touch of boyish pompousness crept in. "I haven't settled precisely what line of study I shall devote myself to, but I intend to take up and pursue some branch of original research."
Grantley's mind had been set on pleasing Sibylla by smoothing her brother's path. His business interest would enable him to procure a good opening for Jeremy—an opening which would lead to comfort, if not to wealth, in a short time, proper advantage being taken of it.
"Original research?" He smiled indulgently. "There's not much money in that."
"Oh, I've got enough to live on. Sibylla's all right now, and I've got a hundred a year. And I do a popular scientific article now and then—I've had one or two accepted. Beastly rot they have to be, though."
Grantley suggested the alternative plan. Jeremy would have none of it. He turned Grantley's story against him.
"If you could live on sixpence a day out of pride, I can live on what I've got for the sake of—of——" He sought words for his big vague ambitions. "Of knowledge—and—and——"
"Fame?" smiled Grantley.